Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church

Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church PDF Author: Stephanie Hollis
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 9780851153179
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
A fresh look at the position of women in the 8th and 9th centuries as defined by the literature of the early church.

Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church

Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church PDF Author: Stephanie Hollis
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN: 9780851153179
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
A fresh look at the position of women in the 8th and 9th centuries as defined by the literature of the early church.

Hild of Whitby and the Ministry of Women in the Anglo-Saxon World

Hild of Whitby and the Ministry of Women in the Anglo-Saxon World PDF Author: Anne E. Inman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1978700679
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This book tells the story of Hild, the abbess of a highly successful double monastery at Whitby in Northumbria, where she was responsible for the education of five future bishops. Here she exercised an authority which in subsequent centuries would be reserved exclusively for men. At thirteen Hild was baptized by Paulinus, who had come to Britain to join Augustine’s mission. Augustine had been sent by Pope Gregory to convert Britain, which had largely lapsed into paganism after the fall of the Roman Empire. Augustine in fact had little success in converting the Britons beyond Kent, and even in Kent Christianity had already been partially re-established by Queen Bertha, who had brought her Catholic Chaplain with her from Gaul upon her marriage to King Ethelbert. There were many powerful women, like Bertha, who had been at the forefront of keeping the faith alive in the "Dark Ages," but whose agency has been written out of history or down-played in favour of the actions of famous men. Hild’s story is brought back to life alongside Mary, who founded a desert community at Tabenisi; Macrina, the teacher (didaskalos) of Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea; Ita, confessor to Brendan; the formidable Aelffled, who succeeded Hild at Whitby, a co-worker and confidante of Cuthbert. As the Catholic Church struggles under the weight of centuries-old misogyny, it is surprising to see how, in the early medieval period, abbesses had shared governance with bishops. As that church struggles with a shortage of male priests to celebrate the sacraments, it is instructive to see how many sacramental ministries were once exercised by female monastics. Confession, for example, was once practiced in the same way whether the confessor was a man or, as in Hild’s case, a woman. The span of Hild’s life covers the period before and after the establishment of clericalism, the unbridgeable gap between the higher plane of the male priesthood and the lower plane of religious women. Bede’s telling of Hild’s life was already downplaying her authority as a powerful leader in the Anglo-Saxon church. It is time for that to be remedied.

Women in Anglo-Saxon England

Women in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Christine E. Fell
Publisher: British Museum Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description


Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England

Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Annie Whitehead
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1526748126
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
The little-known lives of women who ruled, schemed, and made peace and war, between the seventh and eleventh centuries: “Meticulously researched.” —Catherine Hanley, author of Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior Many Anglo-Saxon kings are familiar. Æthelred the Unready is one—but less is written about his wife, who was consort of two kings and championed one of her sons over the others, or about his mother, who was an anointed queen and powerful regent, but was also accused of witchcraft and regicide. A royal abbess educated five bishops and was instrumental in deciding the date of Easter; another took on the might of Canterbury and Rome and was accused by the monks of fratricide. Royal mothers wielded power: Eadgifu, wife of Edward the Elder, maintained a position of authority during the reigns of both her sons. Æthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, was a queen in all but name, while few have heard of Queen Seaxburh, who ruled Wessex, or Queen Cynethryth, who issued her own coinage. She, too, was accused of murder, and was also, like many of the royal women, literate and highly educated. Ranging from seventh-century Northumbria to eleventh-century Wessex and making extensive use of primary sources, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England examines the lives of individual women in a way that has often been done for the Anglo-Saxon men but not for their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters.

Double Agents

Double Agents PDF Author: Claire A Lees
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1783163615
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
First published in 2001, Double Agents was the first book-length study of women in Anglo-Saxon written culture that took on the insights provided by contemporary critical and feminist theory, and it quickly established itself as a standard. Now available again, it complicates the exclusion of women from the historical record of Anglo-Saxon England by tackling the deeper questions behind how the feminine is modeled, used, and made metaphoric in Anglo-Saxon texts, even when the women themselves are absent.

Women and Religion in Medieval England

Women and Religion in Medieval England PDF Author: Diana Wood
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Nuns and devout noblewomen were sometimes celebrated for their achievements in the literature of the medieval period, but more often than not these women only appear on the side-lines of history, while the ordinary wife and mother is virtually invisible. These papers, written by historians and archaeologists, discuss the religious devotion and spiritual life of medieval women from all walks of life. From an analysis of the architecture and economic organisation of nunneries, to an assessment of the medieval Church's response to the pain and perils of childbirth, these papers consider the influence of the church on the lives of women, and the influence that women had on the life and worship of the Church.

Encyclopedia of Monasticism: A-L

Encyclopedia of Monasticism: A-L PDF Author: William M. Johnston
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9781579580902
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 866

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Book Description
First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Importance of Women in Anglo-Saxon Times

The Importance of Women in Anglo-Saxon Times PDF Author: George Forrest Browne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Church history
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description


Going to Church in Medieval England

Going to Church in Medieval England PDF Author: Nicholas Orme
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300256507
Category : RELIGION
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
An engaging, richly illustrated account of parish churches and churchgoers in England, from the Anglo-Saxons to the mid-sixteenth century Parish churches were at the heart of English religious and social life in the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century. In this comprehensive study, Nicholas Orme shows how they came into existence, who staffed them, and how their buildings were used. He explains who went to church, who did not attend, how people behaved there, and how they--not merely the clergy--affected how worship was staged. The book provides an accessible account of what happened in the daily and weekly services, and how churches marked the seasons of Christmas, Lent, Easter, and summer. It describes how they celebrated the great events of life: birth, coming of age, and marriage, and gave comfort in sickness and death. A final chapter covers the English Reformation in the sixteenth century and shows how, alongside its changes, much that went on in parish churches remained as before.

Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England

Writing Women Saints in Anglo-Saxon England PDF Author: Paul Szarmach
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442664584
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The twelve essays in this collection advance the contemporary study of the women saints of Anglo-Saxon England by challenging received wisdom and offering alternative methodologies. The work embraces a number of different scholarly approaches, from codicological study to feminist theory. While some contributions are dedicated to the description and reconstruction of female lives of saints and their cults, others explore the broader ideological and cultural investments of the literature. The volume concentrates on four major areas: the female saint in the Old English Martyrology, genre including hagiography and homelitic writing, motherhood and chastity, and differing perspectives on lives of virgin martyrs. The essays reveal how saints’ lives that exist on the apparent margins of orthodoxy actually demonstrate a successful literary challenge extending the idea of a holy life.