HST 362 Sources 2011 PDF

last update: August 29, 2011
Professor Monica Green

HST 362 (Fall 2011)
SEX & SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES
POSSIBLE PRIMARY SOURCES

FOR RESEARCH PAPERS
As we discussed at the beginning of the semester, primary sources offer the most immediate access we
can have to the medieval past. For your research papers, you will be REQUIRED to identify at least one
substantial primary source on which you will base your analysis. A primary source is any document (in
any medium: a written text, an image, a building, an artifact) that was composed/created/built in the
historical period we are discussing, in this case, Europe or the Mediterranean world between the 4th
and 15th centuries. Our biggest challenge is locating published translations (or, in the case of physical
objects, reproductions) that make these materials accessible to us here in English-speaking modern
America.
What follows is a list of textual primary sources that students in years past have used for their research
projects as well as other sources of relevance to this course. I’ve also included a list of anthologies of
primary sources; these sometimes have whole texts (say, depositions from trials), sometimes just
excerpts. In the latter case, you can often use the citation given to find the complete text published
elsewhere.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. The best way to locate additional sources is to read through
books or articles that have been published on the topic that interests you. (See note at the end about how
to locate these.) Check their footnotes or bibliographies for citations to primary sources they have used.
If you have the language skills and would like to do research in a medieval language (or modern
Continental Europe or Mediterranean languages), please talk to Professor Green.
NOTE ON CITATION PROTOCOLS: Some primary sources are embedded as appendices in

secondary sources (books or articles that modern historians have written about the Middle Ages).
Naturally, all primary sources that you use in your papers must be identified by proper bibliographic
citations, so make sure you identify not simply the original author and title of the text, but also the
modern translator and editor as well as the book and/or article in which the translation appears. For
example, if you used a recently published trial of Jewish midwife, the correct format when citing the
primary source (as opposed to the historical analysis) would be:
[Anonymous], “Text of the Trial of Floreta d’Ays (1403),” trans. M. H. Green and D. L. Smail, in
Monica H. Green and Daniel Lord Smail, “The Trial of Floreta d’Ays (1403): Jews, Christians,
and Obstetrics in Later Medieval Marseille,” Journal of Medieval History 34, no. 2 (June 2008),
185-211.
Materials appear under the following headings:

HST 362 – Primary Sources Page 2
Table of Contents

I. Development of the Christian Theology of Marriage ........................................................... 3
II. Marriage and Inheritance in the Feudal System ................................................................... 3
A. Law Codes ..................................................................................................................................................... 3
B. Documents of Practice and Narrative Sources ................................................................................. 5
III. Inquisition and Canonization Proceedings ........................................................................... 5

IV. Sex inside and outside of Marriage .......................................................................................... 6
A. Sexual Relations within Marriage ........................................................................................................ 6
B. Accusations of Fornication and Adultery .......................................................................................... 6
C. Rape ................................................................................................................................................................ 6
V. Family Life ............................................................................................................................... 7

VI. Gender Roles – Women’s Work and Men’s Work .................................................................. 9
VII. Ranks of Society ............................................................................................................................ 9
VIII. Marital Celibacy ........................................................................................................................ 10
IX. Chivalry and Male Codes of Honor ........................................................................................ 10
X. Same-‐Sex Relations ...................................................................................................................... 11
XI. Sexuality in General ................................................................................................................... 12
XII. Prostitution ................................................................................................................................. 12
XIII. Medicine and Natural Philosophy (Science) ................................................................... 13
XIV. Transvestism and Challenges to Gender Roles .............................................................. 18
XV. Witchcraft ..................................................................................................................................... 19
XVI. Female Celibates: Nuns, Anchoresses, Beguines, Vowesses ..................................... 19
XVII. Male Celibates: Monks, Priests, University Students ................................................. 21
XVIII. “Courtly Love” ......................................................................................................................... 22
XIX. Comparative Topics ................................................................................................................. 22
XX. General Anthologies ................................................................................................................. 23
XXI. Resources in Spanish .............................................................................................................. 25
XXII. Encyclopedias .......................................................................................................................... 26
XXIII. Internet Sources .................................................................................................................... 26
XXIV. Research Databases .............................................................................................................. 26
I. Development of the Christian Theology of Marriage

Judith Evans Grubbs, ed., Women and the Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage,
Divorce and Widowhood (New York: Routledge, 2002). Focuses on the Imperial period, when
Christianity was first developing.
Demetrios G. Tsamis, “The Life of St. Ilaria” [translation of a traditional account of St. Ilaria from
“Meterikon,” Volume 4, Edition of the Sacred Monastery of Panagia of Evros (Alexandroupolis, 1993);
the story recounts that Saint Ilaria, the daughter of King Zeno, escaped to Egypt to live as a male ascetic
in the desert; her sister, possessed by a demon, was brought to Egypt for healing; Ilaria healed her and
was forced to reveal her identity to her father; he rejoiced and regretfully allowed her to return to her life
in the desert as the eunuch Ilarion]. In: Greek Orthodox Theological Review 42, 3- 4 (Fall-Winter 1997):
381- 394.
Jerome, Against Jovinianus, Book I, available on-line at <http://www.ccel.org/fathers/NPNF2-

06/treatise/jovinan1.htm>; go to “External Links” on our Blackboard to access.
Elizabeth A. Clark, ed. & trans., St. Augustine on Marriage and Sexuality (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 1996). Includes very useful commentary and long excerpts from
Augustine’s major writings on marriage.
John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer, transs., Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the
Principal ‘Libri poenitentiales’ and Selections from Related Documents (New York : Columbia
University Press, 1990). Note that in some cases these translations are expurgated, the sins that the
translators themselves deemed outrageous (like lesbian activities) having been omitted.
E. C. Whitaker and Maxwell E. Johnson, eds., Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, 3rd ed., rev. and
expanded (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003). Sources describing how practices of baptism
developed over the centuries. Could be used to study how notions of family and kinship develop out of
this ceremony.
Anonymous, Ad Gregoriam in palatio, in Kate Cooper, The Fall of the Roman Household (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 239-83. A translation of a Latin text written in the late fifth or
early sixth century for the guidance of a married laywoman. Gives important evidence that the notion of
a “chaste marriage” still included the assumption that women would be fertile and tend to their
households.
II. Marriage and Inheritance in the Feudal System
A. Law Codes
These are great places to look for prescriptive statements on marriage law, and attitudes towards rape,
abduction, etc.
Katherine Fischer Drew, trans., The Burgundian Code: Book of Constitutions or Law of Gundobad,
Additional enactments (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972). One of the earliest
written law codes in France.
Katherine Fischer Drew, trans., The Laws of the Salian Franks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1991).
Katherine Fischer Drew, The Lombard Laws (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973).
Laws of the Lombard communities in Italy.
The Visigothic Code (Forum iudicum), trans. S.P. Scott, available online at THE LIBRARY OF
IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE, http://libro.uca.edu/vcode/visigoths.htm. Book III has extensive laws
concerning marriage, rape, etc. Book IV has interesting sections on lineage and inheritance.
Las Siete Partidas (“The Seven-Part Law Code”) is a monument in the history of Spanish law. Compiled
at the order of Alfonso X the Learned of Castile in the 13th-century, it would dominate not simply
Spanish law but that of the New World as well. IN: Las Siete Partidas, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott; ed.
Robert I. Burns, S.J. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).
Libro de los Fueros de Castilla ed. Galo Sanchez (El Abrir, 1981) – a collection (in Spanish) of fazanas
(deeds, but specifically judicial deeds or precedents that often contain juridical proceedings) originally
attributed to Fernando III.
Sara Elin Roberts, ed. and trans., Llawysgrif Pomffred: An Edition and Study of Peniarth MS
259B, Medieval Law and Its Practice, 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) – A Welsh law code, with sections
addressing various aspects of marriage and sexuality.
Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, Richard Perkins, eds., Laws of Early Iceland: Gragas I (University of
Manitoba Press, 2007).
Jana K. Schulman, ed., Jónsbók: The Laws of Later Iceland; The Icelandic Text according to MS AM 351
Fol. Skalholtsbok Eldri (Saarbrücken: AQ-Verlag, 2010). From the publisher’s blurb: “A late thirteenth-
century legal text, Jónsbók’s chapters focus on land use, tenancy, personal rights, farming, maritime law,
marriage and family law, and inheritance, in addition to poor law and theft law. In this translation appear
many fascinating details: . . . If my sister marries before me and receives more in her dowry than I end up
getting, what are my options?”
Crime, Law and Society in the Later Middle Ages, trans. and ed. Anthony Musson with Edward Powell,
Manchester Medieval Sources (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2009). Despite the broad
title, this only has materials from England. Included is a (very short) rape case and some other pertinent
materials.
Anthony Melnikas, ed., The Corpus of the Miniatures in the Manuscripts of ‘Decretum Gratiani’ =
Corpus picturarum minutarum quae in codicibus manu scriptis iuris continentur (Bologna: Universitatis
Studiorum Bononiensis; Columbus, Ohio: distributed by Index of Juridical and Civic Iconography, 1975).
This would make an interesting project: examining the images that accompanied the sections of Gratian’s
textbook on canon law on marriage.
B. Documents of Practice and Narrative Sources

