Veiled Women

Veiled Women
Author: Sarah Foot
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351963317

There is no published account of the history of religious women in England before the Norman Conquest. Yet, female saints and abbesses, such as Hild of Whitby or Edith of Wilton, are among the most celebrated women recorded in Anglo-Saxon sources and their stories are of popular interest. This book offers the first general and critical assessment of female religious communities in early medieval England. It transforms our understanding of the different modes of religious vocation and institutional provision and thereby gives early medieval women’s history a new foundation.

Veiled Women: The disappearance of nuns from Anglo-Saxon England

Veiled Women: The disappearance of nuns from Anglo-Saxon England
Author: Sarah Foot
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN:

There is no published account of the history of religious women in England before the Norman Conquest. Yet, female saints and abbesses, such as Hild of Whitby or Edith of Wilton, are among the most celebrated women recorded in Anglo-Saxon sources and their stories are of popular interest. This book offers the first general and critical assessment of female religious communities in early medieval England. It transforms our understanding of the different modes of religious vocation and institutional provision and thereby gives early medieval women's history a new foundation.

Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England

Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England
Author: Rebecca Hardie
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2023-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501512250

Æthelflæd (c. 870–918), political leader, military strategist, and administrator of law, is one of the most important ruling women in English history. Despite her multifaceted roles and family legacy, however, her reign and relationship with other women in tenth-century England have never been the subject of a book-length study. This interdisciplinary collection of essays redresses a notable hiatus in scholarship of early medieval England. Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Women in Tenth-Century England argues for a reassessment of women’s political, military, literary, and domestic agency. It invites deeper reflection on the female kinships, networks, and communities that give meaning to Æthelflæd’s life, and through this shows how medieval history can invite new engagements with the past.

The Third Gender and Aelfric's Lives of Saints

The Third Gender and Aelfric's Lives of Saints
Author: Rhonda L McDaniel
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2018-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1580443109

In The Third Gender, McDaniel addresses the idea of the "third gender" in early hagiography and Latin treatises on virginity and then examines Aelfric's treatment of gender in his translations of Latin monastic Lives for his non-monastic audiences. She first investigates patristic ideas about a "third gender" by describing this concept within the theoretical frameworks of monasticism and then turns to creating a historical and theological cultural context within which to locate an interpretation of Aelfric's portrayals of male and female saints.

On the Song of Songs and Selected Writings

On the Song of Songs and Selected Writings
Author: Saint Bede (the Venerable)
Publisher: Paulist Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2011
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0809147009

In one series, the original writings of the universally acknowledged teachers of the Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, and Islamic traditions have been critically selected, translated, and introduced by internationally recognized scholars and spiritual leaders. Book jacket.

The Royal Women Who Made England

The Royal Women Who Made England
Author: M J Porter
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2024-03-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1399068458

Throughout the tenth century, England, as it would be recognized today, formed. No longer many Saxon kingdoms, but rather, just England. Yet, this development masks much in the century in which the Viking raiders were seemingly driven from England’s shores by Alfred, his children and grandchildren, only to return during the reign of his great, great-grandson, the much-maligned Æthelred II. Not one but two kings would be murdered, others would die at a young age, and a child would be named king on four occasions. Two kings would never marry, and a third would be forcefully divorced from his wife. Yet, the development towards ‘England’ did not stop. At no point did it truly fracture back into its constituent parts. Who then ensured this stability? To whom did the witan turn when kings died, and children were raised to the kingship? The royal woman of the House of Wessex came into prominence during the century, perhaps the most well-known being Æthelflæd, daughter of King Alfred. Perhaps the most maligned being Ælfthryth (Elfrida), accused of murdering her stepson to clear the path to the kingdom for her son, Æthelred II, but there were many more women, rich and powerful in their own right, where their names and landholdings can be traced in the scant historical record. Using contemporary source material, The Royal Women Who Made England can be plucked from the obscurity that has seen their names and deeds lost, even within a generation of their own lives.

