Women in the Medieval

London: Barrie and Jenkins. Very Good/Very Good. 1990. First UK Edition. Hard Cover. Sm 4to 0712634371 Dust jacket complete, unclipped in a clear protective sleeve. Illustrated cloth cover, bright titles. Illustrated end papers. Colour & b/w Illustrations. 200 pages clean and tight. In the twelfth century in towns all over Europe a radical transformation took place in the lives and status of women. Any woman who could escape to a town and remain there for a year and a day was granted freedom from her bonds with a feudal landlord: Town councils, concerned to develop trade and manufacture, tended to extend that freedom, and women began to take their place in business, banking and local politics. The subordinate status of women in the feudal scheme of things, under which they lacked virtually all personal rights and were often oppressed by tyrannical husbands or fathers, was transformed in the towns and contributed to the rise of a new urban middle class. Our perceptions of the history of .women in this period are likely to be radically altered by Erika Uitz's path-breaking study. Her, researches in town records throughout the continent, in tax registers, court re- ports and wills, in autobiographical accounts and in parish -records, build up a detailed and fascinating picture of the diversity of women's experience in what has .always been perceived as a male-oriented society. The efforts women made to extend their freedoms - to secure education through the convent, to acquire rights of property-owning, to make themselves heard in political and religious affairs, to increase their rights within the family and in trade - are enthrallingly chronicled. The book is also magnificently illustrated, with over a hundred paintings and illuminations from the period reproduced in colour and monochrome, which provide further vivid evidence of the life led by women in those times. .