"Yes, I am fond of history."
"I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does
not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or
pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all
-- it is very tiresome:"
Catherine Morland, in Northhangar Abbey (1803),
by Jane Austen
How are historians to remedy the silence about women in many traditional
accounts of history? This question has received a number of distinct answers.
The first solution was to locate the great women of the
past, following the lead of much popular historiography that focuses on "great
men". The problem here is that just as the "great men" approach to history
sidelines and ignores the lives of the mass of people, focusing on great women merely
replicates the exclusionary historical approaches of the past.
The next solution was to examine and expose the history of
oppression of women. This approach had the merit of addressing the life histories
of the mass of women, but, since it has proved to be possible to find some degree of
oppression everywhere, it tended to make women merely subjects of forces that they
could not control. On the other hand, historians' focus on oppression revealed that
investigating the structures of women's lives was crucial.
In recent years, while not denying the history of oppression, historians
have begun to focus on the agency of women. All human beings are subject
to some degree of social forces that limit freedom, but within those limits people are
able to exercise greater or lesser degrees of control over their own lives. This insight
applies equally to women even in oppressive societies.
These various approaches to the history of women are not exclusive. This sourcebook attempts to present online documents and secondary discussions which reflect the various
ways of looking at the history of women within broadly defined historical periods and
areas.
***
This page is a subset of texts derived from the three major online Sourcebooks listed below.
WEB Diotima: Women and Gender
in the Ancient World
Includes an anthology of texts, much of Mary Lefkowitz' and Maureen Fant's Women's Life
in Greece and Rome, as well as other sources.
Great Women
Queens, Noblewomen, Warriors
Herodotus (c.490-c.425 BCE): Artemisia at Salamis,
480 BCE
Artemesia was rule of Halicarnassus.
Sophocles (496-405/6 BCE)
The second of the great tragic poets. He wrote over 100 plays, but only seven complete
ones survive. The dates here are likely but not certain. The following have female heros.
Sulpicia (Late 1st Cent. CE):
Poems [At Diotima]
or in
Latin [At The Latin Library]
The only surviving Roman female poet.
Socrates Scholasticus: The
Murder of Hypatia
A leading female philosopher, Hypatia was murdered by a Christian mob in Alexandria, urged
on by St. Cyril. See also The
Hypatia Page. Three historical version's of Hypatia's murder are available, and useful
for comparative purposes
Damascius: The Life of
Hypatia, from the Life of Isidore, reproduced in The Suda, [At
cosmopolis.com]
Rules
for Administering the "Special Account" of Egypt, c. 150/161 CE, [Berlin
pap. 1210] [At Diotima]
This link contains those regulations (out of 115) pertaining to women and marriage. The
document as a whole shows the Roman exploitation of Egypt.
2ND Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza: Summary of In Memory of Her:
A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins [At Sunshine for Women]
2ND Ross Shepard Kraemer: Summary of Her Share of the
Blessings: Summary of Women's Religions Among the Pagans, Jews, and Christians in
the Greco-Roman World [At Sunshine for Women]
Gender Construction
Petronius Arbiter (c.27-66 CE): Satyricon c.61 CE
See 2NDThe Satyricon of
Petronius [At Southwestern][Modern Account]
Trimalchio's
Feast [At Internet Archive, from Colorado]
excerpt from the Satyricon. Has annoying HTML markup!
Michael Psellus(1018-after 1078): Chronographia,
full text.
The history of the Roman Empire 976-1078 by one of the liveliest writers of the middle
ages. During the period 1028-1056, the rulership of the Empire depended on two empresses -
Zoe and Theodora.
Nicolas, Nicholas Harris: The
Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: The Wardrobe Accounts of Edward IV [At R3] Nicolas's introductory memoirs of Yorkist royalty, with commentary on the
Ricardian controversies of the time; the privy purse expenses of Elizabeth of York. To
come: the Wardrobe Accounts. A lengthy series of documents, consisting of 24 interlinked
files.
Anna Comnena (1083-after 1048): The Alexiad.
[Full text]
The account of her father, the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I, by Princess Anna
Comnena is perhaps the most important historical work by a woman writer written before the
modern period.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179): Lyrics, Latin and
English, [At irupert.com].
See also the Hildegard
of Bingen page [At Internet Archive, from Millersville]; and the
Catholic Encyclopedia article.
Marguerite Porète: The Mirror of
Simple Souls, (written 1296/1306), trans. Bonnie Duncan and Ellen L Babinsky,
[At Internet Archive, from Millersville]
Porète's book, a mystic account of the ascent of the soul, was condemned in 1306, and was
burned in her presence!
