Women In Medieval Times

A woman’s alternative would be becoming a nun, giving up all social freedoms and dedicating your life to serving the poor and God. Women who were subject to this life received a much more thorough education than other women, in order to properly learn religious concepts and theory. Otherwise, a woman’s education was limited to basic reading abilities paired with instruction on how to do homely activities. A woman of this time period had utterly no voice in politics. Law was man’s law. The life of these women were controlled by the men who surround them, their opinions meaning little to nothing. The life of a woman in medieval times was bleak and varied little. Romantic literature was on the rise, full of damsels in distress that only further perpetuated negative stereotypes of women during these times. These romances were full of helpless women in situations only a man could get them out of, or else they would be doomed. Despite this cultural oppression of women in this time period, some strong female characters were erected in medieval romances. A perfect example of an abnormally strong and independent female main character would be Enide from Erec and Enide written by Chrétien de

As the tenth century rolled about, the power of the Roman Catholic Church grew steadily stronger, the church had an argument with the normal Kingdom over who should rule supreme out of the Pope or the King, the church believed that the Pope who is the voice of God on Earth should be the ruler of the world while the peasants thought that the King should, the power struggle eventually ended with the Church coming out as the dominant force in the West. The Church passed a law that stated that everyone (mostly peasants) is forced to pay 10% of their income to the Church. The church had the ability to stop any laws that they did not like or make some new laws that benefited them, they were a very powerful group that could manipulate the peasants and knights in any way they liked, in Church there were photos of people being tortured in hell, this intensified the peoples longing for heaven and therefore extended the power and influence of the church. All Christians were expected to attend the mass and, by the 13th century, were expected to take the Eucharist at least once a year.

Women in Medieval Europe lived the life one may expect them to live from the 5th and 15th centuries. We know today that women are treated equal compared to men (in most cases), and we also know that Women were not always given the freedoms that they have today. This was no different in Medieval Europe during these times. Women were expected to hold jobs in which they took care of children and tended the household, occasionally helping their husbands with crops during the busy part of the planting year (bl.uk). Also as we would expect, men had complete power and say in the relationship (wikipedia.org). Women lived a lot more different back in Medieval times than they do today, but it was their lifestyle, and they did what society asked of them, whether they wanted to or not.

Since warfare and disease made life unbearable, everyone from the common serfs to the prosperous king looked to Church for direction on the key to a happy afterlife (Document 9). People paid heavy taxes/gifts and devotion to guaranteed themselves in themselves a place in the Church since their births (Document 9). This showed how they had much power over all the other classes in medieval society, especially when the Truce of God was proclaimed to control knights from committing felonies on holy days (Document 4 and

During this time, the Church was everything- everyone believed in their teachings and would go by their rules- and so did

The roles in medieval Europe, available for women were restricted because. Some women did have important roles, such as a queen or and abbess (head of an abbey of nuns), but these were not opportunities for a peasant woman as such. Most women were peasants, nuns, wives, mothers or noblewomen. Noblewomen ran their husband’s estates whilst they were at war, but still could not make any decisions of importance, such as money, . They usually had around 7 children, most of which did not live past the age of three. Peasants were expected to marry and become wives and mothers. Some took up spinning and sewing to make clothes and earn money to support their family. Men were able to work in varying roles, no matter what they did, they

To begin with, religion and the church was an extremely important factor in people's lives in the middle ages. For example, the text states, “...he

Secondly, I'm going to discuss land. Many peasants had to work for free on church land, sometimes up to two days in the week. This meant that they could not work on their own land which made it difficult to grow enough food for their families. Peasants wanted to be free of this trap that made the church rich but the poor.

Over the course of the next 1,000 years (the middle ages) many changes occurred, and numerous things remained constant. One of the changes included the increasing authority of the church. The church introduced schools/universities, care for the sick and poor, legal advice and community services. (Easton and Saldais, 2013) This meant they were more influential than the ruling king because it enhanced trust in the community and built key infrastructure for their community’s needs.

The Medieval church also had a huge influence over people’s lives in the Middle Ages. For one, it had a huge impact over the way people viewed society as a result of the Great Chain of Being. The Great Chain of Being was imposed to give order to feudal society (Melani). It basically stated that everything in the universe from God, to mankind, to plants had a set place in the order of things (Richardson). That place depended on the spirit and the matter of that thing since the less spirit and the more matter the thing has, the lower they were in the order (Melani).

The power of The Church, in The Middle Ages, was enormous. It touched almost everyone's life in many important ways. The Church baptized a person at birth, performed the wedding ceremony at people' marriages, and

People in the middle ages were very religious. People believed that Roman Catholic Church represent God. The church had a big influence on the content spread in the Middle Ages, and they were content with religious or moralistic. The only religion recognized in Middle Ages Europe was Christianity and specifically Catholicism. Christianity in the middle ages dominated the lives. The life of the medieval people was dominated entirely by the church and many religious institutions gained power and wealth. It was single the larges institution in west of Europe. It touched everyone’s life no matter what rank in social class they lived in. Everyone in western Europe was Rome Catholic Christian at that time. From the reaches king all the way down.

Medieval society was extremely hard for women living during that time due to society being male dominated, and the women having no say so in anything during that time period. The women didn't have any real freedom to themselves, because the men overruled their lives. They were treated differently than women now. The women weren't allowed to have real jobs, and they had to take care of their families. Their husbands had to be they main priority and they had no real lives, since they had no say in what or how they wanted their life to go.

Women from the medieval times had clear roles. The women had strict rules to follow by. When it came to marriage, the wives had to submit to their husbands and follow their lead. Women were supposed to be cleaning, stay at home with the kids, cook, make clothes, etc. The women who steered away from these “typical” roles, made very interesting characters. The majority of gender expectations came from the church and biblical history. Since Eve was the cause for the fall of man, there were a lot of anti-feminist feelings. Women were held accountable for the majority of man’s suffering, and were consequently inferior and to be dominated by men. Purity, holiness, and chastity, were all presumptions of women from outstanding role models like the Virgin Mary.

The women of the middle class medieval world did not have much power and dominance throughout this time period. Medieval women do housework and take care of the children. Of the women who were not house-ridden, some crafted and spun silk (Dean and Thomson 41). These roles were not important to villages and this implies that women were restricted with jobs and rights. While men were off hunting or working as a higher position in society, women were unable to do work like men do.