Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

by Janina Ramírez

The title of this book – Femina – was the label scribbled alongside texts known to be written by a woman, so less worthy of preservation. We can only wonder how many other texts were dismissed or destroyed as the work of ‘femina’. Revelations of Divine Love should have gone the same way and fallen victim to the book burnings of generations of reformers. Tracing the rare survival of Julian of Norwich’s work can shed light on why so few medieval women have been recorded down the centuries.

major casualty of this embittered religious turmoil was books. Catholics destroyed Protestant books and vice versa. The burning, destruction or removal of books carries with it two purposes: to destroy the physical objects, and to remove their contents from people’s memories.18 Thousands of medieval manuscripts, the repositories of generations of knowledge and art, were declared heretical and destroyed. Those that survived were either accepted as orthodox, so almost exclusively written by educated men, or were hidden away. While Julian’s book wasn’t heretical, it did sail close to the wind. She referred to Christ as a woman, suggested that sin was ‘behovely’ (‘necessary’), and she saw God as entirely forgiving no matter what a person did during their lives.19 She would have kept her writings secret while inside her anchoress cell, but they eventually made their way out into the world.

The Reformation impacted women significantly. As convents were closed, opportunities available to women narrowed to being a wife and being a mother. Nuns were returned to their families or made to marry, and educational opportunities were increasingly restricted throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.24 The relegation of women to the role of the second sex was firmly embedded in Protestant communities,

Pseudo-scientific treatises like Acton’s did not help women’s emancipation, but much of the blame for the exclusion of women from eighteenth- to nineteenth-century histories lies at the feet of exponents for the so-called ‘great men’ theory during the height of the British Empire.

Those who didn’t fit the moral code of Victorian England, or sat outside the narrative of conquest, were repackaged or removed from the record. Individuals like Alfred the Great fared well, preserved for posterity by Victorian historians as a great military leader. But his daughter Æthelflæd was overlooked. A military strategist and social reformer of a kind that almost eclipsed her father in her lifetime, she didn’t fit with Victorian notions of a woman’s place in society. Women of the past were recast as reflections of what Victorian society wanted them to be.

Over-writing – the practice whereby male writers would take the visions, words and ideas of female intellectuals and rewrite them for a largely male audience – was also common throughout the period.31

Famously the Nazis created a version of German history which cherry-picked and repackaged information so as to benefit the regime’s agenda. But historical manipulation is everywhere, and trickles through to each of us in similar ways.

At the time of writing this book there is a dangerous undercurrent to medieval studies, as the period is increasingly hijacked by the far right to promote extreme ideologies on race, ethnicity and immigration.32

Whether forgotten, ignored or deliberately written out, it is a wonder than any female voices survive at all.

But the methods of passing down information in the non-literate communities of early medieval England were incredibly sophisticated.34 Individuals could recite poems from memory over the course of many hours, if not days. They had to retain information on bloodlines, land possession, law codes, as well as a vast body of stories, myths and history. To be illiterate was not to be ignorant, but rather to utilise more of the memory actively. It was Christianity that brought literacy and Latin to a people who had depended for three centuries on oral tradition and memory. It could be argued that with writing came complacency, bureaucracy and rigidity.

The period between Bertha arriving in Kent and the Loftus Princess being buried with a Christian symbol around her neck was relatively short – a decade or two. Just as the religion travelled to England with a woman, it was women who aided the quick and effective spread of Christianity across the country. The role of women in the early church is consistently underplayed, but when it came to the conversion of the English, wives and mothers were the ultimate tools of influence.

For a woman to be involved in such high-level synodal processes is something extraordinary even today. It is also significant that five men who trained under Hild were all made bishops; if there were king-makers in the medieval world, then she was the bishop-maker. Whitby was the training ground for a new, Roman Christian, learned and respected English church. From Hild’s northern headland, educated men and women would stretch out the length and breadth of the country, assuming the very highest positions within churches and monasteries, including the archbishop of York.54 Hild’s influence would permeate the fabric of Christianity in this part of the world and its effects were felt down the centuries.

But what these seventh-century northern women do reveal is that joining the Roman church in the first flush of conversions was a way of gaining power and influence. These noblewomen could bypass marriages arranged for the purposes of securing allegiances and creating heirs, and instead form their own centres of learning where they could be rich, respected and remembered, with the same opportunities as the men around them. They could shape their future and those of their communities. This was a singularly positive time for women in the church and the Loftus Princess, Hild, Ælfflæd and others reaped the rewards of the new faith.

Like his wife, Offa also claimed descent from Penda, so to marry someone with ties to the Mercian royal house would have reinforced his position. What’s more, by consistently raising up his wife and allowing her power in her own right, Offa was creating a Mercian dynasty. To empower her was to strengthen his own position.

