Medieval women were normally denied access to public educational institutions, and so also denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply anomalies, and women generally as victims.This volume, however, argues instead for a via media. Drawing upon manuscript and archival sources, scholars here show that more medieval women attained some form of learning than hitherto imagined, and that women with such legal, social or ecclesiastical knowledge also often exercised professional or communal leadership.
Bringing together contributors from the disciplines of literature, history and religion, this volume challenges several traditional views: firstly, the still-prevalent idea that women's intellectual accomplishments were limited to the Latin literate. It looks beyond the often-studied major Latin women writers and medieval queens, discussing how the language of learning as shifting at the time, and so, too, scholarly ideas of what constitutes intellectual accomplishment. The collection therefore engages heavily with vernacular writings (in Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, French, Dutch, German and Italian), and also with women's material culture, such as manuscript illumination, stained glass, fabric and jewelry. But in doing so, in the second challenge to traditional views, the contributors strive to avoid the equally problematic position that women's accomplishments were somehow limited to the vernacular and the material. So they examine women at work with the sacred languages of the three Abrahamic traditions, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew. Finally, this book argues against the notion that women were somehow more "original" for their lack of learning and and dependence on their mother tongue.

KATHRYN KERBY-FULTON is Professor Emerita, University of Notre Dame; JOHN VAN ENGEN is Professor Emeritus, University of Notre Dame; KATIE BUGYIS is Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame.

Contributors: Asma Afsaruddin, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Amanda Bohne, Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, Adrienne Williams Boyarin, Dyan Elliott, Thelma Fenster, Sean Field, Sarah Foot, Megan Hall, Ruth Mazzo Karras, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Rachel Koopmans, F. Thomas Luongo, Leanne MacDonald, Gary Macy, Maureen Miller, Barbara Newman, S.J. Pearce, Anna Siebach-Larsen, Gemma Simmonds, David Wallace, John Van Engen, Nicholas Watson, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne,