One of the things about the Cathars that really freaked out Catholic authorities was that they allowed women into the ranks of their equivalent of clergy, the bonhommes and bonnefemmes (sometimes translated to Goodmen and Goodwomen).  Part of the Cathar reasoning behind this stated that since material things were bad and that people’s souls were simply trapped in material bodies, a soul could not be male or female.  Therefore, women were considered to have largely the same capacity to teach as men.
 
Most Cathar bonnefemmes seem to have gathered in small communities and schools, entirely separate from men.  They lived together, worked together (mostly in textiles, it seems), and studied together.  This was also where they taught potential new bonnefemmes along with other women who simply came to learn from them.  They also used these communities as a home base when they went out in pairs to talk to people.  Possibly the most famous, was the one founded by Esclarmonde de Foix and her sister-in-law Philippa.
 
The Cathars didn’t tend towards large gatherings or dramatic preaching.  Instead, people tended to gather in small groups in private homes to listen to a pair of bonhommes or bonnefemmes speak.  Before the Albigenisan Crusade, when the Cathars were peacefully integrated with the rest of the local population and generally left alone, bonnefemmes seem to have mostly spoken to small groups of women in their homes.  Once the persecutions began, they continued to preach mostly in homes, but were more likely to speak to small groups of both men and women and bonnefemmes began to more frequently perform the Consolamentum ceremony that made one a bonhomme or bonnefemme, where before it was mostly done by a bonhomme if possible.  They did this in hiding, at risk of persecution.  As the Cathars died out, so too did their bonnefemmes.  The last known Cathar Goodwoman, Stephane de Proaudes, staunch in her refusal to convert from Catharism, was given over by the Inquisitor Bernard Gui to be executed for heresy in the early years of the 14th century.
 
 
*Most Cathars as far as we can tell anyway.  This was not the most cohesive or organized of religious groups, so there seems to have been a fair amount of diversity of belief.

Sources/Further Reading:
Brenon, Anne. "The Voice of the God Women." In Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, edited by Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker, 114-133. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
O'Shea, Stephen. The Perfect Heresy. New York: Walker Publishing Company, Inc., 2000.
Cathar Beliefs - Cathar.info

Slightly less romanticized than many modern images of her.  Slightly.
[Statue of Matilda of Flanders, 1850, Carle Elshoecht, Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, source: Wikimedia Commons]

Matilda of Flanders (c. 1031-1083) was the first woman to be crowned and titled Queen of England.  She was a powerful woman, not just because of her personality and intelligence, both of which were considerable, but also because of her familial connections to the counts of Flanders, the kings of France, and the earlier kings of England.  She was active both as Queen and as Duchess of Normandy, ruling both England and Normandy alongside her husband, William of Normandy.*
 
Matilda was the daughter of Baldwin V of Flanders and Adela of France.  Through her father she was descended from Alfred the Great of Wessex, while through her mother she was niece and granddaughter to the French kings.  She was betrothed to William of Normandy when she was 19 or thereabouts and married him a few years later, despite a papal ban on grounds of consanguinity.  In 1059 the couple would found a pair of monasteries in Caen to make up for their defiance.  They would go on to have at least eight, possibly nine children together, all of whom were very well educated, at Matilda’s insistence.
 
During the next several years Matilda would act as one of William’s most trusted advisors.  When he sailed for England, he left their eldest son Robert nominally in charge but gave Matilda the real power in Normandy, making her regent.  She was a shrewd ruler, and managed to bring stability to a duchy that was said to be “notoriously susceptible to anarchy.”  When news of William’s victory in England arrived Matilda rejoiced, but she would not actually join him in England for another year.  She was the first woman to actually be crowned Queen of England** and her coronation made clear just how much power she was to have.  William, seeing how well she ruled Normandy, had declared that she could with his authority anywhere in his domains.
 
