Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ was hand-copied so often that over 700 manuscripts exist today.In the back of the only known manuscript is a recipe that involves sugar, aniseed, fennel seed, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger, possibly a cure for her “flux” (dysentery). 1438) dictated the first autobiography in English to her son. Julian of Norwich wrote Showings, the first book in English by a woman, around 1395.The first known morality play, a popular form of drama, came from twelfth-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen and starred a soul and the devil.Also Germany’s first female poet and historian, she adapted pagan Roman tales into Christian stories with moral heroines.

Hrotsvita of Gandersheim (935–1002) wrote Europe’s first dramas in centuries.They appointed the priest, had him ordained, and paid him. Laypeople often brought their offerings to church in material form: bread at Communion wax, candles, and eggs at Easter fowls at Christmas.Įven though medieval thought viewed women as naturally passive, as literacy spread female creativity flowered: Wealthy laymen, monasteries, or bishops owned many medieval churches.By the 1200s virtually all Christians lived in a geographically defined parish-an area of land where the priest was responsible for the spiritual welfare of everyone there.But in the twelfth century, renewal winds began to blow. We often think of the Middle Ages as a dry, dead millennium-sandwiched between the enthusiastic piety of the early church and Reformation renewal, and characterized by illiterate priests and poverty-stricken people with little access to the Scriptures.

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