 | The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion After the Black Death French argues that medieval laywomen both coped with the chaotic changes following the plague and justified their own changing behavior by participating in local religion. Through active engagement in the parish church, the basic unit of public worship, women promoted and validated their own interests and responsibilities. Katherine L. French is Associate Professor of History, State University of New York, New Paltz. She is the author of The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese, also published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. |
