Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400-1400

This collection of fourteen essays in honour of the Oxford medievalist Henrietta Leyser is a welcome book on motherhood in the middle ages. The contributions cover a wide range of subjects, chronologically from late Antiquity to the later middle ages and geographically from northern Africa to Sweden, although just under half concern Britain. One of the most illuminating remarks about the dedicatee’s own views of her ‘métier’ come from her pupil Sethina Watson, who starts her impressive contribution on thirteenth-century family hospitals with Henrietta Leyser’s reminder that for all the excellent work on medieval institutions we should not forget that the middle ages was ‘a peopled age’. It was medieval men and women, among whom there were a large number of mothers, who helped shape the society in which they lived. The editors and contributors are to be congratulated for having picked up on this vital concern to produce a book that on every page has something interesting and new to say about the varied lives of mothers. This is not to say that the concept of medieval motherhood takes second place. All contributors have taken the opportunity to widen their specific interests to stimulating conclusions

Ancient history · Archaeology · Honour · Medieval Literature · Medieval studies · Middle Ages · Sociology · Watson · Classics · History · Medieval Literature and History