Monasticism and the status of women in the West
The first thing we have to remember is that feminism invented pretty much nothing. To the contrary, it succeeded because it demanded that principles that had always dominated Western society should be taken more thoroughly. The status of women in Western society has always been something special. Women could own and inherit property, publish, send official correspondence in their own name (a famous instance being the letters of St.Catherine of Siena to the Pope, sent with no other warrant than her reputation as a Saint, and immensely effective), take part in public and private functions alongside men, sue and testify in courts of law, act in business in their own persons, employ and dismiss people, be diplomatic envoys with full powers (a famous treaty between France and Spain in the sixteenth century was negotiated and signed by two high-ranking ladies), command armies (St.Joan of Arc was by no means either the only or the first woman general; off the top of my own head I can remember the fearsome Cia degli Ordelaffi, who led her troops sword in hand in a dreadful house-by-house fight for the city of Cesena against the Pope's army, and a countess of Ancona whose feudal levies saved the city of Ancona from a Venetian siege), be heads of state and hold official posts. At one point in the eighteenth century, the two most powerful and highest ranking sovereigns in Europe - both claiming the inheritance of the ancient Emperors of Rome - were women: Maria Theresa of Habsburg and Catherine II Romanov. One or more of these things might be possible in cultures other than the West; all of them together are unimaginable.
[There is an interesting correspondence in this matter between ancient Egypt and China. Both these millenarian empires only ever experienced one regnant Empress in her own right in their three or more millennia of history - Wu Zetian, 690-705AD, and Hathshepsut, 1498-1483BC. The case of the Egyptian regent Sobenkefru is dubious and she is not reckoned in the king lists. And in both cases measures were taken to prevent any further such horror. In both empires, women did in fact exercise a good deal of underhanded power, from the women's quarters, as it were; but no official authority was ever given to them, and emperors who were led by their wives or concubines did not gain respect.]
The potential equality of women with men is also testified, in a negative way, by the fact that they could be convicted of the virile and powerful crimes of high treason and lese-majesty. This gave rise to such hideous and long-remembered scenes as the judicial murder of the aged Countess of Shrewsbury, or of that of Mary Queen of Scots. But even apart from the fact that the latter was the result of the rival claims of two women over two great European kingdoms, one must remember that such scenes would be inconceivable in, say, China. If a woman had got to a position where an Emperor of China felt threatened by her, she would just have been strangled in the women's quarters and thrown in a well, without any need for a trial or a public execution.
No doubt, we are talking of a historical process rather than something that existed at all points and all times in the same way. In some areas, we can see the existence of traditional barriers - and we can see them go down. The studio system in the arts encouraged all-male environments, but Artemisia Gentileschi and other women eventually broke into it, and by the nineteenth century nobody thought it very strange that a woman should be a painter or professional illustrator. The tradition of having boys playing women's roles died out within a generation of Shakespeare's death (and I do not believe it was ever in existence in the other great focus of European theatre, Spain). The first female graduate and the first female professor were received into the University of Bologna (by decree of the Pope) in 1750 and 1758 respectively. The horror of castrati was banned from Western music even later, so much that one of them lived long enough to leave behind some recordings. And no doubt they were always in the minority in most of these fields; professions and trades colonized mostly by women did not occur until the nineteenth century, with the rise of the fashion industry in Paris, Florence Nightingale's invention of hospital nursing, and the mass enlistment of women in the job of schoolmistress.
The point is however that no other culture could say as much. In the early nineteenth century, the great Muslim powers - Turkey, Persia, the Muslim states of India - became conscious of their own decline and of the rise of the West: a process that had lasted for centuries, but that had only struck them as a dazzling and frightening light when, in swift succession, the Turkish Empire had been crushed by the Russians, the Indian Muslims by the British, and Egypt by Napoleon. As was to be expected, the attention of educated Muslims turned to the West; and many travellers from Muslim countries - highly-educated, attentive, and curious - started visiting Europe. From their visits they brought many suggestions for reform: military, political, administrative/bureaucratic, technological, educational, even musical. (The Emperor of Turkey set up a Western-style military band, drilled to impressive ability and skill by the brother of the composer Donizetti.) But the one thing which, it seems to me, practically every one of them reported back to his country was: you are wasting the energy of half your population. This was how Europe struck intelligent observers, keen for the most practical of reasons to see and understand everything they could, in the early nineteenth century; a period which, in feminist mythology, might as well be the age of slavery.
