Women and men

MEGAN McLAUGHLIN

'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus' (Gal. 3.28). This promise of equality between women and men, spelled out in an early Christian baptismal formula, and then repeated by Paul in his letter to the Galatians, awoke few echoes in the later Middle Ages. While medieval exegetes sometimes discussed the whole formula, the specific claim that there is 'neither male nor female' received very little attention. In contrast, notions of gender difference and gender hierarchy pervaded mainstream Christianity in the years between 1000 and 1500. In biblical commentaries and pastoral letters, in canon law and scholastic summae, the later medieval clergy repeated patristic and early medieval ideas about the distinct natures of women and men, and about the unequal relationship between the sexes, occasionally refining old arguments and addressing new issues as they arose. In homilies and admonitions, preachers retailed many of the same ideas to a broader audience of layfolk. And clergy and laity together performed gender difference and gender hierarchy within the ordinary rituals of parish life.

The consistent, and apparently unassailable, message of these texts and performances was that God had made men and women different in very significant ways, that men were superior to their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, and that women should accept their divinely ordained subordination. Even female thinkers such as Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) accepted and repeated these views, although women generally softened or complicated the message.315 Yet a closer look reveals how vulnerable the walls of difference and hierarchy really were. For while overt assertions ofequality between the sexes were rare, gender hierarchy was often reinterpreted, revalued and occasionally even turned on its head, in medieval texts and in practice as well.

Let us begin by examining more closely the liturgical performance of gender, the ways in which the differences between men and women were acted out in the recurrent ceremonies of the medieval church, for it was in the liturgy, rather than in sermons or the confessional, that Christians most often encountered the ideas about women and men that theologians and canonists developed more fully in their written texts. Our most detailed information on these performances comes from the works of liturgical commentators, clerics who described and interpreted the rituals of the church for the use of other clerics. These liturgists drew extensively on the writings of theologians and canonists in their interpretations, so their works remind us of some of the key elements in medieval gender ideology, while at the same time informing us about what was actually done in medieval churches. Their works demonstrate how, in the ceremonies of the parish mass, in the festivals of the parish year, and in celebrations of the life-cycle, gender difference and gender hierarchy were ritually enacted over and over again.

For example, women and men normally stood in separate places during the parish mass, highlighting the distinction between the sexes. In many places, the custom was for women to stand on the north side of the nave, and men on the south side; elsewhere, the men stood in the front, while the women filled up the back of the church. This separation of the sexes could be understood simply as a way of preventing unseemly flirtation during sacred times. However, the liturgists also explained the difference in placement in terms of inherent differences between the sexes. Honorius Augustodunensis (d. c. 1157) associated the south with the 'heat' of temptation. Men were appropriately placed on the south side of the church, because, as the naturally stronger sex, they could more easily withstand such heat. The weaker sex should be placed on the north side, farther away from temptation.316 Sicard of Cremona (d. 1215) noted that in some places men were placed in front of women. This reflected the belief that man is the head of the woman (Eph. 5.23), and therefore her leader.317

A further spatial distinction between the sexes involved access to the altar. In general, the space around the altar tended to be reserved for members of the clergy during this period. Yet laymen might sometimes approach the altar, and even - if they were of sufficiently high rank - have seats in the choir during mass. Women, on the other hand, were forbidden by church law to enter the sanctuary.318 With a few notable exceptions, even women whose husbands were seated in the chancel had their own seats in the nave.319 Some monasteries prohibited women from entering their precincts at all - not only the sanctuary, but also the nave of the church, and even the cemetery were closed to the female sex. In the case of the monasteries, these regulations seem to have been symbolic of the struggles saintly founders and members of the community had to maintain their chastity.320 On the other hand, the sanctuaries of parish churches were probably closed to women because of concerns about cultic purity and fears of female pollution.

