| dc.description.abstract | In Medieval Europe, the Bible was strictly prohibited in any language other than Latin. This prohibition of vernacular scripture led to other devotional mediums that drew from Biblical stories such as the book of hours, hagiographies, and paraphrases. In the latter half of the 12th-century, a French theologian by the name of Peter Comestor finished his biblical paraphrase Historia Scholastica. Due to Historia’s comprehensiveness, it became widely circulated and recognized as university required reading. When writing on Genesis 3, (the temptation, creation of sin, and expulsion from paradise) Comestor popularized the belief that to better ensure success the devil took the form of a serpent with the head of a woman to tempt Eve. This study aims to answer questions surrounding the medieval iconographic trend of depicting the serpent in Genesis 3 with the head, or full torso, of a woman. Mainly focusing on the stylistic variants of the woman-headed serpent such as wardrobe, hairstyle, or how much or how little the serpent resembled Eve. By analyzing the societal impact of the variants as well as the opposing venerated view of other Biblical women during the medieval age I intend to better understand the views of women’s culpability for sin and misogynistic allegations against women based in medieval popular circulating opinions on Genesis 3. | en |
