Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

This image shows the tomb effigies of Katherine Mortimer, Countess of Warwick (1314-1369) and Thomas de Beauchamp, eleventh Earl of Warwick (1313/14-1369). In the sculpture, Katherine and Thomas are lying on their backs with heads on pillows that are supported by small figures. Katherine, to the viewer's left, is wearing a fashionable dress and elaborate fretwork veil befitting her status as an elite married woman. Thomas wears armor and is holding the hilt of a sword in his left hand. His right hand reaches out to hold Katherine's right hand, which is drawn across her body. Her left hand was originally resting near the center of her chest. Their feet rest upon animals, Thomas with a bear (unlike here in the Warwick family badge it wears a muzzle) and Katherine with a lamb. This may be an Agnus Dei in reference to her religious devotion to Christ as the lamb of God. The sides of the tomb depict male and female mourners in a variety of fashionable clothing. Windows nearby presented the couple's nine daughters and their five sons. The two windows were destroyed during the English Civil War, but Dugdale includes drawings of the daughters in his Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656)(page 320).

The tomb is located before the high altar in the chancel of the Warwick Collegiate Church of St. Mary in Warwick, England. It dates to shortly after 1369 and was commissioned by Thomas de Beauchamp, the twelfth Earl of Warwick, eldest surviving son of Katherine and Thomas. The double tomb was sculpted from two pieces of alabaster, joined at Thomas's wrist. The choice of alabaster is typical of English nobility at the time. Popularized by the tomb of King Edward II, it held a special appeal for high status memorials. The unpainted stone was valued for its translucence and purity, which gave the faces of tomb effigies a spiritual luminosity. At the same time, clothing and decoration, often painted, were faithfully rendered in durable detail. These properties are shared by the marble used for effigy tombs in France but unlike marble, alabaster is a fairly common English stone.

As is the case for most examples of double tombs, Katherine and Thomas were a married couple. In 1314, the infants were pledged for marriage by their fathers, Roger Mortimer V and Guy de Beauchamp. This agreement was in part motivated to end a dispute between the two families over the manor of Elvel in Wales. Katherine and Thomas's tomb is notable as the first known double tomb made for members of the high nobility in England. The effigies of Katherine and Thomas serve as their lasting representations on Earth, commemorating the most important aspects of their lives and personhood, such as success in military leadership represented by Thomas's sword and armor. With the double tomb, the marriage of Thomas and Katherine is memorialized, because it calls viewers to remember them together rather than separately. Tombs and memorials also helped garner prayers for the deceased, which was believed to help decrease the amount of time souls would spend in Purgatory before ascending to Heaven. By having a double tomb, prayers would likely be said both for Katherine and Thomas, linking the fates of their souls. In this sense, the memorial contradicts the idea that marriage vows only last "til death do us part."

The importance and lasting nature of Katherine and Thomas' marriage is heightened further because they are holding hands. Hands being held, and more specifically clasped right hands, is a gesture which symbolizes marriage in medieval imagery. This is because holding right hands was an important part of the marriage ceremony, as it was a physical element in the exchange of vows. The presence of this imagery on a tomb is associated with a deeply felt marital bond and strengthens the emphasis on a couple's marriage more than a double tomb alone. Their tomb is the oldest known example of hand holding in a three-dimensional monument. A common feature of most hand-holding monuments is that the woman is to the man's right, as seen in Katherine and Thomas' tomb. This is a reversal of the standard pose, where the man is to the woman's right. However, this switch lets the husband easily hold his wife's right hand in his own. This makes the man the active figure of the memorial, albeit at the sacrifice of the more honorable position at the viewer's left. Another frequent feature of hand-holding monuments is that the woman brought property or wealth into the marriage. However, this is not the case in the marriage of Katherine and Thomas. She did not have any dowry for the marriage, but this is likely because her father held the right to Thomas's marriage through royal favor.