The situation worsened during the rule of her brother, Edward, who actively suppressed her reputation in order to bolster his position as king of Wessex. It was important for the Wessex court to stress that Mercia was not an independent kingdom ruled by a strong woman, but rather part of the expanded domain which under King Edward constituted England. Æthelflæd’s history was rewritten, and her name removed from records to prop up the legacies of her male relatives.

The following year her husband died. Æthelflæd had already been the primary decision maker in Mercia for nearly a decade, following the example of influential Mercian queens, but in an unprecedented move, the noblemen of Mercia elected her as ruler – a rare occurence indeed in early medieval history.73 Their choice was wise, as she continued to be a shrewd ruler who set about extending the work of her father, particularly with regards to burh building. She strengthened the old royal capital of Tamworth, and laid the groundwork for Stafford, Hereford, Shrewsbury and Warwick. Many of these cities owe their existence to Æthelflæd’s efforts.

The next year she secured Leicester and made her way towards the prestigious Viking-held city of York. The kingdom of East Anglia had already submitted to Edward, so taking York would have meant the English territories were once more united. She had even managed to secure an alliance with the Scots and the largest territories in Wales were under her ‘lordship’, so the United Kingdom as we know it today was forming through her diplomacy.74

Ælfwynn was probably well educated and prepared for leadership. Like the Mercian women before her, she witnessed charters and owned land. Her achievement is notable, as her ascension as ruler of Mercia after Æthelflæd’s death is the only time rule passed from one woman to another in early medieval England.

What would England be today if Mercian queens had not wielded such power as decision makers? Cynethryth had more influence than almost all other women from the sixth to ninth centuries, and this mantle was carried over by the Lady of the Mercians, Æthelflæd. In the knowledge that women had achieved so much in their own right before her, Æthelflæd was able to rule with ‘strength of character’ for two decades at the turn of the tenth century, a pivotal point in English history. The

Over the last three centuries, it is her father, Alfred, who has become a rallying point of national pride, held up as the exemplar of a great Englishman. But during her reign, and for centuries after her death, many recognised Æthelflæd as ‘more illustrious than Caesar’. She was a victim not of medieval prejudice, but of modern attitudes towards female leadership. Seeing her as her contemporaries did shows us that women could wield influence, and their voices, now written out of the records, can still be heard. Surely it’s time for her to be acknowledged as ‘Æthelflæd the Great’.

The pelvic bone also held clues: in women, the inlet is broader and more circular to allow for childbirth, and the ilium (the curved arch of the pelvic bone) is wider. What remained of this skeleton’s pelvis followed these traits. But for over a century this individual has been known as the ‘Birka Warrior’. Found with an axe, quiver of arrows, spears and a sword, the skeleton was surrounded by ‘masculine’ objects, so archaeologists assumed the bones had to be male too. Now the XX chromosomes overturned these assumptions. The warrior was a woman.

The overriding response was incredulity. How could this person, buried with all the trappings of war, raiding and pillaging, be female? This didn’t fit the traditional view of Vikings, and the reaction highlighted patriarchal assumptions that, frustratingly, still linger. Women could do many things, but to imagine them in the cut and thrust of early medieval warrior culture was a step too far.

Far from ancient, the Viking horned helmet is only 150 years old. In 1876, German designer Carl Emil Doepler created the stage costumes for a production of Wagner’s Ring cycle. Wanting the Viking-age characters to appear more impressive on stage, he put horns on the headdresses of the evil characters, while the heroes wore headdresses with wings. The popularity of this visual image – ancestors harnessing the strength of animals in a form of supernatural shapeshifting – meant it became a way of celebrating all things ‘Germanic’. The hijacking of Viking culture by German nationalists was a deliberate strategy, and in just twenty years the horned helmet was reproduced on everything from cruise menus to children’s books.

Does this seem familiar? Sounds a lot like white people glorifying the South and the Confederate flag.

In early medieval texts, the Old Norse word ‘víking’ describes an activity a group of ‘víkingr’ (explorers, merchants, travellers) would carry out as they took to the seas on expeditions. These could include raiding, trading, diplomacy, settlement and intermarriage. And when their violent attacks were recorded, their victims never called them ‘Vikings’. Instead, they were Norse, Swedes or Danes. If written about in a damning way they were ‘pagans’, ‘heathens’ or ‘wolves’.24

Another theory about the disturbance of the Oseberg skeletons centres on the spread of Christianity in Scandinavia. Among the Rus, there are records of rulers disinterring the bones of relatives to have them baptised. In the mid-eleventh century Yaroslav the Wise had his two pagan uncles, Olaf and Yaropolk, exhumed, blessed and reburied in his newly established church.

