From about A.D. 300 to A.D. 600, hostile tribal incursions furthered the breakup that was already taking place within the roman Empire. The period of Late Antiquity saw the rise and evolution of Christianity displace a thousand years of pagan civilization. A Byzantine Empire that honored The Blessed Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene (the latter as the Apostle to the Apostles) grew in strength. In the roman Christian tradition, a male celibate hierarchy of leadership (although some male priests and popes married until 1022, when Pope Benedict VIII prohibited such unions) had become firmly entrenched. During the Middle Ages, women served as wives, mothers, widows, and workers in their roles within Christian society. Some exceptional women embraced the life of monastic retreat. Hildegard of Bingen, Joan of Arc, Julian of Norwich, Mary of Egypt, and others were mystics and visionaries. For many of those women, God was not only male, but also female, and God's Wisdom was a feminine aspect of God.

Although the medievals did not generally favor educating women, by the ninth century, wealthy women and daughters of nobility did receive some education, meaning that their lives were steeped in the sacred teachings of the Bible and Church. The point was to keep them busy to avoid harmful and impure thoughts. They were expected to live chaste lives in the pursuit of female work — that is, to become wives and mothers. As mothers, their job was to impart religious dogma to their young. The women who desired a monastic life received some educational training, and in some cases had to learn Latin.

Hildegard of Bingen, a Benedictine abbess and mystic who was a prolific writer, musician, herbalist, and healer, personified Wisdom as the Sacred Feminine in her writings and drawings. Hildegard wrote commentaries on the Gospels, among other religious texts, and identified Wisdom as God's bride and Christ as Wisdom Incarnate through the womb of his blessed mother Mary.

But long before Hildegard penned and sketched female images of the Sacred while in an ecstatic trance, the Old Testament books of Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Proverbs, and Solomon's Song represented the Divine in female imagery. God's Wisdom, as a feminine biblical image, dates back to Jerusalem, circa sixth century B.C., when Hebrew holy men believed that the God Yahweh had a counterpart (Asherah).

Catholic clerics dominated the intellectual peak of society, and religion was the focus of medieval literature, art, and music. Village mystery plays constituting the reenactments of important stories of the Bible were popular among the peasantry, and were performed on particular feast days. A favorite mystery play at Christmas would have been the angel's announcement to Mary that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and the subsequent birth of Jesus.

Sacred Feminine symbols

Ordinary women endured a kind of social subordination in the twelfth century. Perhaps in response to pressures of an increasingly restrictive life, many women turned to the Church. During the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, there was a surge in women's religious communities.

From some of them emerged women known to be mystics, or who led such saintly lives that they were later canonized.

Women who spoke in tongues or prophesied found themselves at the mercy of others who feared their gifts might be due to the powers of witchcraft rather than the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, women endowed with those gifts were called necromancers or prophetesses, and unless it was determined that her gift was the result of possession by an evil spirit (such as the case of the girl possessed by a spirit that the Apostle Paul exorcised), such women were generally well regarded. In some cases, even kings consulted them. But in the twelfth century, such women were constantly on guard, expecting to be accused of being a witch. Such an accusation brought with it torture and death as prescribed by religious and secular courts. Many used the passage in the Old Testament Book of Exodus to justify their actions against women accused of witchcraft: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18).

Artistic depictions in which medieval artists condensed the New Testament stories into symbols, signs, and monumental figures were predominant in mainstream culture during the Middle Ages. Particularly popular were church mosaics, illuminated manuscripts, and works of sculpture. Sacred images adorned prayer books, manuscript pages, tapestries, oil paintings, and mosaics. The Blessed Virgin Mary was always a popular image, as was Mary Magdalene, the latter as the repentant sinner. For example, circa 1434, Fra Angelico painted “The Santa Trinita Altarpiece” with Mary Magdalene kneeling at the feet of Christ and kissing his hand. She is dressed in a flowing red gown, and her unbound hair tumbles over her shoulders. The color red and the unbound hair both symbolized the female carnal nature, while kneeling and kissing the hand of the Lord symbolized a repentant attitude. Modern scholarship has since asserted that Mary Magdalene was never a prostitute, repentant or otherwise, despite many painters portraying her as one.

Also in the mid-1400s, Fra Filippo Lippi painted not only altarpieces, but also religious paintings, including “Madonna and Child” and “The Feast of Herod,” featuring a white-gowned Salome dancing in preparation for asking for the head of John the Baptist. It seems ironic that Salome would be clothed in white, ancient symbol of purity and innocence. Lippi also painted “The Annunciation,” showing a lily-bearing angel leaning toward the Blessed Virgin Mary as hands from an unseen source release the dove that represents the Holy Spirit. Light rays from the dove seem to project toward Mary's womb.

In medieval architecture, the Hagia Sophia, or Church of the Holy Wisdom of God, stands as a striking example of an Eastern Orthodox church that, some would say, represents the personification of Wisdom as the Sacred Feminine. In 1453, the church was converted to a mosque when the Turks overran Constantinople. Today, the church, considered one of the finest of all surviving works of Byzantine architecture, is a museum.