Norman Cantor (1999) has noted that the lives of medieval women were
as diverse as those of men, and that women in this era contributed to all
the major movements that spelled success for an emerging European
civilization. Nevertheless, women in the Middle Ages were, regardless of
their position, status or birth, regarded as legitimately inferior to men
and as of necessity submissive to their fathers and husbands and brothers
(Weir, 2000). Even in the case of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine - wife to two
kinds and mother of two more - a misstep could result in imprisonment at
the behest of a husband (Cantor, 1994; Kaufman, 2002). Other women such as
St. Hildegard of Bingen, who chose the religious over the secular life, may
have experienced a slightly greater degree of autonomy than even a queen
such a Eleanor. In both cases, however, the privileged status of these two
women ensured that they would live longer, healthier, and more productive
lives (including lives of the intellect) than their less well-placed peers
Ordinary women in the Middle Ages could be roughly divided into three
or four groups. Women born into the ruling or noble families could count
on some education and also on being used as bartering chips in their
families' quest for power and status. Women of the merchant classes were
less free and less privileged, while women of the peasant class lived lives
that were short, harsh and subservient. Women who elected to choose the
religious life - or had it chosen for them by their fathers or other
relatives - had many privileges as well, but limited freedom of activity
(Labarge, 1986). In almost all cases, women were very much subject to the
rule and domination of their male relatives before marriage or husbands
after marriage; if they chose the abbey or the cloister, they accepted the
rule of the Church. Even an important abbess such as Hildegard of Bingen
wa...