Women in the Middle Ages

An intriguing history of the Middle Ages from the perspective of various aspects of women's lives; the vast number of historical documents cited by the authors constitute not only an extremely informative but also a captivating narrative. For many years, the history of the Middle Ages was primarily known to us from the viewpoint of traditionally male spheres of activity, appearing as a series of battles for power and territory. Therefore, the lives of women, who rarely participated in political and military life, inevitably faded into the darkness of the "dark ages." The authors of classic popular science bestsellers about the life of the medieval world, Frances and Joseph Gies, painstakingly reconstruct this lost history in an engaging historical overview, tracing the evolution of women's roles in society over a millennium. The second part of the book is devoted to the biographies of eight remarkable women of the medieval era, including an abbess and composer, a British princess who spent three years in political captivity, the wives of an Italian merchant and a peasant. From these vivid and characteristic examples, a colorful mosaic of the "female part of the world" emerges during this turbulent period. The distinctive features of Frances and Joseph Gies' creative method are a balanced approach to selecting facts from a wide range of sources, which makes their works interesting for both a general audience and specialists.