I haven’t previously felt there were enough specifically women’s history blogs around to make that a category in my blogroll, but I’m starting to think that it is time for a re-arrangement, having just found two new must-reads, both by women well known as writers.

Mary Beard, the Cambridge classicist and author of many books on Ancient Rome is blogging at The Times. Unlike so many people coming to blogging when already well known for other things, she really gets the medium and the message – there’s some great stuff there, everything from an assertion, based on some actual evidence (unlike so much written on this subject), that students a century go were not in fact any more skilled than those of today, to a very honest account of her “take”, not very large, from the public lending right.

Staying on the ancient side, the great queen Zenobia now has a blog, through the hand of Judith Weingarten, author of The Chronical of Zenobia, which I’ve reviewed. In progress now, a series of profiles of the “four Julias”, some of Rome’s most powerful women, and contemporaries of Zenobia.

In the tenth century, roughly contemporary with some very powerful women in the Byzantine world, there were powerful women in Rome. The period is oh so delightfully known as the “pornocracy”, or the rule of the harlots.

“… two generations of aristocratic women managed to make or break the careers of several popes, some of whom they reportedly also bedded. The first of these women was Theodora (died ca. 926), who along with her husband, the Roman senator Theophylact (died ca. 920), led the dominant aristocratic faction in Rome and advanced several men to the papcy, including John X (reigning 914-28), her alleged lover, and Sergius III (reigning 904-11), who reportedly fathered a son with her teenaged daughter Marozia (ca. 892- ca.937). Later, assuming powers that her parents had exercised, Marozia orchestrated the deposing of John X and, after a brief interval, the elevation of her son John XI (reigning 931-36) to the papacy.”

From C.M. Rustici, The Afterlife of Pope Joan: Deploying the Popess Legend in Early Modern England Uni of Michigan Press, 2006, p. 2.

It follows what seems to be the generally accepted historical line, that Pope Joan didn’t actually exist, but arose as anti-papal satire or slander. One suggestion is that the “pornocracy” was at least part of the inspiration.

Rustici also suggests that it arose in the 12th and 13th century, when women were making “unprecedented demands” for participation in religious life.

“male orders such as the Premonstratensian canons and the Cistercian monks quickly felt overwhelmed by the number of nunneries that sought to affiliate with their foundations. … While the order had ignored them, Cistercian convents had developed extraordinarily autonomous practices. In 1210 Pope Innocent III noted with dismay that abbesses bestowed blessings, heard their nuns’ confessions, and preached from pulpits. Canon lawyers such as Bernard of Parlma found it necessary to argue that regardless of past practices women could not teach or preach, handle sacred vessels, or grant absolution. Women, however, resisted attempts to impose such restrictions. In 1243, for example, when the Cistercian abbess and sisters of Parc-Aux Dames learned of plans to curb their liberties, they shouted at official visitors and walked out of their chapter house in protest.” (p. 11)

There was also in the 13th and 14th century the beguine movement, communities of single women that “sought neither patrons nor papal authoization and functioned withour irreversible vows, a definite “rule” or disciplinary code … or a complex or hierarchical organisation”. … One bishop, Bruno of Olmutz, challenged the beguines apparent piety as a pretense for evading subjection to priest or husband”. (p.12)

Yes, it is in some ways anachronistic to describe all of this as feminist, yet in a broader sense it is not in the slightest bit anachronistic – women have always been fighting for autonomy and self-determination.

We’ve lost their words, and are highly unlikely to be able to recover them, but we can at least remember their names:

Megalostrata, who is described by Alcman as “a golden-haired maiden enjoying the gift of the Muses”. He was reportedly madly in love with her, and she also reportedly had several other lovers attracted by her conversation. (Which might be taken as part of an eroticising tradition rather than fact – I suspect you didn’t mess with Spartan maidens.)

Cleitagora, whose name is used to identify a skolion (drinking song). She’s mentioned in Aristophanes’ Wasps and Lysistrata. (“Of all Greek women, Spartans alone drank wine not only at festivals but also as part of their daily fare.”)

They were roughly contemporaries of Sappho.

Among other notable Spartan women were the philosopher Chilonis, whose father Chilon was a follower of Pythagoras. (Of Pythagoras’s 235 disciples named by Iamblichus, 17 or 18 are female.

Cynisca was the first female star of the Olympics, her four-horse chariot, quadriga, winning in 396 and 392. Her name may be a nickname for a “tomboy”, and the names of her mother, Eupolia (“well horsed”) and her sister Proauga (“flash of lightning”) suggest a family interest.

Other Spartan women soon followed her lead, among them Euryleonis, who won the two-horse chariot race in 368.

(From Spartan Women, Sarah B. Pomeroy, OUP, 2002.)

It is interesting that down through the centuries Athens has been celebrated as the founder of “democracy” and Sparta reviled in the comparison, but if you were born female, there’s no doubt where you would want it to be in ancient Greece. You got to run around, ride horses, often become a heiress (all those soldiers getting killed off), and a great deal of general freedom in Sparta. (Well at least if you were a “proper” Spartan, not a helot.) In Athens, you got locked up in the house, and that was that.

Queen Elizabeth … a studious intellectual who would spend three hours a day reading history books if she could … she could also spit and swear ’round, mouth-filling oaths’ as was the habit of most great ladies of the age. Cecil once spirited away a book presented to the Queen by a Puritan, Mr Fuller, in which ‘Her Gracious Majesty’ was censured for sreading ‘sometimes by that abdominable idol, the mass, and often and grievously by God and by Christ, and by many parts of His glorified body, or by saints, faith and other forbidden things, and by Your Majesty’s evil example and sufferencance, the most part of your subjects do commonly swear and blaspheme…”

Yeah, go Liz!

So what happened? As so often, Cecil fixed things… “Elizabeth demanded to see the book, but with the connivance of one of her ladies it had fortunately been ‘lost’.”

Possibly very luckily for Mr Fuller…

(From Elizabeth the Queen, by Alison Weir, Jonathan Cape, London 1998, p. 229)

A study of 19th-century figures in Utah has found that the more children you have, the earlier on average you’ll die. This effect applies not just to mothers (which you might expect given the physical toll of pregnancy and breastfeeding), but also to fathers.

The researchers add the findings also suggest why women now tend to have fewer children.
“If women have generally incurred greater fitness costs of reproduction, this could explain why they generally prefer fewer offspring than their husbands and reduce their fertility when they obtain more reproductive autonomy.”

Note: I think the date in the BBC intro is meant to the 1885, not 1985, reading the rest of the story.