The Secret Life of Medieval Female Artists Discovered by Accident

From Interesting Engineering: 

A religious woman living in Germany around 1100AD was likely contributing art to the richly illustrated manuscripts of the era. Analysis of her teeth plaque shows evidence of the rare and expensive lapis lazuli pigment. The research shows women may have played a bigger role in religious art than previously thought.

This may indicate the woman was a painter of these highly sought after manuscripts. The study was examining dental calculus - the plaque that fossilizes on human teeth during life - of bodies found close to the site of a women's monastery at Dalheim in Germany. 

Little is known about the monastery, but a women's exclusive community may have formed there as early as the 10th century AD. 

Written records indicate that a lively community present in 1244 AD. Researchers believe up to 14 religious women may have lived on site until its destruction in a fire in the 14th century.

How The Black Death Caused Medieval Women To Shrink

From Forbes: 

If people living after the Black Death were healthier than their ancestors, why did women get shorter?

In the middle of the 14th century, the Black Death swept Europe, killing millions of people, but archaeologists have recently discovered that its effects were far-ranging and surprising. People living after the plague were overall healthier than those who lived just before it, but a new study suggests that the Black Death may have caused Medieval women to shrink.

Writing in the American Journal of Human Biology, bioarchaeologist Sharon DeWitte from the University of South Carolina studied more than 800 skeletons from Medieval London with the goal of investigating "stress, sex, and plague." A bit less salacious than it sounds, the main topic covered in the research is the experience of physiological stress among members of two sexes -- male and female -- before and after the Black Death.

In examining skeletons from the 11th-12th century, the first half of the 13th century, and the mid-14th through mid-16th centuries, DeWitte calculated age-at-death from the bones and also tracked changes in the canine teeth and in the length of shin bones as a way of estimating people's health.

Using a mathematical survival analysis, DeWitte found that survivorship decreased before the Black Death but increased after it, for both males and females. That is, she found a general increase in health after the plague, explaining that "the post-Black Death demographic changes might represent a 'harvesting' effect; that is, an increase in mortality among people with compromised health."

read more here @ Forbes

The Silkwomen of Medieval London

From JSTOR Daily: 

A group of skilled women ran the silk-making industry in 15th century London. So why didn't they protect their workers' rights by forming a guild?

Women’s paid work in medieval Europe was limited, to say the least. The options were essentially: domestic service, retail, midwifery, spinning, and sex work. None of these was considered skilled enough to be worthy of a guild. Guilds (also called gilds) were one of the most influential forms of organization and community in the Middle Ages. Organized around trades or crafts, guilds worked for the mutual benefit of their members. By controlling access to skills passed from master to apprentice, guilds could be a real economic and political force—and few of them allowed women members.

But there were some guilds for women. Historians Maryanne Kowaleski and Judith M. Bennett write that “the treatment of working women by medieval gilds is a complex and varied story.” Building on a historically significant article by one of the first women medievalists, Marian K. Dale, Kowaleski and Bennett argue that “gild membership allowed women to participate in some form of community life that offered its members economic security, spiritual comfort and social privilege.” Wives and daughters of male guild members, as well as widows of male members, were the most common female guild members.

read more here @ JSTOR Daily

Museumgoers in Germany can now see 'Snow White's' gravestone

From ABC News: 

Once upon a time, there was a wealthy woman named Maria Sophia von Erthal. Born in 1725 in the castle of the Medieval German town of Lohr am Main, she was a baroness and the sister of bishops.

But she went on to be known culturally as the possible inspiration for the fairy tale "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" written by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the 19th century.

Kempkens told the BBC that there are "indications" that von Erthal was the model for Snow White.

"Today when you make a film about a historic person there is also fiction in it. So in this case I think there is a historic basis, but there are also fictional elements" he told the network.

Von Erthal's life did not have an overtly romantic ending. She became blind in her youth and died at the age of 71 in a monastery in Bamberg, according to the museum.

At the time, women did not typically get their own gravestones, which makes von Erthal's historically significant, whether or not she inspired the fairy tale, points out the museum.

Marian statue may be medieval

From Church Times: 

The most famous Marian image in medieval England, which was believed to have been burned in the 16th century, could be safe and sound at the Victorian and Albert Museum, two historians have said.

The image of Our Lady of Walsingham — a simple wooden statue that stood beside the altar of Walsingham’s Holy House — was believed to have been burned in 1539, in London, either in the courtyard of Thomas Cromwell’s house in Chelsea, or at Smithfield.

But it has long been recognised that a 13th-century statue of the Madonna and Child at the V&A, known as the Langham Madonna, bears a striking resemblance to the image of Our Lady of Walsingham on the priory seal.

In 1931, six years after it was acquired by the museum, Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton, one of the founding guardians of the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham, wrote in The Tablet of the discovery of a carved wooden figure “in an old house near Walsingham”. It could be a copy of the Walsingham image, he suggested, or even the original, “saved perhaps as other relics and holy things, by means of substitution being made for the purposes of satisfying the desecrators”.

read more here @ Church Times

The wealthy widow who made her mark in medieval England

From The Jewish Chronicle: 

Among the many disasters associated with the fast of Tishah b'Av is the expulsion of English Jewry.

