13. 1000-1500 Women and Feudalism in Europe and Japan

Paleo-anthropologists can track human evolution and migration in prehistory using the remains of women, which have provided some of the most important breakthroughs in our understanding of the past. There is great variation between hunter gatherer groups and the gender dynamics that emerged.

​Feudalism was the dominant social system in the Middle Ages in Europe and Japan. In this system, the nobility was gifted lands by the Monarch in exchange for military service as knights. Vassals rented and worked lands as tenants of the nobles. Peasants, also known as Serfs in some places, were given protection of sorts, but basically lived as slaves on the land, paid homage to the nobles, labored hard and had to give up portions of their crops. Although there were differences, women in Europe and Japan lived similar lives under feudalism. 

Feudal Labor: In the Middle Ages women in Europe entered a period of great change. The planet warmed a bit, allowing for longer growing seasons, and led to a push to clear and settle more lands. The stability brought by this period also led to population growth. European cities reached the tens to hundred thousands. As always, population growth had an impact on women’s roles in society, and forced them into greater domestic responsibilities.

The majority lived in small rural farming societies. Peasant women had many domestic responsibilities, including caring for children, preparing food, and tending livestock. During the harvest, women worked in the fields too. Women labored in their communities, tending their children, their farms, their homes, and their family businesses. Working women were the fabric that held communities together, yet farm records only recorded the output of the farmer, ignoring the labor of his wife. How much of that output was on her back, due to her labor, and because she cared for their offspring? This is lost to history and only glimpses are found in court records regarding defiant women. 

Women worked in vital cottage industries; brewing beer, baking, and weaving or manufacturing textiles or cloths on a loom. There were few jobs working women were excluded from doing when they needed to be done. Women and their families worked in unison for the success of the family. Women’s work was under compensated. Records show them earning around three-quarters what men earned.

Women were active in urban professions like milling grain, midwifery, retail, laundering, spinning, and prostitution. Estimates vary depending on location, but between one third and almost half of merchants in European urban areas were female. Widows in particular continued their husband's businesses and used their wealth to support wars. 

Women's guilds were disappearing and even brothels were run by mostly male owners. In places like England regulations were put in place that outlawed women’s participation in lucrative fields— keeping wealth in the hands of men. Weaving had long been an occupation of women, but larger looms and mills powered by animals or water made production more efficient and provided thicker cloth. Thus men looked to take over these profitable businesses. Sons were trained as apprentices, blocking women from entering the profession.

Women’s labor was often multifaceted, menial, and constant. Men’s work by contrast was dangerous and exhausting. While men were singularly focused, women balanced many tasks. An English poem made this point plain, “For man’s work ends at setting sun, Yet woman’s work is never done.” Wherever they labored, and no matter how hard women worked, they were paid less than men. Cecelia Penifader was an unmarried woman of the lower class whose family's prosperity allowed her to lead an independent life. She earned one-third less than men doing unskilled labor. 

Feudal England: In pre-feudalism England, Anglo-Saxon society had well defined codes of laws, diverse trade, talented artisans, and connections to learning on the continent. The Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity in 597, by Augustine whose mission was commissioned by Pope Gregory and sponsored by Queen Brunhild in Francia. 

The Celtic Christian Church maintained a number of practices that diverged from those of the Roman Catholic Church. In 644, the Abbess Hilda hosted a meeting at Whitby to reconcile the churches. The result was a unified church with Roman authority superseding the Celtic church. Hilda’s accomplishment left her venerated on statues, crosses, and in Stained Glass windows within churches. A homily to Hilda captured her spirit: “Bend your minds to holy learning that you may escape the fretting moth of littleness of mind that would wear out your souls. Train your hearts and lips to song which gives courage to the soul.”

By 900 they were unquestioningly Christian, but pagan traditions were integrated in the daily lives of the working class. Eostre, for example, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, merged into the Christian celebration of Easter, which is why flowers and eggs became part of celebrating the resurrection. 

