what was the role of women during the medieval time period?

Answer 1

Stephen Conway
1991
Silent Voices: Women in the Middle Ages

The history of the Middle Ages is generally known through the recorded accomplishments of wealthy aristocratic men. The rigidly stratified social structure allowed little or no chance for advancement, especially for the very poor. Therefore, the voice of the poverty stricken masses goes unheard or is simply drowned out by the ruling class. However, beyond even the discontented whisper of the poor, another voice without even a breath to push it yearns to be heard. This is a voice that would ultimately help to integrate medieval society and help to establish a more civilized culture in Britain. No louder than a whisper, this is the voice of women. It is a silent cry whose importance was underestimated and undervalued both economically and socially.
Women were valued in the Middle Ages, but only as an economic commodity (Mundy 212). They served two main functions within medieval society: child bearer and manual laborer. Because women represented a large source of cheap labor, they quickly became the mainstay of the medieval economy. In many cases they would work along side men in the fields. However, women were paid less than children's wages for their work (Cipolla 234). The Church would not allow women to hold jobs that required literacy (Mundy 209). In fact, aside from hard labor the only occupation open to women was midwifery. "In hospital work women were almost as important as men" (Mundy 210). The textile industry was dominated by women, especially the woolen and silk industries (Cipolla 200). Though women enjoyed virtual domination in these crafts, they were still paid next to nothing. In addition to the intense labor, women had household duties to fulfill, especially if a woman was married (Cipolla 266). The invention of the flour mill brought women a time and labor saving device. With the flour mills, however, came taxes. Therefore, a woman gained time but lost 6.67% of the grain with which to feed her family in taxes (Cipolla 234). This trend of exploiting women economically continued to push women into the depths of the "culture of hopelessness" (Cipolla 266).
As the guilds began to assert their control over the bulk of skilled labor, wealthy aristocrats started hiring individual women and paying them in advance. The textile industry provided the largest amount of individual patronage. High skill was thus rewarded with economic improvement (Cipolla 266). Therefore it is conceivable that by Chaucer's time women were managing to irk out a meager existence for themselves and possibly even for a family. The undaunted marital entrepreneur in “The Canterbury Tales”, The Wife of Bath, may have been based on a such a hard working semi-independent woman. "In the words pf the Wife of Bath, God has given women three talents- deceit, weeping, and spinning" (Power 118). The slight rise in economic power of women affected the structure of the guilds as well. In Cologne, women and men shared the same rights and privileges in the turners guild. More importantly, women in general gained a limited political voice through their representation in guilds.
"Women can be found in many other trades working on
their own. That they played an important rule in the
ethic of hopeful thrift in many religious
fraternities that doubled as benefit societies is a
certainty" (Cipolla 266).

