'Things given and granted her': Prayer Beads and Property in Late Medieval England

Marchbank, Alex

Abstract

Prayer beads have often been associated with women or a gendered form of piety, but little work has been done on exploring why this assumption has been made, or why and how the link was perpetuated. This article not only uses statistics to substantiate the connection but also explores some of the reasons behind it. Using a sample of wills from Lincolnshire in the period 1505-1534, the article undertakes qualitative and quantitative analysis to explore this connection and to examine the importance of these objects for their owners. It explores the significance of prayer beads for women in life in order to understand better what a testamentary bequest of such objects might have meant both for testator and recipient. Ultimately this article demonstrates that wills were places where the gendered nature of these objects was recorded, created and reinforced and, more broadly, shows the significance of prayer beads as 'women's goods'.

Citation

Marchbank, A. (2020). 'Things given and granted her': Prayer Beads and Property in Late Medieval England. The Mediaeval Journal, 8(2),

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 14, 2019
• Publication Date: Feb 29, 2020
• Deposit Date: Jul 19, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 1, 2022
• Journal: The Mediaeval Journal
• Print ISSN: 2033-5385
• Electronic ISSN: 2033-5393
• Publisher: Brepols Publishers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 2
• Keywords: prayer beads; rosary; gender; women; men; kinship; paraphernalia; property
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2322626
• Related Public URLs: http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503578682-1
• Contract Date: Jul 19, 2019