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＞＞＞Who do you think was the most important woman of the past 10..
Who do you think was the most important woman of the past 100 years?Jane Addams (1860 - 1935) Addams helped the poor and worked for peace. She created shelters, education opportunities and services for people in need. In 1931, Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964) Rachel Carson was born in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania in America. The popular 1962 book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson made people realize the dangers and the harmful effects (影响) of pollution on humans and on the world’s lakes and oceans.Angela Merkel (1954 -&& ) In 2005, Germans chose Angela Merkel as their first woman head of the country. She had been a scientist in the past. As Germany’s leader, she has had an effect on the whole world.Sandra Day O’Connor (1930 -&& )
When Sandra Day O’Connor finished her class at Stanford Law School, in 1952, she could not find work because she was a woman. However, she became the first woman to join the U.S. Supreme Court (最高法院) in 1981 after years of hard work. Margaret Thatcher (1925 -&& )
In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first woman Prime Minister (首相). She served until 1990, which made her the first British leader to serve three terms in a row. Because of her high standards and strong will, people called her Britain’s Iron Lady. Marie Curie (2534) Polish-born scientist Marie Curie discovered that some types of metal give off energy called radiation (辐射能). Her research led to new medical treatments and arms. She received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and in Chemistry in 1911.小题1:Who once won the Nobel Prize?A．Jane Addams and Marie Curie.B．Jane Addams and Margaret Thatcher.C．Marie Curie and Angela Merkel.D．Marie Curie and Rachel Carson.小题2:We can infer from the text that Rachel Carson worked to _____.A．help the poorB．spread geographic knowledgeC．protect the environmentD．protect the rights of women小题3:What do Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher have in common?A．Both of them were scientists before coming to power.B．Both of them are the first woman head of their country.C．Both of them are famous for being strict.D．Both of them have worked for three terms.小题4:Who once failed to find a job?A．Jane Addams.B．Sandra Day O’Connor.C．Rachel Carson.D．Margaret Thatcher.小题5:What would be the best title for the text?A．Great women .B．Famous scientists .C．Strong leaders .D．Ways to success for women .
题型：阅读理解难度：中档来源：不详
小题1:A小题2:C小题3:B小题4:B小题5:A试题分析：小题1:A 细节题。根据第一部分Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.和第六部分She received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and in Chemistry in 1911.说明她们都获得诺贝尔奖，A正确。小题2:C 推理题。根据第二部分. The popular 1962 book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson made people realize the dangers and the harmful effects (影响) of pollution on humans and on the world’s lakes and oceans.说明她写书让人们知道人类的行为对环境的影响，故C正确。小题3:B 细节题。根据第三部分第一行Germans chose Angela Merkel as their first woman head of the country.和第五部分第一行Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first woman Prime Minister (首相)说明这两位都是自己高级的领导人，故B正确。小题4:B 根据第四部分第2行she could not find work because she was a woman说明B正确。小题5:A 主旨大意题。文章讲述了六位对人类有很多影响的女性，故A：伟大的女性。符合句意。考点;考查人物介绍类短文点评：文章介绍了六位对20世纪的人类有巨大影响的女性。本文集中考查了细节题，要求考生在阅读时，把握文章细节，在关键的时间，地点和人物的方面做好标识，一提高阅读的速度和解题的效率。
