Medieval Women in their own words

At the end of last week, I was to be found back at one of my old haunts, the British Library, to see their new exhibition, Medieval Women In Their Own Words. I went with my Museums Friend, Becca, whom I met almost thirty years ago when we worked together at the Science Museum on Exhibition Road in London. She stayed in museums / publishing / public engagement work when I went off to do other things, so it’s always a good thing to attend such events with her as we have some idea of the scaffolding that goes on behind the scenes of setting up a gallery.

I was already interested to see what they did with this exhibition, as it really hits the sweet spot between my academic historic interests and my ever-evolving thoughts on women within the family context as keepers of family history.

At heart, this is a good exhibition and I enjoyed it enormously. If it suffers from anything, it is the sheer breadth of information it presents, and the large number of heavy-duty themes it covers, which can leave you gasping a bit by the end of it, trying to sort it all out in your head. In encompassing themes of Queenship, women and religion (both as consumers of, as church attendants and owners of prayer books and psalters, and proponants of, as religious women, nuns, abbesses and anchoresses), business and economic matters, medicine, political power (separate from Queenship) and of course in their various positions as daughters, wives, mothers and widows, the surface is lightly scratched on all of these topics.

The range is also enormous in terms of time – the stated parameters are 1100 – 1500 ISH, which is broad enough in itself, but also leaves out some very important women from earlier periods who could just as well be included as having a voice which makes more sense of later discussions on Queenship, particularly, and women’s spiritual lives. It is hard to discuss Julian of Norwich (1342 – c. 1416) without first making reference to St Hild of Whitby (614-680) and, if she left no words of her own, her importance in making a space for Christian women in Northumberia during the conversion from pagan to Christian belief in the seventh century, is unarguable.

Although the exhibition wisely restricts itself (mostly) to Europe, it does reference Al-Andalus, the Muslim- controlled Iberian Peninsula that existed between 711 and 1492. It also speaks of the Crusades to the Holy Land of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the role women – particularly queens – could play there. And what medieval exhibition would be complete without Joan of Arc?

This is, perhaps, where the weak points show – there is no visible timeline through the exhibition, so you are likely to see a medical text from tenth century Al-Andalus alongside a fifteenth century herbal from Abingdon, which is interesting but not easily comparable. Additionally, the whole exhitibition could benefit enormously from some very large maps showing the areas under discussion, and some even larger family trees, at the very least showing the crowned heads of Europe and how all those families link together. Discussion of Empress Matilda makes little sense unless you know she was married first to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, then Geoffrey of Anjou whilst also being the only living legitimate child of King Henry I of England at his death in 1135. Her bloody and pointless civil war, fought against her cousin, Stephen of Blois (son of Henry I’s sister, Adela of Normandy), which devolved into an extended stalemate from the early 1140s until the Treat of Wallingford in 1154, only makes sense in this context. At a lower (social) level, there is also a lot about the Pastons of Norfolk to be found and, again, a family tree would be very useful here as you try to wade through the multiple Johns, Williams, Clements and Margarets / Margerys. I do this for a living and I was lost!

The major thing to take from the exhibition, however, is how much of a voice women DID have in the medieval period; how much of a role they did play in private, public and spiritual life and what we can see of their contributions to the economy, to art, to music, to education, to medicine, theology and philosophy. The articles chosen to illustrate all these points are beautiful and it is sometimes hard to believe that they are coming up to 1,000 years old in some cases, the colours are so fresh and new.

So, should anyone find themselves in the St Pancras area with a couple of hours to spare, I’d suggest a look into the exhibition. The statue of Eleanor of Castile that welcomes you in, seen above, sets the tone very nicely.