Women in Christian art and culture, 1000-1400

In the visual culture of medieval Christianity, female images were used to represent the extremes of experience and ethics. This course explores this wealth of imagery and successive scholarly approaches to its interpretation and examines evidence for the role of women as innovators.    

This was a time of dramatic change in the production and use of religious and secular images. The course will set the perhaps familiar developments in style in the broader context of the production of images and their uses. It will trace the rise of new forms such as three-dimensional devotional sculpture, funerary monuments and figurative stained glass and their significance for women. It surveys the development in creation of manuscripts which enabled many lay women to become readers and book owners. It will ex amine the rise of secular imagery and the culture of chivalry and courtly love and the manufacture of luxury personal items, including devotional objects. It considers about how changes in religious institutions impacted on the educational opportunities of women.

The lectures will also engage with different strands in the scholarship of medieval visual culture influenced by the ‘New Art History’ with its adoption of the social sciences , and the different ways in which successive waves of feminist scholarship have engaged with this rich resource of visual imagery. It will approach images as constructions, often using the imagery of gender to convey other polarities. There will be a particular focus on the common instances of the personification of opposites, particularly the variety of oppositions and contrasts deployed in the presentation of the Virgin Mary. It will also look at the ways in which this polarity has been approached by successive generations of iconographers and feminist art historians. It will examine images which deliberately transgress or blend these opposites.

As the didactic role that images played in the medieval church has long been recognised, the course will consider recent scholarship about gendered reception and viewing particularly of devotional imagery by lay and religious women. There will be a focus o n works which seem to promote specific forms of female behaviour or to characterise certain aspects of religion as feminine. This will particularly examine whether these offer evidence of practice and experience or simply of iconographic personification. The examination of creation and agency will lead to a reflection on the importance in early feminist Art History of identifying women artists. There will be a consideration of the ways in which powerful women, abbesses, mystics and those of the social eli te developed and promoted novel iconography. It will also examine whether there are gendered patterns in this rise and proliferation of patronage. , The course will conclude by considering interaction with material and visual culture by Christian women in the Middle Ages. Through case studies, it will look for evidence of the religious use of imagery by women viewers and worshippers. It will use the le ns of hostile testimony from the Reformation and Renaissance to consider whether the limitations on women’s active religious role made material and visual culture more central to their religious experience and understanding of themselves of . Was the world imagery and religious books and objects one which gave women particular freedom and opportunity for spiritual encounter and personal meaning-making?

Learning outcomes

The learning outcomes for this course are:

• To understand the significance of images of women in the material and visual culture of medieval Christianity  
• To reflect on the ways in which modern scholarship has approached these images and interrogate them to understand the cultural construction and experience of medieval women in religious culture 
• To apply iconographic knowledge and cultural context to understand medieval works of art in the context of women and medieval Christianity

Classes

1. Proliferation.  
This contextual lecture surveys the far-reaching developments in the visual and material culture of medieval religion between 1000 and the later Middle Ages. It will trace the rise of new forms such as three-dimensional devotional sculpture, funerary monuments and figurative stained glass and their significance for women.  

2. Construction.  
It has long been acknowledged that a strand of medieval Christian art is constructed around binary polarities and that gendered images are often deployed in this context to show extremes of sin and sanctity, purity and corruption, virtue and vice. This lecture will look at the most common instances of the personification of opposites and the ways in which this polarity and the images which transgress it have been approached by successive generations of iconographers and feminist art historians.  

3. Exhortation.  
The didactic role that images played in the medieval church has long been recognised. This lecture will examine the importance of female religious communities in the emergence and dissemination of complex religious diagrams. There will also be a focus on works which seem to promote particular forms of female behaviour or to characterise certain aspects of religion as feminine.  

4. Creation and Patronage.  
The role of women in the creation of art in a variety of media will be examined, including family-based workshops and religious communities. It will show how new forms of funerary art and the presentation of donors allowed women patrons to select and shape religious buildings and objects. It will also examine whether there are gendered patterns in this rise and proliferation of patronage.  

5. Interaction.  
This concluding session will draw these strands together to consider female agency and experience. Was the world of imagery and religious books and objects one which gave women particular freedom and opportunity for spiritual encounter and personal meaning-making?

Required reading

This is an area in which there are relatively few affordable, general works. Much of the relevant material is in scholarly monographs or the more general literature on different art forms and regions or in focussed articles in encyclopaedic databases and journals.  

The selected course book is: 
Sciacca, Christine. Illuminating Women in the Medieval World. 2017.

Typical week: Monday to Friday

For each week of study you select a morning (Am) and an afternoon (Pm) course, each course has five sessions, one each day Monday to Friday. The maximum class size is 25 students. Your weekly courses are complemented by a series of two daily plenary lectures, exploring new ideas in a wide range of disciplines. To add to the learning experience, we are also planning additional evening talks and events.

Evaluation and Academic Credit 

If you are seeking to enhance your own study experience, or earn academic credit from your Cambridge Summer Programme studies at your home institution, you can submit written work for assessment for one or more of your courses. 

Essay questions are set and assessed against the University of Cambridge standard by your Course Director, a list of essay questions can be found in the Course Materials. Essays are submitted two weeks after the end of each course, so those studying for multiple weeks need to plan their time accordingly. There is an evaluation fee of £65 per essay.

For more information about writing essays see Evaluation and Academic Credit.

Certificate of attendance

A certificate of attendance will be sent to you electronically within a week of your courses finishing.