Chapter 4 Medieval Catholicism: Nuns, “Heretics,” and Mystics

Chapter 4

Medieval Catholicism: Nuns, “Heretics,” and Mystics

Who was the medieval churchwoman, and does she have any relevance for Christian women of the twentieth century? This a difficult question to answer. If one were to read only certain theologians, it would appear as though the medieval woman was some sort of inferior species with no serious function to carry out within the confines of organized Christianity. On the other hand, the record of medieval history abounds with stories of women who spent their lives in Christian ministry. There are a number of factors that account for this apparent discrepancy. Above all, medieval Christianity was not static. As society changed over the centuries and as Christianity adapted to new cultures, major changes occurred. Likewise, there was always a significant gap between prescribed church polity and the actual practice of the church. And closely related to that was the gap between two major traditions that have always coexisted in Christianity—the organized institutional church and the decentralized “spiritled” fringe movements, the former characterized by a patriarchalism and the later by egalitarianism.

Another complicating element in understanding the role of women in medieval Christianity relates to the credibility of the sources. Much of the primary source material is in the form of hagiography—fictionalized biography dealing with the lives of the saints. But despite its inherent weaknesses, hagiography gives the reader the medieval concept of the ideal saint—if not the real one. And there is much historical reality to be found in the pages of hagiography. There is enough at least to aid the historian in making some broad generalizations about the period and about the individuals who wielded the greatest spiritual influences in society.

One such generalization regarding medieval churchwomen relates to the nature of their ministry in the church. Indeed there were limitations, but women sought to avoid these limitations and attain power through nonconventional means. Holy living, charismatic phenomena, and emotional ecstacy all became a means of gaining recognition in a church that placed enormous emphasis on hierarchical office holding. For women more than men, it seems, this charismatic element often became the standard for advancement in the church—or at least for recognition within the community of believers.

Was this in any sense demeaning for women? A cursory glance might give that impression. In the words of one historian:

…there is a suspicion among twentieth-century Christians that the female holy ones were not quite as equal as their brothers…It would seem that just as medieval businesswomen in the textile trade specialized in embroidery and small cloths, so the female saints exemplified a piety extravagant or sentimental, marred by erotic, amorous imagery, removed from the normative rigor and clarity of the Scholastic luminaries.¹

While it is true that women may appear to be more emotional and given to spiritual fantasies, it does not necessarily follow that this was an inferior mode of religious expression or that it was regarded as such by the medieval world. Indeed, it is argued by some that Christianity was more “feminized” during this period than it has been since and that women were responsible for this by placing more stress on the emotional side and less on the intellectual. Eleanor McLaughlin writes:

…these holy women exemplified a human nature and a vision of divine nature that gave more weight to affectivity, love, and the integration of love and intellect…This more “feminized” human nature was not seen as “feminine” by men and women of the pre-Reformation Church but rather as Christian, typical and in the image of God, who was Mother as well as Father, Love more than Intellect.²

Female Status in the Early Medieval Church

Although the medieval world was greatly influenced by women, there was a strong underlying current that envisaged women as inferior—endowed with less spiritual insight than men and incapable of the highest forms of Christian ministry. Just how chauvinistic the medieval churchmen were is difficult to determine. Indeed, there are significant differences of opinion on this matter. According to one author, “men debated whether women had a soul, and the question found its way to the agenda of the Council at Macon (585), attended by 59 bishops. By a majority of just one vote, they did answer in the affirmative.”³ Such a charge, however, is not supported by the historical record, and is inconsistent with what is known from early sources to be the church’s position on women. That women were incapable of knowing God and not included in his plan of salvation was never a position espoused by the Roman Catholic Church. If there were certain churchmen who believed women were so inferior spiritually as to be “soulless,” they were not publicizing their views and they were not representative of the church as a whole.

That is not to say, however, that the church’s perspective on women had become less demeaning and restrictive than it had been in the early centuries of the church. Women continued to be widely viewed as perpetrators of sin. The Council of Tours in 567 blamed women for luring men into sin, comparing them to serpents who make themselves more alluring by shedding their skins. A synod convened at Auxerre at about the same time “asserted that women by nature were impure.” That synod decreed women could not receive the communion bread with their naked hand, or partake at all in the Eucharist during their menstrual period. It also “denied women the right to sing in church, causing church choirs to rely on male eunuchs to sing in the high-pitched voices.”⁴

How strictly such decrees were observed is unknown, but it is certain that they were not universally followed. According to Will Durant, congregational singing, popularized in the East, spread to the West: “The men alternated with the women in antiphonal song, and joined with them in the Alleluia.” In the late fourth century, Ambrose of Milan introduced antiphonal singing into many of the churches in his diocese and wrote, “Psalms are sweet for every age, and becoming to either sex.”⁵

Whether or not women should be permitted to participate in congregational singing seems to have troubled the early medieval churchmen less than whether or not to place restrictions on them during their time of menstruation and immediately following childbirth. In 601 Augustine of Canterbury (who had been sent to England as a missionary some years earlier) wrote to Pope Gregory I, inquiring about various church policies and practices. Among his questions were some that related to these very restrictions. The true character of Gregory shows through in his response. He argued that it would be illogical not to baptize a pregnant woman—denying the gift of grace through baptism to one whose very condition was evidence of God’s gift of fertility. As to whether an “unclean” woman should be allowed to enter a church and partake of the sacrament, Gregory reminded Augustine of the woman (with an apparent menstrual problem) who touched the hem of Christ’s garment. Thus it was not sin for such women to partake, he concluded, and therefore they should not be prohibited from doing so.⁶

Gregory’s pronouncement did not settle the matter, however. Several decades later Theodore, who was then bishop of Canterbury, reverted to the old practice of restricting women following pregnancy and while menstruating, and such restrictions continued during the medieval period in England and on the Continent as well.⁷ It is important to keep in mind, though, that the rules and regulations on the books did not necessarily mirror the actual practices. How many women simply ignored the restrictions will never be known. In church music and in virtually every other area of the church relating to women, there was always a gap between the ideal and the reality—between the proscriptions and theological opinions and the actual involvement of women in the church. Writes Susan Stuard, “Historians dealing with women have grown increasingly wary of accepting restrictive laws and misogynous interpretations of women’s position at face value.”⁸

Ministry in the Local Church

Women’s ministries during the Middle Ages are generally associated with nunneries rather than with local churches. There were opportunities, however, in the early medieval period for women to serve in parish ministry. In some instances such female ministry created heated controversy. This occurred in the Frankish church during the early years of the sixth century, when two priests, Loovocatus and Catihernus, were censured by three local bishops for working with female assistants. These priests conducted an itinerant ministry of celebrating the Mass in villages where there was no parish priest, and it was the responsibility of the women to act as “cohostesses.” In the eyes of the bishops, the female involvement contaminated the holy Eucharist, and it therefore had to be discontinued.⁹

Whether these women had a specific title such as deaconess is not known, but the function of deaconess was still open to women during this period. At least two deaconesses, Radegund and Helaria, were consecrated by Frankish bishops during the early years of the sixth century. From the earliest times, the office of deaconess had been viewed as a necessary one. It was reserved for widows, and until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 lowered the age requirement by twenty years, deaconesses were required to be sixty years of age. Most of these widows had previously been married to bishops or lesser clergy, and upon entering the diaconate, they committed themselves to singleness lest they be “anathematized.” Their duties mainly involved caring for the sick and the needy and helping with female baptisms.¹⁰

The deaconesses, like the deacons, were consecrated or “ordained” by prayer and the laying on of hands in the presence of the other clergy. This was not accomplished without hearing a justification of female ministry. The ordination prayer that was commonly used may have been worded purposely to counteract those who would object to a woman’s leadership role in the church:

Eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of man and woman, who didst fill Miriam and Deborah and Hannah and Huldah with the Spirit, and didst not disdain to suffer thine only-begotten Son to be born of a woman; who also in the tabernacle and the temple didst appoint women keepers of thine holy gates: look down now upon this thine handmaid who is designated to the office of deacon, and grant her the Holy Ghost, and cleanse her from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, that she may worthily execute the work intrusted to her, to thine honor and to the praise of thine Anointed; to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be honor and adoration forever. Amen.¹¹

By the sixth century, such consecrations were becoming less and less common in the Western church. In the Eastern church, however, the ministry of deaconess, which began in the apostolic period, lasted more than a millennium. For a period during the sixth century, the cathedral at Constantinople had under its supervision forty deaconesses, out of a total of more than five hundred church officers—all offices except that of deaconess being for males only. In the West, however, the circumstances were entirely different. Church councils during the sixth century gradually lowered the status of these women until the position of deaconess was virtually nonexistent. Initially the women were denied consecration, and in this way they were prevented from assuming a clerical role. The office of deaconess was “wholly abolished” in 533 when the synod of Orleans decreed that “no woman shall henceforth receive the benedictio diaconalis, on account of the weakness of this sex.”¹²

Along with the restrictions on widows came restrictions on clerical wives. In 538, the Council of Orleans forbade married clerics to sleep with their wives. This legislation not only separated wives from their husbands in their marriage relationship, but also deprived them of ministry. Such restrictions did not apply to the Celtic church, which was independent of Rome during this period. Columban, one of the greatest Irish churchmen “did not harbor prejudices against women. Instead of emphasizing their impurity, he recognized their spiritual equality.” And it was this attitude that led to the later development of double monasteries.¹³

Early Medieval Monasticism

It was the institution of monasticism, far more than the local church, that offered women the real opportunities for “professional” ministry during the Middle Ages. Despite its many shortcomings, monasticism was an important outlet for women who desired to commit their lives to full-time spiritual endeavors, especially after the fifth century, when communal monasticism began to flourish. Monasticism for women began in the West in 512 when Bishop Caesarius of Arles established a convent that was ruled by his sister Caesaria. Only virgins or widows were permitted to join the convent, and they were required to make a lifetime commitment, renouncing all claims to material wealth. The purpose of this convent seems to have been primarily focused on personal spirituality, for the women were admonished by Ceasarius to dwell in their cells, “seeking in earnest prayer the presence of the Son of God,” that they might “be of the number of holy virgins devoted to God, who wait with tapers alight and a calm conscience, calling upon the Lord.”¹⁴

While some nunneries accommodated as many as three hundred women, the vast majority were much smaller and were generally privately owned and operated. By the seventh century their numbers vastly increased, as it became a status symbol for wealthy families to found their own convents. “This type of institution usually remained quite small,” according to Suzanne Wemple, “representing no more than an extended household, that is, an aristocratic house turned into a family cult center.”¹⁵

The Benedictine monasteries, organized under the rule of Benedict, were the first to be organized on a wide scale. The first of these were strictly for men, but around the year 530, Benedict of Nursia, with the help of his twin sister, Scholastica, founded a convent for women. These women, like their male counterparts, took a vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Scholastica was an adept administrator, and soon there were Benedictine convents dotting the continent, with the number of nuns rivaling the number of monks. The Benedictine convents, like the monasteries, were structured around strict rules that affected every waking hour of the nun’s life. Spiritual functions were intermixed with manual labors to provide a degree of variety, but they allowed for virtually no deviation from the regulated daily pattern.¹⁶

Dissatisfaction With Convent Life

The lofty ideals and standards set for women’s monasteries frequently did not correspond with reality. Many of the convents were built in pagan areas, and the caliber of women attracted to them was not high. It was difficult for many of these women to submit to the strict rules of the convent, and on occasion they broke out in open revolt. Such a revolt occurred at the Frankish convent at Poitiers in the late sixth century. Gregory, Bishop of Tours, has left an interesting account of the turmoil that erupted there. One of the nuns, Chrodield, and forty followers rebelled against the abbess.

