Medieval Women: In Their Own Words is on show at the British Library in London from 25 October 2024–2 March 2025.

The manuscript of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love: Add MS 37790

On display is an extraordinary array of manuscripts, documents, early printed books, paintings, coins, textiles and objects associated with women from across medieval Europe. They feature unique items from the British Library's own collections, alongside major loans from the Louvre, the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and other institutions. We are extremely grateful to our lenders for making this exhibition possible.

Portrait of Margaret of York (d. 1503): on loan to the Medieval Women exhibition from Musée du Louvre

You can explore some of the items in the exhibition in more detail here.

• Julian of Norwich, The Revelations of Divine Love, 15th century: Add MS 37790 (The British Library)
• Disease woman, in the Wellcome Apocalypse, 15th century (©The Wellcome Collection)
• A herbal containing plants used in medical treatments, late 13th or early 14th century: Egerton MS 747 (The British Library)
• Maraviglia's prayer book, 1469: Add MS 26957 (The British Library)
• The Sister Haggadah, 14th century: Or 2884 (The British Library)
• Portrait of Margaret of York, 15th century (©Musée du Louvre)
• 'And I war a maydyn', 16th century: Add MS 31922 (The British Library)
• Trousseau or marriage chest of Elizabetta Gonzaga, c. 1488 (©The Victoria & Albert Museum)
• Legal decisions of Isaiah di Trani the Elder, 1293 (©The Bodleian Libraries)
• Ivory cross of Sibylle of Flanders, before 1163 (©Musée du Louvre)
• Gold coin of Shajar al-Durr, first female sultan of Egypt, 1250 (© The British Museum)
• Portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort, by an unknown artist, 16th century (©Christ's College, Cambridge)
• Embroidered altar band made by Joan of Beverley, 14th century (©The Victoria & Albert Museum)

A gold coin of Shajar al-Durr, the first female sultan of Egypt: on loan to the Medieval Women exhibition from the British Museum

This exhibition is made possible with support from Joanna and Graham Barker, Unwin Charitable Trust, and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at the London Community Foundation.

 

Follow us @BLMedieval

Our major new exhibition, Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, opens on 25 October 2024. In hot anticipation, here are some ways you can get involved, and a sneak preview of the gallery to whet your appetite.

Tickets can be purchased in advance here or in person at the British Library, with a large range of concessions available.

The exhibition book, Medieval Women: Voices and Visions, edited by Eleanor Jackson & Julian Harrison, with a foreword by Kate Mosse, can be ordered in advance from the British Library Shop. The perfect birthday or Christmas present! Maybe we can even tempt you to buy our Medieval Women Christmas jumper.

We have an exciting programme of events, starting with Kate Mosse, Here and Now: Meet the Medieval Women, on 29 October (in person and online).

Meanwhile, our Learning team has organised school workshops and tours, and you can find more information about them here.

Medieval Women: In Their Own Words runs from 25 October 2024 until 2 March 2025, at St Pancras in London. We'd be delighted to see you there, as we uncover the stories of women from the past, from across Europe, and from all walks of life.

This exhibition is made possible with support from Joanna and Graham Barker, Unwin Charitable Trust, and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at the London Community Foundation.

 

 

Follow us @BLMedieval

During the Middle Ages, some of the most popular and well-loved stories were about classical women, female saints and heroines of courtly romance.  In a new British Library publication, Maidens or Monsters? Tales of Amazons, Goddesses, Queens & Temptresses in Medieval Manuscripts, Chantry Westwell delves into the stories of these women, exploring their portrayal by medieval authors and illuminators. 

The book is divided into six sections dedicated to female warriors and murderesses, women of virtue and faith, power, and tragedy, as well as enigmatic and allegorical women taken from myth and legend. Their accounts are accompanied by some of the most exquisite examples of medieval art, reproduced from within the pages of manuscripts from the eighth to the 16th centuries, mostly from the British Library’s collections.

The six sections are as follows: 

I: Warriors, Murderesses and Femmes Fatales

The first section of the book features stories of the legendary Amazon Women led by their Queen Penthesilea, the Colchian witch Medea, who takes her revenge on the Greek hero Jason, Minerva, goddess of war and Salome, who danced for Herod, then asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. 

