This new collection of essays brings together brand new research on widowhood in medieval and early modern Europe. The volume opens with an introductory chapter by the Editors which looks generally at the conditions and constructions of widowhood in this period. This is followed by a range of essays which illuminate different dimensions of widowhood across Europe - in England, Italy, France, Germany and Spain. A particular attraction of the volume is the attention given to widowers, and the comparisons made between the male and female experience of widowhood. It is an exciting reinterpretation of the subject which will do much to undo the traditional stereotype of the widow. Contributing to the volume are: Jodi Bilinkoff, Giulia Calvi, Sandra Cavallo, Isabelle Chabot, Julia Crick, Amy Erikson, Dagmar Freist, Elizabeth Foyster, Margaret Pelling, Pamela Sharpe,Tim Stretton, Barbara Todd, and Lyndan Warner.

Whereas recent studies of early modern widowhood by social, economic and cultural historians have called attention to the often ambiguous, yet also often empowering, experience and position of widows within society, Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe is the first book to consider the distinct and important relationship between ritual and representation. The fifteen new interdisciplinary essays assembled here read widowhood as a catalyst for the production of a significant body of visual material-representations of, for and by widows, whether through traditional media, such as painting, sculpture and architecture, or through the so-called 'minor arts,' including popular print culture, medals, religious and secular furnishings and ornament, costume and gift objects, in early modern Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Arranged thematically, this unique collection allows the reader to recognize and appreciate the complexity and contradiction, iconicity and mutability, and timelessness and timeliness of widowhood and representation.

This study of Castilian widows, based on extensive analysis of literary and archival sources, provides insight into the complex mechanisms lying behind the formulation of gender boundaries and the pragmatic politics of everyday life in the early modern world.

The Profession of Widowhood explores how the idea of ‘true’ widowhood was central to pre-modern ideas concerning marriage and of female identity more generally. The medieval figure of the Christian vere vidua or “good” widow evolved from and reinforced ancient social and religious sensibilities of chastity, loyalty and grief as gendered ‘work.’ The ideal widow was a virtuous woman who mourned her dead husband in chastity, solitude, and most importantly, in perpetuity, marking her as “a widow indeed” (1 Tim 5:5). The widow who failed to display adequate grief fulfilled the stereotype of the ‘merry widow’ who forgot her departed spouse and abused her sexual and social freedom. Stereotypes of widows ‘good’ and ‘bad’ served highly-charged ideological functions in pre-modern culture, and have remained durable even in modern times, even as Western secular society now focuses more on a woman’s recovery from grief and possible re-coupling than the expectation that she remain forever widowed. The widow represented not only the powerful bond created by love and marriage, but also embodied the conventions of grief that ordered the response when those bonds were broken by premature death. This notion of the widow as both a passive memorial to her husband and as an active ‘rememberer’ was rooted in ancient traditions, and appropriated by early Christian and medieval authors who used “good” widowhood to describe the varieties of female celibacy and to define the social and gender order. A tradition of widowhood characterized by chastity, solitude, and permanent bereavement affirmed both the sexual mores and political agenda of the medieval Church. Medieval widows—both holy women recognized as saints and ‘ordinary women’ in medieval daily life—recognized this tradition of professed chastity in widowhood not only as a valuable strategy for avoiding remarriage and protecting their independence, but as a state with inherent dignity that afforded opportunities for spiritual development in this world and eternal merit in the next.

An exploration of widowhood in medieval Europe

Examines the role of women in medieval law and society