Wandering Women and Holy Matrons

Medievalist Craig (history, Virginia Commonwealth U.) explores negative images of wanderers, positive portrayals of devout female pilgrims, more contested cases, and the complex of social pressures that formed the matrix in which these interpretations were generated and nurtured. After describing the tension between respect for pilgrimage and the fear of wandering women, she considers women engaged in miraculous, devotional, compulsory, and non-corporeal pilgrimage. Surviving narratives suggest that in the 14th and 15th centuries, women were nearly as likely as men to undertake a pilgrimage, she finds, and more often allowed to tell their own story about it than about most any other aspect of their lives. Quotations are all in English. The study began as her Ph.D. dissertation for Ohio State University in 2001. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Leigh Ann Craig, PhD (2001) in Medieval History, The Ohio State University, is Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has published on medieval pilgrimage and miracle collections, and is an associate editor for the Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage (Brill, 2009).