ABSTRACT
An honourable exception to our generalization, about content at least, is one of the finest possible mothers as well as one of the finest of scholars, namely Henrietta Leyser. Within sixteen years of publication, her book Medieval Women has established itself as a classic, and it explores on Motherhood, the Upbringing of Children and Widows. Mothers are not often encountered in the indexes of social histories of the high middle ages or of collections of medieval documents. For every mother in indexes relating to the twelfth century, there must be at least ten widows and even widows are not thick on the ground. Besides what is in the section on Motherhood, there is much about mothers scattered throughout other parts of the book. Something of the quality of Henrietta's writing, as well as her scrupulous acknowledgement of the work of other scholars, can be gathered from quoting part of one passage about high aristocratic mothers of the late Anglo-Saxon period.
