Thursday, October 27/ 12:00 Noon / Blue-Grey Room
Dr. Sally Brasher
Dr. Sally Brasher holds a B.A. from the University of Colorado, an M.A from Minnesota State University, and a Ph.D. From the Catholic University of America. She joined the Shepherd University History Department in 2004.
Dr. Brasher’s research interests revolve around the development of urban identities in the Middle Ages and their expression in novel religious institutions. She is currently engaged in a study reevaluating the historical model of female religiosity and spirituality of the Middle Ages, through her analysis of the religious orders open to women in the Mediterranean regions between the 12th and 15th centuries.
She is the author of the book Women of the Humiliati: A Lay Religious Order in Medieval Civic Life, which was published by Routledge in 2003.
Circumventing Patriarchal Restrictions to Public Service in the Middle Ages: The Humiliati and Beguines Compared
It is commonly held that options available to Italian women of the thirteenth century were severely limited. The highly patriarchal nature of medieval Italian society, the strict conventions of Church canon, and the prescribed norms of behavior for women of all classes were clearly defined. A young Italian girl could really expect only one of two fates from life; the social enclosure of marriage or the cloistered protection from society inside a nunnery. This was of course the case for most medieval women, but historians have long held that while some women in northern Europe found ways to circumvent these restrictions to civic participation, and follow a vita apostolica, seeking spiritual fulfillment in community service, those of the Mediterranean south were much more restricted. The beguine movement of Flanders is generally seen as an institutional response to the desire for apostolic living reflecting the greater public presence of women in Northern Europe in general.
Dr. Brasher's research into one lay religious group, the Humiliati, active in northern Italy between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, which finds that a majority of the members of this group were in fact women also following a desire for apostolic living, suggests a similar impulse to public service as that of the beguines. As this Italian movement arose within a society in which women were excluded from almost all public activity, its success suggests that women found a way to circumvent such restrictions. They participated in producing inexpensive textiles for the poor, administering poor relief and hospitals, and engaging in business transactions which included landownership, cloth merchandising and even acting as financial lenders.
Dr. Brasher's current research compares the institutions of the beguines in Northern Europe with that of the Humiliati, in order to evaluate the similarity of their experiences. The findings suggest that, in the realm of institutionalized religion as well civic participation, women in even the strictest of patriarchal systems found ways to legally circumvent restrictions to their participation. This research adds to the historical evidence for women’s ability to obtain access to the public sphere in non-traditional ways, thus suggesting that when evaluating women’s role in society alternate measures of participation and influence must be used.