Licoricia was a remarkable Jewess, both because of her love life and her business dealings. But whereas that may apply to many a Jewish woman today, she stands out as being one of the few of whom that could be said in medieval England.

Her story also epitomises the prosperity and gradual decline of the Jewish community, which culminated in one of her sons being hanged and the others banished in the expulsion of the Jews from England, one of the many tragedies connected with Tishah B’Av, which begins next Saturday evening.

The story of the Jews as a settled community starts after William I conquered England in 1066 and invited them over to help colonise his new kingdom.

This was the core factor behind both their rise and downfall: on the one hand they had the king’s protection; on the other hand, they were seen as interlopers, both foreign and the king’s agents. They were also of a different faith in a society where there was only one right faith.

In addition to this toxic mix, many Jews were moneylenders. This was because Christians were banned by canon law from offering loans with interest and so there was a vacuum in society. It enabled many Jews to make a living, but it came at the high cost of unpopularity when the debtors faced mounting interest, or could not repay their loans and had to forfeit their deposits.

This was the world into which Licoricia was born. We are not sure when, or where, but thanks to the painstaking research of the late Suzanne Bartlet, we know that she first appears in 1234 as a young widow, known as Licoricia of Winchester.



read more here @ The Jewish Chronicle

Polish researcher identified possible grave of Slavic warrior woman in Denmark

From Science in Poland: 

Militant Viking women have been popularised in recent years in mass culture by the popular TV series Vikings. Dr. Leszek Gardeła from the Department of Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at the University of Bonn decided to take a closer look at this little researched issue.

According to the researcher, both the form of the burial - a chamber grave with an additional coffin - and the discovered weapon suggest that the deceased woman could originate from the territory of present-day Poland, therefore she could be a Slav. It is known that the burial is just over a thousand years old, as evidenced by an Arab coin from the 10th century found in the grave. The scientist emphasizes that it was the only grave in this cemetery that contained weapons.

"The presence of Slavic warriors in Denmark was more significant than previously thought; this image emerges from new research" - adds Dr. Gardeła and points out that the presence of a possible Slavic woman buried in a Danish cemetery is not necessarily surprising. "During the Middle Ages, this island was a melting pot of Slavic and Scandinavian elements" - the researcher emphasises.

read more here @ Science in Poland

How the society controls a woman’s sexual, matrimonial and reproductive choices

From Daily O: 

Honour Killings .... Each case is telling of the severe violence and hate that emanates when a woman exercises her choice in marriage or relationship. While some of these cases had grabbed national media attention, some were just reported on a corner of the newspaper and forgotten the next day. But the fact remains that these crimes in the name of honour are rampant in India and not much efforts have been made to tackle the menace.

It wasn’t until 2014 that the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) started collecting separate data on the crime. As per the 2014 NCRB report, a total of 28 cases were reported where honour was the motive of the murder. This number saw a shocking 792% jump to 251 cases in the 2015 NCRB report and then fell to 77 cases in the 2016 report. UP topped the list of states with the highest honour killings in the 2016 report with nearly 70% of all the murders in the state caused with honour as the motive.

Evidently, these data are not fully reliable due to the fact that these cases are tabooed and people don’t talk about them openly. A sudden jump in 2015 indicates a pro-active data collection but a sudden fall next year indicates a probable awareness that such crimes would no longer be taken lightly leading to aggressive attempts to hush them up. The NCRB has not published any data after 2016 — in absence of which, fully understanding the nature of these crimes is not possible.

A patriarchal and patrilineal society’s very survival depends upon controlling women’s sexual, matrimonial and reproductive choices because it is through a woman’s womb that identities are produced and reproduced, and controls over properties are maintained.

read more here @ Daily O

Sor Juana, Founding Mother of Mexican Literature

From JSTOR Daily:

From a convent in New Spain, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz became one of the leading lights of the Spanish Baroque’s golden age. A scholar, poet, playwright, philosopher, and composer, in her lifetime Sor Juana (1648-1695) was known as the Tenth Muse and the Phoenix of America. Condemned by the male hierarchy of the Catholic Church, she has since become a Hispanic/Chicana/Latina feminist icon and a founding mother of Mexican literature.

Sure, she was brilliant and multilingual, writing in Latin and Nahuatl, but how did she do all this from inside a cloister? Good prep work, evidently. Before joining the convent, she educated herself in a library inherited from her grandfather. As an adolescent, she became a lady-in-waiting to the viceroy’s wife. Her brains and wit earned her renown in the royal court; a group of forty scholars tested her and granted her the equivalent of a university degree (otherwise impossible for a woman to get). Once inside the convent—a life choice that was virtually the only alternative to marriage—Sor Juana ran a salon for the intellectual elite of Mexico City.

The Church did eventually force her to give up her library and writing in 1694. She died the following year. She had, however, already published the body of work that made her reputation. This includes poetry, particularly her masterpiece Primero sueño (The Dream), comedies, dramas, and La Respuesta (The Answer or The Reply).

read more here @ JSTOR Daily