DThe subtitle of Janina Ramirez’s book promises no less than “A new history of the Middle Ages from the women’s point of view”. In the introduction, the author, who has already published a number of historical non-fiction books and has also produced documentaries for British radio and television, formulates her goal in proud knowledge of the magnitude of the task: she now wants to “turn the spotlight back on medieval women”. Because now the latest research methods have made it possible to make visible again those many women of the Middle Ages who had been pushed out of collective memory for centuries by historiography with its notorious interest in great men. The book is intended to offer a “journey of discovery to women who have been lost, overlooked or removed from history”, in a large geographical context and “deliberately interdisciplinary”.
This voyage of discovery then leads through nine centuries: from a rich seventh-century woman’s grave at Loftus in North Yorkshire, to two early medieval queens of Mercia named Cynethryth and Æthelflæd, and to the so-called “Warrior of Birka” in tenth-century Sweden. It continues to those anonymous women who embroidered the famous “Bayeux Tapestry” in the eleventh century. Hildegard von Bingen stands for the twelfth, Cathars in southern France for the thirteenth, Jadwiga of Poland for the fourteenth century. The English mystic Margery Kempe, who died in 1438, ends the round.
“the:the one who:the these”
In each chapter, Ramirez first gives a brief but clear introduction to the world of her heroines. And she knows what historical research means in concrete terms: Grave goods, scientific data from DNA and isotope analyses, but also texts, images and works of art are presented as historical sources. We watch female archaeologists dig, watch archaeogeneticists analyze ancient DNA, look over the shoulder of a historian as she opens a fourteenth-century scroll of parchment.
Janina Ramirez: Femina. A new history of the Middle Ages from the women’s point of view.
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Image: construction publishing house
All of this is well conceived, informative, memorable: this book is a pleasure to read. (The reviewer should mention at this point that he works at a university and therefore learned to read past gender colons. Only the beautiful phrase “the:the one, who:the these” confused him for a blink of an eye.) Man learns a lot about the protagonists of the book. Ramirez is able to give them a face and a voice, and she describes the world of these women in a colorful and full of life. Numerous illustrations help to visualize the past culture in its materiality. And what a lovely idea to open the book with Emily Wilding Davison! Davison, a suffragette, had studied English literature and looked to strong women of the Middle Ages as role models for her own political struggle for women’s rights.