ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a history of the practice of women being addressed as 'mother' by persons other than their children. The story of women being dubbed 'mother' by their followers is important, however, and not simply because it reinforces sense of the trajectory of female spirituality in the Middle Ages. The rise of 'holy mothers' in the later Middle Ages will parallel what Andre Vauchez has dubbed 'the feminization of sanctity' in that period, as well as the growth of the cults of the Virgin Mary, her mother, Anne, and the entire Holy Kindred, and the growing movement of lay piety. Holy 'mothers' also presided over the spiritual regeneration of their sons and daughters; figuratively speaking, they gave birth to sons and daughters in Christ. In a further metaphorical extension of the roles of biological mothers, holy 'mothers' also provided spiritual nourishment for the sons and daughters who gathered around them.