Looking back at what I said, one thing seems clear: the process of equality was faster and more thorough at the top end of society than at the middle end. By the time the Western political system is in place, women are sovereigns (except where the Salic Law is in force), army commanders, politicians, heads of abbeys, and religious leaders powerful enough to talk back to the Pope. They are also involved in revolts and heretical movements, which means that from time they are punished as savagely as the men. On the other hand, the areas in which women have trouble being recognized and making their way are the middle-class, guild-dominated ones. Now that the world of guild-based trades has vanished, it is not easy to remember that the universities and their system of education were only a part of the middle-class professional world of masters and apprentices, different in degree, but not in kind. All these professions, from rope-making to astronomy and from carpentry to philosophy, were based on a male community life of servants, learners, masters and superiors, in which women found no place. In this world, the place of the woman was to be the home-maker, and often the person who, by marrying the apprentice, transmits in a very real sense the inheritance as well as the heritage of the master. The world of guilds and trades was naturally built upon male relationships. Women could affect it very closely in various ways, as mothers, wives and daughters; as clients; even as owners, employers, or rulers. But, however legitimate, their interest would always tend to come from outside.
It is, then, in the world of sovereign aristocrats, nobles with their own property and area of rule, that potential equality begins. And this is a startling fact, because this is the very area where, in most other cultures, women are most carefully hedged about with control and restrictions, most clearly treated like chattels - if valuable chattels - rather than as beings with a will of their own which deserved respect. I have already drawn attention to the very different status of women in European politics as compared with women at the Chinese court - the difference between an active and even feared participant and a concubine worming her way into favour. But that is a universal fact. The higher the rank of the family, outside Europe, the stronger the grip upon the women. And the reason is obvious. By way of marriage, child-bearing and inheritance, women can affect the relationship of clans and family groups with each other. A marriage, in these spheres, is first and foremost an alliance between families; and a failed marriage can break such an alliance. Inheritance, the legitimacy and rank of children, claims to property, questions of rank (in polygamous marriages), all are part of the delicate nexus of interests that meet in the person of a married woman. Hence it becomes terribly important that the marriage be protected. For this reason, touching a royal or imperial woman becomes as dangerous as touching electricity; you can die from a look. For this reason, culture after culture, from Rome to China, from ancient Egypt to imperial Turkey, re-invented, autonomously from each other, the institution of the royal eunuch, delegated to serve and control the royal female quarters. And in culture after culture, independently from each other, the same evolution is seen: the royal eunuch, in turn, acquires the same kind of illegitimate, underhanded power as the women.
In all cultures, that is, except one. No European court ever had an establishment of eunuchs; and in no European court were the women's quarters ever reduced to the level of guarded harems. One of the many startling features of Arthurian literature, which leaps into existence in Europe's bright and creative twelfth century together with so many things that are distinctive of Europe at large, is the presence of mysterious wandering maidens on horseback who go around demanding service from knights, predicting the future, distributing magical weapons, and so on. It is also startling to what an extent ladies are part of the court's lie, including its political life, in these tales of war and heroism. The whole image of the woman has undergone a complete change from what one may read in Greek or Latin literature, let alone more distant traditions. But it is clear that we are always speaking about sovereigns; indeed, Arthurian literature is barely interested in any other level of society.
In medieval Europe, sovereignty was widely distributed, to the extent that one might talk of a sovereign class rather than of sovereign families. Hundreds of hereditary noblemen with feuds were regarded as reflections of the king in their own lands, and even the many kings drew their sovereignty from the Pope and their legitimacy from the Emperor. We must, therefore, regard them as a social class; and it is as a class that the seeds of female autonomy and female power were received among them.
