Twelve Famous Women of the Middle Ages
Women in the Middle Ages were frequently characterized as second-class citizens by the Church and the patriarchal aristocracy. Women’s status was somewhat elevated in the High and Late Middle Ages by the cult of the Virgin Mary and courtly love poetry but, even so, women were still considered inferior to men owing to biblical narratives and the patriarchy.
Still, there were many notable women throughout the Middle Ages who were able to break from societal norms to live the kind of life they chose for themselves and claim a position of power traditionally associated with males. In almost every case, these women were from the upper class and had slightly more social mobility than the lower classes, but there are records clearly indicating that women throughout the Middle Ages worked alongside men in medieval guilds and were significant and sought-after artists, writers, illustrators, artisans, and monarchs.
Famous Women of the Middle Ages
Scholars divide the Middle Ages into three periods:
Early Middle Ages – 476-1000
High Middle Ages – 1000-1300
Late Middle Ages – 1300-1500
There were many famous women throughout these three eras but the following twelve are among the best-known:
Empress Theodora of Byzantium
Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians
Many of these women significantly influenced their own time as well as later generations through their vision and ability to act on that vision. How women were perceived by society through the lens of the Church, how they were considered as legal and social entities by the law, and how they actually lived out their lives were never precisely the same, but the women named above took control of their situations to live as independent women, equal to men, in a patriarchal society. Scholar Eileen Power comments:
The position of women is often considered as a test by which the civilization of a country or age may be judged. The test is extraordinarily difficult to apply, more particularly to the Middle Ages, because of the difficulty of determining what in any age constitutes the position of women. The position of women is one thing in theory, another in legal position, yet another in everyday life. In the Middle Ages, as now, the various manifestations of women’s position reacted on one another but did not exactly coincide; the true position of women was a blend of all the three. (9)
The Church exerted the greatest influence over how women were perceived through the teachings of the Bible. Famous biblical heroines such as Ruth or Deborah, the Virgin Mary or Mary Magdalene were countered by Eve or Jezebel and the admonitions of St. Paul in his epistles which claimed that men were superior to women and women should submit themselves to male authority. Even though more women were able to assert themselves in the latter part of the Middle Ages, some did so even earlier.
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