Feudal Documents - concerns over marriage, inheritance, and the legitimacy of heirs were crucial to the
kin-based system of feudalism. Many of the texts collected by Evergates give evidence of these concerns
and in particular give evidence of the roles women played in feudal society. In: Theodore Evergates, ed.,
Feudal Society in Medieval France: Documents from the County of Champagne (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).
Lambert of Ardres, The History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres, trans. with an introduction
by Leah Shopkow (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). These are the same Counts of
Guines that Duby discussed in his book.
Widows, Heirs, and Heiresses in the Late Twelfth Century: The ‘Rotuli de Dominabus et Pueris et
Puellis’, ed. and trans. John Walmsley, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 308 (Tempe, AZ:
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2006). After the Norman conquest of England,
there was concern to get as much information as possible about the landholdings of the native English
noble class. That led first to the compilation of the Domesday Books in the late 11th century. This text
dates from 1185 and provides a survey of all widows and male and female minor heirs to various lands
throughout England.
III. Inquisition and Canonization Proceedings

The legal apparatus of the Catholic church grew exponentially from the 11th century on. Based heavily on
the procedural processes of Roman law, church commissions investigated both charges of heresy
(inquisition) and investigations into sanctity (canonization). And they generated HUGE amounts of
records. Not all of these have survived and even fewer have been even selectively translated. But of
those that are available, many have great potential for telling us intimate details of medieval life.
P. Biller, C. Bruschi, and S. Sneddon, eds., Inquisitors and Heretics in Thirteenth-Century Languedoc:
Edition and Translation of Toulouse Inquisition Depositions, 1273–1282 (Leiden: Brill, 2010). From
the publisher’s blurb: “This book . . . [provides] an edition and translation of depositions of heresy
suspects interrogated in Toulouse 1273-82 . . . The book’s introduction investigates the history and
reliability of this copy, and, together with the edition, illuminates the inquisitors and scribes who
produced the original register. The edited text shows a Cathar hierarchy in exile in Italy, a Cathar
revival in Languedoc, and its destruction by a re-launched inquisition. Inquisitors’ questioning led to
depositions which are extraordinarily colourful and lively.”
Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, ed. and trans., The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary: Testimony
from Her Canonization Hearings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). From the publisher’s
blurb: “This book is a study and translation of the testimony given by witnesses at the canonization
hearings of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, who died in 1231 at age 24 in Marburg, Germany. In January
1233 and again in January 1235, papal commissioners interviewed hundreds of people as witnesses to
the healing miracles associated with Elizabeth’s shrine. What these witnesses said about their maladies
and their cures provides an unusually clear window into the workings of a nascent saint cult within the
context of rural Germany.”
R. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents. Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2000). Pages 171–206 contain excerpted translations of canonization proceedings that
show some of the dangers that children encountered in medieval life.
Testimony of Beatrix de Planissoles – The inquisition records from a trial of Cathar heretics in
southern French town of Montaillou in the early 14th century are among the most famous of all such
records in modern historiography, thanks largely to study done give amazing testimony to casual
sexual relations of women and men (including priests!) in a small town in the French Pyrenees. In:
Patrick J. Geary, Readings in Medieval History (Lewiston, NY: Broadview Press, 1989), pp. 540-558.
For more testimony from these trials of the Cathars (including more testimony from Beatrix de
Planissoles), see http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/Fournier/jfournhm.htm
IV. Sex inside and outside of Marriage
A. Sexual Relations within Marriage

al-Ghazzali (1058-1111). Marriage and Sexuality in Islam: A Translation of al-Ghazali’s Book on the
Etiquette of Marriage from the Ihya’, trans. Madelain Farah (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press,
1984).
B. Accusations of Fornication and Adultery

[see documents in McCarthy volume; see also Section III on Inquisition and Canonization Proceedings]
C. Rape
The largest concentration of published cases (with translations) comes from English court records.1
• Pleas Before the King and his Justices 1198-1202, ed. Doris Stenton, Selden Society 84, 4:114;
The Eyre of London, 14 Edward II, AD 1321, Selden Society vol. 26, 1:90-92. The latter case has
been discussed by Barbara Hanawalt in her book Of Good and Ill Repute.
• A case involving the countess of Lincoln, Alice de Lacy, in Select Cases in the Court of King’s
Bench, Edward III, volume V, ed. by G.O. Sayles, Selden Society, volume 76, (London: B.
Quaritch, 1936) 90-1. This has especially vivid testimony.
• Another case involving a woman who conceived from the rape, which led to the case being
thrown out of court: Year Books of Edward II. Eyre of Kent, 6 & 7 Edward II. 1313-4, volume
I, Selden Society, volume 24, (London: Selden Society, 1910), 111.
• A case involving an eleven year old girl appears in some detail in Helen Cam, ed. The Eyre of
London, 14 Edward II, A.D. 1321, vol.1, Selden Society, Year Books of Edward II, vol.26,
(1968), pp. 90-92 (and is also available here:
http://users.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/florilegium/government/gvjust24.html). The same rape is
also discussed in Novae Narrationes, ed. Elise Shanks and S.F.C. Milsom (Selden Society
Publications, 80, 1963), pp. 341-2
• Another case is in: Select Cases in the Court of King's Bench under Edward I, ed. G.O. Sayles
(Selden Society Publications, 55, 57-8, 74, 76, 82, 88, 1936-71), 1: 101-2
• There are some short translations of different documents related to rape in P. J. P. Goldberg,
Women in England, c. 1275-1525: documentary sources (Manchester UP, 1995).
Orr, Patricia. "Men's Theory and Women's Reality: Rape Prosecutions in the English Royal
Courts of Justice, 1194-1222." /The Rusted Hauberk: Feudal Ideas of Order and Their

1
My thanks to the following for these notices: Caroline Dunn, Shannon McSheffrey, and Wendy Marie Hoofnagle.
Decline/. Eds. Liam O. Purdon and Cindy L. Vitto. Gainesville, FL: U Press of Florida,
1994. 121-162.
Material in Spanish:2
http://www.vallenajerilla.com/berceo/florilegio/florilegio/transgresiones.htm
http://ifc.dpz.es/recursos/publicaciones/23/04/4garcia.pdf
The Siete Partidas and the Fuero Real also have many laws about rape. These texts are found in
http://saavedrafajardo.um.es/Biblioteca/IndicesW.nsf/Inicio?OpenForm&m=2
V. Family Life
Roger S. Bagnall and Raffaella Cribiore. Women’s Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 B.C-A.D. 800 (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), ISBN 978-0-472-11-506-8. Most of these letters would have
been dictated to professional scribes and not written by the women themselves. Nevertheless, they are
vitally important witnesses to the kinds of concerns that dominated ordinary women’s lives: concerns
about children, money, the need for wool (to continue with women’s primary occupation of textile
production), missing husbands, etc. Most are anonymous or have only a name without any other clues to
the woman’s identity. Taken collectively, however, these can be used to sketch a rich picture of women’s
daily lives.
Dhuoda, Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman’s Counsel for Her Son, trans. Carol Neel
(Washington: Catholic University Press, 1999). This is an extraordinarily important source for our
knowledge of upper-class women’s concerns under Carolingian rule. Dhuoda (fl. 843) was separated
from her son William when he was sent to the court of Charles the Bald to insure the loyalty of his father,
Bernard, Duke of Septimania. In her Handbook, she gives her son the kind of moral instruction she
would have given him in person had he remained with her. Thus, we learn much of the expectations for
noble masculinity as well as those of motherhood in the Carolingian world.
Amnon Linder, ed. and trans., The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press; Jerusalem : Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1997).
Judah ben Samuel (also known as Yehudah HeChasid, ca. 1150-1217), Sefer Chasidim: The Book of the
Pious, condensed, translated, and annotated by Avraham Yaakov Finkel (Northvale, N.J. : Jason Aronson,
1997). The Sefer Hasidim is a moral compilation written during the early thirteenth century by three
members of the group known as Hasidei Ashkenaz or the German pietists. The authors were R. Samuel,
R. Judah b. Samuel and his student R. Eleazar b. Judah of Worms. There is much rich material here about
the family and gender relations in medieval Jewish society.
Judith R. Baskin, trans., “Dolce of Worms: The Lives and Deaths of an Exemplary Medieval Jewish
Woman and Her Daughters,” in Lawrence Fine, ed., Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages through
the Early Modern Period (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 429-37. Dolce of
Worms, a 12th-century woman murdered by intruders into her home along with her two daughters, was
memorialized by her husband, Eleazar of Worms. This account of her life shows how she supported the
household financially by serving as money-lender to Christians.

