Exceptional Women Eleanor of Aquitaine and Hildegard of Bingen essays

Exceptional Women Eleanor of Aquitaine and Hildegard of Bingen essays Norman Cantor (1999) has noted that the lives of medieval women were as diverse as those of men, and that women in this era contributed to all the major movements that spelled success for an emerging European civilization. Nevertheless, women in the Middle Ages were, regardless of their position, status or birth, regarded as legitimately inferior to men and as of necessity submissive to their fathers and husbands and brothers (Weir, 2000). Even in the case of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine - wife to two kinds and mother of two more - a misstep could result in imprisonment at the behest of a husband (Cantor, 1994; Kaufman, 2002). Other women such as St. Hildegard of Bingen, who chose the religious over the secular life, may have experienced a slightly greater degree of autonomy than even a queen such a Eleanor. In both cases, however, the privileged status of these two women ensured that they would live longer, healthier, and more productive lives (including lives of the intellect) than their less well-placed peers Ordinary women in the Middle Ages could be roughly divided into three or four groups. Women born into the ruling or noble families could count on some education and also on being used as bartering chips in their families' quest for power and status. Women of the merchant classes were less free and less privileged, while women of the peasant class lived lives that were short, harsh and subservient. Women who elected to choose the religious life - or had it chosen for them by their fathers or other relatives - had many privileges as well, but limited freedom of activity (Labarge, 1986). In almost all cases, women were very much subject to the rule and domination of their male relatives before marriage or husbands after marriage; if they chose the abbey or the cloister, they accepted the rule of the Church. Even an important abbess such as Hildegard of Bingen wa...