The sexes were also distinguished during the liturgy by their head coverings. St Paul had taught (i Cor. 11.3-16) that men were to wear nothing on their heads in church, while women should pray with veiled heads, for man 'is the image and glory of God', while woman 'is the glory of man' - she was created for man, but man was not created for woman. This custom was preserved in the Middle Ages. Indeed, if a young girl came to church without a veil, her mother 'or another woman' was to cover her head immediately with a piece of cloth.321 The liturgical commentators' explanations for this distinction played on the common association of women with sin. The Parisian theologian John Beleth (fl. 1160-64) believed that long hair represented a 'multitude of sins'. Hence women, with their long hair, could be seen as the most sinful, and their veils could signify the distance between themselves and God. Laymen, who had shorter hair, fell in between, whereas clerics wore the tonsure so that there would be nothing between them and God.322 The veil, then, was a marker of difference that for many liturgists indicated moral inferiority.

The moment during the mass specifically devoted to 'union, charity, peace, and reverence'323 within the Christian community provided another opportunity for the performance of gender difference. In the later Middle Ages, the kiss of peace was increasingly bestowed not on another person, but on a painted tablet or board, which was passed among the members of the congregation. Nevertheless, liturgical commentators remained very concerned about the possibility that the exchange of kisses in church might excite lust rather than reverence. This led them to insist that women and men should not 'kiss one another'.324 Sicard of Cremona explained that this was why women and men stood in separate parts of the church during the mass: 'let men and women not kiss one another, because of [the possibility of] lust; and this is why they should be set apart, not only in physical kissing, but even in location'.325 The implication of this 'setting apart', however, would seem to be the denial of 'union, charity, peace, and reverence' between the sexes. While there might be reconciliation and forgiveness among men or among women at this point in the mass, there was no ritual possibility here for the performance of reconciliation or forgiveness between men and women, or for a recognition of their fellowship. The sexes remained alienated during the mass in a profound, if not fully articulated, way.

The order of kissing during the ritual of peace further reinforced notions of social hierarchy within the Christian community. The pax descended from the clergy at the altar to the lay members of the congregation in order of social rank, which might lead to courteous wrangles over precedence, or even to outright quarrels over who was entitled to kiss the board next.326 But regardless of other issues of rank, liturgists often specified that the pax should go to the men in the congregation before it went to the women, for 'man is the head of woman'.327

Less regularly than in the mass, but still very often, the life-cycle rituals of individual parishioners reinforced notions of difference and subordination. In particular, the rituals surrounding women's fertility and childbearing capacity carried a range of powerful messages about female impurity, which had no male equivalent. At the end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great had assured Augustine of Canterbury (d. c. 604) that a menstruating woman committed no sin in attending church, yet there remained some uncertainty on this point.328 In the early thirteenth century,

Sicard of Cremona claimed that it was the 'custom of the Romans' that menstruating women not enter a church 'out of reverence'.329 The more general consensus was that women could enter a church during their monthly periods, but some clerics were still troubled by the prospect of menstrual blood polluting sacred rituals and spaces, or even other people. Medieval canonists told menstruating women not to make liturgical offerings.330 And in some places, women who had had sex with their husbands while they were menstruating were obliged to stand outside the church during mass, publicly doing penance for their sin.331

If there was some difference of opinion about menstruation, liturgical commentators all agreed that childbirth should be hedged about with taboos, to prevent the pollution of sacred space. William Durandus (d. 1296) urged women, when they felt the pangs oflabour, not to enter a church, or at least to take care 'lest they pollute it'.332 After childbirth, too, women were to stay out of churches, as Honorius put it, 'because they signify that the unclean are excluded from the heavenly temple'.333 The reference here is to the custom of 'churching' women - excluding them from the church for a set period after childbirth, and then ritually readmitting them once they had been 'purified'. Women required such purification because both the sexual activity associated with conception and the process of childbirth itself were thought to make them 'polluted and sinners'.334 In clerical discussions of churching, the blood associated with childbirth was sometimes equated with menstrual blood, and evoked concerns about filth and pollution.335 The blood of childbirth might also be likened to the blood shed through violence. According to Honorius, the body of a murder victim should not be carried into church, lest its pavement be stained with blood, which would require the reconsecration of the building. And he claimed that some people believed that women who died in childbirth should not be carried into church for the same reason - although Honorius himself thought that this was permitted.336 In short, every time a woman gave birth, the parish community was reminded through her ritual exclusion from and then readmittance to the church building, of the dangers associated with female impurity.