Women in England had more independence than their feudal counterparts. Germanic tribes had long held power in the hands of priestesses and queens. And in many ways they were seen as equal. This is exemplified by women’s wergild, or “bloodprice” paid if they were murdered, which was equal to men’s. Married women were expected to be active partners. Husbands brought property and gifts for their brides, rather than the brides bringing dowries. Women had the right to divorce, and could take with them half of the family wealth. They also had relative control over their finances, including the right to hold land in their own name and defend themselves in court.

But of course there were class differences here. Upper class women had a great deal of freedom. They received an education and managed their estates and finances. Women were barred from learning Latin.

Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians: The best example of a powerful elite woman is Aethelflaed, the daughter of Alfred the Great, and one of the greatest military commanders in medieval England. She received an elaborate education for a girl of her time which included political and military training. She was eventually married to Aethelred of Mercia in a political alliance to unite the two kingdoms. The two held equal power. When he died, she took sole control of the kingdom of Mercia titling herself, “Lady of the Mercians” instead of queen.

When her younger brother Edward ascended to the throne,this brother sister duo proved to be a formidable team. They fought against Danish Vikings who ruled nearby kingdoms, which is where her military strategy shined and earned her the respect of her peers. For example in 917 her brother distracted the Danes elsewhere while she took control of the heart of Danish fortifications by surprise. She also invested in fortresses, providing fruitful defenses and resupplies against the Danes. Many of these were burs, or planned towns which would be replicated throughout Europe in the following centuries. Because of these, working class people had access to secure and close trade centers. Together Aethelflaed and her brother helped secure England from the Vikings.

In 918, at the peak of her power, Aethelflaed became sick and died. In many ways, her death was more significant to the lives of English people than that of her father or even her brother. In a history written two centuries later, William of Malmesbury, described Aethelflaed as a “powerful member of king Edward’s party, the delight of her subjects, and the dread of his enemies. She was a spirited heroine who assisted her brother greatly with her advice. She was of equal service in building cities, and, whether through fortune or her own efforts, was a woman who protected men at home and intimidated them abroad.”

Nunneries: In the early Middle Ages, nunneries provided opportunity and sanctuary for women of all classes generally outside the control of men. Women in these nunneries wielded enormous power, and had lasting influence on scholarship of the time. Abbesses ruled over land, commanded armies, used their own coins, and even had their own courts. Abbesses heard confession, gave absolution and benediction, and some even went by the title “majesty.” 

A woman from the aristocracy had two life paths: marry into financial security or become a nun. Being some of the few women with educations and the resources for a dowry to the Church, nuns were recruited almost exclusively from the aristocracy. But certainly women of lower classes found themselves in convents as well. Women joined nunneries for piety, but there were also more practical reasons like self-preservation. Medieval women in nunneries lived two to four times longer than her married sisters because of the high-risk childbirth played in women’s lives. Some women retired to nunneries in widowhood. Incoming nuns paid dowries of land or coin to the church. The standard of living was pretty high. Nuns worked in the Scriptorium, did domestic labor, and worked in Shops.

Convents provided intellectual opportunity for women, denied to them elsewhere. Historian Rosalind Miles suggested marriage was the “enemy of any woman’s intellectual development” and Historian Joshua J. Mark stated, “The nunnery was a refuge of female intellectuals.” So off to the nunneries went all the deviants, intellectuals, outcasts, and general badasses. Nonconforming women, queer women, women who didn’t want to get married, and women who found the prospects of housekeeping and childrearing abhorrent, sought the covenant with enthusiasm. There is abundant correspondence from this time that highlights the daily lives of the nuns and shows that they did serious scholarship on par with the monks. The nun Lioba, claimed she only put her books down to sleep. Hroswitha of Gandersheim wrote seven Latin plays in the 900s making her the world's first humanist for her abundant love of classical literature.

