Pour une relecture de la vie religieuse féminine chrétienne en Occident à la fin du Moyen Âge

Religious History of women, especially for the Christian Middle Ages, has been studied for too long as a simple parallel of that of men. This tendency was firstly due to religious Orders themselves, which promoted the idea of « female branches » connected to them from the beginning. Moreover, historians faced a lack of sources about medieval female religious life, mainly due to the clerical monopoly of writing during this period. The approach developed since 1935 by Herbert Grundmann, who recommended to adopt a « panoramic vision » of medieval religious history, should be followed by today historians who should abandon the « religious orders » historical schemes, which do not correspond to the internal dynamics of female religious life. It is also necessary to use the « gender » notion which allow historians to take into account the clerical interpretative schemes which appear in most of the medieval sources. Finally, the « practical documents » should be considered as useful sources for religious history, since they enable researchers to take into account the strong social dimension of religion and lead to a better understanding of the « semi-religious » communities.