Women: Luther and the Medieval Roman Catholic Church
The medieval view of women and the woman's role was essentially informed by a centuries-long, Christian informed tradition, upheld by patriarchal society. Thus, that there should exist a vast discrepancy between the views of Luther and the views of the medieval Roman Catholic Church regarding women is to perhaps wish too much. Modern feminism may be, to some extent, found in the works of Chaucer, whose Wife of ath represents a departure from "acceptable" womanhood in the medieval world. ut even a century and a half later not much has changed on this front. Luther's animus towards the Catholic Church was mainly doctrine and practice-centered. Luther had a conception of the faith that differed and evolved significantly as the Protestant Reformation got underway. Nonetheless, there can be found teachings by both Luther and the Catholic Church that can be compared for a…...
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Bibliography
Darlage, Adam. "Double Honor: Elite Hutterite Women in the Sixteenth Century."
Church History, vol. 79, no. 4 (Dec 2010): 753-782
Karant-Nunn, Susan; Viesner-Hanks, Merry. Luther on Women: A Sourcebook. UK:
Northern and Southern California
Gender and the Middle Ages
Legend, Faith, and Historical Reality
'woman,' as was understood by a resident of Europe during the Middle Ages, was either the mother of Jesus or the physical embodiment of Eve's sin. In the rhetorical discourse of courtly love, women functioned either as representations of desire or objects of adoration for men to save. They could inspire heroic deeds in the hearts of knights yet in the Christian discourse of the lives of the saints and miracles, women functioned as representations of what was worldly, fleshy and desirable in a negative fashion. Thus, to eschew the feminine in the religious discourse of the period was evidence of saintliness, as seen through the eyes of saintly hagiographers.
omen thus occupied an ideologically precarious position within the context of Medieval Europe. They were symbolically central. They were not socially marginal as a group, as transactions and exchanges of…...
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Works Cited
Bennett, Judith. Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1297-1344Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1297-134. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
A de Troyes, Chretien. "Yvain: The Knight with the Lion." Arthurian Romances. New York: Penguin Classics, 1991.
Joinville, Jean. Life of Saint Louis. New York: Penguin Classics.
Chretien de Troyes, "Yvain: The Knight with the Lion," Arthurian Romances, (New York: Penguin Classics, 1991), p.296.
The extent gender and class played in Cecilia's life experiences
Looking at the life of other peasants, Cecilia was from a wealthy family. They had a large house constructed from twigs, moss and mud covering approximately 150 sq. Cecilia came from a one-roomed family house, with a fireplace at the center for cooking and warmth. Cecilia spent much of her life as a child in the garden surrounding their house, where she played and helped with caring for her younger sibling (Agnes), cooking, and gardening. Cecilia's home was surrounded with a diverse and large community. Cecilia came from a village whereby people lived close to one another and sometimes shared a wall. Most trade and businesses took place in the villages while critical economic activities occurred in the countryside. The economy of this village looks upon arable fields and pastures, arable fields comprise of a quarter of…...
The second statute which serves to maintain the economic and political domination of women is the rule stating that women may not "dare or presume to take for spinning more than one ball of wool at one time," because this prevents any attempt on the part of female workers to stockpile or otherwise accumulate enough wool to sell or use it outside the established, guild-monitored economy ("Statutes of a wool guild," 1384, 106). Although this statute may have decreased the overall efficiency of the wool-spinning process by requiring women to go get a new ball of wool every time they finish, it also served to protect the guild from rebellion or discontent, because allowing women greater control over the process "might give rise to a strong organization of skilled craftsmen who would be much more difficult to control than" individual women, spinning one ball of wool at a time out…...
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Works Cited
Belfanti, C.M. (2004). Guilds, patents, and the circulation of technical knowledge northern italy during the early modern age. Technology and Culture, 45(3), 569-589.
Caferro, W.P. (2008). Warfare and economy in renaissance italy, 1350 -- 1450. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 39(2), 167-209.
Medieval Philosophy
In the introduction to the Greenwood series the Great Cultural Eras of the Western World, A.D. 500 to 1300, is described as the Middle Ages.
"Borders and peoples were never quiescent during these tumultuous times." Schulman (2002). Germanic tribes had invaded and settled in the former oman Empire, and the synthesis of three cultures -- the classical, Christian, and Germanic -- had begun. In the sixth century, Clovis had completed the Frankish conquest of Gaul; the Vandals controlled North Africa; the Visigoths, forced to retreat from southern Gaul by the Franks, continued to dominate Spain; and the Angles and Saxons had settled in Britain. At the same time, the emperors of the Eastern Empire, Constantinople, thrived. " ... The oman papacy began to play an independent role in European society." Schulman, (2002) says "Pepin needed papal support to become king. Schulman, (2002, p. viii) It is later commented that the…...