2
My thanks to Andréia Frazão, www.pem.ifcs.ufrj.br, for the following references to sources in Spanish.
“Donna Sarah’s Plea to her Husband to Return to His Family,” in Franz Kobler, ed., A Treasury of Jewish
Letters: Letters from the Famous and the Humble, 2 volumes (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Young,
1953), pp. 233-34. A letter from a 13th-century Jewish woman describing the hardships she and her
children are facing because of her husband’s desertion.
The Goodman of Paris = Le ménagier de Paris. A Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by a
Citizen of Paris (c. 1393), introd. and trans. Eileen Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1928). Excerpts
are also available in: A Medieval Home Companion: Housekeeping in the Fourteenth Century, ed. and
trans. Tania Bayard (New York, NY : HarperPerennial, 1992).
John Edwards, ed. and trans., The Jews in Western Europe, 1400-1600 (Manchester ; New York :
Manchester University Press, 1994). Translation of documents originally written in Latin, Hebrew,
French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian.
Barbara Ross, ed. and trans. Accounts of the Stewards of the Talbot Household at Blakemere, 1392-1425,
Shropshire Record Series vol. 7 (Keele: Centre for Local History, University of Keele, 2003). An
excellent resource for understanding how a medieval household actually functioned, from the
provisioning of food and medicinal supplies to spending on alms, funerals, etc.
Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence: The Diaries of Buonaccorso Pitti and Gregorio Dati, trans. Julia
Martines, ed. Gene Brucker (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). These are two sets of ricordanze, a
peculiarly northern Italian genre of personal diary cum family history cum business records.
Florentine Catasto: “Catasto of Florence,” ed. Patrick Geary, Readings in Medieval History, 3rd ed
(Peterborough, Ont.: Westview Press, 2003). These are excerpts from the Florentine Catasto, the great
tax census of Florence of 1427, on which a great deal of our demographic knowledge of the late Middle
Ages has been built.
Christine de Pizan, The Book of the Three Virtues - an allegory directed to women of all social classes,
telling them how they should conduct themselves properly, primarily by submitting to the authority of
their husbands and putting their faith in a better life in the next world. Sarah Lawson, trans., The
Treasure of the City of Ladies, or The Book of the Three Virtues, Rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 2003).
The Letters of the Paston Women: A Selected Translation. Translated from the Middle English with
Introduction, Notes, and Interpretive Essay, trans. Diane Watt (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, New
York: Boydell & Brewer, 2004) OR Norman Davis, ed. and trans., The Paston Letters: A Selection in
Modern Spelling (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Margery Kempe’s Book, trans. Liz Herbert McAvoy (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, New York:
Boydell and Brewer, 2004).
The Letters of the Rozmberk Sisters: Noblewomen in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia, trans. John M. Klassen
with Eva Doležalovà and Lynn Szabo (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, New York: Boydell &
Brewer, 2001).
Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi (1407-1471), Selected Letters of Alessandra Strozzi, translated with an
introduction and notes by Heather Gregory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). The letters
of a 15th-century Florentine noblewoman.
The Distaff Gospels: A First Modern English Edition of ‘Les évangiles des quenouilles’, Broadview
Editions (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2006). An anonymous 15th-century collection of more
than 250 popular beliefs. Told as a series of conversations between country women on long winter
evenings. Each night, an old woman presents her “gospels” to the others, telling what life has taught her.
Another woman then provides a commentary to her story.
VI. Gender Roles – Women’s Work and Men’s Work

General note: there’s lots of material on medieval economic history. The materials I’ve included here
focus specifically on documents that articulate why or how certain kinds of work are “gendered” they way
they are, or because they allow comparative analyses between “men’s work” and “women’s work.”
Etienne Boileau (f. 1261-1270), Livres des métiers, section on the silk guild in Paris, translation in Emilie
Amt, ed., Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 194-99.
Anonymous, “Guild Regulations of the Shearers of Arras (1236),” in Roy C. Cave and Herbert H.
Coulson, transs., A Source Book for Medieval Economic History (New York: Bruce Publishing, 1936),
pp. 250-52.
Carolyn Muessig, ed. and trans., The Faces of Women in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry (Toronto:
Peregrina Publishing, 1999). Excerpts from sermons addressed to or concerning women, by the famous
French Dominican preacher, Jacques de Vitry (ca. 1170-1240).
VII. Ranks of Society

In addition to de Pizan’s Book of the Three Virtues (see above), another text that examines women across
the social orders is a late 15th-century text, the Dance Macabre of Women. Death comes to take women
from every order of society and presents women of dissolute life with an image of their damnation.
Especially important for the images of each kind of woman, all of which are reproduced in Harrison’s
edition. Ann Tukey Harrison, ed., The ‘Danse Macabre of Women’: Ms. fr. 995 of the Bibliothèque
nationale, with a chapter by Sandra L. Hindman (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1994).
Anonymous, Encomium Emmae Reginae, ed. and trans. Alistair Campbell, Camden Classic Reprints, vol.
4 (London: Cambridge Unversity Press, 1998). Regarding the life of Empress Emma.
Agnes of Harcourt, The Writings of Agnes of Harcourt: The Life of Isabelle of France and the Letter on
Louis IX and Longchamp, ed. and trans. Sean Field (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
2003). An edition and translation of a contemporary vernacular biography of Isabelle, a thirteenth-century
Capetian princess, written by one of her female companions. This is the earliest known original French
prose text written by a woman, and the only known medieval biography of a royal woman written by
another woman.
Nicolosa Sanuti, “Nicolosa Sanuti’s Defense of Women and their Clothes,” in Catherine Kovesi Killerby,
“‘Heralds of a well-instructed mind’: Nicolosa Sanuti’s Defence of Women and Their Clothes”,
Renaissance Studies 13, no. 3 (1999): 255-283. This article is an analysis (including translation) of the
1453 treatise written by the Bolognese noblewoman, Nicolosa Sanuti, demanding the repeal of Cardinal
Giovanni Bessarion’s sumptuary law that persons who wear clothes beyond those approved for their
social rank be excommunicated.
VIII. Marital Celibacy

Letters of Abelard and Heloise - one of the most famous sets of correspondence of all time, these letters
exchanged between the theologian/monk Abelard and his former lover/now abbess Heloise offer frank
testimony to love and sexual desire. In: Betty Radice, trans., The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974). See also Constant Mews, The Lost Love Letters of Abelard and
Heloise: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999),
which provides translations of excerpts from Abelard and Heloise’s earlier correspondence.
IX. Chivalry and Male Codes of Honor