Queen Penthesilea leads the Amazon Women into battle, from Christine de Pizan’s ‘Book of the Queen’ (Paris, c. 1410-c. 1414): Harley MS 4431/1, f. 103v

II: Holy Women

The second section focuses on the lives and stories of holy women, from Mary Magdalene and St Margaret of Antioch, who emerges from a dragon’s belly to St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great and a remarkable group of desert saints known as the Holy Harlots.

St Mary of Egypt is handed a cloak by St Zosima, from in the Theodore Psalter (Constantinople, 1066): Add MS 19352, f. 68r.

III: Powerful Women

Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, Olympias of Macedon, and Candace of Ethiopia are among those featured in this section dedicated to women who wielded real power in their lifetimes but were not always treated fairly by historians and chroniclers, who tended to portray them as manipulative temptresses rather than as skilful politicians or rulers.

The Egyptian Nectanebo disguised as a serpent seducing Olympias, in the Roman d’Alexandre en prose (‘Prose Alexander Romance’), from the Talbot Shrewsbury Book (Rouen, c. 1445): Royal MS 15 E VI, f. 6r

IV: Tragic Heroines

This section looks at women whose stories ended in great tragedy: from the romantic heroine Elvide and the classical Lucretia who both die for their honour, to the Persian Shirin who takes her own life on her husband’s grave, and the story of the Biblical Eve, blamed for the downfall of humanity, exiled from paradise, before experiencing terrible family tragedy.

The suicide of Shirin at Khusraw’s tomb, in Nizami, Khamsah (India, 1595): Or 12208, f. 102r

V: Partners and Lovers

The women in the fifth section of the book were all partners of famous men, but nonetheless captured the limelight in their stories.  Among them are Camelot’s Guinevere and the legendary Helen of Troy, as well as the Old Testament Delilah, Dante’s Beatrice from the Divine Comedy and Humayun, the Chinese princess of Persian folklore.

Beatrice showing Dante the orders of angels and saints in Dante, Paradiso (Tuscany, c. 1445): Yates Thompson MS 36, f. 180r

VI:  Mystical, Magical and Allegorical Women

The final section looks at the stories of mystical and magical women, from the fairy Melusine, who transforms into a fish, to the mermaids, who lured sailors from their ships, and the divine Sibyls, known for their prophecies, along with other fantastical female characters.

Two Sirens swim beside a ship with sailors who are under their spell, from the Queen Mary Psalter (London, c. 1315): Royal MS 2 B VII, f. 96v

It becomes clear when reading these tales that women were not always treated fairly or in a positive light by medieval historians and storytellers, most of whom were, of course, men. A counter to this was Christine de Pizan (b. 1364, d. c. 1430), a professional author based at the French royal court during the 14th and early 15th centuries, who argued forcefully in her writings for the intellectual and moral equality of women. Her Book of the City of Ladies was an impassioned defence of women, in which she recounted the stories of these heroines, and imagined herself building a metaphorical city from their achievements. It was Christine who provided the inspiration for this book.

The goddess Venus presiding over her courtiers, who give her their hearts, from Christine de Pizan’s ‘Book of the Queen’ (Paris, c. 1410-c. 1414): Harley MS 4431/1, f. 100r

Maidens or Monsters? Amazons and Goddesses, Queens and Temptresses in Medieval Legend is available to order now from the British Library Shop.

Chantry Westwell

Follow us @BLMedieval

Follow us @BLMedieval

There’s just one month to go until the opening of our new exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words. We can’t wait for visitors to come and explore the rich and complex lives of women in the Middle Ages!

If you can’t wait either, then you might be excited to learn that the exhibition book, Medieval Women: Voices & Visions, is now available for pre-order from the British Library’s online bookshop. All orders will be dispatched after 25 October, the exhibition's opening date.

Drawing on the exhibition items, the book takes a deeper dive into the lives and times of women in Europe in the period of roughly 1100–1500. It begins with a preface by International bestselling author and British Library board member Kate Mosse, followed by an introduction by the exhibition’s lead curator, Eleanor Jackson. The book contains nine chapters exploring over-arching themes, and forty-three short ‘spotlights’ that shine a light on particular women, events and issues, all written by experts in the field.