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References
Adams, M.M. (1999). What Sort of Human Nature? Medieval Philosophy and the Systematics of Christology. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.
Burch, G.B. (1951). Early Medieval Philosophy. New York: King's Crown Press.
Driscoll, J. (1966) The New Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia. New York: Grolier's
Glick, L.B. (1999). Abraham's Heirs: Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe (1st ed.). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
This gave her husband the right to sell any of her property and she was not in a position to object in any way. Religious women with their vows of obedience and poverty really had no reason to get involved in legal matters and were untouched in any way by the legal structure.
idows were the only women who held in legal position in the society. "She (a widow) regained her legal personality, was entitled to a certain share of her husband's holdings and, for the first time in her life, could make independent decisions." Legally, this was the best position for women. It was not without problems especially for wealthy women. These women were frequently intimidated into a second marriage or into relinquishing parts of their holdings. They had no legal recourse against this kind of intimidation in the same way that married women could not object to domestic…...
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Works Cited
Barber, Richard. The Penguin Guide to Medieval Europe. New York: Penguin
Masturbation in Medieval Times
The history of human masturbation extends back into prehistory. Evidence of this can be seen on Prehistoric petroglyphs and rock paintings in areas throughout the world. "A clay figurine of the 4th millennium efore Current Era [i.e., .C.], from a temple site called Hagar Qim on the island of Malta, depicts a woman masturbating. However, in the ancient world depictions of male masturbation are far more common."(McFarland .) For example, from the inventors of the first written Western language, the Sumerians, we find references " ... To the Mesopotamian god Enki masturbating, his ejaculation filling the Tigris River with flowing water." (McFarland .) Until the middle ages sexual activity was generally seen as natural and a normal part of healthy human development.
The attitudes towards sex and masturbation during medieval times were determined by the Catholic Church, particularly under Pope Gregory IX in the 13th Century. The Church…...
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Bibliography
Beidler P. Rape and Prostitution. Retrieved November 3, 2005.
Jealous Woman in Asian Literature and Theater
Muromachi Noh Theater and Aoi no Ue
Steven T. Brown's Theatricalities of Power: The Cultural Politics of Noh adopts a 'new historicist' approach to the study of Noh Theater. In contrast to the dominant tendencies of western scholars, Brown is not interested in "reducing Noh to its theatrical conventions nor abstracting its style and poetics from its performance materiality" (1). Rather he concentrates on Noh as an example of a "micropolitics of culture" (3), which, according to him, is a type of politics grounded in "power relations and effects associated with figurations of authority, gender, subjectivity, naming and patronage" (3).
Brown's primary intention in the Theatricalities of Power is to trace the historical process whereby Noh became institutionalized as the official art form of Japan during the Edo period (1603-1867). Although Brown narrates the history of this institutionalization by highlighting specific historical events and practices…...
Today my father and I did go to a funeral of an old woman. But it was not a sad day, for she was old and the death was expected. Together we passed over the ford, the in-between place where the dead and living meet, a place that is neither wet nor dry, and we held a flask from the water of a ford in our hands. Oh, although it is only the dead that live in between, I at fifteen, neither girl nor women feel that I stand upon such a ford myself, unsure of where I am about to go, to either heaven or hell -- should I become a nun, a wife, or flee this life entirely and go to live amongst the fairy people. I intend to have fun, regardless, while I still can!
A must confess I cast my dream-fate not to be amongst that of…...
Women identified their hrist Jesus who was food during mass as the redemption of humanity. The women believed reaching spirituality was through food, since naturally they were food from their ability to breastfeed. The Medieval women associated the breast as seen in Holy mother, Mary's own breastfeeding as a Eucharistic feeding of the soul.
The painting also indicates that to the Female saints of the Middle Ages, prayer was an important element in their connection to God. In the "The life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve," Godelieve makes prayer requests and offerings of food to God, that are answered by angels who bring delicacies for the poor.
Annotated Bibliography
Amy Hollywood. "Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (Religion and Postmodernism)," University of hicago Press, (2002).
This article carries out an analysis of anthropological studies of the medieval times, and looks into the connection of the body, the soul and physical…...
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Counihan Carole, M. "The Anthropology of Food and Body: Gender, Meaning and Power," Routledge, (1999), p.98.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maryann Ainsworth A., & Keith, Christiansen. "From Van Eyck to Bruegel," (1998), p.127.
Counihan Carole, M. "The Anthropology of Food," Routledge, (1999), p.98.