The vexations [writes Gregory] sown by the devil…daily increased in troublesomeness. For Chrodield, having collected about her…a band of murderers, wrongdoers, law-breakers, and vagrants of all kinds, dwelt in open revolt and ordered her followers to break into the nunnery at night and forcibly bear off the abbess…The armed bands rushed in, ran about the monastery by the light of a torch in search of the abbess, and…carried off the prioress whom they mistook for the abbess in the darkness.

When they realized they had the wrong woman, they returned and “secured the real abbess, dragged her away, and placed her in custody near the basilica of St. Hilary.” They then went back and “plundered the monastery of all its contents.”¹⁷

The local bishops and church leaders stayed away from Poiters for fear of their lives, but finally Count Macco came to the rescue and with his private army attacked Chrodield and her followers, causing “some to be beaten down, others struck down by spears, and those who made most strenuous opposition to be cut down by the sword.” The women were excommunicated for a period of time, but many repented and returned to the nunnery. Chrodield, however, remained a rebel, living out her days in a villa supplied by the king. Lina Eckenstein wrote:

The revolt of the nuns at Poiters, which for two years defied the efforts of church men and laymen, is the more noteworthy in that it does not stand alone. Within a year we find a similar outbreak threatening the nunnery at Tours where a certain Berthegund, similarly disappointed of [not] becoming abbess, collected malefactors and other’s about her and resorted to violent measures.”¹⁸

The Prestige of Female Monasticism

The rebellion of nuns at various convents not only indicates a dissatisfaction with a particular style of monasticism, but also demonstrates the potential for personality conflict within such tightly controlled communities. Maintaining peace was largely in the hands of the abbess. A strong abbess who was confident in her position of authority and who was able to inspire loyalty from those under her was often able to wield power that extended far beyond the boundaries of her own community.

One might assume that the abbess was in charge of women only, but that was frequently not the case. Double (coed) monasteries were common until the eighth century, and they were very often ruled by an abbess. In England between the seventh and ninth centuries they were, in fact, almost always under the control of a woman. Such was the case of the Abbey at Wimborne where the great abbess Lioba was sent as a young child. It was a double monastery, and Mother Tetta ruled both the men and women “with consummate prudence and discretion.” Lioba moved on for her formal religious education to another double monastery, headed by Abbess Eathelberga, and later when she accepted the call of Boniface to serve in Germany, she herself was in charge of a double monastery at Tauberbischofsheim. In 787 at the Second Council of Nice, the double monasteries were outlawed, but later on, during the twelfth century, they began to make a comeback.¹⁹

The abbess was not only a ruler, but also an educator at some of these “coed” monasteries. The seventhcentury abbess Hilda trained a number of men who later served in high positions in the church—one of them being Bosa, the archbishop of York. In light of her ability as an educator, it is not surprising that Hilda actively recruited students for her monastery. Among them was Caedmon, “the most celebrated of the vernacular poets of Northumbria.” He accepted the invitation, and began studying the Scriptures, and soon he was turning biblical stories into poetic verse.²⁰

All things considered, monasticism had a great deal to offer women and continued to appeal to those who gladly renounced marriage for the privilege of devoting their lives in service to God. But the “call” to asceticism did not usually arise out of a vacuum. Recruiting new converts to the contemplative life was the medieval concept of personal evangelism, and both men and women were at times the objects of intense propaganda campaigns. In many areas of Europe, nominal conversion to Christianity had occurred en masse as a result of military or political ploys. Monasticism, then, became a more personalized commitment to God on a higher level. Irish missionaries in particular put out the call to asceticism, sometimes almost glamorizing the ascetic lifestyle. Women were a vital part of Irish monasticism, particularly in the realm of missions, and missions and monasticism were inseparably linked.

Missions

Boniface, who was one of the most distinguished missionaries of the Middle Ages, becoming known as the “Apostle to Germany,” was a strong advocate of women’s involvement in missions. He quickly realized that the spread of monasticism and church planting necessitated the gifts and labors of both men and women. Thus he requested that nuns from the abbey at Wimborne leave the security of their cloistered walls and come to Saxony to serve among the warring pagan tribesmen. But in some respects his deep involvement in monasticism was a setback to women. He unified the monasteries under the Benedictine Rule, which placed them under episcopal authority. As a result, nuns were “deprived of the last vestiges of quasi-clerical functions, which women had continued to exercise after the abolition of the female diaconate in the sixth century.”²¹

In his request for women to serve as missionaries, Boniface specifically asked for his cousin Lioba, “whose reputation for holiness and virtuous teaching,” he wrote, “had penetrated across wide lands and filled the hearts of many with praise of her.” She, along with five other nuns (and six monks from Malmesbury), agreed to go, and they all journeyed to the continent in 748 to begin their very difficult ministries. Boniface was well aware of the horrors facing these women in Germany. He wrote of two kings who “have shown their evil disposition and have sinned in a criminal way against the teaching of the gospels” by persisting “in the seduction of nuns.” Soon after she arrived, Lioba was appointed abbess of Bischofsheim, and from there she helped in the establishment of new convents. Indeed, there was “hardly a convent of nuns in that part which had not one of her disciples as abbess.” Yet, despite her power and influence, she did not enjoy the independence that her male counterparts did. The abbesses were directly accountable to the bishops, while some of the abbots were able to develop monasteries that were virtually independent of the church hierarchy.²²

As an abbess, Lioba found her life filled with richness and variety. Her position, according to Edith Deen, “was not merely that of a ruler, but of a teacher and expositor, and she…became so learned in the Scriptures and so wise in counsel that bishops often discussed church matters with her.” She was respected not only for her knowledge of Scripture, but also for being a “skilled classicist” and one who was well read “in the works of the Church Fathers, in canon law and in the decisions of all the councils.”²³

Yet with all her learning and scholarship, she was a mystic who believed she was endowed with certain charismatic gifts. It was this sense of charismatic authority—a feeling of being personally chosen by God to carry out a special mission that propelled Lioba on. Her success as a missionary-abbess was viewed as a direct result of her holiness and evidence of her ability to make direct contact with God in prayer. And if, indeed, her prayers were so powerful in the establishment of convents and training young women in ministry, why could they not be put to use in the practical matter’s that so affected life in the wilds of Germany? It seemed only natural, then, that during a violent thunderstorm she was aroused by a frightened crowd of villagers, pleading with her to entreat God in their behalf. According to Lioba’s hagiographer, she

rose up from prayer and, as if challenged to a contest, flung off the cloak which she was wearing and boldly opened the doors of the church…she made a sign of the cross, opposing to the fury of the storm the name of the High God…Suddenly God came to their aid. The sound of thunder died away, the winds changed direction and dispersed the heavy clouds, the darkness rolled back and the sun shone, bringing calm and peace.²⁴

Throughout her lifetime Lioba was credited with numerous other miracles—all of which could be considered routine activity for the Medieval saint—and very effective missionary strategy.

The emotional, charismatic element that frequently characterized the faith of medieval women was essential to their role in the church. According to Eleanor McLaughlin, “holiness and power were as charisma granted to individual women which relieved them, as it were, of the disabilities of their sex.” So respected was Lioba that she was permitted to pray at Boniface’s monastery at Fulda, “a privilege never granted to any woman either before or since.”²⁵

The Decline of Female Monasticism

As significant as Lioba was, she was clearly an exception to the rule during this period. The eighth-century Carolingian churchmen went to great lengths to insure the cloistering of nuns. Council after council imposed rules to restrict their movement. Moreover, the egalitarianism of the double monasteries that had thrived especially in England, faded as monks were removed from many of these monasteries. The effect of such restrictions, according to Suzanne Wemple, “considerably tempered women’s enthusiasm for monastic life in the ninth century.”²⁶

Interestingly, it was monastic reform that led to a further setback for women in the church. The power and influence that women enjoyed during the early centuries of monasticism in the West declined sharply in the ninth century, paralleling the gradual decline of Benedictine monasticism that had flourished in the first centuries of the medieval period. From then on there were repeated reform efforts. One of the most successful of these efforts was the Cluniac reform, which began at the abbey at Cluny in central France. This was a “firmly masculine monastic reform movement,” and women lost position and prestige in the process. “The opportunities for women in the higher echelons of Benedictine monasticism declined,” and “no new abbacies for women were created, in contrast to the large number that were created for men.” The Gregorian reform movement in the late eleventh century further limited the options for women in monasticism. “The reform demolished the double monasteries of the earlier era and quite effectively walled women’s houses off from the institutional hierarchy of the church.”²⁷

Nonmonastic Ministry

With the decline in monasticism, one would expect an increase in other religious endeavors, but the opportunities for women in ministry outside the convent were very limited during the Middle Ages. In most instances, such ministry was entirely independent of the church and without its sanction or approval. In fact, many women joined religious sects, where they found freedom to pursue a ministry outside the convent. For those women who remained within the established church, however, it was more difficult to pursue a ministry outside the convent. In the ninth century, Theoda of Mainz illustrates this. “She claimed to know, as though it had been divinely revealed to her, the exact day on which the world would be consumed and other secrets known to God alone. She preached that the last day of the final year was close upon us,” wrote a contemporary observer. “Whence many of both sexes were filled with fear and went to her, offering gifts and commending themselves to her prayers.” Not surprisingly, her ministry was “creating no small turmoil for the parish of Bishop Salomon,” for many people under his jurisdiction had “turned from doctrines of the church…to follow her as though she were a teacher sent from heaven.” But despite her popularity, she was powerless in the face of the church. On the threat of being “publicly flogged,” she “gave up the ministry of preaching.”²⁸

In rare instances independent women preachers were actually sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church, though they were expected to keep within prescribed boundaries. Saint Liutberga, another ninthcentury preacher, is an example. According to Suzanne Wemple, “her humility and submissiveness to the hierarchy had been carefully scrutinized before she was allowed to practice an individualistic form of religious life.” Moreover, she willingly confined her ministry to women’s work. “She gave instruction to women of the neighborhood in the art of working with wool. Only as her fame grew did she begin to preach and prophesy to those who came to visit her cell.”²⁹

Crusades

For laywomen during the Middle Ages, religious holidays, fairs, pilgrimages, and saint worship combined to make the faith an active and integral part of daily life. Time-honored superstitions, combined with a strong belief in God’s intervention in the routine affairs of living, made religion far more than a lofty creed. Nor was the afterlife forgotten. Indeed, the fear of purgatory, as much as anything else, turned Christianity into a religion of works. This prompted an effort to expiate sins in a wide variety of church-sanctioned activities, including participation in the Crusades. These “holy” wars to regain the Holy Land became the Christian response to the Muslim advance.

Surprisingly, there were large numbers of women involved in these military campaigns. For those who were inclined toward adventure, joining the Crusades was a perfect way to demonstrate religious zeal. Women eagerly joined the motley swarms headed for the Holy Land to do battle with the infidels. The most pitiful of these civilian armies were known as the Children’s Crusades. Although accompanied by men and women, these boys and girls were easy prey for vile profiteers, and thousands, it is estimated, either died or were sold into slavery.³⁰

Most of the women who joined in the Crusades were accompanied by their husbands, but apparently enough went on their own to warrant a regulation that required them to obtain their husband’s consent.

It is laid down that the husband may take the cross without his wife’s consent…And yet the wife is not entirely deprived of her right, since she can follow him…Moreover there would be more danger to the wife’s chastity as a result of wandering from country to country, than to the husband’s and less profit to the Church. Wherefore the wife cannot take this vow without her husband’s consent.³¹

Clergy Wives

Wives of members of the clergy are rarely mentioned in a treatment of medieval church ministry, except in regulations to keep them separated from their husbands. That is because, as a rule, those who committed themselves to “professional” church ministry during the Middle Ages also committed themselves to celibacy. There were, however, exceptions—particularly in the tenth century when Nicolaitanism was widely practiced. Nicolaitanism, a term taken from The Revelation of John, referred to clergy who were married or had mistresses—not differentiating between the two. Interestingly, when the church initiated a crackdown, a frequent objection of the married men was that wives were necessary for their sustenance. The priests at Vercelli responded that “unless they were maintained by the hands of their women they would succumb to hunger and nakedness.” And later in the century when the bishop of Verona sought to enforce celibacy in his diocese, he found “the excuse of almost everyone was ‘this can in no wise be because of our poverty.’”³² It is unlikely that these working wives had any meaningful part of the ministry, but they certainly were viewed as a financial asset to their impoverished husbands.

