What are the common misconceptions that we have about medieval women?
Bynum: The most fundamental misconception among the general public is that the Middle Ages was a dark and bleak time characterized by rampant misogyny and therefore by an almost complete lack of — to use the current buzzword — female agency. And also that Christianity was a vast rejection of the physical — that it was a dualistic religion — and everybody was sitting around sticking nails in their hands and flagellating themselves. Now, it is true that there was misogyny in the Middle Ages. But it is also true — just to speak in terms of religious life — that there were significant institutions for women, chief among them nunneries, in which they were able to get education, and produce religious and theological writing. And in the high Middle Ages, one sees the first significant professional role for single women living in the world, not withdrawn from it in cloisters — the Beguines. Beguines and tertiaries — sometimes called quasi- religious — were single women who lived in wo
