Medieval Europe
New Discoveries, Or At Least New Questions, and Women Warriors
Last week a news report from Livescience.com popped up in my Google alerts. (1) Archaeologist Leszek Gardeła has concluded that the remains of a woman buried with an axe on the Danish island of Langeland was not “a Viking”. (2) Both the form of the burial and the style of the axe suggest that she…
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Telling Women’s History: three Questions and an Answer with Nancy Marie Brown
Nancy Marie Brown and I first made contact when I was poking around the medieval world, working on the question of how Islam kept the flame of classical civilization alive and helped shape the culture of the West. That book never saw the light of day, but Nancy and I stayed in touch. We finally…
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A Woman’s Home is Her Castle
As I believe I’ve mentioned before, in Treasure of the City of Ladies; or the Book of the Three Virtues, author, intellectual, and champion of female education Christine de Pizan (1364–1430) instructed noblewomen of her time to learn the military skills they needed to defend their property: “She ought to have the heart of a…
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