An accurate measure of the female population is difficult if not impossible to attain. Population records did not, for the most part, include women, which says something about their status in medieval society. Some general conclusions, however, can be drawn (Cipolla 44). Aside from laboring, a women's main responsibility was to bear children. This was of extreme importance in rural communities. Children meant more workers for the farm. Women were simply baby machines. Trial marriages were set up in most rural communities to pair up the most fertile couples (Mundy 212). Both mother and child were in serious jeopardy during the birth and the following crucial years. Infant mortality rate is know to be appallingly high throughout the Middle Ages. The physical strain of childbearing, coupled with the intense labor and poor sanitary conditions made life harsh, cruel, and short for mast women. Where most men during this time died between the ages of forty and sixty, most women died between the ages of twenty and forty (Cipolla 45).
Among the gentry women were not necessarily chosen for their child bearing abilities. Rather, women were valued for their dowries which usually consisted of land or monetary wealth. These women tended to live slightly longer because they were not constantly subjected to the rigors of childbearing or hard labor (Mundy 208). These women were faced with the distinct possibility of widowhood, because most noblemen waited until their mid-forties to marry. Widowhood would provide women with a tool to help re-evaluate and change their role in society (Mundy 218).
Medieval society, however, was hardly unified in its treatment of women. Ironically, the ideology accepted at the time stressed the equality of men and women (Mundy 207). This is apparent in the love literature of the period. Even the Church, with its reverence of the
Virgin, held to an idyllic vision of equality if not female
superiority in some ways (Mundy 211). Unfortunately, as is often the case, there was a large discrepancy between these theories and ideals and the harsh realities of medieval society.
Marriages, though not particularly popular in general, were seen simply as economic ventures. Women were valued for their dowries, which sent many aristocrats scrambling to strike a deal with wealthy men with daughters. Among the peasants, women had to have their feudal lord's permission in order to marry (Mundy 212). A woman, once her dowry was gained, became an almost useless commodity for most men.
Wives often toiled in the fields and the kitchen simply to earn their keep. Wife beating was common and even socially accepted. The Church supported this barbaric practice. In a theological dictionary of the time Nicholas Byard states,
"A man may chastise his wife and beat her for her own correction; for she is of his household, and therefore the
lord may chastise his own” (Coulton 615). Often times livestock received better treatment than a man's wife because a man could lose profit from his livestock. The safety of a wife, therefore, often depended upon her ability to please her husband (St. Bernardino 224).
Indeed, a wife's two main goals were the salvation of her soul and the comfort of her husband (Power 99). Though many conflicts arose from the vast age difference between husband and wife, the chief duty of a wife was to make the last years of her husband's life good ones (Power 97).Men often wrote treatises or manuals describing the duties of a wife in detail (Mundy 213). The Menagier de Paris wrote such a book for his young bride in the fourteenth century (1392-94). It has been an invaluable source of insight into the daily lives of women as well as men's attitudes toward women(Power 119). When describing the ideal qualities of a wife the Menagier states,

"She is to be loving, humble, obedient, careful, thoughtful for his person, silent regarding his secrets, and patient if he be foolish and allow his heart to stray to other women” (Power 99).

Total submission was expected and given (Mundy 213). Above all others, patience was the virtue women struggled to practice every day (Power 103).
Marital fidelity highlights one of the many hypocrisies of medieval society. Infidelity among men was tolerated and wives were told to look the other way, while female infidelity was grounds for divorce (though technically it did no exist yet) or even worse punishments (Coulton 636). Men of higher social status could even use their wives as sexual bribes to further their political careers (Mundy 217). No attempt was made to conceal this blatant double standard.
"Everywhere bastards were common, and rape hardly
less so; in England, harsh penalties confronted the
noble 'who covers a maid without her thanks', but
legal severity did nothing to end the practice”
(Wood 121).

Widowhood was the saving grace of most unhappy marriages in the Middle Ages. Widowhood gave women their husband's lands and authority. Even though women were the childbearers and rearers, only when widowed did women have a role in the inheritance of land.(Mundy 211).Women could then inherit and bequeath land but could not sit in Parliament (Coulton 617). The rights of widows are even discussed in the Magna Carta. It declares that widows did not need to marry again if they did not want to (Cipolla 59). It is fair to say that women gained not only wealth but freedom as a result of their husbands' deaths.
Where the husband's and employer's power over women was practical, the clergy's was spiritual. These two worlds were in constant conflict (Mundy 223). Women flocked to the Church. They turned to religion for consolation and solace (Wood 56). More women attended mass, more confessed, they were the true keepers of the faith (Mundy 223). Women provided the Church with a source of cohesion (Mundy 209). Their fierce and desperate faith would lay the groundwork for the growing dominance of the Church in medieval
Society (Wood 56).
The Church, however, was two-faced when dealing with women. Women were the mainstay of each parish, yet the clergy constantly reinforced the concept of women as inferior creatures. Because women were weaker in the Church's eyes, it was easier for them to succumb to their
sinful desires (Mundy 222). Women were "natural traitors", deceitful and treacherous gossip mongers (Mundy 214). The Church portrayed women as slaves to vanity.

"Ye, women, ye have bowels of compassion, and ye go
to church more readily than men, and ye pray more
readily than men. ..and many of you would be saved
but for his [Satan's) one snare which is called vain
glory and empty honour"(von Regensburg 64).

