Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives

Abstract

Dyan Elliott turns her attention to Tertullian whom she sees as being at the root of medieval attitudes towards virginity and marriage; she scrutinises how the church Father's perceptions of male and female were linked with angelology (angels not being differentiated into two sexes), and assumes that being freed from sexual activity was a way for women to get rid of the constraints of their bodies. Monastic writers used military terms to describe their efforts to preserve their virginity, and Karras suggests calling theirs an 'alternative model of masculinity' in order to distinguish clerical pursuits from those of secular men. Jane T. Schulenburg, who twenty-five years ago published a foundational account of Strict active enclosure and its effects on the female monastic experience (500-1100), investigates the establishment in nunneries of centres of saints' cults and pilgrimage.