This image is an illustration of a Jewish woman, married to a blacksmith, who is forging nails for Christ's crucifixion. It appears in the Holkham Bible Picture Book which presents over eighty pages of of drawings. While the woman's dress does not mark her identity, she has glowering eyes, dark brows, a bulbous nose, as well as a grimacing expression. These kinds of grotesque distortions were first associated with Jews in the late twelfth century in scenes of Christ's mockery before the crucifixion. By the early fourteenth century, they had become an anti-Jewish stereotype. Such a depiction is not just a reflection of antisemitism. Rather it is thought to be an early artistic rendition of of a Jewish woman who appears different from her Christian counterparts. Just twenty years before the illustration in the Holkham Bible, the very same scene of the Jewish blacksmith's wife in the Queen Mary Psalter was depicted quite differently. The woman had small and fair features, was graceful, and could not be distinguished in any way from the Christian women depicted in the text. This change in illustration embraces societal values that mark Jewish difference as both moral and physical.

Michelle Brown has argued that the Holkham Bible Picture Book originated as an artist's pattern book of scenes from the life of Christ for textiles or altarpieces. It was then expanded to include more full-page illustrations from Genesis and the Apocalypse. A prefatory illustration shows a Dominican instructing the artist: "Now do it well and thoroughly for it will be shown to rich people." The artist replies: "Indeed, I certainly will, if God lets me live, never will you see another such book." The illustration suggests that the manuscript was revised for a lay audience. When the illustrations were completed, a brief commentary was added in Anglo-Norman French. The Holkham Bible, through its over 230 illustrations and text descriptions, provided direct access to many stories from the Bible and the Apocrypha.

The story portrayed in the image above concerns a Jewish woman whose husband refused to forge nails because he did not want to have any part in the crucifixion. He told those who ordered the nails that his hand was crippled. When asked to show his hand, God rendered his right hand unusable. At that point, his wife volunteered to make them. It was the Christians' perception of the Jewish people's role in the crucifixion of Christ that turned a generalized anti-Jewish belief into anti-Semitism. There was a shift in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from a religious divide between Judaism and Christianity, to a significant hatred of Jewish people by Christians. New forms of affective piety emphasized Christ's suffering at the hands of Jewish tormentors. Additionally, in England Jewish people were active in finance, often lending money to many people in urban areas. This provided Christians with more reasons for enmity, blaming Jews for monetary problems and claiming they had robbed them. In the late thirteenth century, a series of anti-Jewish laws were enacted, culminating in King Edward I's expulsion of all Jews from England in 1290.

Throughout medieval Europe resentment and violence against Jewish people was not uncommon, and researchers note that violence was often directly targeted at Jewish women. They were blamed for inspiring their husbands to fight back and even for fighting back themselves. Accounts of female martyrdom date back to the Hellenistic period in Maccabees (a mother who commits suicide after exhorting her sons to resist) and to the Babylonian Talmud. Medieval Jewish chronicles from France and Germany recognize women killed in pogroms and those who chose suicide over attacks by passing Crusader armies. In 1196 Dolce of Worms and her two young daughters were killed by local intruders, while her husband, his students and the couple's son were wounded. The attackers were likely attracted by Dolce's work as a moneylender. Her husband, Rabbi Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, wrote two elegies in their honor:

What a rare find is a capable wife [31:10]: Such a one was my saintly wife, Mistress Dolce.
A capable wife [31:10]: the crown of her husband, the daughter of community benefactors. A woman who feared God, she was renowned for her good deeds.
Her husband put his confidence in her [31:11]: She fed him and dressed him in honor to sit with the elders of the land [31:23] and involve himself in Torah study and good deeds. …
She was like a merchant fleet [bringing her food from afar] [31:14] to feed her husband so that he might immerse himself in Torah. Her daughters saw her and declared her happy [31:29] for her merchandise was excellent [31:18]… Poetic Elegy 1 (trans. Judith Baskin; quotations from Proverbs)