The volume is divided into four main sections reflecting women’s contributions right across medieval society: ‘Private Lives’, exploring women’s bodies, health, households and family life; ‘Public Lives’, focusing on women’s power and political involvement; ‘Working Lives’, revealing women’s work and creativity; and ‘Spiritual Lives’, uncovering women’s experiences as visionaries, heretics, and in religious communities. It tells the stories of a wide variety of women: from queens to peasants, nuns to sex-workers, physicians to artists.

Sumptuously illustrated, the book is a feast for the eyes. There are images of most of the items on display in the exhibition, and many more!

You can pre-order your copy of the Medieval Women exhibition book now on the British Library website.

The exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words is open at the British Library from 25 October 2024 to 2 March 2025. You can pre-book your tickets online now.

This exhibition is made possible with support from Joanna and Graham Barker, Unwin Charitable Trust, and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at the London Community Foundation.

Follow us @BLMedieval

Following the cyber-attack on the British Library last year, staff have been working behind the scenes to restore access to the Library’s digitised manuscripts. The Library has now made an initial batch of 1,000 digitised items available online, of which over 600 are ancient, medieval and early modern manuscripts.

A full list of the items, with links to their digitised images and summary catalogue information, can be consulted on the British Library website. Improvements to the discoverability of the manuscripts will be made in due course.

The page for Easter Sunday in the Sherborne Missal: Add MS 74236, p. 216

A highlight is the Sherborne Missal (Add MS 74236), a service book containing all the texts required for celebrating Mass on the different feasts, holidays and saints’ days throughout the year. Made for the Benedictine abbey of St Mary in Sherborne, Dorset, the manuscript has been called one of the masterpieces of 15th-century English illumination, with decoration on nearly all of its 694 pages. You can read more about the manuscript in our previous blogpost and listen to a guided tour and discussion of the page for Easter Sunday as part of the BBC’s Moving Picture Series.  

A phoenix rising from the ashes, from an illuminated Bestiary: Harley MS 4751, f. 65r

The selection also includes all 400 manuscripts digitised as part of The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project, a ground-breaking collaborative project between the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The manuscripts, made in England and France between the years 700 to 1200, comprise a wide range of texts and topics, including biblical, liturgical and theological works, science, music and medicine, Classical and contemporary literature and works on history and law. Among them are a lavishly-illuminated Bestiary (Harley MS 4751), with illustrated accounts of birds, beasts and fantastical creatures, and the Eadui Psalter (Arundel MS 155), a copy of the Book of Psalms, written by a scribe called Eadui Basan at Christ Church, Canterbury in the early 11th century, with a partial gloss in Old English.

The Beatus page of the Eadui Psalter, showing the opening of Psalm 1: Arundel MS 155, f. 12r

There are also a number of manuscripts containing significant works of Middle English literature. They include the ‘Amherst Manuscript’ (Add MS 37790), a Carthusian anthology of theological material containing the only surviving medieval copy of the Short Text of The Revelations of Divine Love by the anchoress Julian of Norwich. This work is an account of the 16 mystical visions Julian experienced in her early 30s, and the earliest surviving example of a book in the English language known to have been written by a woman.

The Short Text of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love: Add MS 37790, f. 98v

As further digitised manuscripts become available online, we will post updates about them on the Medieval Manuscripts blog. Browse a list of all currently available digitised manuscripts here. 

Follow us @BLMedieval

There’s only one month to go before our major exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words opens. Running from 25 October 2024 to 2 March 2025, this exhibition tells the history of medieval women through their own words and uncovers their lives through manuscripts, documents and precious artefacts. Tickets for the exhibition are already on sale! 

As opening day approaches, we thought we would reveal a few more of the incredible items that are going to be on display.

The Psalter of Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem

The Presentation in the Temple, from the ‘Melisende Psalter’; Jerusalem, 1131–43: Egerton MS 1139, f. 3r

From Margaret of Anjou to Empress Matilda, you will hear the stories of many medieval queens, their lives, words and achievements in the course of the exhibition. They include Melisende (d. 1161), ruler of the Crusader state of Jerusalem in the mid-12th-century. Jointly reigning with her husband, Fulk of Anjou, and then her son Baldwin III, Melisende was responsible for much of the kingdom’s day-to-day governance. She was also a renowned patron of the Church and the arts, founding schools devoted to bookmaking and miniature painting. A precious survival from her reign is her Psalter (Book of Psalms), a personal prayer-book that was probably commissioned for her and features exquisite illuminations and writing in gold.

