Women of the Last Millennium

By: Arther Trace

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 9

WOMEN OF THE LAST MILLENNIUM 15

LIVED IN THE 11TH CENTURY 23
LIVED IN THE 12TH CENTURY 27
LIVED IN THE 13TH CENTURY 32
LIVED IN THE 14TH CENTURY 35
LIVED IN THE 15TH CENTURY 42
LIVED IN THE 16TH CENTURY 53
LIVED IN THE 17TH CENTURY 69
LIVED IN THE 18TH CENTURY 84
LIVED IN THE 19TH CENTURY 110
LIVED AND DIED IN THE 20TH CENTURY 181

APPENDIX
WOMEN OF THE MILLENNIUM LISTED
ACCORDING TO TYPE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT 269

INDEX 277

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this book is to call attention to the most famous women who lived-and died-during the last millennium. There are actually thousands and thousands of women during this long period who have a serious claim to being famous, and as a result there may seem to be a certain arbitrariness in the choice of the 234 women whose biographies appear here. It is to be hoped, however, that there will be a general agrement that at least upwards of 80 percent of those chosen in this study deserve to be regarded as the most famous. Some readers are bound to be disappointed that women whom they consider to be among the most famous are not represented, just as some readers will be surprised, and perhaps pleasantly so, that the biographies of other women do appear here, women whose fame the reader may not know about.
This book therefore makes no claim to "discover" women whose achievements have not hitherto been properly recognized, for the women's movement has already done much to assure that they have; rather it is just the opposite: to call attention to the contributions of the most famous women who have already established a wide reputation through their achievements. This book is not therefore intended to be either politically correct or politically incorrect. Rather, it presents short biographies of truly famous women in chronological order beginning with the 11th century.
A millennium is a long time-so long, in fact, that it is virtually impossible to take it all in at a glance. For that reason the women represented in this study are those who lived mainly, though not entirely, in the Western World, for it is difficult enough to try to picture what they did in the Western World without trying to understand what they have done in a world view, at least it is for this writer.
Nonetheless a biographical study of this sort tells a great deal about the progress that women have made-and not made-over the past millennium in most of the major areas of achievement. It shows particularly the impact that the gradually expanding education of women has had on the history of Western culture.
Even based upon the biographie of so few famous women as appear in this study, it is possible to make some valid observations about the history of their achievements. One may note, for example, that in the early centuries of the millennium most of the famous women were either religious or political figures, or occasionally both, though the same may likewise be said of famous men, because cultural contributions were necessarily limited by the very nature of the times, for both men and women. Many women became saints, just as many men did, though only a few of the influental women saints are represented here. Some influential women religious figures who did not become saints were sometimes charged with being frauds or even witches, as this study indicates.
One may observe too that among women political figures some wielded enormous power, even during the Middle Ages, at a time when there were no democracies but a plethora of monarchies. Famous women who came to achieve great political power sometimes inherited it, but they were also often queen-consorts of kings who were themselves weak or absent, or occasionally even insane. Women sometimes made their political power felt also through their sons, who often became kings or other men of power but remained under their mothers' influence. Women during these early centuries sometimes achieved power through multiple marriages, which were usually politically arranged. Some had the power of acquiring or giving away huge sections of land, of hiring and firing ministers, of declaring war, of achieving peace, of reforming governments, and some, beginning in the 15th and 16th centuries, made many cultural contibutions by building buildings and encouraging the arts.
Some of them, however, in the end, as this study will show, became so caught up in political intrigue that they suffered as a result of their power by being banished or sent to a nunnery or becoming impoverished, and some were even executed. Some of the women who held power in the early centuries of the millennium ruled over large sections of Italy and France. When they were not the power behind the throne, they were sometimes on the throne. Almost half of 16th century England, for example, was ruled by two women, first by Queen Mary I and then by Queen Elizabeth I. Four empresses were rulers in 18th century Russia, one of them being Catherine the Great.
The kind of power they wielded, however, came from the monarchical form of government, and since there were often few checks on the way they used their power, some women-like many man-tended to use it lavishly. Women who ruled under a monarchy were able to achieve an off-with-their-heads kind of power, which was to be denied women political leaders in a democracy, such as Golda Meir or Margaret Thatcher. The workings of democracy necessarily cool the ambitions of both men and women because of its very nature, but it seems worthwhile to make the point that where women ruled in Western Europe before the advent of the demacracies, they enjoyed far more power than women who were leaders of 20th century democracies.
The development of literature and the arts came slowly in the early centuries of the millennium in Europe, and given the almost univeral practice of not educating women, it is little short of a miracle that women participated at all in cultural achievements. And yet, as this study will show, notable women writers especially, and even women scientists, matematicians and, and scholars were not unknown. Among theatrical performers, however, there were virtually no women before the 17th century, when, for example, women English actors were allowed to appear on the stage, as exemplified by the life of Nell Gwyn. The 18th century produced a few more and the 19th century even more, until in the 20th century there were so many women actors on the stage and on both the large and small screen that most, though by no means all, have been excluded from this study, even though they pass the requiste test of having already died.
Among the arts, the rise of women writers is perhaps the most spectacular, though they did not appear in any large numbers until the 19th century, and even then, novelists like the Brontë sisters and George Sand wrote under men's names. But as this study will show, there came an explosion of writing talent in the 20th cenury among women, who rather suddenly appeared in such numbers that only some of the most spectacular of them can be included in this study. The advent of the increasing practice of allowing women to become educated is obviously the key, and it seems safe to assume that in succeding centuries, women writers will multiply geometrically. Already in the United States women outnumber men in the colleges and universities. The fact that far more 20th-century women are represented in this study than in previous centurieis of the millennium testifies to the cultural effect of educating women. It may be that it is th 21st century tha will be the century of the woman.
Women scientists in various fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, anthropology, psychology, and other scientific fields have already made their mark, even those who are now dead. They have also made their influence strongly felt in such fields as communications, economics, government, and scholarship. And yet, women have not made such notable gains in architecture, musical composition or in a few others of the major cultural fields, though such women do exist and are represented in this study. And they have not made great gains as theologians, philosophers, mathematicians, and engineers. They have merely demonstrated their ability to do so.
Recognition must also be given to women social reformers, without whose work the achievements of women in the Western world would surely have come much more slowly, and so they are rather well represented in this study.
The ages at which these women died are determined by he simple expedient of subtracting the year of their birth from the year of their death, and therefore there may be a few months' discrepancy either way.
The sources which I have consulted in composing these biographies include the Encyclopedia Britannica, the World Book Encyclopedia, Encarta, Compton's Encyclopedia, a number of relible internet sites, and sometimes the recesses of my own memory, the sources of which are hidden in a long academic career. In any case, I am solely responsible for any factual errors, which I hope will be few, very few.

