Janina Ramirez - Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It

Beautifully written, wonderfully free-ranging and gloriously original, Femina makes us look into the mists of history in new, exciting and provocative ways. A joyous read

Peter Frankopan, bestselling author of The Silk Roads

Janina Ramirez is a born storyteller, and in Femina she is at the peak of her powers. This is bravura narrative history underpinned by passionate advocacy for the women whom medieval history has too often ignored or overlooked. Femina is essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Middle Ages and its place in the modern mind

Dan Jones, bestselling author of The Plantagenets and Powers and Thrones

The women of the Middle Ages, so often silent and inconspicuous in our histories, find voice, agency and justice in this brilliant book

Alice Roberts, bestselling author of Ancestors: A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burialss

Femina is an important addition to our understanding of a period still mistakenly thought to have excluded women from positions of power and significance. Femina skillfully brings out from the shadows the lives of women who ruled, fought, traded, created, and inspired

Cat Jarman, bestselling author of River Kings: A New History of Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads

Spellbinding, passionate, gripping and magnificently fresh in tone, boldly wide in range, elegantly written, deeply researched, Femina is a ground-breaking history of Middle Ages. It brings the world to life with women at its very heart, centre stage where they belong. What a delight

Simon Sebag Montefiore, bestselling author of Jerusalem: The Biography

This is a passionate, energetic, hugely enjoyable and brilliantly observed book. Both a plea for a new way of thinking about history and a commitment to putting womens lives back at the heart of things, I read it in one sitting. Magnificent

Kate Mosse, bestselling author of Labyrinth

Janina Ramirez is a passionate voice for women in history. With this bold and masterful book, she salvages womens stories from the dark corners into which they have been pushed, and brilliantly restores them to the centre of the historical narrative where they have always belonged

Hallie Rubenhold, bestselling author of The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

A compelling and breathtaking account of the women whose stories have been lost, ignored, or silenced in history. As important as it is remarkable

Susie Dent, bestselling author of Word Perfect

Passionate, provocative and brilliant, this book is a firecracker somehow captured between two covers

Lucy Worsley, author of Jane Austen at Home

Challenging, inclusive and riveting, Janina Ramirezs book is breaking new grounds. This is a history as youve never read before. A unique page turner

Olivette Otele, author of African Europeans: An Untold History

Inventive, informative, surprising this book is a revelation! Seeing so many remarkable women creating so much powerful history rewrites our entire sense of the medieval past

Waldemar Januszczak, Chief Art Critic, Sunday Times

As both writer and broadcaster, Dr Janina Ramirez radiates tremendous passion for her subject. To spend time in her company is to soon find yourself intoxicated by the vast drama of human history, with all its far-off wonders, frustrating mysteries, and tantalising echoes that still resonate in our modern world

Greg Jenner, author of Ask a Historian and Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity

Gripping, incisive, brilliant, Janina Ramirez opens a door into hidden worlds, the secrets of womens lives. She is a detective and guide on this, an eye-opening, wonderful journey into the power, beauty and reality of early womens experiences

Kate Williams, author of Englands Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton

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Ebury is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published in the United Kingdom by WH Allen in 2022

Copyright Janina Ramirez, 2022
Maps Helen Stirling, 2022

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover Design Andrew Smith

ISBN: 978-0-753-55827-0

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

To the women lost to time, those that look for them,

and those who told me about them

For D, K and K

I am the fiery life of divine substance, I blaze above the beauty of the fields, I shine in the waters, I burn in sun, moon and stars.

Hildegard of Bingen

This book comes with no apology. I am not here to convince you that it is high time we put women back at the centre of history. Many have done this before me. Im also not here to draw a dividing line between male and female, to stress the importance of each in opposition to the other. Instead, I want to show you that there are so many more ways to approach history now. Far from being unrecoverable, developments in archaeology, advancements in technology and an openness to new angles have made medieval women ripe for rediscovery.

I am not rewriting history. Im using the same facts, figures, events and evidence as weve always had access to, combined with recent advances and discoveries. The difference is that Im shifting the focus. The frame is now on female rather than male characters. Both perform in the narratives, and we can only truly understand one in relation to the other. This book is about individuals, rich in their complexity and fascinating in their variety. It is also about societies groups of individuals working together and against one another, alongside a backdrop of shifting politics, economics, beliefs and power. Approaching the past through womens lives and stories offers a unique prism through which to find new and overlooked perspectives.

Women have always made up roughly half the global population. Why then should they not inform the way we perceive the past? We know so much about the rich and powerful few, but what about the poor and impoverished many? The very old and the very young are often ignored too. Disabilities are not a modern phenomenon, and neither are issues surrounding sexuality and gender. Yet we read so little about these areas in history books. Great progress has been made to understand the historical aspects of race and immigration recently, but there is still a long way to go. The medieval world was fluid, cosmopolitan, mobile and outward-looking. Every major city would have been full of individuals of different skin colours, ages, backgrounds, religions and heritage. Lets put them back into the history books too.