And it also highlights our collective responsibility to negotiate how we want the future generation to view our timeline in the course of history. Dr Janina Ramirez, in her new book Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It, uses this item as a point of contact to Jadwiga, the purse’s rich embroidery functioning as symbolic threads narrating the story of Rex Jadwiga, the one and only female ‘king’ of Poland and primary establisher of Jagiellonian University, and Jadwiga the woman. B. dichtet die Autorin aufgrund der Tatsache, dass es einen Almosenbeutel mit Tristan und Isolde-Motiv gibt, der Jadwiga zugeschrieben wird, ihr an, dass ihr Liebesleben ja wie in besagter Legende gewesen sein müsste und sie sich bestimmt sehr darin wiedergefunden hat. As such, queerness, in its broadest sense as that which is eccentric, peculiar, or outside of, is at the heart of Femina. Vaak was het de tijd gewoon waardoor bronnen verdwenen, of de foute veronderstelling dat, wanneer iemand met veel pracht en praal is begraven, of wapens meekreeg, dit automatisch een man is.

Falls ihr aber - wie ich - gerne mehr über Frauen* im Mittelalter erfahren möchtet und Bock auf ein Sachbuch der etwas anderen Art habt, kann ich euch Janina Ramirez beeindruckendes Werk sehr ans Herz legen! Focus is instead turned to an early medieval princess, known as the ‘Loftus Princess’, buried with an extraordinary cloisonné necklace; a Swedish woman buried with an axe, quiver of arrows, spears, and sword known as the ‘Birka Warrior’; the anonymous nuns who painstakingly stitched the Bayeux Tapestry; and rebellious (potentially heretical) Cathar spies. Ich habe mich sehr auf dieses Buch gefreut und mit großen Erwartungen gelesen, bin aber leider sehr enttäuscht worden.In attempting to voice the lives of the women from the medieval period, both extraordinary and ordinary, Janina Ramírez utilises a new approach in her discourses, namely relying on alternative interpretations based on recent findings in the fields of archaeology, newly available archives, as well as the writings written by the women themselves. Also, after introducing her eminent women in the early chapters, Ramirez can appear to go off on a tangent due to the lack of records, but skilfully brings the narrative back to her chosen exemplar of a worthy woman in the period, providing relevant context for their significance. Rotator cuff disease and spinal degeneration told of a life spent in brutal manual labour, probably coerced. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy View image in fullscreen In the picture … female warriors in the television series Vikings. I found this very frustrating and disappointing but that’s probably mostly due to my expectations of what I thought this book was going to be.

Only now, through a careful examination of the artefacts, writings and possessions they left behind, are the influential and multifaceted lives of women emerging. The middle ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings: a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But by digging a little deeper into the truth, drawing on evidence from all disciplines, we can see that the 'dark' ages were anything but. Gripping, incisive, brilliant, Janina Ramirez opens a door into hidden worlds, the secrets of women's lives. Only now, through a careful examination of the artifacts, writings and possessions they left behind, are the influential and multifaceted lives of women emerging.

In Femina, Ramirez invites us to see the medieval world with fresh eyes and discover why these remarkable women were removed from our collective memories. The section on the Cathars—the victims of the 13th century Albigensian Crusade in southern France—was a bit better; while again pretty surface-level on the individual women, it compensates for that by including a bunch of them along with addressing the larger issues at play. Oxford and BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women’s names struck out of historical records, with the word FEMINA annotated beside them.