Introduction

Women are often left out of history. Here, we’ll consider women’s roles in Europe during the last half of the Middle Ages (c. 1000 – c. 1350 CE). People used traditions and beliefs to shape their societies. We’ll look at how religious and non-religious laws shaped women’s lives.

Social structures

In medieval Europe, most women were considered property in many ways. They were under the control of their nearest male relative. In most cases, this was the father or husband. A few women were born into wealthy and noble families. They often lived in big country estates. These women received some education from tutors. However, their main responsibility was to run the household. Wives were also expected to have many children. Families wanted sons, especially.

Daughters of small business owners belonged to the middle class. Their families usually lived in towns or cities. As young women, they sometimes worked in the family shop or business. There, they might gain some knowledge of math and reading. As wives, they managed the household as well as helped with the business. They also raised children. In the country, a woman was middle class if her family had a good farm. She had little chance for a formal education there.

However, most women were peasants or workers with little wealth. They often worked outside the house. But they also had to provide food and other needs. In the cities, they might find work as servants. In the countryside, many were paid as farmworkers. In the Middle Ages, many of these rural women were serfs: farmworkers whose only pay was a place to live and land to plant.  

Religious traditions about women

Religion was very important in kingdoms of Western Europe at that time. Roman Catholic Christianity was the main faith. Judaism was also practiced. Islam had established itself on the Iberian peninsula. This region is where Portugal and Spain are today. These three religions had a lot in common regarding women. They all shared the story of Adam and Eve. Eve, they said, was the reason humans had been thrown out of Paradise. So women were blamed for evil in the world. Men were taught that women were disobedient. Therefore, they had to be controlled.¹  However, these religions had stories that honored women, as well.

Christian women and religion

Religion played a central part in people’s lives in this time and place. However, women’s roles were limited. A woman from a wealthy family could join a convent. Convents could be big estates that employed hundreds of people. A woman might even rise to become the Abbess.²  The Church’s leaders ended that practice by the 1300s. They ordered that men (priests) should run the convents. Women (nuns) were to be cloistered. In short, they were no longer allowed to leave the convent. Still, convents remained a women’s place. Nuns were seen as important members of the surrounding community.

A family had to pay a large fee for women to join a convent. For this reason, most nuns came from wealthy families. Women who could not afford this could join a beguine. These were communal, women-only houses. There, they lived religious lives while working in the community.

Christian women attended church on Sundays and holy days. However, they had little role to play. Women could not take part in religious ceremonies. Seating in the church reflected divisions in society. Elite member of the community sat at the front of the church. The middle class were seated in the middle aisles. The poor were usually standing at the back of the church. Women also had to be seated separately from men.

Jewish women in medieval Europe

Jewish communities existed in many places in medieval Europe. They faced different challenges. Christian kingdoms did not allow Jews to own land. It was a way to keep them from having influence. As a result, they often settled in Jewish neighborhoods or quarters. There, they could be close to the synagogue and Jewish-owned shops. They were also safer from the threat of antisemitism.³

Jewish women mostly were left out of public religious life. They were considered unequal to men. They were not taught Hebrew, the holy language of Judaism. Nor were they trained in Jewish law. There were no convents for Jewish women. However, men were told to love and praise their obedient wives.

Some Jews prospered. They built wealth through trade and lending money. The daughters of middle-class families benefited. Parents saved up dowries for their girls. Such transfers of wealth helped a new wife. A generous dowry gave her influence in her new family.⁴  Many Jewish women also helped run the family business. In the process, they developed skills and expertise. They also learned how to manage money. Some women also made important business decisions.

In the countryside, Christian and Jewish women lived similar lives. They worked the fields alongside their husbands. However, they had household duties, as well.

Note: Because of the region being discussed, this article did not include Muslim women. Most Muslim women in western Europe at this time lived in the Islamic kingdom of Al-Andalus. It existed where Spain and Portugal are today. Al-Andalus was closely connected to Islamic North African states.

1 Indeed, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, whose writings from the fourth century BCE were some of the only Greek writings known in medieval Europe, also considered women to be intellectually, morally, physically and emotionally inferior copies of men.
2 A convent is a community of women (nuns). They devote their lives to religious study. They work under the supervision of an abbess. The abbess is a member of the Christian church hierarchy.
3 Antisemitism: the hatred of Jews. When there were unexplained disasters in medieval society, sometimes Jews were used as scapegoats or easily-blamed villains.
4 A dowry could be money, land, goods given from the bride’s family to the groom’s family at her wedding.