Double Standard for Women Saints Two Books - One History, One Fiction - Explore How Women Attained Sainthood in the Medieval Church

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FORGETFUL OF THEIR SEX: FEMALE SANCTITY AND SOCIETY

ca. 500-1100

By Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg U. of Chicago Press

IMPOSSIBLE SAINTS

By Michele Roberts

Ecco Press

308 pp., $24

Among the summer offerings are two books by women about women - women saints, to be exact. Both are drawn from one of the remotest periods of Christian history, when the Roman Catholic Church was extending its influence all over Europe, and sainthood was a growth industry.

In their books, American scholar Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg and London-based fiction writer Michele Roberts address the conditions, religious and secular, under which medieval …