1st Edition
Medieval Work, Worship, and Power Persuasive and Silenced Voices
Medieval Work, Worship, and Power: Persuasive and Silenced Voices celebrates Sharon Farmer's significant contributions to the fields of medieval European social, religious, gender, environmental, labor, and interfaith history.
This volume explores and builds on Farmer’s influence through twenty chapters organized across five intersecting topics that capture, chronologically, topically, and theoretically, the scope and trajectory of Farmer’s work. These are 1) Saints, Power, and Piety; 2) Gendered Work; 3) Gender and Resource Management; 4) Women’s Agency and Networks; and 5) Interfaith Tensions and Encounters. At the same time, the essays themselves reflect the ways in which these fields of inquiry are intertwined, many drawing inspiration from the multiple themes that Farmer has explored. Beyond paying homage to a dedicated and influential scholar, mentor, and teacher, this volume represents current and future directions in the field of medieval history, and how scholars are engaging with unexpected sources and interpreting more familiar sources in new, interdisciplinary ways.
The volume will appeal to medievalists and early modernists interested in how religion, gender, and status shape human connections to each other and their environment. More broadly, it will also be of interest to scholars interested in historical methods.
Introduction: Persuasive and Silenced Voices
Abigail P. Dowling, Nancy McLoughlin, and Tanya Stabler Miller
Part 1: Saints, Monks, Power, and Piety
1. Drinking the Saints: Relic Water in High Medieval English Miracles
Fiona Harris-Stoertz
2. From Runaway Wife to Sainted Queen: Scandal and the Model of Saintly Queenship in the Early Middle Ages
Anna Katharina Rudolph
3. Monks as Enemies: Monastic Feuds in Greater Anjou
Tracey L. Billado-Lotson
4. Monks and Their Frenemies: Chronicling Gender, Masculinity, and Violence in Twelfth-Century Vézelay
Andrew G. Miller
Part 2: Women and Work
5. The Medieval English Marketplace through the Experience of Women Upholders
Kate Kelsey Staples
6. Women’s Labor in Later Medieval France: Case Studies from Paris
Emily Hutchison and Sara McDougall
7. Medieval Sheep, Women’s Labor, Boat Shuttles, Broadcloths, Tapestries, and Beguinages
Constance H. Berman
8. Ritual Exclusion and Sacramental Transformation: Women’s Work at the Edges of the Mass
Martha G. Newman
9. Between Martha and Mary: Framing Beguine Labor in Medieval France
Tanya Stabler Miller
Part 3: Hitting the Glass Ceiling: Women’s Overlooked Management of Resources
10. Martine Cabot: Portrait of a Medieval Female Kennel Master
Julia F. Crisler DeSimas
11. Growing Power of Place: Urban Gardens in Late Medieval Saint-Omer, 1302–1310
Abigail P. Dowling
12. Three Visionary Women Hospital Founders, c. 1300
Adam J. Davis
13. Urban Women’s Work as Entrepreneurs and Administrators: Cloth Sellers, Abbesses, and Leaders of Hospitals in Fourteenth-Century Douai
Sarah Hanson-Kegerreis
14. The Many Lives of Pelegrina de Saladino: Mother, Testamentary Executor, Guardian, and Patroness in Late Medieval Zadar
Giulia Giamboni
Part 4: Women’s Agency and Networks
15. Communities of Women in Carolingian Society
Valeric L. Garver
16. A Persuasive Voice? Berengaria of Navarre and Female Agency at the Papal Curia, 1200–1230
Richard Barton
17. Granting Access: Rescuing the Stories of Missing Witnesses in the Canonization Inquest for Countess Delphine de Puimichel
Nicole Archambeau
Part 5: Interfaith Tensions and Encounters
18. From Vine to Tavern: Jews, Christians, and Wine in Medieval France and Italy
Jessica Marin Elliott
19. Finely Made, From Afar: Crusader Bourse and Histories of Reuse — Unwinding Gendered Labors in French Textile Networks
Anne E. Lester
20. Philippe de Mézières’ Visualizations of Gender, Crusade, and Community
Nancy A. McLoughlin
Biography
Abigail P. Dowling is Associate Professor of History at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Her work considers the interplay between landscape, natural resources management, and power. Her first edited volume was Conservation’s Roots, co-edited with Richard Keyser.
Nancy Ann McLoughlin is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. Her most recent work explores intersections among late medieval understandings of the seven deadly sins, gender, community, crusading, and the environment. She is the author of Jean Gerson and Gender: Rhetoric and Politics in Fifteenth-Century France.
Tanya Stabler Miller is Associate professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. Miller’s research focuses on lay religion, gender, and urban culture, with special emphasis on northern France. She is the author of The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority.
