Friendship Women's friendships with one another, even though little documentation of them, must have sustained and comforted them: the warmth of female friendship within the convent is shown by the affectionate references to nuns in various writings. In villages and towns, women were linked across the generations by the godparent relationship. Goddaughters are often mentioned in wills while women who were godmothers to the same siblings formed close relationships with one another and with the parents. Women's close friendships and ties are often termed "feminine subculture." Although the modern pejorative term 'gossip', used almost exclusively of women, is derived from 'god-sib' (one in a godparent or godchild relationship), the mixture of anxiety and contempt felt by men about women communicating and sharing their knowledge with one another is far older than the word 'gossip'. The image on this page shows a devil who was detailed to collect women's talk, designated idle and trivial by moralists, to add to their other sins when judgment came, figuring the "endless cackle" of women, the disorder it is supposed to engender and the dangers of possession.
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