Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister 500 to 900

Description

In what is probably the most comprehensive and revelatory work yet published on women in the Middle Ages, Suzanne Wemple examines the ways in which the status of women in both secular and religious life changed between 500 and 900. In the Frankish kingdom, women were able to exercise power and apply their talents outside the domestic sphere, though they did not reach either legal or social equality with men. Three distinct cultural forces in Frankish Gaul — Germanic, Roman, and Christian- determined women’s position, and Wemple concludes that their fusion benefited women, noting that females were much freer in Latin Christendom than they had been in pagan society. The cloister, in particular, offered women a means of self-expression that they avidly exploited during the earliest days of the Frankish kingdom, the Merovingian period. Wemple compares the Merovingians, who sanctioned divorce and tolerated polygamy, to the later Carolingians, who translated into secular laws the Christian ideal of marital indissolubility. Delving into the ninth-century application of Christianity to family law, the author points out how the enforcement of monogamy and prohibition of divorce, as well as the emergence of the nuclear family, affected women’s power. She describes how ecclesiastic regulation of monastic life intensified inequality between the sexes. Wemple cogently discusses the economic power of medieval women, their influence as wives and mothers, their cultural contributions as administrators, educators, spiritual leaders, scribes, and writers, their declining position in the Frankish church, and the treatment of peasant women. This volume is not only a definitive study of the history of women in the Frankish period, but an indispensable introduction to the history of European women. Acknowledgments xvii Introduction 1 part one: women in secular life 1. The Triple Heritage of Merovingian Women 9 Germanic Tribes 10 The Roman Empire 15 Early Christianity 19 2. Merovingian Women in Law and the Economy 27 Women in a Man’s World 28 Betrothal and Marriage 31 Polygyny and Divorce 38 Marriage Settlements and Inheritance Rights 44 3. Wives and Mothers in Merovingian Society 51 Marriage Patterns 51 Women in the Aristocracy 58 Women in the Peasantry 70 4. The Ascent of Monogamy 75 Carolingian Legislation 76 New Marriage Strategies 88 5. The Consequences of Monogamy 97 Wives and Widows in the Aristocracy 97 Carolingian Women as Landowners 106 PART TWO! WOMEN IN RELIGIOUS LIFE 6. The Waning Influence of Women in the Frankish Church 127 Women in Pastoral Care 129 Women and the Diaconate 136 Theory and Practice in the Seventh Century 141 Carolingian Reforms 143 7. The Search for Spiritual Perfection and Freedom 149 Rebellion and Obedience 150 The Heroic Age of Female Asceticism 154 The Flowering of Female Monasticism 158 Monasticism under the Carolingians 165 8. Scholarship in Women’s Communities 175 Nuns as Scholars, Teachers, and Scribes 175 Merovingian Nuns as Authors 181 Carolingian Restrictions 187 Conclusion 189 Appendix 199 Abbreviations 202 Notes 203 Bibliography 307 Primary Sources 307 Secondary Sources 316 Index 337