take up his lifestyle. 137 She took the Christian celibate state to be of higher importance than her marriage, placing religion over family. 138 In Christina’s case, her life allowed her to pursue her religion and contribute to the wider changes that were occurring in her lifetime through her new branding of female piety. 139 However, she also represents the key element of restriction upon women, her choice imposed on her through lack of another option. 140 Despite her influence and reputation she only was able to exert this through the favour she obtained at the behest of men. 141 Christina remains an interesting figure in which one may
use to observe changes in the twelfth century but the continuation of her female
subordination amongst the changes is still apparent.
The major and undeniable change of the period which impacted the
opportunities of women, was the intense proliferation of monastic houses set in motion by the reforming new standards of behaviour. 142 The return to primitive Christianity produced new influential orders such as the Cistercians, a backlash to the wealth of the Benedictine orders. 143 For women, this diverse range of new houses presented more opportunity for them to enter religious life and devote themselves to God in different devotional styles. 144 The evidence of women
camping outside religious houses to be admitted, indicates the scale of the
desire to follow the life they wished, as does the Cistercian imitation convents that developed in response to their rejection of women. 145 The expanse of
monasticism over the twelfth century, and its culmination in the Cistercian
137 Holdsworth, p. 185 138 David Herlihy, Women, Family and Society in Medieval Europe (Providence, Berghahn Books, 1994), p. 173. 139 Leyser, p. 201. 140 Leyser, p. 197. 141 For the spiritual value and guidance she provided for Geoffrey of St Albans see, Leyser, p. 190. 142 Holdsworth, p. 204. 143 A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World , p. 183-4. See also Green, p. 394. See also Green, p. 402-3. 144 Leyser, p. 191. 145 Green, p. 387. Sally Thompson, ‘The Problem of the Cistercian nuns in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’ in Medieval Women , ed. by Derek Baker and Rosalind M. T. Hill (Oxford: Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1978), pp. 227-252 (p. 232).
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