Note: I include under this heading a few chronicles of the Crusades. There are many more sources that
address expectations of noble masculine behavior than those listed here (see, for example, Dhuoda’s
Handbook listed above), and almost all will be rich sources for constructing notions of masculinity (and
sometimes, femininity) in the Middle Ages. To get some ideas, look through articles on “Crusades,”
“Knights,” etc., in some of the encyclopedias listed below.
Helen Nicholson, ed. and trans., Chronicle of the Third Crusade: A Translation of the ‘Itinerarium
peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997). An important source for late twelfth-
century warfare.
Geoffroi de Charny, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation, ed.
Richard W. Kaeuper, trans. Elspeth Kennedy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).
Anonymous, “The Tract about the Places and Condition of the Holy Land,” trans. G. A. Loud, Leeds
Medieval History Texts in Translation Website, University of Leeds, 2004; available online at
<http://www.leeds.ac.uk/history/weblearning/MedievalHistoryTextCentre/Tractatus de Locis Sancte
Terre.doc>. Written between 1168 and 1176, this includes a kind of anthropological overview of the
Middle East, such as the following statement: “The first of these [the peoples you will find there] are the
Jews, obstinate men, weaker than women and everywhere slaves, suffering a flux of the blood every
month.”
Anonymous, “The Conquest of the Holy Land by Saladin” [and other texts], trans. G. A. Loud, Leeds
Medieval History Texts in Translation Website, University of Leeds, 2004, available online at
<http://www.leeds.ac.uk/history/weblearning/MedievalHistoryTextCentre/De Expugnatione.doc>.
Ibn Al-Athir, “Account of the First Crusade,” in E. J. Costello, trans., Arab Historians of the Crusades
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).
Usamah ibn-Munqidh, An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs
of Usamah ibn-Munqidh, trans. Philip Hitti and Richard Bulliet, Records of Western Civilization (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
“Rule of the Templars” – The Knights of the Temple were a crusading order first founded in 1129. This
text provides information on the knights’ clothing, their armor and equipment, codes of conduct, and
aspects of their daily lives. The Templars grew exceedingly rich, and became the object of persecution by
the French king in the later 13th century (see next item). Judith Mary Upton-Ward, trans., The Rule of the
Templars: The French Text of the Rule of the Order of the Knights Templar, Studies in the history of
medieval religion, 4 (Cambridge: Boydell Press, 2008), ISBN 9780851157016.
“Articles of Accusation” against the Knights Templar. The full text of the articles of accusation made in
the trial of the Knights Templar as well as an eye-witness account by Gerard de Caux can be found in
Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, 1st ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
Note that for the narrative of the trial, you should refer not to Barber’s first edition, but to his second
edition of 2006 (Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars, 2nd ed.), which does not, however, include
the primary documents.
X. Same-‐Sex Relations
Bassem Nathan, “Medieval Arabic Medical Views on Male Homosexuality,” Journal of Homosexuality
26, no. 4 (1994), 37-39. Includes a translation of Avicenna’s (d. 1037) chapter on passive male
homosexuality (ûbnah) from his Canon of Medicine.
Peter Damian, Book of Gomorrah – a diatribe written against clerical homosexuality in the mid-11th
century. In: Peter Damian, Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh Century Treatise Against Clerical
Homosexual Practices, translated with an introduction and notes by Pierre J. Payer (Waterloo, Ont.,
Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982).
John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from
the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1980). In his Appendix, Boswell includes documents on homosexuality, 4th-13th centuries.
“The Trial of Arnold of Verniolle for Heresy and Sodomy” – records of a trial held in 1323-24 in Pamiers
(southern France) of a subdeacon accused of pretending to be a priest and of committing sodomy. In:
Michael Goodich, The Unmentionable Vice: Homosexuality in the Later Medieval Period (Santa
Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1979), pp. 89-123. The same text is also available in Goodich’s collection of
primary sources, Other Middle Ages: Witnesses at the Margins of Medieval Society (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 117-43.
“Trial of John Rykener” – we read this for class; it describes the case of a male prostitute arrested in
London in 1394. For a fuller analysis of the text, see David Lorenzo Boyd & Ruth Mazo Karras, “The
Interrogation of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fouteenth-Century London,” GLQ: A Journal of
Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (1994), 459-65.
“The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer” – brief record of a trial held in Speyer (Germany) in 1477 of a
woman accused of dressing as a man and having sexual relations with other women. In: Helmut Puff,
“Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477),” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern
Studies 30 (2000), 41-61, at pp. 60-61.
XI. Sexuality in General
Here are some essay collections that give general overviews and suggestions for finding other sources.
Vern L. Bullough & James A. Brundage, eds., Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (New York:
Garland, 1996)
Joyce E. Salisbury, Medieval Sexuality: A Research Guide (New York: Garland, 1990). This has
selections of both primary and secondary sources.
Karma Lochrie et al., eds., Constructing Medieval Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1997). Essays by historians and literary and art historical scholars.
Carol Pasternack and Lisa M.C. Weston, Sex and Sexuality in Anglo-Saxon England: Essays in
Memory of Daniel Gillmore Calder (Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University, 2005). A collection of
literary essays.
XII. Prostitution
Sources relating to prostitution generally fall into three categories: (1) laws and other theoretical legal
pronouncements condemning or regulating prostitution; (2) specific local ordinances regarding
prostitution; and (3) arraignments or trials of prostitutes, pimps, or brothel keepers. Most evidence comes
from the late Middle Ages, when prostitution was legalized (but also tightly regulated) in various
European localities. The following sources are organized by region.
France
Leah Lydia Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc
(Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1985). The Appendix includes primary sources in translation.
Jacques Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (New York, NY: Blackwell, 1988).
The Appendix includes primary sources in translation.
“Richeut,” an Old French literary text about a prostitute. There is a brief discussion and English
translation by Gabriel Haddad in Comitatus 22 (1991): 1-29.
Spain
There are a lot of sizable quotations (all in the original Castilian Spanish) in the following essay: Ekene
Lacarra Lanz, “Legal and Clandestine Prostitution in Medieval Spain,” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies
(Liverpool) 79, no. 3 (2002), pp. 265-85.
“Confessions of a Muslim Prostitute (1491)” – a case from Valencia (Spain) that tells a lot about violence
as a major factor in the “making” of a prostitute. In: Olivia Remie Constable, ed., Medieval Iberia:
Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1997), pp. 340-42.
England
“Trial of John Rykener” (see under “Homosexuality” above)
“Regulations of the Southwark Stews” – a detailed series of regulations by the archbishop of Winchester.
This appears as an appendix to Ruth Mazo Karras, “The Regulation of Brothels in Later Medieval
England,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14 (1989), 399-433; reprinted in Sisters
and Workers in the Middle Ages, ed. J. Bennett, E. Clark, J. O’Barr, B. Vilen, and S. Westphal-Wihl
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 100-134.
Christine L. Winter, “The Portsoken Presentments: An Analysis of a London Ward in the 15th Century,”
Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 56 (2005), 97-161. The Portsoken
presentments are records of criminal indictments for a suburb of London that span the period 1465-
1483. There is an extraordinary number of indictments for prostitution and pimping, brought against
both women and men.
A variety of documents (mostly legal records) related to prostitution in and around York, England, can be
found on pp. 210-22 of the Jeremy Goldberg collection (see General Anthologies below).
Italy
Lynn Marie Laufenberg, trans., “Regulation of Brothels in Florence Two Texts (Thirteenth Century,
1346): The Thirteenth-Century Law and Judicial Condemnation of a Brothel-Keeper in Late Medieval
Florence (1346), in Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation, ed. Katherine L. Jansen, Joanna Drell, and
Frances Andrews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 196-98.
Germany
[Anonymous], “Ordnung der gemeinen Weiber in den Frauenhäusern/Regulations concerning Prostitutes
Dwelling in Brothels,” in Ladies, Whores, and Holy Wornen: A Sourcebook in Courtly, Religious,
and Urban Cultures of Late Medieval Germany. Introductions, Translations, and Notes by Ann Marie
Rasmussen and Sarah Westphal-Wihl, TEAMS. Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions V
(Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2010), pp. 143-55.
XIII. Medicine and Natural Philosophy (Science)

Louise Cilliers, ed. and trans., “Vindicianus’ Gynaecia: Text and Translation of the Codex Monacensis
(Clm 4622),” Journal of Medieval Latin 15 (2005), 153-236. Despite the title by which it is known in
modern scholarship, the Gynaecia (often translated as ‘Gynecology,’ though it could be interpreted more
simply as ‘Women’s Matters’) of Vindicianus (late 4th cent. CE) is in fact a treatise on anatomy and
embryology. Cilliers provides a useful summary here of prior scholarship of the text and includes a text
and translation of the work from a 12th-century manuscript copy now in Munich.
Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, “An Edition and Translation of the Pseudo-Hippocratic Epistula de virginibus,”
in Testi medici latini antichi: Le parole della medicina. Lessico e storia, ed. Sergio Sconocchia and
Fabio Cavalli (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 2004), pp. 211-26. This is an intriguing late antique text, called
“The Letter on Virgins,” now extant in five copies dating from the 9th through 13th centuries, that
prognosticates the future health of a woman (how many children she will bear, whether the labors will be
difficult, how long she will live thereafter) depending on the age she begins to menstruate. The text is
corrupt or lacunous in all five witnesses, but together they allow us to gather a sense of the unique
perspectives of this text. Included here are editions and translations based on all five known copies of the
text.
Constantine the African, On Sexual Intercourse – this is a treatise focused on male sexuality that
Constantine the African, a monk at Monte Cassino, translated from Arabic in the late 11th century. In:
Paul Delany, “Constantinus Africanus’ De coitu,” Chaucer Review 4:1, (1969), 55-65. Note: if you can
read Latin or Spanish, there is also a more recent edition of the Latin text, with complete Spanish
translation, in Enrique Montero Cartelle, ed., Constantini Liber de coitu: El tratado de andrologia de
Constantino el Africano. Estudio y edicion critica, Monografias de la Universidad de Santiago de

