Gendered lessons: The pastoral care of women in late medieval England

This dissertation examines how late medieval English priests viewed and cared for female parishioners. First, it establishes the critical role vernacular sermon compendiums and pastoral care handbooks played in the education and training of clerics with cura animarum. Second, it traces the use of gender inclusive language in vernacular sermons and pastoral care handbooks to argue that clerical writers recognized their responsibilities to teach, preach, and care for women. Using John Mirk's Festial as a case study, it asserts that clerical writers persistently and explicitly included women when addressing pastoral matters. Thus, through their particular use of gender inclusive language, clerics acknowledged the important role female parishioners played in pastoral matters and accepted clerical obligations to provide women with proper pastoral care. Third, it details the attentiveness that clerical authors paid to female parishioners, recognizing women's lifecycle stages and special pastoral needs. Yet this realistic concern was tempered by the limited ability of clerics to perceive women outside of their dependence on men and by their continued portrayal of women as sexually dangerous. Finally, it asserts that the problems associated with women took a sinister shape as they threatened the sacred powers of priests. Women's physical presence threatened clerical purity; the disbelief of some women in the Eucharist miracle threatened sacerdotal authority; and women's dependent status potentially interfered with confession. In the end it seems priests were left with little choice. Caught between the difficulties of trying to provide appropriate care for women yet hindered by social restrictions, religious restrictions, and their own preconceptions, priests faced critical challenges when caring for the pastoral needs of female parishioners. Clerics with cura animarum had to care for women—and most seemed to want to care for women—yet they simultaneously had to be careful about how they provided that care. By reminding priests of their duties toward female parishioners and giving advice on how to handle problems associated with women, clerical authors of vernacular instruction manuals and sermon collections attempted to solve this conundrum. Did they succeed? This we cannot know, but we can know that at least some tried.