WISDOM · Women in the Domain of Ritual: a comparative analysis of early Medieval Irish, Lombard, and Frankish law texts

WISDOM analyses the socio-legal roles attributed to women in three regions of early medieval Europe: Ireland, Francia, and Lombardy from c. 500 to 800 CE. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the legal texts written in Latin and Old Irish, by combining critical historical analysis, comparative legal history, anthropology and gender studies. This allows me to mediate between law and social norm in a time where those boundaries are more fluent than nowadays. Its primary objective is to unravel the underlying social values and role attributions governing women's legal agency. This will be done first on an individual basis due to the varying social, linguistic and historical background of each region, and subsequently with a comparative approach drawing out cross-cultural tenets that bind together women's lives and legal thinking in the early middle ages. WISDOM addresses a vital area of research from an innovative vantage-point of sources and methodological approaches. As a result, it will provide a novel comparative framework to specialists in legal history, gender history and early medieval studies. This is timely and relevant, because it links to the evolution of legal thinking and generates new knowledge and interdisciplinary insights into women's experiences, unearthing forgotten narratives from the middle ages that offer lessons for the present.