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据魔方格专家权威分析，试题“Who do you think was the most important woman of the past 10..”主要考查你对&&人物传记类阅读，故事类阅读&&等考点的理解。关于这些考点的“档案”如下：
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人物传记类阅读故事类阅读
人物传记类文章的文体特征：
人物传记是记叙文体的一种，主要描写某人的生平事迹、趣闻轶事、生活背景、个性特征、成长奋斗历程等，包含记叙文的时间、地点、人物、事件等要素。其特点是以时间的先后或事件的发展为主线，空间或逻辑线索贯穿文章始终，脉络清楚，可读性较强。 人物传记类文章的阅读策略和解题技巧：
1、把握文体特征，注意写作手法如前文所述，人物传记是记叙文体的一种，因此在阅读时要把握好时间、地点、人物和事件这四大要素。其次，还应该注意人物传记类文章的结构多按时间顺序排列，一般采用倒叙的写作手法，有时也采用插叙和补叙等手段。弄清楚人物传记类文章的特征和写作手法，能帮助考生在阅读和回答问题时做到高效省时、准确无误。 2、抓住题干关键词，采用寻读的方法查找细节描述事实细节题是人物传记类文章的主要题型，一般常见以下几种类型： (1)对号入座题：这种题的答案一般在原文中可以直接找到，只要读懂文章，掌握文章中的事实，如时间、地点、事件等细节问题，就能选对正确答案。 (2)词义转换题：这种题常常是原文有关词语和句子的转换，而不能在原文中直接找到。它要求考生能理解原文中某个短语或句子的含义，从而找到与答案意思相同的词语和句子。 (3)是非题：该题型俗称“三缺一”题型，即题目四个选项中有三个符合文章内容，剩下一个不符合。题干多为：Which of the following isTRUE?或者三个不符合文章内容，剩下一个符合，题干多为：Which of the following…isNOTtrue?或All the following are true EXCEPT(4)排序题：这种题要求考生根据动作发生的先后顺序和句子之间的逻辑关系，找出事件发生的正确顺序。可采用“首尾定位法”，即先找出第一个动作和最后一个动作，迅速缩小选择范围，从而快速选出正确答案。 (5)指代理解题：一般是在人物或事物关系比较复杂的情况下使用的一种题型，所以理清人物及事物之间的逻辑关系是关键所在。可采用“逻辑关系梳理法”，使人物或事件关系清晰条理。不管题型如何，在做事实细节题时，可采用比较实用的方法一有目的的阅读。在阅读时，首先看题目要求我们理解什么细节，找出关键词，然后以此为线索，运用寻读的技巧迅速在文章里找出相应的段落、句子或短语。认真比较选项和文中细节的区别，在正确理解细节的前提下，确定最佳答案。这样一来，既提高了阅读的速度，又能确保答案的准确率。同时，建议阅读文章时把与答案相符的句子或短语用红线标示出来，标号注上是哪一题答案的相关句子，这样在检查时就不必重新阅读整篇文章了。 3、抽丝剥茧，推理判断深层含义推理判断题主要提问那些未曾在文中说明，但已特别暗示的内容，考查考生对文章的准确理解和判断。人物传记类文章常见的推理判断题型为： (1)细节推断题：要求考生根据语篇关系，推断具体细节，如时间、地点、人物关系、人物身份、事件等。一般可根据短文提供的信息，或者借助生活常识进行推理判断。 (2)因果推断题：要求考生根据已知结果推测导致结果的可能原因。考生要准确掌握文章的内涵，理解文章的真正含义。 (3)人物性格、作者态度及观点判断题：人物传记类文章中有些是考查考生对作者的主导思想、被描写人物的语气、言语中流露的情绪、性格倾向和作者或文中人物态度、观点等方面的理解题。推理判断题要求在理解原文表面文字信息的基础上做出一定推论和判断，从而得到文章的隐含意义和深层意义。解答此类题时，要注意： (1)吃透文章的字面意思，从字里行间捕捉有用的提示和线索，这是推理的前提和基础。 (2)对文字的表面信息进俐宅掘加工，由表及里，由浅入深。从具体到抽象，从特殊到一般，通过分析、综合、判断等进行符合逻辑的推理。不能就事论事，断章取义，以偏概全。 (3)基于文章内容，以文章提供的事实和线索为依据，立足已知，推断未知。不能主观臆想，凭空想象，随意揣测，更不能以自己的观点代替作者的观点。 (4)把握句、段之间的逻辑关系，了解语篇的结构。要体会文章的基调，揣摸作者的态度，摸准逻辑发展的方向，悟出作者的弦外之音。 (5)注意文中所用词句的感情色彩，是讽刺性的，批评性的，赞成性的，还是反对性的，以便推测作者的观点和态度。故事类阅读概念：
这类文章一般描述的是某一件具体事情的发生发展或结局，有人物、时间、地点和事件。命题往往从故事的情节、人物或事件的之间的关系、作者的态度及意图、故事前因和后果的推测等方面着手，考查学生对细节的辨认能力以及推理判断能力。故事类阅读应试技巧：
1、抓住文章的6个要素：阅读时要学会从事情本身的发展去理解故事情节而不要只看事件在文中出现的先后顺序。因此，无论是顺叙还是倒叙，阅读此类文章时，必须要找到它结构中的5个W（when, where, who, why, what）和1个H（how），不过不是每篇都会完整地交待六个要素。毫无疑问，寻出这些元素是能够正确快速解题的一个先决条件。 2、注意作者的议论和抒情：高考英语阅读理解故事类文章常伴随着作者思想情感的流露和表达，因此议论和抒情往往夹杂其中。行文时或按事情发生发展的先后时间进行或按事情发生发展的地点来转换，也可能按事情发展的阶段来布局。在引出话题，讲完一件事情后，作者往往会表达个人感悟或提出建议等。这些体现作者观点或思想的语句在阅读时可以划线，它们往往体现文章中心或者写作意图，属于必考点，所以要仔细体会。 3、结合前两点归纳文章中心，把握作者态度：故事类文章是通过记叙一件事来表达中心思想的，它是文章的灵魂。归纳文章中心思想时，尤其要分析文章的结尾，因为很多文章卒章显志，用简短的议论、抒情揭示文章中心；文章中议论抒情的句子往往与中心密切相关；也有的文章需要在结合概括各段大意的基础上归纳中心。另外，叙述一件事必有其目的，或阐明某一观点，或赞美某种品德，或抨击某种陋习，这就要求我们在阅读时，通过对细节（第1点中的六要素）的理解，把握作者的态度。 4、有章有据进行解题判断：分析文章，归纳主题，属于分析、概括、综合的表述能力的考查。切忌脱离文章，架空分析，一定让分析在文章中有依据。
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375261404031356417409701426691406324Vitamin D supplementation reduces insulin resistance in South Asian...