The Church's view of marriage reflected a belief in female
inferiority. According to a priest of the time, Mahieu, marriage was to be avoided at all costs.
“Mahieu asked the Lord: your daughter Eve betrayed
you; can you imagine what your wife would have done?
In short the law is unfair: the Lord ordained what
he dare not try himself" (Mundy 214).

Jovinian, another priest, warns men not to be swayed by a woman's beauty (or lack thereof) when choosing a wife.
"A fair woman is easily loved, a foul woman easily falls into concupiscence. It is hard to keep a thing that men covet; it is burdensome to possess that which no man deigneth to love” (Jovinian 24). Yet because of all their supposed faults, a woman's resistance to sinful desires became all the more virtuous. Thus the high praise and worship of virginity developed out of the Church's dual but divided treatment of women (Mundy 222).
The relationship between love, sex, women, and the Church was a source of great controversy throughout the Middle Ages. Sexual and spiritual love were linked to the clergy. Once again, however, theory and common practice contradicted each other. This contradiction was the main source of the conflict. As stated earlier adultery was commonplace. Men and women did have sex and/or fall in love with people other than their spouses.
“Lovers -though perfect in their moral and physical
beauty- are obliged by their adulterous love to
violate all canons of society: marriage, friendship,
family, and loyalty to the Church and state"
(Mundy 221).

Women could often gain power by exploiting this conflict between the practices of the laboring society and the policies of the clergy (Mundy 223).
The Church did provide women with a viable alternative to the life of a common laboring peasant: the convent (Mundy 209). The nunnery was often the choice of a father with several daughters. Rather than waste time and money searching for a suitable husband, many lazy fathers simply placed their girls in a nunnery and married them to the Church.
"Because girls counted as grown up when they were
fifteen in the Middle Ages, they could be married
out of hand at twelve and they could be come nuns
for life at fourteen” (Power 78).

Upon entering a nunnery, a girl was considered dead to the world; she lost all rights of inheritance; she became the property of the Church. This inability to collect inheritance was another ulterior motive for stingy fathers (Power 79).
Convents did, however, enjoy a relative amount of self
government. This was one of the few places where women held positions of authority (Power 77). The clergy's preoccupation with virginity made nuns bastions of virginity. Nuns saw themselves as protectors of something cherished and sacred (St. Jerome 15). They were taught to
fear men. "Flee from men also.. .the subtle foe hath many stratagems of war" (St. Jerome 16-17). Nuns were completely isolated. Their spiritual duties became their entire existence. Thus the doctrine of simplicity was instituted: the less the nuns knew the better. Though nunneries provided the only source of education for women, the knowledge the nuns were provided with was carefully screened by the Church hierarchy. The Church saw simplicity as a metaphoric extension of virginity, a sort of mental innocence (Caesarius 52-53). Rules of strict discipline (written by men of course) were also in effect. These rules covered the etiquette of a devout nun including topics such as laughing, standing, sitting, speaking, and looking at men (Aungier 320).
By Chaucer's time monastic houses were used more as an economic escape than a spiritual office. In fact, many nuns may not have been able to understand the sermons which were in Latin (Powers 8l).The heavy economic responsibility of the medieval marital system was a major factor in the decline of monastic houses. Nunneries were slowly introduced to worldiness.
"It was the view of Authority that the Devil
dispatched 3 lesser D's to be the damnation of nuns,
those were Dances, Dresses, and Dogs”(Powers 86).

