Women of the Middle Ages: An Interview with Historian Luke Daly
- 15 April 2026
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- 9 Min Read
Editorial Introduction
For too long, the story of medieval women has been told from the margins — glimpsed in charters signed by queens, letters penned by abbesses, or miracles attributed to saints. Luke Daly’s Women of the Middle Ages: A Window into the World of Medieval Women (Pen & Sword History, 2026) sets out to correct that imbalance, moving beyond the celebrated figures of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Empress Theodora to recover the voices of those who ploughed, brewed, healed, and traded at every level of medieval society.
Drawing on manorial records, court depositions, miracle collections, and penitential literature, Daly constructs a richly textured portrait of womanhood across a diverse medieval world — one shaped as much by geography, law, and local custom as by theology and royal decree. From the alewives of England’s urban taverns to the abbesses who governed spiritual communities, from the women of Scandinavia navigating different legal traditions to the mothers and midwives who faced the profound risks of childbirth, the book insists that there was never a single medieval woman’s experience.
We sat down with Luke Daly to discuss the motivations behind the book, the challenges of writing women’s history from fragmentary sources, and what readers today might most usefully unlearn about the Middle Ages.
The Interview
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Luke Daly: One of the great frustrations of medieval history is that the archive is so often tilted towards the exceptional. Queens leave charters, abbesses leave letters, and saints leave miracles, and so the temptation is always to write a history of the extraordinary. Yet the Middle Ages were not lived only in palaces and cloisters. It was lived in kitchens, in fields, in workshops, and on roads thick with mud and commerce.
What first drew me to the subject was precisely that imbalance. When one begins to read account rolls, manorial records, miracle collections, court depositions, and the stray references scattered through sermons or penitentials, a far larger world begins to emerge: women brewing ale, managing households, tending animals, travelling as pilgrims or traders, nursing the sick, and negotiating the relentless practicalities of daily life.
What I most wanted readers to rethink is the idea that medieval women existed only in silence or subordination. They certainly lived within a society that prescribed legal, theological, and social limits, but within those limits they worked, bargained, organised, travelled, and endured. The Middle Ages were not populated solely by the Eleanors and Matildas of the world. It was sustained by women who ploughed, milled, healed, prayed, and very often kept the fabric of society running.
Luke Daly: Medieval theologians, physicians, and moralists were rarely shy about explaining what women were, what they ought to be, and what dangers they supposedly posed to the moral order. We find a chorus of voices insisting that biology dictated destiny, that women were weaker in body and therefore in mind, and that their proper sphere was strictly defined.
Yet when we turn from these prescriptions to the documentary record of everyday life, the picture becomes far more complicated. Women appear to be litigating in courts, managing businesses, travelling considerable distances, holding property, negotiating contracts, or directing households with remarkable authority.
In writing the book, I tried to let these two worlds sit beside one another rather than forcing them into a tidy reconciliation. Medieval ideology tells us what people believed (or at least what they claimed to believe) about gender. The archive tells us how life actually unfolded. The tension between the two is not a contradiction so much as a reminder that societies rarely behave exactly as their theorists imagine.
Luke Daly: Very much so. When one first approaches medieval women through the lens of political or ecclesiastical history, it is easy to assume that the most visible forms of agency lie among queens, noblewomen, or celebrated mystics. They certainly mattered, and their stories are fascinating.
But the deeper we go into the economic record, the clearer it becomes that the everyday economy was saturated with female activity. Alewives brewed and sold drink that was essential to urban life. Servants ran households that could scarcely function without them. Women appear in market records selling cloth, foodstuffs, or small manufactured goods. They travelled as traders, managed inns, worked as craftswomen, and participated in the rhythms of local economies in ways that are both persistent and surprisingly visible.
What changed my perspective was the realisation that agency was not confined to the spectacular. It existed quietly in thousands of small decisions: running a brewhouse, managing a shop, negotiating wages, or keeping a household afloat in difficult times. In many ways, the economic sphere reveals women’s presence most clearly precisely because daily survival depended upon it.
Luke Daly: It was certainly one of the more sobering sections to write. Pregnancy was shadowed by the possibility of death for mother or child, and the emotional, physical, and spiritual stakes were immense.
