âMedieval women were officially denied most of the public forms of education (song schools, grammar schools, and universities) available to males, yet paradoxically, there was a vocabulary for women performing advanced intellectual work: in Latin, for instance: auctrix (female author), scriptrix (a female scribe), magistra (a female teacher), and, though ideational, even doctrix (the female equivalent of doctor, the universityâs top rank) and apostola (female apostle). In fact, women were the first educators of both boys and girls in the home, a role codified even in scholastic theology by writers like Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent as a womanâs right to teach âsound doctrineâ to the young (cf. Titus 2:1â8 or Proverbs 4:3â4). For Aquinas, this private sermo was appropriate to women, as successive theologians agreed, including even the teaching of nuns (secreto in claustro). Canon law granted the right of abbesses to teach, but not to teach men (ne doceat viros; nam mulieres potest abbatissa), a position that was effectively challenged over the centuries by Hildegard of Bingen and others.
Theologians perennially debated pro and contra as to whether women could preach publicly, the contra arguments repeated ubiquitously by modern scholars, but the pro arguments more rarely, so worth mentioning here: the traditionally accepted circumstances under which women could teach theology, for instance, are summed up by Henry of Ghent in his questio, âUtrum mulier possit esse doctor seu doctrix huius scientiae.â Repeating the standard biblical evidence that God called women as prophets to teach publicly (docere publice) or lead the Hebrew people he named four in particular: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, and Anna â the very four, we should note, invoked in a prayer for the ordination of women in the early church. Women, like anyone who has a special gift of knowledge (1 Peter 4:10), he says, are obliged to minister or lead (debent administrare), adding that Mary Magdalene and Martha taught just as disciples (publice sicut Apostoli). These women, of course, first delivered the news of the Resurrection to the disciples themselves, an act that engendered the medieval term apostola (translated âapostolesseâ in Caxtonâs English), applied not only to the biblical women, but to revered women figures such as Catherine of Siena. Theologians alsocited in their âproâ arguments women missionaries even St. Paul had recognized, building, albeit grudgingly, a case for womenâs teaching under defined circumstances, i.e., when there is need (a shortage of labourers in the vineyard) or when there are too many corrupt or degenerate males (ironically termed âeffeminatiâ).
Fortunately for medieval women, there was never a shortage of male clerical corruption. So the loophole authorizing women to teach âby a special graceâ (ex speciali gratia) persisted, and a surprising number of women took advantage of it to preach, teach, write, and minister in a variety of ways â in the present volume alone: Agnes of Harcourt, Catherine of Siena, Colette de Corbie, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Mary Ward. Especially at times of stress and crisis for the church, such women emerged: Hildegard of Bingenâs preaching tours took place during the twelfth-century period of heresy and schism; the turbulent years of the late thirteenth century for the papacy and for beguines gave rise to the works of Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and the anonymous author of âEckhart and the Lay Womanâ.â
Kerby-Fulton Kathryn, âTaking early women intellectuals and leaders seriouslyâ, in: Women intellectual and leaders in the Middle Ages
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