Birth Girdle

Medieval birth girdle, featuring the Three Nails from the Crucifixion, illustrations of Christ’s Side Wound, and other textual and image-based talismans; England, 15th century: Harley Roll T 11

A life-size representation of Christ’s Side Wound, from a medieval English birth girdle: Harley Roll T 11

Among the exhibits devoted to the subject of women’s health is one of only nine surviving medieval English birth girdles. These parchment waist belts were produced commercially as amulets, offering protection against a number of different hazards and ailments, but particularly childbirth. This 15th-century birth girdle is covered with a variety of prayers, charms and other textual and illustrative talismans, including an image of the three nails used during the Crucifixion and a life-sized representation (‘measure’) of Christ’s side-wound.

Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum

Hildegard of Bingen’s proto-opera, Ordo virtutum (‘Play of the Virtues’); Sponheim, 1487: Add MS 15102, f. 219v

The exhibition will also introduce a number of women who embraced a spiritual calling and found purpose as part of religious communities. A foremost example is Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179). Sent to live in the Benedictine nunnery of Disibodenberg in Germany when she was 8 years old, Hildegard later founded and became abbess of the nunnery of Rupertsberg. In the course of her life, Hildegard had many achievements and roles. She was a polymath, a visionary and prophet, who went on multiple extended preaching tours, even in her 60s and 70s; she was also an author, a prolific letter-writer, and the beloved leader of her religious community. One of her many compositions is a musical play, or proto-opera, the Ordo virtutum (Play of the Virtues), which tells the story of the struggle for a human soul between personifications of the virtues and the Devil, and was intended to be sung by nuns.

The Luttrell Psalter

Female labourers bringing in the harvest and reaping barley with sickles, from the ‘Luttrell Psalter’; Lincolnshire, 1325–40: Add MS 42130, f. 172v

The exhibition will also highlight the variety of working roles women played at all levels of medieval society, from rural communities to royal courts. The Luttrell Psalter is one of the masterpieces of medieval English art, an illuminated copy of the Book of Psalms commissioned by the landowner Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (d. 1345), lord of Irnham in Lincolnshire. Its marginal illustrations are known for their fantastical menagerie of hybrid creatures and grotesques, but they also include depictions of arable farming and labourers, artisans, and craftspeople at work, many featuring women prominently. On this page, three female farmworkers reap and gather barley with sickles. In the background, one of the labourers stands and stretches to ease her aching back, her sickle balanced on her shoulder.

The Lais and Fables of Marie de France

An opening from Marie’s ‘Bisclavret’, the story of a werewolf trapped in lupine form, from a collection of her Fables and Lais; England, 13th century: Harley MS 978, ff. 66v–67r. 

Alongside Christine de Pizan’s ‘Book of the Queen’ and The Book of Margery Kempe, one of the exhibition’s most important literary manuscripts contains the work of Marie de France (active around the 1180s), one of the first recorded female authors in Europe. Few details of Marie’s identity are now known to us, though she was probably based in England, since she wrote in Anglo-Norman, a dialect of French spoken by the ruling class in England after the Norman Conquest. This manuscript is the only medieval copy to record all twelve of Marie’s Lais, a set of narrative poems notable for their celebration of courtly love, and featuring such memorable characters as the werewolf Bisclavret, the abandoned girl Le Fresne, and the knights Milun, Guigemar and Lanval.

Marie ai nun, si sui de France (Marie is my name and I am from France): Marie naming herself at the end of the lai ‘Bisclavret’; Harley MS 978, f. 67r

Medieval Women: In Their Own Words is on show at the British Library from 25 October 2024 to 2 March 2025. You can pre-book your tickets online now. 

This exhibition is made possible with support from Joanna and Graham Barker, Unwin Charitable Trust, and Cockayne – Grants for the Arts: a donor advised fund held at the London Community Foundation.

Follow us @BLMedieval

Follow us @BLMedieval

The British Library is delighted to be hosting Dan Jones on Monday, 23 September, when he will be talking about his breathtakingly brilliant new biography of King Henry V. You can join us in person at St Pancras or online. Things kick off at 1900 (we know, should have started at 1415), and Dan has agreed very kindly to sign copies of his book afterwards.

