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

by Janina Ramírez

During the French Revolution it was confiscated as public property and used to cover munition loads.3 Napoleon moved it to Paris, but it eventually ended up back in Bayeux on a winding contraption which did terrible damage to the final scenes. The biggest threat to its survival came during the Second World War, when Himmler requested its removal to Germany as an example of ‘Germanic Art’. The SS-led research group the Ahnenerbe moved it to the Louvre. But a message intercepted by the coding team at Bletchley Park revealed it was to leave for a bunker in Berlin. Had this happened there’s no doubt it would have been destroyed or lost, as so many other irreplicable artworks were during the post-war era. When Himmler made his last-ditch attempt to take the Bayeux Tapestry, Allied forces had already stormed the beaches of Normandy and the Louvre was back in French hands. The tapestry was found safe in the museum’s basement and returned to Bayeux.

In later medieval texts an arrow in the eye was symbolically the appropriate death for a perjurer; someone who had broken an oath. Harold is shown earlier in the tapestry swearing on relics, so the arrow has always been interpreted as his just deserts. The right punishment for the crime. A handful of twelfth-century sources mention an arrow, but they could have been employing a bit of artistic license, as a portrayal of what ‘should’ have happened. The selective rewriting of history to shape later moral interpretations of the past is nothing new. Harold met a grizzly death, but the arrow may not have played a part in it.

Men wear colourful tunics over breeches, with large woollen cloaks slung across their shoulders. A handful of English men are scattered through the crowd, distinguished from the Normans by their moustaches and hair worn long, rather than shorn up the back of the neck.11 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.

Yet while no one would think of discussing Starry Night without mentioning the artist Van Gogh, or the Mona Lisa without extensive investigation in the life and times of Leonardo da Vinci, very few begin discussions of the Bayeux Tapestry thinking about the women who made it.

An extraordinary survivor of what must have been a huge body of textiles that have not made it to the present day, the Bayeux Tapestry provides evidence of an area of medieval art in which women excelled.

Even through the Renaissance and up to the nineteenth century, most artistic creativity was the work of skilled craftspeople creating the finest examples of useful objects. 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.

From the seventh to the tenth century, individual women were praised for their stitching skills. Some are now known as saints, including Eadburga and Ethelreda of Ely.24 The type of embroideries they created became known as ‘opus anglicanum’ (English work). These were usually for church vestments – decorative fabrics, woven with silk, gold and jewels – and they were the most desirable luxury goods in Europe. Popes became patrons of these English female artists, and opus anglicanum vestments are listed in Vatican inventories.25 William the Conqueror’s own chronicler, William of Poitiers, went so far as to write: ‘Everyone attests to the great needle-craft of English women in gold embroidery.’

The idea that a woman stitching is a virtuous act has a long history, for while she is still, silent and submissive, she cannot be challenging or corrupted.27 In the eighteenth century, tenacious women like Mary Wollstonecraft saw the process of embroidering as restrictive. In her Vindication of the Rights of Women, she wrote how it ‘confines their thoughts to their person’, and rejected it in favour of less sedentary activities like gardening, experimental philosophy and literature.28 But there have also been moves to reclaim fabric as a medium for celebrating female contributions to art. Tracey Emin’s famous embroidered tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1995) included 102 appliquéd names stitched around the inside. The quote at the centre – ‘With myself, always myself, never forgetting’ – not only suggests the piece focuses on Emin’s personal battles, but also reiterates Wollstonecraft’s suggestion that the process of embroidering is personal, private and performs a role in memorialising.

the Maaseik Embroideries, are believed to be the oldest complete pieces of embroidered fabric to survive in Western Europe. They formed parts of a chasuble, the sleeveless cloaks worn by priests. The fragments look rather sorry today, since the silk, pearls and some of the golden threads have been damaged or picked out. But the distinctive colour palette of reds, greens and blues is still clear and the detailed stitched designs of birds and beasts present an echo of what must have been very sophisticated work. They date to the ninth century and appear to have been made by English women.

Winchester Cathedral and its associated monasteries had been the most influential artistic centre in England, due to support from King Alfred and the subsequent dominance of Wessex over the other kingdoms. But after the turn of the millennium, the Canterbury school rose in prominence.

The ninth-century Carolingian masterpiece, the Utrecht Psalter, spent at least two centuries in Canterbury from AD 1000. Its lightly inked illustrations were a radical departure for manuscript art. It is a revolution in illumination: instead of coming before the text or decorating the margins, the images in the Utrecht Psalter wrap around and illustrate each of the psalms.

