OF SIX MEDIÆVAL WOMEN
ideas of his time. In truth, we find mediæval literature, if we try to estimate it reasonably, gives a quite pleasing impression of womankind, whether we turn to some of the royal ladies who presided over brilliant Courts, where learning was encouraged and poets made welcome, or to the lady of lesser degree, who reigned supreme in her castle, at any rate when her lord was away, as was often the case in time of war or during attendance at Court, or to the abbesses who governed the religious houses they were set over, to their material and mental well-being, proving thus their genius for administration, and, in many instances, their rare intellectual attainments. A record in a chartulary of the Benedictine nunnery of Wherwell in Hampshire, now in the British Museum (Egerton MS., 2104), and accessible to all in translation in the second volume of the Victoria History of the County of Hampshire, may be mentioned in passing, since it gives such a charming picture of mediæval convent life. It recounts the life and work of the Abbess Euphemia, who presided over the house from 1226 to 1257. Amongst her many good deeds, it is told of her that "with maternal piety and careful forethought, she built, for the use of both sick and sound, a new and large infirmary away from the main buildings," and that, besides caring thus for the bodily wants of
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