OF SIX MEDIEVAL WOMEN 



fectionery, surgery, writing, and drawing. They 

 also wove, and embroidered, and added their mite 

 to the sum-total of beauty by transcribing and 

 illuminating MSS. of the Gospels and of the 

 lives of the Saints. But sometimes such a 

 limited sphere of activity was enlarged, and it is 

 to an anonymous Anglo-Saxon nun of the eighth 

 century, to whom the experiences were related, 

 that we owe one of the earliest and most 

 interesting accounts extant in Northern Europe 

 of a journey to Palestine. 



To learn something of those living in the 

 world, who were the inspirers, the helpmates, 

 and the companions of men in everyday life, we 

 must turn to the poems and romances. These 

 form the key to the domestic life of the time. 

 Though ordinary life may be somewhat idealised 

 in them, still it is ordinary life on which they 

 are based. Moreover, many of the MSS. in 

 which they are written down contain miniatures 

 a legacy of exceeding worth to the student. 

 But if we seek some knowledge of mediaeval life 

 from miniatures, it is not necessary to confine 

 our researches to MSS. of romances. Tran- 

 scripts of the classics, of the moralised Bible, and 

 of other religious works also supply many 

 pictures of everyday life, adapted quite regard- 

 less of incongruity, for one of the characteristics 

 of the Middle Ages was a profound incapacity 



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