Fiona Griffiths's Teaching and Research InterestsResearch Interests:
My work to date has focused on the intersection of gender, spirituality, and intellectual engagement, especially as these relate to the education of medieval women within the monastic life. My first book, The ‘Garden of Delights’: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century (The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) explores the involvement of monastic women in the intellectual renaissance and spiritual reform of twelfth-century Europe. The book focuses on the late twelfth-century Hortus deliciarum (Garden of Delights), an illuminated encyclopedia of theology, biblical history, and canon law that was produced at the monastery of Hohenbourg in Alsace by the community’s abbess, Herrad (d. after 1196). I argue that this manuscript, one of the very few medieval Latin works to have been created both by and for women, offers a new vantage point from which to consider the culture of female monasticism during this period: it presents decisive evidence of women’s interest and engagement in the spiritual and intellectual vitality by which the twelfth century is now predominantly defined, but from which scholars have often assumed that women were wholly excluded.
My work on the Hortus forms a central part of my long-term research agenda to reconsider the roles played by religious women, and their relationships with male supporters, within the contexts of medieval religious reform movements. In my second book project, Nuns and Priests: Mutuality and Dependence in the Medieval Monastery, 1050-1250, I focus on the provision of pastoral care (the cura monialium) to professed women by priests, who were often ordained monks. One of the central ironies of the religious life for professed women was their inability, despite their freedom from marriage and childbearing, to be entirely independent of male authority and influence. Since women were barred from the priesthood, they remained reliant on priests to provide them with the sacraments and to act for them in their public capacity—to manage their business, negotiate with secular powers, and witness their charters. While traditional historiographies present the cura as a burden that was resented by priests, I argue that some men were actively drawn to the care of women, which they saw as an integral part of their own spiritual lives. The ways in which these men present and defend their involvement with women, and the ways in which women claim men’s spiritual attention, form the central focus of this project.
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