An Introduction to Women's Letters in the Dark Ages: Caesaria to Radegund

This video introduces two women, Caesaria of Arles and Radegund of Poitiers, and a letter exchanged between them.

Video

What were the possibilities and limitations of monastic life for early medieval women?
What might this letter tell us about Merovingian women’s literacy?
What is asceticism? How is it depicted in this letter?

Joan M. Ferrante, ‘Caesaria, abbess of Arles’, Epistolae: Medieval Women’s Latin Letters. New York: Columbia University, 2014.
Professor Ferrante’s translation of the letter is also available.
Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MS 250, with beautiful illustrations of Radegund’s life, has been fully digitized and is available online.
Erin T. Dailey, ‘Misremembering St. Radegund’s Foundation of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers’, in Erfahren, Erzählen, Erinnern: Narrativ Konstruktionen von Gedächtnis und Generation in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. Benjamin Pohl et al. (Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2012), pp. 117–40.

(available as e-books through library subscriptions)

Angelo Di Berardino, ed. Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity (Downers’ Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1994-2013), pp. 1:407 (biography of Caesaria) and 3:374 (biography of Radegund).
Jo Ann McNarama and John E. Halborg, with E. Gordon Whately, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 112-8.

(available online through library subscriptions)

Magdalena Elizabeth Carrasco, “Spirituality in Context: The Romanesque Illustrated Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MS 250).” The Art Bulletin 72: 3 (1990), pp. 414–435.
Jennifer C. Edwards, Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poiters’ Abbey of Sainte-Croix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 25-59.

Williard, Hope. “An Introduction to Women's Letters in the Dark Ages: Caesaria to Radegund,” Middle Ages for Educators, April 17, 2020. Accessed [date]. https://middleagesforeducators.princeton.edu/node/1276/