APPENDIX

WOMEN OF THE MILLENNIUM
LISTED ACCORDING TO
TYPE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

NUMBERS REFER TO
NUMBERED BIOGRAPHIES, NOT TO PAGES

RELIGIOUS FIGURES
Elizabeth Barton 29
Saint Bernadette 85
Helen Petrovna Blavatsky 87
Saint Bridget of Sweden 10
Mother Cabrini 95
Saint Catherine of Siena 11
Saint Clare of Assisi 8
Dorothy Day 166
Mary Baker Eddy 103
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary 9
Saint Elizabeth of Portugal 12
Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon 50
Hildegard von Bingen 6
Ann Hutchinson 52
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz 53
Joan of Arc 24
Juliana of Norwich 16
Margery Kempe 26
Amy Semple McPherson 205
Saint Margaret of Scotland 1
Saint Rose of Lima 57
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton 128
Edith Stein 224
Mother Teresa 227
Saint Teresa of Ávila 43
Saint Therese of Lisieux 135

POLITICAL FIGURES
Abigail Adams 58
Anna Ivanovna of Russia 60
Anne, Queen of Britain 61
Anne of Austria 45
Margaret Beaufort 18
Anne Boleyn 30
Lucrezia Borgia 31
Catherine of Áragon 32
Catherine de Mèdicis 33
Catherine I of Russia 64
Catherine II (the Great) of Russia 65
Catherine of Valois 19
Beatrice Cenci 34
Christina of Sweden 48
Diana, Princess of Wales 169
Eleanor of Aquitaine 5
Elizabeth of Austria 106
Elizabeth I of England 35
Saint Elizabeth of Portugal 12
Elizabeth of Russia 66
Indira Gandhi 179
Isabella Farnese of Spain 67
Lady Jane Grey 36
Isabella of Bavaria 22
Isabella of France 13
Isabella II of Spain 113
Isabella I of Castille 21
Jacoba of Bavaria 23
Joan of Arc 24
Joan of Naples 14
Joan of Navarre 15
Barbara Jordan 193
Josephine Bonaparte 68
Clare Booth Luce 201
Dolly Madison 69
Margaret of Anjou 25
Margaret of Navarre 38
Margaret I of Norway and Denmark 17
Maria Carolina of Naples 70
Maria Theresa 71
Marie Antoinette 72
Marie de Mèdicis 54
Mary, Queen of Scots 37
Mary Tudor of England 39
Mary II of England 55
Matilda of Canossa 2
Golda Meir 208
Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis 216
Catherine Parr 40
Eva Perón 218
Renée of France 42
Eleanor Roosevelt 222
Queen Victoria 139
Martha Washington 79
Elizabeth Woodville 27