Over the next several years, Matilda acted both with her husband and separately from him, both in England and in Normandy, including accompanying him in the Harrying of the North.  She was particularly involved not only in religious work (a traditional sphere of influence for queens), but also in the administration of justice and is known to have judged several major disputes.  When their son Robert rebelled, Matilda supported him monetarily, but seems to have preferred to act as mediator between father and son.  She died in 1083 with William at her side and was buried in her monastery, the Abbey of Sainte Trinité, where her daughter Cecelia was a nun.
 
 
*Also known as William the Conqueror or William the Bastard.
**Her ancestor, Judith of Flanders was both crowned and anointed 855, but as Queen of Wessex, not Queen of England, and even this was highly unusual.

Sources/Further Reading:
Matilda of Flanders - Epistolae
Borman, Tracy. Queen of the Conqueror: the Life of Matilda, Wife of William. New York: Bantam Books, 2011.
Douglas, David C. William the Conqueror. Yale University Press, 1964, 1999.

Unfortunately for us, the people who knew the most about preventing and ending pregnancies in the Middle Ages were women, especially women who weren’t in a position to be writing things we would have now.  But even so, we do know that people who wanted to prevent pregnancy had several options open to them, some more effective than others.  A lot of this information actually comes from some of the very authors who disapproved of the use of contraception (though largely as an afterthought or side issue to more important topics), some of them seemingly following the saying “if not chastely, then at least cautiously.”  Some methods were more effective than others.
 
There are a couple different plants that were commonly used to prevent pregnancy or stop it in its first few days.*  Silphium, so famous in earlier centuries, was extinct other plants were known to work as well.  Pennyroyal seems to have been the most widespread, but Queen Anne’s lace (also known as wild carrot) and rue seem to have been widely used as well.  Some plants, like asafetida (a relative of silphium) have been proven to be somewhat effective, but not totally so. Pomegranate was also believed to act as a contraceptive, but that has since been disproven.  The problem with most of these was how toxic they were.  An overdose could easily result in far more serious health problem, or even death.
 
Not that these things were always used for contraception.  Many of them were known to bring on menstruation, which could be done to prevent a pregnancy, but it could also be used to make sure of fertility (if, for example, a woman hadn’t been having periods in a while) or to easily remove an already dead fetus from the body.
 
Another method of contraception was to have sex in such a way that wouldn’t get someone pregnant.  Coitus interruptus is known to have been a common method, but pennitentials and other texts also mention oral and anal sex, among other ways.  Some people tried wearing amulets and charms or jumping up and down after sex.  More effective than either of these things was the insertion of a sponge or some other barrier into the vagina.  Regardless of the Church’s (rather formulaic) disapproval, medieval people knew and practiced a wide variety of contraceptive methods, some of which were more effective than others.
 
 
*Most medieval people who had opinions on the subject that we know about seem to have considered the fetus a person either after 40 days or once its mother felt it move.

Sources/Further Reading:
Brundage, James A. Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Birth Control and Abortion in the Middle Ages - Medievalists.net
Contraception (Sample article from Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia) - Routledge

Am I the only one who finds it weird that they're all the same height?
[Marriage of Frederick and Isabella, 13th century, source: Wikimedia Commons]

Isabella II of Jerusalem (1212-1228), also known as Yolande of Brienne, Queen of Jerusalem, never in her own right, partially because the men in her life ruled for her, partially because she died at the age of 16.  We know very little of her actions beyond her marriage, but her position as the Queen of Jerusalem made her the focus of a lot of political attention.  Her father, John of Brienne, and her husband, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, clashed several times over power, leaving Isabella to be seen as a simple pawn between them.
 
Isabella was the daughter of Maria of Montferrat, Queen of Jerusalem, and John of Brienne.  Her mother died shortly after she was born, leaving Isabella to become queen at only a few days old.  We don’t really know much of anything about her childhood. Her father ruled as regent, having no direct claim to the throne himself.  She was probably raised in the city of Acre.  Though she was titled Queen of Jerusalem, the city itself had last been in her people’s hands during her grandmother’s lifetime.  But plans were being made by Western European leaders to try and take it back and Isabella would come to figure in those plans.
 
