Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World
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often oversaw the education of girls from other families. Depending on the
place and the era, many of these ladies kept busy with necessary crafts such
as spinning, weaving, and embroidery. Some brewed medicinal potions or
ale themselves. Each manor or castle was a self-sustaining farm, as much as
it could be. A lady had to be at least somewhat familiar with farming, all the
crafts, building repair, education, and buying and selling.
When the lord of the manor or castle was away from home, the lady took
over all his oversight responsibility. She hired and fi red, bought and sold,
and even took over the defense of the castle or house. She was his repre-
sentative in all matters. During the Crusades, husbands could be away
for years, if they came back at all. There was a corresponding rise in the
rights and freedoms of these ladies. In some places where women had been
barred from directly inheriting land, laws were amended to permit widows
or daughters to inherit.
The castle lady lived a life of comfort and ease, but she also lived under very strict
rules of conduct with little freedom of movement. The illustration is from a poem
written by Christine de Pizan, one of the few successful women authors of the Middle
Ages. A widow who had to support her children, she began writing poems, stories,
and advice. The new availability of paper and secular copyists allowed her to sell
enough books to become reasonably prosperous. (Paul Lacroix, Moeurs, Usage et
Costumes au Moyen Age et a l’Epoque de la Renaissance, 1878)
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The medieval lady’s education varied in place and time. In the early pe-
riod, while literacy was uncommon and while barbarian invasions kept sur-
vival as the primary focus, very few women could read. Only the daughters
of some kings such as Charlemagne learned to read. By the 11th century,
most upper-class girls were learning to read. They needed to read in order
to amuse and educate themselves and to keep their husbands’ accounts
when they were in charge. Many girls learned some form of music and
dance. They learned a strict code of manners: how to greet, converse, and
eat, as well as how to handle diffi cult social situations. The lady’s role in
public was to appear beautiful and serene and to give no sign of trouble if
she was anxious or unhappy. A lady’s stressful face might give away her hus-
band’s secret troubles.
The condition of widows varied greatly. In some places and in some eras,
a widow had few rights. In 12th-century England, unless a widow bought
back the right to raise her children and give them in marriage, they were re-
moved, regardless of age, and placed with a guardian. Guardianships could
be sold several times until the child came of age, so many widows tried to
buy back these rights. In England, they automatically received one-third of
a husband’s estate to keep, but no more. In other places, they could retain
the whole estate and live with independence, or they could return to their
family’s home to be cared for or remarried.
The image we have of the medieval lady is a fairy-tale construction
blended with truth. Most upper-class women led diffi cult lives, although
they were surrounded by luxury. Their marriages were often unkind, since
they were matched on the basis of land, money, or power. But they lived
on a plane above the noise and dirt of the classes below them, and they left
behind an impression of magical elegance. Some of this image comes from
the romances and troubadour songs. Many romances told the stories of
beautiful, refi ned, intelligent, sweet ladies who won the love of kings and
knights and who suffered for this love. While some real ladies led such
lives, most did not.
Women in towns had fewer restrictions than castle ladies. They worked
hard, starting in childhood, but had more control over their own destinies.
Some town girls became apprentices on their own, in some eras and places.
More often, girls helped in the family trade and then helped their husbands
in their trade. Wives worked next to their husbands in all kinds of crafts,
and the craft guilds made exceptions for wives, daughters, and some female
servants to work in trades that were generally barred to women. Widows
often carried on a husband’s craft or business.
Cities included a wide range of material wealth. Some women in town
were servants, living in a back room of the house and never earning
enough to move into anything better. These women tended (and breast-
fed) babies, cleaned, washed, sewed, and did all the laborious work of a
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742
house. Their wages went up and down as conditions changed. Sometimes
their parents were paid for their labor so that they helped support younger
siblings at home. Some worked to save for a dowry. Being a servant was
still considered better than living in poverty in the country, and servants
could move up to better employment if they had skill and good recom-
mendations.
At the top of the urban scale were the merchants’ wives, who might live
with more luxury than castle ladies. By the end of the Middle Ages, mer-
chants’ town houses had every possible comfort. The sumptuary laws tried
to prevent their wives from dressing like noblewomen, which shows that
they could afford it, and many were doing so. Less wealthy crafts supported
women and families on a more modest scale. They were busy and generally
lived in fi nancial security.