Compostela, 77 (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1983).
Johannes Afflacius (?), “Book on the Disease of Heroes [Lovesickness].” Mary Frances Wack, “The
Liber de heros morbo of Johannes Afflacius and Its Implications for Medieval Love Conventions,”
Speculum 62, no. 2 (April 1987), 324-344, provides an edition and translation of a brief text on
lovesickness, translated from the Arabic and perhaps written by a student of Constantine the African (d.
before 1098/99) in southern Italy.
Ibn al-Jazzar and commentators on lovesickness. Another one of the works translated by Constantine the
African was a general medical text by a North African writer named Ibn al-Jazzar (d. 979 CE). This text,
the Viaticum, proved to be very popular and was commented on by several physicians in the 13th and
14th century. Because “lovesickness” was newly introduced to the West in this and other books, it is
interesting to look at how medical theorists addressed it. In Mary Frances Wack, Lovesickness in the
Middle Ages: The ‘Viaticum’ and Its Commentaries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1990), there is an appendix including excerpts (with English translations) from several medical texts and
commentaries.
medical writings of Trota of Salerno – recent researches have proven that there was indeed a female
medical practitioner and writer in 12th-century Salerno called Trota. The more widely-known Trotula
treatises only partially derive from her work (the other authors were most likely male), but it has been
possible to reconstruct a significant portion of Trota’s authentic work. Excerpts of her work, or works
mentioning her, can be found in Monica H. Green, “Reconstructing the Oeuvre of Trota of Salerno,” in
La Scuola medica Salernitana: Gli autori e i testi, ed. Danielle Jacquart and Agostino Paravicini
Bagliani, Edizione Nazionale ‘La Scuola medica Salernitana’, 1 (Florence: SISMEL/Edizioni del
Galluzzo, 2007), 183-233. This is an important supplement to the biographical information on Trota
given in Green’s 2001/2002 edition of the Trotula. Also, a short passage on obstetrics that might derive
from Trota can be found in Monica H. Green, “Medicine in Southern Italy: Six Texts (twelfth–fourteenth
centuries),” in Katherine L. Jansen, Joanna Drell, and Frances Andrews, eds., Medieval Italy: Texts in
Translation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 314-16. This also includes the
complete translation of the medical license granted to a female surgeon, Maria Incarnata, in Naples in
1343, two hundred years after Trota lived (pp. 324-25).
The Trotula – a compendium of three texts on women’s medicine and cosmetics written in 12th-century
Salerno. In: Monica H. Green, ed. & trans., The ‘Trotula’: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s
Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), which has both the Latin text and an
English translation; if you only need the English, you can use the paperback edition, The ‘Trotula’: An
English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2002). When citing this text, include the paragraph numbers since the pagination
of the hardback and paperback editions varies. Also, be sure to consult the previous item for more up-to-
date information on the female healer Trota, who can be credited with only one of the three Trotula
treatises.
Salernitan Anatomical Treatises: several texts on anatomy were composed in the famous medical center
of Salerno in the 12th century. All of them have sections on the anatomy of the reproductive organs.
They can be found in translation in George Washington Corner, Anatomical Texts of the Earlier Middle
Ages: A Study in the Transmission of Culture, repr. (New York: AMS Press, [1977]).
Hildegard of Bingen, Cause et cure (“Causes and Cures”) – a treatise on nature and medicine, written by
a 12th-century Benedictine nun, with quite distinctive views on male and female nature. In: On Natural
Philosophy and Medicine: Selections from ‘Cause et cure’, trans. Margret Berger (Rochester, NY: D.S.
Brewer, 1999). If you can read Latin, a new critical edition (much improved over the text Berger used) is
now available in Laurence Moulinier, ed., Beate Hildegardis Cause et cure, Rarissima mediaevalia, 1
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003).
A Hebrew obstetrical treatise – Ron Barkaï, “A Medieval Hebrew Treatise on Obstetrics,” Medical
History 33 (1989), 96-119, presents a study and edition of Miquosi ha-Leda (“On difficulties of Birth”), a
chapter on difficult birth apparently extracted from a Hebrew medical compendium in the 14th century. It
is accompanied in the later of the two extant mss (s. xiv/xv) by the 16 fetus-in-utero figures from
Muscio’s Gynaecia. With photographic reproductions of the Hebrew text and accompanying illustrations
Jewish Gynecological Treatises – a wonderful collection of medieval Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic texts on
gynecology and generation is now available in translation: Ron Barkaï, A History of Jewish
Gynaecological Texts in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1998). These include:
“The Treatise on Generation, Called the Secret of Conception” - 14th-cent. Hebrew tract on
diagnosis and treatment of sterility in male and female. Barkaï, pp. 212-22
“On Difficulties of Birth” - chapter on difficult birth apparently extracted from a Hebrew medical
compendium; accompanied by the 16 fetus-in-utero figures. Barkaï, pp. 115-19.
“Dinah’s Book on All That Concerns the Womb and Its Sicknesses” - translation into Judeo-Arabic
(Arabic written in Hebrew characters) of gynecological recipes. Barkaï, pp. 97-10.
“The Book on the Womb by Galen, which is called Gynaecias” - Hebrew translation of a late
antique Latin gynecological text, probably made between 1197 and 1199 in southern France.
Barkaï, pp. 145-180.
“Hippocrates’ Book on Pregnancy and the Womb”) - a Hebrew translation (from the Arabic) of the
Hippocratic On Superfetation (a treatise on how one child can be conceived when another
pregnancy is already in progress). Barkaï, pp. 53-55.
“A Record of the Diseases Occurring in the Genital Members”) - Hebrew text in 2 parts, one on
diseases of male organs, one on female; probably written in Christian Spain in the 12th cent. or
13th cent. Barkaï, pp. 109-44.
Carmen Caballero-Navas, The ‘Book of Women’s Love’ and Medieval Medical Hebrew Literature on
Women, Kegan Paul Library of Jewish Studies (London: Kegan Paul, 2004). Edition, translation, and
commentary on a Hebrew treatise on love magic, aphrodisiacs, cosmetics, gynecology, and obstetrics.
The work is known to exist in only one late fifteenth-century copy, made probably in the area of
Catalonia or Provence. Essentially a remedy book, this essentially empiricist text will disappoint those
looking for theoretical statements about sexuality or magic. Caballero-Navas concedes that the author is
male, but then offers a rather strained argument for a female audience despite evidence within the text that
it was directed toward male readers.
pseudo(?)-Constantine the African, “On Those [Men] Who, Impeded by Magic, Cannot Have Intercourse
[with Their Wives]” – this work is probably either by Constantine the African (d. before 1098/99), a
Benedictine monk who translated a wide variety of Arabic medical texts into Latin, or by a student of his.
We read this in class, but you are welcome to use it as the basis for a more extended study of views on
impotence. The text, as well as further historical analysis, can be found in Catherine Rider, Magic and
Impotence in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
The Secrets of Women – a late 13th-century treatise on processes of generation and sexuality, very
misogynistic in tone. In: Helen Lemay, ed. & trans., Women’s Secrets: A Translation of Pseudo-
Albertus Magnus’s ‘De secretis mulierum’ with Commentaries (Albany: State University of New York,
Press, 1992). We read this in class. For more background on Christine de Pizan’s views on the text, see
Monica H. Green, “‘Traittié tout de mençonges’: The Secrés des dames, ‘Trotula,’ and Attitudes
Towards Women’s Medicine in Fourteenth- and Early Fifteenth-Century France,” in Marilynn Desmond,
ed., Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1998), pp. 146-78, repr. in Green, Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West: Texts and Contexts
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).
Gerrit Bos, ed. and trans., Ibn al-Jazzar on Sexual Diseases and Their Treatment, The Sir Henry
Wellcome Asian Series (London: Kegan Paul, 1997). An edition (of the Arabic original) and English
translation of Book VI of Ibn al-Jazzar’s Zad al-musafir wa-qut al-hadir (Provision for the Traveller and
Sustenance for the Settled). This tenth-century Arabic work was translated into Latin in the late eleventh
century as the Viaticum, where it became one of the most widely circulating medical) encyclopedias in
the West. The gynecological section from Book VI also served as the basis for the Salernitan Liber de
sinthomatibus mulierum (Book on the Conditions of Women), one of the so-called Trotula treatises.
Peter Biller, “A ‘Scientific’ View of Jews from Paris around 1300,” Micrologus 9 (2001), 137-168.
Carrying forward observations he had already made in 1992,3 Biller explores the genesis of the belief that
Jewish males menstruate. Biller identifies three separate strands of thought, all deriving from the Arabic
world: medical texts (that melancholy was associated with a flux of blood), astrological texts (that Jews
were associated with melancholy and Saturn), and two texts coming out of the Crusader states (that Jews
suffered a flux of blood). The three strands came together ca. 1300, later to be diffused through such texts
as one of the commentary traditions on the pseudo-Albertus Magnus, Secreta mulierum (Secrets of
Women). Biller includes in an appendix all the relevant texts, with translations.
The Sickness of Women (Version 2) – a mid-15th-century English text on gynecology and obstetrics. This
is an important text, but the only available modern English translation is badly flawed: Rowland, Beryl,
ed. Medieval Woman’s Guide to Health: The First English Gynecological Handbook (Kent, Ohio: Kent
State University Press, 1981). IF you use it, you must ignore the introduction here (which is seriously
misleading) and instead rely on the description of the text in Monica H. Green and Linne Mooney, “The
Sickness of Women,” in Sex, Aging, and Death in a Medieval Medical Compendium: Trinity College
Cambridge MS R.14.52, Its Texts, Language, and Scribe, ed. M. Teresa Tavormina, Medieval &
Renaissance Texts and Studies, 292, 2 vols. (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, 2006), vol. 2, pp. 455-568. IF you have any training in Middle English (say, you’ve taken a
Chaucer course), then you can probably work directly with the Middle English edition in Green and
Mooney. (Or ask Dr. Green for recommendations for other Middle English texts on women’s medicine.)

3
Peter Biller, “Views of Jews from Paris around 1300: Christian or ‘Scientific’?,” in Christianity and Judaism:
Papers Read at the 1991 Summer Meeting and the 1992 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical Society, ed. Diana
Wood, Studies in Church History, 29 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 187-207.
The Mirror of Coitus – a 15th-century Catalan treatise on sexual intercourse. In: Michael Solomon,
trans., Mirror of Coitus: A Translation and Edition of the Fifteenth-Century ‘Speculum al foderi’
(Madison, WI: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1990).
“Public Record of the Labour of Isabel de la Cavalleria. January 10, 1490, Zaragoza,” Montserrat Cabré,
trans., The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies <http://orb.rhodes.edu/birthrecord.html>. We
read this amazing description of a medieval birth scene in class. This could be made the basis of an
intriguing study of medieval childbirth practices if combined with another primary source (see below for
ideas).
Trial of a Jewish midwife, in Monica H. Green and Daniel Lord Smail, “The Trial of Floreta d’Ays
(1403): Jews, Christians, and Obstetrics in Later Medieval Marseille,” Journal of Medieval History 34,
no. 2 (June 2008), 185-211. This concerns a Jewish midwife who was charged with killing a Christian
patient who was under her care. The Latin text and an English translation of a portion of the trial record
are included, which provide vivid descriptions of birth and maternal death.
“Trial of Jacoba Felicie” – excerpts from the trial of woman who was tried for illegal medical practice in
Paris in 1322; part of her defence is her argument that she, as a woman, is better qualified to treat female
patients. Partial translation in: James Bruce Ross and Mary M. McLaughlin, eds., The Portable Medieval
Reader (New York: Viking, 1959), 635-40. Another partial translation (with different sections of the
trial record) can be found in Amt (see below under “General Anthologies”).4
Eucharius Roeslin,5 When Midwifery Became the Male Physician’s Province: The 16th Century
Handbook ‘The Rose Garden for Pregnant Women and Midwives’, trans. (from the German) and intro. by
Wendy Arons (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1994). English translation of the famous German midwifery
handbook, Der swangern Frauwen und Hebammen Rosegarten, originally printed at Strasbourg and
Hagenau in 1513. The first published text of its kind, the Rosegarten was frequently reprinted and
translated in the 16th century. Although this technically post-dates the cut-off point for our course
(1500), I will allow this as a primary source since Rösslin’s text is, for the most part, just a German
translation of a Latin medieval text by an Italian writer, Michele Savonarola (d. ca. 1466). If this is used,
it must be used in conjunction with the important corrections in Monica H. Green, “The Sources of
Eucharius Rösslin’s Rosegarden for Pregnant Women and Midwives (1513),” Medical History 53, no. 2
(Spring 2009), 167-92; available gratis on PubMed Central at
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?iid=178168.
Legal account of a Caesarean section performed in 1545 – although this goes beyond the chronological
boundaries of our course, I will allow its use since it usefully captures situations that were probably fairly
common from at least the 13th century on. In Christian Europe, C-sections were performed for two
reasons, both of them only in situations where the mother had already died or was dying: (1) to bring the
fetus out in order to baptize it (and save its immortal soul); and (2) to allow the husband to inherit his
wife’s property. (This has to do with an unusual kink in Roman law, which will be explained in class.)
In 1545 in Vercelli (Duchy of Savoy, in northern Italy), the wife of a physician, Isabella della Volpe, died