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2009 Sep 28.Vitamin D supplementation reduces insulin resistance in South Asian women living in New Zealand who are insulin resistant and vitamin D deficient - a randomised, placebo-controlled trial.1, , .1Institute of Food, Nutrition and Human Health, Massey University, Private Bag 102 904, North Shore Mail Centre, Auckland, New Zealand. p.r.vonhurst@massey.ac.nzAbstractLow serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) has been shown to correlate with increased risk of type 2 diabetes. Small, observational studies suggest an action for vitamin D in improving insulin sensitivity and/or insulin secretion. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of improved vitamin D status on insulin resistance (IR), utilising randomised, controlled, double-blind intervention administering 100 microg (4000 IU) vitamin D(3) (n 42) or placebo (n 39) daily for 6 months to South Asian women, aged 23-68 years, living in Auckland, New Zealand. Subjects were insulin resistant - homeostasis model assessment 1 (HOMA1)&1.93 and had serum 25(OH)D concentration & 50 nmol/l. Exclusion criteria included diabetes medication and vitamin D supplementation &25 microg (1000 IU)/d. The HOMA2 computer model was used to calculate outcomes. Median (25th, 75th percentiles) serum 25(OH)D(3) increased significantly from 21 (11, 40) to 75 (55, 84) nmol/l with supplementation. Significant improvements were seen in insulin sensitivity and IR (P = 0.003 and 0.02, respectively), and fasting insulin decreased (P = 0.02) with supplementation compared with placebo. There was no change in C-peptide with supplementation. IR was most improved when endpoint serum 25(OH)D reached & or = 80 nmol/l. Secondary outcome variables (lipid profile and high sensitivity C-reactive protein) were not affected by supplementation. In conclusion, improving vitamin D status in insulin resistant women resulted in improved IR and sensitivity, but no change in insulin secretion. Optimal vitamin D concentrations for reducing IR were shown to be 80-119 nmol/l, providing further evidence for an increase in the recommended adequate levels. Registered Trial No. ACTRN82.PMID:
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Supplemental Content
External link. Please review our .Women and Hagiography in Medieval Christianity
Compiled by Thomas Head
Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
is in a very fundamental way a social or institutional construct. Sanctity
is an ideal which developed historically: different sorts of people were
recognized as saints by Christian communities during different periods.
One of the most important factors in the changing character of sanctity
over the course of the middle ages was gender. The recognition of, or more
importantly the failure to recognize, women as saints betrays many of the
misogynist traits typical of medieval society and culture. While most medieval
theologians conceded a theoretical equality between men and women in their
ability to be saved, they almost uniformly saw men as more likely to practice
the virtues necessary for salvation. Thus Athanasius (+373) claimed that
female martyrs demonstrated how something &against nature& (that
is, female bravery) could give proof of something &higher than nature&
(that is, the truth of Christianity). Moreover women were excluded from
the Christian clergy and thus from the callings which produced the majority
of saints recognized during certain periods. Throughout the middle ages
women were a distinct minority among those Christians whose reputation
for holiness received public celebration and thus earned for them the title
Two works which have charted the study of women and sanctity are the
pioneering research of Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the
Middle Ages, trans. Steven Rowan (German original, 1935; Notre Dame,
IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1995) and the more recent work of Caroline
Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food
to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
The first Christians to be recognized as saints were martyrs, those
who had died for their &witness& (the meaning of the Greek term
martus) to the name of Christ and who had thus earned immediate
entrance into heaven. A number of contemporary descriptions survive of
the deaths of various martyrs. These passions, as they are often
called, constitute the earliest known p the very earliest
composed around 167. Many passions were, however,
written at a much later date and even concerned martyrs whose very existence
is apocryphal. Christian women shared the sufferings of martyrdom in significant
numbers and many women figure in the earliest passions. The oldest
surviving hagiographic account of a woman, the
(c. 200), preserves Perpetua's remarkable
first-person account of the visions which she experienced during the time
spent in prison awaiting execution. (Note that an important discussion
of the Passion of Perpetua
is available on-line.)
Female martyrs were not, however, memorialized in the same manner or
to the same degree as their male counterparts. From an early date Christian
communities favored prominent clerics, and thus by definition men, in their
recognition of communal heroes. Thus it is not surprising that among some
120 martyrs listed by name in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History (c.
313) only fifteen were women. Some women did have their feasts celebrated
and their relics venerated by the fourth century: in addition to Perpetua,
we know of Agnes of Rome, Eulalia of Merida, Euphemia of Chalcedon, and
a handful of others. With the exception of Perpetua, few of the authentically
early passions focus on women. It was only in the later fourth century,
long after their martyrdoms, that accounts of the lives and deaths of most
of the authentic female martyrs on the calendar of saints began to be written.
