Women's Power In The Middle Ages

Women have been one of the most oppressed minorities in history. They have rarely been powerful in any culture. In some events in history, women didn’t even have a role at all. Women didn’t have a Renaissance, like the rest of Europe did. In fact, women had more power in the middle ages than the renaissance. This power came from courtly love, and will probably be one of the only times in pre-modern European history where women had power. Throughout history women were regarded as clearly inferior to men.
In pre-medieval Europe, there were two types of groups that dominated: The Romans and the Christians. The Romans believed that women can only be wives and mothers. The famous Roman philosopher Aristotle asked “what are women for?” and “what …show more content…
Before the middle ages, monasteries were the only place were people can get an education. Then during the middle ages, universities appeared in large cities across Europe, but only white, unmarried, Christian men could attend. The universities had more choices of majors to choose from and the most popular major was logic. Logic was popular because many people believed that it could improve religion. From this idea emerged scholasticism which is the belief that logic and religion are compatible. Scholasticism offered the idea that women are weaker than men, both physically and mentally. As education was changing so was the legal world. With the emergence of feudalism, a new type of heritance system began to materialize. This new inheritance system was called the primogeniture system and states that the first born son would get all of his father’s fortune. The other sons were forced to find their own fortune as bishops and knights, while women were not allowed to inherit anything. The only exception to this rule is if the father has no other sons or if the wife becomes a widow with no …show more content…
Instead a new theory materialized that oppressed them even more. This theory was called the “Theory of the Four Bodily Humors.” It states that the four bodily liquids are in connection with the mind and body as so: blood=earth=cold; phlegm=air=dry; black bile=fire=hot; and yellow bile=water=wet. If you had an increase in blood, then your body would by too cold. This continues on for the rest of them. Though this theory also says that men are both dry and hot, but women are cold and wet. They concluded that women are irrational because heat travels to the brain, where you are more rational, and women are regarded as cold and wet. Perhaps women are categorized as cold and wet because if you are cold then you have an increase in blood, like a women’s menstrual