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In Acts of Care, Sara Ritchey recovers women's health care work by identifying previously overlooked tools of care: healing prayers, birthing indulgences, medical blessings, liturgical images, and penitential practices. Ritchey demonstrates that women in premodern Europe were both deeply engaged with and highly knowledgeable about health, the body, and therapeutic practices, but their critical role in medieval health care has been obscured because scholars have erroneously regarded the evidence of their activities as religious rather than medical.The sources for identifying the scope of medieval women's health knowledge and healthcare practice, Ritchey argues, are not found in academic medical treatises. Rather, she follows fragile traces detectable in liturgy, miracles, poetry, hagiographic narratives, meditations, sacred objects, and the daily behaviors that constituted the world as well as in testaments and land transactions from hospitals and leprosaria established and staffed by beguines and Cistercian nuns.Through its surprising use of alternate sources, Acts of Care reconstructs the vital caregiving practices of religious women in the southern Low Countries, reconnecting women's therapeutic authority into the everyday world of late medieval healthcare.

Medical care --- Women healers, Medieval --- HISTORY / Medieval. --- History --- Religious aspects --- Christianity. --- , psalters, medieval medicine, Low Countries, hagiography, miracles. --- Beguines, Cistercians, medical charms. --- Medieval women healers --- Delivery of health care --- Delivery of medical care --- Health care --- Health care delivery --- Health services --- Healthcare --- Medical and health care industry --- Medical services --- Personal health services --- Public health

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Agnès Sorel (1428-1450), beautiful favourite of Charles VII of France and first in the long genealogy of French royal mistresses, was mysteriously poisoned in the prime of life. Agnès, part of a network of royal "favourites," is equally interesting for her political activity. And yet, no scholarly study in English of her exists. This study brings her story to an English-speaking audience, examining her in her historical context, that is, the factional struggle for power waged against Charles VII by the dauphin Louis and the king's final routing of the English. It then traces Agnès's afterlife, exploring her roles as founding mother of the tradition of the French royal mistress and foil for the less popular holders of the "office"; as erotic fantasy figure for nineteenth-century historians "re-inventing" the Middle Ages; and, most recently, as poignant victim for fans of the true crime genre.

Favorites, Royal --- Favorites, Royal. --- Relations with women. --- Sorel, Agnès, --- Charles --- 1422-1461 --- France --- France. --- History --- Histoire --- Sorel, Agnès, --- Favoris et favorites --- HISTORY / Medieval --- HISTORY / Medieval. --- Agnès Sorel. --- King Charles VII of France. --- King Louis XI of France. --- Philippe Chartier. --- medieval women. --- poisoning. --- royal mistress. --- Sorel, Agnes,

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In the period between 1200 and 1500 in western Europe, a number of religious women gained widespread veneration and even canonization as saints for their extraordinary devotion to the Christian eucharist, supernatural multiplications of food and drink, and miracles of bodily manipulation, including stigmata and inedia (living without eating). The occurrence of such phenomena sheds much light on the nature of medieval society and medieval religion. It also forms a chapter in the history of women. Previous scholars have occasionally noted the various phenomena in isolation from each other and have sometimes applied modern medical or psychological theories to them. Using materials based on saints' lives and the religious and mystical writings of medieval women and men, Caroline Walker Bynum uncovers the pattern lying behind these aspects of women's religiosity and behind the fascination men and women felt for such miracles and devotional practices. She argues that food lies at the heart of much of women's piety. Women renounced ordinary food through fasting in order to prepare for receiving extraordinary food in the eucharist. They also offered themselves as food in miracles of feeding and bodily manipulation. Providing both functionalist and phenomenological explanations, Bynum explores the ways in which food practices enabled women to exert control within the family and to define their religious vocations. She also describes what women meant by seeing their own bodies and God's body as food and what men meant when they too associated women with food and flesh. The author's interpretation of women's piety offers a new view of the nature of medieval asceticism and, drawing upon both anthropology and feminist theory, she illuminates the distinctive features of women's use of symbols. Rejecting presentist interpretations of women as exploited or masochistic, she shows the power and creativity of women's writing and women's lives.

Food --- Women --- Food habits --- Aliments --- Femmes --- Habitudes alimentaires --- Religious aspects --- Christianity --- History --- Aspect religieux --- Christianisme --- Histoire --- Social history --- Eglise catholique --- History of doctrines --- 248.153.4 --- 396 "04/14" --- -Social history --- -Food --- -Food habits --- -Eating --- Food customs --- Foodways --- Human beings --- Habit --- Manners and customs --- Diet --- Nutrition --- Oral habits --- Foods --- Dinners and dining --- Home economics --- Table --- Cooking --- Dietaries --- Gastronomy --- Descriptive sociology --- Social conditions --- Sociology --- Human females --- Wimmin --- Woman --- Womon --- Womyn --- Females --- Femininity --- Vasten. Versterving. Onthouding --- Feminisme. Vrouwenbeweging. Vrouw en maatschappij--Middeleeuwen --- -Religious aspects --- -Christianity --- -History of doctrines --- -History --- -Vasten. Versterving. Onthouding --- 396 "04/14" Feminisme. Vrouwenbeweging. Vrouw en maatschappij--Middeleeuwen --- 248.153.4 Vasten. Versterving. Onthouding --- Christianity. --- -248.153.4 Vasten. Versterving. Onthouding --- Eating --- History of civilization --- Christian spirituality --- anno 1200-1499 --- Middle Ages, 500-1500 --- Primitive societies --- Food - Religious aspects - Christianity --- Women - History - Middle Ages, 500-1500 --- Food habits - History --- Aliments - Aspect religieux - Eglise catholique --- Femmes - Histoire - 500-1500 (Moyen Age) --- Habitudes alimentaires - Histoire --- Food - Religious aspects - Christianity - History of doctrines - Middle Ages, 600-1500 --- Social history - Medieval, 500-1500 --- Food habits - History - To 1500 --- anthropology. --- catholicism. --- devotional practices. --- eucharist. --- fasting. --- feminism. --- feminist theory. --- food studies. --- food. --- gender studies. --- gender. --- historiography. --- history. --- inedia. --- medieval asceticism. --- medieval religion. --- medieval society. --- medieval women. --- middle ages. --- miracles. --- mysticism. --- nonfiction. --- piety. --- religion. --- religiosity. --- religious studies. --- religious vocation. --- religious women. --- renunciation. --- saints lives. --- saints. --- stigmata. --- symbolism. --- western europe. --- women and religion. --- womens lives. --- womens studies. --- womens writing. --- world history. --- MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION --- WOMEN --- HABITUDES ALIMENTAIRES --- HISTORY --- MIDDLE AGES, 500-1500 --- MOYEN AGE