Margery Kempe: Treatise of
Contemplation, from her Book as reprinted in The Cell of Self-Knowledge [At CCEL],
For many centuries this was the only well-known part of Margery's writing.
Margery Kempe (1413-1415): Book
of Margery Kempe. (Text--Butler-Bowden translation of Chapter 26-34, 37-41)[At
Traveling to Jerusalem/U Sth Colorado]
Fourth Book of Maccabees: The
Death of the Maccabees circa. 63 BCE-70CE [RSV]
This book is in an "Appendix" of Greek Orthodox Bibles (although not part of the
Latin Church's deuterocanonica). Its account of the persecution the Maccabees
influenced later martyrdom accounts in many ways. The Maccabees and their mother were
celebrated as saints in Orthodox churches.
Vibia Perpetua: The
Passion of SS. Perpetua and Felicity. The
Latin Original is available
[At The Latin Library]. See also
Catholic Encyclopedia: Sts.
Felicitas and Perpetua; and Peter Dronke's
Discussion of Perpetua [At Internet Archive, from Millersville]
This text is composed, in part, of Perpetua's own account of her trial, and of her
visions. It is thus among the earliest of all texts ascribed to a Christian woman.
According to Thomas Heffernan [Sacred Biography, (New York: Oxford UP, 1988), 190]
this text also sees the earliest use of the topos of Christ, the Bridegroom of the
saint. Perpetua is "the wife (matrona) of Christ, the beloved of God" (17:2)
Palladius: The Lausiac History [extended excerpts]
Includes lives of a number of important Late Roman saintly women, such as Melania the
Elder and Melania the Younger.
Gregory of Nyssa (c.335-d.c.395): Life of Macrina, trans.
W.K. Lowther Clarke.
One of the most important lives of a female saint. This is an account of Gregory's
strongminded sister, Macrina (c.327-379)
Life of Matrona of Perge,
d.c. 510-515, trans Khalifa Ben Nasser, [full text of Metaphrastic Life: selections
from Vita Prima],
An example of a "transvestite" saint who was also a historical figure.
Life of Mary the Younger,
d.c. 903, trans Paul Halsall, [First five chapters, and concluding prayer]
Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints' Lives
in English Translation [At DO]
Complete texts of translations of female saints lives. The data in these texts present an
opportunity to those who do not read Greek to gain a a massively richer view of Byzantine
society than available hitherto. In addition to the political history of Byzantium, which
has always been available, the data is now available to address comparative issues in many
areas of social and cultural history - religious practice/belief, roles of men and women,
variant sexual minorities, ethnic groupings, family history, the cultural history of disease,
and so forth.
The texts are all in PDF form [for which you need the free Acrobat reader,
downloadable from the index page]. Although it is possible to read these within the
browser with Acrobat as a plugin, that often seems to destabilize a system. I recommend
downloading the files onto a hard disk, and then opening them with Acrobat running
independantly of the Browser.
The Life and Doctrine of
Saint Catherine of Genoa [At CCEL]
Includes a Life, The Spiritual Dialogue, and Treatise on Purgatory, all from a 1874, 1907
English version. It is unclear from the etext if this Life is a translation of the Libro
de la vita mirabile e dottrina santa de la beta Caterinetta da Genoa, or a modern
work.
William Caxton: The
Life of Saint Cecilia (1483) trans by Caxton from Jacobus de Voragine: Golden
Legend. [At Catholic Forum]
Cecilia is the Patron saint of music in the west.
Geoffrey Chaucer: The Life of Saint
Cecilia (The Second Nun's Tale), c. 1380, [Modernized English, At Internet Archive, from Virginia Tech]. The
original Middle
English is also available [At University of Virginia]. Chaucer's account is based on
the Golden Legend.
Jacobus de Voragine (1230-1298): The Golden Legend
Texts in Voragine's order, numbering following William Ryan, (Princeton: 1993)
Life of Markella of Chios,
(date uncertain), [At Demetrios Greek Orthodox]
It is unclear if this is a modern or old [how old] life of Markella. The sexual
overtones of the text, are, however, intense.
A Legend of the Austrian Tyrol: St. Kümmernis [At this Site]
A story of a saint who women grows a beard so she can become a bride of Christ.
Religious Women: Monasticism
Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents [At DO]
A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founder's Typika and Testaments. The texts (from
61 monasteries) include a number of texts commissioned by women founders, as well as
documents for womens monasteries.
