| Paper 324-b | Religious Women and Money: Examples from Medieval Germany
(Language: English)
Erika Lauren Lindgren, Department of History, Wartburg College, Iowa
Index terms: Economics - General, Gender Studies, Monasticism, Religious Life |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
The year 1284, marked by the issue of the Statute of Rhuddland, is considered as a turning point in the history of Welsh law. After the conquest of Wales by Edward I, the centuries-old laws of Wales, which were focused on compensating damage to the victim, were to be replaced by English laws, which, usually, meant punishment for the offender. The purpose of the present research is to identify changes that occurred in the treatment of rape and similar offences before and after the conquest. The research objectives include comparing the laws themselves as well as the outcome of actual cases of rape under the laws of medieval England and Wales.
Paper -b:
Lester Little, in Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe, set forth the relationship between male religious and the developing medieval European economy. His seminal work, however, fails to ask the question of how religious women fit into this picture. My current project plans to rectify this oversight and explore how the relationships between apostolic poverty and the profit economy might be gendered. For this paper I will present my preliminary findings from my examination of the sources (charters, wills, and record books, as well as narrative sources) of medieval German religious women. These finding illuminate the ways in which nuns and beguines talked about money and how they presented their wealth or poverty to their patrons.
Paper -c:
Travel was often a key characteristic of early medieval sanctity for both men and women. However, female saints were more often facilitators or instigators of travel, rather than the actual travelers themselves. This paper will examine the vitae of three female Frankish saints of the 6th and 7th centuries (Radegund of Poitiers, Gertrude of Nivelles, Rictrude of Marchiennes). Using these hagiographical sources, the paper argues first, that these narratives of saints' lives show evidence of connectivity and a shared religious culture between early medieval Francia and the surrounding regions. Second, the paper argues that female saints were objects and instigators of connectivity, but rarely as the main actors of connection or travel.
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