OF SIX MEDIEVAL WOMEN 



only women who were prominent through their 

 high official positions, either political or religious, 

 such as Blanche of Castile, or St. Catherine of 

 Siena, or the Abbess Hildegarde, or women like 

 the Blessed Angela of Foligno, 1 or Julian, 

 anchoress of Norwich, 2 or some other of the 

 devout women of mediaeval Italy, who inter- 

 preted the mysteries of divine love to mediaeval 

 society, having in fact, as it were, religious 

 salons, from whom the veil has been withdrawn, 

 and even amongst such as these it has sometimes 

 been only very slightly lifted. With these 

 saintly and political women must be mentioned 

 the women doctors of Salerno Trothula, Abella, 

 Mercurialis, and others who played so important 

 a part both as professors and practitioners when 

 this school of medicine was at its zenith in the 

 eleventh and twelfth centuries, and who left 

 behind them, as evidence of their learning, 

 treatises which are of interest to-day as showing 

 mediaeval methods in medicine. 



Still, even so, the records are scanty. In 

 order, therefore, to form some idea and estimate 

 of women generally in the Middle Ages, we 

 must perforce fall back on reasoning from the 



1 The Book of the Divine Consolation of the Blessed Angela of 

 Foligno. The New Mediaeval Library. 



2 Revelations of Divine Love recorded by Julian, Anchoress of 

 'Norwich, 1373. 



xiv 