NOVELISTS, DRAMATISTS, POETS, AND
OTHER WRITERS
Anna Akhmatova 144
Louisa May Alcott 81
Hannah Arendt 147
Isabella Andreine 28
Jane Austen 83
Aphra Behn 46
Elizabeth Bishop 151
Louise Bogan 152
Elizabeth Bowen 154
Anne Bradstreet 47
Fredrika Bremen 89
Anne Brontë 90
Charlotte Brontë 91
Emily Brontë 92
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 93
Pearl Buck 155
Fanny Burney 62
Rachel Carson 158
Willa Cather 159
Agatha Christie 160
Christine of Pisan 20
Collette (Sidone-Gabrielle) 161
Anna Comnena 4
Anne Dacier 49
Emily Dickenson 100
Isak Dinesen 171
Mary Mapes Dodge 102
Hilda Doolittle (H. D.) 172
Daphne DuMarier 173
Maria Edgeworth 104
George Eliot 105
Marie de France 7
Anne Frank 178
Mary Wilkins Freeman 108
Margaret Fuller 109
Elizabeth Gaskell 110
Ellen Glasgow 183
Lady Auguste Gregory 186
Edith Hamilton 187
Julia Ward Howe 112
Juliana of Norwich 16
Selma Lagerlöf 116
Amy Lowell 201
Clare Booth Luce 202
Mary McCarthy 203
Carson McCullers 204
Katherine Mansfield 206
Harriet Martineau 117
Margaret Mitchell 209
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 73
Marianne Moore 212
Hanna More 74
Anaïs Nin 214
Flannery O'Connor 215
Countess of Pembroke 41
Sylvia Plath 220
Katherine Ann Porter 221
Anne Radcliffe 76
Christina Rossetti 124
V. Sackville-West 223
George Sand 126
Mary Shelley 129
Edith Sitwell 224
Madame de Staël 131
Gertrude Stein 226
Harriet Beecher Stowe 134
Dorothy Thompson 228
Frances Trollope 137
Sigrid Undset 229
Edith Wharton 232
Virginia Woolf 233

PAINTERS AND OTHER ARTISTS
Margaret Bourke-White 153
Julia Margaret Cameron 97
Mary Cassatt 98
Rosetta Carriera 63
Julia Morgan 213
Grandma Moses 185
Maria Tinteretto 44

PHILOSOPHERS
Hanah Arendt 147
Simone de Beauvoir 167
Edith Stein 225
Simone Weil 230

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS
Jane Addams 143
Susan B. Anthony 82
Clara Barton 84
Fredrika Bremen 89
Frances Mary Buss 94
Dorothy Dix 101
Margaret Fuller 109
Julia Ward Howe 112
Mary Putnam Jacobi 114
Susan K. Langer 197
Florence Nightingale 119
Elizabeth Stanton 132
Harriet Tubman 138
Frances Willard 140
Mary Wollstonecraft 80
Frances Wooduill 141
Frances Wright 142

SCIENTISTS AND MATHEMATICIANS
Marie Gaetana Agnesi 59
Sarah Josephine Baker 149
Annie Jump Cannon 157
Marie Curie 164
Alice Cunningham Fletcher 107
Dian Fossey 177
Caroline Herschel 111
Karen Horney 191
Mary Putnam Jacobi 114
Dame Kathleen Kenyon 196
Margaret Douglas Leakey 199
Maria Mitchell 118
Florence Nightingale 119
Ellen Swallow Richards 123
Mary Fairfax Somerville 130
Trotula of Salerno 3

