“For too long medieval women have been written out of history. It’s high time we put them back in”
Janina Ramirez introduces three trailblazers whose stories show that medieval women were far more than the wives, sisters and aunts of men
1 The religious pioneer
The Yorkshire soil has offered up tantalising glimpses of a “princess” who straddled England’s pagan and Christian ages
A few beads and pendants was all they found. It wasn’t much to go on, but these diminutive treasures nestled in the soil threw up some tantalising clues about an influential woman who died in the seventh century.
That woman lived during a period of huge cultural change in England. Known as the Loftus Princess, her burial alongside a series of remarkable treasures, overlooking the cliffs of North Yorkshire, testifies that she was honoured by the people who placed her in the earth. The rest of her story – what she achieved, how she lived, who she encountered – can only be surmised.
Should we stop asking questions and dismiss the Loftus Princess as yet another lost woman from our medieval past? Or can we put her in context and build up a world around her using a range of evidence and approaches at our disposal?
For all too long, the former option has prevailed. There’s not enough room on these pages to list the medieval women who have been deliberately removed from the records. So let’s cite just one: Æthelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians, a military leader, social reformer, patron of the arts and a diplomat whose contributions to ninth and early tenth-century English politics were substantially downplayed by her brother, King Edward the Elder.
The likes of Edward sought to portray women as little more than wives, sisters and aunts of kings. Yet they were also warriors, artists, authors, scientists, leaders, explorers, entrepreneurs and so much more. They were multifaceted, complex and fascinating figures, who are deserving of our recognition. And now let’s return to the Loftus Princess.
An active afterlife
That we know that the Loftus Princess existed at all is down to archaeologist Steve Sherlock and his team, who in 2006 discovered an early medieval burial site cut into an ancient landscape near the town of Loftus. Among Iron Age barrows and Roman remains were 109 graves dating from the seventh century. Acidic soil has claimed the bones,
