Fallen Prophet
Well-Known Member
Pssh your mom!
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What would you be doing if you born in 1300?
- Thread starter MatthewA
- Start date
Augustus
…
As king I'd put a tax on romping in barns and use the money to build a massive trebuchet to lob boulders and plague ridden corpses at some other king who I think is a ****.
Best get saving if you want to roll in the hay more than once every 5 years.
I think I can see an agreement here.
We can go romping in the other King's barns and mess them up instead.
Fixing the spelling: Bhiksha is a mendicant/yogi/Buddhist monk asking for food from a householder. . This is part of the person asking relying on charity as a means to diminish desires and the householder gaining merit by helping the mendicant.
As far as becoming a ruler does, from my reincarnational framework we get to learn from every kind of life.
Augustus
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Were they education averse though?
The church educated women, and leaders from Charlemagne to Alfred educated their daughters.
Hilda of Whitby - Wikipedia
Gisela, Abbess of Chelles - Wikipedia
Æthelflæd - Wikipedia
I agree with you on this that it wasn't the norm, but it was the norm for men too.
It wasn't so much that it was taboo to educate women, it's hard to declare something taboo if the church and the ruling elites do it after all. It's more that it was not seen as particularly useful.
Very few, if any, pre-modern societies saw education for education's sake as a generic virtue rather than a means to an end or a marker of distinction.
And, to be fair, why should they have?
Augustus
…
Heyo
Veteran Member
Had their daughters educated. Charlemagne was illiterate, he couldn't write more than his name. Writing was for monks and women, men had to fight, hunt and rule.
(But though he was illiterate, he was very well educated and pushed education and literacy.)
Augustus
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I've actually seen claims that more women were literate than males at certain times in European history, at least as regards the nobility.
No idea how true it is or not.
Heyo
Veteran Member
I repeated that claim a few posts above. We don't really know and we can't discern a male writing from a female but the longer I look at history and newer discoveries, the more I find that the role of women pre-plague has been misrepresented and obscured by later efforts by (male) historians and the church. Based on that experience alone, I find any claim that goes against the traditional historical view immediately believable.
There absolutely were adversaries to education for women. Even founders of early Renaissance teachings and organizers like Erasmus said things like “I do not know the reason, but just as a saddle is not suitable for an ox, so learning is unsuitable for a woman .”
It wasn't just a matter of generic practicality but active disdain for women in scholarly roles. The best most women could hope for if they wanted to be educated is some basic schooling which often didn't come with grammar schooling in a nunnery where you mostly were expected to do religiously pious needlework. (No seriously, ridiculous amounts of time of medieval nuns was spent making 'educational' illustrativd tapestry.) Prior to 1300s it was even worse because chivalry and Tertullian virtueism demanded passive, decorative roles for women. Women were literally believed to be intellectually and morally inferior.
I've never seen claims of women being more literate than men at any point in medieval history substantiated. It was certainly more likely an aristocratic woman could be given an education, but this was more true of men than women, who had access to formal education women were barred from. There are examples of some Abby women achieving similar standards of education but it was exceedingly rare.
If you wanted to be an educated women in the 1300-1500's you'd be better off in Japan or even India.
Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
Augustus
…
I agree that many people were prejudiced against giving women 'higher' educations, but still many women received them, although usually only if they were nobility, merchant class or in religious orders.
This isn't too different from males of that era though, as education for education's sake was not a commonly held value.
There were also champions of female education.
I'm not sure there was this societal taboo against education, although I agree most men would probably have trouble seeing a woman as an intellectual equal.
While I know nothing about women's education in medieval Japan, it piqued my curiosity so I had a quick look.
The sources I've seen seem to suggest upper class women generally got no more than a basic literacy, if anything and that Buddhist and Confucian influences saw education of women as a threat to harmony to a far greater degree than in Europe where the Church was one of the biggest promoters and providers of female education.
An exception to this was the Heian period fro 350 or so years from late 8thC where women where court women were encouraged to write/read poetry and literature and best illustrated by a couple of famous texts that deal with poems, etiquette and court gossip.
Based on what little I've read (so I might not be seeing the full picture), seems like there were more women in Europe who achieved more of note in a wider range of fields than there were in Japan even during the 'good times'.
From the 6th C through to the 1300s there were numerous women who achieved things of note in Europe in politics, medicine, science, poetry, music, religion (although not saying they were treated anything close to equally).
What achievements in Japan make you think it was far better there?