ACTORS, SINGERS, DANCERS, AND
OTHER ENTERTAINERS
Dame Judith Anderson 145
Marian Anderson 146
Isabella Andreine 28
Josephine Baker 148
Ingrid Bergman 150
Sarah Bernhardt 86
Maria Callas 156
Katherine Cornell 162
Joan Crawford 163
Bette Davis 165
Agnes De Mille 168
Marlene Dietrich 170
Isadore Duncan 174
Dame Margot Fontaine 176
Greta Garbo 180
Judy Garland 181
Lilllian Gish 182
Martha Graham 184
Nell Gwyn 51
Helen Hayes 189
Audrey Hepburn 190
Mahalia Jackson 192
Fanny Kemble 115
Grace Kelly 195
Gertrude Lawrence 198
Marilyn Monroe 210
Anna Pavlova 217
Edith Piaf 219
Sarah Siddons 78
Mae West 231

OTHER WOMEN OF THE MILLENNIUM
Lizzie Borden (legendary character) 88
Amelia Earhart (aviator and adventurer) 175
Mata Hari (legendary spy) 188
Helen Keller (legendarily handicapped achiever) 194
Marie Montessori (educator) 211
Annie Oakley (legendary character) 120
Ida Pfeiffer (adventurer) 121
Lydia E. Pinkham (legendary medicine woman) 122
Molly Pitcher (folk heroine) 75
Betsy Ross (legendary character) 77
Sakajawea (legendary pioneering guide) 125
Belle Starr (legendary outlaw) 133
Alexandrine Tinné (adventurer) 136
Babe Didrickson Zaharias (legendary athlete) 234

1. SAINT MARGARET, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND (ca. 1045-1093) was queen consort of King Malcolm III Conmore and the patron saint of Scotland. Her mother was Agatha, a relative of Gisela, who was the wife of St. Stephen of Hungary. For her remarkable piety and good works she was canonized by Pope Innocent IV in 1250, some 250 years after her death. She thus played a major role in both the spiritual and political history of Scotland in the 11th century
She was born probably in Hungary because her father Edward and his brother Edmund were presumably sent to Hungary for safety during the reign of King Canute. Her father returned to England, apparently with Margaret, in 1057. After her husband's death and after the Norman conquest, Agatha and her children, including Margaret, the story goes, planned to return to the Continent, but a storm drove their ship to Scotland, where King Malcolm III received the party under his protection and in time fell in love with Margaret and they were married. There was, however, some hesitation on Margaret's part, for she had always been deeply religious and had planned to pursue a religious life.
They were married about 1070, and Margaret began to exert a benign influence over her husband, who had been known for his coarseness and bad manners. According to one early writer, "She incited the king to works of justice, mercy, charity, and other virtues in all which by divine grace she induced him to carry out her pious works." Her pious works included the founding of several churches, including the Abbey of Dunfermline, and imposed on the Scots the ecclesiastical customs she had learned in England and which prevailed in France and Italy, in accordance with the Gregorian reform. She also encouraged the founding of schools, hospitals, and orphanages.
She was not so successful, however, in preventing feuding among Scottish Highland clans, and when her husband was slain near Alnwick, Northumberland, she herself died only a few days later. But her person and deeds were long remembered and recognized by her canonization and the declaration in 1673 that she was to be the patron saint of Scotland.

21. ISABELLA I (1451-1504) was queen of Castile and Aragon and played one of the most important roles in the history of Spain. Her marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon led to the union of Spain's largest kingdom, Castile and Aragon, and laid the foundation for Spain's future greatness. The rule of Ferdinand and Isabella also marked the beginning of an overseas empire in the New World.
A number of major historical developments occurred during her reign. Spanish law was codified and the rulers took over the administration of justice, which included reducing the powers of the nobles. Isabella and Ferdinand together completed the reconquest of Spain by driving the Moors out of southern Spain and capturing the Moorish stronghold of Granada in 1492. Jews, however, were ordered to leave Spain or else to become Christians. Isabella was one of the few to support Columbus's plan to find the Indies by sailing west, and so can take some credit for Spain's claims in America. Columbus's discoveries led to the growth of the Spanish Empire in the New World.
Isabella was much interested in promoting the Catholic religion, and took an active part in the appointment of high church officials. She sought candidates of high standards, and she and Ferdinand became known as the "Catholic Kings," though in the process they perpetuated the medieval struggle between the popes and the kings over who should be named to high church positions. The Inquisition in Spain was also set up under their reign, in Andalusia in the year 1480.
Isabella was almost as interested in education as in religion, and in fact after she reached the age of 30, she learned Latin and encouraged scholars to establish a palace school for the education of the sons of the nobility. She was also a patron of Spanish and Flemish artists and part of her extensive collection of paintings still survives.
In her will, which was written toward the end of her life, she sums up her aspirations and her awareness of how much she and Ferdinand had been unable to do. She had aimed for the unity of the states of the Iberian Peninsula, the maintenance of control over the Strait of Gibraltar, and she hoped for a policy of expansion into Muslim North Africa and for a just rule for the Indians of the New World. And finally she hoped for a reform of the Church at home. She died at age 53.