And many of the most familiar female martyrs-including Cecilia of Rome,
Margaret of Antioch, and Catherine of Alexandria-were the inventions of
hagiographers writing in the seventh century or later. Indeed even in the
fourth century the most influential account of a female martyr was of a
fictive saint, that of Thecla included in the apocryphal . The story inspired sharply differing reactions: the holy
woman Macrina (+379/80) read it and considered Thecla to be her patron,
while the controversialist Jerome (+419/20) denounced it.
The end of the persecution of Christians marked by the so-called
in 313 did not only allow the growth of the public recognition
of the martyrs, but led to the recognition of new types of saints. The
first important category was that of bishops, such as Martin of Tours (d.
397), Augustine of Hippo (+430), Cyril of Alexandria (+444), or the shadowy
fourth-century Nicholas of Myra whose cult survives today under the guise
of Santa Claus. Women were as fully excluded from this form of sanctity
as they were from membership in the clerical hierarchy.
The second important new path to sainthood was asceticism, the rigorous
practice of self-denial and even mortification of the body-through disciplines
such chastity and fasting-which led to a kind of symbolic martyrdom. Many
of the saints of the fourth and early fifth centuries were drawn from the
so-called &athletes of Christ& who lived singly or communally
in the deserted wastelands of the Roman empire. For Christian women the
ascetic life, in a way similar to martyrdom, promised a means of subverting
misogynist ideals. According to contemporary theologians such as Athanasius
and Jerome, women could make up for their natural inferiority to men through
leading a life vowed to virginity as an ascetic bride of Christ. But the
promise was largely illusory. The homeland of the monastic movement was
the Egyptian desert. When Palladius (+425) wrote his influential record
of saintly Egyptian monks, he commented, &I must also commemorate
in this book the virile women to whom God granted struggles equal to those
of men, so that no one could plead as an excuse that women are too weak
to practice virtue successfully.& Yet only eleven of his seventy-one
chapters concerned ascetic women.
Women were, on the other hand, preeminent in the smaller ascetic movement
centered in the cities of the Roman empire. A number of women who chose
to pursue a life dedicated to chastity and charity within an urban landscape
gained a great deal of fame. Records of their lives were composed by male
clerics who were friends and relatives in order to serve as ascetic guidebooks
for other women: Gregory of Nyssa (+c.395) wrote the
(+379/80), Jerome an epitaph for
Paula (+404), John Chrysostom (+407) letters memorializing Olympias (+410),
Gerontius a life of Melania (+439). While all these men considered their
subjects &holy,& the only one who was unequivocally regarded
a &saint& was Melania.
The circulation of, and audience for, the lives of such women paled,
however, in comparison to that for the stories of Thecla and the other
apocryphal female martyrs mentioned above (some of whom were described
as having been inspired to their martyrdoms by having heard or read the
story of Thecla). A new type of apocryphal female saint--and with it a
new genre of hagiography--began to develop in the fifth century, that of
the lascivious woman, usually a prostitute or actress, who converted to
Christianity and repented her former life through dramatic asceticism.
These legends, concerning characters such as Pelagia of Antioch and Mary
the Egyptian, bore strong literary ties to classical Greek romances. It
is ironic that these fictive female ascetics should have attained a much
greater importance in medieval Christianity than their real-life counterparts.
These stories of apocryphal female martyrs and penitents had their roots
in the Christian east, but became very popular in the Latin west at a later
Over the course of the fifth century, imperial authority and many of
the institutions of Roman government crumbled in the Latin west, but just
as the Roman empire survived in the Greek east, transforming itself into
the empire usually called Byzantium, so too did the late antique traditions
of hagiography and sanctity. Through the seventh century it was the monastic
life of the desert which produced most Byzantine saints, and the cities
and monasteries of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine which produced most hagiography.
Alongside the stories of male stylites (as one distinctive type of desert
ascetic who lived on pillars were known), the stories of Mary the Egyptian
and other penitent women flourished not only in Greek, but in Syriac, Armenian,
and other eastern languages. Literary production, including hagiography,
declined in the latter seventh and eighth centuries, partially as a result
of the twin blows of the Islamic conquests and the battles of iconoclasm.
In the renewal of hagiography during the later ninth and tenth centuries,
generally considered the golden age of Byzantine hagiography, the old themes
were repeated, but in a slightly different key. Wise abbots who sagely
guided their communities, such as Athanasius the Athonite (+1003), replaced
the extravagant ascetics of the Palestine desert, while chaste matrons
of the upper classes, such as Mary the Younger (+902/3), stood in for repentant
prostitutes. (Two versions of the life of Mary the Younger are available
on-line: an incomplete, but useful translation by
which does not require Adobe PDF, and a full translation by
which does.)