Pope Honorius III felt that the Kingdom of Jerusalem needed a strong leader who would be invested in taking back the lands that had been lost to the Saladin and his successors.  The solution was to marry Isabella to Frederick, who would then be King of Jerusalem and would have a much stronger reason to actually try and take the city back.  In 1225, Isabella, then aged 13, married by proxy at Acre and was officially crowned Queen.  She then sailed to Italy to marry in person.
 
As it turned out, Isabella’s father and her husband did not get along and most of our sources were written by John’s sympathizers.  They accuse Frederick of shutting Isabella up in a harem and preferring to sleep with mistresses than with his wife.*  Other evidence does suggest, though, that she may have traveled around Italy with him on more than one occasion.  Even married to the Queen of Jerusalem, Frederick still put off actually going on crusade.  Isabella died in 1228, at the age of 16, before he had even gotten around to it, leaving Frederick no longer King of Jerusalem, but merely regent for their infant son, Conrad.
 
 
*To be fair, she was thirteen.  How do we know she wasn’t glad he wasn’t sleeping with her much?  Or that she didn’t ask him to leave her alone?

Sources/Further Reading:
Abulafia, David. Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.  [Note: found on Google Books here]
Isabella II of Jerusalem - Wikipedia
Le Quattro Mogli di Federico II - Stupormundi.it

Up until the 12th century or so, medieval legal writers weren’t particularly concerned with contraception.  They certainly didn’t look at it positively, but they also didn’t consider it an issue worth spending much time on except where it came up in connection with other concerns.  The 12th century saw greater focus on the issue, but specific condemnation of it independently of other issues only came 400 years later, in the 16th century.  It’s worth nothing though, that however much contraceptive practices were condemned, no serious effort was ever made to stop them.
 
St. Augustine argued that sex with any sort of contraceptive intent was a serious sin.  Married couples should simply stop having sex at all once they’d had a couple of children.  Beyond this statement, he seems not to have touched on the issue.  Similarly, the Penitentials of the next several centuries didn’t really focus on or specifically mention contraception much.  Instead, as a rule, they tended to discourage any sexual position that didn’t have a chance of resulting in a pregnancy as sinful in and of themselves.
 
The 11th and 12th centuries saw rising concern with what was “natural” and what wasn’t.  St. Peter Damian considered most forms of contraceptive sex to be “against nature.”  A bit more than a century later, Gratian called it “inappropriate use of sex organs,” but also considered such things only mildly sinful when the people involved were married to each other.
 
The 12th century was also when legal and religious writers began paying more attention to the issue.  A few people argued that both the use of contraception and sex with contraceptive intent invalidated a marriage entirely.  Others said that while marriages entered into with the intent to avoid having children were illegal, they were still binding.  Some compared the use of contraception to adultery, while many considered it serious spiritual pollution at the very least.
 
The thing is, though, for all that several writers had opinions on the topic, contraception wasn’t considered seriously as a separate issue until the 16th century.  It was mostly a minor point among far greater concerns.

Sources/Further Reading:
Brundage, James A. Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Birth Control and Abortion in the Middle Ages - Medievalists.net

Maria of Montferrat (1192-1212), Queen of Jerusalem, inherited the throne from her mother Isabella of Jerusalem at the age of 13.  Both her reign and her life were relatively short and she ruled without a regent for only three years.  As a result, we know little of her life and reign beyond the usual concerns about marriage and continuing the line despite the fact that she was the Kingdom of Jerusalem’s third Queen Regnant in a row.
 
Maria was only child of Isabella of Jerusalem and Conrad of Montferrat.  She was born after her father’s death and her mother’s subsequent remarriage to Henri of Champagne.  Isabella was actually visibly pregnant at the wedding.  Maria herself was born at the end of both the Third Crusade and Guy of Luisignan’s attempts to remain King of Jerusalem.  The city itself had long since been lost and the crusaders were unable to get it back.  As a result Maria probably spent much of her childhood in the cities of Tyre and Acre.
 