One theory is that the scene depicts Harold’s sister, whom he has pledged in marriage to William. But this Ælfgyva was already dead by 1066. Other members of his family have also been proposed, including an imagined daughter, a wife and even his mother. Some claim the woman is the abbess responsible for the making of the tapestry, and here she is being given instructions on its creation by a monk. But this fails to take into consideration the gesture of touching which would have been inappropriate between a nun and a monk.59 A relatively novel suggestion is that the woman is Ælfgyva of Northampton, who was abbess of Leominster in 1046 and taken as a mistress by Harold’s older brother, Sweyn Godwinson. The enclosure and habit imply the woman is a nun, but all these suppositions are loaded with uncertainty.

But the other major difference is the inclusion of not one but two primary figures. Cnut is present, his sword piercing the frame in recognition of his military might. But equal to him in stature, and raised a little higher, is Queen Emma.

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.

Yet despite her vulnerability – a widow and sister of two kings of England having to accept the rule of an invader – she thrived under the new Norman regime. William saw the importance of treating Edward’s widow kindly and while almost all other nobles had their lands and properties confiscated, Edith is recorded in the Domesday Book as retaining land in Wessex, Buckinghamshire, East Anglia and the Midlands.

Like Emma, she knew the importance of writing her own history, and at the time of the dramatic events of 1066 she commissioned a book called The Life of King Edward.77 It is a remarkable piece of self-promotion, for although it relays events from her husband’s life, Edith continually hovers in the background.78 The first part deals with her father and brothers, justifying their actions and reinforcing their influence, while the second part is hagiography, written to emphasise the sanctity of her husband. Edith seems to have had a greater hand in the first part and much of it was composed while her husband was still alive. It was completed around 1067, when Edith’s fortunes had dramatically transformed, and it provides an incredibly important source for the wider context of the Bayeux Tapestry. In fact, it has recently been suggested that Edith may have been the brains behind the embroidery itself.

The events of 1066 were incredibly disruptive for English women, many of whom lost male relatives and lived in fear of being forcibly married to Norman incomers.80 The number of nuns swelled as women sought sanctuary in convents. This would have provided Edith with a growing body of skilled, dedicated embroiderers capable of completing a project as demanding as the Bayeux Tapestry.

From her childhood as an enclosed nun with just a handful of companions, to her rise on the international stage as a leading scholar, theologian, visionary, musician, linguist, artist and scientist, the remarkable life of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) has been celebrated for centuries.2 Yet as the aftermath of the Second World War rips through her home in the Rhineland, her written works are destroyed, stolen, hidden and lost.

The manuscript is priceless. Known as the Riesencodex (‘the giant book’) because of its size, it is made up of 481 folios of vellum held together by wooden boards bound in pig leather that measure 45 centimetres by 30 centimetres. Still attached to its spine is a chain, originally used to secure it to the library of the monastery Hildegard founded in Rupertsberg (today called Bingen). The book contains almost all her writings; a rare attempt to create a single version of her ‘definitive works’ while she was still alive. Many scribes worked for years to collect her visions, music, linguistic writings, homilies, biography and letters. Very few writers even now are so popular in their lifetimes to have such a volume made in their honour.

These three sites form the basis of the ‘Hildegard Way’ through the heart of the Rhineland, which devoted pilgrims can still travel today to get close to the woman and her works.

Thanks to Margarete, this manuscript made it out, but its companion – Hildegard’s Scivias, complete with the famous illuminations of Hildegard’s visions – is still untraceable.

She was given by her parents as an oblate at around the age of eight, perhaps to study scriptures in the noble home of her mentor, Jutta of Sponheim.18 Since childhood this woman has experienced visions. According to her view of divinity and love flowing through the natural world, the monastery at Disibodenberg is the closest a person can get to experiencing paradise.

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.

Hildegard will live a long life – the equivalent of two average lifetimes in the twelfth century – and over the course of these 81 years she will carve her name into history. She will be a confidant to kings, chastiser of emperors and protégé to popes.

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 Crusades promoted cross-state diplomacy and collaboration, as kingdoms had to pull together to provide forces for the shared aims of Christendom. As bureaucracy developed across the kingdoms and vernacular languages were increasingly used in written texts there was an evolution in national identities. The rise of universities meant greater engagement with classical texts on law, rhetoric and science. Monastic reform and an increasingly wealthy church established powerhouses of creativity, and closer contact with the Islamic and Byzantine worlds allowed Western scholars access to innovative ideas and new scientific knowledge.