Clare of Assisi
Saint Clare of Assisi was not a feminist in the modern sense, but then again no such ideas existed at all in the 13th Century. By all accounts, though, she was a formidable and powerful woman who was the first in history to found a religious order. In the society in which she was born, women were politically, socially and economically powerless, and quite literally the property of their fathers and husbands. This was a feudal, authoritarian and patriarchal society, and even aristocratic women like Clare and her friend St. Agnes of Prague were forced into arranged marriages by their fathers. Indeed, both Clare and Agnes defied their fathers when they insisted on entering religious life as followers of St. Francis of Assisi, and Clare's family disowned her. She was not a political rebel or revolutionary, but she did have a utopian vision of society that was radically…...
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WORKS CITED
Anderson, C. Colt. The Great Catholic Reformers: From Gregory the Great to Dorothy Day. Paulist Press, 2007.
"The Blessing of Clare" (1253?) in Armstrong, Regis J. (Ed) The Lady Clare of Assisi: Early Documents. New City Press, 2006: 66-70.
"First Letter to Agnes of Prague" (1234) in Armstrong, Regis J. (Ed) The Lady Clare of Assisi: Early Documents. New City Press, 2006: 43-46.
"The Form of Life of Clare of Assisi" (1253) in Armstrong (Ed): 106-28.
omen
The specific attitude toward women in medieval times was that they were inferior to men. Generally, women were taught that they should be meek and obedient to their fathers and husbands. This view of women was consistent to women of mythology in many ways. Many of the myths and legends created were directed towards women, to teach them lessons in humility and obeisance. They explained the social laws and rules which women had to obey, despite their influence over their husbands.
Medieval women had major responsibilities and were not at all inferior to men in terms of daily effort. Most worked and did not stay at home. Many toiled alongside their families in the fields, and some were employed in workshops or were trades-women. omen sometimes had the responsibility of running large estates, due to the death of a husband. They settled local disputes and arranged estate finances. They even took…...
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Works Cited
Dozier, E.P., (1971). The American Southwest. In Leacock, E.B., & Lurie, N.O. (Eds.),
North American Indians in historical perspective. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc.
Faiman-Silva, S. (1997). Choctaws at the Crossroads. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Martin Guerre and his wife Bertrande?
Natalie Zemon Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre chronicles the strange, true-life story of a medieval woman named Bertrande who was left abandoned by her husband Martin Guerre for many years, only to live with him once again when 'he' returned -- in the form of an imposter. For many years Bertrande lived with the false Martin Guerre, until the actual Guerre returned to reclaim his wife and household. The question has lingered on: how could Bertrande have been so deceived? Davis has a very simple answer: she was not. In proving her thesis, Davis takes the reader on a tour of medieval French peasant life, with a specific focus on the role of women. "The male-dominated society put a premium on 'the woman's ability to get her way with the men and to calculate her advantages'" and Davis, contrary to the conventional reading…...
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Works Cited
Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre. Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1984.
Davis, Davis, Natalie Zemon. "On the Lame." The American Historical Review, 93. 3 (1988).
Finlay, Robert. "The Refashioning of Martin Guerre." The American Historical Review, 93, 3
These 'girls' are openly and immediately obvious as famous successful women from various times of human history and places through the past 1200 years. In their interactions with the characters of the present, women such as Pope Joan and Lady Nijo teach the contemporary family featured in the play about the various implications their lives hold for contemporary women. The education is not covert as in "Arcadia," but overtly didactic and feminist in nature.
Although it moves as two rather than one linear narratives, however, Stoppard's tale of past and present parallels still has a narrative force. One of the most interesting ways in which Stoppard deploys time in his play to move the narrative forward, is when, for example, the academic Bernard advances the theory that Lord Byron was a murderer. The viewer first realizes this is unlikely by observing the past, and later the present day academic Hannah…...
medieval romance has inspired literature for generations. The magic of the Arthurian romance can be traced to Celtic origins, which adds to it appeal when we look at it through the prism of post-medieval literature. The revival of the medieval romance can be viewed as an opposition against modern and intellectual movement that became vogue in modern Europe. These romances often emphasized the human emotions rather than the human intellect and a return to more classical traditions. Poets and writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not want to feel the oppression from the constraints of their time. Instead, they looked beyond the intellectual to a more mystical and emotional realm. They wanted to achieve another level in their writing -- one that allowed them to stretch their imaginations and their knowledge. The medieval aspects that we find in literature from this era accentuates a different type of…...
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Works Cited
Carlyle, Thomas. "Past and Present." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. II
New York W.W. Norton and Company. 1986. pp. 157-70.
Carl Woodring, "The Eve of St. Agnes: Overview." Reference Guide to English Literature.
2nd ed. 1991. Gale Resource Database. Site Accessed April 20, 2005.
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