The Prioress in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a shining example of not only this decline in spirituality, but is also a rare glimpse of a woman with a position of authority in medieval society. The Prioress found delight in fancy clothing, jewelry, and little dogs. A worldly nun to be sure, but an interesting human character rather than a dull stultified figure meekly quoting scripture (Power 8l).The Prioress is Chaucer. testimony to both the strength of medieval women and the talent of Chaucer.
Very few options were available to women in the Middle Ages. While young, the allure and power of sex gave women some freedom, and widowhood could provide a young bride with power over her husband's estate (Mundy 2l6). A third, equally viable option was the convent, especially as it became less strict and more worldly.(Power 78).Only the advent of courtly love brought broad improvement for the
status of women (Wood l07). While the majority of men were fighting crusades in the Holy Land, women were making significant alterations in culture and society. A sense of cultural coherence was achieved by this feminine influence. Unbridled and sometimes violent passions were now controlled by chivalric codes which taught restraint. Women in the higher levels of society were now worshipped. This was an ironic and almost unbelievable difference from the backbreaking life of the common woman in medieval society. Courtly love did little, however, to improve the plight of poor women (Wood 107). These women were doomed
to live their lives trapped in castles or the surrounding villages.

"For better or worse, this was the woman's domain. Here she bore her children, not infrequently dying in the process. Here she awaited the return of husband and sons from battle, with what mixture of emotions is hard to say. Here, in short, she spent her days in an endless monotonous round of needlework, child rearing, and supervision of domestic labours from which only death -or in widowhood or the convent- could provide release"(Wood 56).

The contribution of women to medieval society, though underestimated and undervalued at the time and for years to come, has not and will not be forgotten. Their voices will be heard.
ESSAYS

Women and the Crusades ©1996-2007
womeninworldhistory.com



When thinking about the Crusades, few people consider the dramatic effect on women in these unsettling times. At first women, as ill prepared as men, set off for the Holy Lands, eager to wash away their sins and receive special glory for their effort to free Jerusalem from Muslim control. After the bloody failures of the Crusaders in the fall of 1096, however, Pope Urban II decreed that henceforth no women, old people, nor children could take part in the Crusades. Despite Pope Urban’s ban, some women accompanied their husbands anyway. The best known adventurer was Queen Eleanor of Acquitaine.

Women who were left behind had to fend for themselves. The absence of a husband, son or guardian could be as long as ten years. Many men never returned. It is reported that in the second and third crusades perhaps 500,000 were lost, a significant drain on the male Christian population. Poignant evidence illustrates the emotional effect crusading men’s absence had on women. Two French troubadour songs speak to the depth of women’s loss:


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“Her eyes welled up beside the fountain, and she sighed from the depths of her heart.
‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘King of the world, because of You my grief increases,
I am undone by your humiliation, for the best men of this whole world are going off to serve you’,
..Nothing matters now, for he has gone so far away.’”
(Troubadour Marcabru)
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“Jerusalem, you do me a great wrong by taking from me that which I loved best.
Know this to be true: I’ll never love you, for this is the reason for my unhappiness...
Fair, sweet lover, how will you endure your great ache for me out on the salty sea,
When nothing that exists could ever tell the deep grief that has come into my heart?
When I think of your gentle, sparkling face that I used to kiss and caress,
It is a great miracle that I am not deranged....”
(Anonymous singer of women’s songs)


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By the Second Crusade, experienced men-at-arms, mostly noble, were sought, leaving property and wealth to be administered and protected by women. Raids on property were common throughout this period and women often were called upon to defend their homes or castles. The words of Lady Alice Knyvet when faced with troops posed to take her castle probably reflected the motivations and actions of many who were forced into this militant role. “I will not leave possession of this castle to die therefore; and if you begin to break the peace or make war to get the place of me, I shall defend me. For rather I in such wish to die than to be slain when my husband cometh home, for he charged me to keep it.”
Such changing conditions gave some women greater power than they had had before. In times of constant warfare, women’s role in maintaining household stability was needed. Women who governed in their husband’s name engaged in legal transactions, directed the farming, collected monies in case of ransom, and brought up the children. Important female royal regencies rose when the king was away on crusade. One example was Blanche of Castile (1187-1251), queen of Louis VIII of France, who became regent while her crusader son, King Louis IX, took up arms in his “holy war.” On his departure in 1247, Louis IX told his accomplished mother: “I leave my three children for your wards. I leave this realm of France to you to govern it. Truly I know that they well guarded and it well governed be.” Blanche managed to suppress rebellions and actually extend the power of the French dynasty. In 1249 she completed the absorption of the Midi into the French state and made advantageous alliances. As a result, the kingdom of France more closely assumed the shape and appearance it has today.

