The story of women in the Middle Ages is one of colour, drama and controversy. In a society dominated by men defined by their military function, and by priests who recorded events in histories and chronicles, what was the role of medieval women? Were they as powerless as some modern scholarship would have us believe, 'damsels in distress'? Through illustrated lectures using a rich range of sources, we will discover the actual roles, functions and activities they played in medieval society. As royal consorts and wives, daughters and mothers, family historians, warlords, holy women, visionaries and heretics, medieval women were far from being considered insignificant. Along the way we will meet the Empress Judith, Matilda of Canossa, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hildegard of Bingen, and the 'good women' of the Languedoc. Sometimes queens, sometimes saints, and occasionally Jezebels, but always movers and shapers of the medieval world. Lecture style with question and answer time.