The ninth and tenth centuries, however, also witnessed the development
of menologia, standardized collections of short saints' lives organized
by the liturgical calendar and intended to provide readings for monastic
communities and other spiritually minded people. These collections included
few women. Still, the old Roman models of female sanctity endured in Byzantine
Christianity through the eleventh century. Asceticism itself came under
attack from some intellectuals and hagiographic composition declined through
the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. It revived under the Palailogan
dynasty of the late middle ages, but largely as a form of polemic in the
varied controversies of the period. Concerned almost exclusively with males
of the military and monastic elites, there was no room for saintly women,
except in rewriting of stories of earlier saints. Among the hagiographers
there was one woman, Theodora Raoulaina (+1300), herself a member of the
Palailogan family.
Far to the west in Ireland, a Christian tradition developed during the
early middle ages which had little to do with the traditions of the Roman
world. Through the efforts of missionaries from Britain and Gaul the myriad
Celtic kingdoms of the island were converted to Christianity in the first
half of the fifth century. The Irish quickly both adopted and adapted monasticism.
The severely ascetic ideals of the Egyptian desert mingled with native
concepts of holiness producing a unique form of monasticism, especially
severe in its ascetic rigor, but tempered by a boundless enthusiasm for
the wonders of the natural world. The early Irish monastic movement produced
a large number of men and women of saintly reputation, so much so that
by the eleventh century Ireland had become known as &the isle of saints.&
A handful of Latin works which can be securely dated to the seventh century
celebrated the lives of the greatest Irish saints: the chief missionary
bishop, Patrick (+c.461); the wandering abbot, Columba (+597); and the
extraordinary abbess of Cell Dara, Brigit (+c.523), a figure who combined
aspects of Christian monasticism and a native fertility goddess. Later
hagiographic works in both Latin and Irish, however, are notoriously difficult
to date with any accuracy and virtually all were written at a great remove
from the lives of their subjects. While some 119 Irish female saints were
recorded in the Martyrology of Tallaght, lives have survived for
only four (Brigit, Monenna [+c.518], Ite [+c.570], and Samthann [+739]).
Between these geographical and cultural extremes, the early middle ages
witnessed the development of barbarian kingdoms as successors to the Roman
empire in the Latin west. For over a century after the fall of the city
of Rome to the Goths, sanctity in these regions was a domain almost exclusively
inhabited by male clerics, and those mostly from the ever-diminishing ranks
of the old Roman elite. The cults and legends of the old martyrs endured,
but new saints were bishops such as Caesarius of Arles (+542) and Germanus
of Paris (+576) or abbots such as Severinus of Noricum (+482) and Benedict
of Nursia (+c.540). Their hagiographers were men of similar background:
Gregory of Tours (+593/94) and Venantius Fortunatus (+610) in Gaul, Ennodius
of Pavia (+521) and Gregory the Great (+604) in Italy. There was little
room for female leaders in the world of this elite struggling for its survival,
but the virgin ascetic Genevi&ve (+c.500) became one of the patrons
of Paris by helping to organize the defense of the city against Hunnish
and Frankish attacks. By the late sixth century, however, members of the
converted Germanic peoples were entering the clergy and the monasteries.
Among the nobleman who became bishops and abbots were some, particularly
among the Franks, who adopted a fiercely ascetic lifestyle, borrowed in
part not from continental monastic traditions, but from the influence of
Columbanus (+615) and other missionary Irish monks. They represented a
new type of sanctity, mixing noble blood and asceticism, which was peculiar
to the new ruling elites of the barbarian kingdoms.
Women played a distinctive role in these developments, in the persons
of new saints who came almost exclusively from royal families or from the
ranks of the abbesses of important convents. Sanctity was particularly
associated with queens of Merovingian Frankland (for example, Radegund
[+587] and Balthild [+680]), Anglo-Saxon East Anglia (Aethelthryth [+679]
and Sexburga [+c.700]), and Ottonian Saxony (Mathilda [+968] and Adelheid
[d.999]). Female saints also included daughters of these and other clans
of the high nobility who served as abbesses of important convents such
as Nivelles (Gertrude +659), Gandersheim (Hathumoda +874), Wilton (Edith
+984), and Willich (Adelaide +1015). As with their male contemporaries,
some combination of noble blood and exceptional asceticism marked these
women as holy. This was the dominant model of female sanctity in the west
from the sixth century to the year 1100. The lives written about
these women served as a kind of &mirror for princes& addressed
to the female elite of the emerging European kingdoms. Although most were
written by male clerics, the Frankish nun Baudinovia wrote the second part
of the Life of Radegund, becoming the earliest hagiographer to identify
herself as a woman. Other female authors from this period include the eighth-century
Hugeberc of Heidenheim, the tenth-century Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, and
the eleventh-century Bertha of Willich. Their subjects included male as
well as female saints. Female sanctity seems to have been regarded as potentially
dangerous by much of the episcopal hierarchy. Throughout these centuries,
fewer and fewer people became celebrated as saints after their deaths.