I realized this when I was working on my History of Britain 407-597. The widespread sovereignty of medieval Europe comes down directly from the dozens of kinglets in the Germanic pagan world, and in the even larger number of kings and little kings in the Celtic culture. The account of the conversion of Europe outside and after Rome, told by the likes of Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon - as well as by a number of lesser documents, saints' lives, charters and letters of various kinds - focuses on the conversion of this royal class, even though it becomes clear in several contexts that the conversion of kings did not by any means march in step with the conversion of other members of society. (For instance, when Clovis decided to become officially Christian, he found that the majority of his own nobles had already accepted the faith; conversely, the conversion of the kings of Kent did not prevent a severe pagan reaction that lasted for decades.)
One thing seems certain: it is clear from Gregory, and even more from Bede, that the conversion of royal families led inevitably and with some speed to the rise of large female monasteries. Within two generations of the conversion of the Franks, St.Radegund in Tours, under the eye of St.Gregory, ruled a monastery barely less powerful than his own bishopric. A similar lapse of time saw mighty female monasteries rise in converted England, under renowned female leaders - all, interestingly, of royal blood. Now why would that be? I found a couple of hints in my study of the figure of St.Patrick, in history and legend. The historical Patrick, in his Confession, testifies that he refused to travel to Britain - as the local bishops had apparently demanded - because his absence from Ireland would leave his converts uprotected; and he makes special mention of a movement of nuns led by a young lady of royal birth (chapter 42), but which also includes women of slave rank. These women had taken the veil very much against the desire of their parents, who persecuted them with false accusations (of a kind we can easily imagine). Without his presence, it is clear that this movement would collapse and that the women would be herded back into their families, to be dealt with as the family saw fit.
This picture is confirmed in chapter 27 of the oldest known life of Patrick, by Muirchu. This is already a work of legend, from which a few historical facts can only be detached with difficulty. Chapter 27 is the story of Monesan, a supposed convert of Patrick's whose hand was asked - so to speak - in marriage. It is clear that this "asking" had nothing of the chivalry and romantic feeling with which we imagine such a transaction; for when the young woman refused, her family - in particular her mother and her nurse - beat her black and blue and poured freezing cold water over her (a worse punishment, in the cold British isles). The story implies that she resisted several such torture beatings before Patrick was brought in by her parents, and baptized and consecrated her. A cynic would not be surprised to hear that she died shortly after; but in fact a swift death after being baptized and consecrated was, in the eyes of the story's writer, a blessing that opened Heaven to her. Interestingly, her response to threats and beatings amounted to a demand for wisdom, a demand to be educated: she would repeatedly ask: "Who made the Sun?"
(This is an allusion to the memorable conclusion of the historical Patrick's own Confession, in which he declares that the Sun itself is a created being and will have a beginning and an end, whereas its Maker lives for ever. What the author of the story wanted to convey was that her thirst for wisdom and religious truth could be satisfied only by St.Patrick.)
This story may be historical or not, but it gives an idea of what an Irish monk of the late seventh century expected a king's daughter to experience if she refused to be married to the partner of her family's choice. In that context, there is little difference between marriage and rape; and this suggests an immediate and overwhelming reason why the daughters of Celtic and Germanic kinglets flocked to monasteries in the early days of barbarian conversion. But the same legend gives another reason: Monesan, it is said, wanted to know "Who had made the sun", and "sought for the maker of all creation through nature". In other words, she was intellectually ambitious.
The Christian monastic movement answered both demands. It may be hard for modern readers to imagine it, but sex can be felt as a burden and as a threat, and virginity as an escape and a field of cleanness and purity; and that, indeed, would be very natural to women whose experience of courtship and marriage was anything like Monesan's. (It does not have to always involve violence, so long as the young women are conscious that they may well suffer violence if they refuse.) Monasticism removes the control of a woman's womb from the family to herself and her community; and that is already a shattering separation from the status of a woman - especially a woman of high rank, whose birth and connections were tradeable and valuable. It delivers an immediate answer to the pressure that the family can bring: if you don't leave me alone, I will seek refuge in the monastery. And last but hardly least, it affords a woman opportunities for independent and even creative work and for a real career. Whatever the original reaction of the royal families to the introduction of Christian female monasticism, with its shattering and revolutionary effects, it is certain that the fact that monasteries would be routinely founded by ladies of royal blood lent them almost immediately a tremendous prestige, the same prestige that went with royal birth and rank.
