Did women do philosophy in the Middle Ages?

When we think of the periods in European history when women were able to do philosophy, the Middle Ages may hardly come to mind as providing favourable conditions for this activity. One may argue that on the basis of their gender – or, more precisely, the notion of women’s supposedly lesser reasoning capabilities that was advanced at the time – they received no education whatsoever, and were subsequently barred from the places where medieval philosophy was developed, namely universities manned by scholastics. Thus, they were excluded from all intellectual pursuits, especially philosophical debates. At least two premises outlined here, however, are not true, rendering this argument unsound.

On the one hand, the Christian Middle Ages produced two environments where women were able to pursue learning. These were convents and beguinages – semi-monastic communities situated outside the patriarchal ecclesiastical hierarchy, where women lived together without taking vows. On the other hand, medieval philosophy is much richer with respect to content, form and language than those which are often assumed to determine its limits: the codified summas, glosses and commentaries on Aristotle written in Latin at universities and in other exclusively male spaces.

And so, we find many interesting ideas put forward by medieval nuns and beguines that are philosophically nuanced in terms of both the subject matter and style, composed not only in Latin but also in vernacular, such as medieval dialects of French, Dutch, German and Italian. Importantly (and somewhat problematically), most of these women – with a few notable exceptions – established their authority to do philosophy as based on divine revelation. It is for this reason that they have been traditionally recognised only as ‘medieval female mystics’ and left out of the philosophical canon.

In this talk, we will look at the works written by several medieval women philosophers, and offer some strategies for addressing these and other difficulties hindering their recognition as such.