Gender & Experience
Women are present as authors, readers, and makers of manuscripts throughout the Middle Ages. The earliest account of Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem was written by a 4th-century woman, Egeria, in the form of a letter addressed to her sorores, or ‘sisters’, at home in Europe; in the 10th century the German nun Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim created comedic plays adapted from ancient Latin sources for the entertainment of her monastic community. And yet, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, stereotypical impressions of medieval life continue to marginalize women and overlook their lives and contributions to theology, literature, and art.The section of the exhibition counters such misconceptions, fostered by a history of misogyny, through a closer look at the contributions of women to medieval book culture. Scholarship in recent decades has filled many gaps in our understanding of gender and experience in the Middle Ages, but this work has sadly been hampered by the destruction of some of the most significant manuscripts made by and for medieval women. Chief among these are Scivias and the Hortus Deliciarum, two books of extraordinary significance that disappeared during catastrophic wars and are only known through archival documents and published facsimiles. The physical erasure of these works mirrors the realities of absence and loss in both medieval sources and modern reception. Pitt’s facsimiles are valuable tools towards recovering the rich lives of medieval women; the examples below create stories of women not only as passive recipients of knowledge but also as active creators in their own right, their agency enhanced by vivid illuminations that keep their legacies alive across the centuries.
