The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages

"Did women really constitute a 'fourth estate' in medieval society, and, if so, in what sense? In this wide-ranging study Shulamith Shahar considers this and the whole question of varying attitudes to women and their status in Western Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. She draws a cohesive picture of women in a range of situations: nuns and married women, peasants and noblewomen, townswomen and women involved in heretical movements and witchcraft." "The Fourth Estate has become a classic in the area of women in the Middle Ages. In her new preface, Shahar revisits the context in which The Hour Estate was first conceived and looks at new developments in medieval women's history since the first edition."--BOOK JACKET.