| Early medieval women expressed their piety through a variety of channels, including pilgrimage, weaving, giftgiving, and through the formation of idiosyncratic, non-cloistered religious communities. With the exception of giftgiving, none of these topics have been examined as part of early medieval female spirituality. In doing so, I have uncovered information not just about women's religious lives, but have shown women as agents who built the spiritual world among them using the limited resources available to them. Furthermore, in their search for personal spiritual fulfillment, women transformed religious culture through their public and private pious acts. Early medieval women were particularly vulnerable to political, cultural, and familial forces outside of their control, and as exogamous wives, widows, and professed religious, their personal fortunes continually shifted. Despite official attempts to control women and their movement, many high-status women were migratory individuals---wives, royal ambassadors, exiles, missionaries, and pilgrims. Moreover, women were often the offspring of nationally "mixed" marriages, and often entered into such unions themselves, requiring them to leave their kin and become part of new families and cultures. As such, women performed tenuous balancing acts: they sought to acculturate themselves into their new environment, yet feared being subsumed by their in-laws. They attempted to retain their personal history and culture through the strategic naming of children, the preservation of family histories, and especially through their relationships with churches, churchmen, and their material objects. These transplants localized their "native" culture through their books, textiles, and saints' cults within their new environment. Women needed allies and protectors, and the relationships they fostered with clerics and churches provided important support systems and influential channels both at home and abroad. As benefactors of the church, women internationalized early medieval religious culture. |
