Title: Fragmentation and Redemption
Subtitle: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion
First published: March 1, 1996
Description: *Fragmentation and Redemption* is first of all about bodies and the relationship of part to whole in the high Middle Ages, a period in which the overcoming of partition and putrefaction was the very image of paradise. It is also a study of gender, that is, a study of how sex roles and possibilities are conceptualized by both men and women, even though asymmetric power relationships and men’s greater access to knowledge have informed the cultural construction of categories such as “male” and “female,” “heretic” and “saint.” Finally, these essays are about the creativity of women’s voices and women’s bodies.

Bynum discusses how some women manipulated the dominant tradition to free themselves from the burden of fertility, yet made female fertility a powerful symbol; how some used Christian dichotomies of male / female and powerful / weak to facilitate their own imitatio Christi, yet undercut these dichotomies by subsuming them into *humanitas*. Medieval women spoke little of inequality and little of gender, yet there is a profound connection between their symbols and communities and the twentieth-century determination to speak of gender and “study women.”

(Source: [Princeton University Press](https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780942299625/fragmentation-and-redemption))
Subjects: Religious aspects of the Human body, Religious aspects of Sex role, Religious aspects, Christianity, Women, Sex role, Religious aspects of Women, Body, Human, Women in Christianity, History of doctrines, Human Body, History, Histoire des doctrines, Femmes dans le christianisme, Christendom, Religion and Medicine, Geschichte 500-1500, Corps humain, Geschichte (500-1500), Gender Identity, Femmes, Geschlechterrolle, Christentum, Rôle selon le sexe, Aspectos religiosos, Mujeres en el cristianismo, Frau, Cuerpo humano, Christianisme, Rollen (sociale wetenschappen), Aspect religieux, Vrouwen, Körper, Rol sexual, Lichamelijkheid, Geistesgeschichte 500-1500, Histoire, S.V-XV, Aufsatzsammlung, Church history, middle ages, 600-1500, Sex, religious aspects
Time periods: Middle Ages, 600-1500
LC classification: BT741.2 .B95 1990