Meet the women who made the Middle Ages
![[Whole folio] Psalm 95. Border decoration including grotesque with a rabbit's head. In the lower margin, a harvest field. Two women bending forward reap with sickles; in the centre, a bound sheaf, while a man with a sickle in his belt prepares another sheaf for binding,](https://d3ir5jsauc24hh.cloudfront.net/0370B42F-ACC4-4710-AA7016A5D20EF0FA/8c07993c571e47812a67e8f71363016b-xl.jpg)
Curator Eleanor Jackson introduces some of the women – writers, printers, weavers and illustrators – who shaped the cultural life of medieval Europe.
A version of this article first appeared in the autumn 2024 issue of Art Quarterly, the membership magazine of Art Fund.
The Middle Ages is a period where the narratives told are often dominated by men, presenting a tidy vision of social order in which women’s roles are sidelined. Yet the collections of institutions such as the British Library tell a different story, attesting to women’s contributions right across society: as authors, artists, homemakers, saints, leaders, workers, healers, traders and more.
The exhibition ‘Medieval Women: In Their Own Words’ aims to restore women to their central place in history by telling their stories through their own words, their own images, and by uncovering their lives through original documents and artefacts. Objects loaned from UK and international institutions as well as from the library’s own collections reveal how medieval women’s voices resonate across the centuries and still speak powerfully to our world today. One such object is the Luttrell Psalter, one of the most iconic and glorious illuminated manuscripts to survive from late medieval England (acquired with Art Fund support in 1929). Its vivid depictions of everyday life in rural Lincolnshire include female agricultural workers, showing the vital work of rural women, whose labour, ultimately, paid for the creation of magnificent works of art such as the Luttrell Psalter itself.
The artistic and cultural legacy of medieval women will run like a thread through the exhibition. These women’s agency, creativity and labour produced illuminated manuscripts, intricate textiles and remarkable art objects, and manywere trailblazers and skilled practitioners in a range of artistic pursuits.
Christine de Pizan, Europe‘s first professional woman author
‘God has given them [women] such beautiful minds to apply themselves, if they want to, in any of the fields where glorious and excellent men are active.’ So asserted Christine de Pizan (d1430), often described as the first professional woman author in Europe, in her impassioned defence of women, The Book of the City of Ladies (c1405, from a translation by Earl Jeffrey Richards, published by Pan in 1983). Centuries before feminism existed as either a concept or a movement, de Pizan insisted on women’s moral and intellectual equality. In City of Ladies she discusses exemplary historical, legendary and biblical women, describing this endeavour as building a metaphorical city out of women’s achievements.
Born in Italy, de Pizan moved to Paris as a young child when her father accepted a position as court astrologer to Charles V of France. After the death of her husband in 1389 she turned to writing to support herself and her two young children, becoming a prolific author and attracting patronage from the French royal family and aristocracy.
As well as composing the texts, de Pizan also personally supervised the creation of illuminated manuscripts of her works for presentation to her noble patrons. The largest and most splendid example is a two-volume collection of her works made for Isabeau of Bavaria (d1435), Queen of France, and known as The Book of the Queen. The frontispiece shows de Pizan presenting the book to Queen Isabeau in her chamber, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting.
In City of Ladies de Pizan also praises a woman book illuminator named Anastasia, whose painted borders and backgrounds were unsurpassed throughout Paris. ‘I know this from experience,’ she added, ‘for she has executed several things for me which stand out among the ornamental borders of great masters’ (from translation as earlier). Although Anastasia’s work remains unidentified, it is quite possible that she worked on The Book of the Queen. If so, then this most gorgeous of manuscripts would exemplify women’s cultural activity at the level of author, patron and craftswoman.
Anna Rügerin and Estellina Conat, 15th-century printers
A little later, women began to adopt a new role in book production: as printers. Movable type printing came into use in Europe in the 15th century, beginning with the famous Gutenberg Bible in the 1450s. The technology of print quickly spread, revolutionising the availability and affordability of books. Women participated in printing from the earliest times but, since most worked anonymously in family workshops, their contributions are generally invisible. The first woman in Europe to print under her own name is often credited as Anna Rügerin. She published an edition of the German legal compendium the Sachsenspiegel in Augsburg in 1484, announcing at the end: ‘printed and completed by Anna Rügerin’. After her husband’s death, Rügerin took over his printing business, apparently working in partnership with her brother.
Often overlooked, however, is Estellina Conat, a Jewish woman who worked in her family’s Hebrew printing workshop in Mantua (northern Italy) in the 1470s. Conat printed the first edition of Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi’s Beḥinat ha-‘Olam (The Contemplation of the World), a philosophical poem written after the expulsion of Jews from France in 1306. The colophon, or printer’s statement, at the end of the book, declares: ‘I, Estellina, the wife of my worthy husband Abraham Conat, wrote [meaning printed] this book.’ She used the word ‘wrote’ (katavti) because no Hebrew term for printing existed yet. Although she did not specify a date, Conat’s edition of Beḥinat ha-‘Olam was almost certainly printed in the mid-1470s. Therefore, the distinction of being the first woman in Europe to print under her own name goes, in fact, to her. Through their work in early print, women like Conat and Rügerin aided the spread of knowledge and literacy that profoundly influenced the culture of Europe.
Sibilla von Bondorf, scribe and illuminator
Sibilla von Bondorf (d c1524), a nun in the Order of Poor Clares, was an accomplished scribe and illuminator. She began her career in the Poor Clares’ convent in Freiburg (Germany) before moving to a convent in Strasbourg in 1483, where she eventually became prioress. Considering that most medieval manuscripts are anonymous and many have been lost over the centuries, Von Bondorf has an astonishing 14 surviving to her name.
