Abstract
___
In this thesis, Jacobus da Varagine’s Legenda aurea (1260s) is posited as a prime example of what several medievalists have referred to as ‘somatic sanctity’. Throughout this compendium, pain and violence are used as important signifiers of religion and sanctity. By thoroughly condemning the body, the body itself became fundamentally necessary for the subsequent veneration of these saints, turning it into a primary place where sanctity could be constructed. Whereas men could use their male bodies to directly refer to Christ and His passions, the late medieval female body symbolized different things, meaning women could not perform religiosity in a similar manner. Therefore, other solutions had to be found to justify their sanctification. It is argued that, instead of transcending contemporary gender identities, the stories of these saints rather confirmed these by emphasizing the connection between their gendered bodies and the stories of their sanctification. By analysing the roles bodily experiences played in the sanctification of both female and male martyrs and connecting the martyrs’ gendered body to their eventual sanctification, this thesis serves as an intersection of gender theory and ‘history of the body’.
Table of contents
___
Introduction 4 First chapter: Mortification of the flesh 13 Second chapter: Feminising chastity and surrogate martyrdom 31 Conclusion 53 Appendix 56 Bibliography 61Introduction
___
“Lord, do not let me come down alive! It is time for you to entrust my body to the earth … now I wish to be discharged of this obedience and relieved of this most burdensome garment. I think of how I have laboured to carry its weight, to control its unruliness, to support its weakness, to compel it slow responses. You know, O Lord, how often it has struggled to draw me away from the purity of contemplation and awaken me from the repose of that most sweet stillness, how many and how grave pains it has inflicted on me. O most kind Father, I have resisted the assaults of this body for so long, and with your help I have mastered it.”1 “There dwelt also the Epicureans, who placed the happiness of man solely in bodily pleasure, and the Stoics, who placed it only in the virtue of spirit.”2 The term martyr has been derived from the Greek martus, which signifies a witness who advocates or refuses to advocate a certain religious belief due to knowledge from personal observation. The Christian martyrs of the first four Christian centuries were known to have bravely persevered severe persecution, bodily punishment, and even death in the name of Christ and their religion.3 Their bodies were necessary vehicles through which they could achieve spiritual greatness, and through their physical passions they were united with Christ. Throughout the Middle Ages, they were greatly admired, and their stories provided inspiration and encouraged perseverance through adversity. Yet their widespread acclamation seems to indicate a paradox in one of the canonical fundaments of Christianity: how could a religion with such a high regard of non-material spirituality hold narratives where the body plays an indispensable role so highly? According to Caroline Walker Bynum, a pioneer in introducing the concepts of gender and body to the study of medieval Christianity, the body took centre stage especially in late medieval theological discourse: “The exempla of preachers and the stories of hagiographers make soul unabashedly somatomorphic … It asserts, however inconsistently, some kind of 1 Jacobus da Varagine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. by William Granger Ryan (Princeton 2012), p. 18. 2 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 153. 3 Maurice Hassett, "Martyr", The Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. 9 (New York, 2020), accessed Jan. 2020, www.newadvent.org/cathen/09736b.htm.material continuity between Christ’s body in the triduum and in heaven, elaborates the theory of Mary’s Bodily Assumption, and strives to account for the shape and integrity of the cadaver before decay. Despite a certain distrust of physical pleasure, it bestows on the risen body all the organs and senses – even the scars – of earthly experience.”4 In Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Bynum disagrees with those who argue that the emphasis on fasting and the female bodies’ suffering in the later Middle Ages was related to internalized misogyny and denial of the body. Instead, she posits the female mystics’ body precisely as a place of opportunity for somatic spirituality, celebrating the body, its potential, and its possibility to transform into a vehicle for religious expression; a way to fuse with Christ.5 Other medievalists following in her footsteps have referred to expressions of religiosity in this period as ‘somatic mysticism’ or ‘somatic sanctity’.6 Whereas ascetics tended to distrust the body and its needs, the body was simultaneously considered a fundamental requirement for sanctification. Moreover, for the early Christian martyrs, it was the exact place where sanctity was constructed. In this thesis, I will analyse the ways