This
may come as a shock to some, but Anglo-Saxon England was the first place in
history where women were allowed to be entered or accepted into sainthood.
After accepting Christianity and all of its views, women who went into the
convent way of life and took certain vows, (obedience, complete purity, etc.)were
praised highly by the important people of the church. They had many responsibilities
and much higher authority than ever before!
However,
when it came to marriage, women of the time had no authority, and were to
understand their place as second to or below men. Divorce was very uncommon and if there were a
divorce, it is documented that it was because a woman committed adultery. Seems
pretty justifiable. If a woman did leave a marriage and chose to take the
children, she was to get half of their property. If there was not a divorce and
a woman became a widow in this time era, they couldn't remarry for 12 months
after the death of her first husband.
Something
else I found interesting about the women of this time, was the way they would
"show signs" of pregnancy . These people were not as uneducated as one
may have thought; they were more observant than I believed. Pregnant women of the time would stop heavy
drinking, horseback riding, eating anything to sweet, or too salty and that's
how people knew someone was pregnant. A new phenomenon that some archeologists
are looking into about the Anglo Saxon time era, are suggestions of a coffin
birth. Where the woman pregnant had passed away, body gasses build, and two-
three days later would give birth to a deceased baby. Artifacts can tell us so much about the
history of Anglo Saxon women both good and bad.
https://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/anglo-saxon-child-birth-and-female-fertility/
Paige, I'm not sure about your first sentence--what about desert mothers like Mary of Egypt? When did the legend of St. Helena come into being? It might be worth exploring more deeply, although I think your essential point (that the Middle Ages were more feminist than we think) is very well taken.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that first sentence threw me too. However, there were a lot of smart women that knew how to work the system. For example, Henry I's daughter, Matilda, was married to an abusive bratty man a little over a decade younger than her: he was abusive and controlling. She actually left him at one point, because she's a princess and has the ability to, and while she was forced to go back to him she was able to negotiate the terms of her relationship with him since she had to remain married.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Matilda was also a badass in many other ways, but she exemplifies your point best in that situation.
Paige, I would like to play devils advocate here. While the Anglo-Saxon version of Christianity might have allowed women to become Saints, don't you think it is kind of effed up that their path to sainthood was through "obedience, complete purity, etc" rather than through performing incredible charitable or miraculous deeds. While the Anglo-Saxon culture allowed for female saints, I cant help but to think that they only allowed this because it made it easier for the men to control their sexuality and maintain the patriarchy that existed in their times and for generations after.
ReplyDelete