Whether she died in childbirth, through illness or accident, or even from old age, the death of a woman led to a final reminder of gender difference and hierarchy. By the twelfth century, many places followed the custom of ringing the 'passing bell' for the dead, so that their fellow parishioners could pause in their activities and pray for the newly departed soul. However, the knell for women was different from that for men - two rings, as opposed to three rings. Presumably, the intention behind this distinction was to indicate for the listeners the identity of the person who had just died, so that they could pray for him or her in a more personal way. But the liturgists also interpreted this in terms of gender difference: the three rings for a man reflected his resemblance to the Trinity.337 On the other hand, the bells were rung for a woman only twice, because 'through woman came difference - that is, the separation of humanity from God; and thus she is doubly disgraced, and on that account she signifies difference (unde binarius infamis est, eo quod alteritatem significat)'.338

Woman, then, 'signifies difference'. Hence the repeated performance of female weakness, sin, impurity and subordination in the most common rituals of the medieval church, and the repeated assertion of female inferiority in the teachings of the medieval church. But hence too the usefulness of gender to medieval theologians and preachers as a signifier of other kinds of difference. Women were constantly invoked in medieval texts as symbols of weakness, imperfection, sensuality, body and humanity, while men represented strength, perfection, rationality, spirit and divinity. And this, in turn, led to the use of women to symbolise particular groups in medieval society who were thought to embody such negative, 'female', characteristics.

Heretics were one such group. In his commentary on the Song of Songs, Honorius interpreted the phrase 'O beautiful among women' (Song 1.7) in allegorical terms, to refer to the one who is beautiful 'in faith' among women -'that is, among heretics'. For 'woman' (mulier) is pronounced like 'softer' (mollier), and is understood in terms of the multitude of heretics or of the imperfect, who are 'softer, that is, prone to sin'.339 The association of heresy with softness, weakness and effeminacy dates back to Christian antiquity. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, as theologians and pastors began to pay greater attention to unorthodox belief, they interpreted more and more biblical references to women in terms of heresy. The rape of Dinah, who 'went out to visit the women of that region' (Gen. 34.1-2), for example, could be taken to refer to simple folk, who are separated from the church because they 'like to listen to the teachings of heretics and philosophers'. Such folk are 'quickly captured and deceived, and join the flock of the heretics'.340 341 The 'foolish and clamorous woman' of Prov. 9.13, who calls out to 'the simple', could also be linked to heresy: 'The foolish and clamorous woman is heretical depravity: foolish, because of empty reasoning, and clamorous, because of garrulity.' Such heresy attracted the foolish, those lacking in good

Sense.

And of course, 2 Tim. 3.6 refers specifically to the wicked men (normally understood in the Middle Ages as heretics) who 'creep into houses and lead captive silly women (mulierculas) laden with sin'. Mulierculas could be interpreted in general terms as 'foolish and weak and unworthy and inconstant' souls, whether of men or of women.342 Often, however, the text was taken more literally. It was a commonplace for orthodox writers to accuse heretics of too close an association with women. Heretical preachers, it was said, travelled with women (again, mulierculas) who were neither their wives nor their sisters.343 Some heretical groups even allowed women to preach.344 Moreover, many of the orthodox clergy asserted that heretics found their most eager audience among women.345 Bernard of Fontcaude (d. c. 1192) explained that heretics approach women first, because they can be more easily swayed, and can then bring their husbands into the heretical fold with them, just as Eve led Adam astray. Given this close association between women and heresy, it is hardly surprising that men who listened to heretics were said to be acting 'not in a manly, but in a womanish fashion' (non viriUter, sed muliebriter).346

