Status and Social Roles of Women in Central Europe in the Middle Ages

This book presents a comprehensive overview of women's activities in various spheres of life in medieval Poland and its neighbouring countries, seeking to move beyond the commonly accepted perspective of queens and higher nobility from the social elite to rural women, townswomen and poor noblewomen.The authors provide the broadest possible overview of these women's activities, encompassing their domestic, religious, economic, and cultural lives. Women are presented as active characters, not merely as objects of male actions. The limits of this activity were set by a system of norms and values and the resulting power relations within and outside the family. A fundamental problem in the study of women in the Middle Ages is the limited number and type of surviving sources, as well as their chronological and geographical distribution. Their voices are barely audible and almost always mediated. Despite these difficulties, the source material from the medieval period proves abundant enough to allow the contributors to take a broad look at the fate of women and their roles in many aspects and perspectives.This volume will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in the history of women and their significance in medieval society.

About the Author

Beata Możejko is a full Professor at the Faculty of History of the University of Gdańsk. She is the author of over 150 articles and publications and six monographs, including Peter von Danzig: The Story of Great Caravel 1462–1475 (2020) and Studies on Late Medieval Gdańsk (2025).

Aneta Pieniądz is Associate Professor in Medieval History at the University of Warsaw. She is the author of Fraternal Bonds in the Early Middle Ages (2023) among other publications and is currently working on a project devoted to the history of the relationship between bees, forests, and beekeepers in medieval and early modern Poland.

Magdalena Biniaś-Szkopek is Professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, heads the Department of Archivistics, Faculty of History and serves as Director of the Polish Academy of Sciences Kórnik Library. Her publications include Marriage in Medieval Poland (2024) and over 30 scholarly studies on medieval and nineteenth-century Poland.