Meilan Solly

Senior Associate Digital Editor, History

During an impromptu game of table tennis in September 1934, a player accidentally stepped on the ball. The host’s father decided to look for a replacement in a cupboard at their English country house. Instead of table tennis balls, the family patriarch stumbled onto an “entirely undisciplined clutter of smallish leather books,” including one whose cover “had been eaten away, presumably by a mouse,” as his son later recalled.

That unassuming manuscript turned out to be the only surviving copy of The Book of Margery Kempe, a medieval text chronicling the adventures of a female Christian mystic. Previously known only through 16th-century excerpts that painted Kempe as an anchoress who walled herself up in a cell to devote her life to private prayer and reflection, the manuscript reframed its namesake as a colorful figure who’d traveled abroad on religious pilgrimages, claimed she’d experienced visions of herself participating in such biblical events as the birth and crucifixion of Jesus, and endured multiple arrests on charges of heresy.

“You lose all sense of her story and her personality” when only reading the excerpts, says Eleanor Jackson, a curator at the British Library in London. “She’s a very larger-than-life character … who was not an anchoress but [rather] incredibly mobile. She’s been to the Holy Land, she’s been to Rome, she’s been to Santiago de Compostela.”

The opening page of The Book of Margery Kempe​​​​​​​
The opening page of The Book of Margery Kempe © British Library Board
An illustration of the coronation of Jeanne de Bourbon as queen of France
An illustration of the coronation of Jeanne de Bourbon as queen of France © British Library Board

The chance discovery of Kempe’s autobiography speaks to the rich trove of writing about medieval women that survives to this day, as well as the countless works that have been lost over the centuries, Jackson says. “Women in the Middle Ages were seen as less important than men, and they were excluded from a lot of areas of power,” the curator adds. “Their stories were less often recorded, and because women often weren’t given the same level of education as men, [many] couldn’t write themselves. Women’s histories are much harder to find, but they are there when you look for them.”

A new exhibition at the British Library tells some of these long-overlooked tales through a selection of more than 140 documents and artifacts spanning roughly 1100 to 1500. Co-curated by Jackson and Julian Harrison, “Medieval Women: In Their Own Words” spotlights queens, nuns, authors, warriors, physicians and artisans alike. As the name suggests, the show emphasizes women’s personal testimony, “telling their stories as much as possible through their own words,” whether preserved in their writings or dictated to scribes, as was the case with Kempe, Jackson says.

The individuals featured in the exhibition run the gamut from famous figures like Joan of Arc and Italian French writer Christine de Pizan to the lesser known, including Estellina Conat, the first recorded female printer of Hebrew texts; Shajar al-Durr, the first female sultan of Egypt and Syria; and Alice Claver, a silkwoman who crafted ornate clothing for England’s Edward IV. By highlighting such a diverse group, lead curator Jackson and co-curator Harrison hope to move past widely held conceptions of medieval women’s existences being centered around domesticity and oppression by men. “Their lives were a lot more vibrant than people expect,” Jackson says, “and [visitors] will be surprised by the sheer variety of roles” that they occupied in the fields of politics, religion and the arts.

The British Library’s yearlong digitization of nearly 100 manuscripts related to medieval and Renaissance women provided the inspiration for “In Their Own Words.” While searching the collections for relevant texts, staff found “a huge amount [that] had not really been looked at very much before,” Jackson says. She and Harrison spent two years selecting documents for inclusion in the show, in addition to securing loans from cultural institutions in both the United Kingdom and continental Europe.

An illustration from the Melisende Psalter
An illustration from the Melisende Psalter © British Library Board
An illustration of the fall of Tripoli in 1289, showing Lucia, Countess of Tripoli, sitting in the center of the fortified city
An illustration of the fall of Tripoli in 1289, showing Lucia, Countess of Tripoli, sitting in the center of the fortified city © British Library Board

Beyond medieval manuscripts and books, the exhibition showcases such objects as a skull that may have belonged to a pet lion owned by English queen Margaret of Anjou; a silk textile crafted in al-Andalus, a Muslim kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula; and an altar band that is the only known piece of English medieval embroidery to bear the name of its creator, in this case a nun named Joan of Beverly.

To complement these historic artifacts, the British Library asked scent designer Tasha Marks to create four fragrance installations that “evoke different scents and experiences from medieval life,” including a hair perfume and a breath freshener, according to a statement. Staff also recruited actresses to record readings of several of the written sources, “so that as visitors come through, they feel as though they’re actually encountering these [medieval] women in person,” Jackson says.

The items on view are divided into three categories: the public, the private and the spiritual. The first of these focuses on women in outward-facing roles, among them monarchs and authors. Melisende, a queen of Jerusalem who clashed with her husband and her son in her fight to assert her authority over the kingdom, is represented by a beautifully illustrated psalter, or book of psalms, that blends Western and Eastern religious influences. Matilda, a 12th-century claimant to the English throne, appears in miniature on the seal of a charter for a new abbey, which describes her as “empress” and “lady of the English.”

