The first thing that came to mind when I picked up this book is that this book should not be categorised as a ‘history’ book. Rather, we should call it ‘herstory’ since it highlights the unheard voices of women during the medieval period in Europe. The medieval period is often seen as a period heavily influenced by the clergy, with religions taking a central role in people’s daily lives as well as the men who took a central position on it. In attempting to voice the lives of the women from the medieval period, both extraordinary and ordinary, Janina Ramirez utilises a new approach in her discourses, namely relying on alternative interpretations based on recent findings in the fields of archaeology, newly available archives, as well as the writings written by the women themselves.

Femina is a reassessment of the medieval period, particularly in the role of women in unheard roles, notably in science, governance, clergy and cultural developments. But apart from that, Janina does not only talk about women, but also about the ‘now and then’ situation. Supported by recent findings, we could see that queerness and heretics did exist in the past, and that history contains the other sides of official narratives. An example of this would be the Cathars who practiced a Christian dualist movement in the 12th century southern France and was considered heretics by their contemporaries. Yet we could find among their practices which encourage women empowerment, i.e. through abstaining from sexual intercourse and meat, which encourage the women to not be constrained by their traditional roles as they were less likely to die from childbirth and could have the luxury to pursue other vocations in their lives.

Some women who are described in this book are quite popular in their native countries and countless scholarly research are already written about them. For example, Jadwiga who married Jagiełło in the Union of Krevo that established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is widely celebrated in Poland, especially during the era of the partition of Poland by the neighbouring Russia, Austria and Prussia in the 19th century, as she was seen as a symbol of Poland’s enduring history. Yet Janina’s research adds more values to Jadwiga’s role in Poland, particularly when compared with her husband Jagiełło in terms of their contribution in negotiating Poland’s position in the medieval Europe and the establishment of the first university in Poland, i.e. Jagiellonian University in Kraków, which was named after Jagiełło even though it was established by Jadwiga.

Janina’s research shows that history is not static, new findings could change the way we view the past. And it also highlights our collective responsibility to negotiate on how we want the future generation view our timeline in the course of history. But first, we need to reassess history to gain more objective views about those written out of it, i.e. women, queer, working class people. It’s an interesting book, but I think the discourses are too focused on the women in the medieval Europe and shows lack of representation of women from other parts of the world.

Femina authored by Janina Ramirez is a fascinating, approachable read for anyone interested in the Middle Ages. The focus is on women who have been written out of history but by no means is it solely about the fairer sex. There is great detail on influential men of the time, too, and how they helped and, sometimes, hindered these women so don't be put off if you worry this will be raging feminist in tone. It is not. Femina is balanced and, as I said above, approachable and conversational. A delight to tuck into.

The ability to paint a vivid picture of time and place puts this book in an enviable position. Janina Ramirez excels with this immersive text. Each section gives the low down on the political and religious conditions of the time as well as a glimpse into the everyday regional happenings. It feels very much like stepping out of a time machine into the distant past, so far removed from a dusty old historical tome.

The women highlighted in Femina are of great significance. Alfred the Great's daughter AEthelflaed, Hildegard, Jadwiga, Cathar women and the weavers of the Bayeux Tapestry all enjoy fruitful investigation from our intrepid author. Such a diversity of characters all worthy of deeper research with enlightening stories for modern readers. For me the least interesting was the chapter on Margery Kempe's self published book of her life, from the 1400s. Nothing against Margery, but maybe it's the fact that she's a bit of a busybody full of her own self-importance that put me off? Maybe it's because we all know someone like Margery and they aren't the people you tend to form strong attachments to? It matters not as her story has value, too, being such a rare account of life from this period. She would have been tickled pink to be included amongst this set of powerful and incredible women, I have no doubt.

The middle ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, Saints and Kings: a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But by digging a little deeper into the truth, drawing on evidence from all disciplines, we can see that the 'dark' ages were anything but. BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women's names struck out of historical records, with the word FEMINA annotated beside them. Male gatekeepers of the past ordered books to be burnt, artworks to be destroyed, and new versions of myths, legends and historical documents to be produced, which has manipulated our view of history.