… Let me tell about the life of my younger daughter [Hannah]. She recited the first part of the Sh'ma prayer every day.
She was six years old and spun and sewed and embroidered. She entertained me and she sang.
Woe is me for my wife and for my daughters! I cry out in lamentation.…Poetic Elegy 2 (trans. Judith Baskin)

In categorizing all Jews as hateful and morally corrupt, medieval Christians established a classification that would have a profound impact and would generate exclusionary practices for additional groups of people. The antisemitism perpetuated in the fourteenth century and amplified by the Holkham Bible still has a large presence in the world today.

Baskin, Judith. "Dolce of Worms: The Lives and Deaths of an Exemplary Medieval Jewish Woman and Her Daughters." Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period. Edited by Lawrence Fine. Princeton University Press, 2001. Pages 429-437.

British Library, "Add MS 47682." Description and images. Available open access.

Brown, Michelle P. The Holkham Bible Picture Book: A Facsimile. British Library, 2007.

Caroselli, Susanna Bede. "Illuminating Difference: Christian Images of Jews in Medieval English Manuscripts." Jews in Medieval England: Teaching Representations of the Other. Edited by Miriamne Ara Krummel and Tison Pugh. Springer, 2017. Pages 191-207.

Einbinder, Susan. “Jewish Women Martyrs: Changing Models of Representation.” Exemplaria 12, 1 (2000): 105-27.

Heng, Geraldine. England and the Jews: How Religion and Violence Created the First Racial State in the West. Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Kirkland, Brad. "'Now thrive the armourers': The Development of the Armourers' Crafts and the Forging of Fourteenth-Century London." PhD diss. University of York, 2015. Available open access. See sections concerning women in Chapter 3, The Armourers' Households.

Lavezzo, Kathy. The Accommodated Jew : English Antisemitism from Bede to Milton. Cornell University Press, 2016.

Lipton, Sarah. “What's in a Nose? The Origins, Development, and Influence of Medieval Anti-Jewish Caricature.” The Medieval Roots of Antisemitism: Continuities and Discontinuities from the Middle Ages to the Present Day. Edited by Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Hess. Routledge, 2018. Pages 183-203.

Lipton, Sarah. “Where Are the Jewish Women?" Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography.” Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2014. Pages 201- 238.

Strickland, Debra Higgs. “Gazing into Bernhard Blumenkranz's Mirror of Christian Art: The Fourteenth-Century Tring Tiles and the Jewishness of Jesus in Post Expulsion England.” Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe: The Historiographical Legacy of Bernhard Blumenkranz. Edited by Philippe Buc, Martha Keil and John Tolan. Brepols, 2015. Pages 149 - 187. The book is available open access.

The woman, then who thinks she is pregnant should live discreetly, contentedly, and chastely - light nourishing foods, no hard, excessive labor, no sleepy or lazy days in idle solitude. She should give birth in her husband's house and not elsewhere. Once she is delivered, she must not go out into the cold and the wind until her health is fully restored and all her limbs have fully regained their strength.

The manuscript was commissioned by Anne of Brittany, twice queen of France. She asked Dufour, a Dominican at the royal court, to compile this account of famous women whom he presents as models to emulate or avoid. He praises Joan for her celibacy and religious devotion and makes careful note of her rehabilitation including an annual celebration in Orléans, while the illustration by Jean Pichore emphasizes her military persona. Pichore ran a large workshop in Paris that specialized in book illustration for prominent patrons including Louise of Savoy and Cardinal Georges of Amboise as well as Louis XII and Anne of Brittany. Scholars have speculated that Anne may have intervened here to solidify this portrayal of a strong female leader, adding a political emphasis to Joan's life.

