Middle Ages Literature Posters, Prints, & Charts Index
images for language arts, social studies and drama classrooms.

Saint Hildegard von Bingen
b. 1098; Germany
d. 9-17-1179

“I wrote them down because a heavenly voice kept saying to me, 'See and speak! Hear and write!” Hildegard von Bingen

Saint Hildegard von Bingen should be considered a “polymath” (a person with varied knowledge and learning). She was an “abbess, artist, author, counselor, linguist, naturalist, teacher, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, activist, visionary, and composer”. Hildegard was also the founder of monasteries at Rupertsberg and Eibingen, communicated with popes, and traveled through Europe.

• Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias
• more women posters

Geoffrey Chaucer
b. c.1343; London
d. 10-25-1400

Geoffrey was a Medieval author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat best remembered for his unfinished narrative The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer is sometimes called the father of English literature as the first author to use the vernacular English for an artistic work. Chaucer is also the first to associate the day commemorating two early martyrs of the Christian faith - Valentine - with courtly, romantic love.

• Geoffrey Chaucer in Great British Authors series

Christine de Pizan
b. c.1362; Venice, Italy
d. c.1431

Christine de Pizan was a feminist philosopher and first professional women writer in the medieval era. Her first works as a writer was to provide for her family after the death of her husband. She then evolved into a social critic of Romance of the Rose, an popular poem that less than esteemed women.

The illustration for the presentation frontispiece of Christine de Pizan presenting her Collected Works to Queen Isabeau of France, sometime between 1410 and 1415, consists solely of females. It is possible the entire Collected Works was produced by women in the spirit of patronage of women's intelligence and talent.

• The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan's Cite Des Dames
• more book cover posters

'Romance of the Rose' is a late medieval French poem written in two stages, by two authors, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, in the style of an allegorical dream vision.

The 13th century poem was very influential - Geoffery Chaucer read it and his Wife of Bath resembles the poem's Old Woman; very popular - it survives in hundreds of illuminated manuscripts (the printing press wasn't invented until the mid 1400s); and very controversial - the first professional woman writer, Christine di Pizan, critized her contemporary, the second author Jean de Meun, for slandering women.

Anne of Brittany
b. 1-25-1477; Nantes, Brittany
d. 1-9-1514; Blois, France

Anne of Brittany was the richest European woman during her time, and married to two successive French kings.

Gottfried von Strassburg (Godfrey of Strasbourg)
d. c 1210

Gottfried is considered the author of the courtly narrative romance Tristan from the late German Middle Ages, which came to be inspiration for Richard Wagner's operatic works.

The story of Tristan is basically the beginning of the our contemporary concept of love, a person to person relationship (see Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth - Tales of Love and Marriage).

Fragment of a Poem by Wolfram of Eschenbach, Published by Fetis, Giclee Print

Wolfram of Eschenbach
b. c 1170; Germany
d. c 1220

• Parzival: With Titurel and the Love Lyrics, Wolfram von Eschenbach
• Richard Wagner Operas

Saint Bede the Venerable
b. ca. 672 or 673; England
d. 5-27-735

Bede, a Benedictine monk at a Northumbrian monastery, is best known as an author and scholar. His most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title “The father of English history”.

Piers Plowman, a Middle English allegorical narrative, was probably written c. 1380 by William Langland, a contemporary of Chaucer. Also known as William's Vision of Piers Plowman, it is a theological allegory and social satire told from the point of view of a medieval Catholic striving for a true Christian life through the vision of a "plowman" who falls asleep and dreams of a "field of folk" between two symbols of heaven and hell.

Piers Plowman is also the first literary mention of Robin Hood and his merry men in Sherwood Forest. It is interesting to note that the 1381 English Peasant Revolt was contemporanious to the appearance of an archetypal hero figure who sympathized with the plight of the poor.

Abelard and His Pupil Heloise
b. 1069; France
d. 4-21-1142

• notable teachers

Scribe Writing out the Gospel; Page of Text Decorated with an Illumination

Printing Press - an Invention that Changed the World

Johann Gutenberg is generally credited by scholars as inventing the technology of the printing press with movable types c. 1450.

Gutenberg's press meant that books were no longer as expensive to make or own. Knowledge was available to more than just the wealthy and privileged. Gutenberg's “simple” invention changed the course of human history. As one historian has said “The modern world began with the printing press.

• Inventions that Changed the World poster series.