4
For further background to the trial of Jacoba Felicie, see the literature cited in Monica H. Green, “Conversing
with the Minority: Relations among Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Women in the High Middle Ages,” Editor’s
Preface to a special issue of Journal of Medieval History 34, no. 2 (June 2008), 105-118, at p. ??; and eadem,
“Getting to the Source: The Case of Jacoba Felicie and the Impact of the Portable Medieval Reader on the Canon of
Medieval Women’s History,” Medieval Feminist Forum, no. 42 (Winter 2006 [appeared Summer 2007]), 50-63;
available online gratis at http://ir.uiowa.edu/mff/vol42/iss1/10/.
5
This author’s last name will variously be spelled “Roeslin,” “Roesslin,” “Rösslin,” and “Rößlin.”
after a brief illness; the present account gives the witness testimony of what happened next. See
Katharine Park, “The Death of Isabella della Volpe: Four Eyewitness Accounts of a Postmortem
Caesarean Section in 1545,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82.1 (2008) 169-187. Park presents the
full Latin text as well as a complete translation.
XIV. Transvestism and Challenges to Gender Roles

“The Life of St. Mary/Marinos,” available on-line at http://www.doaks.org/HolyWomen/talbch1.pdf. The
story of an early Byzantine woman who cut her hair, took on men’s clothing, and followed her father into
a monastery. Accused of fathering a child, instead of contesting the charge she accepted punishment for
her “crime” and raised the child in the monastery with her.
Christine de Pizan, “The Tale of Joan of Arc” – the only contemporary writing about Joan by a woman,
this short poem celebrates Joan as an emblem of all that is good about women. In: R. Blumenfeld-
Kosinki & K. Brownlee, The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan (New York: Norton, 1997), pp.
252-62.
The trial records of Joan of Arc are a never-ending source of fascination. An excellent recent
interpretation of them is Karen Sullivan, The Interrogation of Joan of Arc (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1999). For the records themselves, see:
Régine Pernoud, Joan of Arc by Herself and Her Witnesses (Lanham, MD: Scarborough House,
1994).
W P Barrett, trans., The Trial of Jeanne d’Arc: A Complete Translation of the Text of the Original
Documents (London: G. Routledge, 1931). Available on-line on the Internet Medieval
Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/joanofarc-trial.html
Daniel Hobbins, trans., The Trial of Joan of Arc (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2005). To be preferred over the Barrett translation, if you can get a hold of it.
Craig Taylor, ed. & trans., Joan of Arc: La Pucelle, Manchester Medieval Sources (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2006). From the publisher’s blurb: “Following a detailed and
enlightening introduction by the author, the book adopts a chronological approach, starting with
Joan’s childhood and her rise to prominence, her rise as a military leader, the trials which resulted
in her death, and finally a section on the debate over Joan, looking at how she was remembered and
recorded by her contemporaries after her death.”
Primary Sources and Context Concerning Joan of Arc’s Male Clothing. Joan of Arc: Primary
Sources Series. Historical Academy (Association) for Joan of Arc Studies, 2006.
http://primary-sources-series.joan-of-arc-studies.org/PSS021806.pdf. A useful collection of
excerpts from Joan’s rehabilitation trial (in the 1450s, 20 years after her condemnation) of
recollections about her cross-dressing. Also includes a collection of opinions of 15th-century
theologians on the issue of cross-dressing.
“Joan of Arc: Primary Sources Series” http://primary-sources-series.joan-of-arc-studies.org/

Makes available a great collection of “contextualizing” materials on Joan of Arc: information on

what her soldiers were paid, English records concerning her trial, etc. These are all accompanied
by useful annotation.
For general background and leads to other primary sources on female cross-dressing, see Valerie
Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross-dressing in Medieval Religion, Literature and History
(New York: Garland, 1996)
Michael Shank, “A Female University Student in Kraków,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society 12, no. 2 (Winter 1987), 373-379; reprinted in Judith Bennett et al., Sisters and Workers in the
Middle Ages (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989). This is of course the document we read in class.
XV. Witchcraft
Witchcraft is related to gender roles both in the ways it may have been associated with women in
particular, and in questions about the way the devil used sexuality as a way to gain access to his
“victims.” (There is also the issue of male impotence caused by magic, which we discussed in class.) The
peak period of witchcraft trials came long after the Middle Ages were over, but there are nevertheless
some important developments in the theology of witchcraft in the 14th and 15th centuries. A particular
concern was how to tell whether a woman who claimed to be inspired by God (a mystic) was in fact holy
or was deluded by the devil; this was called “the discernment of spirits.”
William of Auvergne, The Universe of Creatures, trans. Roland J. Teske (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 2000). William of Auvergne, who was bishop of Paris from 1228 until his death in
1249, wrote this general encyclopedia of natural-history knowledge as part of his attempt to integrate
Aristotelian learning into Christian theology. It includes important sections where he discusses the nature
of incubi and succubi, witches who come to people during the night and have sex with them.
Richard de Ledrede, The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler: A Contemporary Account (1324) Together with
Related Documents in English Translation, ed. and trans. L.S. Davidson and J.O. Ward (Binghamton,
N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1993).
Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, ed. and trans. Christopher S. Mackay
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). This is “big mama” of all witchhunting manuals.
Written by two Dominican preachers towards the end of the 15th century, it is full of evidence for how
ideas about witchcraft became feminized in the late Middle Ages. Be sure to use this translation and not
the very problematic one published by Montague Summers in the 1920s and widely cited on the Internet.
See also the Kors & Peters and Levack volumes listed under the General Anthologies section below.
XVI. Female Celibates: Nuns, Anchoresses, Beguines, Vowesses

