Hedervärda kvinnor och vördnadsvärda män : Kön och trovärdighet i tre sennmedeltida svenska mirakelberättelser

The purpose of this essay is to look upon the gender structure in Sweden, during the late Middle Ages. Mainly I focus on how the church viewed men and women, since the material of my research, the miracle stories of three saints, was found credible and was written down by churchmen. The saints, whose miracles I have studied, are Birgitta Birgersdotter and Katarina Ulfsdotter of Vadstena and Niklas Hermansson of Linköping. These miracles have earlier been studied by the historian Anders Fröjmark, who has noticed that there are fewer heeled women than men figuring in the miracles. Because of this, Fröjmark draws the conclusion that women were less able to leave their homes and travel as pilgrims to the holy sites of the saints. I, on the other hand, argue that the pilgrim journey was a religious act that both sexes could take equal part in. There are for example plenty of cases in the miracle stories were women have traveled for long distances alone, or with their cured children. The reasons why females are underrepresented could instead be that men seemed more reliable in the eyes of the churchmen. Another reason to the lower representation of women is that men, during the late middle ages, seem to have been far more likely to be the target of accidents and violent assaults.This research also shows that women, being regarded as less reliable, seldom were accepted as witnesses to the miracles. Nuns were however an exception and there is reason to believe that also widows were seen as more reliable than other women. Females who were present during a “birth miracle” were also allowed to witness