The whole impact of monasticism on the female condition can be seen in the career of Radegund, contemporary and friend of Gregory of Tours. As a very young woman, this princess of Thuringia - a still pagan land on the borders of Frankland - had been captured and married by force by the Frankish leader Lothar. It does not surprise anyone that her life with this ruthless bandit king was unhappy; when he finally murdered her only surviving brother - for cold-bloodedly political reasons - she had enough, escaped, and convinced a reluctant bishop to ordain her a deaconess. By this time Lothar was old (he would die a few years later) and he may have put a little less effort into the pursuit of his runaway wife than the matter required; but it does seem that, bandit though he was, the sanction of the Church had some weight for him too. Eventually he accepted his wife's vows and, a year or two before he died, wrote to her begging for her pardon (which she quickly granted). By this time, Radegund had gathered a number of like-minded women around her and started her famous monastery at Poitiers.
Make no mistake: Lothar was a hard man. He was, when necessary, capable not only of murder, but of kin-slaying and child-murder; not because he enjoyed it, but because, in his view, such things could be necessary. This was the world he lived in. He was a smart and clever bandit, with a brilliant eye for an opportunity; and by the time he was reconciled with his wife, he had managed to climb from nearly landless kinglet hunted by his own brothers to unchallenged king of all the Franks. That such a man should feel the importance of the Church's sanction, and that he should not only give up any claim on his rebellious wife but even ask for her forgiveness - and that at the time when he was unchallenged King and could have torn her out of her cloister by main force - says a lot about the difference that the Church was making, even in the most barbarous of ages, in the behaviour of men and the status of women. The escape of Radegund represents with an almost mythological purity the liberation of women, especially high-born women, from the status of tradeable chattel; and the fact that she ended up establishing a community of women learned enough that one of them was capable of writing her life after her death (at a time when writers in northern Gaul could be counted on the fingers of one hand - literally) also shows the element of intellectual ambition that went with religious devotion. It is at this point, then, that royal women start to become ladies, owners of their own persons and equals of their menfolk; a transformation that was complete by the twelfth century, when it was exhibited in the new Arthurian literature, and that was to spread downwards from the aristocracy through all ranks of Western society; till distinguished and interested Muslim visitors could report back that, as compared with the West of their time, their own countries were wasting the energies of half your population.
(NOTE: I corrected a couple of sentences in this essay on August 2, 2010.
NOTE: Further corrections on February 3, 2011. Also, be sure and read m_francis' response, below.)
[There is an interesting correspondence in this matter between ancient Egypt and China. Both these millenarian empires only ever experienced one regnant Empress in her own right in their three or more millennia of history - Wu Zetian, 690-705AD, and Hathshepsut, 1498-1483BC. The case of the Egyptian regent Sobenkefru is dubious and she is not reckoned in the king lists. And in both cases measures were taken to prevent any further such horror. In both empires, women did in fact exercise a good deal of underhanded power, from the women's quarters, as it were; but no official authority was ever given to them, and emperors who were led by their wives or concubines did not gain respect.]
The potential equality of women with men is also testified, in a negative way, by the fact that they could be convicted of the virile and powerful crimes of high treason and lese-majesty. This gave rise to such hideous and long-remembered scenes as the judicial murder of the aged Countess of Shrewsbury, or of that of Mary Queen of Scots. But even apart from the fact that the latter was the result of the rival claims of two women over two great European kingdoms, one must remember that such scenes would be inconceivable in, say, China. If a woman had got to a position where an Emperor of China felt threatened by her, she would just have been strangled in the women's quarters and thrown in a well, without any need for a trial or a public execution.
