MdvlWmn:Sisters,Seers,Scholars

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course will explore the diverse paths taken by medieval women within families, religious communities, and court life. For many, but not all, religious life offered both protection and opportunities for creative writing and composition, for scholarship and reflection, for meaningful work, for mysticism and prophecy, for companionship and solitude. They include the Roman martyr Perpetua (d. 203), the Saxon canoness and playwright Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (ca. 935-1000), the brilliant Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the passionate and gifted Heloise of the Paraclete (1101?-1164), the court writers Marie de France (ca. 1160-1215) and Christine de Pizan (1363-1430), the warrior and martyr Joan of Arc (1412-1431), the mystics Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) and Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), and other noted abbesses and recluses. Some were canonized as saints, some were convicted and slain as heretics, but they all left remarkable records during centuries where most women lived short repressed lives and died in obscurity. These women were a product of their times, a crucial millennium in European history from the disintegration of the Roman Empire to the emergence of European nation states in the 12th and 13th centuries and the eve of the Renaissance, but they transcended their times and resonate with us today.