Today Dr Schrader continues her mini-series on opportunities for women in the Middle Ages with a look at women's access to education.
After wealth, education is arguably the most powerful means of empowerment. As I noted in last week’s essay on women and economic power, professional skills were mobile and endowed women with independence and self-respect. Today, however, I want to look at abstract learning, “book-learning,” rather than practical, professional skills. It is still common to impute ignorance to people in the Middle Ages generally, and even more common to assume that women were not generally literate.
Certainly, literacy was not as widespread or common in the Middle Ages as it is today. There was no requirement to attend school, and for the poor, the need to work from a very early age made schooling a luxury. It was possible to learn a trade by watching and listening to a master, rather than reading texts. Thus for a significant portion of society at the lower end of the social scale, reading and writing was neither a necessity nor particularly valuable.
Yet, as with everything in feudal society, class more than gender determined whether a person was likely to be literate or not. Among the classes that valued and required higher levels of education, women were as likely to be educated as their brothers and husbands. In the early Middle Ages among the upper classes, some historians argue, women were more likely to read and write than their husbands and brothers. Because their men were too busy fighting, women were expected to provide a basic education to children and maintain control of the estates by doing the book-keeping and correspondence.
For merchants or skilled craftsmen running a business, the support of wives in keeping the books, conducting correspondence, collecting arrears, etc. was vital. Recognizing this, burghers ensured that their daughters were sufficiently literate and numerate to carry out these tasks ― or they risked having unmarriageable daughters.
Noblewomen,
likewise, needed to be literate and numerate in order to manage their
own and their husband’s property. In fact, even in the later Middle Ages
the everyday management of a household and estate generally fell to the
lady of the house, since men were often engaged in warfare and
politics, activities that took them away from their estates, sometimes
for extended periods. The higher their status, the higher the level of
educated expected. Noblewomen could usually correspond in both their own
language and Latin. They were frequent patrons of the arts, owners of
books, and in some cases authors as well. It is no coincidence that
Eleanor of Aquitaine’s tomb shows her reading a book, while her daughter
Marie of Champagne was the patroness of Chrétien de Troyes and it was
to her that he dedicated some of his greatest works such as Yvain, or The Knight with the Lion.
Finally,
women who chose a religious vocation chose a lifestyle that revolved
around reading, writing, copying and illustrating Holy Scripture and
more. The most highly educated women of the Middle Ages were, therefore,
often found inside convents. Furthermore, by their work copying and
illuminating manuscripts, nuns played a key role (along with monks) in
preserving knowledge both sacred and secular, and in their role as
educators, they were instrumental in spreading literacy to others.
The most dramatic evidence of female education in the Middle Ages, however, is provided by the large number of women who were authors
of important works. A certain noblewoman, Dhuoda, for example, wrote an
extensive and erudite treatise on education in or about 842; the book
is full of biblical and other references that indicate this “ordinary”
noblewoman was herself very well read (and incidentally very busy). In
965, a certain Hroswitha composed a long epic poem of Otto I. In the 12th
century, there was Heloise, famous, unfortunately, more for her affair
with Abelard than the fact that she was accounted a brilliant scholar in
Latin, Greek and Hebrew before she even met him. Indeed, Abelard claims to have wanted to seduce Heloise because
of her learning ― as well as writing that he never really loved her,
only lusted after her. In her letters to him, Heloise espoused a radical
feminism that rejected both marriage and children. In the 15th century, there was the poet Christine de Pisan who in the early 15th century took on the University of Paris, mocking their misogyny.
My
personal favorite among the women of letters of the Middle Ages was
Hildegard von Bingen. She was born in 1098 and died in 1179. She joined a
convent at eight, took the veil at 15 and was abbess from 1136 onwards.
She had visions, as she describes them:
Through
God’s goodness, my soul sometimes surges up to the heights of the
heavens and the air and sometimes wanders among different peoples,
although they live in far regions and unknown places…I see them only in
my soul, and the eyes of my body remain open, for I have never fainted
in ecstasy. I see them awake night and day…The light that I see is not
local, but infinitely more brilliant than the light that surrounds the
sun.” (Cited in Pernoud, p. 43)
The
heroines of these award-winning novels set in the Middle Ages reflect
their respective class in terms of their level of education -- from
Dowager Queens to serving girls.
For readers tired of clichés and cartoons, award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader offers nuanced insight into historical events and figures based on sound research and an understanding of human nature. Her complex and engaging characters bring history back to life as a means to better understand ourselves.
Find out more at: https://www.helenapschrader.com/crusades.html
No comments:
Post a Comment