Mother Maria Caritas McCarthy, The Rule for Nuns of St. Caesarius of Arles: A Translation with a
Critical Introduction (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1960)
Monastic rules for women from the early Middle Ages can be found in: Jo Ann McNamara, The Ordeal
of Community (Toronto: Peregrina, 1993).
Saints’ lives of holy women (some of whom were “transvestite saints”) can be found in Sainted Women of
the Dark Ages, ed. and trans. Jo Ann McNamara and John E. Halborg with E. Gordon Whatley (Durham
[NC] : Duke University Press, 1992).
Vera Morton, ed. and trans., Guidance for Women in 12th-Century Convents, Library of Medieval
Women (Boydell & Brewer, 2003). A selection of letters to and biographies of enclosed women in
England and northern France. The interpretive essay by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne is especially helpful.
Goscelin of St Bertin, The Book of Encouragement and Consolation [Liber Confortatorius], trans.
Monika Otter (Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2004). Written ca. 1083, the monk Goscelin’s book of
instruction to his friend and protegée Eva provides examples of moral living and advice on meditative
practices.
Anonymous, Guide for Anchoresses, in Medieval English Prose for Women: Selections from the
Katherine Group and ‘Ancrene Wisse’, ed. Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1990). A 13th-century guide composed in Middle English; this edition has selections in a
facing-page format with the Middle English. The full text, in translation, can be found in Anchoritic
Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works, translated and edited by Nicholas Watson and Anne
Savage (New York: Paulist Press, 1991); and Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses, translated with
introduction by Hugh White (Harmondsworth, New York: Penguin Classics, 1994).
Odo Rigaldus (or Eudes Rigaud), Archbishop of Rouen, d. 1275. The Register of Eudes of Rouen, trans.
Sydney M. Brown; ed. with an introd., notes, and appendix by Jeremiah F. O'Sullivan (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1964). In his role as archbishop, Eudes was responsible for travelling around
to the monastic houses and parishes in his archdiocese and confirming that ecclesiastical dictates were
being followed. This is an amazing document, with tales about how much was not going right in some of
the nunneries and monasteries under his supervision.
Charity Scott-Stokes, trans., Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England (Woodbridge, Suffolk:
Boydell & Brewer, 2006). This is a collection of texts that often appeared in women’s books of hours:
small, often highly personalized prayer books that people used for personal devotion and meditation.
These were the most widely owned books in later medieval Europe and they give us a glimpse of how
women might have used religion as a focal point of their lives.
The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth Century Recluse, ed. and trans. by C. H. Talbot (Toronto :
Published by University of Toronto Press in association with the Medieval Academy of America, 1998).
Brigitte Cazelles, ed., The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the
Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
Alice-Mary Talbot, trans., Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). Includes lives of the following 10th- through 13th-
century saints: St. Mary/Marinos, St. Matrona of Perge, St. Mary of Egypt, St. Theoktiste of Lesbos, St.
Elisabeth the Wonderworker, St. Athanasia of Aegina, St. Theodora of Thessalonike, St. Mary the
Younger, St. Thoma of Lesbos, and St. Theodora of Arta.
Virgin Lives and Holy Deaths: Two Exemplary Biographies for Anglo-Norman Women, translated with
introductions and notes by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and Glyn S. Burgess (The Everyman Library).
London: J.M. Dent; Rutland, Vt.: C.E. Tuttle, 1996. (lxiii, 106 p.) ISBN: 0460875809. Includes
Clemence of Barking’s 12th-century life of St Catherine.
The Gilte Legende: Middle English Womens’ Saints Lives, trans. Larissa Tracy (Woodbridge, Suffolk,
and Rochester, New York: Boydell and Brewer, 2003).
The Writings of Margaret of Oingt, Medieval Prioress and Mystic (d. 1310), trans. Renate Blumenfeld-
Kosinski (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997).
Marguerite Porete: The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Ellen L. Babinsky (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist
Press, 1993).
Philippine de Porcellet, The Life of Saint Douceline, a Beguine of Provence, trans., Kathleen E. Garay and
Madeleine Jeay, Library of Medieval Women (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK; Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer,
2001).
Goswin of Bossut, Send Me God: The Lives of Ida the Compassionate of Nivelles, Nun of Le Ramee,
Arnulf, Lay Brother of Villers, and Abundus, Monk of Villers, trans. Martinus Cawley (Belgium: Brepols
Publishers, 2003). Ida of Nivelles was an early 13th-century beguine.
“Na Prous Bonnet (Boneta)” – a summary of the trial record of a southern French beguine, Na Prous
Boneta (ca. 1290-1325), who claimed to have had a personal encounter with Jesus. She was burned at the
stake in 1325. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/naprous.html
Ulrike Wiethaus, trans., Agnes Blannbekin, Viennese Beguine: Life and Revelations, Library of Medieval
Women (Cambridge, Eng.: D.S. Brewer, 2002).
Anonymous, The Life of Juliana of Mont-Cornillon, trans. Barbara Newman, Peregrina Translations
Series, no. 13 (Ontario: Peregrina Publishing Co., 1999). The life of a 13th-century beguine from the
Low Countries.
Interrogations of two Waldensian (heretical) women, Agnes Francou and Huguette de la Cote: in
Shulamith Shahar, Women in a Medieval Heretical Sect: Agnes and Huguette the Waldensians, trans.
Yael Lotan (Rochester: Boydell, 2001)
Sister Bartolomea Riccoboni, Life and Death in a Venetian Convent: The Chronicle and Necrology of
Corpus Domini, 1395-1436, Edited and translated by Daniel Bornstein (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000). Bartolomea’s own account of the history of her convent, together with individual
biographies of nearly fifty women who lived in the convent between 1395 and 1436.
Teresa de Cartagena, The Writings of Teresa de Cartagena, ed. Dayle Seidenspinner-Nunez, Library of
Medieval Women (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1998).
XVII. Male Celibates: Monks, Priests, University Students

Documents on universities (statutes, rules, etc.) and student life can be found in: Lynn Thorndike,
University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).
Seybolt, Robert Francis, trans., The Manuale Scholarium: An Original Account of Life in the Mediaeval
University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1921). This is the source used by Ruth Karras for her
study of the beanus and rituals of initiation. It’s got lots more info on student life in the 15th century.
A Monk’s Confession: The Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent, trans., with an introduction by Paul J.
Archambault (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).
See also the entry for Odo Rigaldus (or Eudes Rigaud) under “Nuns” above.
XVIII. “Courtly Love”
The list of translations of literary texts would be endless. Here are some more important ones:
Songs of the Women Troubadours, ed. and trans. Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Laurie Shepard, Sarah
White (New York: Garland, 1995).
Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus, intro. and trans. John Jay Parry
(New York: F. Ungar [1964]).
Fournival, Richard de. Master Richard’s Bestiary of Love and Response, trans. Jeanette Beer. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1986.
Erotic Tales of Medieval Germany, ed. Albrecht Classen, trans. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and
Studies (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007).
XIX. Comparative Topics

Although we have focused in this course primarily on the development of Christian marriage and ideas
about sexuality, comparative topics on Jewish and Muslim traditions are entirely permissible for your
research papers. In addition to the Encyclopedia Judaica and Encyclopedia of Islam which were listed on
the instruction sheet for your “Marriage Rites and Rituals” assignment, the following would be excellent
resources to use. See also under the “General Anthologies” section below.
Nicholas Awde, ed. and trans., Women in Islam: An Anthology from the Quran and Hadiths (Richmond,
Surrey, England: Curzon, 2000).
Basim F. Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam: Birth Control Before the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge,
England, 1983). This is a scholarly study of the history of birth control in Islam. It does not include
whole primary sources, but the footnotes and bibliography will lead you to some sources that are
available.
Mordechai Akiva Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine: A Cairo Geniza Study, 2 vols. (Tel-Aviv:
Tel-Aviv University, The Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, 'Moreshet' Project for the Study of
Eastern Jewry; New York : The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1980-1981. Volume offers
historical analysis of the marriage (ketubba) traditions of Jewish communities in medieval Palestine.
Volume 2 presents English translations of ketubba texts.
S. D. Goitein, “Three Trousseaus of Jewish Brides from the Fatamid Period,” AJS Review 2 (1977), 77-
110. This lists and comments on 11th- and 12th-century trousseaus of Jewish women in Egypt from
varying social classes.
Mark R. Cohen, The Voice of the Poor in the Middle Ages: An Anthology of Documents from the Cairo
Geniza (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). The Cairo Geniza is a collection of documents
(letters, invoices, legal contracts, petitions, etc.) from a synagogue outside Cairo. This amazing resource
allows us to capture life within the Jewish communities under Islamic rule. In this collection of sources,
Cohen presents documents relating to poor people and how they attempted to carve out lives for
themselves in the midst of poverty. Many documents relate to women.
“Medieval Jewish Women in History, Literature, Law, and Art: A Bibliography”

<http://www.brandeis.edu/hirjw/publications.html>; also available at <http://www.the-
orb.net/encyclop/religion/judaism/jew-wom.html>. This bibliography, compiled and annotated by Cheryl
Tallan, offers an excellent entree into scholarly work on the largest minority community in medieval
Europe. This is not a database but just a link to a printed bibliography in PDF format.
XX. General Anthologies

The following books bring a whole range of sources together. If you know you are interested in a
particular geographic region or social group, these are great places to look for primary sources related to
marriage, family life, sexuality, etc.
Miri Rubin, ed., Medieval Christianity in Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
Includes several documents on marriage and religiosity.
Martha A. Brožyna, ed., Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages: A Medieval Source Documents Reader
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005). This is not great quality (in fact, it is quite dated and unreliable on
some issues), but it has a few documents from Central European sources not available elsewhere.
Judith Herrin, ed., A Medieval Miscellany: The Medieval World in Its Own Words (London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1999). Includes excerpts from chronicles, legal documents, private communications,
epitaphs and romances.
Robert S. Lopez and Irving W. Raymond, eds. and transs., Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World:
Illustrative Documents. Reprint of 1955 edition with a new foreword and bibliography by Olivia Remie
Constable. Records of Western Civilization, vol. 52. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). This
collection of merchant contracts, etc., doesn’t have a whole lot pertinent to our themes of marriages,
sexuality, etc. But who knows what things you might find relevant to the largely masculinized business
of long-distance trade.
Roy C. Cave and Herbert H. Coulson, eds., A Source Book for Medieval Economic History (New York:
Bruce Publishing, 1936).
Angus A. Somerville and R. Andrew McDonald, eds., The Viking Age: A Reader (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2010). Includes several documents relating to divorce and sexuality.
Daniel Smail and Kelly Lyn Gibson Smail, eds., Vengeance in Medieval Europe: A Reader (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2009). This would be a great resource to use to compare attitudes towards
sexual violence with other kinds of assault.
Jacqueline Murray, ed., Love, Marriage, and Family in the Middle Ages: A Reader (Broadview Press,
2001). A useful collection of key documents from church history, etc. Murray is mostly excerpting from
fuller translations available elsewhere, so do check her notes if you’re interested in finding the complete
text.
Robert Bonfil, ed. and trans., History and Folklore in a Medieval Jewish Chronicle. The Family
Chronicle of Ahima'az ben Paltiel (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
Kirsi Salonen and Ludwig Schmugge, eds. and transs., A Sip from the “Well of Grace”: Medieval Texts
from the Apostolic Penitentiary (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009). Lots of
examples of dispensations (formal papal grants of forgiveness) for various kinds of sin, including many
instances of illegitimacy.
David Nicolle, Medieval Warfare Source Book, 2 vols. (London: Arms and Armour; New York, NY:
Distributed in the USA by Sterling, 1995-1996). Volume 1 has “Warfare in Western Christendom”;
volume 2 “Christian Europe and its neighbours.”
Olivia Remie Constable, ed., Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). This is a rich collection with marriage contracts,
the confession of a Muslim prostitute, and a variety of other materials reflecting on family life and
sexuality in the richly multicultural context of medieval Spain.
Charles Melville, trans., Christians and Moors in Spain, 3 vols. (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1988-
1992).
Alan C. Kors & Edward Peters, eds., Witchcraft in Europe, 1100-1700: A Documentary History
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).
Brian P. Levack, ed., The Witchcraft Sourcebook (New York; London: Routledge, 2004). A word of
caution: the bulk of the evidence included here relates to the post-medieval witchhunts. Do NOT use any
material that dates from after 1500 for these essays.
Michael Goodich, ed. and trans., Other Middle Ages: Witnesses at the Margins of Medieval Society
(Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). A variety of testimony to the lives of “marginal”
people (lepers, heretics, etc.), these sources are translated from Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic.
Emilie Amt, ed., Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1993);
better to use the rev. 2nd ed. 2010. An interesting collection of sources relating to women from across
Europe and several time periods. Includes a wide variety of short excerpts on various topics such as law,
marriage, the lives of noblewomen, peasants, and townswomen, religious regulations and practices; and
the lives of Jewish, Muslim, and heretic women. Most of these sources can be found elsewhere (and
often in full, e.g., the Trotula), but this may be worthwhile perusing to get general ideas and citations.
Carolyne Larrington, Women and Writing in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook (London & New York:
Routledge, 1995). General topics include “Marriage”; “Love, Sex and Friendship”; “Motherhood and
Work”; “Women and Christianity”; “Women and Power”; “Education and Knowledge”; and “Women
and the Arts.”
Jennifer Ward, Women of the English Nobility and Gentry, 1066-1500 (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1995). Topics include “Marriage”; “Family”; “Land”; “Wealth and Lordship”;
“Household”; and “Religion.” NOTE: this collection has lots of otherwise unpublished sources (e.g.,
wills, charters, excerpts from account books) and so is especially valuable.
P. J. P. (Jeremy) Goldberg, Women in England, c. 1275-1525 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,

