Women and Authority: Truth and Testimony in Late Medieval English Courts
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Jennifer McNabb
Organizer Affiliation
Western Illinois Univ.
Presider Name
Karl Shoemaker
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
Paper Title 1
Witness Testimony and the Ecclesiastical and Municipal Regulation of Midwifery in the Late Middle Ages
Presenter 1 Name
Ginger L. Smoak
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of Utah
Paper Title 2
"That Right May Take Place": Female Witnesses and Their Stories in Late Medieval English Church Courts
Presenter 2 Name
Jennifer McNabb
Paper Title 3
Marking the Woman a Sinner: Testimony and Legal Fiction in Renaissance England
Presenter 3 Name
Lesley Skousen
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
Start Date
9-5-2013 10:00 AM
Session Location
Valley III 303
Description
England during the late medieval period was home to a vast network of civil and religious courts that both disciplined those who violated the peace and stability of the social and political order and acted as a forum for the settlement of personal disputes over issues involving marriage, public insult, property, theft, and violence. Papers in this session would take as their focus notions of "truth" and "testimony" as historical and historicized categories; while on the surface, the concepts seem to be objective and abstract, truth, as recounted before and constructed within late medieval courts, was subjective and subject to modification, manipulation, and transformation, both by those who gave testimony and those who heard it. Medieval evidence indicates the ways in which female litigants and witnesses presented both a challenge to and a reinforcement of structures of authority. Their words and actions served to destabilize ideas about evidence and authority.
-Jennifer McNabb
Women and Authority: Truth and Testimony in Late Medieval English Courts
Valley III 303
England during the late medieval period was home to a vast network of civil and religious courts that both disciplined those who violated the peace and stability of the social and political order and acted as a forum for the settlement of personal disputes over issues involving marriage, public insult, property, theft, and violence. Papers in this session would take as their focus notions of "truth" and "testimony" as historical and historicized categories; while on the surface, the concepts seem to be objective and abstract, truth, as recounted before and constructed within late medieval courts, was subjective and subject to modification, manipulation, and transformation, both by those who gave testimony and those who heard it. Medieval evidence indicates the ways in which female litigants and witnesses presented both a challenge to and a reinforcement of structures of authority. Their words and actions served to destabilize ideas about evidence and authority.
-Jennifer McNabb