Volume LIII Number 9
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Books
The Voice of the Living Light
The Personal Correspondence of Hildegard of Bingen, edited by Joseph Baird; Oxford University Press, 2006, $39.95.
During the last few decades, historians have translated primary sources which suggest something happened to the role of women during the Middle Ages, particularly during a period often referred to as the High Middle Ages (1000–1299 AD); a period of rapid population and economic growth, urbanisation, rise of centralised government, and struggle for control between church and state. The relative tolerance of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries gave way to increasing pressure for unity and conformity from all classes. For example, earlier on, some wives went into separate trades from their husbands and, in some towns, were treated as a single woman when involved in trade disputes. How much this independence characterised the role of medieval women generally, and how much that role changed, as the twin cults of Chivalry and the Virgin combined to influence the perception and position of women, are subjects of debate.
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