Book Review: FEMINA - A NEW HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES, THROUGH THE WOMEN WRITTEN OUT OF IT by Janina Ramírez

Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It by Janina Ramírez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Controlling access to the past controls populations in the present, and determining who writes history can affect thought and behavior."

Yesterday, a friend shared a travel photo that sent chills up and down my spine: She was up close with the Bebelplatz plaque in Berlin, commemorating the Nazi burning of books, some years before they starting burning bodies of those they murdered in concentration camps.

It had a quote from Heinrich Heine: "That was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also."

What easier way to change history than by erasing it through fire?

But Janina Ramirez's book title features another way: crossing them out or erasing them, with the remark "femina" written by a masculine hand on the margin. This outrage was done some centuries later, with misogynistic notions not reflective of the times these remarkable women lived in... Wiping out a fellow human's lifetime of work in the process.

Ramirez tells the stories of those who were lucky enough, and important enough, to escape this selective re-telling. This is "herstory" through and through, and it's rather remarkable to read a popular history book fresh off the press, to see dates as recent as 2021 already in the books: a timely reminder that we are living history even now.

Ramirez is a medievalist, and she tells stories from this incredible period, subverting this reader's mistaken notions that all women were oppressed (some were, but a lot weren't) during these dark ages. I was delighted to see Hildegard of Bingen included, as she was my chosen confirmation saint, as well as Jadwiga of Poland, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe, among other lesser known but no less incredible women! They wielded worldly power, both political and material, as well as social influence. Ramirez also pointed out how a lot of the suffragists were either medievalists themselves or drew heavy inspiration from the Middle Ages.

This book was meant for popular reading, with simple and concise language. Don't be put off by the length, because around 1/4 of the book is made up of endnotes and a bibliography. Ramirez meant this book to be a mere introduction, and she exhorts the reader at the end:

"Scrutinize how you have been taught, ask questions about what stories you're not hearing," for "it is our responsibility to think about how we want it (history) recorded and remembered."

We all have stories. Who are we allowing to tell ours?

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