Femina Quotes

“Knowing that people of different classes, backgrounds, races, religions, disabilities, genders and sexual orientations have always been a part of history allows us to find ourselves in the past. It also serves to level the playing field going forward. It wasn't just rich and powerful men who built the modern world. Women have always been a part of it, as has the full range of human diversity, but we are only now beginning to see what has been hidden in plain sight.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“If sources are to continually reinforce an idea of a past where women haven't contributed, women will feel they have always been invisible. We need a new relationship with the past, one which we can all feel a part of.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“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.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

“Teaching children about great men enforced a sense of a great nation, a version of history which could be distributed along the length and breadth of vast empires. Controlling access to the past controls populations in the present, and determining who writes history can affect thought and behaviour. Famously the Nazis created a version of German history which cherry-picked and repackaged information so as to benefit the regime's agenda.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“Time erodes nuance”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“The title of this book — Femina — was the label scribbled alongside texts known to be written by a woman, so less worthy of preservation.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“In times of colonial expansion, when support for the slave trade was required, the historian fed readers tales of explorers and conquerors. When soldiers were needed, ready to die for king and country, the historian gave them heroes and warriors. When society favored male dominance and female subservience, the historian provided male oriented history

What about writing history now, at a time when so many are striving for greater equality? Can looking backward impact how we look forward? Finding empowered women with agency from the medieval period is my way of shifting gear, providing new narratives for readers today.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“Those who didn't fit the moral code of Victorian England, or sat outside the narrative of conquest, or repackaged or removed from the [historical] record.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“The Lichfield Angel reminds us that so much of the art and architecture of the medieval period survives without its colour. We just see the bones, rather than the finished piece”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“[...] And unlike many of her contemporaries, Hildegard also took a keen interest in the gynaecological and sexual well-being of women. 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.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“[...] In a rather sad and humiliating scene we see the couple celebrating Midsummer Eve in 1413. Her husband asks:

'Margery, if there came a man with a sword who would slice off my head unless I should have sex with you as I have done before, tell me the truth from your conscience — for you say you will not lie — whether you would allow my head to be sliced off or allow me to be intimate with you, like in the past?' She replies, 'Truthfully, I would rather see you be slain than that we should turn again to the impurity of sexual activity.'

She goads him further, asking why he won't try to have sex with her, even though they sleep in the same bed. He says: 'He became so afraid when he touched her that he dared not do more.' A far cry from the domineering husband we might expect from a medieval marriage. Margery adds insult to injury, explaining that she still lusts after other men but is sickened by her own husband.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“[...] However, even in the early years of their marriage, when she was about 30 years old, Margery records how she told her husband she no longer wanted to have sex with him; indeed, that Jesus himself had told her not to. [...]”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“In Cathar beliefs, humans were, by nature, imperfect — fallen angels whose soul and spirit had been given physical form in frail bodies. [...] Cathars strove for this moment of consolamentum when their souls would be reunited with their angelic form.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“[...] This reputation carried down the centuries immediately following, with this twelfth-century poem a testament to how she was perceived a quarter of a millennium after her death:

Heroic Æthelflæd! Great in marital fame,
A man in valour, though a woman in your name:
Your warlike hosts by nature you obeyed,
Conquered over both, though born by sex a maid.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“Women like Hild chose to join monasteries, rising to positions of great power as abbesses, gaining wisdom and influencing decision-making within the newly emerging church. They had a choice and they embraced lives that brought them in touch with the Christian continent, with new ideas, beautiful art and architecture, and a world of stories, saints and sinners that would change the ideological landscape of Britain long-term. Not until the last decades have women been able to assume such roles within the modern church, but for a short time in the seventh century they were the movers and shakers. [...]”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“Like her granddaughter, Clotilde wielded considerable influence. When her sons — heirs to the Merovingian dynasty — were deciding whether to overthrow the young heirs of Burgundy and take their lands under their control, they placed their decision in their mother's hands. They sent her a pair of scissors and a sword, with the following instructions: if she felt they should peacefully back down she should choose the scissors and cut off their long hair, which represented their royal power. If she felt they should assert their power, she should choose the sword. She famously replied, 'It is better for me to see them dead rather than shorn.'
Clotilde was true to her name. She chose the sword. This decision brought about the murder of two young princes, aged seven and ten, killed by Clotilde's older sons on their mother's instructions. But she remained 'honoured by all' and celebrated for her humility and grace. [...]”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“This quote by medievalist Kolve is my concession:

We have little choice but to acknowledge our modernity, admit that our interest in the past is always (and by no means illegitimately) born of present concerns.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“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'.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“The title of this book - Femina - was the label scribbled alongside texts known to be written by a woman, so less worthy of preservation.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“It wasn't just rich and powerful men who built the modern world. Women have always been a part of it, as has the full range of human diversity, but we are only just beginning to see what has been hidden in plain sight.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“There is even a reference to Vikings in Newfoundland returning with two Native American children, who may have settled and ultimately entered the gene pool in Iceland. In 2011 a DNA feature (CIe) was identified in the Icelandic population which is not of European or Asian origin, and may have arrived with a Native American woman around the year AD 1000.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“Over the past two centuries women have both pushed against and leaned into the connection of femininity with embroidery. The idea that a woman stitching is a virtuous act has a long history, for a while she is still, silent and submissive, she cannot be challenging or corrupted.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“Today we still speak of ‘tradesmen’ and assume the travel, negotiation and labour involved in moving goods is a largely male sphere. However, in Birka the weights and scales usually associated with traders are found in 32 per cent of female graves, compared with only 28 per cent of male burials. Birka is a place where gender assumptions are continually challenged, and assessment of similar finds across Norway show a similar pattern. Trade was not the exclusive preserve of men.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“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. The relegation of women to the role of the second sex was firmly embedded in Protestant communities, with Martin Luther stating ‘the wife should stay at home and look after the affairs of the household as one who has been deprived of the ability of administering those affairs that are outside and concern the state’, while John Calvin agreed that ‘the woman's place is in the home’.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it

“The modern leaning towards science and reason over religion and spirituality has meant the deeply devout nature of the suffragette movement is often overlooked. For many today they are seen as political rather than pious. But the majority of women who took part in militant activity saw themselves as soldiers of Christ, promoting social change framed within religious terms.”
― Janina Ramírez, Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of it