A Distant Mirror

1
What, Me Worry?
The Undistressed Damsels
of the Middle Ages
What, me worry?
Western Civilization Lecture October 24,
2006 Ohio Northern University
Undistressed Damsel
2
The Middle Ages were resolutely male. All the
opinions that reach and inform me were held by
men, convinced of the superiority of their sex.
I hear only them. Georges Duby, Love and
Marriage in the Middle Ages It is a fact that
in medieval society women never emerged from
the strictest subordination. Georges Duby,
Medieval Marriage Women are, when men speak of
them at all, a negligible quantity. Georges
Duby, William Marshall The Flower of Chivalry
3
When considering the status of women in medieval
society, the noted historian Eileen Power
stated The result is very much what
common sense would indicate, for in daily
life the position occupied by woman was one
neither of inferiority nor of superiority,
but was of a certain rough-and-ready
equality. Eileen Power, The Position of Women,
in The Legacy of the Middle Ages, edited by C.
G. Crump and E. F. Jacob.
4
Selections from Gratian, Decretum Women should
be subject to their men. The natural order for
mankind is that women should serve men and
children their parents, for it is just that the
lesser serve the greater. The image of God is
in man and it is one. Women were drawn from
man, who has Gods jurisdiction as if he were
Gods vicar, because he has the image of one God.
Therefore woman is not made in Gods
image. Womens authority is nil let her in all
things be subject to the rule of
man....And neither can she teach, nor be a
witness, nor give a guarantee, nor sit in
judgment. Adam was beguiled by Eve, not she by
him. It is right that he whom woman led into
wrongdoing should have her under his direction,
so that he may not fail a second time through
female levity.
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He could not keep from kissing her eagerly he
drew near to her. Looking at her restored and
delighted him....But the damsel, for her part,
looked at the knight no less than he looked at
her, with favorable eye and loyal heart, in
eager emulation. They would not have accepted a
ransom to leave off looking at one another.
They were very well and evenly matched in
courtliness, in beauty, and in great nobility.
They were so similar, of one character and of
one essence, that no one who wanted to speak
truly could have chosen the better one or the
more beautiful or the wiser. They were very equal
in spirit and very well suited to one
another. Chrétien de Troyes, Erec and Enide
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Peasant farmyard
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Harvesting scene
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Harvesting scene from the Très riches heures of
the Duc de berry The month of july
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Woman collecting eggs
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Peasant woman selling butter
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Fishmongers
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Women weaving and collecting silk cocoons
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Women carding and spinning
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Nursing the sick
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Childbirth scene
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Apothecary shop
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Woman working at a forge
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Aristocratic family tree
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Aristocratic woman overseeing the planting
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Women defending a castle
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Women attacking a castle
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Women in battle
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Medieval queens
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Tomb of Eleanor of Aquitaine
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Sculpture from the church of St. Hilaire of
Poitiers Purported to be Eleanor of Aquitaine
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Twelfth-century fresco of Eleanor and her son
King Richard I
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Modern imagining of Eleanor of Aquitaine
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Eleanor and Henry IIs Descendants
HENRY II m 1152 Eleanor of
Aquitaine b 1133 d 1189 b c1122 d 1204
William Henry Matilda RICHARD I Geoffrey
Eleanor Joanna JOHN b 1153 b 1155 b
1156 b 1157 b 1158 b 1162 b 1165
b 1157 d 1156 d 1183 d 1189 King 1189 d
1186 d 1215 d 1199 King 1199 m
Margaret m Henry, d 1199 m Constance m
King m1) King Wm. II d 1216 of
France duke of of Brittany Alphonso VIII
of Sicily m1) Isabella of Saxony
of Castille 2) Raymond VI
Gloucester count of 2)
Isabella of Toulouse
Angouleme
Henry, count palatine of the Rhine
Otto of Brunswick king of Germany and emperor
Raymond VII count of Toulouse
Eleanor Arthur of Brittany
Berengar Blanche Urraca Eleanor King
Henry I m king of
Castile Louis VIII of France
HENRY III Richard Joan Isabel
Eleanor king of England king of
Germany 1216-1272 and
Emperor
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Aristocratic Women of the Chartrain and their
Families