By weaving a vivid and evocative picture of the lives of the women who influenced their society, we discover not just why these remarkable individuals were removed from our collective memories, but also how many other misconceptions underpin our historical narratives, altering the course of history, upholding the oppressive masculine structures of their present, and affecting our contemporary view of the past. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fantastic. Well-written full of facts and historical content. Recommended..

I was lucky enough to get a Netgalley copy of Femina by @drjaninaramirez and I've just finished it (as timing goes, I read it straight after a novel of Joan of Arc!) It's such an amazing book, taking the reader through the Middle Ages, one theme at a time. I found myself looking up the women mentioned, buying copies of their books and in the case of Hildegard of Bingen, listening to music she'd written. It's amazing how these remarkable women can still speak to us almost a millennium later. I also liked how Dr Ramirez allowed us to challenge our traditional thinking about history- such as assuming all burials with weapons are men- and how we look back at our past as we reckon with our present and where we go in the future.

I like Janina Ramirez as a tv presenter as she’s always so enthusiastic about her subject,so,I was pleased to discover that she’s just as enthusiastic as an author.It’s a fascinating study of medieval women, some better known than others ,but extensively researched and clearly presented in language that makes it accessible to everyone .Each chapter begins with a modern day discovery that links to the person who’s the subject ,which I found extremely interesting.It’s well illustrated,although my ancient Kindle didn’t do justice to the images as it didn’t show colour.I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it highly.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in return for an honest review which reflects my own opinion.

Femina is a fascinating and insightful look into a medieval women who have been largely written out of history (the authors words) I loved how Ramirez pieces their stories together through the artefacts and brief mentions in history texts that remain, but still manages to create a clear and vivid picture. I found it’s tone to be a perfect balance between academic/educational and still being light/readable to your general reader who may not be a historian. It is well researched and many of the women featured I knew little about and it was a delight to read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for in exchange for an honest opinion

This was a really interesting collection of essays, focusing on the lives of women from the early Saxon period to the fourteenth century. The aim is to reconsider both the lives of these women, but also the social norms and attitudes in the times and places in which they lived. On the whole it's quite successful, setting out recent discoveries and research before looking at the women's lives and assessing what we now know against previous assumptions. Most of it is fascinating reading and I learned a great deal about women's roles within those societies, diversity and identity etc. Not all the chapters are as successful as others, while in most I got a really good feel for both the woman being re-evaluated and the wider context, there were a couple that didn't quite work for me. Overall, however, this was very readable and I found several things I really want to know more about. Very enjoyable.

I've read a few new takes on history this year - from The Dark Queens narrative history of Brunhild and Fredegund in the 6th-century Merovingian Empire, and Vagabonds attempt to reclaim the words of the 18th Century London working and criminal underclass. And its interesting reading forewords and the authorial voice in these projects to see the degree to which they see themselves fighting against orthodoxy (and where they come from). Vagabonds was very open and matter-of-fact about its attempt to put people back into history, and The Dark Queens pretty much got stuck in to its version of Game Of Thrones. Femina - perhaps as suggested by its name - is much more self conscious about its attempt to put women back in to medieval history, and has the feeling of someone who has been pushed back in that process many times. The result is often fascinating, but a little scattershot. There is an early attempt to take down the Great Man Theory of history, but - even when the actual identity of her women cannot be identified - there is a sense that she wants to respond with a Great Woman Theory.

Within that Ramirez does a very impressive job of both standing on the shoulders of giants from the last century, and also utilising all of the technology that archaeology and other forms of scientific analysis can give her. This is in the way of a summary - certainly the archaeological findings from the Birka Warrior Woman sits differently from the detailed writings of Margery Kemp or the near mythological status of Jadwiga of Poland (a proper woman king). Books like this are vital to start to set the record straight, but there is a question around how that plays to someone who is already on board with the project (and is critical of Great Anyone Theory).

As mentioned Ramirez bounces around a lot within her definition of the medieval period, and stays solely within Europe (despite a last gasp bit of racial diversity from a Black Plague Pit). And whilst I learnt a lot, and have plenty I want to follow up on (not least Jadwiga), the book didn't feel quite as focused as it could be. I was also surprised not to hear mention of Brunhild and Fredegund which I think fit in her period and were themselves extraordinary women - if perhaps not learned and rather more bloodthirsty. I suppose that is where the book didn't work for me - its so keen to prove the point that there were exceptional women succeeding beyond the strictures of their time that it seems to ignore most women, who were an important part of history just by living and contributing albeit though perhaps making no mark officially.

