“Patient Genowefy, shameless Magdalene...” - meeting with Anna Brzezińska

The Hieronim Łopaciński Municipal Public Library in Lublin invites you to a meeting with Anna Brzezińska, author of the book “Patient Genowefy, Shameless Magdalene. A Guide to the Middle Ages of Ordinary Women”, which will be held at Branch No. 2 of MBP (ul. Peowiaków 12, ground floor) on October 27, 2026 at 17.00.

Meeting as part of the “Biographists” series.

Hosted by: Ewa Hadrian

Bankers and slaves, bridesmaids and clerks, beggars and midwives, witches and mystics—fifty women of blood and bone. Not the statuesque and canonical ones, but those that usually remain on the sidelines of great history.

In the Middle Ages, women were considered the sinful daughters of Eve, morally and intellectually inferior to men. Laws and customs subjected them to the authority of fathers, husbands, and brethren — for their own good, of course. But the fates of real women prove that they were beings much more complex and complicated than we are sometimes told.

So here is the story of a heretical nun who declared herself pope and celebrated masses. About a frustrated mother who went to court for alimony when the father did not want to lay on her son. About the tough Sołtysh woman who shook the Podkarpackie village, and the respectable clerk who managed one of the oldest law firms in Silesia. And also about those women who collected books in monasteries, quarreled with the clergy and wrote learned treatises. Which defended the family castles, and sometimes Jerusalem, and when the need arose, could steal even the royal crown.

Anna Brzezińska does not romanticize the past: she shows agency where it was possible — as resistance, cunning, adaptation or the struggle for dignity. The women in her stories teach what the Middle Ages really was—and many of their experiences remain surprisingly current.

Source of description: Wydawnictwo Marginesy

Anna Brzezińska - writer and medievalist, three-time winner of the Janusz A. Zajdl Prize. Her work combines a rich historical background with elements of fantasy, and the books belong to the classics of contemporary Polish literature of this genre. Author of acclaimed historical novels (including Daughters of Wawel, Water on the Sieve) and popular science books: Twilight of the Knights and Patient Genowefy, Shameless Magdalene. A Guide to the Middle Ages of Ordinary Women (more than 500 pages, published in 2026 by Wydawnictwo Marginesy, featuring 50 women of the Middle Ages). She is a regular columnist for “Ale Historia”, an appendix to Gazeta Wyborcza, and also publishes in “Polityka” and “Tygodnik Powszechny”. Member of the Board of the Literary Union Association.

Fig. Albert Zawada