Women and the Expression of Virtue in Late Medieval England

Abstract

The notion of virtue lay at the heart of medieval moral and spiritual teaching and provided an important antecedent for public values in the later Middle Ages. At the same time, these values were also informed by the demands of socio-economic incentives such as wealth, status, and reputation, which initially appear to contradict the development of virtue as a rational Christocentric characteristic of late medieval Christian morality. This thesis addresses the role of virtue as a model for pious performance among gentry and noblewomen in late medieval England, and aims to understand, as far as possible, the ways in which the performance of virtue as a conduit for salvational merit was adapted to suit the socio-economic incentives for everyday activity, and how the interplay between the social and the spiritual afforded spiritual legitimacy to those same demands which were otherwise antithetical. To this end, it identifies the virtues of charity, chastity and humility as models for exploration, not only for their emphasis in late medieval socio-spiritual ideology, but for their relevance to the experiences of women in the Middle Ages. In the introduction, the thesis considers the definition of virtue and the flexibility that is apparent in the translation of definition into practice for each of the virtues, drawing on the evidence from conduct literature as the middle ground to support this approach. In chapters 1-3, the virtues of charity, chastity and humility are broken down and applied to examples of late medieval women and their experience in order to demonstrate not only the broad application of these virtues to female activity, but to emphasise the ways in which women might fashion their own approach to each. In chapter 4, the virtues are applied to three independent case studies in order to explore the ways in which they were manifest across the lives in individual women, and how each woman was able to engage in self-fashioning through her interpretation and performance of the virtues. What will become abundantly clear is that there were plenty of opportunities for women to engage with the virtues in a way that was often specific to their circumstances, and to mould them to suit a combined socio-spiritual incentive which strengthened and legitimised the virtues of charity, chastity and humility and their socio-economic informants. Over its course, the thesis will propose several avenues for exploration which would open up new opportunities for exploring thought and practice among late medieval gentry and noblewomen, as well as the nuances of socio-spiritual culture in the later Middle Ages.
 

Date of Award	21 Nov 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Bangor University
Supervisor	Mark Hagger (Supervisor) & Sue Niebrzydowski (Supervisor)