From Veleda to the Völva

According to Bynum, male suspicion of female visionary power was alerted by the increasing numbers of women saints in the later Middle Ages, and articulated in a series of influential works on the testing of spirits. ¹ The observation, if correct, assumes the presence, outside the Church, of an inherent female capacity for divination. Indeed, female visionaries were by no means confined to the Christian world. Female visionary power manifested itself in Antiquity, where it culminated in the oracling sibyls, as well as in those parts of Europe that were only integrated in the Christian world at a later stage, like Germanic Europe, for instance.