These Rare Artifacts Tell Medieval Women’s Stories in Their Own Words

Pelican Press · October 24

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These Rare Artifacts Tell Medieval Women’s Stories in Their Own Words

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Meilan Solly

Senior Associate Digital Editor, History

During an impromptu game of table tennis in September 1934, a player accidentally stepped on the ball. The host’s father decided to look for a replacement in a cupboard at their English

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. Instead of table tennis ******, the family patriarch stumbled onto an “entirely undisciplined clutter of smallish leather books,” including one whose cover “had been eaten away, presumably by a mouse,” as his son

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.

That unassuming manuscript turned out to be the only surviving copy of

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, a medieval text chronicling the adventures of a female ********** mystic. Previously known only through 16th-century

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that painted Kempe as an

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who walled herself up in a cell to

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to private prayer and reflection, the manuscript reframed its namesake as a colorful figure who’d traveled abroad on religious pilgrimages, claimed she’d experienced

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participating in such biblical events as the birth and crucifixion of ******, and endured

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on charges of heresy.

“You lose all sense of her story and her personality” when only reading the excerpts, says

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, a curator at the

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in London. “She’s a very larger-than-life character … who was not an anchoress but [rather] incredibly mobile. She’s been to the Holy Land, she’s been to Rome, she’s been to

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.”

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The opening page of The Book of Margery Kempe

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An illustration of the coronation of Jeanne de Bourbon as queen of France

The chance discovery of Kempe’s autobiography speaks to the rich trove of writing about medieval women that survives to this day, as well as the countless works that have been lost over the centuries, Jackson says. “Women in the Middle Ages were seen as less important than men, and they were excluded from a lot of areas of power,” the curator adds. “Their stories were less often recorded, and because women often weren’t given the same level of education as men, [many] couldn’t write themselves. Women’s histories are much ******* to find, but they are there when you look for them.”

A new exhibition at the British Library tells some of these long-overlooked tales through a selection of more than 140 documents and artifacts spanning roughly 1100 to 1500. Co-curated by Jackson and

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, “

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” spotlights queens, nuns, authors, warriors, physicians and artisans alike. As the name suggests, the show emphasizes women’s personal testimony, “telling their stories as much as possible through their own words,” whether preserved in their writings or dictated to scribes, as was the case with Kempe, Jackson says.

The individuals

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in the exhibition run the gamut from famous figures like Joan of Arc and Italian French writer

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to the lesser known, including Estellina Conat, the first recorded

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of Hebrew texts;

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, the first female sultan of Egypt and Syria; and Alice Claver, a

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who crafted ornate clothing for England’s Edward IV. By highlighting such a diverse group, lead curator Jackson and co-curator Harrison hope to move past widely held conceptions of medieval women’s existences being centered around domesticity and oppression by men. “Their lives were a lot more vibrant than people expect,” Jackson says, “and [visitors] will be surprised by the sheer variety of roles” that they occupied in the fields of politics, religion and the arts.

The British Library’s yearlong digitization of

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related to medieval and Renaissance women provided the inspiration for “

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.” While searching the collections for relevant texts, staff found “a huge amount [that] had not really been looked at very much before,” Jackson says. She and Harrison spent two years selecting documents for inclusion in the show, in addition to securing loans from cultural institutions in both the ******* Kingdom and continental Europe.

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An illustration from the Melisende Psalter

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An illustration of the fall of Tripoli in 1289, showing Lucia, Countess of Tripoli, sitting in the center of the fortified city

Beyond medieval manuscripts and books, the exhibition showcases

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as a skull that may have belonged to a

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owned by English queen Margaret of Anjou; a silk textile crafted in

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, a ******* kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula; and an

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that is the only known piece of English medieval embroidery to bear the name of its creator, in this case a nun named Joan of Beverly.

To complement these historic artifacts, the British Library asked scent designer

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to create four fragrance installations that “evoke different scents and experiences from medieval life,” including a hair perfume and a breath freshener, according to a statement. Staff also recruited actresses to record readings of several of the written sources, “so that as visitors come through, they feel as though they’re actually encountering these [medieval] women in person,” Jackson says.

The items on view are divided into

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: the public, the private and the spiritual. The first of these focuses on women in outward-facing roles, among them monarchs and

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. Melisende, a queen of Jerusalem who clashed with her husband and her son in her ****** to assert her authority over the kingdom, is represented by a beautifully illustrated

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, or book of psalms, that blends Western and Eastern religious influences.

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, a 12th-century claimant to the English throne, appears in miniature on the seal of a

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for a new abbey, which describes her as “empress” and “lady of the English.”