An illustration of Christine de Pizan laying the foundation of the city of ladies
An illustration of Christine de Pizan laying the foundation of the city of ladies © British Library Board

While some medieval women were born into power, others rose to prominence through their creative talents. Consider for instance, the earliest recorded French female poet, whose identity is only known through a brief sentence in one of her works: “Marie is my name, and I am from France.” Also of note is Christine de Pizan, who became the first woman in Europe to “make her living through writing books,” says Jackson. Christine, the daughter of an astrologer at French court, crafted both poetry and prose to support her family after the death of her husband. Her best-known work is The Book of the City of Ladies, a 1405 text that celebrates the accomplishments of women and argues for their intellectual and moral equality with men—a controversial stance in an era when women were widely regarded as inferior. In Christine’s words, “I realize more than ever how great is the ignorance and the ingratitude of all those men who speak so much ill of women. … Let them lower their eyes in shame to have dared lie so much in their books, when one sees that the truth goes counter to what they say.”

In addition to famous figures, the public lives section of the exhibition explores the stories of everyday women at work. Early printers like Conat and Anna Rügerin are discussed alongside manual laborers who harvested crops for wealthy landowners, often for less pay than their male counterparts. Jackson was especially drawn to the story of Maria Moriana, a Moorish woman whose 15th-century petition against the Venetian merchant who was trying to sell her is on loan from the National Archives in London. “There’s an idea sometimes that there weren’t people of color in medieval England, but this document shows that there absolutely were,” Jackson says. “Not only that, but she’s also fighting for her rights, being defiant and standing up for herself.”

Woven silk textile with inscription from al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia), Spain, circa 1400
Woven silk textile with inscription from al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia), Spain, circa 1400 © Courtesy of the Whitworth, the University of Manchester

The section on private lives, meanwhile, adopts a more intimate approach to medieval women’s history. Prayer books, instructional texts and letters shed light on women’s bodies and health, as well as their relationships with loved ones. Fertility and childbirth are recurring concerns, with one medical compendium advising readers to wear a charm made from weasel testicles to prevent conception and another recounting the legend of St. Margaret, the Christian protector of pregnant women.

The Paston letters are a clear highlight of the exhibition, following three generations of an English family as its members navigate marriage troubles, land disputes and even armed invaders. “Send me crossbows, arrows, poleaxes and armors for the servants,” wrote Margaret Paston in a 1448 letter to her husband, John, after enemies seized the family’s Norfolk manor house. Two decades later, Margaret disowned her daughter for marrying a servant, writing in a letter to her son that “we have lost of her but a brethel,” or good-for-nothing.

The Pastons were a “nouveau riche family who rose up from the peasant level due to the increased opportunities that happened after the Black Death in the 14th century,” says Jackson. “By the 15th century, they’d established themselves within the gentry, but they were still insecure, so they were constantly in conflict with other families [while trying to] establish their position in the social hierarchy.” The trove of around 1,000 letters and documents is rare for the period, as personal correspondence was “seen as ephemeral, and once it had served its purpose, people threw it away,” Jackson explains. The missives offer “such a strong sense of all of these women’s personalities,” she adds. “There’s a lot of love and death and arguments—and literal fighting.”

The last section of “In Their Own Words” examines the many ways in which religion shaped medieval women’s lives. Some of the spotlighted individuals, like St. Catherine of Siena and English anchoress Julian of Norwich, were celebrated in their day as visionaries, while others, including Kempe and Joan of Arc, were persecuted as heretics. Though neither Kempe nor Joan knew how to read and write, both found ways to make their voices heard, the former by dictating her story to a scribe and the latter by testifying at her 1431 heresy trial. “The text that gives us access to this trial is an extraordinary witness to the life of Joan, her mental outlook [and] the social structures of the world in which she lived,” wrote historian Daniel Hobbins in the introduction to a 2005 translation of the trial transcript.

In between the two extremes of saints and (supposed) sinners were women who joined religious communities, dedicating their lives to the worship of God. The exhibition outlines the strict rules that governed medieval European nuns and anchoresses, from the types of pets they could keep to the clothing they wore.

At the same time, “In Their Own Words” complicates the image of nuns living “a pretty dire existence,” underscoring the beautiful manuscripts, textiles and artworks these women created to provide a sense of the “culturally rich” lives that many enjoyed, says Jackson. Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century German Benedictine abbess and composer, is represented by a passage from her most famous musical morality play and a letter in which she defends her convent against practices that some outsiders view as “strange and irregular,” such as nuns being allowed to wear white silk dresses and loose hair.

An opening from Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love
Pages from Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love © British Library Board

Many of the artifacts on display are directly linked to specific individuals, whether they created the objects or commissioned them as patrons. But some are anonymous, with the identities of their authors either lost to time or intentionally obscured. It’s a testament to Jackson and Harrison’s curatorial efforts that the featured women emerge as such layered, complex individuals, regardless of whether their real names are known today.

“While the wider literature from the period tells us that medieval women were silent and passive, quiet and chaste, their [surviving creations] tell a different story,” writes Pragya Agarwal, author of the 2022 book Hysterical: Exploding the Myth of Gendered Emotions, in an essay. “The women who wrote and created these works were bold and strident, angry and astute. And they were clever enough to find their own tools for claiming power in a culture determined to silence them.”

“Medieval Women: In Their Own Words” is on view at the British Library in London from October 25, 2024, to March 2, 2025.

A large oak altarpiece, probably made around 1400 for the Dominican nuns of Dartford Priory, featuring portraits of saints, including Agatha, Catherine and Margaret
A large oak altarpiece, probably made around 1400 for the Dominican nuns of Dartford Priory, featuring portraits of saints, including Agatha, Catherine and Margaret © Leeds Castle Foundation

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Meilan Solly

Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's senior associate digital editor, history.