1995). Topics include “Childhood”; “Adolescence”; “Husband and Wife”; “Widowhood, Poverty and
Old Age”; “Work in the Countryside”; “Work in the Town”; “Law and Custom”; “Recreation”; and
“Devotion.” This contains lots of otherwise unpublished materials, many of which are drawn from
sources from Yorkshire (Goldberg’s research field).
Alcuin Blamires, ed., Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1992). A superb collection of excerpts demonstrating medieval traditions of misogyny and
also, sometimes, the defence of women.
Anne Crawford, ed., The Letters of the Queens of England, 1100-1547 (Dover, NH: A. Sutton, 1994).
S. D. Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). Like
the Lopez and Raymond collection above, despite this collection’s economic focus it nevertheless has
valuable materials on the business aspects of marriage and the property and emotional aspects of long-
distance trade.
Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315-1791 (New York: Atheneum,
1974).
Lawrence Fine, ed., Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). Entries includes such texts as Italian Jewish Women
at Prayer,” “The Role of Women at Rituals of Their Infant Children,” “Women and Ritual Immersion in
Medieval Ashkenaz: The Sexual Politics of Piety,” and “Life-Cycle Rituals of Spanish Crypto Jewish
Women.”
Lynn Thorndike, ed., University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1944). A collection of all kinds of different materials relating to the exclusively masculine
environment of the university.
Basil Dmytryshyn, ed., Medieval Russia: A Source-book, 900-1700 (New York, 1967).
XXI. Resources in Spanish

For those of you who have bilingual capabilities, there are many additional sources available in Spanish:
García Herrero, María del Carmen. Las mujeres en Zaragoza en el siglo XV, 2 vols. (Zaragoza:
Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza, 1990)
[see also the sections above on law codes]

XXII. Encyclopedias
These are excellent places to look for introductory essays on topics of interest to you. They will also
include short bibliographies that may lead you to relevant primary sources. See the instructions for the
“Marriage Rites and Rituals” assignment (posted on our Blackboard under the “Assignments”
button) for a full list of the major resources we have here in our libraries.
XXIII. Internet Sources

Here are our old standbys, the Internet resources:
“Internet Medieval Sourcebook” <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html>. The Internet Medieval

Sourcebook is organized as three main index pages: Selected Sources, Full Text Sources, and Saints’
Lives. The first has selected passages (excerpts) of major documents; the second has the full text of the
sources; while the third provides hagiographic sources. Each category is also supplied with a number of
supplementary documents.
“Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Latin Letters” <http://db.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/ferrante/index.html>.

This database includes the letters by or, more often, to women who lived between the 4th and the 13th
centuries. The full Latin text as well as an English translation are included.
“Matrix: A Scholarly Resource for the Study of Women’s Religious Communities from 400 to 1600
C.E.” <http://monasticmatrix.usc.edu/>. This is an extraordinary resource for researching all aspects of
formal women’s religious communities in the medieval period. The database includes a “Monasticon,” a
listing of the names, dates of founding, abbesses, etc. of several thousand institutions. The
“Cartularium” is the section you need to go to to find primary sources on female institutions, saints’
lives, etc.
XXIV. Research Databases

Finally, there is a vast world of professional scholarship (“secondary sources”) out there on the Middle
Ages. Historians, literary scholars, art historians, and others all use primary sources as the basis of their
own research and oftentimes include translated excerpts in their publications. Hence, if you know you’re
interested in a certain topic, it often pays to find the best and most recent secondary literature on the topic
to guide you to the primary sources. This mode of research may not always pay off in leading you to
published translations: professional medievalists are expected to do their research in the original
languages so even when sources exist, there may be no available translation. But it’s worth looking
anyway, since at the very least you will have a reliable guide to the field. Links to all these resources
can be found under the “Resources” button on our Blackboard site.
Listed below are several bibliographic resources for medieval scholarship. The first three are quite
extensive and survey wide ranges of topics. The rest are more specialized. It often pays to check more
than one of them, since they do not always have the same information. Feminae primarily focuses on
English language materials, but the others include scholarship in various European languages.
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index – This is a free-access bibliography that currently covers
articles and book reviews published from 1992 on. Try browsing through the subject index or using the
“Advanced Search” option. http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/Default.aspx
International Medieval Bibliography – This is probably the most comprehensive bibliography available.
It includes material in all European languages. If you want to limit results to material in English, in the
field “Language of work” input “English”. Access is through the ASU library webpage:
http://www.asu.edu/lib/resources/db/imedbib.htm
Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance – This combines medieval and early modern
scholarship. It is less comprehensive than the IMB and less specialized than Feminae. But it might pull
up material that you would not otherwise encounter. Remember that since this database also includes
Renaissance material, you will need to double-check that the material you choose really relates to the
Middle Ages only. (Any topic before 1500 is permissible for this course.)
http://www.asu.edu/lib/resources/db/iter.htm
“Bibliographie récente sur l’histoire de l’enfance,” Annales de démographie historique 2/2001 (no 102),
p. 47-100. URL : www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2001-2-page-47.htm,
accessed 08/21/2010. The title translates as “Recent Bibliography on the History of Childhood.” This
surveys works covering Antiquity as well as the Middle Ages and more modern periods. Again, any topic
before 1500 is permissible for this course.

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Professor Monica Green

POSSIBLE PRIMARY SOURCES

NOTE ON CITATION PROTOCOLS: Some primary sources are embedded as appendices in

Materials appear under the following headings:

Table of Contents

III. Inquisition and Canonization Proceedings ........................................................................... 5

V. Family Life ............................................................................................................................... 7

I. Development of the Christian Theology of Marriage

Jerome, Against Jovinianus, Book I, available on-line at <http://www.ccel.org/fathers/NPNF2-

II. Marriage and Inheritance in the Feudal System

B. Documents of Practice and Narrative Sources

III. Inquisition and Canonization Proceedings

IV. Sex inside and outside of Marriage

A. Sexual Relations within Marriage

B. Accusations of Fornication and Adultery

VI. Gender Roles – Women’s Work and Men’s Work

VII. Ranks of Society

VIII. Marital Celibacy

IX. Chivalry and Male Codes of Honor

XI. Sexuality in General

Karma Lochrie et al., eds., Constructing Medieval Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of

XIII. Medicine and Natural Philosophy (Science)

Constantino el Africano. Estudio y edicion critica, Monografias de la Universidad de Santiago de

XIV. Transvestism and Challenges to Gender Roles

“Joan of Arc: Primary Sources Series” http://primary-sources-series.joan-of-arc-studies.org/

Makes available a great collection of “contextualizing” materials on Joan of Arc: information on

XVI. Female Celibates: Nuns, Anchoresses, Beguines, Vowesses

XVII. Male Celibates: Monks, Priests, University Students

XVIII. “Courtly Love”

XIX. Comparative Topics

“Medieval Jewish Women in History, Literature, Law, and Art: A Bibliography”

XX. General Anthologies

P. J. P. (Jeremy) Goldberg, Women in England, c. 1275-1525 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,

XXI. Resources in Spanish

[see also the sections above on law codes]

XXIII. Internet Sources

“Internet Medieval Sourcebook” <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html>. The Internet Medieval

“Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Latin Letters” <http://db.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/ferrante/index.html>.

XXIV. Research Databases

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