The introduction of the more civilized customs of the East also may produced positive results for women. Among the nobility, at least, some of the harsher elements of Western European culture softened their treatment. The creation of the concept of the ideal, often unattainable, lady, fictionalized in knightly romances, can in part be traced to the years immediately following the first Crusade.

In the East, the effect of the Crusades on women was also evident. When the crusaders first occupied Jerusalem in 1099, women and children were among the thousands who were killed. Anna Comnena, daughter of the Byzantine emperor, documented the arrival of the “uneducated barbarians” who arrived from the West, supposedly to liberate Constantinople from the threat of Seljuk Muslim raids. Looting and raiding for supplies more often than not were the result of these “innumerable Frankish armies” which swept into Byzantine lands.

A few women who had access to power benefited. In 1249, Shagrat al-Durr mobilized the Egyptian Mamluk army to drive Frankish Crusaders out of the coastal town of Damietta. This helped her become, for a short time, the Sultan of Egypt. In the rich Christian states, which lasted almost 200 years, some queens of the Latin titular male nobility achieved the right to rule in their own name. One of the most fascinating was Queen Melisende, daughter of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem, who became a sovereign in 1131.
Marriage Although the great majority of the female population were married at some point in their lives, the writings by women which survive are overwhelmingly those monastic women, who have never been, or were no longer, married. Yet the universality of marriage in one form or another is such that there are many texts which serve to flesh out a conception of the changing institution emerging in law codes and theological writing throughout the period. Marriage customs varied by region and marriage patterns were modified by class. At the most general level marriage is a social mechanism designed to regulate the distribution of women between male members of society and to formalize the links between a man and his offspring. In western Europe men have tended to have only one wife at a time: serial monogamy. In early medieval Europe divorce seems to have been relatively easy to obtain. A declaration before witnesses that a husband or wife was divorcing his or her spouse was all that was necessary. However, by the tenth century, marriage had changed from an essentially private arrangement between a man and a woman and their respective families, into a Christian and lifelong monogamous partnership. The wife had to have useful kindred to cement political alliances, be able to provide sons and heirs in sufficient numbers to ensure inheritance, and, increasingly, to be a companion to her husband. Courtly love is epitomized by the idea of the lover's unworthiness, the educative and ennobling effects of love, the need for secrecy, the idealization of the woman, and the pain that the lover feels. Often the love is characterized as hopeless: the lady is stony-hearted or far away. Courtly love was predominantly an institution of serving male interests: the acquisition of honor and status. Yet women were necessarily implicated in the tradition. The rhetoric and practices of courtly love did nothing to raise the status of women in the regions where courtly love flourished. If idealization of the feminine became culturally widespread, there were no tangible benefits to actual women in terms of individual autonomy. The ideology of courtly love was evolved by men intent on working out their own ideas of what women should be, ideologies which fulfilled their own emotional needs and desires. Sex
Medieval medical writers and natural philosophers, as opposed to theologians, viewed sex as necessary to both men and women. Without a regular outlet for sexual desire both sexes were likely to become ill. Male seed, and the female equivalent which many writers believed to exist and be discharged by the woman during orgasm, had to be eliminated from the body periodically, just as other discharges such as phlegm, saliva, etc. Thus, sexual pleasure of the woman was regarded as a precondition of conception. Without orgasm, it was thought, ejaculation of the 'female seed' would not occur and conception could not take place. Women were then expected to take pleasure in sex. It was commonplace in writing that women were naturally more lustful and voracious in their sexual appetites than men, and that they could easily exhaust and destroy their husbands' with their relentlessness. Power
Power Women held both power and authority in different areas and at different times in the medieval period. The distinction between power and authority is important. Power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance. Power rests on the notion that an individual has the "right" to impose his will, and when it is exercised within a hierarchy of roles, it is defined as authority. Thus a Merovingian queen might have the power, in terms of forcefulness of character and personal access to treasure, to order assassins to attack her rivals, or to seize and torture Parisian housewives. Later, Carolingian queens had authority over the running of the palace. Setting the level of taxes on agricultural products was seen as part of the domestic arrangements, and the queen would oversee the royal treasury, freeing the king to concentrate on military activity. Influence must not be discounted either when considering the relations of medieval women to power. Influence means to bring about a decision on another's part to act in a certain way, because it is felt to be good for the other person. The activities of the king's mistress are often analyzed in these terms. The medieval period saw a decline of women's rights of power. As ever, birth or marriage into a powerful family bestowed informal power; possession of land and money before the marriage and during widowhood conferred legal rights which disappeared on marriage. Participation in public affairs had become a near-impossibility for women of all classes, except where influence might be effected behind the scenes, in the role of royal wife, mistress, or as a queen mother. Under any other circumstances a woman could not speak or act in the public domain, unless she had authority derived from God. So, for medieval women, power was possible, but for the most part, unknowable. Friendship
Women's friendships with one another, even though little documentation of them, must have sustained and comforted them: the warmth of female friendship within the convent is shown by the affectionate references to nuns in various writings. In villages and towns, women were linked across the generations by the godparent relationship. Goddaughters are often mentioned in wills while women who were godmothers to the same siblings formed close relationships with one another and with the parents. Women's close friendships and ties are often termed "feminine subculture." Although the modern pejorative term 'gossip', used almost exclusively of women, is derived from 'god-sib' (one in a godparent or godchild relationship), the mixture of anxiety and contempt felt by men about women communicating and sharing their knowledge with one another is far older than the word 'gossip'. The image on this page shows a devil who was detailed to collect women's talk, designated idle and trivial by moralists, to add to their other sins when judgment came, figuring the "endless cackle" of women, the disorder it is supposed to engender and the dangers of possession.

