Femina (a book review)

Janina Ramirez is an excellent writer. You can’t go wrong with her. My favourite would still be her “Private Lives of Saints”.

This book, Femina, looks at forgotten women across the early Middle Ages.

Starting with Queen Bertha of Kent who was here to welcome a very nervous Augustine to Canterbury. She had come over from France and been married off to Aethelburt. They had a son and a daughter. The son became King and reverted much of his kingdom back to pagan gods. The daughter Aethelburg married Edwin of Northumbria who became a Christian and they had a daughter Eanfled. She married Edwin’s successor as King of Northumbria but then went off to establish a double monastery. I suppose the encouragement and challenge is to see the role of parents in the faith of our children. I don’t think it was any easier then than now.

St Hild of Streanshalh was the key woman at synod of Whitby 664. Cynethryth was the only woman to have her own coins minted. Her daughter Eadburgh accidentally poisoned her husband.  Aethelflaed, the Lady of Mercia, pushed back the invading Danes. Birka was a Viking warrior woman from Sweden. For this woman, the author is relying more on archaeology than Gildas or Bede. She mentions how in Scandinavia around 1050, they went through a practice of digging up the bones of ancestors in order to baptise them. This idea is based on an obscure verse from St Paul about the baptism of the dead. I suppose her point, for this paragraph, is to show how there were lots of powerful women doing amazing stuff.

I thought it clever the way she brought in the Bayeux Tapestry. Presuming that history is mostly written by males, here is some history woven by women. She argues that Harold was not hit in the eye, as we all assumed from the tapestry but instead is the bloke to his right clearly hacked and trampled on. And here is Bishop Odo in full armour wielding a large club encouraging his soldiers forward. Perhaps it’s as well that Bishops don’t wield clubs anymore. Mostly they wield archdeacons.

The only bit I am not so sure about is her take on “The Benedictine Reform which had spread across Europe in the tenth century”. The author sees this as local rulers investing in one set of monks rather than the large variety that had sprung up thus giving the Benedictines a chance to stamp out heresy, a sort of early form of inquisition.

But the authors point is that the Benedictines were needed to combat the rise of heresies like the Cathars in France. The Waldensians were a sort of proto-reformation movement, and then what with Monastic orders like Cluniacs, Franciscans, Dominicans all popping up it was hard to keep up.

My favourite was the chapter on Jadwiga. She, yes she, became King, yes King, of Poland 1384. She was instrumental in encouraging the faith, unafraid to lead her army. Her plaque in Kraków refers to the coronation of Hedwig. And that makes me think of an owl from JKRowling obviously.

Hildegard of Bingen wrote three major theological works, the first recorded morality play, two scientific treatises and over 300 letters. Definitely a polymath.  She wrote the first detailed description of the female orgasm (p189). She created a safe space for women, nuns, to be educated and find their voice. No wonder her communities grew.

The book ends on Marjory Kempe, an English mystic, early 1400s. But I came away from that chapter confused by a woman who had had wonderful experiences of God but who seems to have been quite neglectful as a mother and wrote in her biography that she’d rather not have sex with her husband even if he was threatened with decapitation. Nonetheless, she gave birth to 14 children.

I had hoped there would be more on Julian of Norwich but I see that Ramirez has written a book on her!