The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World

The Lost Art of the Anglo-Saxon World
Author: Alexandra Lester-Makin
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2019-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789251478

This latest title in the highly successful Ancient Textiles series is the first substantial monograph-length historiography of early medieval embroideries and their context within the British Isles. The book brings together and analyses for the first time all 43 embroideries believed to have been made in the British Isles and Ireland in the early medieval period. New research carried out on those embroideries that are accessible today, involving the collection of technical data, stitch analysis, observations of condition and wear-marks and microscopic photography supplements a survey of existing published and archival sources. The research has been used to write, for the first time, the ‘story’ of embroidery, including what we can learn of its producers, their techniques, and the material functions and metaphorical meanings of embroidery within early medieval Anglo-Saxon society. The author presents embroideries as evidence for the evolution of embroidery production in Anglo-Saxon society, from a community-based activity based on the extended family, to organized workshops in urban settings employing standardized skill levels and as evidence of changing material use: from small amounts of fibers produced locally for specific projects to large batches brought in from a distance and stored until needed. She demonstrate that embroideries were not simply used decoratively but to incorporate and enact different meanings within different parts of society: for example, the newly arrived Germanic settlers of the fifth century used embroidery to maintain links with their homelands and to create tribal ties and obligations. As such, the results inform discussion of embroidery contexts, use and deposition, and the significance of this form of material culture within society as well as an evaluation of the status of embroiderers within early medieval society. The results contribute significantly to our understanding of production systems in Anglo-Saxon England and Ireland.

The Politics of Language

The Politics of Language
Author: Rebecca Stephenson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442624167

Old English literature thrived in late tenth-century England. Its success was the result of a concerted effort by the leaders of the Benedictine Reform movement to encourage both widespread literacy and a simple literary style. The manuscripts written in this era are the source for the majority of the Old English literature that survives today, including literary classics such as Beowulf. Yet the same monks who copied and compiled these important Old English texts themselves wrote in a rarified Latin, full of esoteric vocabulary and convoluted syntax and almost incomprehensible even to the well-educated. Comparing works by the two most prolific authors of the era, Byrhtferth of Ramsey and Ælfric of Eynsham, Rebecca Stephenson explains the politics that encouraged the simultaneous development of a simple English style and an esoteric Latin style. By examining developments in Old English and Anglo-Latin side by side, The Politics of Language opens up a valuable new perspective on the Benedictine Reform and literacy in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

Anglo-Saxon Kingship and Political Power

Anglo-Saxon Kingship and Political Power
Author: Kathrin McCann
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2018-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786832933

Works on Anglo-Saxon kingship often take as their starting point the line from Beowulf: ‘that was a good king’. This monograph, however, explores what it means to be a king, and how kings defined their own kingship in opposition to other powers. Kings derived their royal power from a divine source, which led to conflicts between the interpreters of the divine will (the episcopate) and the individual wielding power (the king). Demonstrating how Anglo-Saxon kings were able to manipulate political ideologies to increase their own authority, this book explores the unique way in which Anglo-Saxon kings understood the source and nature of their power, and of their own authority.

Stealing Obedience

Stealing Obedience
Author: Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012-04-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1442662581

Narratives of monastic life in Anglo-Saxon England depict individuals as responsible agents in the assumption and performance of religious identities. To modern eyes, however, many of the ‘choices’ they make would actually appear to be compulsory. Stealing Obedience explores how a Christian notion of agent action – where freedom incurs responsibility – was a component of identity in the last hundred years of Anglo-Saxon England, and investigates where agency (in the modern sense) might be sought in these narratives. Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe looks at Benedictine monasticism through the writings of Ælfric, Anselm, Osbern of Canterbury, and Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, as well as liturgy, canon and civil law, chronicle, dialogue, and hagiography, to analyse the practice of obedience in the monastic context. Stealing Obedience brings a highly original approach to the study of Anglo-Saxon narratives of obedience in the adoption of religious identity.