Isabella died in 1205 and since Maria’s only half-brother, the four-year-old Amalric, Isabella’s son by Amalric II, had died earlier that same year, Maria was crowned Queen of Jerusalem at age thirteen.  Her uncle, John of Ibelin, Isabella’s half-brother and son of Maria Komnene and Balian of Ibelin, ruled as regent until she turned seventeen.
 
Once she came of age, the issue of Maria’s marriage became a major political issue, as it had been for her mother and her aunt Sibylla.  She soon married the French nobleman John of Brienne at the suggestion of the king of France Philip Augustus.  The couple would only rule together for three years, maintaining a policy of peace with the neighboring Muslim sultanates.  In 1212 Maria gave birth to their only child, a daughter, Isabella II of Jerusalem, also known as Yolande.  The child survived.  Maria did not, dying a few days after the birth and leaving her infant daughter as the next Queen of Jerusalem.

Sources/Further Reading:
Maria of Montferrat - Epistolae
Setton, Kenneth Meyer, Robert Lee Wolff, and Harry W. Hazard. A History of the Crusades, Volume 2. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
Maria of Montferrat - Fact Index

For all of its popularity, the Franciscan Order was not founded by someone with any particular gift for administration.  By the 1270s, less than 50 years after St. Francis’s death, the Order was on the verge of schism.  The two sides, now called the Spirituals and the Conventuals, disagreed almost violently on the question of poverty and how to interpret St. Francis’s intention that the Friars Minor should own nothing.
 
The Spirituals argued that this was meant very literally.  The Friars Minor should neither have nor use as their own goods or money of any sort.  The Conventuals found this highly impractical, especially given the work of preaching and teaching that the Church had given them.  How could one study without having books or a space to study in?  And how could one teach without having studied?  How could one be an effective teacher when one had no idea where the next meal might come from?*  Were they to just turn away the gifts of grateful, generous donors?  A Papal Bull by Gregory IX authorized Franciscan communities to appoint a ‘spiritual friend’ who would act as a trustee for their goods and property.  Thus they could maintain the fiction of owning nothing while still having the things they needed.  The stricter view, it was felt, was impractical and unnecessarily harsh.
 
The Spirituals rejected this interpretation.  They saw themselves as the only true inheritors of Francis’s vision for his Order and felt that the Conventuals had succumbed to the materiality of the world.  Absolute poverty, not owning anything or having a fixed home was what St. Francis had intended for them.  Many of them were also heavily influenced by the works of Joachim of Fiore, which were then considered heretical.
 
Conflict raged between the two groups, and many Conventual abbots complained of the disobedience of Spirituals among their communities.  Various authority figures tried to mediate, with little success.  In 1317, things came to a head with the election of Pope John XXII, who threw his support entirely behind the Conventuals.  Spiritual Franciscans were subject to excommunication and accusations of heresy.  Some were burned at the stake.  Others were reconciled to the Conventual view.  A few Spirituals remained, but they no longer posed a threat to the Conventual point of view.  The Conventuals had won.  The Order would hold property.  Absolute poverty was no longer the goal.
 
 
*It’s also worth noting that many of the Order’s recruits at this point in time came from the middle and upper classes as well as from the Masters and students of the universities.

Sources/Further Reading:
Lawrence, C. H. Medieval Monasticism. London: Longman, 1984.
Briggs, Charles. The Body Broken. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Barber, Malcolm. The Two Cities. London: Routledge, 1992.
Spirituals - Catholic Encyclopedia
The Spiritual Franciscans and Beguins - Virginia Tech

Aaaand back to new stuff!

I like how some of the people in the background aren't even paying attention.
[Marriage of Amalric I and Maria Komnene, 13th century, source: Wikimedia Commons]

Maria Komnene (c. 1154 – before 1217), Queen of Jerusalem, held power by virtue of both her connections to the Byzantine Imperial family and her first marriage to King Amalric of Jerusalem.  How well she used that power continues to be debated and people’s positions seem at least partially based on their opinions of her second husband, Balian of Ibelin.  She lived in tumultuous times, seeing the fall of the city of Jerusalem (though not the Kingdom) to Saladin and playing her own significant role in the events of the time, first as Queen, then as Dowager.
 
