ABSTRACT
Sacred spaces in Europe during the Middle Ages were sharply divided along two similar but not identical axes: clerical/secular and male/female. In churches, for example, the altar and areas around it were specifically reserved for the priest (clerical and male) to the point of enclosure behind specially constructed screens. In nunneries, the sacristy, the place where sacred vessels were stored, was a masculine preserve in an otherwise feminine space, the convent. And, as Roberta Gilchrist has commented, ‘It would seem that the space of any medieval church, parochial or monastic, consisted of an intricate map of gendered spaces.’1 In addition to the male/clerical altar space, religious women were often segregated from men in choirs or at the north ends of churches. This map of gendered sacred spaces would seem to indicate that clerical men had firm control over access to the sacred within medieval Europe.
