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Johanna
n.d.
What can history tell us about women whose identities have barely survived the centuries? Below is an image of the title-page from a volume of saints’ lives which was written by one man, translated by another man, printed by a third, and is literally about the “fathers” of monasticism. But this copy was owned by an as yet unidentified woman who signs herself “Johanna.”
St. Jerome (325 CE–420 CE), Vitae Sanctorum Patrum, translated by William Caxton. London: Wynken de Worde, Westminster, 1495.
In A Room of One’s Own, a copy of which you can see in the third digital exhibit case ("Brave New Women"), Virginia Woolf says of the medieval and early modern woman that “One knows nothing detailed, nothing perfectly true and substantial about her. History scarcely mentions her.” Is this necessarily true? Or can we discover who Johanna was?
2020-1193. Purchased in 2020 with the Louis J. Appell Jr. Fund for British Civilization in Harvard College Library, the Philip Hofer Charitable Trust, the Richard S. Chute Library Leaders Fund for Medieval English Collections, and the Edgar Huidekoper Wells Memorial Fund.
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