Maria was the daughter of John Doukas Komnenos and Maria Tronitissa.  Through her father she was grand-niece and cousin to the Byzantine emperors while through her mother she was descended from Armenian royalty.  She grew up in Constantinople, where she received a broad education befitting a Byzantine princess.
 
In 1167, when she was about 13, Maria was crowned Queen of Jerusalem and married its king, Amalric as his second wife.*  The couple had only one surviving child in their seven years of marriage: a daughter, Isabella.  Amalric died in 1174, leaving Baldwin IV as king and Sybilla as his heir, the children of his first wife.  Maria, now the dowager queen, retired with her daughter to Nablus, left to her by her husband for her lifetime.
 
For several years Maria mostly stayed out of politics.  She was against the betrothal of her daughter Isabella to Humphrey of Toron, but was unable to stop it.  She eventually married Balian of Ibelin** and had at least four children with him.  Once Baldwin IV died, Maria and her husband reentered politics, opposing Sybilla’s husband Guy of Lusignan.  It was Maria who eventually persuaded Isabella to agree to a divorce from Humphrey so she could marry Conrad of Montferrat instead.
 
When Saladin besieged Jerusalem, Maria was among those trapped in the city.  Balian arrived to secure safe passage for her and her children, and Saladin granted it on the condition that Balian not take up arms.  Balian went back on his word.  Saladin, however, still provided safe passage, probably in large part because he didn’t want to anger the Byzantine Emperor by injuring part of his family.
 
Maria continued to play a role in selecting her daughter’s husbands as each died.  She also had a hand in negotiating the marriage of her granddaughter Alice of Champagne’s marriage in 1208.  She disappears from the historical record after this, leaving her ultimate fate unkown.
 
 
*He’d been required to divorce Agnes of Courtenay, his first wife before becoming king.  Maria’s coronation actually happened before her marriage, though she only became queen because of said marriage.
**As far as we can tell it was for no reason other than that she wanted to.

Sources/Further Reading:
William of Tyre, History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea - Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Claster, Jill N. Sacred Violence: the European Crusades to the Middle East, 1095-1396. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
Maria Comnena, Byzantine Princess and Dowager Queen of Jerusalem - Defender of Jerusalem
Maria Comnena, Lady of Ibelin and Founder of Two Dynasties - Defender of Jerusalem

I love this picture.  Not my absolute favorite but I'll still take any excuse to use it again.
[Hildegard and her secretary and close friend Volmar, , Scivias, Rupertsberg Codex, source: Wikimedia Commons]

He who knows and discerns all creatures, Who rouses them and is watchful over them, the Living Eye sees and says: the valleys are complaining against the mountains, and the mountains are falling into the valleys.  What does this mean?  Subordinates are no longer disciplined by the fear of God, and madness sends them scaling the heights of the mountains to rail at their superiors.  And they are too blind to see the error of their evil ways.

--Hildegard von Bingen to Pope Eugenius III, 1153

Among the works by Hildegard of Bingen is a collection of letters, many written by her, but others written to her asking, or in a few cases giving, advice.  People from popes to abbesses to ordinary monks, from kings to laywomen wrote to her for counsel and information and received letters in reply.  At the beginning of her career and during two of the three major crises in her life* she wrote to powerful male churchmen seeking advice or, more commonly, relying on her utter certainty that God was on her side.  She is best known for her visionary texts, but her letters may well have had the most immediate effect on a broader range of people.
 
Most of her letters we know of come from a manuscript known as the Riesencodex** and were organized not by date, but by the status of the correspondent.***  Her letter to Bernard of Clairvaux comes first, followed by letters to popes and archbishops, kings and queens, bishops, nobles, and abbots/abbesses, and finally ordinary monks, nuns, and members of the laity.  The majority of the letters involve people writing to her for advice and her responses to them.  The higher status the person, the sharper she is with them, while abbots, abbesses, ordinary monks and nuns, and non-noble laypeople saw the more compassionate side of her.  The ones concerning the major crises of her life (see *) show more personal investment and give a clearer indication of her own strong feelings.
 