Come along and find out more about one of medieval England's most intriguing kings, the victor of Agincourt, conqueror of northern France, and immortalised by Shakespeare. 'Once more unto the British Library's Pigott Theatre, dear friends, once more!'

Tickets to attend in person or online can be purchased here.

Among the Cotton Charters and Rolls are several booklets, short manuscripts bound together and mostly dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. A great many of them are the private accounts and papers of the Cotton family, but Cotton Ch XVI 18 is something else entirely: a muster book from the English Civil War, more accurately known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

Entries recording that Nathaniel Naseby and Thomas Tarlton need muskets and that the whole company has one wagon, three horses, and a carter: Cotton Ch XVI 18, f. 11v

This short volume lists the troops raised for Colonel George Goring, Lord Goring (1608–1657), giving their names and whether they were a musketeer or a pikeman or needed equipment. A note at the back records that this was done on 7 September 1640 and on the orders of the Earl of Strafford, lord lieutenant-general of the royal army.

Entry recording that William Knowles has run away: Cotton Ch XVI 18, f. 2r

Clearly not everyone wanted to sign up. One man, William Knowles, is marked down as a runaway. Five others are listed as sick. In the end, Goring raised 41 pikemen, 104 musketeers, and 12 officers, for a total of 157 men. They were probably raised for the Bishops’ Wars (1639–1640), fought between King Charles I (r. 1625–1649), who wished to reform the Church of Scotland to be more like that of England, and the Covenanters, hardline Presbyterians who resisted him. The conflict marked the beginning of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Luckily for Colonel Goring’s soldiers, the war soon ended with the Treaty of Ripon on 14 October 1640, just over a month after they were mustered.

The total muster for Goring's company, including the signature of Philip D'Ewes: Cotton Ch XVI 18, f. 12r

But this was not the end of Colonel Goring’s military career. An ardent royalist, he would serve as lieutenant-general of the royal cavalry in the First English Civil War (1642–1646). He fought at the Battle of Marston Moor and commanded the western royalist army until its defeat at the Battle of Langport in 1645. Goring then retired to France on grounds of ill-health before going to Spain to command some English exiles in the Spanish army, where he died in 1657.

Painting of George Goring, after Anthony van Dyck, c. 1635–1640

The muster book gives Captain Richard D’Ewes (1615–1643) as Goring’s second-in-command. He had previously served under him in the Netherlands from 1636 to 1637. Richard was the younger brother of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–1650), an antiquary and friend of Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631), who founded the Cotton Collection. Richard and Simonds took opposing sides in the Civil Wars, Richard declaring for the royalists, Simonds for Parliament. Richard had already fought for the king in 1639 and 1640 and he wrote to his brother in July 1642 imploring him to side with Charles, but Simonds refused.

In April 1643, Richard, now a lieutenant-colonel, was besieged in Reading by Parliamentarian forces. As one of the royalist officers leading the defence, Richard was shot with a cannonball in his left leg, tearing the flesh away to the bone. The wound turned gangrenous and the young officer died on 21 April, aged only twenty-eight. His brother wrote that the date ‘had been made sad and fatal to me by the loss of my most dear and only brother’ (J. Sears McGee, An Industrious Mind: The Worlds of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (Stanford, 2015), p. 391).

Etching of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, 2nd quarter of the 17th century

The manuscripts of Simonds D’Ewes, including this volume with its reminder of the service that led to his beloved brother’s death, were purchased by Robert Harley, 1st  earl of Oxford (1661-1724), in 1704. His descendants sold them to the nation for £10,000 in 1753, and they formed one of the foundation collections of the British Museum. Although most of these manuscripts are, of course, held in the British Library’s Harley Collection, several hundred subsequently found their way into the Cotton Collection. The original Cottons only went from Cotton Ch I 1 to XVI 3, but many unrelated charters were added to them in the 1790s, and given numbers in an extended sequence. These were at first called 'Cartae Miscellaneae Addendae', but the distinction was dropped in the late 1860s and 1870s, so that now they are all referred to as Cotton Charters. Amon them was Goring’s muster book, which presumably belonged to Richard D'Ewes and passed to his brother Simonds upon his death.

This is just one of more than 1,000 Cotton charters and rolls that we are adding to the British Library's online catalogue. As the project progresses, further blogposts will highlight other interesting documents from the collection.

 

Rory MacLellan

Follow us @BLMedieval