Religious Women in Medieval Europe

Question 1

How were women involved in the life of the church during the barbarian invasions?

Answer 1

Exogamous marriages remain important, especially among nobility promoting tribal conversions
– Example of Clovis’ Christian wife, Clothilde (sculpture at right). Another example of this is Monica, who is Augustine’s mom. She helped convert her husband. They are often the unsung factors in the spread of Christianity.

Overall, evidence is much harder to come by for this period. The Celtic and Irish have more evidence of women being involved.

Tribal societies had different expectations of women, and some of them were very patriarchal in nature. Many Christian women get married to pagan men.

Question 2

What were women’s roles in the church during Early Middle Ages?

Answer 2

For women, specialized roles tended to be found only among aristocratic women. Overall, women’s monastic life was not encouraged.

Question 3

How many women’s houses did the Cluny reform have?

Answer 3

– Cf. only one female house under Cluny (10th century). They only had one. Wow. Sad.

Question 4

In the early Middle Ages, where are some of the powerful Abbesses found?

Answer 4

– Some powerful Abbesses are found. In Irish monasticism, Abbesses did have powerful roles. Sometimes they came from powerful noble and royal families.

– Irish monasticism tended to have important roles for Abbesses and female saints. Some even had control of the men’s monasteries.

• Cf. yoked monasteries of men and women, some with women in charge. The women’s role were more spiritually adept. We find some of this in the early middle ages.

Question 5

What happens in the 11th and 12th centuries that allows women to participate in the spiritual life?

Answer 5

• Time of great expansion of religious life. Town life began to grow. So does religious life. There is an emerging middle class. All life is impacted. Wealth, population, longevity, all begin to grow.
• New life in found in trade. You get a lot of movements of lay people.
• Not just renewal movements of Benedictine life (e.g., the Cistercians), but new orders and forms of the committed Christian life
• Women very much a part of this explosion
• This wave of enthusiasm affects aristocrats, the new “middle class,” and the poor

Question 6

What role does the “Apostolic Life” play in encouraging women to engage in the spiritual life?

Answer 6

• Wandering preachers springing up, many urging radical forms of “the Apostolic life” of poverty and rootlessness in following Jesus. Basically, living lives of poverty and living without wealth. They were trying to go back to the roots of Christianity.
– Often involved breaking off from social rootedness in expected kin, marriage, and patriarchal social obligations
• Women flock to these new movements.
• Monasteries are founded for many of these women

Question 7

True or False. Ordinary women could go on pilgrimages.

Answer 7

True. Even household (ordinary) women could go on pilgrimage, a temporary “apostolic lifestyle”. When you went on a pilgrimage, you became like a temporary monk, to go on a specific journey. They left all institutions and family and went away on a spiritual journey.

Question 8

After dying out, where do we find a resurgence of yoked monasteries?

Answer 8

• After mostly dying out, a rebirth of yoked monasteries (at least in England)

Question 9

What form of piety began to include lots of women?

Answer 9

Heterodox (non-orthodox) forms of piety.

Cathars, Waldensians, “Heresy of the Free Spirit”: The number of females in these groups was large, especially before they developed their own leadership structure that later excluded them from leadership.

Question 10

Explain some of the differences between heterodox and orthodox Christianity in the 12th century. There are four differences.

Answer 10

– Concern for emotional response (this was not a concern for the orthodox Benedictine monasteries).
– Forms of extreme penitential asceticism.
– An emphasis on Christ’s humanity and the inspiration of the Spirit. The 11th and 12th century is a growth in the humanity of Christ.
– A bypassing of clerical authority.

Question 11

Who are the “Friends of God”?

Answer 11

13th and 14th centuries: women’s monasteries forming networks among themselves, known as “friends of God”. They experienced visions, and passed them around. You often had male clerics who were their spiritual advisors who wrote these things down. They took the term “friends of God” and communicated with each other widely.

• These shared sisters’ lives, writings, and visions
read also in male houses as spiritual instruction

Question 12

What happens to monasteries in the 13th century, and how do women respond?