The Birka Warrior Woman and the Ribe ‘Valkyries’ offer two different views on Viking-age women. On the one hand, there may have been a few notable individuals who took part in battle and were warriors. On the other, women could have taken on male roles and attributes, like weapons, in ritual and ceremonial settings. Both discoveries reinforce the idea that, rather than simply assign an individual from the past ‘male’ or ‘female’, we have to consider cultural context. DNA may determine an XY or XX chromosome configuration, but the way that person lived, dressed, behaved, self-identified and the roles they assumed within their societies are all much harder to reconstruct over a thousand years later.

First impressions suggest the tapestry is filthy and damaged, and it reeks of insecticide. It’s hardly surprising given the rough treatment it has experienced in the past. During the French Revolution it was confiscated as public property and used to cover munition loads.3

Women wear flowing gowns fitted to their figures dyed with woad, madder or dyer’s rocket in vibrant shades of red, blue, green and yellow. Some also have fragments of an exotic material – silk – woven into their trimmings. Golden threads shimmer in the stitches of the wealthier ladies, jewels dangling from their neck and headdresses influenced by fashions of the imperial court in Byzantium.

Instead of a museum or gallery, these artefacts functioned in specific settings, such as a church or a home, and existed as part of design schemes alongside other decoration and articles that performed practical roles. Why some artworks have survived while others haven’t can be put largely down to chance, as well as changing tastes, monetary value and historical significance. But when we see a medieval ceremonial comb or a page from an illuminated manuscript in a glass cabinet today, we are seeing it out of context.

First, an important point: women made the Bayeux Tapestry. Exactly who these women were, where they lived and worked are questions we may never be able to answer. We do know that during the eleventh century, female artists outperformed men in the field of embroidery. Women have excelled at needlework and textile production since antiquity. While the three artistic graces of painting, sculpture and architecture had been dominated by men, the creation of fabrics, from spinning wool to decorating textiles, was largely the realm of women.23 From

The nuns at Barking received the finest education available for eleventh-century women, reading biblical studies, ancient law, history, grammar and spelling, and hosted William the Conqueror there while his White Tower was being finished in London. As the abbess received her role and responsibilities directly from the king, the production of the Bayeux Tapestry may have been a gift in turn, used to secure the continued relationship between Barking and the new Norman royal family.

The women – a team of highly trained embroiderers – would have required a good deal of space and resources to create it. The first two sections of the tapestry run to nearly 14 metres – and handling this amount of linen simultaneously is a complicated process. From analysis of the different hands at work on the Bayeux Tapestry it seems that the women worked alongside one another in close proximity, some helping to keep in place the individual sections while others embroidered, with the remaining linen collected together or held on a roller.

Either way, the connotations are largely negative and create a sense of foreboding. What is noticeable from our contemporary vantage point, however, is that modern prejudices colour how the scene is interpreted, with one recent historian stating ‘the cleric may be making a pass, or slapping the woman for having impure thoughts or for being a witch’.57 The cliché of woman as victim, witch or whore is still rife.58

Had Emma never married Cnut, a Danish claim would not have led to the depletion of Harold’s forces at Stamford Bridge before the Battle of Hastings. Had Emma not sent her children to be raised in Normandy, then William would not have had such a strong claim to the English throne. Had Emma not shifted allegiance back and forth, the question of Edward’s successor would have been clearer, and there may have been other claimants to the throne. Towards the end of her life she was the richest woman in England, holding vast amounts of land in many areas. She didn’t just wield economic power but also political clout, determining the nature of governance throughout the 1030s and 1040s.72 The eleventh century was a time of constant and rapid change, and Emma’s survival was thanks to her strategic ability to turn with the tides.

Her father was the extremely influential Lord Godwin, who became Earl of Wessex,75 and her brothers held some of the country’s most important positions of authority as Earls of East Anglia, Northumbria, Kent, Sussex, Essex, Surrey and more. She was a well-educated woman and spoke many languages, having grown up at the royal convent in Wilton. The Norman chronicler William of Poitiers described her as ‘intelligent as any man … a woman in whose bosom there was a school of all the liberal arts’.76 Her marriage to Edward was politically motivated for, although Edith was not of royal birth, her familial connections would prove useful. And in a strategic move to keep the Godwin family onside, unlike most wives of Saxon kings in the tenth and eleventh centuries Edith was crowned queen in her own right. This coronation led to accusations of nepotism, so much so that in 1051 Edward exerted some damage control, exiling the family to Flanders and sending Edith to a convent. But the Godwin family put on a show of force and returned more powerful than they left. From this point Edith became not just queen but also close adviser to her husband. Her influence increased.