In its style, subjects and expressive qualities, Von Bondorf’s artwork is typical of a movement of women’s book production in German-speaking lands known as Nonnenarbeit (nuns’ work). Nuns’ creations were unconventional because they often had limited access to artistic training and little contact with the world outside the cloisters. Their works have often been dismissed as naïve, crude and inferior. Yet their idiosyncratic features can be regarded as intentional, designed to articulate the nuns’ distinctive ideals and spirituality. As Von Bondorf’s illuminations demonstrate, Nonnenarbeit is often startling in its exuberance, beauty and sincerity of feeling.
One example is Von Borndorf’s painting of St Clare and the nuns of San Damiano mourning over the body of St Francis. This is a scene that was rarely depicted in medieval art, showing her interest in emphasising the role of the nuns in St Francis’ story and inviting the viewer to identify with them and share in their emotional responses. The bright colours, dense composition and flat visual plane are reminiscent of embroideries, suggesting cross-fertilisation with the textile art widely practised in convents.
Alice Claver and the silkwomen of London and al-Andalus
Textiles are the artistic medium most closely associated with women in the Middle Ages. We know from written records that women played a major role in crafts such as spinning, embroidery and silkwork, although it is rare that we can identify any of their surviving work today. One woman whose career we can reconstruct is Alice Claver (d1489), a London silkwoman. In medieval Europe, silkwork was an industry sustained chiefly by women that offered considerable opportunities for independence and enterprise. Claver ran a successful business that involved buying raw silk, spinning it into thread, and weaving and handcrafting it into intricate items. These she sold to a distinguished clientele that included Edward IV, Richard III and his queen, Anne Neville, and Henry VII. An account of Edward IV’s expenses for 1480 lists an array of gorgeous silk items purchased from Claver including sewing silk, silk-covered buttons, ribbons, fringes of many colours, and laces and tassels for garnishing the king’s books.
Like most silkwomen, Claver probably began her career as an apprentice in her early teens. She married Richard Claver, a wealthy mercer (cloth merchant) and, after he died in 1456, she chose not to remarry and continued her business over 30 years of widowhood. She operated a workshop within her household and her home bustled with apprentices, servants and alms-children (poor children taken in out of charity). In her will, she named as her heir a younger silkwoman, Katherine Champyon, who continued the business after Alice’s death.
The London silkwomen had a strong network and engaged in collective action. Alice was probably one of the London silkwomen who petitioned Parliament four times between 1455 and 1484, seeking economic protection for their profession. Parliament granted most of their requests. Yet, unlike the male-dominated trades of London, the silkwomen never formed a guild, leaving them vulnerable. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the guilds increasingly excluded women from silkworking, putting an end to the opportunities that had allowed women such as Alice to prosper.
In al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia), a thriving silk industry created luxury textiles that were highly sought after throughout Europe. One beautiful example, which is on loan for the exhibition from the Whitworth in Manchester, features a classic design favoured in the 14th and 15th centuries, with stripes bearing the calligraphic Arabic inscription ‘Glory to our Lord the Sultan’, alternating with floral and interlace knot-work designs. Although the specific craftspeople who made this beautiful textile are unknown, recent research has indicated that the skilled work of cultivating, processing and spinning silk in al-Andalus was carried out largely by women.
Herrad of Landsberg, abbess of Hohenbourg
Women in religious communities lived according to the principle of ora et labora (pray and work). In some medieval convents, women fulfilled this principle by creating religious books and artworks. Such creative endeavours were understood as a kind of worship, combining religious devotion with manual labour. Spectacularly perched on a mountaintop in Alsace, the Abbey of Hohenbourg (or Mont Sainte-Odile) was the site of one of the most ambitious projects of 12th-century book production, the Hortus deliciarum (Garden of Delights). The driving force behind it was Herrad of Landsberg (died after 1196), abbess of Hohenbourg, who likened compiling her scholarly project to a bee gathering sweet nectar from flowers.
The Hortus was a vast compendium, at least 648 pages, designed by Herrad for the education of her community and probably made by a workshop of women under her supervision. It told the history of the world from Creation to the End Times, including topics as wide-ranging as theology, music, ecclesiastical law, philosophy, cosmology and the science of time reckoning. It was filled with pictures and diagrams, skilfully painted, imaginative and often intellectual. Tragically, the Hortus perished in flames on 24 August 1870, when German incendiary bombs hit Strasbourg library during the Franco-Prussian War. Only reproductions made before the fire remain to give an impression of this once great manuscript.
Yet an unusual object in the British Library collection may also attest to the accomplishments of the Hohenbourg community. A parchment strip, 87 × 19cm, is painted on both sides with scenes from the life of St John the Baptist, one of Hohenbourg Abbey’s patron saints. At some point it has been concertina-folded along its length, suggesting that it might have been used as a flabellum (liturgical fan). Art historians have pointed out its striking resemblance to the Hortus miniatures, suggesting that it too was probably painted by the Hohenbourg workshop. This makes the John the Baptist strip their only work that survives to the present day, allowing us a tantalising peek into Herrad’s verdant garden of female knowledge and accomplishment.
‘Medieval Women: In Their Own Words’, the British Library, London, 25 October to 2 March 2025. 50% off exhibitions with National Art Pass.
Curator of illuminated manuscripts at the British Library, London.
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