The trades of spinning and brewing were dominated by women. Many
town women made and sold beer or ale out of their homes. Every woman
kept a spinning distaff nearby and used wasted minutes to add to a growing
spindle of thread. Some women spun for a living. Our term spinster, mean-
ing an unmarried woman, comes from this large group of women who kept
themselves alive without the support of a husband, industriously spinning
yarn and thread at all hours. While weaving was a man’s job, lace making
and silk weaving were dominated by women.
Medieval farm workers formed the backbone of the economy. They were
either free or unfree. Unfree peasants were not exactly slaves, but they did
not have the freedom to move away or alter their terms of employment.
They were born to live on a manor, and they stayed on that manor unless
they were granted freedom or unless they paid an annual fee for permis-
sion to live in a town. We also call these unfree farmers “serfs.” Free farm-
ers were not necessarily better off fi nancially, but they did not owe the same
obligations to a landowner and could move if they chose.
The women of these farm families, both free and unfree, had very few
options. They worked hard next to the men, helping sow and harvest and
care for the animals. They cut fi rewood and hauled water. In addition, they
cared for children and made as much as possible of what their family would
need through spinning, weaving, and sewing. They cooked and brewed,
and they gathered seasonal fruit and nuts. Most peasant families were very
poor, and the lives of these women were hard. Some obtained permission
to work in a nearby town as servants, but otherwise, they married locally
and carried on with peasant farming life as they had always known it. Those
who lived near a market were often able to earn extra money by brewing
ale, like town women.
During the early 12th century, women began trying to join or imitate
men’s religious orders. Some of the monastic orders welcomed and pro-
tected them, and others did not. Throughout the 12th and 13th centuries,
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743
the attitude of the Popes changed. Some viewed women’s vocations with
suspicion, while others admitted that women, too, could be called to a re-
ligious life and were mainly concerned with their support, protection, and
regulation.
Early orders of nuns were informal. Many wealthy young women in Flan-
ders and northern France left their homes and refused marriages, instead
choosing lives of complete poverty in the order of Beguines. The Beguines
had no property and lived in huts of their own choosing, rather than in a
convent. Saint Clare, their founder, was a friend of Saint Francis and con-
sidered herself personally to be under his pastoral care, although he resisted
any oversight of women.
As more women clamored to join orders, the church had to make for-
mal provision for them. The Cistercian order of monks admitted women’s
convents to its rule, provided that they follow the same rules of order and
discipline. Cistercian convents multiplied in France and Spain, probably
because the Cathar religious movement, which had been suppressed vio-
lently, allowed for religious vocations of women; the church needed to sup-
ply this need in order to rule out a Cathar revival.
By the later Middle Ages, many convents owned vast property, served as
boarding schools to the children of the rich, or took in society women who
did not have a serious vocation. Unwelcome daughters could be placed in a
convent, without regard to their wishes. Poor and serious convents still ex-
isted, but there were many nuns who did not take the religious life seriously
Poor women generally had more freedom of expression and travel than castle women,
but they also had ceaseless hard work. These women are helping with the daily task of
milking the sheep. They also made the butter and cheese, spun the sheep’s wool, and
kept up innumerable other chores such as making ale, tending children, gathering
wood, and sewing. (The British Library/StockphotoPro)
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and who gave convents a bad reputation. They kept pets, visited men, and
neglected chapel.
A few women lived unusual lives for their times. Some were religious—
abbesses who wrote well-known books. Italian legend said that a woman
taught at the medical school in Salerno in the 11th century. Her name was
Trotula, and although a real person cannot be positively identifi ed, medical
books under her name circulated during the 12th and 13th centuries.
Two French ladies lived unusual, famous lives in the 15th century. Chris-
tine de Pizan was born in 1364. When her husband, a French court sec-
retary, suddenly died, Christine turned to writing love ballads to support her
family. In time she became one of the most successful writers in France. In
1405 she published The Book of the City of Ladies and later wrote The Three
Virtues, both of which discussed the proper lives and roles of women. A
famous illustration shows her offering her newest book to the queen.