But by the 900s and 1000s, there was a major decline in the opportunities available to nuns. The church was overwhelmingly masculine in its power structure, and became increasingly concerned about women and the time-honored-tradition of silencing them. Therefore, their public activity, status in church, and educational opportunities all declined in the mid and late Middle Ages. Double houses disappeared and nuns were forced to live in strict enclosures, or seclusion, completely separate from the male monks. Yet nuns were forced to rely on male priests for all sacraments, confessions included. The contributions of nuns to scholarship and learning greatly declined. Phillippe of Navarre writing in 1300 optimized the general sentiment about learned women: “One should not teach a woman letters or writing unless she is a nun, because a woman’s reading and writing leads to great evil.” Even in all-female covenants, all the opportunities for status and advancement available to male scholars were denied to them.

The increasing hostility toward the very essence of womanhood saw a parallel rise in the adoration of the Virgin Mary. There was a thriving religious mysticism around her that the church saw as basically heresy. Although honoring the mother of Christ could be seen as a net win for womankind– in reality it only further led to their subordination. Proponents felt that the essence of the feminine was her innocence– and to educate her (think Eve) would be to pollute her. So surprise surprise, the rationale to deprive women of an education deepened. 

Hroswitha Gandersheim: Hroswitha of Gandersheim was a canoness, working in the scriptorium to record documents in the 900s in Saxony. She was a noblewoman given to the nunnery as a child to gain an education. The Gandersheim nunnery was the center of intellectualism in Germany. When she became an Abbess and negotiated with the German Holy Roman Emperor to hold her own court and coin money. Hroswitha was titled “the strong voice of Gandersheim.”

She is considered the first female German historian having written a long poem about Otto I’s rule. This documented the long struggle between paganism and the spread of Christianity. She wrote legends about the Saints considered contemporary literature. And to top it all off, she is the first known playwright of Christianity having written six plays! And of course in her writing she worked to take a stand for women. The characters and plots in her plays countered the religious dogma that suggested women were corruptible and weak. 
                    
 She said, “Sometimes I compose with great effort, again I destroyed what I had poorly written...[so that] the slight talent...given me by Heaven should not lie idle in the dark recesses of the mind and thus be destroyed by the rush of neglect.”

Hildegard of Bingen: Some medieval women were able to bypass misogyny and forge meaningful careers through the church, one of the more notable was Hildegard de Bingen in Germany. She was a nun turned abbess, turned scholar, and Christian mystic. She was brilliant and her research and works touched many fields from philosophy to musical composition, herbology to medieval literature, cosmology to medicine. In one of her books she identified  almost 300 herbs, in another, she listed and suggested causes as well as remedies for 47 different illnesses. She was also interested in better understanding the female reproductive system. She had visions that she believed, as was common in the time, foresaw the future. What was uncommon was that she, a woman, would write interpretations of them. Popes, emperors, and kings accepted her writings. Yet she regularly defied the patriarchal hierarchy of her profession and pushed boundaries for women. She was unanimously selected as abbess when the previous woman died and after growing the reputation and wealth of the convent for many years, she requested to build her own further away from patriarchal influences. She was denied, but persisted and eventually founded the convent at Rupertsberg c. 1150 CE. There Hildegard was freer to explore her spiritual and intellectual ideas. 

She corresponded with extraordinary women of her time including Eleanor of Aquitaine. She Lamented bad leadership and corrupt governments stating, “You neglect Justice...you permit her to lie prostrate on the earth.”    

She also fell in love with another nun, who’s wealthy family later separated them. Their letters of exchange show painful heartbreak. Her love died from illness a short time later leaving her stunned. Her theology emphasized the feminine, and she thought women had just as important roles to play as men. She was widely popular and went on four speaking tours in defiance of prescriptions that women should stay silent in churches and in public. 

Reflecting on her life, she claimed she was a “poor uneducated woman.” But she justifies her work as her contribution to posterity. She wrote that she was asked to write, “for the benefit of mankind.”