in which martyrs’ bodies were conceptualized in the Legenda aurea, or Golden Legend, a late thirteenth-century hagiographic compendium written by Jacopo De Fazio, otherwise known as Jacobus da Varagine (ca. 1230-1298).7 The stories of the martyr saints within were filled with “lurid detail of gruesome sufferings, with defiance and rejection of the world, and larded with spectacular miracles,”8 and, by analysing Jacobus’ martyrs, I would like to posit the Legenda aurea as a primary example of this late medieval somatic mysticism. In researching the stories of monks, abbots, and hermits in the Legenda, Emmy Atterving has used the theoretical framework of hybridity as a way to “understand the creation of identity and gender in language, focusing on the very words that tie subjects to their roles and identities.”9 She argues that the ways in which sanctity could be performed transcended contemporary gender roles, stating that saints transcended boundaries both vertically and horizontally: “Sanctity is dependent on the death of the saint and its rise to Heaven, as well as interventions from above in the form of miracles, visions and messages. … In a similar fashion, saints transcend horizontally the spectrum of humans, both male and female ones. Saints have an inherent potential for transcending pronouns and genders, that is, identities, and it is my 4 Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York, 1995), p. 319. 5 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (1987), pp. 219-244. 6 Alexandra Locking and Rachel Fulton amongst others. 7 I have found there to be an array of different spellings of Jacobus’ name in secondary literature. To remain consistent, I will refer to him as Jacobus da Varagine. When citing quotes where his name was originally spelled differently, I will change it accordingly. 8 Eamon Duffy, ‘Introduction to the 2012 Edition’, in: The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, 2012), p. xv. 9 Emmy Atterving, “She said she was called Theodore”: A modality analysis of five transcendental saints in the 1260s Legenda Aurea and 1430s Gilte Legende (MA-thesis), Stockholm University (2017), p. 7.
hypothesis that hybridity and sanctity are correlated, either by pure causality, where sanctity forms a premise for hybridity, or by necessary coexistence.”10 Whereas I agree that the concepts of sanctity, body, and identity were fundamentally intertwined in the Legenda, I would like to argue that they were more directly connected to each other in the stories of Jacobus’ martyrs. While Atterving emphasizes the importance of sanctity to the construction of identity, I would rather like to state the opposite. When we look at the martyrs Jacobus chose to depict as well as the manner in which he depicted them, it is precisely the body and its gender identity which is of fundamental importance to the construction of sanctity in the Legenda. Instead of transcending contemporary gender identities, I would like to argue that the stories of these saints rather confirmed these by emphasizing the connection between their gendered bodies and the stories of their sanctification. The significance of Jacobus’ martyrs is primarily conveyed through their bodies, and these bodies were used as a place where gender difference was created. Gender and the construction of somatic sanctity in the Legenda In the Legenda, the body is the place where gender difference is created. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries knew an upsurge in the popularity and importance of female martyrs. Writers and artists glorified them for withstanding great ordeals, suffering in the name of faith, and performing overall praiseworthy conduct worthy of imitation. Yet male martyrs performed somatic sanctity in ways wholly different to female martyrs. Whereas men could use their male bodies to directly refer to Christ and his passions, the late medieval female body symbolized different things, meaning women could not perform religiosity in a similar manner. Other solutions had to be found to justify their sanctification. In this thesis, I shall analyse the roles bodily experiences played for both female and male martyrs and in what ways their body was coupled to their gender and sex. What role do the body and external factors relating to the body play in the lives of female and male martyrs? In what ways is somatic sanctity constructed in the Legenda, and how does this specifically relate to the martyrs’ gender? To answer these questions, I have divided this thesis into two chapters. In the first chapter, I will focus on the ways in which the saints were tortured. I will emphasize how important their physical suffering was for their eventual sanctification. Furthermore, I will discuss the role of Saint Francis and the Franciscan and Dominican monastic orders in creating contemporary meanings of imitatio Christi, which led late medieval descriptions of masculine martyrdom to differ fundamentally from feminine martyrdom. Men could use their male bodies to directly refer to Christ and his passions, whereas 10 Atterving, “She said she was called Theodore”, pp. 13-14.
