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“sche hungryd ryth sor aftyr G oddys word”: Female Piety and the Legacy of the Pastoral Programme in the Late Medieval English Sermons of Bodleian Library MS Greaves 54
Author(s) -
Barr Beth Allison
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of religious history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1467-9809
pISSN - 0022-4227
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9809.12140
Subject(s) - piety , fifteenth , narrative , filial piety , middle ages , history , gender studies , sociology , literature , theology , classics , religious studies , art , ancient history , philosophy
The pastoral programme guiding the content of most Middle E nglish sermons had a gendered side effect: it encouraged treating female parishioners as individual souls rather than emphasising the subordinate status of women. A close study of B odleian L ibrary MS G reaves 54, a fifteenth‐century pastoral manual containing two sequences of Middle E nglish sermons, shows how these sermons reached out to women through gender‐inclusive language, pastoral directives that regarded women as distinct from men, and didactic narratives that both encouraged female participation in devotional activities as well as highlighting women as exemplars for all C hristians. Thus G reaves 54 models how Middle E nglish sermons could have appealed to ordinary women and affected their piety, even to the extent of encouraging the extreme devotional behaviour of M argery K empe.