Answer 2

Women In Medieval Society

Answer 3

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Answer 4

The role that women played within the medieval community was primarily restricted to domestic duties including cooking, baking bread, sewing, weaving, and spinning. However, some women were permitted to hunt for food and fight in battles. It was important for women to learn how to use weapons so that they could defend their homes when the men were away at war or on Crusades. Some medieval women held other occupations. There were women blacksmiths, merchants, and apothecaries. Others were midwives, worked in the fields, or they spent their time writing, playing musical instruments, dancing, and painting. Some women were known as witches. These women were often herbalists who were thought to be involved in sorcery as well as healing. Others became nuns and devoted their lives to God and spiritual matters. Some of the most famous women of the Middle Ages include, Christine de Pisan who was a writer; Hildegard of Bingen who was an abbess and musician; Eleanor of Aquitaine who was known for being the patron of the arts; and Joan of Arc who was a French peasant who heard voices telling her to protect France against the English invasion. She dressed in armor and led her troops to victory in the early fifteenth century. She was later burned at the stake for being a witch.

Answer 5

the role for women was to stay home and take care of the kids and do the dishes and clean the house and like make a garden and then go out when ready and pick them they did not get to go to school!!!!!!!!!! that will be the best day of my life no school... by the way I'm 16 I'm learning about it now wow some people are cute

Answer 6

Oh, be quiet, Drew.

In those times it was nothing but work from sun up to sun down in order to survive. That applied to both men and women, but a woman would have absolutely no say so in anything. Many children were still born and many died in infancy. Many women also died in childbirth. There was no joy in day to day living at all. The best years would be the childhood years until around age 4... when they were also put to work.

Answer 7

Women were basically subservient to their husbands, and the source of children.

How well they lived depended on their husband's station in life. Or their father if they weren't married yet.

But generally they had very little freedom and were only slightly better off than slaves, legally. Husbands and fathers could of course change that for their own darling, but she really couldn't do it herself.

Answer 8

All women were supposed to give birth to strong children. The rest was depending on their social status. The lower the status the harder the work. A lady just had to please her husband.
All in all they were citisens second class. They could not have their own buisness, they could not vote (but men couldn't either), they could not become pope (which they still can't today), actually they couldn't do much their husband, father or brother hadn't told them to do.

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