Most of these letters follow a general format: a description of a vision followed by its interpretation.  But it’s not actually that simple.  First of all, it’s not always clear whose voice she is using.  Many of her visions are spoken with the voice of the Living Light,**** but sometimes she switches back to her own words.  More often it’s uncertain precisely who the speaker is.  Second, it’s also unclear where vision ends and interpretation begins.  Vision bleeds into interpretation and interpretation into vision.  This was probably purposeful.  By obscuring the distinction, Hildegard was able to say things she wouldn’t have been able to get away with without divine backing.
 
 
*The election of the nun Richardis as Abbess of Bassum and the interdict placed on her community resulting from Hildegard’s dispute with Church authorities over a nobleman’s burial.  We have almost no letters concerning the third crisis (first chronologically), the dispute with her superiors at Disibodenberg, but the bad feelings resulting from it left their mark on subsequent letters exchanged between them.
**A collection of all her works except her medical texts, put together primarily by her last secretary, Guibert of Gembloux.  Hildegard herself seems to have had significant influence over any editing done.
***Which makes dating some of them kinda dicey at best.
****Her term for the divine speaking through her.

Sources/Further Reading:
Baird, Joseph L. and Radd K. Ehrman, trans. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 1998, 2004.
Ferrante, Joan. "Correspondent: 'Blessed Is the Speech of Your Mouth.'" In Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World, edited by Barbara Newman, 91-109. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Flanagan, Sabina. Hildegard of Bingen, 1098-1179: a Visionary Life. London: Routledge, 1989.

Husband one of four.  And possibly the one she liked the best.
[Marriage of Isabella of Jerusalem and Humphrey of Toron, 13th century, source: Wikimedia Commons]

Isabella of Jerusalem (1172-1205) reigned as Queen of after her elder half-sister Sibylla despite the city’s technical capture by Saladin in 1187.  She married four separate times, mostly for political reasons as keeping the throne would be a lot easier with an apparently strong and ambitious husband at her side.
 
Isabella was the daughter of Almaric I of Jerusalem and Maria Komnene.  Though her father’s previous marriage had been annulled, her half-siblings Baldwin and Sibylla were considered legitimate and were ahead of her in line for the throne.  Since Baldwin had contracted leprosy and it was unexpected that he would have children, Sibylla became his heir, though there were some who wanted to contest her legitimacy and put Isabella on the throne.
 
A few nobles actually tried to do this, but Isabella’s first husband, Humphrey of Toron, would have none of it.  The pair had been betrothed when she was 8 and he 14.  They married three years later.  Instead of trying to take the throne though, Humphrey, who did not want to be king, did homage to Guy of Lusignan, Sibylla’s husband, recognizing him as his lord.
 
When Sibylla died in 1190 and Guy refused to give up his crown, Maria insisted Isabella find a new husband who could take it back for her.  Isabella next married Conrad of Monferrat and the pair were acclaimed King and Queen of Jerusalem.  But it didn’t last long.  In 1192 Conrad got himself stabbed to death, leaving Isabella pregnant with a daughter, Maria.
 
Isabella chose to remarry very quickly, this time to Henry II of Champagne, who was closely connected to the kings of England and France and was politically a fantastic match.  The marriage only lasted three years though and ended when Henry fell out a window and died, leaving her with three more daughters.
 
She last married Almaric of Cyprus, Guy of Lusignan’s brother by whom she had two daughters and a son, who died in infancy.  They ruled together for seven years, dying days apart from each other in 1205.  Isabella's thirteen-year-old daughter Maria succeeded them as Queen.

Sources/Further Reading:
Isabella of Jerusalem - Epistolae
Queens Regnant: Isabella I of Jerusalem - History of Royal Women