Medieval Women at the British Library 25 October 2024 – 2 March 2025, £17 adult ticket. 5/5! AB-FAB, lots of time to catch it, allow 2+ hours, prepare to be astounded – and disgusted.
Marvellously Multisensory – they’ve got everything except TASTE (thank goodness) to delight you at this exhibition of the medieval world from a woman’s perspective. The smells of medicines recommended for female illnesses; the digital version of a great fat doctor’s tome so you touch a body part and the cure pops up with a modern-day analysis of the properties, which range from random to downright toxic; sung recordings of sacred songs written by women; a love poem read out in English and Persian. You get the idea.
Note her hair is covered…
Wags to Witches – All social classes are included, from the celebrity wife of a king with the clout to write a book of advice to her daughter, to the receipt of purchase of a female slave in Venice. I asked one of the Curators, ‘How did you upturn all these obscure stones?’ Julian Harrison said they had pulled on the knowledge of many international researchers, which lead him, for example, to investigate the plight of some plucky Hungarian washerwomen!
La Cité de Femmes, a female Utopia
Illuminating visuals – The documents on display are of course the core of the show and their sheer beauty deserves mention. The exquisite Gothic calligraphy, scrolly Elizabethan handwriting, illuminations of women brick-laying in ‘La Cité des Femmes’, etchings of beauty routines, are all spell-binding. A number of famous nuns and their literary achievements are showcased. In one such tome appears a delightful illustration of a group of nuns looking like they can’t wait to get the frock off poor dead St Francis. The Church at least provided one dignified way for women to escape the world of men.
Sibilla von Bondorf’s version
Most appalling Fact of the Day – The lucky ones were taught to read, but not to write. So you wonder how the exhibition can claim these documents are ‘In their own words’. Well I’ll tell you, or maybe I’ll just let you guess, or go and find out. I can tell you for free, Joan of Arc could clearly not hold a quill properly to write her own name. Why would any woman have need to write their own name for goodness sakes. Far too empowering. I imagined every generation wishing for more rights and freedoms, but finding themselves gradually suffocated over and over. I said prepare to be disgusted.
Tickets for Medieval Women available from here.