Joan of Arc is perhaps the most famous medieval woman, although her
life was very short. As a teenager, she saw visions of saints who urged
her to go to the court at Chinon and present herself as a military com-
mander. The uncrowned French king Charles VII was on the verge of los-
ing his kingdom to combined English and Burgundian forces. Wearing
white armor and urging confi dent, offensive action, Joan led the armies
of France and Aragon to several victories. After King Charles VII captured
Paris and was crowned, Burgundian forces captured Joan. King Charles did
not ransom her, and she was sent to the English to be tried as a heretic for
hearing voices and wearing men’s clothing. Joan was burned at the stake
in 1431.
See also: Babies, Beverages, Minstrels and Troubadours, Monasteries,
Weddings.
Further Reading
Bennett, Judith M. Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Chang-
ing World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Bennett, Judith M. Women in the Medieval English Countryside: Gender and
Household in Brigstock before the Plague. New York: Oxford University Press,
1989.
Gies, Frances, and Joseph Gies. Daily Life in Medieval Times. New York: Black
Dog and Leventhal, 1990.
Hanawalt, Barbara. The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medi-
eval London. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Hanawalt, Barbara, ed. Women and Work in Pre-Industrial Europe. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1986.
Power, Eileen. Medieval Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Singman, Jeffrey. Daily Life in Medieval Europe. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1999.
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Shahar, Shulamith. The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages. New
York: Routledge, 1984.
Stuard, Susan Mosher, ed. Women in Medieval Society. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1976.
Wilson, Katharina M., and Nadia Margolis, eds. Women in the Middle Ages: An En-
cyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Z
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Zoos
Many kings and noblemen (and even some Popes) kept menageries of ex-
otic animals, following the example of Roman emperors. The Roman em-
perors used some of the animals for public displays at the Circus. Medieval
monarchs rarely, if ever, had fi ghting exhibitions in the Roman style. Some
had public parades of their animals to show their magnifi cence. A favorite
theme was to have exotic animals paraded with foreigners from Arabia or
Ethiopia in order to suggest that the king was dominant over these far-off
regions.
The earliest medieval zoos were in Muslim Spain. The caliphs in Cor-
doba kept a large zoo of exotic animals, many imported from Africa and
Asia. It was surrounded by a moat to keep the animals secure. In the ninth
century, Charlemagne kept a menagerie at Aachen, in a climate colder than
most of the animals were adapted for. The caliph of Baghdad sent an el-
ephant for his collection, which had to make a long journey on foot over
the Alps and only lived a few years. Charlemagne also kept camels, lions and
monkeys, and a few bears.
Beginning with William I, the English kings kept a menagerie that was
housed at the Tower of London by the middle of the 13th century. The re-
cords are not clear as to which animals lived there at which times, nor how
they were fed or cared for. One chronicler stated that Henry I had a victory
parade in Normandy that included a leopard riding a horse and a panther
pulling a chariot. Another reported that King Henry II of England kept a
menagerie of exotic animals at his palace at Woodstock. Reportedly, he had
lions, leopards, camels, and a porcupine.
Henry III kept a pair of leopards or lions at the Tower of London, a gift
of Emperor Frederick II of Germany. His son, Prince Edward, became known
as the “Leopard Prince” in association with both the heraldic and the me-
nagerie cats. Henry III added a polar bear, a gift from the king of Norway.
The keepers allowed the white bear to swim in the Thames on a leash, catch-
ing its own fi sh, but kept it muzzled the rest of the time. In 1254, Henry’s
brother-in-law, King Louis IX of France, sent him an elephant. It lived in
a special house in London and was eagerly viewed by the public, but it did
not live more than a few years.
The Tower of London continued to have a royal menagerie, probably
housed mainly in the gatehouse of the Lion Gate. As animals died, they re-
placed the lions, leopards, and bears, with at least one more polar bear mak-
ing its appearance in the reign of Edward I. Tower records show that each
lion ate one quarter of a sheep every day, making them very expensive pets.
By the 15th century, the collection was not large, but it was still in exis-
tence. The Lion Tower began to admit some paying visitors to see the ani-
mals. King Henry VI decreed that in lieu of a cash fee, visitors could offer