Papess Johanna

The influence of medieval churchwomen was most evident in the convents where they rose to the position of abbess and often wielded substantial power—political as well as spiritual. But beyond the position of abbess, how high could a medieval woman rise in the church? Could she attain to the office of bishop or to the papacy itself? Indeed, one of the most fascinating footnotes of medieval history is the story of the Papess Johanna, who wore “the triple crown” for more than two years in the period between Pope Leo IV (847) and Benedict III (855). Because of her sex she was forced to disguise herself while a student in Athens and later while teaching theology in Rome. She went by the name Johannes Anglicus, and took the name John VIII when she was “elevated to the papal dignity.” But her reign as pope came to an abrupt and tragic end. Her life was terminated suddenly “in the open street during a solemn procession from the Vatican to the Lateran.” Or, did she die soon after giving “birth to a child as she was taking part in a procession to the Lateran”? Or was she “tied to the hoof of a horse, dragged outside of the city and stoned to death by the people”? Or was the whole story of her life and death a mere myth? Probably the latter is closest to the truth. “The story is undoubtedly a mere fiction,” writes Schaff, “and is so regarded by nearly all modern historians.”³³

This mysterious saga of the scholarly Papess Johanna apparently originated with the Dominicans and was widely accepted as truth during the late medieval period—so much so that a bust of this mythical female pope was actually displayed alongside the busts of other popes during the early fifteenth century, and the myth was cited as fact at the Council of Constance in a statement against the popes. But why would anyone invent such a bizarre story? Perhaps as a satire of a number of popes perceived to have been controlled by ambitious women, or a satire on Pope John VIII, who was believed to be weak and ineffective. At any rate, the story was an interesting conversation piece for some two centuries, and it served as an argument for Torrecremata, a staunch defender of papal authority (no matter what the character of the man was), who insisted that if the church could permit a woman to be a pope, it could also permit a heretic to be a pope.³⁴

That a woman could have become pope in the Middle Ages or any other period in history is utterly absurd. The Roman Catholic Church was deeply committed to a position of male domination in spiritual matters. Women had a place in the church, but that place was clearly defined as one that carried with it no official authority. By their own leadership ability and charismatic influence, women on occasion overcame this disability, but whatever role they attained almost always remained within the confines of monasticism.

Convent Life

The cloistering of nuns and the general decline of female monasticism that began in the eighth and ninth centuries continued on in the succeeding centuries. According to R. W. Southern, “in the great period of monastic foundation from the early tenth to the early twelfth century the position of women in the monastic life suffered a sharp decline.”³⁵ But despite this continued setback, the convent continued to be the most viable option for women who desired a life commitment to religious ministry.

Who were the nuns of the medieval period? They were vastly different in social standing from nuns of the modern age. The majority of them were of high social status, coming from the ranks of the nobility. Later, during the High Middle Ages, some came from the ranks of the gentry and merchant classes, but rarely did any come from below that level. Why? “The chief barrier in admission to a nunnery was money rather than class,” write Frances and Joseph Gies. “Although canon law and monastic rule strictly condemned accepting fees from postulants, nunneries from earliest times evaded the ruling by requiring parents to provide girls with dowries of lands, rents, or cash, sometimes even clothes and furniture.”³⁶

Frequently the decision to send girls to a convent was made by the parents when their daughter’s were very young. For Edburga, a tenth-century nun, the decision had been made when she was only three years old. Still a toddler, growing up in a royal family in England, Edburga

An Illustration Depicting the Medieval Officers of a Nunnery. The abbess is depicted with her crozier, the cellaress with her keys, and the sacristan at the bell ropes. At the bottom, ordinary nuns are in procession. British Library, MS Add. 39843, f. 6v.

allegedly had a part in the decision. “Her father set before her both religious objects (Bible, chalice, and paten) and secular (jewels, gold, and silver) in an attempt to decide the future course of her life.” Without hesitation she reached out for the religious objects, and with that sign, her exuberant father placed her in a convent under the care of Abbess Etheldreda.³⁷

Were nuns, many of whom were placed in convents as youngsters, truly happy with their lot in life? There is ample evidence that even in the convents with the most relaxed standards and lifestyles, some of the women felt trapped. According to Durant, by 1300 in the older orders, such as the Cistercians, “most of the nuns came from the upper classes, and nunneries were too often the repository of women for whom their male relations had no room or taste.” This was not a new problem to the late Middle Ages. Indeed as early as the middle of the fifth century the emperor decreed it unlawful for parents to lighten their burden of family responsibilities by sending their daughters off to the nunnery. “Many parents,” according to Susan Bell, “put their young daughters into nunneries for life in order to avoid having to provide (often crippling) dowries,” though lesser dowries were sometimes required by the convents.³⁸

Life in a medieval convent was routine. Duties ranged from cleaning and cooking to designing vestments for priests and copying manuscripts. Usually each nun was assigned a particular duty. The chambermaid cleaned and mended clothing and bedding. The Fratress repaired furniture and did housekeeping. The cellaress was in charge of meal preparation. The almoness was responsible for the almsgiving. The novice mistress served as the teacher for new recruits. The sacrist designed and mended vestments and altar clothes, and the chantress was in charge of church services. But a duly certified male cleric (usually a priest) was brought in from the outside to say the masses and hear confessions. Of course, the daily vigils and prayers were accomplished without a male chaplain, and so were the special days that were set aside for nothing but prayer and fasting.³⁹

Convents and orders varied considerably in the freedom that women were permitted. The Carthusian and Cistercian orders required the nuns to observe strict silence unless speaking was deemed absolutely necessary. Although some nuns were involved in charity work, the strict cloistering of women limited such activities. Some convents specialized in education—providing the only higher education available to young women, though most had only a few boarding students.⁴⁰

Not only were women restricted in monasticism by the regulations foisted on them by the church, but also in the actual openings available to them in monastic life. While on the one hand there was intense recruitment of women during certain periods of time, at other times the women who desired the monastic life far outnumbered the spaces available. In the central Middle Ages only a small number of new convents were founded, but in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was a significant increase in women’s monasteries. Yet, despite that upsurge, men far outnumbered women in monasticism. In the early thirteenth century there were more than six hundred Augustinian and Benedictine monasteries for men in England alone, while the women’s houses numbered fewer than one hundred and fifty. In population totals there were about fourteen thousand men and only three thousand women in the monasteries. By the beginning of the fourteenth century there were some seven hundred Cistercian convents in Europe. But while such numbers are impressive, the total number of nuns was far less than the total number of monks and priests.⁴¹

The increasing restrictions that women confronted in the church apparently did not diminish their zeal for ministry. There was an “explosion of female piety,” Eleanor McLaughlin writes, and the religious orders were deluged with requests for membership.⁴² The Cistercians were able to accommodate only a third of the women who were desirous of joining them, and the order sought to further limit their numbers by stricter regulations—enclosing the houses and banning visitors. Still women pleaded to join. “But the Cistercian general chapter made the point most forcibly that there was little place for more women in its order and that they were accepted only with extreme reluctance.”⁴³

When women were barred from joining certain religious orders, they quickly found new outlets for their services, many of which were only reluctantly sanctioned by the church. These outlets included new religious orders that began springing up in the twelfth century, some of which seemed to have a special appeal for women. The Fontevrault, a twelfth-century community, is an example. It was one of the double monasteries that sprang up after the ban placed on them during the Gregorian reform was lifted. Its founder, Robert of Abrissel, was a popular itinerant preacher of the day whose ministry attracted a large following of women, and the community served as an outlet for their expressions of piety. Although the order was founded by a man, an abbess ruled over both the men and the women of the community. This female leadership was not just by happenstance, but was purposely arranged to symbolize the Virgin Mary’s authority over Jesus and later John, when at the cross he became as it were her adopted son. The men and women lived in separate residences but shared the same chapel. This order continued on until the end of the eighteenth century when the last abbess died.⁴⁴

This concept of a double monastery was, according to Eleanor McLaughlin “a radical innovation, at least on the theological level, for never before had there been an explicit acceptance of a woman’s preeminent spiritual authority.” Inherent in the system was the belief that the female was the “weaker and more delicate sex, for whom the life of contemplation and psalmody is appropriate.” The monks, on the other hand, were more suited to an active role involving service and manual labor. “Thus the women’s cloister dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the monk’s cloister to John the Evangelist represent these reciprocal roles, in which the male is servant and subordinate to the nuns, who rule.”⁴⁵

Another order started by a charismatic twelfth-century preacher was known as the Premonstratensian order. Founded by Norbert of Xanten, it attracted some ten thousand women to its numerous double monasteries. But the heyday of this massive outpouring of female volunteerism was short-lived. Because of his alleged concern for the welfare of the women, Pope Innocent issued a bull in 1198 forbidding the acceptance of any more women in the order.⁴⁶

Abbesses

Whatever the restrictions on female monasticism were at any particular time, the actual lifestyle at a particular convent was determined to a large extent by the abbess. In many instances she had as much power as did her male counterpart. Despite the church’s best efforts to place tight reins on nunneries, the abbess often ruled her community according to her own prescribed standards. This was possible because “monasticism from its very beginning,” according to Lina Eckenstein, “lay outside the established order of the Church.” It was this factor, more than any other that allowed women a meaningful place in the religious life of the Middle Ages. Susan Bell maintains that “nuns could and did achieve complete equality with men during the Middle Ages, particularly between the sixth and twelfth centuries.”⁴⁷

Whether there was actually “complete equality” between the sexes in monasticism is a matter for debate, but certainly monasticism offered women a place of prominence that could not be found elsewhere in the church. Indeed, in rare instances abbesses wielded power comparable to that of the local bishop. Lioba’s mentor, Mother Tetta, for example, was said to be “so powerful in her ability to lead her community that no man dared enter her monastery; even bishops were forbidden.” The power of the abbess was reinforced by the religious symbolism that was and is so pervasive in Catholicism. “Like the bishops and abbots, they wore the mitre and cross and carried the staff.” During the installation service of the abbess of St. Cecilla in Cologne, “each member of the clergy under her jurisdiction passed before her, prostrating himself and kissing her hand.”⁴⁸ The abbess of Las Huelgas in Spain served as “dame, superior, prelate, legitimate administrator, spiritual and temporal,” not only of her own monastery but also of the “convents, churches, and hermitages” under her jurisdiction.”⁴⁹ Even if she did not wield ecclesiastical power, it was common for the head of the convent to act as a business administrator with wide-ranging duties closely tied to the local economy and politics. This is illustrated in Chaucer’s Tales. Here the prioress is “a woman of proud breeding and large responsibilities, administering a spacious domain as the source of her convent’s revenues.”⁵⁰

The position of abbess was the highest to which a woman could attain. It was clearly above that of prioress—women who also ruled convents, but who were usually subject to an abbot.⁵¹ The abbess not only ruled a large community of nuns (and frequently monks as well), but also had jurisdiction over vast territories that often included villages and towns. And this jurisdiction in a number of instances did not involve merely civil matters. According to Joan Morris, “the abbess of a religious order was an ordained person even though those under her were not so,” and they “were exempt from the jurisdiction of a bishop and directly dependent on the Holy See.”⁵² Morris argues in her book The Lady Was a Bishop that the long history of women with clerical ordination has been purposely hidden in an effort to hold women back.