Increasingly the cult of saints focused on cherished patrons from the distant
past, such as martyred bishops or founding abbots. The bulk of hagiography
written from the eighth to the eleventh centuries concerned such figures,
and few of those were female. The major exception was the development in
the Latin west of the traditions of virgin martyrs. Even the lives of those
contemporary female saints we considered above tended to have a restricted
circulation. Few survive in more than a handful of manuscripts and few
of these women were included in liturgical calendars outside the regions
in which they had lives. Female sanctity was a strictly controlled form
of charisma in the earlier middle ages.
In the later eleventh and twelfth centuries, the revival of eremitic
monasticism, the growth of the vita apostolica, and the wider reform
of ecclesiastical institutions all made the western church more open to
seeing contemporary figures as saints. Cults honoring people as different
as Thomas Becket (+1170) and Francis of Assisi (+1226) covered western
Europe within a few years of their deaths. The period witnessed the composition
of many lives of contemporary holy men, but only a few of holy women. According
to one calculation, only 18 of the 153 people recognized as saints during
the twelfth century were women. Several male founders of new monastic orders
for women, such as Robert of Arbrissel (+1116) and Gilbert of Sempringham
(+1189), became saints, but none of their female disciples attained similar
status. Although convents flourished in England, a life was composed
for only one English holy woman of the twelfth century, Christina of Markyate
(+c.1155). The attempt to win a papal bull of canonization for Hildegard
of Bingen (+1179), who had been recognized as a holy woman and visionary
by contemporaries including Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugenius, failed
The foundations had been laid, however, for a remarkable flowering of
female piety, and with it female sanctity, in the thirteenth century. For
the variety of options open to women interested in the religious life had
increased dramatically. Beguinages and other informal urban communities,
and later groups affiliated with the mendicant orders, offered women lives
of ascetic spirituality outside the boundaries of the traditional rural
cloister. These new movements were particularly vibrant in the cities of
the low countries and northern Italy. By the 1230s James of Vitry and Thomas
of Cantimpr& had begun to write an influential series of lives concerning
beguines and nuns in the region of Li&ge. Their many subjects included
Mary of Oignies (+1213), Christina of St. Trond (+c.1224), and Juliana
of Mont Cornillon (+1258). (See the article by Margot King on these saints,
available on-line, )
A similar trend can be found in Italy celebrating women associated with
new, particularly mendicant, orders, including Bona of Pisa (+1207), Clare
of Assisi (+1253), and Margaret of Cortona (+1297). Nor was the older tradition
of royal sanctity dead, rather it had been translated to the recently Christianized
realms of central Europe, whose ruling clans produced such holy women as
Elizabeth of Thuringia (+1231), Margaret of Hungary (+1270), and Agnes
of Bohemia (+1282). Yet this tradition had also been transformed, for these
women expressed their asceticism in association with the mendicants rather
than traditional convents. According to one calculation, more than one
quarter of the thirteenth-century Christians accorded posthumous veneration
(themselves in excess of five hundred) were women, probably the highest
percentage of any period of the middle ages. It was also during this century
that the papacy fully asserted control over the official recognition of
sanctity, or canonization. Still the vast majority of late medieval holy
people did not receive a papal bull of canonization, but rather a more
local cult or form of authorization. Of the seventy-two processes of canonization
undertaken by the papacy between 1198 and 1418 thirteen concerned women,
while there were but seven women among the thirty-five successes.
The lives of thirteenth-century holy women championed their generally
novel approach to the religious life. They exhibited the concerns with
voluntary poverty, urban charity, and public teaching so prominent in the
mendicant movements. Yet there were aspects which were distinctively female.
In addition to the visions which had long been characteristic of female
sanctity, these women focused their devotions on the reception of the Eucharist,
often rejecting all other forms of food in fasts of heroic-even mortal-length.
They thus developed a form of piety which centered on food, whose preparation
had always been the work of women in medieval society, and which was replicated
in the practices of few male saints. At the same time, this piety illuminates
the dependency of religious women on male clerics, for only a priest could
consecrate the Eucharist or provide the sacrament of confession. The lived
lives of these women created a new model of female holiness which the works
which recorded those lives transmitted to new audiences and new generations.
Most of those works were written by male confessors who held a position
of authority over them. At the same time, many autobiographical writings,
particularly detailing visions, survive from these holy women. Taken together
these writings allow historians to chart the dialectical processes by which
a reputation for sanctity was negotiated and developed.
A different tradition of female sanctity was also developing in western
Christendom over the course of the central and high middle ages, that is
the traditions of the ancient female martyrs and saintly penitents. Largely
traveling from the Christian east, these began to mature in Latin hagiography
in the ninth century, beginning a process of development which would continue
for the rest of the middle ages. Simultaneously cults focused on the relics
of such women as Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Alexandria (some also
imported from the east) grew. By the thirteenth century the legends of
these early Christian women were widely disseminated and incorporated into
hagiographic collections intended for preachers. The most important of
these was the Golden Legend, completed by the Dominican James of
Voragine in 1258. Thirty-one of the 182 legends included in this collection
concerned female saints, all of them figures from the New Testament or
the early church.