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An illustration of Christine de Pizan laying the foundation of the city of ladies

While some medieval women were born into power, others rose to prominence through their creative talents. Consider for instance, the earliest recorded

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, whose identity is only known through a

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in one of her works: “Marie is my name, and I am from France.” Also of note is Christine de Pizan, who became the first woman in Europe to “make her living through writing books,” says Jackson. Christine, the daughter of an astrologer at French court, crafted both

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to support her family after the ****** of her husband. Her best-known work is

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, a 1405 text that celebrates the accomplishments of women and argues for their intellectual and moral equality with men—a controversial stance in an era when women were

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as inferior. In Christine’s

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, “I realize more than ever how great is the ignorance and the ingratitude of all those men who speak so much ill of women. … Let them lower their eyes in shame to have dared lie so much in their books, when one sees that the truth goes counter to what they say.”

In addition to famous figures, the public lives section of the exhibition explores the stories of everyday

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. Early printers like Conat and

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are discussed alongside manual laborers who harvested crops for wealthy landowners, often for less pay than their male counterparts. Jackson was especially drawn to the story of

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, a Moorish woman whose 15th-century petition against the Venetian merchant who was trying to sell her is on loan from the

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in London. “There’s an idea sometimes that there weren’t people of ****** in medieval England, but this document shows that there absolutely were,” Jackson says. “Not only that, but she’s also fighting for her rights, being defiant and standing up for herself.”

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Woven silk textile with inscription from al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia), Spain, circa 1400

The section on private lives, meanwhile, adopts a more intimate approach to medieval women’s history. Prayer books, instructional texts and letters shed light on women’s bodies and health, as well as their relationships with loved ones. Fertility and childbirth are recurring concerns, with one medical compendium advising readers to wear a charm made from weasel ********** to prevent conception and another recounting the legend of

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, the ********** protector of pregnant women.

The

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are a clear highlight of the exhibition, following

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of an English family as its members navigate marriage troubles, land disputes and even

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. “Send me crossbows, arrows, poleaxes and armors for the servants,” wrote

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in a 1448 letter to her husband, John, after enemies seized the family’s Norfolk manor house. Two decades later, Margaret disowned her daughter for marrying a ********, writing in a letter to her son that “we have lost of her but a brethel,” or good-for-nothing.

The Pastons were a “nouveau riche family who rose up from the peasant level due to the increased opportunities that happened after the ****** ****** in the 14th century,” says Jackson. “By the 15th century, they’d established themselves within the gentry, but they were still insecure, so they were constantly in conflict with other families [while trying to] establish their position in the social hierarchy.” The trove of around 1,000 letters and documents is rare for the *******, as personal correspondence was “seen as ephemeral, and once it had served its purpose, people threw it away,” Jackson explains. The missives offer “such a strong sense of all of these women’s personalities,” she adds. “There’s a lot of love and ****** and arguments—and literal fighting.”

Our Medieval Women exhibition opens next Friday.

This blogpost tells you how to get involved and (shhhh) shows you a few of the items that will be on display.

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— Medieval Manuscripts (@BLMedieval)

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The last section of “In Their Own Words” examines the many ways in which religion shaped medieval women’s lives. Some of the spotlighted individuals, like

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and English anchoress

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, were celebrated in their day as visionaries, while others, including Kempe and Joan of Arc, were persecuted as heretics. Though neither Kempe nor Joan knew how to read and write, both found ways to make their voices heard, the former by dictating her story to a

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and the latter by testifying at her

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. “The text that gives us access to this trial is an extraordinary witness to the life of Joan, her mental

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[and] the social structures of the world in which she lived,”

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historian

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in the introduction to a 2005 translation of the trial transcript.

In between the two extremes of saints and (supposed) sinners were women who joined religious communities, dedicating their lives to the worship of ****. The exhibition outlines the strict rules that governed medieval ********* nuns and anchoresses, from the types of pets they could keep to the clothing they wore.

At the same time, “In Their Own Words” complicates the image of nuns living “a pretty dire existence,” underscoring the beautiful manuscripts, textiles and artworks these women created to provide a sense of the “culturally rich” lives that many enjoyed, says Jackson.

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, a 12th-century ******* Benedictine abbess and composer, is represented by a passage from her most famous musical

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and a letter in which she defends her convent against practices that some outsiders view as “strange and irregular,” such as nuns being allowed to wear white silk dresses and loose hair.

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Pages from Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love

Many of the artifacts on display are directly linked to specific individuals, whether they created the objects or commissioned them as patrons. But some are anonymous, with the identities of their authors either lost to time or intentionally obscured. It’s a testament to Jackson and Harrison’s curatorial efforts that the featured women emerge as such layered, complex individuals, regardless of whether their real names are known today.

“While the wider literature from the ******* tells us that medieval women were silent and passive, quiet and chaste, their [surviving creations] tell a different story,” writes Pragya Agarwal, author of the 2022 book

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, in an essay. “The women who wrote and created these works were bold and strident, ****** and astute. And they were clever enough to find their own tools for claiming power in a culture determined to silence them.”

“

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” is on view at the

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in London from October 25, 2024, to March 2, 2025.

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A large oak altarpiece, probably made around 1400 for the Dominican nuns of Dartford Priory, featuring portraits of saints, including Agatha, Catherine and Margaret

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#Rare #Artifacts #Medieval #Womens #Stories #Words

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