Whatever credentials an abbess possessed, the recognition accorded her depended initially on her social rank (very often from royalty) but to an even greater extent it depended on the local church and political authorities and, of course, on her own charisma and assertiveness. If these conditions and attributes were in her favor, she might serve as the king’s or the pope’s local representative—involving herself is such secular responsibilities as raising armies or sitting in on assemblies.⁵³

No matter how high her social rank was, it was not uncommon for an abbess to have to fight for her authority. This was the case at the abbey at Jouarre in the twelfth century and following. At one time the local bishop requested and received jurisdiction over the abbey, and Abbess Eustache dutifully recognized his authority and vowed obedience to him in an installation ceremony over which he presided. Her successor, Agnes I, however, refused to follow suit. Although she had the support of the local clerics and residents, Pope Innocent II sided with the bishop and excommunicated Agnes and all those under her, both clergy and laity. Eventually, however, this decision was reversed when Abbess Agnes II journeyed to Rome with a delegation of supporters and documents disproving the bishop’s authority over her.

So significant was the power of the abbess over a monastic community that the community often collectively seemed to take on the personality of the abbess. Her interests became the interests of the community. If education and the arts were her priorities, so with the nuns under her. Or if she was a mystic, it was likely that the entire community would have a mystical aura.

Education and the Arts

During the Middle Ages, many convents became centers of female education—often providing the only schooling that was available to women. As women were barred from the universities, monasticism afforded the only opportunity for education beyond that which might be given in the home. The academic standards of the convents deteriorated, however, as the medieval period progressed. One of the primary reasons for this deterioration was the effects of mysticism. According to Lina Eckenstein, “devotional interests were cultivated to the exclusion of everything else.” Earlier in the period it was not uncommon for women in convents to read and write in Latin and to quote from the classics and the church fathers, but as time passed such scholarship declined.⁵⁴

For many medieval women, the seclusion and solitude of the convent was an ideal environment to express their literary and artistic talents. It is not surprising, then, that Hroswitha, Germany’s first poet and playwright, was a nun. Her literary genius is best demonstrated in her six Latin comedies. Why would a nun write comedies? In her words, it was to make “a faint sound to the praise of God.” She deplored the Latin comedy of the day, and thus her mission was to offer her own Christian version.⁵⁵

Hroswitha’s “faint sound” was surprisingly open about physical sexual desires, and she presented an interesting perspective of men from a woman’s viewpoint—particularly in light of the standard view of woman as the evil temptress. In Dulcetius, one of her dramas, Emperor Diocletian orders three saintly virgins to deny their faith. Their refusal leads to imprisonment, which is followed by a ludicrous ordeal with Dulcetius, an army general. He is enamored of their beauty; so he locks them in the kitchen, scheming to seduce them later that night. His plan runs awry, however, when he is overcome by a strange sensation. He enters the kitchen but is utterly confused.

Befuddled, he begins to caress the pots and pans, while the girls watch through a crack in the wall. “Why, the fool is out of his mind, he fancies he has got hold of us,” reports one of them. “Now he presses the kettle to his heart, now he clasps the pots and pans and presses his lips to them…His face, his hands, his clothes are all black and sooty; the soot which clings to him makes him look like an Ethiopian.” One of her companions comments, “Very fitting that he should be so in body, since the devil has possession of his mind.”⁵⁶

Despite her brilliance, Hroswitha was ever conscious of the perceived inferiority of her sex. In a letter to three men to whom she had sent her dramas for criticism, she wrote:

I cannot sufficiently admire your great condescension…for your kindness towards me; you, who have been trained in the study of philosophy and have perfected yourselves in the pursuit of knowledge, have held my writings, those of a lowly woman, worthy of admiration…You have declared that there is in me a certain knowledge of that learning (scientiam artium) the essence of which is beyond my woman’s understanding.⁵⁷

There are other notable examples of literary and artistic self-expression that blossomed out of medieval nunneries. The masterpiece produced by Herrad, a twelfth-century abbess who headed a convent in Alsace, is an example. She, with the assistance of her nuns, compiled the “Garden of Delights,” a massive encyclopedia that contained all the knowledge that a well-educated medieval nun would ever need to know. Through lengthy texts and hundreds of colorful illustrations, “the book instilled a broad spectrum of history, religion, philosophy, and science, and it simultaneously taught Latin to her German readers in the most painless manner.”⁵⁸ The volume also tells a great deal about the particular nunnery Herrad ruled. The atmosphere was stimulating. Enthusiasm was high. Liberty reigned. The sixty nuns and lay sisters wore stylish clothes with brightly colored veils. For them life was certainly more challenging than it was for most women of the Middle Ages.⁵⁹

Music was another area of artistic endeavor that sometimes flourished in the convent. Indeed some abbeys became famous for their music—foremost among them, the abbey of Las Huelgas. Under Abbess Berenguela during the thirteenth century, there were more than one hundred nuns and some forty children in the choir, which was trained to sing the highly complicated compositions for which the abbey was known. “But the greatest testimony of their musical erudition,” writes Joan Morris, “is to be seen in the Codex Musical de Las Huelgas, a manuscript whose complexity indicates that the musicians had contact with conservatories throughout Europe.⁶⁰

The freedom granted nuns at cer-

A Choir of Franciscan Poor Clare Nuns. From a fifteenth-century psalter, British Library MS Cott. Dom AXVII, f. 74v.

tain convents was a threat to some church officials. At the beginning of the fourteenth century Boniface VIII sought to tighten his control by issuing a papal bull requiring nuns to remain secluded in their convents. This certainly indicates that there was widespread disregard for the previous clerical decrees to keep the nuns cloistered. At least one group of nuns openly defied the directive—hurling the document at the bishop who delivered it to them. How widely the bull was heeded is impossible to ascertain, but no doubt there were many other convents where it was simply ignored. As Will Durant points out, “The prioress in Chaucer’s Tales had no business there, for the Church had forbidden nuns to go on pilgrimage.”⁶¹

Spiritual Life at Convents

The spiritual quality of the convents naturally varied, depending on the leadership provided by the abbess and on the type of women who were in residence. Becoming a truly spiritual person was the primary purpose of monastic life, and the activities of the convent were centered around this goal. Personal and corporate worship was a strictly regulated aspect in the daily routine of most medieval convents. Confession and communion were generally scheduled on a regular basis, varying according to the monastic rule. The Rule of St. Clare, for example, specified that confession would be made twelve times a year, and communion taken seven times a year on special holidays.⁶²

The style of the spiritual life in the convents varied considerably. There were a number of ways to attain a reputation for spirituality or saintliness. Often it was associated with charity and menial service rendered to others, with vigils and prayers, and with various forms of penitence. The road to perfection for some medieval holywomen involved sleeping on boards, wearing a hair shirt, walking barefoot in the snow, or putting stones in their shoes. Even flagellation was taken up by some of these would-be saints. “Countless are the stories,” writes Rudolph Bell, “of young girls who whipped themselves until the blood ran.”⁶³ Bell’s most recent book, entitled Holy Anorexia, details the lives of medieval female “saints” who starved (or nearly starved) themselves to death in order to demonstrate their dedication to God.⁶⁴ But an even more significant factor than asceticism involved charismatic qualities of an individual—the proclivity to receive visions and revelations or the ability to perform miracles.

For a nun to attain sainthood generally meant that she must have manifested throughout her life a combination of the above characteristics. St. Edburga of Winchester, a tenth-century nun, is an example. Although a royal princess, she was known for her humble and pious deeds such as cleaning the shoes of other nuns and keeping private vigils during the night while the other nuns slept. Her miracles included one spectacular story of a woman’s sight being restored after she was directed in a vision to bathe her eyes in the water in which Edburga washed herself.⁶⁵

Toward the end of the Middle Ages the female candidates for sainthood steadily increased. The thirteenth century saw a remarkable upsurge in female piety, the percentage of women saints nearly doubling that of the previous century. By the fifteenth century, some 28 percent of the designated saints were female.⁶⁶

Thirteenth-century Italy was particularly known for its female saints. There monastic communities were usually located in towns where the residents mixed freely with the townspeople, performing sacrificial deeds of all kinds. These nuns, unlike their sisters of an earlier age and elsewhere in Europe, often were of humble origin. Margaret of Cortona is a prime example of the thirteenth-century Italian female saint. She was born into a peasant family around 1247. She was a member of the Franciscan Third Order. According to Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, “Margaret was a protector of the poor and sick and took special care of pregnant women, founding hospitals and houses of refuge.”⁶⁷

While humility, deeds of charity, and keeping vigils were important to medieval spirituality, it was the charismatic element that gained the most publicity, and it was in Germany where such phenomena were most in evidence. Here female monasticism was frequently associated with fervent mysticism and visionary experiences—quite unlike the monasticism of England and France (representing a higher percentage of noblewomen), which was known for its education and intellectual achievements.⁶⁸

German Mysticism

“The German nunneries,” writes Will Durant, “tended to be havens of intense mysticism.” But it was not only in Germany that female mystics proliferated. Beginning in the thirteenth century, women mystics outnumbered men, and “their ecstasies were more frequent and more often accompanied by paramystical phenomena.” Directly related to their mysticism was the emphasis they placed on the humanity of Jesus. This involved a fascination with the baby Jesus and also a near-obsession with his death—“devotion to the sacred heart and to the wounds of Jesus.”⁶⁹

One of the most powerful abbesses and well-known visionaries of the entire medieval period was Hildegard (1098–1179), who ruled the Benedictine convent of Disebodenberg, located on the Rhine. She corresponded with two emperors, four popes, and many other high church officials, and was regarded as “the most prominent woman in the church of her day.”⁷⁰ As with other women, her power was derived more from the charismatic qualities she possessed than from education, family, or rank. She claimed to have been directed by a Divine Light—a power that guided her in writing, counseling, and teaching. “From my infancy,” she wrote, “my soul has always beheld this Light…The brightness which I see is not limited by space and is more brilliant than the luminous air round the sun.”⁷¹ Unlike other visionaries, she claimed that she never fell into trances: “The visions which I saw, I did not perceive in dreams or sleeping, nor in delirium, nor with the corporeal ears and eyes of the outer man; but watchful and intent in mind I received them according to the will of God.”⁷²

Hildegard of Bingen. This woman is receiving a revelation through “a great flash of light from heaven.” From a contemporary manuscript of Scivias. Hessische Landes-bibliothek. Wiesbaden, f. I.