I really enjoyed this. It was well researched and explored multiple women, both through archeology and archives. Many of them I either didn't know or knew very little about, and I found it really fascinating. Janina Ramirez really brings colour to the Middle Ages in an engaging way without compromising on facts.

Femina has a strong start and an assertion to put all kinds of people back into the history books, as Dr Janina Ramirez puts it ‘reframing the narrative to include women’; but of course this means including men too as the old-fashioned way of doing history also told their stories in an unhelpful way. Nobody existed in a vacuum and there is no single narrative.
I like that Ramirez’s style is collaborative and inquisitive rather than didactic, acknowledging that it carries bias even though trying to be objective. She takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining information from archaeological finds, literature, art and objects to provide a better picture of the past. Not only does this approach make sense for interpreting the deep past, it makes it more interesting to read about.
Around stories of particular women, Ramirez gives a much wider account of what was going on around her at the time, showing that history is fluid and organic rather than made up of discrete events. With Femina she gives us accessible history writing that is by no means dumbed down for what deserves to be a big audience (and will be, given it made the Sunday Times bestseller list in its first week).

Femina provides a fascinating insight into a number of medieval women who most amateur lovers of history will probably have heard of only in passing, if at all. Ramirez describes them as being "written out of history" and by the very nature of that, the evidence surrounding many of their lives is fragmentary and tangential. Despite this, the way their stories are pieced together through the artefacts and mentions of them that have survived the centuries felt very well reasoned and the writing very capably led the audience through the details and their meanings to draw vivid, realistic pictures of how they and their contemporaries might have lived. While it is a book that requires focus when reading and time to digest all the information presented, I felt it struck a good balance between a tone of academic authority and still being readable for someone like me - with an interest in history but no background in its study and not a regular reader of academic texts.

Most of the women discussed in detail in the book are extraordinary in one way or another. They are royalty or nobility, or hold positions of wealth and power in the religious institutions where a number of them are found; they are the pioneering female academics of their times or the leaders of their communities. This does make their stories all the more engaging, and means that there is more evidence to trace their lives, but on the other hand limits how much they can illustrate of the wider roles of women in medieval times. Ramirez does her best to draw out the connections and inferences that can be made, but if it is the broader picture that you are interested in, this isn't the book for you. Personally, I wish that more had been included in that area, but that is probably more reflective of my particular interests than of any fault in the book itself.

i wanted to read more non fiction again i love history and this is sort of thing i enjoy ive read one her books before and i liked it this has the story of many forgotten women in history some of which i didnt know about and has a level its understandable to people who experts but not surface level which is excited also had illustrations which were nice and i may get the print version to see them better

A very important, inspiring and eye-opening reevaluation of the medieval history of Europe through the prism of the societal status of women, through which one realizes not only the importance of their contributions to society and the culture till recently only attributed or acknowledged to men, but also their enduring legacy. It is by no means an overstatement that this book attempts to re-instance the whole interpretation of the so called and overly propagated by the popular culture dark ages, and it does so with remarkable backing up by archaeological evidence of great importance. This constitutes a paradigm-shift that has been not only refreshing but also necessary, and one that could be carried out over different eras, as well. It is also important to note how well-researched the book is, featuring an extensive and invaluable list of references in the end that can be useful to the interested and curious reader eager to expand one's horizons on the eras spanned in the book.

My thanks to NetGalley and Edbury Publishing for the opportunity to review this book.
Unfortunately although well written and researched I definitely struggled.
I was possibly out of my educational comfort zone but it felt more like required reading rather than pleasurable.
Definitely a few now thats interesting moments.
This is a personal opinion and I'm sure there are readers out there that will love it.

Dr Ramirez is an incredibly engaging presenter on her television programmes so I was excited to read this book by her. From the outset it is structured in an exciting way, taking the artefacts and grave goods associated with particular women from history and exploring their lives and the contexts of other women of the same time in a case study type approach. I haven't seen a history book that follows this format before, but I think it works.

