A History of Women in the West, Volume II: Silences of the Middle Ages

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 series offers new perspectives on women of the past. Twelve 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 percieved 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 illustate 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 explored in these pages. The authors investigate legal, economic, and demographic aspects of family life between the 6th and 15th centuries and bring to light the fleeting moments in which women managed to sieze some small measure of autonomy over their lives. The notion that courtly love empowered feudal women 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 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.