Some medieval women writers, like Julian of Norwich, escaped the threat of accusation by remaining in an anchorite’s cell and avoiding what was going on in the world. But Hildegard took the role of a prophet and waded into politics head first.

Her correspondence list is a who’s who of the medieval period. She wrote to, and received letters from, some of the shining stars of her generation, including three popes, St Bernard of Clairvaux, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, King Henry II of England and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.29 Although it was prohibited by the church, she even embarked on a ‘book/preaching tour’ around Germany, something few women up to the present day could entertain.30 She was a twelfth-century celebrity.

Hildegard’s achievements are even more remarkable when we consider that she was blazing a trail as one of the first women visionaries of the medieval period. While others would rise to prominence as mystics in the fourteenth century, during the twelfth century female visionaries were not common.32 The Second Lateran Council of 1139 made the independence of women in the church more problematic, since the enforced separation of monastic communities led to the strict enclosure of nuns.

Jutta of Sponheim was the daughter of a count and grew up in a castle, but while most women in her situation would have been a desirable match in marriage, Jutta rejected all suitors and insisted on becoming a nun.37 She was extremely pious and an ascetic, practising frequent fasting and self-flagellation, praying barefoot for hours in extreme weather, wearing chains and horsehair shirts, and refusing all meat. By the time of her death, aged just 44, her body had been ravaged by these practices, which horrified the young girl she shared a cell with.

Hildegard repeatedly stressed that her visions were good and experienced in a waking state, not during a trance. She described existing in ‘the shadow of the living light’, but when she entered a vision she felt it physically, ‘like a trembling flame, or a cloud stirred by the clear air’.38 It is highly probable that she was experiencing migraines. What she describes is like the sensations and auras reported by sufferers: ‘The heavens opened, and a blinding light of extreme brilliance flowed through my whole brain. And it ignited my heart and all my breast like a fire, not burning but warming.’39

Images from Scivias, which Hildegard almost certainly had a hand in, show a proliferation of concentric circles, jagged edges and black spots. Unusually, her illuminations include the use of both gold and silver, the metals creating the effect of ‘scotoma’ – shimmering and flickering areas of light and dark. The renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks began experiencing migraines during early childhood, around the same age as Hildegard did. His description recalls her visions almost exactly, including the range of colours, shapes and composition she included in Scivias:

The change in nature of Hildegard’s visions in her forties unlocked a whole new phase of her life. She recorded that she was ‘compelled by a great pressure of pains to make known what I had seen and heard … But then my veins and marrow became filled with powers I had lacked in my childhood and youth.’41 Her whole body was affected by the migraines, and she felt their intensity increase. Could it be that Hildegard was experiencing the menopause?42 She would have been 43 at this point, which is relatively young to go through menopause today, but was mature for medieval women who rarely lived into their fifties. Current research on the effects of the menopause suggests that the onset of waves of heat, blurred eyesight and increase in the intensity of migraines are all widely shared symptoms.43 Higher levels of oestradiol (the most abundant oestrogen hormone in post-menopause) could also cause disorientation and even delirium.44 The timings make sense, and Hildegard could no longer keep these more intense visions to herself.

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:

As she grew in confidence and reputation, however, the number of references to her weakness as a woman decreased. In her later theological works, she shifted pronouns regularly. When describing her visions, she would start by referring to a man ‘seeing’, but the viewpoint would switch in the next sentence to that of a woman. This blurring of gender appears deliberate; a way of showing that Divine Love (which she characterises as feminine) flows through everything regardless of perceived biological sex. She also visualised central concepts, like the physical manifestation of Love, as having male, female and animal elements; an old male bearded head atop a woman, with an eagle on top of that.

The fury of this letter is contrasted by the pitiful grief in the one she then writes when she realises Richardis is really leaving: My grief rises up. That grief is obliterating the great confidence and consolation which I had from another human being … I loved you for your noble bearing, your wisdom, your purity, your soul and all your life! So much so that many people said, ‘What are you doing?’

Her songs are unusual in terms of how much attention they pay to Mary. She is described as ‘Star of the Sea’, ‘Most Splendid of Gemstones’, ‘Author of Life’, ‘Holy Medicine’, ‘The Bright Matter of the World’. While Eve brought about women’s subservience to men, Mary carries them higher: Because a woman brought death / A bright Maiden overcame it, / And so the highest blessing / In all of creation / Lies in the form of a woman, / Since God has become man / In a sweet and blessed Virgin.