No doubt, we are talking of a historical process rather than something that existed at all points and all times in the same way. In some areas, we can see the existence of traditional barriers - and we can see them go down. The studio system in the arts encouraged all-male environments, but Artemisia Gentileschi and other women eventually broke into it, and by the nineteenth century nobody thought it very strange that a woman should be a painter or professional illustrator. The tradition of having boys playing women's roles died out within a generation of Shakespeare's death (and I do not believe it was ever in existence in the other great focus of European theatre, Spain). The first female graduate and the first female professor were received into the University of Bologna (by decree of the Pope) in 1750 and 1758 respectively. The horror of castrati was banned from Western music even later, so much that one of them lived long enough to leave behind some recordings. And no doubt they were always in the minority in most of these fields; professions and trades colonized mostly by women did not occur until the nineteenth century, with the rise of the fashion industry in Paris, Florence Nightingale's invention of hospital nursing, and the mass enlistment of women in the job of schoolmistress.
The point is however that no other culture could say as much. In the early nineteenth century, the great Muslim powers - Turkey, Persia, the Muslim states of India - became conscious of their own decline and of the rise of the West: a process that had lasted for centuries, but that had only struck them as a dazzling and frightening light when, in swift succession, the Turkish Empire had been crushed by the Russians, the Indian Muslims by the British, and Egypt by Napoleon. As was to be expected, the attention of educated Muslims turned to the West; and many travellers from Muslim countries - highly-educated, attentive, and curious - started visiting Europe. From their visits they brought many suggestions for reform: military, political, administrative/bureaucratic, technological, educational, even musical. (The Emperor of Turkey set up a Western-style military band, drilled to impressive ability and skill by the brother of the composer Donizetti.) But the one thing which, it seems to me, practically every one of them reported back to his country was: you are wasting the energy of half your population. This was how Europe struck intelligent observers, keen for the most practical of reasons to see and understand everything they could, in the early nineteenth century; a period which, in feminist mythology, might as well be the age of slavery.
Looking back at what I said, one thing seems clear: the process of equality was faster and more thorough at the top end of society than at the middle end. By the time the Western political system is in place, women are sovereigns (except where the Salic Law is in force), army commanders, politicians, heads of abbeys, and religious leaders powerful enough to talk back to the Pope. They are also involved in revolts and heretical movements, which means that from time they are punished as savagely as the men. On the other hand, the areas in which women have trouble being recognized and making their way are the middle-class, guild-dominated ones. Now that the world of guild-based trades has vanished, it is not easy to remember that the universities and their system of education were only a part of the middle-class professional world of masters and apprentices, different in degree, but not in kind. All these professions, from rope-making to astronomy and from carpentry to philosophy, were based on a male community life of servants, learners, masters and superiors, in which women found no place. In this world, the place of the woman was to be the home-maker, and often the person who, by marrying the apprentice, transmits in a very real sense the inheritance as well as the heritage of the master. The world of guilds and trades was naturally built upon male relationships. Women could affect it very closely in various ways, as mothers, wives and daughters; as clients; even as owners, employers, or rulers. But, however legitimate, their interest would always tend to come from outside.
It is, then, in the world of sovereign aristocrats, nobles with their own property and area of rule, that potential equality begins. And this is a startling fact, because this is the very area where, in most other cultures, women are most carefully hedged about with control and restrictions, most clearly treated like chattels - if valuable chattels - rather than as beings with a will of their own which deserved respect. I have already drawn attention to the very different status of women in European politics as compared with women at the Chinese court - the difference between an active and even feared participant and a concubine worming her way into favour. But that is a universal fact. The higher the rank of the family, outside Europe, the stronger the grip upon the women. And the reason is obvious. By way of marriage, child-bearing and inheritance, women can affect the relationship of clans and family groups with each other. A marriage, in these spheres, is first and foremost an alliance between families; and a failed marriage can break such an alliance. Inheritance, the legitimacy and rank of children, claims to property, questions of rank (in polygamous marriages), all are part of the delicate nexus of interests that meet in the person of a married woman. Hence it becomes terribly important that the marriage be protected. For this reason, touching a royal or imperial woman becomes as dangerous as touching electricity; you can die from a look. For this reason, culture after culture, from Rome to China, from ancient Egypt to imperial Turkey, re-invented, autonomously from each other, the institution of the royal eunuch, delegated to serve and control the royal female quarters. And in culture after culture, independently from each other, the same evolution is seen: the royal eunuch, in turn, acquires the same kind of illegitimate, underhanded power as the women.
