#shulamith shahar

[ian-thebean]

Hot tip for all you ladies out there:

If your husband cannot satisfy you in matters of conjugal love, consider taking a trip to the statue of Saint Uncumber in St Paul’s cathedral. If you set a peck of oats at her feet, she’ll straight up destroy your husband! Once Saint Uncumber has carried him off, maybe try one of those convents you’ve heard so much about. I hear it’s a very fulfilling place for those inclined to assist their sisters in Christ.

[virgin-martyr]

Hello!

What books do you recommend for someone who wants to read more about religion/middle ages but doesn't know where to start?

love your blog btw <3

Hello, friend! The Female Mystic by Janelle Dickens is an excellent introduction. For something more in-depth, anything by Caroline Walker Bynum. Holy Feast and Holy Fast focuses specifically on the religious significance of food to medieval women but is also comprehensive as a general study.

I would also recommend Medieval Women's Visionary Literature as a primary source(book)!

Not exclusively about religion, but definitely The Fourth Estate by Shulamith Shahar, too!

[dwellordream]

Child Life in Colonial Days - Alice Morse Earle

The World We Have Lost - Peter Laslett

The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages - Shulamith Shahar

Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market - Walter Johnson

First Generations: Women in Colonial America - Carol Berkin

Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, & Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, & Power in Colonial Virginia - Kathleen M. Brown

Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women - Caroline Walker Bynum

Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States - Alice Kessler Harris

Below is a list of some of the historical nonfiction books I’ve read in the last year, I highly recommend all of them not just as informative but also grippingly written and intriguing:

The Waning of the Middle Ages - Johan Huizinga

Domina: The Women Who Made Imperial Rome - Guy de la Bédoyère

Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England - Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos

Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen - John Edwards

Elizabeth I: A Study in Insecurity - Helen Castor

Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206-1335 - Bruno De Nicola

She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth - Helen Castor

Viking Friendship: The Social Bond in Iceland and Norway, C. 900-1300 - Jón Vidar Sigurdsson

The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503 - J. L. Laynesmith

Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503-1533 - Michelle L. Beer

The Ugly Woman: Transgressive Aesthetic Models from the Middle Ages to the Baroque - Patrizia Bettella

Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800 - Amy M. Froide and Judith M. Bennett

The Politics of Female Alliance in Early Modern England - Christina Luckyj and Niamh J. O’Leary

Revenge and Gender in Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Literature - Lesel Dawson and Fiona McHardy

The Age of the Vikings - Anders Winroth

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England - Ralph V. Turner

Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama - Farah Karim-Cooper

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Women in the Middle Ages: Women in the Peasantry

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Nuns

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Women’s Work

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Women in the Nobility

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Married Women

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Married Women

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Townswomen

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Public and Legal Rights

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Nuns

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Women in the Nobility

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

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Women in the Middle Ages: Married Women

- Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate

[virgin-martyr]

None of the medieval movements of political or social revolt sought to improve the status of women, nor was there ever a feminine movement to improve the condition and extend the rights of women. A singular case is reported tersely in the annals of the Dominicans of Colmar: 'A maiden came from England who was comely and well-spoken. She said that she was the Holy Spirit who had become incarnate for the salvation of womankind. She baptized the women in the name of the Father, the Son and Herself. After she died she was burnt at the stake.'

Shulamith Shahar, From The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages

[dwellordream]

“Throughout the Middle Ages and into the sixteenth century, most Europeans believed that God had intentionally organized society in a particular way, imposing certain obligations on people in every societal role, at every level. Protestant reformers built upon this idea in focusing on the nuclear family, convinced that the family was the God-given, fundamental unit in spreading the reform of both church and society. Within the family, there were those responsible for leading and instructing—father first, but also mother—and those in need of teaching and nurture—the children. Both good parenting and responsible behavior on the part of children came to be seen as obligations not only to God and to one’s family, but also to the surrounding community. 

Even the most idealistic of reformers did not believe that the effective use of catechism books and sermons alone would result in appropriately faithful and responsible children. Physical discipline was required as well. Corporal punishment was common in medieval and early modern Europe—a fact that Ariès and Stone used as evidence that parents in those time periods did not love their children in the same way that (ideal) modern parents do. Yet most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers who addressed the topic advised restraint in corporal punishment. Most Protestant reformers believed that children needed some moderate physical discipline—including beating—to help them resist the overwhelming temptation to sin. 