Her music is unique, haunting, experimental, extraordinary. Her images fascinate, baffle and assault the eyes with psychedelic colours, shapes and compositions. Hildegard used all the means available through her senses to explore her understanding of existence.

Elizabeth practised self-mortification and fasting, which drove her to depression and recurrent illness. Hildegard wrote to her encouraging gentler treatment of her body, the mollycoddling tone of her letter revealing a maternal responsibility for the younger woman. Elizabeth’s visions were copied and distributed widely as an increasing taste for female mystics spread through Europe.

Hildegard proved that women could learn, write, create and carve out a position of power for themselves, inspiring a devotional following. A nun from Stahleck, Gertrud, was so overwhelmed by her love for Hildegard that she wrote: I am at a loss as to what I should say or write to such a unique and beloved mother in Christ, for the power of love has taken from me all knowledge of speech. Indeed, your divine absence has made me drunk on the wine of sorrow.92 Her passion ran so deep that she felt ‘an aversion not only to dictating a letter, but even to life itself’ as she contemplated an existence without Hildegard. The visionary had other devoted fans, like the abbess of Altena, who wrote that she was ‘most loved of all women’ and lamented Hildegard’s lack of reply since, ‘I have decided to love you like my own soul.’93 These letters read like the outpourings of superfans.

Hildegard was a product of her time; it is not simply that she was extraordinary, but the world she grew up in was more hospitable to extraordinary women than we might think.

Here she describes her understanding of God: I am the fiery life of divine substance, I blaze above the beauty of the fields, I shine in the waters, I burn in sun, moon and stars. And I awaken all to life with every wind of the air, as with invisible life that sustains everything. For the air lives in greenness and fecundity. The waters flow as though they are alive. The sun also lives in its own light, and when the moon has waned it is rekindled by the light of the sun and thus lives again; and the stars shine out in their own light as though they are alive.

Seven centuries earlier, a group of radical Christians thrived in this area. Known as Cathars, they pushed against the power structures of the Church and challenged the primacy of the Papacy, proposing an alternative way of life which included avoiding meat and embracing the idea of two gods (one good and the other evil).

Studies of medieval Languedoc and the group of heretics based here in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries range from highly detailed archival research to far-fetched conspiracy theories centred on the holy grail and the bloodline of Christ.

It is March 1225 and this fortress atop of a needle of stone has been under siege for the past ten months.5 Its inhabitants are starving and fear for their lives. A crusading force with as many as 10,000 soldiers waits at their door. But despite the all-too-present danger, a sense of peace has descended for a moment. Behind the three layers of barricades reaching up the cliff towards Montségur, whose very name means ‘safe hill’ in the local dialect of Occitan, a group of men, women and children wait patiently for the bishop, Guilhabert de Castres, to perform a ritual known as the ‘consolamentum’.6 Whatever the next hours and days bring, the placing of hands and the saying of prayers will offer comfort, promising these people that, after death, they will be freed from their flawed, imperfect bodies and their souls will return to the divine essence. The fortress at Montségur is described as the ‘head and heart’ by those within, and the ‘Synagogue of Satan’ by those on the outside.

One of the difficulties surrounding the study of Catharism is that, while from the fourteenth century onwards ‘heretics’ were deposed and executed by a relatively organised inquisitorial team, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was no such coordination.

Cathars believed the sacraments the church administered were useless, its clergy corrupt, and its wealth and power ill-gotten.15 Cathars performed an extreme form of asceticism, not eating meat, avoiding physical and sexual temptations, and rejecting worldly pleasures. But it was their dualist suggestion of a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ God that undermined the very foundations of Christian belief.

While both rejected the wealth of the papacy and embraced poverty, the Waldensians also rejected pilgrimage as ‘just a way of spending money’ and said that relics were no different from any other bones. They did allow their followers to eat meat, but more extreme Waldensians are reported to have suggested the priesthood was depraved, declared the papacy the anti-Christ, and rejected transubstantiation – the transformation of the bread and wine of the Eucharist into the body and blood of Christ.

They are referred to as ‘sandaliati’ in inquisition reports, suggesting that the sandals they chose to wear indicated their connection to a heretical group.26 These micro-communications are often lost to historians and archaeologists looking back on a particular time, but would have been as clear to people then as a goth wearing thick eyeliner or a punk styling their hair today.

In their rejection of papal excess and desire to live in poverty like Jesus, the Franciscans were very similar to the Waldensians. But Francis seems to have proved he was devoted to the church and clergy in a way Peter Waldo couldn’t. While the former founded one of the most influential monastic movements within Christianity, the latter was excommunicated and driven into hiding.