the variety of interpretations of Mary and Martha and their relation to the changing views of the nature of contemplation and of the place of monasticism in Christian society can be found in the works of many writers of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. A conspectus of these differences, and an introduction to the differing views of Mary and Martha in the late Middle Ages, are presented by Joachim of Fiore, Adam of Dryburgh, and Lothar dei Segni (Innocent III), of whom the first was a Cistercian monk before he founded his own religious order, the second was a regular canon and later a Carthusian, and the third was a secular cleric, lawyer, and administrator. Each of them was formed in the twelfth century and lived into the thirteenth – only just in the case of Joachim, who died in 1202 – and each had a somewhat different view of the meaning and relation of the two sisters.

Joachim stood for the monastic tradition, which went back to the earliest monks and was greatly strengthened in the twelfth century, of separating the two lives and asserting the difference between Mary, whom he identified with the soul and spiritual men, from Martha, who stood for the body and fleshly men.