Drawing on myriad sources--from the faint traces left by the
rocking of a cradle at the site of an early medieval home to an
antique illustration of Eve's fall from grace-this second volume in
the celebrated series offers new perspectives on women of the past.
Twelve distinguished historians from many countries examine the
image of women in the masculine mind, their social condition, and
their daily experience from the demise of the Roman Empire to the
genesis of the Italian Renaissance.
More than in any other era, a medieval woman's place in society
was determined by men; her sexuality was perceived as disruptive
and dangerous, her proper realm that of the home and cloister. The
authors draw upon the writings of bishops and abbots, moralists and
merchants, philosophers and legislators, to illuminate how men
controlled women's lives. Sumptuary laws regulating feminine dress
and ornament, pastoral letters admonishing women to keep silent and
remain chaste, and learned treatises with their fantastic theories
about women's physiology are fully explored in these pages. As
adoration of the Virgin Mary reached full flower by the year 1200,
ecclesiastics began to envision motherhood as a holy role;
misogyny, however, flourished unrestrained in local proverbs,
secular verses, and clerical thought throughout the period.
Were women's fates sealed by the dictates of church and
society? The authors investigate legal, economic, and demographic
aspects of family and communal life between the sixth and the
fifteenth centuries and bring to light the fleeting moments in
which women managed to seize some small measure of autonomy over
their lives. The notion that courtly love empowered feudalwomen is
discredited in this volume. The pattern of wear on a hearthstone,
fingerprints on a terra-cotta pot, and artifacts from everyday life
such as scissors, thimbles, spindles, and combs are used to
reconstruct in superb detail the commonplace tasks that shaped
women's existence inside and outside the home. As in antiquity,
male fantasies and fears are evident in art. Yet a growing number
of women rendered visions of their own gender in sumptuous
tapestries and illuminations. The authors look at the surviving
texts of female poets and mystics and document the stirrings of a
quiet revolution throughout the West, as a few daring women began
to preserve their thoughts in writing.
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