It is these visions that she is describing to the monk Volmar and her confidant, Richardis. Together they craft her abstract images of searing lights, sapphire figures and star-encrusted skies into a theological work. She describes a view of the divine which is unique: the natural world held in harmony through the female figures of Divine Love and Wisdom, and the church as a mother caring for its child.

Throughout the ages there is perhaps only a handful of people who can be said to have achieved as much as Hildegard.20 She wrote three major theological works, the first recorded morality play, two scientific treatises, over 300 letters and a large body of music. She even invented her own language – the Lingua Ignota.21

Her enormous output over the eight decades of her long life means her reputation is rivalled by just a handful of individuals. Perhaps only the polymath Leonardo da Vinci, working three centuries after Hildegard, can compare to her. But as is well known, he rarely finished his projects,23 while Hildegard did.

The conflicts intensified in the latter years of Hildegard’s life when, from 1160, Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III were bitterly opposed to one another. Hildegard felt the terror keenly, as her monastery in Rupertsberg was at the front line of hostilities. She wrote personally to both the emperor and pope, giving advice while daring to criticise the two most powerful men of her time. It was through this role as prophetess to the powerful that she gained the title ‘Sibyl of the Rhine’. Like a medieval Cassandra, she wanted influence in what she saw as a pivotal point of moral and social transformation, and she was prepared to shout to be heard.

Hildegard seems opposed to this violence. She presents Synagoga (who represents the Jews) as a woman holding the prophets in her arms. Synagoga is a counterpart to the female representation of the Christian church, Ecclesia, who is cloaked in gold, and also holds the faithful close to her. This sympathetic representation of Synagoga in Scivias demonstrates her opinion that Jews and Christians both contributed to the church, and they should not be persecution by Crusaders. A true medieval activist living through a time of fear, Hildegard was campaigning against immorality and corruption.

She told the pope to act against the ‘bear’, Emperor Barbarossa: ‘You now, the viceroy of Christ, seated on the throne of the church, choose for yourself the better part, that you may be the eagle overcoming the bear!’28 Bold words for anyone in the twelfth century, let alone a woman.

She is considered by many to be the founder of natural sciences in Germany and her remedies are well known today among herbalists and practitioners of alternative medicine.45 One

For example, she lists the plants that can be ingested to bring about an abortion.46 She gives very clear instructions that the woman should take a bath in freshly heated river water and fill it with tansy (a well-known abortifacient), chrysanthemum, mullein and feverfew. The water should cover all the belly. Then she must: take rifelbere and one-third as much yarrow, aristologia, and about one-ninth as much yue, and crush this mixture in a mortar. Put it in a little bag and then cook it in wine; add clove and white pepper … and honey. Drink this daily both fasting and with meals … for five days or fifteen or until the matter is resolved.47

While the modern church has developed stringent guidance on abortions in response to advances in medicine, such clear criticism of the process was not expressed in the medieval period. As a healer Hildegard prized the health of the people she assisted above all, and here she is treating a critical situation where a woman may need to ‘abort an infant which is a danger to her body’. Even today this view may be seen by some as radical.

Hell yeah Hildegard

And unlike many of her contemporaries, Hildegard also took a keen interest in the gynaecological and sexual well-being of women.50 Writing in 1150, she provided the first known description of what a female orgasm feels like: When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman’s sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.51

Of course, when Hildegard wrote about sex she had in mind the act of procreation. Other twelfth-century authors were writing about female sexuality and gynaecology too, but her discussions of sexuality and gender were broader and more engaged than those of contemporary male writers.

Her approach to sex reflects a broader agenda that underlines all her work; to provide a female perspective which could be shared and enhanced by the women she lived, worked, prayed and learned alongside. She was putting the focus onto women’s experience – something few of her contemporaries did. She even goes so far as to say that, in relation to the act of creation, women are superior to men: ‘Women may be made from man, but no man can be made without a woman.’55 Whether through medicine, theological texts, images or music, Hildegard was a woman writing for other women.

She still experienced misogyny. In a letter to Pope Eugenius, she described how her visions had been rejected and criticised by ‘many wise men … because they come from this poor female figure who was formed in the rib and not taught by philosophers’. In this bold letter Hildegard was asking the pope to challenge his own assumptions of women visionaries. She appeals to the head of the church to behave as an ally and not ignore female voices, visions and views: ‘Do not reject these secrets of God, for they are part of that need which is hidden, and which has not yet appeared openly.’60

Her public works put the concerns of women in front of the leading male power players of the time and her own example would have proved inspirational to others that followed her.

She explains the vision as a representation of the universe in the form of an egg. This ties back to her ideas of the feminine within the divine, since only the female produces eggs, so the universe is made from woman.