Feudal Japan: Across the world, an strikingly similar society existed on the islands of Japan. Japan adopted feudalism in 1192 with the rise of the first Shogun, Yoritomo. A shogun was an emperor by title, but was more like a military ruler in practice. The shogun’s goal was to use his military prowess to prevent the return of civil war among the 260 daimyo, or feudal lords each with their own band of samurai soldiers. 

But let’s back up. 

Prior to the Shogunate, women in Japan had lots of privileges. They were allowed to own and inherit, unmarried women lived alone, wife- beating was forbidden by law. Aristocrats were polygamous but women lived with their families and were protected by their families. Their husbands would come to them for visits, and while this allowed women some independence, it meant their spouse could easily desert them.

Before and after the rise of the shogunate, the idea of chivalry, which was important in Europe, did not exist. While women could influence affairs at court, they did so in a cloistered setting behind sliding screens. Unlike in Europe, women were given more sexual freedoms and would accept male visitors at night. Divorces were somewhat common and easy to attain. 

Aristocratic ladies lived lives of luxury, engaged in artistic pursuits, and had scandalous love affairs. Women writers were abundant in Japanese courts and they developed a uniquely female style of writing as they were barred from learning Chinese, which was the official legal language in Japan, similar to the way European women were denied the learning of Latin. They wrote in everyday Japanese language in their diaries, novels, and poetry, making it widely readable and popular. 

Being smart and showing how smart you were was important in Japanese courts, and people were regularly challenged to prove their intellect. Aristocrats would have poetry contests that men and women would partake in. To misquote or be proven wrong was equivalent to being socially ruined. 

Women writers were not only present, but prominent in Japan. Lady Murasaki wrote the world's first novel, The Tale of the Genji. The story is as long as an epic and followed the journey of a fictional prince. In the story, she wrote: “Without the novel what should we know of how people lived in the past from the age of the Gods down to the present day? For history books...show us only one corner of life; whereas the diaries and romances contain...the most minute information about people’s private affairs.”

Sei Shonagon wrote a collection of her vivid observations at court known as Pillow Book. She broke down what she saw into categories like, “Annoying Things” and “Things Which Distract in Moments of Boredom.” In a detached way, she ranked and classified the people, events, and objects around her. 

Izumi was Japan’s most illustrious female poet. Her writings were erotic, anguished, and reinforced the impermanence of life. She was born around 975 and grew up in the imperial court as her father was a mid-level government official. There girls of her status earned an education in poetry and the arts. She was married to a provincial governor but began an affair with the son of the emperor. When the emperor died the scandal reached its climax and she was divorced from her husband and estranged from her family. She then started a relationship with the emperor's brother and was invited to the prince's compound, much to the distress of his principal wife. Her life was marred by scandal. Lady Murasaki was a contemporary and wrote “how interestingly she writes. What a disgraceful person she is.” The irony is that all of the men had many concubines, but relations with a handful of men in her lifetime made her disgraceful. Her most famous poem she wrote while just a teenager: “from utter darkness/I must embark upon an/even darker Road/oh distant moon, cast your light/from the rim of the mountains.” 

The Japanese worshiped the Goddess Amaterasu, known as “the great divinity illuminating heaven.” She was the sun goddess of Shintoism practiced in Japan, which morphed with Buddhism as it spread throughout Asia. Amaterasu was the daughter of Izanami and Izanagi from the Japanese creation story, who made her ruler of the sky. 

Women had always been religious leaders known as shamans in Shintoism. Women were called upon in crisis to provide wisdom. Women participated equally in religious celebrations. Some of which were even designed specifically for women, like the Maid Star. 

Like the nunneries of Europe, upper-class women found Buddist convents appealing. They offered them leadership opportunities, intellectual pursuits, and an alternative to marriage. But Buddhism also lessened women’s status with its teachings that emphasized female deceitfulness and dishonesty.

