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Author Stewart has created a vibrant series highlighting the significant role of women in European, especially Celtic, history through prose, poetry, and photographs. This volume focuses on the Franks, who at one time occupied the large valley known as Pannonia lying cradled within three mountain ranges. Stewart invites us to imagine the region before the ascension of the male-dominated Catholic Church when travelers could stay at abbeys housing both men and women, enjoy sumptuous hospitality, visit fairs, learn crafts, and bask in natural hot springs surrounded by magnificent artworks celebrating women's roles and leadership. Though Celtic peoples like the Franks were oppressed and suppressed by churches and conquerors, Stewart's book affords us a glimpse of the stately manses, the peaceful rivers and forests, and the remarkable artistry of that earlier place and time.
Stewart is convinced that pre-Christian, pre-Catholic peoples honored women as leaders. They were formally depicted in buildings and monuments, as witnessed by the many statues of females. Some of them, as in Laon, France, were later beheaded or vandalized. Many appear in the book, such as a famous frieze in Austria in a church that, Stewart states, was probably once a Celtic hall. Designated as Saint Catherine, the portrait was likely originally a mighty Celtic woman standing by a wheel, a potent Celtic symbol. Stewart, a student of Celtic language, cites instances of distortion of Celtic words into Latin. Her poetry, as well as the rich narrative accompanying the photos collected here, indicates her sincere, strongly held conviction that we should reject the "all-male hierarchy" not only of established churches but of any belief system allowing no authority to the feminine principle. Her work presents a challenge to readers, offering the aesthetic satisfaction of its illustrations while invoking a call for radical change in intellectual perspective.
The first in the Hidden Women series was a 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award Montaigne Medal Finalist.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review