What makes the subject particularly challenging is that medieval people did not view childbirth purely as a medical event. It was also theological and moral. Pain in labour was interpreted through the lens of the Fall; fertility was associated with divine blessing; miscarriage or infant death could provoke searching questions about sin, providence, or divine judgement. Even caesareans were wrapped up in moralistic and theological opinions.
Modern readers sometimes imagine that medieval women were passive in the face of these dangers, but the sources suggest otherwise. Midwives possessed practical knowledge and were often highly respected within their communities. Women drew upon networks of support from female relatives, neighbours, midwives, and female saints to navigate pregnancy and childbirth. It was a world shaped by fear and uncertainty but also by experience, skill, and solidarity.
Luke Daly: It seemed essential. One of the persistent myths about the Middle Ages is that it was culturally uniform, as though the entire period shared a single social model neatly wrapped as ‘feudalism’. In reality, the medieval world was remarkably diverse.
By stepping beyond the Latin Christian sphere to Scandinavia, for instance, or to regions where different legal traditions or cultural assumptions prevailed, we begin to see how varied the experience of womanhood could be. Laws governing property, marriage, or inheritance differed. Cultural expectations about work, mobility, and authority could also shift in subtle but significant ways.
Looking comparatively helped reinforce the central point of the book: that there was never one single medieval woman’s experience. Instead, there were many overlapping worlds, shaped by geography, law, religion, and local custom. The result is a far richer and more human picture of the medieval past and one in which women appear not as a single category but as individuals navigating the particular circumstances of their lives.
About the Author
Luke Daly is a medieval historian of the 12th and 13th centuries, with a particular focus on English monasticism. Holding a bachelor’s degree and a distinction master’s degree in medieval history from the University of East Anglia, he is undertaking research into the financial records of Canterbury Cathedral to shed new light on Christian monastic life in England between 1200 and 1300. His work has attracted the attention of the Pipe Roll Society, which has agreed to publish his findings upon completion.
He is also a prolific author, best known for Women of the Middle Ages and Medieval Saints and their Sins, alongside other titles including Medieval Latin: A Beginner’s Self-Taught Guide (self-published in November 2021 via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing). In 2025, he was listed in BBC HistoryExtra’s “30 Under 30” for his work in the field. Beyond print, Daly hosts The Daly Medieval Podcast, available on platforms including YouTube and Spotify, where he shares historical narratives and interviews historians, authors, and other specialists.
Book Discussed in This Interview
Women of the Middle Ages: A Window into the Lives of Medieval Women
by Luke Daly
In Women of the Middle Ages: A Window into the World of Medieval Women, historian and author Luke Daly turns away from the familiar focus on queens and saints to recover the lives of ordinary women who sustained medieval society. Drawing on a wide range of sources—from manorial records to theological texts—the book explores how women worked, traded, worshipped, and navigated the constraints of a world shaped by deeply ingrained ideas about gender. Rather than presenting a single narrative, Daly reveals a complex and varied landscape in which women appear not as passive figures but as active participants in the economic, social, and spiritual life of the Middle Ages.
Interview conducted by Luciano Anastasi for HistoryMedieval.
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Luciano Anastasi
Luciano is the founder of the MedievalHistory platform and the LinkedIn History Enthusiasts Group, where he is dedicated to curating and sharing high-quality medieval history content. His goal is to engage scholars, teachers, students, and enthusiasts by fostering insightful discussions and promoting scholarly resources on topics from medieval warfare and religion to societal transformations and daily life in the Middle Ages.
Luciano is also an active book reviewer, focusing on academic publications related to medieval history. He recently collaborated with Yale University Press to review forthcoming medieval history titles, aiming to deepen educators' and researchers' understanding of the period. Alongside his history endeavors, he has over 40 years of experience in IT leadership roles across various industries, including the public sector, banking, insurance, airlines and consulting, and has contributed to United Nations projects.
With a Master of Arts in Business Process Management, Luciano combines his expertise in IT strategy and governance with his passion for medieval history. He leverages technology to bridge the academic community and the wider public, making historical scholarship more accessible through engaging online content.