The legends of martyrs and penitents also served as the primary inspiration
for the development of hagiography about women in the vernacular languages,
traditions which began as early as the ninth century. In Anglo-Saxon the
enigmatic poet Cynewulf composed accounts of the discovery of the true
cross by Helena and a passion of Juliana, probably toward the beginning
of the century. The earliest surviving literary work in any Romance language
is the Old French S&quence de Sainte Eulalie, a brief liturgical
piece from the late ninth century celebrating the martyr of Merida. It
was in these languages-and in their relatives, Anglo-Norman and Middle
English-that hagiography about female saints flourished in the years before
1300. By the late tenth century, for example, the Anglo-Saxon monk Aelfric
(+c.1010) had included a number of female martyrs such as Cecilia and Agnes,
but only one native female saint (Aethelthryth), in his large prose hagiographic
corpus. Over the course of the twelfth century verse lives were
composed about women in Old French (Catherine of Alexandria, Genevi&ve
of Paris, Margaret of Antioch, and Mary of Egypt) and Anglo-Norman (Catherine
of Alexandria and Faith). Many of these works, notably the so-called &Katherine
Group& which is one of the masterpieces of Middle English, were composed
specifically for audiences of religious women. Far to the north, a group
of sagas was composed about a similar group of ancient female saints, but
these do not seem to have come into vogue until the late thirteenth century.
Other vernacular traditions do not offer the same richness before 1300.
Early works are known from Middle Irish (into which the life of Brigit
was translated, possibly as early as the ninth century), Church Slavonic
(a now lost, and probably contemporary, life of the martyred princess Ludmilla
[+921]), and Old Proven&al (the earliest surviving example of which
is the Chanson de Sainte Foi, written between 1030 and 1070), but
female saints never became a staple of these flourishing literary traditions.
Lives of female saints are not found until later in Middle High German
(Legenden von der heiligen Juliana of the Priester Arnold, composed
post-1150), Castilian (Estoria de Santa Maria Egip&iaca,
composed c. 1235), and Catalan (Can&o de Santa Fe, composed
sometime after 1250). Up to 1300 it was the virginal martyr and the penitent
prostitute of antiquity who served as the dominant models of female sanctity
in vernacular works and the sermon literature, that is in works intended
for a broad audience. In contrast, contemporary male such as Thomas Becket,
Francis, and Dominic were relatively common in those literatures. Some
exceptions, however, did exist, notably Rutebeuf's poem on the recently
deceased princess Elizabeth of Thuringia, dedicated (post 1258) to Queen
Isabelle of Navarre, and Ebernand of Erfurt's Heinrich und Kunigunde,
written in support of the canonization of the German royal couple around
1200. It should also be noted that collections of miracles associated with
that very special female saint, the Virgin Mary, became a staple of both
Latin and vernacular literatures over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.
These two traditions which had developed over the course of the high
middle ages-contemporary women associated with mendicant and other urban
religious groups as well as the martyrs and penitents of antiquity-continued
to set the pattern for female piety and sanctity in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Yet these traditions were slowly, as it were, transcribed
into new keys. Many contemporary holy women continued to be associated
with the mendicants, most particularly in Italy: Agnes of Montepulciano
(+1417), Catherine of Siena (+1380), Colette of Corbie (+1447), and Catherine
of Genoa (+1510). The development of a new lay ideal of sanctity within
the married state also began to include women. Yet this still involved
chastity, for saintly wives such Delphina of Puimichel (+1361) and Dorothy
of Montau (+1394) either kept their unions strictly chaste or took a vow
of chastity after years of childbearing. Other women who lived much of
their lives as laywomen, such as Bridgit of Sweden (+1373) and Francesca
Romana (+1440), founded new religious orders for women as alternatives
to the mendicants. Devotion to the passion of Christ and bodily mortification
began to take a central place in their spiritual and penitential practices,
accompanied by a heightened emotionalism often expressed in the so-called
&gift of tears.& While poverty and fasting remained important,
a new stress was placed upon visionary powers in the lives of most late
medieval holy women. Their own accounts of ecstatic experiences were written
down, by themselves or by scribes, in works which remain highpoints of
the vernacular literatures: Mechtild of Magdeburg's Flowing Light of
the Godhead (original Low German before 1268, translated into Middle
High German c. 1344), Juliana of Norwich's Showings (Middle English
after 1373), Catherine of Bologna's Seven Spiritual Weapons (Italian
published after her death in 1463). The lives of these women also came
to be far more available in the vernacular, some of them even written by
female friends and disciples. Female sanctity remained subject to close
supervision, and may have become even more suspect to some ecclesiastical
authorities. Some visionary women were burned for heresy or witchcraft,
even when, as in the case of Margaret Porete (+1310), their claims and
practices did not vary greatly from some orthodox saints. Joan of Arc (+1431)
was sentenced to death for heresy by a corrupt ecclesiastical tribunal,
only to be canonized in the twentieth century. Somewhat more mundanely,
the earliest piece of English autobiography, the Book of Margery Kempe
(c. 1438), records the process by which its author tried, and largely failed,
to become accepted as a lay holy woman by her community.