Like other churchwomen, Hildegard pleaded for reform within the church. She despaired over the corruption and immorality of the clergy, and she admonished her audiences to look to the Scriptures as their authority and to Christ, not the priests, for salvation.⁷³ And she was an outspoken evangelist. She pleaded for sinners to repent, lest they suffer the agony that was so vividly depicted to her in visions:

I saw a well deep and broad, full of boiling pitch and sulphur, and around it were wasps and scorpions…Near a pond of clear water I saw a great fire. In this some souls were burned and others were girdled with snakes…And I saw a great fire, black, red, and white, and in it horrible fiery vipers spitting flame; and there the vipers tortured the souls of those who had been slaves of the sin of uncharitableness…And I saw a thickest darkness, in which the souls of the disobedient lay on a fiery pavement and were bitten by sharp-toothed worms.”⁷⁴

It was the convent at Hefla where German mysticism of the thirteenth century was most pronounced. It was here that “reports of visions and inner experiences or meditations form the largest single body of women’s mystical writing in the period.” The mystical character of this community developed under the forty-year leadership of Gertrude of Hackeborn. The preponderance of mystical writing, however, came from three other women: Gertrude of Hefla (also knowns as Gertrude the Great), Mechtild of Hackeborn, and Mechtild of Magdeburg. They all served as ordinary nuns—their reputations being built on their revelations and visions.⁷⁵

These nuns believed that they served as special conduits from God to man, and in this capacity they revealed specific messages to individuals and groups. As their popularity increased, they served not only their own convent but also outsiders, including a wide range of male clerics. “They provided information about what practices Christ wished performed and about the state of souls in the afterlife.” They were convinced that “Christ himself guaranteed the efficacy of their prayers, particularly for removing souls from purgatory.” Gertrude of Hefla was known particularly for her specific revelations concerning souls in purgatory, and she did not hesitate to give precise data on the number of souls released for any given amount of prayer or service.⁷⁶

The content of Gertrude’s visions, as well as those of the other nuns of Hefla, varied, but there were common characteristics. The themes were frequently pessimistic—particularly the themes of the dying Son and the damning Father. Sometimes the vision provided justification for a specific activity or belief. In several of Gertrude’s visions she claimed for herself and other nuns the explicit instruction to preach—an activity that the church frowned on for women. One particular nun was commanded in a vision to “imitate Jesus especially in his nights of prayer, his preaching in villages by word and example, and his service of neighbor.”⁷⁷

So, as the decades passed, the convent at Hefla maintained its steady flow of visions and revelations—churning them out as fast as they could be recorded. And if ordinary visions became mundane for some, there were always more spectacular miracles to seek. Indeed, Gertrude’s meditation on the dying Savior became such an obsession that she received the “stigmata”—nail scars in her hands and feet. They were not visible to others, but they were allegedly real to her.

Although Hefla was known for its extreme mysticism, women’s monasteries in general were fertile soil for visions and revelations. What was the cause of this? Were women by their very nature more emotionally inclined, and thus more prone to mystical experiences? This issue has been hotly debated by historians and behaviorists alike. Caroline Bynum, a church historian, argues strongly against those who contend that there is “some kind of inherent female ‘emotionalism.’” In her view, “these answers will not do. If women become mystics because they are intrinsically more emotional, imaginative, religious, or hysterical than men, why did it take centuries for this to emerge?”⁷⁸

Bynum suggests that the visionary experiences women had frequently transported them into priestly roles that they were denied in real life, and it gave them “direct authorization to act as mediators to others.”⁷⁹ So in that sense they were seeking to overcome (whether consciously or subconsciously) their inferior position in the church. Other historians, including I. M. Lewis in his book Ecstatic Religion have come to similar conclusions. Lewis maintains that such mysticism was a reaction to social oppression. Whatever the cause, this trend of women’s predominance in mysticism continued within the framework of the Roman Catholic tradition, and later in radical Protestantism.

Although many nuns gained wide acclaim for their visions and revelations, others met with ridicule and threats from the church authorities. Even Hildegard, despite her fame and popularity, was denounced by some of her contemporaries as being “demon-possessed.”⁸⁰

Women in Seclusion—Anchoresses

Monastic life varied not only from community to community but also from one individual to another. So impelled were some women to be secluded from the world that even the strictly cloistered communities were unsatisfactory to them. For these women, living in solitude was the best means of maintaining a truly contemplative life. In the early centuries of the church, many such anchoresses, like the male hermits, lived in the desert, near others for protection but entirely away from civilization. How many women opted for such a lifestyle will never be known, but Bishop Palladius (d. 425), who spent a number of years as a desert monk in Egypt, claimed that there were as many as twenty thousand female ascetics in the desert—outnumbering the men by a ratio of two to one.⁸¹

The decline of desert asceticism did not signal the end of the hermit lifestyle. As Christianity pushed northward, it was only natural that ascetics would move indoors, and thus various communities of anchoresses and hermits developed—often attached to cathedrals or churches. The accommodations usually consisted of unfurnished cells, often built into the exterior walls of the building, where the ascetic could have complete privacy. Women were more commonly found in these cells than their male counterparts, who often took up their abode in the forest or in caves. The most famous of these communities was located in England at Whitby and was headed by Hilda.⁸²

One of the most celebrated anchoresses of the medieval period was a fourteenth-century English mystic, Julian of Norwich. Virtually nothing is known of her life, except that she presumably lived in a small cell built into the wall of the St. Julian’s church at Norwich and that she allegedly lived to be one hundred. Her fame was a result of her series of sixteen revelations, recorded in Revelations of Divine Love. These revelations began when she was thirty years old. By her own account, she was in her teens when she began living a contemplative life. Although she prefaced her revelations by describing herself as “a simple, unlettered creature” who was “lewd, feeble and frail,” there is ample reason to believe that she was familiar with the writings of other mystics as well as those of theologians and was more learned than she was prepared to admit. One probable explanation for her selfeffacement relates to her sex:

These protestations are…anticipating the criticisms of her book which she expects from hostile men, who will say that she is disobeying Paul’s precept that women must not preach. She tells them…that she is not preaching, that she is no more than the witness to the graces of enlightenment which she has received.⁸³

It was not only her “preaching” that raised questions in the minds of her critics, but also her message. More than a half millennium before the modern feminist movement arose, she was offering her hearers a feminine image of God. Her writings contain many phrases such as “god is oure mother,” “oure savyoure is oure very moder,” “very moder Jhesu,” and “oure moder, Christ.”⁸⁴

Christina of Sweden. From Franz Blei. Fascinating Women: Sacred & Profane (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1928).

For Julian, living the life of a hermit was by choice—her own personal preference of how she could best serve God. For others, however, such living was an escape. Christina, a twelfth-century Anglo-Saxon mystic, is an example of the latter. From her earliest childhood it was her desire to enter a convent, and at the age of thirteen she made a vow of virginity—a vow that was strongly opposed by her parents, who desperately wanted to see their daughter married. Indeed they were so determined to have her marry that they encouraged Burthred, her most persistent suitor, to enter her room while she slept. Through “providential intervention,” Christina was wide awake and prepared to fend him off. But her parents were persistent. By bribing clerics, she was forced to face their arguments. Again she prevailed. In one instance, she “defeated the Bishop in the ensuing contest of prooftexting.” Finally she escaped by disguising herself as a boy, fleeing to a remote area to live with Roger, a religious hermit, with whom she was able to share her spiritual pilgrimage without fear of breaking her vow.⁸⁵

Christina was a visionary, who spent much of her time in meditation and prayer—often ecstatic in nature. But she was more than that. She involved herself in the lives of others, including the unconverted and worldly abbot of St. Albans. Through her influence, his life changed dramatically, and over the years she discipled him in the way of holiness.⁸⁶

Women Abroad—Pilgrims

In sharp contrast to the holy woman secluded in her cell was the holy woman who demonstrated her piety by making pilgrimages from one holy shrine to another. One of the most noted pilgrims of the late medieval period was Margery Kempe, whom Edith Deen describes as a “wandering evangelist.” She spent most of twenty years traveling, mainly on foot, as far South as the Holy Land and as far North as Norway. As a wife and a mother of fourteen children, she began to have visions and became convinced that Christ wanted her to live in celibacy and devote the remainder of her life to the pursuit of holiness. As she traveled she not only worshiped at the sacred shrines but also met with churchmen and theologians, often detailing her visions and experiences with them, seeking to assuage “her constant fear of diabolical delusions.” Her travels required separating from her husband, but for her the separation was more than a matter of convenience. She was convinced that she could not maintain a perfectly holy marriage to Christ if she was continuing to have sexual relations with her husband. “By a carefully executed scheme of divine manipulation, Margery follows Christ’s lead and strikes a bargain with her husband,” and eventually convinces him to join her and “mutually enter a pact of chastity before the bishop.”⁸⁷

Although she was regarded as mentally unbalanced and a fanatic by many in her own day and since, her love for Christ made a deep impression on many she encountered, including Julian of Norwich, from whom she sought counsel. She left a record of her spiritual and geographical journeys in her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe.

New Religious Orders

By the beginning of the thirteenth century, monasticism had peaked. The Cistercians, an offshoot of the Benedictines, had seen phenomenal growth during the twelfth century, despite a tightening of regulations, but monasteries in their traditional form were beginning to be replaced by new religious orders consisting of friars who were actively involved in the cities and towns. The Dominicans and the Franciscans were the most prominent of these orders, the former emphasizing education and Roman Catholic orthodoxy, and the latter stressing the importance of self-sacrifice and service.

What was the response of these new orders to women? Both were amazingly open to female ministry in the early years. Indeed, Dominic founded a nunnery at Prouille before he founded the Dominican order—using it in his effort to stamp out heresy in southern France by educating young women who would have otherwise been educated by the Cathars. He founded other convents as well. However, his position regarding women changed over the years, and at the time of his death he was warning his followers against any association with women. Women would have been virtually excluded from that order after his death had they not, with the aid of Pope Innocent IV “launched a massive counter-offensive.”⁸⁸ The Cistercians also sought to prohibit additional nunneries in the thirteenth century, but to no avail. Like the other orders, they could not stem the tide of pious women yearning to serve God.⁸⁹

Were there valid reasons for the effort to exclude women from these religious orders? Perhaps there were. The women, unlike the men, were generally cloistered, and it was therefore necessary for several friars to serve each such convent—performing the duties that required contact with the outside world, and thus preventing them from fulfilling their call to preach. This problem is closely tied to the more general economic problem of maintaining a convent of unproductive nuns. The friars were out in the world, sustaining themselves through alms. But probably the major objection to women in the religious orders was the view of the woman as temptress and the fear that any association with her would inevitably bring about the downfall of an institution dedicated to the service of God. This view has endured throughout Christian history and was accepted as valid by leaders of the new religious orders of the thirteenth century. The Dominicans, known for their preaching expertise, rarely mentioned women, except in the context of their sensuality. McLaughlin writes, “The typical thirteenth-century preacher harped on the danger of women, stringing out his biblical exemplars—Eve, Jezebel, Delilah, Bathsheba, Salome.”⁹⁰

Although the Cistercians, Dominicans, Franciscans, and other such orders did not close the door completely to women, they did on occasion impose very strict regulations on them. The emphasis was more and more on the strict isolation of women from society—particularly men. “For example, elaborate curtains were erected lest a dying nun see the priest who administered last rites,” and “in double monasteries the sisters were not allowed to sing the offices lest their song…arouse male passion.” Seclusion for women was confirmed by Pope Boniface VIII in 1293 when he issued a bull restricting nuns from leaving the convent unless they had the local bishop’s permission.⁹¹

The Poor Clares

Despite the opposition they faced, women did play an important role in these new religious orders. The female arm of the Franciscans was founded in 1212 by Clare of Sciffi. Clare was only a teenager when she first heard Francis of Assisi preach. His message was compelling, and with his assistance she fled the security and wealth of her noble family and took a vow to live her life in the service of Christ. Soon afterward the order of Poor Clares (or Clarisses) was officially organized, and she headed that order for some forty years.⁹²

The Young Clare Speaking With Francis. From a painting in the basilica of St. Clare, Assisi, photo by Alinari-Giraudon.

Unlike the Franciscans, who mixed freely in society, preaching in the cities and towns, the Poor Clares spent most of their lives behind the locked gates of their monasteries. Clare, in fact, according to her contemporary hagiographer, never left Saint Damian’s monastery during her forty-two years of ministry. Although this statement is refuted by others, it nevertheless indicates a very cloistered lifestyle. Indeed such a lifestyle was central to their purpose for existing. In a letter from Pope Gregory in 1228 to “the abbess Clare, and to the cloistered religious of the monastery of San Damiano,” he reminded them of their calling:

Remember that of your own free will you have followed the divine call, that you have enclosed yourselves in these poor cells to the end that being free from the tumult of the world, and preserved from the snares of earthly vanity, you may unite yourselves by a pure and holy love to the heavenly Bridegroom, Whom you have preferred to all others until He shall introduce you into His eternal dwellings.⁹³

But if the Poor Clares could not match the efforts of their Franciscan brothers in public ministry, they could and did match them in their vow of poverty that both orders were committed to uphold above all other rules. Poverty became a virtual obsession to the noble-born Clare—an obsession that was borne out in her letters:

O blessed poverty who givest eternal riches to those who love and embrace her! O holy poverty, it is enough to desire thee and to share in thee for God to promise us the Kingdom of Heaven, eternal glory and a life of rest and blessedness! O beloved poverty whom our Lord Jesus Christ found worthy of His love, He to whom heaven and earth and all creation are eternally subject!⁹⁴

The respect accorded Clare was due in part to her association with Francis of Assisi, but she earned a name for herself in her own right, and this is borne out in the hagiography penned after her death. One particular account depicts Clare as a humble woman receiving the highest honor that could be accorded her. And, typically, it ends with a miracle. The story took place in 1228 at Saint Damian’s and the guest of honor was Pope Gregory IX.

