Since the middle of the 16th century, a series of arbitrary notions, prejudice and even openly fabricated lies have fallen on the Middle Ages. The very expression “Middle Ages” was coined at the beginning of the modern era as a way to establish a criterion of the superiority of the moderns in relation to the medieval man. However, we know that history is more complex than is thought and that there are several themes inherent to the medieval period that need to be carefully investigated. One of these themes is the women's situation At that time.
We used to have the view that, in the medieval world, the woman was submissive to the male figure, whether at home, whether outside it, that is, in works carried out in cities or in the countryside, or in the spheres ecclesiastical. This idea was born from a very common prejudice: that of thinking that, as a society oriented by the Catholic Christian religion, the figure of the woman would be directly associated with sin, either by the Genesis narrative, in which Eve is the one who induces Adam to sin, or by the female body, which could lead to lust and lust.
But the fact is that the compression categories of the Catholic Church, from its roots in Christianity primitive, they never attributed to the woman any condition of inferiority or detainment of sin in relation to to man. Christianity understands that the human being, both woman and man, is exposed to evil, because he is free – he is free to accept or deny the good, the grace. Thus, in the social and ecclesiastical spheres of the Middle Ages, like men, women had a great deal of influence. Society did not deny them space based on political-religious determinations, as noted by historian Regine Pernoud, in the book “The Myth of the Middle Ages”:
[…] certain women enjoyed in the Church, and because of their role in the Church, an extraordinary power in the Middle Ages. Some abbesses were authentic feudal lords, whose power was held in equal measure with that of other lords; some wore a crosier, like the bishop; they often administered vast territories with villages, parishes. [1]
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
In addition to their great influence in the ecclesiastical sphere, women also had a prominent place outside the abbeys and convents. Pernoud continues:
“In notarial acts, it is very common to see a married woman acting on her own, opening, for example, a shop or a business, and this without being obliged to present an authorization from her husband. Finally, the records of the spills (we would say the records of the recipients), when they were kept to us, as in the case of Paris, at the end of the century XIII, show a multitude of women who exercised professions: teacher, doctor, apothecary, educator, dyer, copyist, miniaturist, bookbinder, etc."[2]
With regard to the issue of magical practices, witchcraft, witchcraft, etc., the figure of the woman was, yes, directly related. This was due to cultural mixtures between pagan rites, of Roman and Germanic origin, and popular Christian conceptions of demons, or inferior entities. The pagan fertility cult, for example, had great weight in the Middle Ages. However, the outbreaks of persecution against women identified as "witches" came more from the population that sought "goats expiatory” to explain some natural disaster, such as droughts, floods, pestilence, etc., and less of the Church and the Inquisition. The Inquisition, by the way, was born as a way of containing the public lynchings that were carried out against someone accused of heresy.
The “witch hunt” only turned into a campaign with a religious banner in the Modern Age, when the State, the civil authority, had already superimposed itself on the authority of the Church and its criteria.
GRADES
[1] PERNOUD, Regine. The Myth of the Middle Ages. Lisbon: Europe-America Publications, 1978. P. 95.
[2] Idem. P. 101.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
