Shulamith Shahar (1928–2025)

Shahar's Women in a Medieval Heretical Sect focuses on the testimony produced in a 1320-1 trial against 4 Waldensians in order to examine the role of women within that heretical sect. Agnes Franco and Huguette de la Cote were, after two years of questioning by the Inquisition, burnt at the stake for heresy. The information Shahar gathered from the Inquisition records is interesting, and her observations about the problems of using such records as historical sources are well observed.

Yet I show more found myself completely unengaged by this book—I'm not entirely sure if Shahar intended it to be an examination of the Waldensian women (in which case it could usefully have been trimmed down to article length) or as a general undergraduate textbook on religion, heresy and gender in medieval Europe (in which case it would need a substantial reorganisation and slight shift in focus). Some of her gender analysis also left me frowning—I have no idea what she means by a 'feminine voice' as opposed to a 'Waldensian voice' not being evident in the records. Identities are not mutually exclusive; not to mention the fact that, as Shahar herself writes, using Inquisition records as a means of identifying Waldensian views on gender is very dangerous. Useful for the translated primary sources included as an appendix, but I won't be coming back to this one. show less