The identification of women with another despised group in medieval society, the Jews, was more complex.347 Christian theologians had traditionally associated Jews with stubbornness and 'hardness of heart', which made it difficult to link them with the 'softness' of women. Nevertheless, women continued to serve as useful foils for Jewish 'perfidy' because of their association with pollution. A number of medieval writers associated contemporary Jews with biblical concubines and prostitutes. When Absalom's revolt forced King David to leave Jerusalem, he left behind ten of his concubines to look after the palace (2 Kings 15.16). When he returned, he put those concubines under guard, providing for their upkeep, but never visiting them again; they were 'shut away until the day they died, widows, as it were, of a living man' (2 Kings 20.3). Peter Damian (d. 1072) drew on this text to argue that 'the Jews now are clearly shut away, and living in widowhood, since they don't go in to the husband of Holy Church. Neither does Her heavenly Bridegroom go in to them, since He scorns to live with them, like foolish women prostituted to the devil, and instead gives them a bill of divorce, because they are polluted by adultery.'348

The level of hostility to the Jews in such texts is disturbing, although perhaps not surprising, given the growth of anti-Jewish sentiments among Christian writers during this period. For Peter Damian, the Jews were not only 'prostitutes', but 'prostituted to the devil'. In the same vein, Rupert of Deutz (d. c. 1129) likened the Jews to Jezebel, the wicked queen,349 whose name was taken to mean 'flow of blood'. This linked both her and the Jews to menstrual impurity,350 while reminding readers that the Jews had called for Christ's blood to 'be upon us and upon our children' (Matt. 27.25).351 Rupert also saw the great harlot in the Apocalypse (Rev. 17.1-6), who was 'drunk with the blood of the saints', as a type of the Jews: 'therefore it is certain that the first and foremost part of this harlot is the Israelite race, which killed the holy prophets, and for this reason it received a woman's name and was convicted of having fornicated with the kings [of this earth]'. 'Carnal Israel' was represented as a harlot, Rupert asserted, because it 'raged with feminine lust'.352

The common association ofwomen with certain negative traits, then, made them useful for medieval clerics to 'think with'.353 Nevertheless, it is important not to oversimplify the dichotomy between 'male' and 'female' characteristics in medieval Christian belief, since individual thinkers might play with the usual clerical language ofgender, depending on their own particular situations and goals.354 Normally 'female' characteristics might be used to distinguish between different categories of men.355 Thus, in some monastic texts, choir monks were described as 'spiritual', while lower class conversi were associated with physicality.356 By the same token, the attribution of characteristics such as weakness or carnality to women as a group might be complicated by differences among women. In particular, virginity - or even chastity within marriage - might transform the carnal female into a member of the spiritual elite.357

The variety of ways in which medieval authors used gendered imagery to reflect on the nature of God is particularly striking. Most often, of course, He was represented as male - the Father in heaven, the Warrior God of Hosts. But sometimes 'He' might be depicted as female, in order to illustrate 'His' maternal love for humanity.358 And still other writers used a language of paradox, highlighting female difference in order to illustrate divine difference - using the 'otherness' of women to unveil the supreme 'otherness' of God.359 360 Peter Abelard (d. 1142), for example, pointed out that God had chosen to be born of a woman - not because women were worthier than men, but precisely because they were less worthy:

What glory can be compared to that which this sex won in the mother of the Lord? If he had wished, our Redeemer could certainly have assumed his body from a man, as he chose to form the first woman from the body of a man. But he transferred this singular grace of his humility to the honor of the weaker sex. He could have been born fTom another, worthier part of the female body than other men, who are born from that most vile part by which they are conceived. But to the incomparable honor of the weaker body, he more highly consecrated its genitals by his birth than he did those of a man by

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Circumcision.

This positive reference to women's normally 'dishonourable' parts is surely intended to shock, but it is far from revolutionary. Abelard's goal was less to make his readers look favourably upon women, than to remind them of Christ's supreme humility in the Incarnation.

