julia!!’s Reviews > Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It > Status Update

the next chapter is about everyone’s favorite, well-traveled, independent, emotional queen Margery.

“the church itself has always been a living organism, transforming year by year in response to new challenges and developments” — that is exactly why i don’t understand how people can use the church & religion to justify backwards and outdated ideas, rather than adapt it to more recent social changes. it’s part of society, and if society changes, why not also the church? it doesn’t make sense 🥲

The book suggests that Hildegard von Bingen perhaps had a romantic attraction to a fellow nun. It’s always complicated to try to pinpoint what the relationships were like back then, because people (especially from the background of the clergy) thought differently about them than we do today. But it is so interesting to think about, especially when considering that queer people existed in the Middle Ages.

The subchapter about gender-fluidity in the “Viking age” (in quotation marks because the term is a bit problematic) once again negates the point that non-binary identities are an “invention of the 21st century” 🌈