Joan of Arc, or Jeanne d'Arc, was a fifteenth century French heroine who led French troops to relieve the siege of Orléans by English forces during the Hundred Years' War. Born in 1412 to a peasant family, Joan grew up in Domrémy, a village in northeastern France. As a teenager, she reported hearing saints' voices and receiving visions of angels. These she interpreted as signs from God to help Charles, the Dauphin, reclaim France from the English. Joan pledged her virginity to the service of Christ and to the divine task of rescuing France. Over the years, images of Joan of Arc have varied greatly in their portrayals, depending upon the particular viewpoint of the group involved. Representations have ranged from a humble maiden to a saintly savior, from a personification of liberty to a symbol of right-wing nationalism.

Both images above showcase the fluidity of Joan of Arc's appearance and her identity in both feminine and typically masculine spaces. In the sketch, she wields a sword, a phallic object, and in the manuscript image, she fully straddles her horse in a typically masculine manner. Her dress in both images connotes flexibility in the representation of her gender. The manuscript portrays Joan androgynously in total body armor with her hair encased in a helmet, whereas the sketch displays her in a gown and with her hair plaited but holding a massive weapon. The manuscript's portrait of Joan has her brandishing the banner in place of a weapon. Despite the difference in dress and appearance across these images, they both present Joan's readiness to command in battle. The banners signify her religious connection. Joan's public appeal won France a tremendous victory in a major turning point of the war.

The Hundred Years' War, growing from a dynastic conflict, pitted England against France from 1337 to 1453. It was compounded by the Black Death, the loss of the city of Calais to England, the capture of the Valois king of France Jean II, and the seizure of almost one third of France's territory by the English. Civil conflict also erupted between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, the latter loyal to King Charles VI and his brother, despite the king's increasing insanity. From October 12th, 1428 to May 8th, 1429, the English army besieged the French city of Orléans. After convincing a French captain of her divinely-ordained mission, Joan joined a relief convoy of soldiers bringing supplies to Orléans on March 6th. Once she had entered the city, Joan regularly participated in discussions of tactics, paraded the streets to raise morale, and distributed supplies to the people and the garrison. Joan also sent out messengers to the English demanding that they depart in the name of God, referring to herself as “the Maiden."

Joan of Arc participated in several assaults, and was wounded twice. Despite being injured, she led troops to retake the fortress of Tournelles, freeing hundreds of French prisoners and pushing back the English forces with immense losses. This led to the lifting of the siege. This was a major victory for the French royal army, and the first victory during Joan of Arc's service. After the siege of Orléans, the Maid of Orléans led droves of volunteers to join the French army, serving under her banner.

Joan of Arc, unfortunately, did not live long past this victory. At the age of 19 in 1431, a prisoner of war, she was tried by her English enemies. She was first accused of heresy and witchcraft and acquitted with a warning. However, she ultimately was convicted and burned as a relapsed heretic for wearing men's clothing. However, a 1456 court authorized by Pope Callixtus III re-examined the charges against Joan, pronouncing her innocent and declaring her a martyr. By 1504, Joan of Arc had been rehabilitated and her status elevated to that of a Christian hero rather than a heretic. Her popularity increased over time. Joan became a symbol of the Catholic League in the 16th century, and Napoleon Bonaparte declared her a symbol of France in 1803. The Roman Catholic Church beatified Joan in 1909 before canonizing her in 1920. Groups ranging from the far-right Action Française movement to suffragettes took up Joan of Arc as their hero. In recent years Joan kissed Marianne, the personification of the French republic, on a marriage rights poster. In 2018 Mathilde Edey Gamassou, whose mother is from Poland and father is from Benin, re-enacted Joan's ride in the annual festivities in Orleans. Despite racist and bigoted reactions in newspapers and social media, Mathilde made Joan of Arc especially meaningful to the crowds who cheered for her.

When they had made this oath so that all could hear it,
Nature, who thinks on the things that are enclosed
beneath the heavens, was entered within her forge,
where she would put all her attention
on forging individual creatures to continue the species.