Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister 500 to 900

376 Pages·1981·22.508 MB·English

by  Suzanne Fonay Wemple

WOMEN
IN
FRANKISH
SOCIETY
MARRIAGE AND THE CLOISTER
500 TO 900
SUZANNE FONAY WEMPLE
“The most complete, scholarly, and
important book on medieval women
which has appeared in my lifetime. ”
Archibald R. Lewis
WOMEN IN
FRANKISH SOCIETY
Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900
SUZANNE FONAY WEMPLE
In what is probably the most comprehensive
and revelatory work yet published on women
in the Middle Ages, Suzanne Wemple
examines the ways in which the status of
women in both secular and religious life
changed between 500 and 900.
In the Frankish kingdom, women were
able to exercise power and apply their
talents outside the domestic sphere,
though they did not reach either legal or
social equality with men. Three distinct
cultural forces in Frankish Gaul —
Germanic, Roman, and Christian-
determined women’s position, and Wemple
concludes that their fusion benefited
women, noting that females were much
freer in Latin Christendom than they had
been in pagan society. The cloister, in
particular, offered women a means of
self-expression that they avidly exploited
during the earliest days of the Frankish
kingdom, the Merovingian period. Wemple
compares the Merovingians, who sanctioned
divorce and tolerated polygamy, to the
later Carolingians, who translated into
secular laws the Christian ideal of marital
indissolubility.
Delving into the ninth-century application
of Christianity to family law, the author
points out how the enforcement of
monogamy and prohibition of divorce, as
(Continued on back flap)

Women in Frankish Society
THE MIDDLE AGES
a series edited by
Edward Peters
Henry C. Lea Associate Professor
of Medieval History
University of Pennsylvania
SUZANNE FONAY WEMPLE
Women in Frankish Society
Marriage and the Cloister
500 to 900
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University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
1981
THIS BOOK WAS PUBLISHED WITH ASSISTANCE FROM THE PUBLICATIONS PROGRAM
OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES.
Copyright © 1981 by Suzanne Fonay Wemple
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wemple, Suzanne Fonay.
Women in Frankish society.
(The Middle ages)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Women—History—Middle ages, 500-1500. 2. France
—History—To 987 3. France—History—Medieval
period, 987-1515. 4. Women and religion. 5. Women—
Legal status, laws, etc. 6. Merovingians—History.
7. Carlovingians—History. I. Title. II. Series:
Middle ages.
HQ,i 147.F7W45 305.4'o9'o2 80-54051
ISBN 0-8122-7798-8 AACR.2
Printed in the United States of America
To my mother, Magda Mihalyfy Szechenyi,
and to my daughter, Carolyn Wemple.