page_title: Women in Church history
section_title: Virgin Mary and female saints
hierarchical_section_title: Women in Church history / Middle ages / Virgin Mary and female saints
context_page_description: Women in Church history have played a variety of roles in the life of Christianity - notably as contemplatives, health care givers, educationalists and missionaries. Until recent times, women were generally excluded from episcopal and clerical positions within the certain Christian churches; however, great numbers of women have been influential in the life of the church, from contemporaries of Jesus to subsequent saints, theologians, doctors of the church, missionaries, abbesses, nuns, mystics, founders of religious institutes, military leaders, monarchs and martyrs.
  Christianity emerged from within surrounding patriarchal societies that placed men in positions of authority in marriage, society and government, and, whilst the religion restricted membership of the priesthood to males only, in its early centuries it offered women an enhanced social status and quickly found a wide following among women. In most denominations, women have been the majority of church attendees since early in the Christian era and into the present.
context_section_description: Geoffrey Blainey, writes that women were more prominent in the life of the Church during the Middle Ages than at any previous time in its history, with a number of church reforms initiated by women. Blainey cites the ever growing veneration of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene as evidence of a high standing for female Christians at that time. Irish hagiography records that, as Europe was entering the Medieval Age, the abbess St. Brigit of Kildare was founding monasteries across Ireland. The Celtic Church played an important role in restoring Christianity to Western Europe following the Fall of Rome, due in part to the work of nuns like Brigid.
  The Virgin Mary became increasingly important to Christian worship through the Middle Ages. She was conferred such titles as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven. Mary Magdalene's Feast Day was celebrated in earnest from the 8th century on and composite portraits of her developed from Gospel references to other women Jesus met.
  The art historian Kenneth Clarke wrote that, if art is taken as a guide, then only from the 12th century did the cult of the Virgin come to appeal to the popular imagination in the West. The great Cathedrals of France were dedicated to her: Notre Dame de Paris, Amiens, Laon, Rouen and Rheims. Chartres Cathedral in particular honoured Mary with the elaborate splendour of its architecture. St Bernard of Clairvaux preached of her as an ideal of beauty and mediator between humanity and God.
  St. Clare of Assisi was one of the first followers of Saint Francis of Assisi. She founded the Order of Poor Ladies, a contemplative monastic religious order for women in the Franciscan tradition, and wrote their Rule of Life—the first monastic rule known to have been written by a woman. Following her death, the order she founded was named in her honor the Order of Saint Clare, commonly referred to today as the Poor Clares.
  St. Catherine of Siena (1347–1380) was a Dominican tertiary and mystic of considerable influence who was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1970. Considered by her contemporaries to have high levels of spiritual insight, she worked with the sick and poor, experienced "visions", gathered disciples and participated in the highest levels of public life through letters to the princes of Italy, consultations with papal legates and by acting as a diplomat negotiating between the city states of Italy. She counseled for reform of the clergy and was influential in convincing Pope Gregory XI to leave Avignon and restore the Holy See to Rome.
  Monastic orders came to include key Catholic figures such as Doctor of the Church Teresa of Ávila, whose influence on practices such as Christian meditation continues to date.
  Arguably the most famous female Catholic Saint of the period is St. Joan of Arc. Considered a national heroine of France, she began life as a pious peasant girl. As with other saints of the period, Joan is said to have experienced supernatural dialogues which gave her spiritual insight and directed her actions - but unlike typical heroines of the period, she donned male attire and, claiming divine guidance, sought out the King Charles VII of France to offer help in a military campaign against the English. Taking up a sword, she achieved military victories, before being captured. Her English captors and their Burgundian allies then arranged for her to be tried as a "witch and heretic", after which she was burned at the stake. A papal inquiry later declared the trial illegal. A hero to the French, sympathy grew for Joan even in England and in 1909 she was canonised a saint.
caption: St. Joan of Arc
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