In all cultures, that is, except one. No European court ever had an establishment of eunuchs; and in no European court were the women's quarters ever reduced to the level of guarded harems. One of the many startling features of Arthurian literature, which leaps into existence in Europe's bright and creative twelfth century together with so many things that are distinctive of Europe at large, is the presence of mysterious wandering maidens on horseback who go around demanding service from knights, predicting the future, distributing magical weapons, and so on. It is also startling to what an extent ladies are part of the court's lie, including its political life, in these tales of war and heroism. The whole image of the woman has undergone a complete change from what one may read in Greek or Latin literature, let alone more distant traditions. But it is clear that we are always speaking about sovereigns; indeed, Arthurian literature is barely interested in any other level of society.
In medieval Europe, sovereignty was widely distributed, to the extent that one might talk of a sovereign class rather than of sovereign families. Hundreds of hereditary noblemen with feuds were regarded as reflections of the king in their own lands, and even the many kings drew their sovereignty from the Pope and their legitimacy from the Emperor. We must, therefore, regard them as a social class; and it is as a class that the seeds of female autonomy and female power were received among them.
I realized this when I was working on my History of Britain 407-597. The widespread sovereignty of medieval Europe comes down directly from the dozens of kinglets in the Germanic pagan world, and in the even larger number of kings and little kings in the Celtic culture. The account of the conversion of Europe outside and after Rome, told by the likes of Gregory of Tours, Bede and Paul the Deacon - as well as by a number of lesser documents, saints' lives, charters and letters of various kinds - focuses on the conversion of this royal class, even though it becomes clear in several contexts that the conversion of kings did not by any means march in step with the conversion of other members of society. (For instance, when Clovis decided to become officially Christian, he found that the majority of his own nobles had already accepted the faith; conversely, the conversion of the kings of Kent did not prevent a severe pagan reaction that lasted for decades.)
One thing seems certain: it is clear from Gregory, and even more from Bede, that the conversion of royal families led inevitably and with some speed to the rise of large female monasteries. Within two generations of the conversion of the Franks, St.Radegund in Tours, under the eye of St.Gregory, ruled a monastery barely less powerful than his own bishopric. A similar lapse of time saw mighty female monasteries rise in converted England, under renowned female leaders - all, interestingly, of royal blood. Now why would that be? I found a couple of hints in my study of the figure of St.Patrick, in history and legend. The historical Patrick, in his Confession, testifies that he refused to travel to Britain - as the local bishops had apparently demanded - because his absence from Ireland would leave his converts uprotected; and he makes special mention of a movement of nuns led by a young lady of royal birth (chapter 42), but which also includes women of slave rank. These women had taken the veil very much against the desire of their parents, who persecuted them with false accusations (of a kind we can easily imagine). Without his presence, it is clear that this movement would collapse and that the women would be herded back into their families, to be dealt with as the family saw fit.
This picture is confirmed in chapter 27 of the oldest known life of Patrick, by Muirchu. This is already a work of legend, from which a few historical facts can only be detached with difficulty. Chapter 27 is the story of Monesan, a supposed convert of Patrick's whose hand was asked - so to speak - in marriage. It is clear that this "asking" had nothing of the chivalry and romantic feeling with which we imagine such a transaction; for when the young woman refused, her family - in particular her mother and her nurse - beat her black and blue and poured freezing cold water over her (a worse punishment, in the cold British isles). The story implies that she resisted several such torture beatings before Patrick was brought in by her parents, and baptized and consecrated her. A cynic would not be surprised to hear that she died shortly after; but in fact a swift death after being baptized and consecrated was, in the eyes of the story's writer, a blessing that opened Heaven to her. Interestingly, her response to threats and beatings amounted to a demand for wisdom, a demand to be educated: she would repeatedly ask: "Who made the Sun?"
(This is an allusion to the memorable conclusion of the historical Patrick's own Confession, in which he declares that the Sun itself is a created being and will have a beginning and an end, whereas its Maker lives for ever. What the author of the story wanted to convey was that her thirst for wisdom and religious truth could be satisfied only by St.Patrick.)
