Have you ever heard about medieval mysticism or medieval heresies? Have you ever wondered about the particular role women played in medieval spirituality? Do Hildegard of Bingen, Clare of Assisi, Marguerite Porete, the Cathar ladies or Isabel de Villena ring a bell? Have you ever felt like you wanted to know more about them? If your answer to any of these questions was yes, then this MOOC, A voice of their own. Women’s spirituality in the Middle ages is what you were looking for.
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A Voice of their own is much more than a course. It is an invitation to follow the paths traced by the spiritual experiences of medieval women. It is a challenge that, should you let it, will take you to places where you will see and hear things that will astonish you. Here you will find medieval women playing a major role in the spiritual transformations of the Middle Ages, founding monastic movements and orders, writing about their experiences, traveling the roads of Europe to spread their ideas, creating spiritual landscapes, as well as both material an intangible architectures. In this MOOC, these women will speak to you from the past, and you'll see that their voices still hold great validity in the present.
Syllabus
WEEK 1
A Voice of their Own: Introduction
In this Unit you will get an idea of all the topics that will be discussed throughout this course and you will start to learn about the many roles women adopted in the spirituality of the Middle Ages.
WEEK 2
The house of the heart: nuns in the Middle Ages
This Unit focuses on the world of medieval nunneries from the Early to the Late Middle Ages. Here you will find the early varied forms of monasticism and also the well-established orders of the end of the medieval period. You will learn about enclosure, about life in nunneries and about the men and women who helped found and support them for their own purposes.
WEEK 3
The Space Within: Female Mysticism in the Middle Ages
WEEK 4
Voices of dissent
WEEK 5
Spiritual landscapes