The facts are presented straightforwardly, making this a book that even those not interested in history in an academic sense will be able to engage with. Unlike some other books that focus on historical women, it doesn't try to make the women more 'exciting' or glamorous than they really were, which actually makes them more interesting, not less. The book focuses on the medieval/Middle Ages period which isn't an area I am particularly knowledgeable about but I felt like I gained a deeper understanding of women's lives during this period.

There is a nice range of women included, across different social classes in society with a focus on Western historical contexts. The imagery contained within also serves to effectively enhance the examples provided. Overall a fantastic piece of work and I look forward to reading more by Dr Ramirez.

Reading historical fiction seems to have given me a taste for factual history. I enjoyed reading Femina, but it took me a lot longer to get through it than I hoped – probably because I didn’t get lost in the story as I do with fiction.
In Femina, Janina Ramirez shares the stories of many influential women that have had their names struck out of historical records. Records that seem to prefer telling history portraying men as either a saviour or a bloodthirsty savage!! She believes (and I agree) that gatekeepers of the past ordered books to be burnt, artworks to be destroyed, and new versions of myths, legends and historical documents to be produced. The result is that our view of history has been manipulated.
In reality, examination of the artefacts, writings and possessions that have been discovered has resulted in the influential and multifaceted lives of women emerging. Femina goes beyond the official records to uncover the true impact of women like Jadwiga, the only female King in Europe, Margery Kempe, who exploited her image and story to ensure her notoriety, and the Loftus Princess, whose existence gives us clues about the beginnings of Christianity in England.
Despite the complexity of the subject matter, Ramirez has created a highly informative read. Not a book that you’d devour in one sitting but will enjoy.
3/5

This book is styled as a series of essays focusing on different people, locations and archaeological finds, all joined by the overarching purpose of telling women’s stories, a century at a time. There are stories of diplomacy, warfare, religious leadership, literacy and artistic production - “It wasn’t just rich and powerful men who built the modern world. Women have always been part of it, as has the full range of human diversity.”

Femina takes a journey from early Medieval England (or, more accurately, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex) to Scandinavia, down to the Rhineland then further to southern France, before heading back up to Poland. It concludes in Britain, with Margery Kempe and her travels across Europe and South West Asia, before the women of the book are placed within the context of a medieval world of diverse genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, races and heritages.

If you’re interested in medieval history, there are a lot of familiar faces: Hildegard of Bingen, the women from the Oseburg ship, the Birka warrior, Aethelflaed Lady of Mercia (who I have a massive crush on). There are also less well known stories, like Mercian queen and Abbess Cynethryth, and the Loftus princess.

Dr Ramirez also covers an important context of modern medieval studies, which is the way it’s co-opted by nazis and various European nationalists. This is particularly relevant with regard to the way 19th, 20th and 21st century nazis, and British and German nationalists, have hijacked an inaccurate and propagandist version of viking history. I was pleased to see this covered, since it is difficult to engage with popular medieval history without bumping into white supremacy.

This book was a joy from start to finish.

For the first ten per cent of the book, I was thinking 'this is interesting and I realise women have been almost written out of history (by and large) but there's quite an emphasis on men' then various women came into view and we were away! It made me reach for my laptop to research my own little queries, which is always a good thing in my opinion. Fascinating.

I thoroughly enjoyed this in-depth re-examination of the middle-ages, told through the stories of women. With each chapter broadly taking in a century, Ramírez covers a broad spectrum of European history, but she does so by focusing specifically on a particular woman or community of women at a time. This is a history rich in detail - and I found myself not only learning about new and fascinating characters, but really getting a sense of the world they lived in.

Ramírez also provides some context of where these women sit in the study of history, and - as is often the case - how they have been rediscovered. While it's impossible to view these women through the lens of modern day feminism, it's fascinating to see medieval women who are empowered by their sex in different ways. But not only does our contemporary culture influence how we view history, Ramírez also shows how our understanding of the past shapes the present. And that's why books like Femina are some important.

A must-read for anyone interested in medieval history.