Women in Christianity in the Medieval Age

This volume offers a comprehensive introduction to and investigation of the multivocality of women’s experience in the Middle Ages. In medieval Europe women saw their role in the Christian Church and society progressively confined to conflicting models of femininity epitomised by the dichotomy of Eve/Mary. Classical views of gender, predicated on misogynistic dichotomies which confined women to matter and the corruption of the flesh, were consolidated in powerful male-dominated clerical institutions and widely disseminated. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, however, women’s corporeality and somatic spirituality contributed to and influenced burgeoning modes of piety centred around the cult of the Virgin Mary and the veneration of the suffering body of Christ on the Cross. This shift in devotional practices afforded women as bodily beings the space for an increased level of self-expression, self-realisation, and authority. Ranging from philosophical and theological enquiry to education and art, as well as medical sciences and popular beliefs, the essays in this collection account for the complexities and richness of the conceptualisations and lived experiences of medieval Christian women. The book will be especially relevant to students and scholars of religion and history with an interest in medieval studies and gender. Whilst expounding the key strands of thinking in the field, it engages with and contributes to some of the latest scholarly research.

Laura Kalas is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Swansea University, UK. She is the author of Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life- Course (2020) and coeditor of Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe (2021). Her research focuses on medieval religious culture and especially writings by, and about, women, on medicine, materiality, and devotion.

Roberta Magnani is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Swansea University, UK. Her research interests lie in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and late medieval manuscript culture with a specific focus on queer and trans theory. She has co-edited with Diane Watt a Special Issue of the journal postmedieval entitled ‘Queer Manuscripts’.