The effect of the Shogunate was centuries of peace which allowed for economic growth, commercialization, and urban development. Women's status declined a bit with the rise of the Shogun more than the encroachment of Confucian ideas from China.

But when Yoritomo died, his widow Masa-ko was left to hold the Shogunate together for her son Yoriye, but he was killed in battle. Go-Toba brought his armies against her. Grieving, Masa-ko rallied her army and crushed him. Her ability to do this harkened to a long tradition of queens in Japan. Masa-ko became known as “Mother Shogun” and her clan ruled as regents over the successive shoguns for a century and a half.

Women under the Shogun samurai culture were expected to be brave and loyal wives and daughters. They had very important duties at home providing food and supplies for their warrior husbands. Women managed all of the servants, finances, and business affairs. Because the father was so often absent, women’s ideas and opinions were honored. Women were also responsible for providing education for their children which emphasized physical activity, strength, and samurai ideals.

Poor women worked alongside men relatively equally. They had some property and divorce rights, but were not allowed to remarry. Peasant women had short hair, while aristocrats grew it long. Peasant farmers only had one wife, while aristocratic women married young.

As time went on, however, the later feudal age samurai ideal of the obedient, submissive woman was accepted by the common people and peasant women lost much of their earlier independence.

But it was not uncommon for women to also fight. Women were trained in weaponry, carried a curved dagger called a “naginata”which they threw with remarkable precision. Women sometimes fought alongside their husbands in battle and played pivotal roles in encouraging troop loyalty. All samurai were expected to commit suicide if they were dishonored or lost in war, and women were no exception. Women would even use suicide as a form of protest against domestic abuse.

But the powerful Samurai women were eventually pushed into domestic servitude as the culture became more peaceful. The ideal samurai woman was obedient, controlled, and subservient. Women’s access to property ownership and inheritance disappeared. 

By the 1400s, Confucian ideas spread into Japan and solidified what the Shogun had begun. Women were subjected to the teachings of the “Three Obediences” emphasized in China, where women were subordinate to their fathers, husbands, and sons. 

Conclusion: Like in Europe, the feudal period was a mixed bag for women, and the effect varied greatly by class. Women were leaders, thinkers, and workers who helped lay the groundwork for the rise in Capitalism.

[Setting up the Inquiry] By the end of this period, so much remained in question. Did peace in Japan outweigh the decline in rights? Would women be able to circumvent the confines of cloistered life and have more public lives? Would women regain their rights lost? Was chivalry in Europe helpful to women?

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Bibliography

Cartwright, Mark. "Amaterasu." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified December 17, 2012. https://www.worldhistory.org/Amaterasu/. 

British Library Editors. “Women in Medieval Society.” British Library. https://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/women-in-medieval-society. 

Miles, Rosalind. The Women’s History of the World. London, UK: Harper Collins Publishers, 1988.

​​Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.

Primary AUTHOR:

Kelsie Brook Eckert 

Primary Reviewer:

Dr. Katherine Koh

Consulting Team

Editors

Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University

Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer, Consultant
Professor of History at Maryville University. 

Chloe Gardner, Consultant
PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University

Dr. Whitney Howarth, Consultant
Former Professor of History at Plymouth State University

Jacqui Nelson, Consultant
Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University

​Maria Concepcion Marquez Sandoval
PhD Candidate in History at Arizona University

Amy Flanders
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy
Ron Kaiser
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy
Chris Canfield
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy

Reviewers

Ancient:
Dr. Kristin Heineman
Professor of History at Colorado State University
Dr. Bonnie Rock-McCutcheon
Professor of History at Wilson College
Sarah Stone
PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University
Medieval:
Dr. Katherine Koh
Professor of History at La Sierra University
Dr. Jonathan Couser
Professor of History at Plymouth State University
Dr. Shahla Haeri
Professor of History at Boston University 
Lauren Cole
PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University
Modern:
Dr. Jack Gronau
Professor of History at Northeastern University