Christianity requires its followers to submit their lives to the will of God. So why would women of the twelfth century willingly choose to leave their patriarchal homes, where the expectation was to be submissive, only to be submissive to a ‘higher power’? The early church did not view women’s bodies as objects with traditional gender-defined purposes, but as instruments to carry forth the word of God. Christianity still objectified women, however, Christianity also gave agency equal to that of men in the church. When we view the traditional roles of medieval women, we understand why Christianity was such a coveted ideology. Women such as Christina of Markyate chose to suffer through years of hardship to break from the patriarchal bonds of