This story may be historical or not, but it gives an idea of what an Irish monk of the late seventh century expected a king's daughter to experience if she refused to be married to the partner of her family's choice. In that context, there is little difference between marriage and rape; and this suggests an immediate and overwhelming reason why the daughters of Celtic and Germanic kinglets flocked to monasteries in the early days of barbarian conversion. But the same legend gives another reason: Monesan, it is said, wanted to know "Who had made the sun", and "sought for the maker of all creation through nature". In other words, she was intellectually ambitious.
The Christian monastic movement answered both demands. It may be hard for modern readers to imagine it, but sex can be felt as a burden and as a threat, and virginity as an escape and a field of cleanness and purity; and that, indeed, would be very natural to women whose experience of courtship and marriage was anything like Monesan's. (It does not have to always involve violence, so long as the young women are conscious that they may well suffer violence if they refuse.) Monasticism removes the control of a woman's womb from the family to herself and her community; and that is already a shattering separation from the status of a woman - especially a woman of high rank, whose birth and connections were tradeable and valuable. It delivers an immediate answer to the pressure that the family can bring: if you don't leave me alone, I will seek refuge in the monastery. And last but hardly least, it affords a woman opportunities for independent and even creative work and for a real career. Whatever the original reaction of the royal families to the introduction of Christian female monasticism, with its shattering and revolutionary effects, it is certain that the fact that monasteries would be routinely founded by ladies of royal blood lent them almost immediately a tremendous prestige, the same prestige that went with royal birth and rank.
The whole impact of monasticism on the female condition can be seen in the career of Radegund, contemporary and friend of Gregory of Tours. As a very young woman, this princess of Thuringia - a still pagan land on the borders of Frankland - had been captured and married by force by the Frankish leader Lothar. It does not surprise anyone that her life with this ruthless bandit king was unhappy; when he finally murdered her only surviving brother - for cold-bloodedly political reasons - she had enough, escaped, and convinced a reluctant bishop to ordain her a deaconess. By this time Lothar was old (he would die a few years later) and he may have put a little less effort into the pursuit of his runaway wife than the matter required; but it does seem that, bandit though he was, the sanction of the Church had some weight for him too. Eventually he accepted his wife's vows and, a year or two before he died, wrote to her begging for her pardon (which she quickly granted). By this time, Radegund had gathered a number of like-minded women around her and started her famous monastery at Poitiers.
Make no mistake: Lothar was a hard man. He was, when necessary, capable not only of murder, but of kin-slaying and child-murder; not because he enjoyed it, but because, in his view, such things could be necessary. This was the world he lived in. He was a smart and clever bandit, with a brilliant eye for an opportunity; and by the time he was reconciled with his wife, he had managed to climb from nearly landless kinglet hunted by his own brothers to unchallenged king of all the Franks. That such a man should feel the importance of the Church's sanction, and that he should not only give up any claim on his rebellious wife but even ask for her forgiveness - and that at the time when he was unchallenged King and could have torn her out of her cloister by main force - says a lot about the difference that the Church was making, even in the most barbarous of ages, in the behaviour of men and the status of women. The escape of Radegund represents with an almost mythological purity the liberation of women, especially high-born women, from the status of tradeable chattel; and the fact that she ended up establishing a community of women learned enough that one of them was capable of writing her life after her death (at a time when writers in northern Gaul could be counted on the fingers of one hand - literally) also shows the element of intellectual ambition that went with religious devotion. It is at this point, then, that royal women start to become ladies, owners of their own persons and equals of their menfolk; a transformation that was complete by the twelfth century, when it was exhibited in the new Arthurian literature, and that was to spread downwards from the aristocracy through all ranks of Western society; till distinguished and interested Muslim visitors could report back that, as compared with the West of their time, their own countries were wasting the energies of half your population.
(NOTE: I corrected a couple of sentences in this essay on August 2, 2010.
NOTE: Further corrections on February 3, 2011. Also, be sure and read m_francis' response, below.)