Pious widowhood in the Middle Ages

This study investigates the social conditions, doctrinal issues, and spiritual trends that discouraged widows from remarriage and directed widows toward chastity and service to the Church. As a group, widows played a key role in defining medieval women's social order. Whereas men were identified by their status and profession, women were characterized by their sexual state: virgin, widow, or wife. Research on widows as patrons, workers, guild members, and court litigants has engaged the scholarly question of whether widowhood permitted women increased social and financial freedom. However, the spiritual directives that shaped their lives and conduct remain largely unexplored. This work pursues the origins of medieval thinking on widowhood in the New Testament and the development of a theology of widowhood through the later Middle Ages.; Official vows of chastity consecrated women to a life of sexual renunciation, and sermons, treatises, exemplary tales, and other prescriptive sources guided a woman once she embarked on a life of celibacy. The canonization and widespread veneration of widowed saints such as Elizabeth and Thuringia likewise provided widows with a model of chastity, charity, and asceticism that patristic and medieval theologians ascribed to the ideal expression of the pious widow's life.; The Church perceived itself as responsible for monitoring the spiritual life of its members thus responded to a perceived need for widows' pastoral care. Their discourse provides a means through which we can reconstruct not only the ideal spiritual life of chaste widows, but also the most central values of pre-modern Christian society. In widowhood, theologians constructed a sacred “space” for married women to redeem their lost status as chaste virgins; in the process, they created an identity for widowed women that was an integral part of the social and moral structure of Christian Europe.