Did women really constitute a "fourth estate" in medieval society and, if so, in what sense? In this wide-ranging study, Shulamith Shahar considers this and the whole question of varying attitudes to women and their status in Western Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. She draws a cohesive picture of women in a range of situations: nuns and married women, peasants and noblewomen, townswomen, and women involved in heretical movements and witchcraft.