2ND Lina Eckenstein, Women Under Monasticism, Chapters
on Saint-Lore and Convent Life Between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500. (New York: Russell and
Russell, 1963), chaps. 4, 6, 7, 9 [At Yale]
Rule of the Lady
Hospitallers of the Royal Monastery of Sigena, 1188, in Latin, [At Internet Archive, from Kansas]
The Royal Monastery of Sigena was an institution of Lady Hospitallers and enjoyed a great
deal of independence and influence. It would appear that its Rule was the work of Sancha,
Queen of Aragon.
Conrad of Saxony: Mirror of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, [Full text], often ascribed to St. Bonaventure, but now
considered the work of Conrad by many scholars. [At Intratext]
Athanasius: Life of
Anthony [From Ante-Nicene and Nicene Fathers Series]. See also
Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Anthony or
Encyclopedia Britannica
(9th ed): Athanasius
Just as the martyrdom of Polykarp is a model text for many other martyrdom accounts, the Life
of Anthony provided a model for accounts of saints - later called confessors whose sanctity was manifested by a holy - usually monastic - life rather than by a heroic
death for the faith.
Witchcraft Legends, Translated and/or
edited by D. L. Ashliman, [At Pitt]
Ibn Fadlan. Risala, 921 CE [At
VikingAnswerLady]
Ibn Fadlan was an Arab chronicler. In 921 C.E., the Caliph sent Ibn Fadlan with an embassy
to the King of the Bulgars of the Middle Volga. Ibn Fadlan wrote an account of his
journeys with the embassy, called a Risala. This Risala is of great value as a
history. It contains an account of a Viking version of suttee.
St Augustine: On Marriage
and Concupiscence, excerpts.
A crucial text for understanding why marriage was such a problem for medieval canonists
and theologians.
St Jerome (c. 320-420): On Marriage and
Virginity, From Letter XXII to Eustochium and from the treatise Against
Jovinian
St Jerome (c. 320-420): On The Song of Songs,
From the treatise Against Jovinian
Synod of
Castilian Jews, 1432
Ordinances from assembly of the Jews of the kingdom of Castile at Valladolid in 1432
-- includes a discussion on forced marriage.
Everyday Life
Stephen de Bourbon: De Supersticione: On
St Guinefort
The basis of the film The Sorceress about a sainted dog. Based on the tradition
of St. Christopher as being "dog-faced".
Master Huen's Boke of Gode Cookery
A compilation of Medieval recipes from period sources, with modern adaptations for the
20th c. kitchen. With diverse facts on food & feasting in the Middle Ages, and many
things related historically. [At SCA site: at labs.net]
1135 : Serment de
fidélité prêté par Guillem VI, seigneur de Montpellier, au comte et à la comtesse de
Melgueil. In Latin
12 novembre 1166:
Convention et confédération de paix, concorde et commerce entre les consuls de
Gênes et l'archevêque Pons, la vicomtesse Ermengarde et le peuple de Narbonne. In Latin
30 avril 1196 : Testament
d'Ermengarde, vicomtesse de Narbonne. In Latin
Sister Marianne: Love
Letters to Noel Bouton de Chamilly [At Internet Archive, from Letters Magazine]
A very different Counter-Reformation experience is seen in these letters by a 17th-century
Portuguese nun "who wrote these letters to her lover, Noel Bouton de Chamilly, a
French officer whom she met in about the year 1663".
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797): Maria, 1795-97 [At Project Gutenberg]
[Full Text]
[The attribution in the text to Mary Shelley must be wrong, since Mary W. died giving
birth to Mary Godwin (later Shelley) in 1797.] Mary Shelley (1797-1851):
Frankenstein, 1818
[At Project Gutenberg] [Full Text]
Mary Shelley (1797-1851): The
Last Man [At this Site]
WEBThe Gaskell Page [At
Nagoya]
A Comprehensive web page dedicated to the works of Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65). It
includes ALL of Mrs. Gaskell's writings as etexts, as well as a lot of ancillary material
about 19th-century England.
Elizabeth Gaskell: North
and South, 1855, excerpts [At Internet Archive, from Clinch Valley College]
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910): Rural Hygiene [At
this Site]
Life on the farm was not that much of an improvement over a factory. But, eventually, the
social activists turned their eyes on the countryside as well.
Angelina E. Grimké: Appeal
To The Christian Women of the South, 1836, full text [At Furman]
Text of one of the few abolitionist treatises published by a Southern
white woman.
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910): The Challenge of Facts, pub.
