2023/102: Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It — Janina Ramirez

Hildegard was a product of her time; it is not simply that she was extraordinary, but the world she grew up in was more hospitable to extraordinary women than we might think.[loc. 3686]

Ramirez aims to find 'empowered women with agency' from medieval Europe: she eschews the best-known candidates (Joan of Arc, Isabella of France, et cetera) but reveals her subjects from multiple angles. Each chapter starts with a section on 'Discovery!', which may be an archaeological find or the canonisation of a queen; then there's a fictionalised account of an episode in the woman's life; and then there's an exploration of the woman's impact, her power, and her context. Ramirez' subjects range from 'the Loftus Princess' (an unknown woman given a 'bed burial' in the seventh century with exquisite grave goods, and the wider context of women gaining power by converting to Christianity) to a sex worker known as Eleanor, who was arrested as a man for sodomy but explained in their trial that they had dressed and behaved as a woman for years. Other women featured include Margery Kempe; Hildegard of Bingen; the Mercian queens Cynethryth and Æthelflæd; several Cathar heretics; Jadwiga who ruled Poland as a king rather than a queen; and the anonymous embroiderers of the Bayeux tapestry.

Femina is full of fascinating facts and observations -- for instance, I hadn't known that the infamous 'arrow through the eye' of the Bayeux tapestry was added in the nineteenth century! -- and conveys the thrill of discovery and the satisfaction of reclaiming women's history. It's let down, though, by errors that should have been picked up during the editing stage. Lindisfarne is not a 'west-coast satellite of Iona': it's on the east coast. The passage about the post-war rescue of Hildegard's Riesencodex seems confused as to whether one of the two conspirators was named Catherine or Caroline. And when Ramirez uses Norse myth as a starting-point for a discussion of gender norms in Viking society, she betrays more familiarity with the MCU than with Þrymskviða: in the Eddas, Thor was not Loki's brother.

A really interesting and wide-ranging book, with copious illustrations (not all of which render well on my Kindle): it would have been even better with a more careful edit.

Fulfils the ‘one-word title’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge. I'm not counting the subtitle!