Household, Women, and Christianities: in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

From its earliest beginnings in the homes of its members, the church has been the ‘house’ of God, and the episcopal and monastic institutions in which many of God’s professed servants and officials dwell have been seen as religious ‘houses’. The church’s history is accordingly the history of an institution largely conceived of as a household. In recent years, secular life and lifestyles in late antiquity and the Middle Ages have been illuminated through renewed attention to the economic and social history of households, while scholarship on women has produced studies of the lives and the devotional reading of laywomen and women religious. This volume is a pioneering collection that unites study of the household with women’s religious practices as a focus of enquiry. It moves beyond consideration of the church’s roles in women’s history to the impact of women’s householding on the history of the church.