| Paper 1824-b | Sofia's Hospital on Mount Sion: Negotiating the Challenges of Late Medieval Female Penitents
(Language: English)
Jon Paul Heyne, Department of History, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC
Index terms: Islamic and Arabic Studies, Lay Piety, Women's Studies |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
In spite of the growing popularity of the history of prostitution, the researchers are still encountering difficulties when it comes to the definition of this phenomenon in the Middle Ages. The boundaries between 'common women' and meretrices are not always easy to define, especially for medieval Poland, where sex work was not uncommon. The most important aim of this paper is to clarify various meanings of prostitution for late medieval Polish society, with a particular reference to the perception of 'common women', 'public women', 'suspect women', and 'meretrices'.
Paper -b:
Roughly sixty years after the Mamluk conquest of Acre in 1291, the Florentine laywoman Sofia degli Arcangeli undertook one of the earliest efforts to reestablish an official Latin presence in the Levant. Founding the hospital of St Mary's in Jerusalem, she created both a haven for pilgrims and a house for penitential laywomen. This paper considers Sofia's little-studied establishment, paying particular attention to the complex relations she developed with Mamluk administrators, popes, and the mendicant orders. It argues that Sofia successfully negotiated, at least for a time, the challenges facing many female penitential movements in the late medieval world.
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