Women on the Fringes: Heretics and Witches

A Dialogue with Prof. Matteo Duni, NYU Florence.

“Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve”. Saint Paul, the most influential figure of Christianity after Christ, was talking to an early Church in which women were actually prominent and vocal. The history of the following centuries is a tale of progressive exclusion, as a male leadership gains control of the hierarchy and shapes theology, depriving females of any say in the Church and portraying them as weak and (contradictorily) dangerous. Pushed to the margins, however, women do not entirely lose their voice. In the outgroups which proliferate in the late Middle Ages – some openly heretical, others just independent from clerical supervision – women find new opportunities to offer a different vision of religion. Around this same time, the image of the witch as the female, ultimate heretic starts taking shape. This talk will focus on some particularly significant moments in this millennium-long process, and examine a few cases of women who, from their fringe positions, seemed to pose a threat to the centers of religious and political power.

Picturing Women series