St. Clare had the table laid, and set loaves of bread thereon that the Holy Father might bless them…St. Clare knelt down with great reverence, and besought him to be pleased to bless the bread…The holy Father answered: “Sister Clare, most faithful one, I desire that thou bless this bread, and make over it the sign of the most holy cross of Christ, to which thou hast wholly devoted thyself.” And St. Clare said: “Most Holy Father, forgive me, but I should merit great reproof if, in the presence of the Vicar of Christ, I, who am a poor, vile woman, should presume to give such benediction.” And the Pope answered: “To the end that this be not imputed to thy presumption, but to the merit of obedience, I command thee, by holy obedience, that thou…bless this bread in the name of God.” Then St. Clare, even as a true daughter of obedience, devoutly blessed the bread with the sign of the most holy cross. Marvelous to tell! Forthwith on all those loaves the sign of the cross appeared figured most beautifully…And the Holy Father, when he saw this miracle, partook of the bread and departed, thanking God and leaving his blessing with St. Clare.⁹⁵

Personality Cults

In remarkable distinction from the anchoresses and the cloistered Poor Clares were certain independent women who spent their lives seeking to affect change in society—women who were recognized by bishops and popes for their influence and power, and around whom often developed personality cults.

Catherine of Siena

The most famous of all medieval churchwomen was Catherine of Siena, a fourteenth-century mystic. As with all medieval saints, it is difficult to sort fact from fantasy in seeking to discover her true character, but, unlike some, she left behind a wealth of information in personal letters and writings. Many biographies have been written on her life—the most thoughtful and balanced (and readable) account being De La Bedoyere’s Catherine: Saint of Siena.⁹⁶ He shows Catherine to be one of the strangest of all the Roman Catholic saints and, at the same time, one of the most influential.

From early childhood, Catherine sensed that God had a special ministry for her. At the age of seven she made a vow of virginity (the age a child could legally consent to marriage). Like Christina, she met with strong family resistance and at the age of twelve cut off her flowing hair to repel the man to whom she had been matched. Though raised in a congested household (she being the twenty-third of twenty-five children), she managed to steal time for contemplation, and she had numerous visionary experiences during her childhood and young adult life. One of the most enduring of these visions came to Catherine during a pre-Lenten carnival—at a time when she was undergoing doubts about her commitment to celibacy. She was

tormented by demons who paraded before her the earthly and womanly pleasures she was giving up…The Sienese were in the streets eating, drinking, playing at love, and mocking their betters. In her dark cell Catherine heard the carnival riot while her demons continued to torture her. Suddenly Christ appeared with his mother and a host of saints. Placing a gold ring on her finger, he took Catherine as his bride. The ultimate mystic joy was hers.⁹⁷

Such ecstatic trances served to deepen her commitment to God—a commitment that during her teenage years was manifested in extreme asceticism that included shunning food and sleep, long periods of silence, severe flagellation, and wearing a painfully course undergarment and an iron chain. Although she later joined the Third Order of St. Dominic (with a membership in Siena of some one hundred women), her lifestyle changed very little. She began playing a more public role, but she always remained on the fringe of that movement. She was very often the subject of local gossip and ridicule, and her activities were closely scrutinized as she moved with relative ease from the secluded chamber in her family home to the disease-ridden, vermininfested streets of Siena.⁹⁸

Catherine’s extreme asceticism and her sometimes shocking ways of displaying her love and concern for others were directly related to the role she perceived God had given her—that of being in essence a sinbearer for those who, unlike herself, could not or would not be responsible for their own sins. This role is unmistakably laid out in one of her written prayers:

Lord, whatever you say must be right…If so many take the wrong road, it’s they themselves who are to blame. It’s because they obstinately follow their own wills. But I know what I’ll do. I’ll gather together all our sins, all our faults, all our human miseries, and I’ll make a great bunch of them all and carry them all on my shoulders, and I’ll carry the hateful burden to the foot of the throne of your infinite mercy.”⁹⁹

Catherine of Siena, Painted by Caracci. From Light and Life for Women 32:4 (April 1902): 193.

It would surely seem that attempting to carry the sins of mankind on her shoulders would lead to despair and utter helplessness. But amazingly this was not the case. According to De La Bedoyere, Catherine displayed “a combination of delight in sacrifice with delight in life,” and “a geniality, charm, playfulness of manner.” This attitude was no doubt prompted by the overwhelming love and concern that she felt for the helpless victims to whom she ministered and the joy she derived from her spiritual ecstacies. Yet, there were moments of dejection and doubt as well. “At times she doubted whether even her celestial visions were God-sent or Devil-sent.”¹⁰⁰

There are many stories about Catherine’s selfless sacrifice toward others—the most gruesome of which have been the most publicized. One of these stories depicts her with a dying woman—Catherine gently swabbing the pus-filled sores, but nearly overcome by the sickening stench. But then in an instant, Catherine was guilt-stricken by her revulsion. In a demonstration of love and identity with this wretched creature, she picked up the bowl of pus she had drained from the foul sores and drank it, later claiming that it delighted her taste buds as nothing else ever had.¹⁰¹ During the plague of 1374 that ravaged Siena, Schaff writes that “she was indefatigable by day and night, healed those of whom the physicians despaired, and she even raised the dead.”¹⁰²

The sick and dying were not the only ones to feel the loving touch of Catherine’s sacrificial service. In one instance she came to the aid of an accused criminal. The accused was a nobleman charged with defaming the city fathers and had been sentenced to death. Before he met Catherine, he was abusive and violent, but her visits soon transformed him. In a letter to one of her dedicated followers, Catherine described the ordeal of his execution, which was turned into a virtual celebration:

I was there at the place of execution, waiting and praying…At length he came, like a meek lamb. When he saw me, he laughed and asked me to make the sign of the Cross over him. When I had done so, I said: “Kneel down now, my sweetest brother. To the nuptials! In a moment you will have entered into life eternal.” He knelt down gently and I bent over him and held him as he lowered his head, reminding him of the blood of the Lamb. His lips murmured nothing but the names, Jesus and Catherine. I closed my eyes accepting in the Divine Goodness the sacrifice, and as he was speaking I received his head into my hands.¹⁰³

As touching as these acts of mercy were, Catherine’s prestige lies more in her involvement in church affairs than in her humanitarian labors. This more than anything else separates her from the vast majority of medieval saints, whose reputations are often based on flimsy accounts of miracle working. She was deeply troubled by the lowered status and corruption of the papacy since its relocation to Avignon and was convinced that there would be no real reform until the pope moved back to Rome. She was also deeply concerned about the Florentines and others of her own countrymen who demonstrated open defiance of the pope. These were terrible wrongs that had to be corrected. But that meant gaining influence at the highest levels of the politically powerful and strictly male-dominated Roman Catholic church. It would have been a difficult feat for any woman, and thus the accomplishments of Catherine stand as truly amazing when one considers her lack of social status, her obscure background, and her utter lack of renown in ecclesiastical circles.

The event that stands above all others in Catherine’s life is her march to Avignon with an entourage of some twenty dedicated followers. Her purpose was to convince the pope to depart from that “Babylon of the West,” and return to Rome. Obtaining an audience with Pope Gregory XI was not a simple matter, and other complications soon developed. The Florentine delegation, whom Catherine was unofficially representing, was delayed in their coming and refused to recognize her when they finally did arrive. Although the pope treated her with respect, his advisors did not; in fact they insisted that this strange woman be examined—a routine precaution to prevent the pope from being influenced by a heretic or a witch. She passed the test and had further interviews with the pope, during which time she debated with him over the feasibility of launching another crusade. Gregory argued that it was necessary first to establish peace among the Christians, while Catherine insisted that a crusade would be the critical factor in bringing unity to the seriously divided Christians.¹⁰⁴

Just how successful was Catherine in her mission to Avignon? Gregory did return the papal seat to Rome, but what part did Catherine’s prodding play in the decision to do so? M. Robert Fawtier, a French scholar who has done the most extensive research on her life, contends that her role in persuading the pope to return to Rome has been greatly inflated. De La Bedoyere, on the other hand, claims that she “greatly impressed” the pope and “proved to be a determining factor” in prompting the “vacillating Pope to take the actual step of returning to Rome.”¹⁰⁵

Whatever her role was, she was greatly disappointed when the pope died soon after his return to Rome. But her dreams were not tied to the fate of one man. Catherine immediately made contact with the new pope, Urban VI, who, in the face of intense opposition and disloyalty, welcomed all the support he could muster. Urban’s sole claim to the papal throne, however, was short-lived. The election of Clement VII by dissidents reestablished the papacy in Avignon. The Great Schism had begun. Catherine’s impassioned support of Urban VI is evident in her letters to him, and she did not hesitate to blast the election of Clement VII: “I have learnt that the devils incarnate have elected not the Christ on earth, but have cause to be born an anti-Christ against you, the Christ on earth.”¹⁰⁶

The Great Schism that divided the Western church continued for four decades. The fighting among churchmen continuted unabated, though Catherine had sought desperately to end it, and the crusade that she had so strongly pressed for was never launched. Thus despite her efforts, she failed to make any significant impact on the church at large. That “she dominated Pope Gregory and, to a lesser extent, Urban VI,” or even that “she was held in high regard in Florence,” as Eleanor McLaughlin maintains¹⁰⁷ is certainly not an obvious conclusion from the historical record.

