ABSTRACT
The cultural and temporal distance between life today and the Middle Ages can make the period difficult to grasp and to understand. Historians of this period, collectively, need to confess that often only a patrimonial vision of history can retrace a direct and continuous line between that period and our own. The theoretical framing of women and violence is constructed and represented, almost exclusively, by men. In the Middle Ages, both in the Germanic and the Roman traditions, there were specific standards put in place to protect women from men, regardless of the legal status of women. The issue of the relationship between women and violence, as all issues related to women, is located at the crossroads between two realities: male domination and gender distinction.
