Women, Power, and Duty in the Medieval World

A reconsideration of recognized power - 'zine edition!

Hello lovely reader! Welcome to the 15th century feminist substack, here I seek to reimagine the women that were intentionally erased, minimized, and/or villainized throughout the Middle Ages in hopes to challenge the patriarchal myths which allow for the continued subjugation of women, femmes, and those challenging gender norms worldwide. This newsletter will always remain free, however, a paid subscription directly supports the costs attached to the required research—it is a small but impactful way to make a difference and help bring new stories to life. Please consider upgrading today. Thank you for your presence! 💜

Writer’s note: Reader, my family is one of countless impacted by the US governmental shutdown. If you’ve enjoyed my writing, please consider upgrading this month to support. Thank you.💜

Arthurian Romances Beinecke MS.229 folio 329r circa 1275-1300 - and yes, she is fighting with a spindle

There is a certain patriarchal absolutism which precedes most people’s understanding of the Middle Ages. An imposed partitioning of society reinforced by academic abstractions loosely grasped, affirmed through years of both outright and subtle social reinforcement. More than just a literary topos, the paradigm of a medieval world with strict gendered spheres of influence that insisted men divinely occupied dominion over all things public while women were relegated to the private/domestic has informed the very biases systemic to the governing institutions of today.

This partition—perhaps more aptly regarded as an iron-curtain—dispossessed women of their individuality; of their humanity, while presupposing innate traits judged to be inferior by way of gender expectations. It is a construction of womanhood tediously built through authoritative assertions—“all the men whose thought we can know were convinced that woman by nature is weak, that she is dangerous (and this idea found justification in the text of Genesis) and that she must therefore be subjected to the man.” Which ultimately served to support the imposition of patriarchy through justification for the maintenance of male supremacy.¹ In this ‘resolutely male’ epoch, acts of domination became inextricably linked to the socially enforced manifestations of power and as patriarchy continued to prevail and evolve, the language of power became increasingly androcentric.²

The harm necessitated to uphold a social hierarchy achieved through subjugation, where women’s bodies existed in servitude to patriarchy (through birth; through sexual gratification; through domestic service) is both excused and perpetuated through such a paradigm. By insisting that “by nature, because she was a woman, the woman could not exercise public power. She was incapable of exercising it,” Duby essentially created the ideal conditions of patriarchy and anachronistically ascribed it to the Middle Ages.³ Granted full authority by the very archetypes he was both eternalizing and assuming internalization of. But as Heather Tanner identified, “the division of activities into public and private spheres, a construct developed to describe changing conditions after the industrial revolution (and problematic even in that regard), utterly belies medieval practices.”⁴

It is because of this public/private construct many may think it impossible to envision medieval women in arenas of war - Amazons - miniature from folio 040r from Der naturen bloeme (KB KA 16) by Jacob van Maerlant circa 1340/50

Perceiving medieval women without power is to fall for the trap that is womanhood built exclusively through the lens of patriarchy. A conscription of obedience meant to create this exact phenomena. It is this very paradigm paired with the continued weaponization of the language of power that threatens women’s autonomy and access to public spheres of influence today. As Jackson Katz highlighted in a recent essay, US secretary of war Hegseth’s use of language such as ‘male-standards’ aims to achieve the same goal: To create a society devoid of feminine power and influence in both thought and realized action. Not because women don’t, or didn’t, possess power, but because women realizing their own power threatens the foundations of patriarchy.

Below you will find another ‘zine edition of this newsletter: Women, Power, and Duty in the Medieval World. I share these women for a few reasons, none of which are to glorify the violence represented in the imagery. First, I share in hopes of challenging the suppression generationally perpetuated by patriarchal gender roles. This public/private paradigm seeks to strip women of their personhood; their individual ambitions and aspirations. It frames action as duty instead of power realized. Secondly, through contemporary accounts and depictions, I hope to impart upon you a medieval world that recognized powerful women. They were neither exceptions nor outliers but an underrepresented force of medieval society. The stories told of these strong women weren’t just shared in the exclusive circles of Latin scholarship but were translated into the vernacular languages across Europe, preserved across mediums from painted vellum to stitched tapestry.

If you take one thing away from today’s post, please let it be this: it was only within the machinations of patriarchal thought that medieval women were ever without power.⁵

Medieval Women and Their Weapons of War

A feature from Holly A Brown, author of Medieval Musings

There was something different about the women of sixth-century Dover (England).

Laid to rest in a highly gendered world, four individuals bucked the trend for a feminine material identity. Those burying them carefully placed their swords along their sides, their spears too, alongside the usual brooches needed to hold their clothes together.

Burial display was important to early medieval people. In a public funeral attended by most of the local community, the backfilling of the grave was just the final part of a days-long ritual. For days prior to this, the person was laid out in the grave, perhaps atop flowers, leaves, and herbs, before items important to them in life were placed on and around their body, and they were left visible to visitors.

Though the social and cultural world of the early medieval world had been deconstructed and reconstructed multiple times since the Romans left, a carefully curated code for gender display had developed over the course of a century. About half of people who died in this period were afforded a ‘furnished’ burial, the practice of adding objects other than those related to clothing. Women were buried with a combination of jewellery (including brooches and long strings of beaded necklaces), keys (symbolic of their household responsibilities), and items related to weaving (spindle whorls or weaving battens). Men, on the other hand, were buried with weaponry (swords, spears, arrowheads).

Analysis of their skeletons, where possible, bears out the assumption that these assemblages reflect their roles in life, too; these weren’t simply symbolic features of a burial. Males show evidence of hard labour, including martial combat, while their teeth show more signs of decay, perhaps a result of more frequent alcohol consumption (related not just to feasting but also to increased hydration needs associated with hard labour).

Only four females have been discovered buried with weapons in this highly gendered world, and they all came from the same cemetery. What was something different about the women in this community that meant they were deemed worthy of a weapon burial, a rite otherwise exclusively reserved for men?

At least one of these women definitely saw armed combat during her lifetime: her skull shows evidence of a massive cranial injury consistent with a weapon impact. For this woman, then, the weapons she was buried with were likely her own, rather than an heirloom or treasured possession of a lost loved male. Beyond this, though, weapons aren’t straightforwardly evidence for personal experience with warfare. A lot of the males buried with weapons were too young or infirm ever to have used them, suggesting instead that they represent a status or social grouping who were permitted to bear arms. The Dover women then, despite their femaleness, were part of that same, male group permitted to bear arms.

We’ll never really know quite why this was the case for them and (to date) no other females. What their burials do require, though, is a rethinking of the relationship between gender and weapons-bearing during the early medieval period. Yes, the vast majority of weapons burials were afforded to males. But not all. In such a highly gendered world, it is even more significant that these four women broke the mould.

Image source list available here

1. Duby, Georges. “Women and Power.” Cultures of Power: Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, edited by Thomas N. Bisson, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995, pp. 69–86.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Tanner, Heather J., editor. Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Springer International Publishing, 2019, p. 10

5. I am by no means diminishing or ignoring the fact that these women of course lived in a patriarchal society which operated almost exclusively to affirm the maintenance of male supremacy. Though there were women that did not have access to avenues of power, there were also countless who could, and did, with that power recognized (and expected) by contemporaries.