Abstract. This paper explores an area which has proven difficult for scholars to penetrate: women's popular wisdom concerning medical matters in the later medieval period. Contextualized within an examination of medieval medical texts both by and about women, our discussion focuses on a later 15th-century French work, The Distaff Gospels. This text, published recently in English for the first time since 1510, consists of more than 200 pieces of advice or "gospels," ostensibly conveyed to one another by a group of women who met together during the long winter evenings to spin. A significant portion of the advice might be considered "medical" in nature; it is grouped into two broad categories: pregnancy and health. We conclude that although our text is male mediated, it provides a reliable and valuable guide to peasant women's medical lore during this period.Résumé. Cet article aborde un domaine qui reste encore peu accessible aux chercheurs, celui des connaissances médicales des femmes du peuple au Moyen Age, notamment à la campagne. Placée dans le contexte des traités médiévaux sur la santé des femmes, éventuellement composés par des femmes, notre présentation est centrée sur un texte français de la fin du Moyen Age, les Évangiles des Quenouilles. Cette oeuvre rassemble une collection de plus de 200 « évangiles », exemples de leur savoir traditionnel, échangés par un groupe de villageoises qui se rencontraient pour filer durant les longues soirées d'hiver. Une portion significative de ce savoir est de nature médicale. Il peut se répartir en deux catégories. La première concerne les questions reliées à la grossesse et à la santé des enfants ; la seconde traite de la santé en général, avec des façons Author, position
For more than a century now criminologists have been giving some attention to the phenomenon of female involvement in criminal activity. However, the female criminals of earlier eras, particularly those of the later mediaeval period, have not been the subjects of such scrutiny. Indeed, if we are to give credence to the romance literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the woman was the meek, self-effacing and virtuous helpmeet of her husband. We cannot imagine, for example, that the daughters of the Knight of La Tour Landry would ever fall foul of the law or even be suspected of the most trivial offence. Yet the legal evidence of the period makes it clear that women could and did appear before the courts as accused as well as accusers. They are found to such an extent that a Victorian interpreter of the court records has concluded that the women of the later mediaeval period were, "except in the very highest rank, almost as brutal as their husbands or paramours," that they were, indeed, "such as the circumstances in which they lived had made them — strong in muscle but hard of heart - more fit to be the mothers of brigands than to rear gentle daughters or honest sons."
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