The traditions of the female martyrs and penitents became much more
widely available to and known by the pious laity in the later middle ages.
The Golden Legend and other important hagiographic collections were
translated into virtually every vernacular languages. Such collections-which
occasionally, as in like Osbern Bokenham's Legends of Holy Women
(c. 1443), contained only female saints-were common in manuscripts and
early printed books. Even the Lives of the Fathers, whose dissemination
was widespread, contained models of female sanctity, as penitents such
as Mary the Egyptian entered the translated versions. These stories still
served the purposes of preachers, but were also read by an ever growing
literate lay audience. Paintings, statues, woodcuts, and other art objects
(some virtually mass produced) also commonly incorporated the traditions
of early Christian women. Stories and images together became part of a
fervent culture of devotion. Those practices of devotion, and indeed the
entire panoply of the cult of saints, were vigorously attacked by the Protestant
reformers of the sixteenth century. Yet both traditions of female sanctity-that
of contemporary visionary women and that of the ancient martyrs-remained
central to the religious culture of Catholic regions in the early modern
Note: A version of this essay will appear as part of the
entry on &Hagiography& in Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia,
ed. Nadia Margolis (New York: Garland, in press), as well as in my introduction
to Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints' Lives from Late Antiquity
and the Early Middle Ages, eds. Thomas Noble and Thomas Head (University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). I would prefer that
any published citation of or reference to this essay be made to the relevant
printed version.
Benvenuti-Papi, Anna. &In castro poenitentiae&: santit&
e societa femminile nell'Italia medievale. Italia Sacra, 45. Rome,
Bynum, Caroline.Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance
of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley, 1987.
Elliott, Alison. Roads to Paradise. Reading the Lives of the Early
Saints. Hanover, NH, 1987.
Elliott, Dyan. Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval
Wedlock. Princeton, 1993.
Elm, Susanna. &Virgins of God&: The Making of Asceticism
in Late Antiquity. Oxford, 1994.
Head, Thomas. &The Marriages of Christina of Markyate.& Viator,
21 (1990), pp. 71-95.
Head, Thomas.&The Religion of the Femmelettes: Ideals and Experience
Among Women in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century France.& In That
Gentle Strength: Historical Perspectives on Women and Christianity,
eds. Lynda Coon, Katherine Haldane, and Elisabeth Sommer (Charlottesville,
VA, 1990), pp. 149-75.
Heffernan, Thomas. Sacred Biography. Saints and Their Biographers
in the Middle Ages. Oxford, 1988.
Matter, E. Ann, and John Coakley (eds.). Creative Women in Medieval
and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance. Philadelphia,
Newman, Barbara. From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval
Religion and Literature. Philadelphia, 1995.
Roisin, Simone, L'hagiographie cistercienne dans le dioc&se
de Li&ge au XIIIe si&cle. Louvain, 1947.
Robertson, Elizabeth. Early English Devotional Prose and the Female
Audience. Knoxville, 1990.
Salisbury, Joyce. Church Fathers, Independent Virgins. London,
Schulenburg, Jane Tibbets. &Forgetful of Their Sex&: Female
Sanctity and Society, ca. 500-1100. Chicago, 1998.
Smith, Julia, &The Problem of Female Sanctity in Carolingian Europe
c. 780-920.& Past and Present, 146 (1995), pp. 3-37.
Vauchez, Andr&. The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs
and Devotional Practices. Trans. Margery Schneider. French original,
1987; Notre Dame, 1993.
Collections of sources in translation which contain hagiographic
works concerning women include: Medieval Women's Visionary Literature,
ed. Elizabeth Petroff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Sainted
Women of the Dark Ages, ed. Jo Ann McNamara and John Halborg, with
E. Gordon Whatley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992); Consolation
of the Blessed, ed. Elizabeth Petroff (New York: Alta Gaia Society,
1979); The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances
of the Thirteenth Century, ed. Brigitte Cazelles (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); A Legend of Holy Women. A Translation
of Osbern Bodenham's Legends of Holy Women, ed. Sheila Delany (Notre
Dame Texts in Medieval Culture, 1; Notre Dame, 1993; Medieval Hagiography:
An Anthology, ed. Thomas Head (New York: Garland, 1999). The introductions
to these volumes all contain much of interest to the student of gender
and hagiography.
Copyright &1999, Thomas Head. This file may be copied
on the condition that the entire contents,including the header and this
copyright notice, remain intact.The contents of ORB are copyright &
Laura V. Blanchard and Carolyn Schriber except as otherwise indicated