We should remember as well that, in a religion based on redemption, the 'feminine' can never have wholly negative connotations, for it always evokes not only the Fall - the 'separation of humanity from God' - but also the possibility that love will overcome that separation and restore humanity and God to unity. For medieval Christians, 'woman' symbolised not only what was imperfect in the universe, but also how that imperfection could be brought back into the realm of the sacred. In particular, she represented the sometimes wayward, perhaps even impure, but always beloved church. Just as man and woman became one flesh, a single body, in marriage, so the church was the Bride and the Body of Christ, the difference created by the Fall ultimately erased in the nuptial moment of the Redemption. An anonymous sermon for the Rogation Days tells the story of man whose bride was desired by 'strangers'. They took her by violence and held her for a long time, until finally - after a series of warnings which he sent on ahead - he came and freed her from the hands of her enemies. The man in the sermon was, of course, Christ, who came to earth to free the church from her enemies, 'the demons, who defiled her from top to bottom, that is, polluted her with the sin of idolatry'. Christ cleansed the church and made her pure again, and now the Bride, who had been 'polluted with many lovers', was adorned with ornaments to please her Spouse.361

Medieval Christian teachings on gender could, therefore, be quite ambiguous. While medieval clerics generally emphasised the negative associations of femininity in order to reinforce the normal superiority of the masculine, they sometimes did the same thing in order to question ordinary categories of authority and status, and to exalt certain women favoured by God. Moreover, positive female attributes - beauty, tenderness, constancy - might be invoked under certain circumstances, especially in writings about the church, the Virgin Mary or other female saints, but occasionally even in discussions of ordinary women.362 And while there were few advocates for the equality of the sexes in medieval Europe, a number of thinkers emphasised gender complementarity rather than hierarchy. As Hildegard of Bingen wrote:

Man and woman are dependent on each other so that each is necessary to the other; because man is not called 'man’ without woman nor is woman named 'woman’ without man. For woman is necessary to man, and man is the consolation of woman; and neither of them can be without the other.363

Male and female could be seen as two different, but equally essential aspects of creation, which together fulfil God’s plan for humanity and the world.

The most extreme expression of this viewpoint may be found in the writings and actions of the tiny Milanese sect known to historians as the Guglielmites, after the holy woman who served as its focus. Guglielma, who was probably a member of the Bohemian royal family, arrived in Milan in the 1260s, and began attracting followers because of her simple life, her healing powers and her miracles. How she viewed her own life and work is uncertain, but after her death in 1281, two of her followers circulated the idea that Guglielma had been the incarnation on earth of the Holy Spirit, 'true God and true human in the female sex’. Probably they were influenced by the apocalyptic ideas of Abbot Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202), who had taught that history was divided into three ages, that of the Father, that of the Son and that of the Holy Spirit. At least some of Guglielma’s followers seem to have thought that just as the death and resurrection of Christ - a male redeemer - had ushered in the second age, so the death and resurrection of Guglielma - a female redeemer - would usher in the third and final age of the world. In that age the Jews and 'Saracens’ would be converted, and the church would be renewed. And in fact the Guglielmites began that renewal in the Jubilee year of 1300, when - in expectation of their redeemer’s imminent resurrection - their female 'pope’, Maifreda da Pirovano, surrounded by both male and female assistants, celebrated a solemn Easter mass. A few months later, she and several other members of the sect were tried for heresy and executed.364 The career of the Guglielmites was brief, and their end tragic, but the mere fact of their existence tells us something about the vulnerabilities of the medieval gender order.

The research of the last half century has demonstrated clearly the diversity of medieval religious belief. The clergy did not always agree among themselves. And certainly the rest of the population did not always share the views of those with spiritual authority over them, as witness the beliefs and behaviour of Maifreda and her comrades. Instead, like modern individuals, medieval women and men took threads from whatever cultural materials were available, and wove for themselves a pattern of belief that made sense to them and to the people around them. It seems likely that, in the realm of gender ideology, the consensus was higher than in some other areas, for secular law and social practice reinforced the notions of gender difference and gender hierarchy expressed in theology and preaching. Yet even here, as we have seen, there remained ample room for exceptions and inversions.