MONTIGNY
FRÉTEVAL
ALLUYES-BROU
(1) Wm. I Gouet Mahild of Alluyes (2)
Geoffrey of m. 1040/1045
Mayenne,

1060/1070
Gauslen ???
Ganelon I
Nivelon I Ermengard m. c. 1025
Wm. II Gouet Eustachia m. 1065/1070
Hildeburg Gouet
Fulcher m. 1050/1060
(2) Hamlin of Fréteval m. c.1090
Nivelon II of Fréteval Eustachia m. c. 1080

Pagana Pagan of Frouville m. c. 1090
Hildeburg Bernard of La Ferté m. c. 1090
Agnes/Comitissa Viscount Hugh
of Châteaudun m. c. 1080
(1) Ganelon II Adela m. c. 1070
no issue
Viscount Geoffrey III Heloise m. c. 1110
VIDAMES OF CHARTRES

(1) Vidame Helisend (2) Bartholomew
Guerric
Bodellus m. 1070/75 m.
1096/1098
Agnes of Montigny
(1) Vidame Hugh of Chartres
m. 1096/1098
(2) Eudes of Vallières m. c. 1112
Stephen Abbot
of Saint- Jean -en-Vallée
Elizabeth Wm. Ferrières m. c. 1110
no issue
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Childbirth scene
31
Letter from Pope Pascal to Queen Mathilda of
England, 1105 Therefore, beloved daughter, we
beg you to watch more carefully over his Henry
Is keeping and to turn his heart away from
wrong counsel so that he will not continue
provoking Gods fury so greatly against himself.
Remember what the Apostle says The unbelieving
husband will be saved by the believing wife.
Reprove, beseech, rebuke, so that he may
reinstate the aforesaid bishop in his see and
permit him to act and preach as his office
demands, and also return the churches to his God
lest God take from him what he has given.
32
Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury to Countess
Clemence of Flanders, 1102 It is your duty,
reverend lady and dearest daughter, to mention
this and other similar things to your husband in
season and out of season, and advise him to
prove that he is not lord of the Church, but her
advocate, not her step-son but her true
son....Admonish him never to oppose Gods law,
for Scripture, which does not lie, states that
those who are not subject to it are
undoubtedly enemies of God.... Thus I beg that
Countess Clementia should admonish and counsel
her husband in this way so that divine clemency
may raise both him and her to the kingdom of
Heaven.
33
His Count Stephen of Blois wife Adele also
frequently urged him to return to the crusade,
and between conjugal caresses used to say, Far
be it from you, my lord, to lower yourself by
enduring the scorn of such men as these for
long. Remember the courage for which you were
famous in your youth, and take up the arms of
the glorious crusade for the sake of saving
thousands.... Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical
History
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Aristocratic family tree
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Medieval holy woman
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Abbess Hildegard of Bingen instructing nuns
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Hildegard of Bingen being inspired by God to write
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Christine de Pisan teaching men
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Woman teaching men
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Courtly love scene
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Christine de Pisan offering her work to Queen
Marguerite of Navarre
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Woman writing
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Woman sculptor
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Woman drawing
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Woman painting a self-portrait
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Women constructing a church
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Woman musician
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A Distant Mirror The Real Women of the Middle
Ages
If there is a mistake worse than believing that
the present and the past are the same, it is
thinking they are completely different. There may
be worlds of difference between yesterday and
today, but the past is not a different world. We
are continuous. The past draws us to itself and
we learn from it precisely because we discover
ourselves there under altered conditions.
Steven Ozment, Magdalena and Balthasar An
Intimate Portrait of Life in Sixteenth-Century
Europe as Revealed in the Letters of Nuremberg
Husband and Wife