women could not. Therefore, Jacobus sought other ways to sanctify his female martyrs in their martyrdom. In the second chapter, I will continue to show how the application of this feminized imitatio Christi led to the creation of two female archetypes: one related to chastity and one to caregiving and motherhood. Most of Jacobus’ female martyrs were Virgin Martyrs, young women who were beatified for preserving their chastity in the face of adversity. Whereas virginity was important for all Christians, the concept of chastity was feminised throughout the Legenda, especially in the way these Virgin Martyrs were presented. Several women could not be martyred as virgins for they had already taken on the role of spouse or mother. I will argue that these remaining female saints can be groups under the term ‘surrogate martyrdom’. Throughout this thesis, I will also focus on elements in the stories which did not directly address characteristics of the saints, such as difficulties which halted them in their spiritual journeys and the role of their mortal counterparts (e.g. romantic interests, family members). Ultimately, this thesis will serve as an exploration of the ways in which gender was constructed in relation to sanctity in the late middle ages. The Legenda aurea The body of this thesis will consist of a thorough analysis of how approximately one hundred martyrs (25 female and 76 male) were depicted in the Legenda aurea.11 This collection of hagiographies, initially published in the 1260s, was compiled and written by Jacobus da Varagine. He was most likely born in Genoa in 1228 or 1229, where he was trained as a Dominican. He eventually became prior of the Dominicans in Lombardy (1267-1277), and in 1292 Pope Nicholas IV appointed him to be archbishop of Genoa.12 He passed away in 1298 and was belatedly beatified in 1816 by Pope Pius VII at the request of the Genoese. During his life he was a prolific author, producing many religious works such as guides, sermons, a chronicle to the history of Genoa, and, by far his most famous and cited work, the Legenda aurea.13 11 I will be using the 2012 edition of the English translation by William Granger Ryan, which was originally published in 1993. It was the first complete translation in modern English, following and completing the previous 1969 version by Ryan and Helmut Ripperger. It is a complete English translation of Theodor Graesse’s second edition of the Latin Legenda aurea (Leipzig, 1850). This 2012 edition has restored many passages from Graesse’s edition which have previously been omitted.11 As Sherry L. Reames has noted, it also includes commentary by Jacobus, such as “scholarly answers to questions on the life of Christ and on the liturgy; discussions of particular cruxes in saints’ legends; arguments for the special status of particular saints; homiletic discourses of various kinds,” making it easier for modern readers to understand the popularity and its original didactic function. 12 Jacques Le Goff, In Search of Sacred Time: Jacobus de Voragine and The Golden Legend (Princeton, 2014), p. 1. 13 Albert Evan Kohn, Voragine’s Golden Jews: The Positioning of the Jews in the Legenda Aurea (senior thesis), Colombia University (2018), p. 1. Steven A. Epstein, The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine: A Genoese Mind in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 2015), p. 7.