To be sure, if the greatness of Catherine of Siena, is tallied by her political prowess, she would not necessarily receive high marks by historians. The greatness of this woman, however, is seen more in her failures than in her success. She did not reform the church or even the papacy, but her voluminous correspondence to accomplish that end stands as a permanent monument to one lowly individual’s fight against corruption and immorality. “A person might well argue,” De La Bedoyere writes, “that if things in the Church were as bad as Catherine makes out, it was indeed high time that men spoke out. But the fact remains that they did not.”¹⁰⁸

Unlike the churchmen of her day, she had nothing to lose—except her life. And her bold denunciations could never be construed to signify disloyalty to the church. Her scathing indictments were accompanied by affirmations of love and concern. She maintained a balanced approach, and her admonitions could be applied to spiritual leaders in any age. On one occasion she scolded the pope for turning his back on “the abundance of many iniquities committed by those who are fed and pastured in the garden of the Holy Church,” and then she went on to say, “Since He has given you authority and you have assumed it, you should use your virtue and power; and if you are not willing to use it, it would be better for you to resign what you have assumed; more honor to God and health to your soul would it be.”¹⁰⁹

Catherine of Siena died in 1380 before she had reached the age of thirty-three. Many came to mourn the passing of a life that had been so brief—yet so full. She truly was a saint in the eyes of her countrymen—a role model for generations of Christian women. “She was excelled by none in her own age,” writes Schaff, “in passionate effort to save her people and help spread righteousness. Hers was the voice of the prophet, crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’”¹¹⁰ In 1461 when she was canonized by Pope Pius II, he characterized her ministry by saying that “none ever approached her without going away better.”¹¹¹

Brigitta

Catherine was not the only fourteenth-century female reformer who made her presence known to popes and political rulers. Brigitta of Sweden was also on the scene, ministering to the poor and hurling insults at the popes. She did not begin her work as a reformer until after her husband died. Then as a middle-aged widow she journeyed to Rome, where she lost no time in taking a stand against the corruption and political vice she saw all around her. When Pope Urban announced his intention to return to the papal residence in Avignon, she promptly predicted his death as a result. Her prophecy was not fulfilled, but that did not silence her. She continued her scathing indictments against the church hierarchy. She bemoaned how far the papacy had drifted since the time of the apostle Peter, who “was appointed pastor and minister of Christ’s sheep.” But now, “the pope scatters them and lacerates them. He is worse than Lucifer, more unjust than Pilate, more cruel than Judas.” But Brigitta did not limit her diatribes to third-person accounts. In a letter to Pope Gregory she wrote, “In thy curia arrogant pride rules, insatiable cupidity and execrable luxury. It is the very deepest gulf of horrible simony. Thou seizest and tearest from the Lord innumerable sheep.”¹¹²

Women in Sects

Part of the fear of permitting women freedom in ruling monasteries or forming their own orders was based on the belief that women were more prone to become snarled in heresies than were men. There was concern that the prophecies and visions so frequently attested to by women would lead to beliefs not sanctioned by the church—or, even worse, would lessen the authority of the church. Was this fear warranted? Were women more likely than men to be snared by heretical sects, or were they more like to initiate heretical doctrines? The main problem in answering those questions lies in the church’s definition of “heresy.” Indeed while some women were elevated to sainthood for their alleged miracles and acts of charity, others whose doctrine was just as orthodox (or perhaps more so) were denounced as heretics. There was often a fine line between heresy and orthodoxy.

The Beguines

A striking example of a movement that began to be considered heretical is that of the Beguines, a religious order of women that spread across Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, without the sanction of the papacy. This, according to Caroline Bynum, was “probably the first ‘women’s movement’ in western history.” It was a mass groundswell of goodwill, initiated and carried out by women, few of whom came from wealthy aristocratic families. “The women renounced their goods and lived a semi-conventual life, but took no vows and followed none of the approved monastic rules.” Their organization was simple, without a complex hierarchical structure.¹¹³

Unlike most of the other women’s orders, they were not cloistered and they spent much of their time feeding the hungry and caring for the sick. Doctrinally, many of these groups were as orthodox as other medieval orders. Others, however, apparently were caught up in the heresy of the Free Spirit—a mystical antinomianism that found its way into many of the sects of the Middle Ages. Some Beguines were accused of this heresy, though most avowedly denied it. They were condemned by the Synod of Cologne in 1260, and in 1312 by the Council of Vienne. Among the charges against them were their failure to confess to a priest, their lack of worshipful respect for the host, and their perfectionist and antinomian tendencies (their alleged belief that an individual could attain perfection in this life, and then could indulge in illicit sex and vice without committing sin).¹¹⁴

That they supposedly held to such antinomian heresy was bad enough, but added to that were charges of gross sexual immorality. Such accusations were rarely substantiated and may have been prompted by the threat these women were to the established church. But there were other accusations that were easily substantiated—that they were translating the Bible, preaching, and acting as self-appointed theologians—and these were equally serious, and perhaps more so, to medieval theologians.

The Franciscan Gilbert of Tournai…claimed that certain beguines had translated the Bible into the Gallic idiom, that they were reading their vernacular commentaries not only in conventicles, but openly in public squares, and that he himself had seen one of the Bibles which church officials had exhibited in Paris in order to display the many heresies and errors contained therein.¹¹⁵

Although the nature of these heresies is not specified, “he no doubt…thought that the Beguines’ greatest crime was simply daring to translate and discuss the Bible even though they were mere laypeople.”¹¹⁶

Outside the Roman Catholic church during the Middle Ages there were many other sects in which women found a spiritual refuge. Indeed, many such groups allowed women more opportunities for meaningful ministry than did the institutionalized church. Women had leadership positions and in many instances were involved in preaching and teaching. Whether the sects actually offered women a greater share of the ministry over the long term, however, is a matter of debate. Eleanor McLaughlin argues that “before the sixteenth century, it was in the Church, not in sects, that women found the most enduring and powerful roles.”¹¹⁷ Although she concedes that the sects permitted women great freedom and opportunities for ministry in their early years of development, she rightly points out that these roles gradually diminished as the sect officially organized. Yet, the equality that women were accorded in religious groups outside the church—even if it did not extend for generation after generation—cannot be ignored as a significant factor in attracting women in such large numbers.

The Waldensians

During the Middle Ages, membership in a sect automatically characterized an individual as a heretic. And unrepentant heretics were not treated kindly by religious authorities, whether they were women or men. In 1212 there was a crackdown against the “heretics” in Strassburg, eighty of whom were burned at the stake, twenty-three of them being women. It is presumed that many if not all of these were Waldensians—a religious group that denied the authority of the Roman Catholic church while emphasizing the authority of Scripture and the need for all to study it. The group was known for its lay preachers and evangelists (one of whom was its founder and leader Peter Waldo), and their activities were proof to the inquisitors of the group’s heretical nature. And what is worse, “the Waldenses went still further in shocking old-time custom and claimed the right to preach for women as well as for men.” Indeed, laypersons were permitted to administer communion and baptism, and apparently that included women. At least a charge was made to that effect, and there was no denial of it. Whether the women were permitted to minister in such a way to both men and women or were limited strictly to their own sex is unknown. Nevertheless, they participated more fully than did those women who remained under the umbrella of the Roman Catholic Church.¹¹⁸

The Cathari

The persecution against the Waldensians, though severe, was mild in comparison to that waged against the Cathari (also known as Albigensians), whose heaviest concentration was in southern France. Unlike the Waldensians, the Cathari were a truly heretical sect holding to a Manichean form of dualism. The most important rite of the Cathari was the consolamentum, which involved the laying on of hands and guaranteed the recipient absolution of past and future sins. Women, as well as men, performed this rite. Women were given positions of authority, while at the same time normal husband-wife sexual relationships were denounced, and women were viewed as the instigators of sin. Philip Schaff illustrates this:

A strange account of the fall of the angels was current in Southern France. Satan ascended to heaven and waited in vain thirty-two years for admittance. He was then noticed and admitted by the porter. Hidden from the Father, he remained among the angels a year before he began to use his art to deceive. He asked them whether they had no other glory or pleasure besides what he saw. When they replied they had not, he asked whether they would not like to descend to his world and kingdom, promising to give them gifts, fields, vineyards, springs, meadows, fruits, gold, silver, and women. Then he began to praise woman and the pleasures of the flesh. When they inquired more particularly about the women, the devil said he would descend and bring one back with him. This he did. The woman was decked in jewels and gold and beautiful of form. The angels were inflamed with passion, and Satan seeing this, took her and left heaven. The angels followed. The exodus continued for nine days and nights, when God closed up the fissure which had been made.¹¹⁹

Early in the thirteenth century Pope Innocent III announced a crusade against the Cathari. In the words of Philip Schaff:

The same reward was promised to those who took the cross against the Cathari [Albigensians] and Waldenses, as to those who went across the seas to fight the intruder upon the Holy Sepulchre. There was no mercy. Two emissaries of the pope reported the carnage as the crusaders entered Beziers: “Divine vengeance raged wonderfully against the city…Ours spared neither sex nor condition. The whole city was sacked, and the slaughter was very great.”¹²⁰

The Taborites

No matter how “orthodox” a sect might be, the very fact that it did not recognize papal authority or was not recognized by the pope made it the target of fierce opposition. This was true of the Taborites in the early fourteenth century. They were known as “the most radical branch of the Hussite movement.” Although viewed as a heretical cult by the Roman Catholic church, the Taborites “were fundamentalists in the tradition of John Wycliffe and wished to confine doctrine to what was explicitly stated in the Bible.”¹²¹ In light of this, it is all the more interesting that they permitted women to be preachers.

Theologians and Women

Despite the impressive roles played by women in the medieval church and the tributes paid them by their contemporaries, theologians in many instances perpetuated a view that held women back in church-related ministries. While this may have been due in part to the active role women played in sects outside the church, it seems to have been prompted more by simply a low view of the female sex. Women such as Catherine of Siena rose above the place accorded her sex, but others no doubt were constrained by it.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century theologian, did a considerable amount of writing on the subject of women, invariably in a derogatory manner. According to Durant:

he follows the climactic egotism of Aristotle in supposing that nature, like a medieval patriarch, always wishes to produce a male, and that woman is something defective and accidental (deficiens et occasionatum); she is a male gone awry (mas occasionatum); probably she is the result of some weakness in the father’s generative power, or of some external factor, like a damp south wind.¹²²

Aquinas argued that a woman is dominated by her sexual appetite, whereas a man is ruled by reason; and a woman is dependent on the man for everything in life, whereas he depends on her for procreation only. For these reasons and others women were unsuited for any meaningful role in the church or society. Indeed, women were beneath slaves in some respects:

A Thirteenth-Century Depiction of the Expulsion of Adam and Eve From the Garden of Eden. Eve was blamed for the expulsion. British Library, MS Stowe 17. f. 29.

The woman is subject to the man, on account of the weakness of her nature, both of mind and of body…Man is the beginning of woman and her end, just as God is the beginning and end of every creature…Woman is in subjection according to the law of nature, but a slave is not…Children ought to love their father more than their mother.¹²³

Because of her subjection, woman is not fit for ordination, Aquinas argued. It is interesting that his case against the ordination of women included arguments in their favor. He pointed out that women had been prophets (he viewed the prophetic office as higher than that of priest), that women could possess some “perfection” even as men, and that ordination pertained to the soul and the soul has no sex. Unlike Aquinas, the other thirteenth-century Catholic theologians who dealt with the ordination of women did not give opposing arguments.

Bonaventura argued against the ordination of women on the basis of their biological makeup—particularly because the one who performs the sacrament must be in the image of God, and only the male sex qualifies. John Duns Scotus, another thirteenth-century commentator, took essentially the same position but concluded that a woman is incapable of being ordained, solely because it is not the will of Christ. He conceded that there would be benefits in ordaining women, but that such benefits could not be considered, since Christ had willed otherwise.¹²⁴

The restrictions placed on women by the theologians corresponded closely to canon law. Women were denied the right to baptize or to take communion to the sick. In fact, they were not even permitted to touch the consecrated vessels or cloths used for communion. The Nova Quaedam, issued by the powerful thirteenth-century pope Innocent III, prohibited abbesses “from giving a blessing to their nuns, hearing confessions, reading the Gospel, or preaching in public.”¹²⁵ Although neither the commentaries of the theologians nor canon law corresponded strictly with the actual situation, there was nevertheless a concerted effort in the high Middle Ages to further restrict the ministry of women in the church.

Bonaventura

Not all late medieval theologians so consistently demeaned women as did Aquinas. Bonaventura, a leading Schoolman and the “prince of the mystics” of the thirteenth century, has been singled out as one who deeply appreciated the characteristics of “the devout feminine sex.” According to Sister Emma Healy, he argued that “the soul of woman—no matter what restrictions or inhibitions philosophers might offer—is the perfect equal of the soul of man. And hence, woman is man’s equal in nature, grace, and glory.” Yet, even he could say that Aristotle “has spoken truly” that “woman is an embarrassment to man, a beast in his quarters, a continual worry, a never-ending trouble, a daily annoyance, the destruction of the household, a hindrance to solitude, the undoing of a virtuous man, an oppressive burden, an insatiable bee, man’s property and possession.”¹²⁶

The Limits of Sexism

The low view of women in the Middle Ages was no doubt a factor that brought sexual harassment on women. Whether it was verbally demeaning them or physically abusing them, such harassment reached into the highest echelons of the church. Throughout the entire period women not only struggled for a meaningful place in the church, but also fought against the vicious slander inflicted on their sex as a whole. These outrageous attacks were more pronounced in the late medieval period—at the very time that some Renaissance humanists were beginning to look on women as their equals.