The Anabaptist reformer Menno Simons wrote: “Constrain and punish [your children] with discretion and moderation, without anger or bitterness, lest they be discouraged.” This caution against extreme violence was a common sentiment; at the same time, one of the greatest complaints of reformers who wrote about disciplining children was that parents overindulged their children. Protestant leaders believed that either extreme—physical abuse or overindulgence—could both harm a child and dishonor God. Of course, the words of reformers did not translate directly into stricter or more lenient behavior on the part of parents. Nevertheless, their views did have a direct impact on the lives of children in the Reformation. 

One of the most significant developments during the Reformation, in terms of children’s lives, was a heightened emphasis on parental responsibility and an increased oversight of family life by church and civic authorities. It is helpful to view the reformers’ increasing attention to enforcing parental responsibility in connection with the Protestant rejection of the cult of saints, which marked a major religious and social change beginning in the sixteenth century. Praying to saints was a fundamental resource for medieval Christians, including parents who sought help caring for their children. Shulamith Shahar tells the story of a woman who, forced to leave her daughter at home in order to fulfill a work obligation to her landlord, prayed to a saint to watch over her child while she was gone. 

Medieval Europeans, both church officials and laypeople, accepted such dependence on the mercy of saints in people’s daily lives. Protestant reformers rejected this role of saints as mediators between human beings and God; they rejected even more forcefully the idea that saints could act to intervene in people’s daily lives. This meant that the responsibility of caring for children fell entirely on living human beings: parents, neighbors, and church and civic authorities. The community, then, was of key importance to the reformers. Particularly in Calvinist areas, church members were strongly encouraged to pay close attention to the behavior of their neighbors and to report any “un-Christian” actions to the consistory. 

Medieval Europeans also had intervened in the affairs of their neighbors, but with the establishment of consistories in the sixteenth century, people could now report their concerns directly to an immediately responsive authority. Some children benefited from the reports of concerned neighbors. When the Genevan consistory learned that Claude Gardet had beaten her daughter until her face bled, and that she had a pattern of such excessive discipline, they banned her from communion and sent her to the city council for punishment. But consistories did not provide absolute protection for children. Most contented themselves with admonishing parents and then sending them back home, unless they believed a child’s life was in immediate danger.

Lest we are left thinking that all early modern parents were abusive, it is also important to note that in other cases church and secular authorities insisted on more discipline than parents thought appropriate. In such cases children might find themselves in situations where their parents seemed to be protecting them from the church authorities, rather than vice versa. This could lead to confrontations between consistories and parents, as when the Genevan consistory summoned two men for “not having wanted to do their duty in chastising their children as they had been ordered to by the consistory.” 

Overall it appears that the actual physical treatment and experiences of children did not change drastically as a direct result of the Reformation. Religiously and legally, children had the right to expect that they would be clothed and fed by their parents, but they themselves had little power to enforce this right. Most children remained at the mercy of their parents well into their teenage years (and of their masters, if they were working as apprentices or servants). And most parents sought to provide for their children and to find some method of moderate but effective discipline. While parents had the responsibility to train and support their children and the right to discipline them, children also had obligations to their parents. 

These duties sometimes developed into points of conflict as the children became adolescents and young adults who might spend their parents’ money carelessly, not support parents in need, or even physically abuse their parents. For young children, however, resistance to family obligations rarely rose to the level of public attention. While it is difficult to be certain about how young children reacted to those expectations, we do know that obligations to their parents were reinforced in many phases of their upbringing, including daily family life, catechism lessons, and even school. 

Viewed in one way, the changes provoked by the Protestant Reformation imposed new restrictions on the lives of children— stricter expectations, somewhat more organized attempts to teach the catechism, enforcement of very particular understandings of Christianity that would have significant impact on how children came to understand the world, and reinforcement of parental authority, especially that of fathers. On the other hand, all of these changes must be viewed within the context of life in the sixteenth century. Throughout the period of the Reformation, life remained uncertain in even more ways than it is today. 

After several centuries of outbreaks of the plague, climatic changes, and civil wars, the Reformation might be seen broadly as an attempt to bring stability and order to society and perhaps to gain some slightly increased confidence about one’s status in the eyes of God. From this standpoint we might see Protestant efforts regarding children in a more positive light. From a religious point of view, reforming theologians argued that children were an important part of the “family of God” from the time of their birth and, for that very reason, deserved faithful nurture and care from their parents. In the best situations, children experienced these teachings in the diligence and care that their parents applied to raising them. In other instances, church and civic authorities intervened in attempts to guide wayward parents in their duties to their children.”

- Karen E. Spierling, “Baptism and Childhood.” in Reformation Christianity