Answer 12

• After the 13th century, decline in male houses in parts of Europe
• Continued expansion of female houses there
• Hence, females began to outnumber male counterparts of cloistered monastics in many areas by 14th/15th centuries.

Question 13

Which is the first identifiable women’s movements in Christianity? Where do we find them?

Answer 13

The Beguines

Found throughout Northern Europe. In the low countries like France, and Switzerland.

Question 14

Beguines

Answer 14

• Austere, poor, chaste lives, in which manual labor and charitable service were joined to worship. Their worship wasn’t as systematized as the monasteries, but they did take up the holy life. They were lay women, who wanted to serve God.

Question 15

Male Beguines

Answer 15

Male Beguines were known as “Beghards,” but not as numerous as the women

Question 16

tertiary

Answer 16

“Tertiaries” were laypeople who lived together without a formal vow or rule in ascetic and service-orientated groups

Question 17

How did the Beguines differ significantly from the more Traditional orders?

Answer 17

– no vows, no complex organization or rules, no order linking houses, no hierarchy of officials, no wealthy founders or leaders.

Question 18

What impact did social status on women’s spiritual practice?

Answer 18

– New movements peopled by the “rising” classes (emphasis on renunciation of wealth). They came from the new middle class, basically. They were feeling anxiety about their growing wealth, and wanted to give it up.

– Women from nobility tended to join traditional orders, such as the Benedictines (which required large dowries when they entered).

Question 19

By the 15th century, who represented the female saints? And the male saints?

Answer 19

By 15th century, women represent almost exclusively the lay saint.

Male clerics/monks almost exclusively represent male saints.

Question 20

What was the lay model of saintliness? In other words, when the laity wanted to be like saints, who were their examples?

Answer 20

Female model was the dominant “lay” model of saintliness. In other words, if you weren’t going to be a cleric, women provided the role model of what a “normal” person in society should strive for in their relationship with God.

Question 21

When do double (yoked) monasteries disappear?

Answer 21

• Double (yoked) monasteries eliminated by later 13th century

Question 22

When do people become suspect of female spirituality, and what happens to the Bebuines?

Answer 22

14th century onward: increasing hostility toward woman’s spirituality (but also some suspicion of male movements as well). Holy women who were charismatic began to become suspect.

The Buigunies become suspect and are suppressed.
– More subject to male scrutiny and charges of witchcraft or heresy.
– Women life Catherine of Siena were influential only because their male patrons were powerful, this waasn’t the case before in the 10th and 11th centuries.

Question 23

By 1500, what were the common things that witches and female saints shared?

Answer 23

By 1500, the image of the female saint mirrored that of a witch:

– Both were “possessed” (by the spirit of God, or by demons).
– Both read minds uncannily (either positively as a gift from the spirit, or as intrusive mind reading).
– Both suspected of flying (interesting, sainted women were supposed to be able to fly also, like witches).
– Both bore mysterious wounds (Saints had “stigmata” like St Francis, witches had marks of incubi- or possesions of demons)

Question 24

What are the first three general aspects of female spirituality in the Middle Ages?

Answer 24

1. Less Institutionalized than men’s
   – Many of prominent female actors not tied to traditional orders with rules
   – But, when men wrote about them, they usualy told a story of how they’d been part of a group, with a leader, like in male monasticism. Imposing a male point of view on femal spiritual life.
2. Life patterns of holy women different than men’s
   – Vocation was more slow through childhood and their teenage years, gradual growth of vocation rather than the abrupt crisis more common with men
   – Why? Maybe their lives were controlled by men and they didn’t have the option of throwing their money away.
3. Mysticism more central, and more often a claim to sanctity for women than for men
   – The experiential authority was more the female model, not just theological

Question 25

What are the last three general aspects of female spirituality in the Middle Ages?

Answer 25

4. More marked by penitential asceticism
   – Self-inflicted suffering, extreme fasting, patient endurance of illness
5. Devotional emphases on Christ’s suffering humanity and the Eucharist. No emphasis on the virgin
6. Most elaborate self-images were female (“mother,” “bride”) or androgynous
   – No need to acquire metaphorical “maleness” (in other words, they wanted to be women Christians).