86. SARAH BERNHARDT (1844-1923) was a celebrated French actress who became one of the best-known figures in the history of the stage.
Her acting career got off to a slow start. Her mother was a notorious Dutch courtesan, who put her in a convent as soon as possible because she interfered with her profession. Sarah had in mind to become a nun, but one of her mother's customers, the Duke de Morny, who was the half-brother of Napoleon III, decided that she should pursue an acting career, and so she entered a Paris conservatory but showed no particular promise. Thanks, however, to the connections of the Duke de Morny, she was accepted into the national theater company Comedie-Française as a beginner, but she made no impression there either and was ejected for bad behavior, including slapping the face of a senior actress who had been rude to her sister.
She appeared briefly but unsuccessfully in burlesque, and during a period when she was questioning her talent she became the mistress of Henri, Prince de Ligne, and gave birth to her only child. Later she married a Greek military officer turned actor, but he died shortly thereafter of drug abuse.
In 1866 she signed a contract with the Odeon theater and after six years of intense work she gradually established her reputation as an actor. During that time she played the role of Cordelia in King Lear and a role in a one-act verse play called "The Passerby," which was so successful that she played it again in a command performance before Napoleon III.
She organized a military hospital in the Odeon theater during the Franco-Prussian War in l876, and after the war the theater produced a verse play Ruy Blas in honor of France's great 19th century writer Victor Hugo, and she won over the audience with the lyrical quality of her voice.
In l872 she returned to the Comedie-Française, even though her success as an actress was not yet phenomenal. There, however, she was given the title role in Racine's Phèdre. Although the critics did not believe that she could handle so emotional a role, she surprised them all and they wrote enthusiastic reviews of her performance. She performed in the same play in London to rave reviews, and her international reputation was established. She undertook a world tour that included Australia and South America, during which time she also played the role of Marguerite Gautier, the redeemed courtesan in The Lady of the Camellias, written by Dumas fils. She then enjoyed a string of other successes including roles in La Tosca and Cleopatra, plays by Victorian Sardou, the chief playwright for melodrama at the time.
In 1905, during a tour of South America, she injured her knee when jumping off the parapet in the last scene of La Tosca. Ten years later gangrene set in, and at the age of 70 she had to have her leg amputated. This misfortune did not, however, interrupt her career. She continued to perform in roles which allowed her to sit, and she was carried about in a litter chair while visiting soldiers during World War I.
She even published a novel, Petite Idols, which was partly autobiographical, and she wrote her autobiography entitled My Double Life: Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt, partly to counter a nasty biography of her life by Marie Columbier. In 1923 she wrote a treatise on acting called The Art of the Theater. She also showed a talent for painting and sculpture. In 1914 she was made a member of the Legion of Honor. She ended her career as one of the great actors of the modern world.

185. GRANDMA MOSES (Anna Mary Robertson) (1860-1961) was an American self-taught and much beloved primitive-style painter.
She was born in Washington County, New York, and married Thomas Salmon Moses when she was 27 years old. She was a busy farmer's wife and mother, but after her husband died, she found more leisure time for painting. She created her first painting with house paint on a piece of canvas left over from making a threshing machine cover. But her first love was embroidering pictures on canvas. She developed arthritis, however, and so had to give up embroidering. She did not became a serious painter until she was 78 years old. When she was 80 years old she had a one-woman show at the Galerie St. Ètienne in New York. Her special primitive style on rural subjects, drawn chiefly from her own recollections, quickly proved her fame and even won her international acclaim for their freshness and innocence. Some of her paintings now hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Her autobiography, entitled My Life's History, was published in l952, when she was 92 years old.