Witchcraft

Perhaps the most infamous diatribe against women of this period is included in the Witches’ Hammer, written by two Dominican Inquisitors and published in 1486. The subject matter of the book is witchcraft, but, not surprisingly, women are an essential theme. In the words of Philip Schaff, “Of all parts of this manual, none is quite so infamous as the author’s vile estimate of woman…She deceives, because she was formed from Adam’s rib and that was crooked.” One full chapter deals with women’s inferiority and her willing cohabitation with demons. Few men, say the authors, would consent to such vile sexual relations, while women offer themselves freely in such degradation. The very word to describe woman, femina, according to the authors is derived from fe and minus or fides minus, interpreted as “less in faith.”¹²⁷

Was the Witches’ Hammer unique in the literature of the late Middle Ages? According to Schaff it was not. He points to a number of writings that denigrate women, and asserts that “it was the common representation of the writers of the outgoing century of the Medieval Age that God permits the intervention of Satan’s malefic agency through the marriage bed more than through any other medium.” Only a century earlier, a Roman Catholic bishop, writing from Avignon had “enumerated 102 faults common to women, one of these their cohabitation with the denizens of hell.” How did he know? “It was practiced, he says, in a convent of nuns and vain was his effort to put a stop to it.”¹²⁸

Were the accusations against medieval women true? Were women more inclined toward superstition and demonic rituals of all kinds? Perhaps they were. While Berthold of Regensburg may have been overstating the case, there is no doubt some truth in his contention that women were deeply involved in the popular superstitions and folk magic of the day. He accused them of casting “spells for getting a husband, spells for the marriage, spells before the child is born, spells before the christening.” His conclusion was typical: “It is a marvel that men lose not their wits for the monstrous witchcrafts that women practice on them.”¹²⁹

The belief that women practiced spells and cohabited with demons—acts that were viewed as solid evidence of their being witches—made them the brunt of vicious accusations that often resulted in trials and executions. Women were many times more likely to be executed for witchcraft than were men. And how did their proclivity for witchcraft affect their eternal state? Berthold of Regensburg believed that many more women would be in hell than men because of their witchery.¹³⁰ Indeed, the witchcraft frenzy of the late Middle Ages was one of the most sexist atrocities to have occurred in all of history.

Sexual Harassment

There were other forms of physical harassment besides that of imprisonment and execution. One very well-known account that has generally been treated as a love story would more correctly be categorized as a classic case of teacher-student sexual harassment. It is the case of Peter Abelard (1079–1142), the most brilliant theologian and philosopher of his age, and Heloise, a beautiful and intelligent young woman who had studied for a time at the convent of Argenteuil. She was in her early teens when they met—Abelard being more than twice her age. Through his reputation as a scholar and renowned teacher, he obtained permission from her uncle to be allowed to come to his home and tutor her. How much tutoring was accomplished is unknown, but apparently more kisses and caresses were given than instruction. Indeed, Heloise became pregnant by Abelard and gave birth to a son.¹³¹

In an effort to pacify her uncle, Abelard reluctantly agreed to marry Heloise, but he insisted that it would have to be kept secret so as not to mar his reputation. But even a secret marriage was not his style. He wrote, “Who intent upon sacred and philosophical reflections could endure the squalling of children, the lullabies of nurses and the noisy crowd of men and women! Who would stand the disagreeable and constant dirt of little children!”¹³²

Abelard later claimed that they had been married secretly, but Heloise denied it. She apparently cared enough about him not to want to harm his career. Yet she was well aware that their relationship had been lacking in true affection. In a letter to him she wrote: “Thy passion drew thee to me rather than thy friendship, and the heat of desire rather than love.” Heloise returned to the convent of Argenteuil, and Abelard to his scholarly activities, but he did not go unpunished. How else could an enraged uncle avenge such a deed except by hiring ruffians to attack him at night and carrying out the insidious crime of castration? Following this, Abelard entered the monastery of St. Dennis, and several years later, when his position of authority allowed it, he selected Heloise to be in charge of the nuns at the Paraclete, a chapel that he had built in Champagne.¹³³

From her letters it is apparent that her love for him did not die easily. In one letter she confessed that she “was allured to the asperity of monastic conversion…not by religious devotion, but by thy command alone,” adding that she could not expect a reward “from God for the love of Whom it is well known that I did not do anything.”¹³⁴ Yet she saw great success in this position, while Abelard faced charges of heresy and continued to generate controversy wherever he went. Despite the scandal, Abelard is recognized as one of the greatest of the philosopher- theologians of the Middle Ages, and Heloise is remembered as his mistress, though she was one “of the last of the great abbesses” of medieval monasticism.¹³⁵

Perhaps an even more despicable case of sexual harassment involved Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–31), who married at the age of fourteen and was widowed some years later. She dedicated herself to charitable works for a time in Wartburg, but then she came under the influence of Konrad of Marburg, the infamous German inquisitor. “Scarcely any scene in Christian history,” writes Schaff, “exhibits such wanton and pitiless cruelty to a spiritual ward as he displayed to the tender young woman who yielded him obedience.” He separated her from her children and every day reprimanded her severely and forced her to do menial labor. One day, on a charge of disobedience, she was ordered beaten by one of Konrad’s aids, and soon thereafter, she died of her wounds.¹³⁶ Why Elizabeth submitted to such treatment can be understood only in the context of the medieval status of women and the unquestioned authority the Roman Catholic church had on its subjects.

There were many other instances of sexual harassment throughout the medieval period. In fact, the situation was so serious in England that Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Egbert, the Bishop of York, issued an injunction forbidding bishops, priests, and abbots from seducing nuns.¹³⁷

Apparently the women in convents were not always the innocent victims of aggressive males. The nuns of St. Fara’s Convent, according to the bishop of Chartres (d. 1115), were involved in prostitution, and so were the nuns in many of the French convents, if Abelard is to be believed. A century later, in 1246, the bishop of Rouen “gave a generally favorable report of the religious groups in his diocese, but told of one nunnery in which, out of thirty-three nuns and three lay sisters, eight were guilty, or suspected, of fornication, and ‘the prioress is drunk almost any night.’”¹³⁸

Veneration of Mary

One of the most paradoxical aspects of medieval thought in regard to women was the veneration given the Virgin Mary, while ordinary women—particularly those outside aristocratic circles—were looked down on. Although women were often viewed as the source of evil, it was Mary who was the mediator between God and man, and it was she who, with divine authority, took on the devil, rebuking and even punishing him. The cult of Mary paralleled the medieval aristocratic concept of chivalry, and only in that light can it be properly understood. The poetry, the songs, the cathedrals, and even the scholarly writing of this period all reflected on the great reverence there was for her on all levels of society. Stories of her miraculous deeds of kindness abounded. One woman who had been dead for a year was reported to have suddenly reappeared, claiming to have been released from purgatory in answer to her prayers to the Virgin.¹³⁹ But as important as these stories and other expressions of veneration were, “the worship of the Virgin Mary entered into the very soul of medieval piety and reached its height in the doctrine of her immaculate conception.” One after another—from Anselm to Aquinas—the medieval theologians argued that Mary was conceived without sin and remained sinless throughout her lifetime. There were points of difference, however. Some argued that she was conceived sinless; others, that she somehow attained her sinlessness while yet in the womb. Along with the belief in her sinlessness was the belief in her perpetual virginity. Aquinas stated the popular position succinctly: “As a virgin she conceived, as a virgin gave birth, and she remains a virgin forever.” But if the proclamation of the immaculate conception by the church’s greatest scholars and theologians was insufficient for some, credibility was added by the saints and mystics, not the least of whom were women. Brigitta of Sweden verified the doctrine through a vision, and Catherine of Siena gave it a new slant by claiming direct revelation that confirmed that Mary was not perfected until three hours after she was conceived. In the end, it was the position of Duns Scotus—that Mary was sinless from the instant of her conception—that prevailed and became part of church dogma in 1854 under the papacy of Pius IX.¹⁴⁰

Another issue relating to Mary’s supposed sinlessness centered on the birth of Christ—whether he was born naturally or in a supernatural manner. The “closed uterus” theory developed to support the belief that Jesus could not have been born through the natural, “unclean” process of childbirth. There were those who took an opposing view, but by the thirteenth century it was generally believed that “Mary’s womb remained closed” and that the birth process was entirely unique and thus supernatural.¹⁴¹

What the overall effect of the cult of Mary had on women is difficult to determine. Will Durant suggests that “the worship of Mary transformed Catholicism from a religion of terror…into a religion of mercy and love.”¹⁴² It thus “feminized” both the church and society as a whole. Besides that, it provided a fantasizing outlet for men who had renounced romantic love and marriage in order to commit themselves to the church. For many of them there was an intense erotic delight in loving her who was described as “the most beautiful of all virgins.”¹⁴³ But the perfection associated with Mary established an impossible standard for all others of her sex. She was larger than life—the ideal female and the perfect lover, and other women were just women.

Summary

So, overall, how did women fare in the medieval church? Certainly not as badly as women in other societies during that period. And in many ways, the church came to the aid of women. Durant points out that civil law was more hostile to women than was canon law—though both had a clear antiwoman bias.

Both codes permitted wife-beating, and it was quite a forward step when, in the thirteenth century, the “Laws and Customs of Beauvais” bade a man beat his wife “only in reason.” Civil law ruled that the word of women could not be admitted in court, “because of their frailty”; it required only half as high a fine for an offense against a woman as for the same offense against a man.¹⁴⁴

There were instances in which the woman’s place was lowered with the advent of Christianity. This apparently was true in Scandanavia. Under paganism, “she was the mother not of sin but of strong brave men; she had one-third—after twenty years of marriage, one half—right in all wealth acquired by her husband; she was consulted by him in his business arrangements, and mingled freely with men in her home.”¹⁴⁵ How much Christianity was able to alter that situation is uncertain, but certainly such liberty was not promoted by the church.

All in all, despite the degrading statements about women by medieval theologians, the charges of witchcraft, and the impossible ideal of the Virgin Mary, medieval women as a whole were not forced into a position of second-class citizens. “The aristocratic ideal of chivalry and the Church’s ideal of feminine submissiveness were indeed ideals. In her daily life the average medieval woman neither stood on a pedestal above men nor groveled submissively below them but was treated as a ‘married friend.’”¹⁴⁶ The same could be said for the “sisters” in the church. In many ways they stood as equals to their clerical “brothers.”

Perhaps the most pronounced shortcoming of women in the church during the medieval period was their lack of true ministry. This period of church history had a high proportion of women in “professional” ministry. Yet the effectiveness of this ministry is questionable. One has to wonder how many women—Christian and pagan—could have benefited from the warmth and concern of another woman who could not only give spiritual counsel, but also give advice and assistance to alleviate some of the grueling problems of life. But instead, the nuns were by and large cloistered in their convents and many had virtually no ministry to the outside world. Not that they alone should be faulted. The majority of male clerics, who far outnumbered the women, also remained cloistered and were often of little real service to mankind. It was a failure of the church at large. The work of charity and the commitment to evangelism that so distinguished the Christians in the early centuries was no longer a primary function of the church. But wherever the blame is placed, the ministry of women in the Middle Ages was frequently of little effectiveness and profit. Although written in a spirit of humility, Clare’s frequent description of herself as “the useless servant of the monastery of Saint Damian’s”¹⁴⁷ could perhaps be taken at face value, and unfortunately that description is fitting of many medieval church women.

↑ Back to top