Rural Women’s Right and Images during Late Middle Ages Focusing on the Distaff Gospel

This study aims to clarify women s rights related to the lives of rural women in the late Middle Ages. For this purpose, I analyzed the Distaff Gospels written in the 15th century. This book is written in the form of a conversation where women gather at night and older women pass on their wisdom to the younger women. This book has been translated and edited as several different versions, there were changes in the contents according to the intention of the author or the context of when it was rewritten. The analysis in this study is the Chantilly version, which can be said to be the most primitive. Unlike the Parisian version, this version takes a very critical position on physical and mental violence against women. In addition, it describes women as active rather than passive, and does not describe women s desires negatively. It cannot be definitively confirmed, but what I found that this book was that domestic violence against women was taken very seriously in rural areas in the late Middle Ages, and Christianity was critical of such violence against women. The church was the center of respect for the human rights of women who would fight such violence.