1914 [At this Site]
A prominent American social Darwinist mixes social Darwinism with aspects of a Calvinistic
work ethic, provides Darwinist explantion of the family, and attacks Socialism.
DeAnne Blanton: Women
Soldiers of the Civil War, Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives Spring 1993,
vol. 25, no. 1 [At National Archives][Modern Text]
WEB The Mary Anne Sadlier Archive [At Virginia]
Mary Anne Sadlier (1820-1903), an Irish-American immigrant, wrote sixty volumes of work --
from domestic novels to historical romances to children's catechisms.
WEB American Life Histories,
Manuscripts from the Federal Writers's Project, 1936-1940 [At Library of Congress]
Over 2,900 online oral histories from the Depressison era. The site also has image files.
WEB The Andrea Dworkin Online
Library [At IGC]
An interesting and generous site which makes many of Dworkin's writings available online.
Andrea Dworkin: Intercourse,
1987 [At Dworkin Online Library]. Dworkin rejects the argument that she calls all
heterosexual intercourse rape. See
Interview 1995.
Isaac Taylor Headland, 1859-1942: Court life in
China: the capital, its officials and people, (New York, F.H. Revell, c1909), full
text
Contemporary discussion of reform efforts in late imperial China, with a significant
discussion of the lives of elite women, and an extended account of the rule of the Empress
Dowger.
The Legend of
Miao-Shan
The divinity with perhaps the most devotion in China is Guan Yin. She began as a male
bodhisattva, but has now become the Chinese Goddess of Mercy through assimilation of the
Buddhist belief with this old Chinese story.
Pruitt, Ida, A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman by Ida
Pruitt from the Story Told Her by Ning Lao T'ai t'ai, (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1945, repr. Stanford CA; Stanford University Press, 1967) Daughter of Han Reading
Guide
Manifesto of First Chinese
Tongzhi Conference, 1996 [At HKGAY]
Tongzhi is being used in Chinese for Gay. This manifesto directly asserts a
historical basis for modern Chinese homosexuals and the differences of Chinese Tongzhi
movements with western gay movements.
It is important to note that, while I in no way, wish to minimize the
implications of the sati/suttee, a number of the readings here must be understood as
western colonialist texts, and be addressed from that perspective.
WEBWomen in Islam [At Answering
Islam]
The website is a site devoted to arguments with Muslims. This web page contains links to
explanations, defences, and attacks on the subject of women in Islam.
The Qur'an: The Women [At Internet Archive, from CCNY]
From Surah's 2 and 4.
Ibn Battuta: Malian
Women, [At Internet Archive, from CCNY]
WEB Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project
lots of interesting stuff, and discussion within the context of Islam. Also discusses
"male genital mutilation" - such discussions in the past have ended up with
distinct anti-Semitic overtones.
The Legends &
Poetry of The Turks, selections
This file includes selections from the women poets Mirhi (the "Turkish Sappho")
and Zeyneb.
Apologetics
2ND M. Rafiqul-Haqq and P. Newton: The Place of Women in Pure Islam [Ar Venus Project]
Decidely critical of Muslim practice, but quotes a large number of sources.
Sadi: Gulistan, 13th Century CE, Full text
of Persian prose/poetry text with significant homoerotic content.
Rumi: Poetry
Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1522 - 1592): Lesbian Love in A
Turkish Bath, 1560 [At Internet Archive, from Letters Magazine]
2ND Richard Burton: Terminal Essay, from his edition of the Arabian
Nights.
Burton' compilation of data on variety of societies was meant to explain some of the
stories in The Nights. In doing so, he provided first overview of Islamic
homosexuality.
2NDIslam and Homosexuality [At Islam
Geocities]
An extremely homophobic article which claims Islam never tolerated homosexuality.
If any copyright has been infringed, this was unintentional. The possibility of a site
such as this, as with other collections of electronic texts, depends on the large
availability of public domain material from texts translated before 1923. [In the US, all
texts issued before 1923 are now in the public domain. Texts published before 1964 may be
in the public domain if copyright was not renewed after 28 years. This site seeks to abide
by US copyright law: the copyright status of texts here outside the US may be different.]
Efforts have been made to ascertain the copyright status of all texts here, although,
occasionally, this has not been possible where older or non-US publishers seem to have
ceased existence. Some of the recently translated texts here are copyright to the
translators indicated in each document. These translators have in every case given
permission for non-commercial reproduction. No representation is made about the
copyright status of texts linked off-site. This site is intended for educational use.
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