Status Updates From Femina: A New History of th...

At the end of the chapter about King Jadwiga of Poland I see that this book makes sense if you forget the title and the introduction and take it as an attempt to get close to a double handful of medieval women, then it works.

hildegard van bingen details how to perform abortions - the church did not
Have a negative view of abortion until the renaissance. Up until then abortion of a male feotus up to 15 weeks, or a female up to 30 weeks was not an issue since the soul had not attached itself in the body until then (female bodys are cold and wet so the soul take longer to anchor)

The Riesencodex of Hildegard van Bingen weighs 15 kilos with a surface if 45x30 cm. The kind of book that you need a wheelbarrow to help you move it about.

In old money thats about 30ibs and a foot and a half by just over a foot.

Comparison of a scene from the Bayeux tapestry and the column of marcus Aurelius in Rome. Both show a woman leading a child away from violence, holding it with her right hand. For sure Anglo-saxons visited rome and may have seen that column. This is a needlessly obscure reference - I think all of us have seen a parent pulling,leading or dragging a child in this way, + every other detail in the 2 scenes is different

The author discusses graves found in the town of Birka, telling us that sets of scales were found in 32% of the women's graves and 28% of the men's. She seems to think that this is a significant difference.

It is nice reading that Offa of Mercia's widow Cynethryth became abbess at Cookham, a place which previously I had associated only with the painter Stanley Spencer.