Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women As Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages

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BRILL, 2009 - History - 308 pages
This book explores womena (TM)s experiences of pilgrimage in Latin Christendom between 1300 and 1500 C.E. Later medieval authors harbored grave doubts about womena (TM)s mobility; literary images of mobile women commonly accused them of lust, pride, greed, and deceit. Yet real women commonly engaged in pilgrimage in a variety of forms, both physical and spiritual, voluntary and compulsory, and to locations nearby and distant. Acting within both practical and social constraints, such women helped to construct more positive interpretations of their desire to travel and of their experiences as pilgrims. Regardless of how their travel was interpreted, those women who succeeded in becoming pilgrims offer us a rare glimpse of ordinary women taking on extraordinary religious and social authority.
 

Contents

Chapter One Introduction
1
Pilgrimage and the Fear of Wandering Women
21
Women and Miraculous Pilgrimage
79
Women and Devotional Pilgrimage
131
Women and Compulsory Pilgrimage
175
Women and NonCorporeal Pilgrimage
221
Conclusions on Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages
261
Appendix
269
Bibliography
281
Index
301
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About the author (2009)

Leigh Ann Craig, PhD (2001) in Medieval History, The Ohio State University, is Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has published on medieval pilgrimage and miracle collections, and is an associate editor for the Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage (Brill, 2009).

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