Introduction

Few women of the later Middle Ages, apart possibly from Joan of Arc, are known by name to people in the twenty-first century. Joan of Arc was herself exceptional in taking on the male role of a soldier and raising the siege of Orleans in 1429. More is heard of kings, popes, philosophers and scholars than of queens and women mystics and writers. Partly this is due to the subordination of medieval women and the way in which they were viewed by the Church and the law, partly it is due to traditions in historical writing until recent times. According to the Church, mankind fell from the state of grace through the action of Eve who, according to the story in the Bible in the Book of Genesis, was tempted by the devil to pick the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil growing in the middle of the Garden of Eden.