Jacobus set out to create a complete encyclopaedia of famous and lesser known saints, rendering works by his predecessors irrelevant. The primary purpose and original intention of the Legenda was to aid priests and preachers; to serve as a quick way to look up saints’ lives, information on feast days, and instructions to “bulk out their sermons and catechesis.”14 Through these leaders of Christian congregations the information was passed on to others in the community.15 The compendium did not remain sealed in monasteries and convents for long. Dominican networks helped disseminate it amongst lay people in the thirteenth, fourteenth and even fifteenth centuries, where it served as “a source of entertainment and of inspiration and source material for poets, dramatists, and painters.”16 The vast work became one of the most published works of the Late Middle Ages, even beating the amount of publications of the bible in certain time periods, and was translated and available in most West-European languages.17 Almost a thousand copies of the manuscript containing part or all of the original Latin version of the Legenda remain today, in addition to around five hundred translated versions. Ernest Richardson explains that the popularity of the Legenda can partially be explained by the contemporary late medieval climate: “[The Legenda aurea] was produced and put into circulation at that essential moment in the history of the written word when vernacular language began to rival Latin, when a growing number of laymen became capable of reading, and when, during the latter half of the twelfth century, the spread of the practice of silent reading permitted individual reading and put an end to total reliance on reading aloud, the only form of reading practiced in the Middle Ages.”18 The widespread reception of the Legenda means it should be treated as a reflection of contemporary meanings, values and interpretations. According to Lynda Coon, hagiographies “enforced theological orthodoxy and institutional power. Through saints’ lives, sacred biographers demarcated Christian asceticism, dogma, and miraculous power. Hagiographical images therefore operated as the popular manifestation of didactic power and, as such, they provided vital lessons of institutional authority and hierarchical control over most aspects of Christian spirituality.”19 This is especially significant seeing as it was not only publicized and read within and by the Dominican and Franciscan monastic orders; the Church, too, chose to endorse and spread this specific compendium to represent their canonised saints.20 Jacobus had 14 Duffy, ‘Introduction to the 2012 Edition’, p. xi. 15 Epstein, The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine, p. 8. 16 Duffy, ‘Introduction to the 2012 Edition’, p. xx. 17 Emma Gatland, Women from the ‘Golden Legend’: Female Authority in a Medieval Castilian Sanctoral (Woodbridge, 2011), p. 1. Duffy, ‘Introduction to the 2012 Edition’, pp. xi-xii. 18 Le Goff, In Search of Sacred Time, p. x. 19 Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Atiquity (Pennsylvania, 1977), p. 10 20 Kohn, Voragine’s Golden Jews, pp. 2-3.
a deep sense of respect for Pope Innocent IV (1243-1253), and, in the Legenda, “Rome is second only to Jerusalem in the number of times it appears.”21 There are no known instances of conflict between him and church authorities that we know of, which must have made it easier for him to be taken into church doctrine. The immense popularity of the compilation makes it exemplary of “the shared comprehensions of sanctity among clergy and laity alike in the later Middle Ages,”22 making it a useful source through which to study late medieval culture. At the same time, the Legenda should be treated as an influential place where certain meanings, values and interpretations were created and strengthened. Jacobus had freedom, to some extent, in what he chose to include, exclude, elaborate on, condense or leave out completely. Saints he believed to be more important than others were emphasized, and he was highly selective over which feast days to cover and which to give the most attention to.23 It is important to reflect on the narratives and elements Jacobus chose to include, because he either believed them to be true or to be important metaphorical reflections of correct moral values; even though he critiques certain passages for containing mistaken details, he still chose to record the supposed flaws. The subsequent popularity of the Legenda meant that the choices he made had a huge influence on and was formative of perceptions of what exactly constituted sanctity. The stories in the Legenda have not been organised alphabetically or chronologically, but under four distinct periods: the time of deviation (from Adam’s expulsion until Moses), of renewal (from Moses until the birth of Christ, which renewed faith under mankind), of reconciliation (from Easter to Pentecost), and of pilgrimage (“that of our present life, for we are on pilgrimage and constantly engaged in warfare”24). At the same time, the book is divided into five unequal sections based on the liturgical year: “the periods from Advent to Christmas (ch. 1-5); from Christmas to Septuagesima (ch. 6-30); from Easter Day to Pentecost (ch. 54-76); and from the octave of Pentecost to Advent again (ch. 77-180).”25 The compendium contains figures from the New Testament and the early Church, and several chapters have been reserved for special saints such as Michael (angel and thus nonhuman), apostles, and several authors Jacobus looked up to (Augustine, Gregory, Bernard).26 The majority of the compilation was dedicated to the early Christian martyr saints, making up 92 of the 180 chapters.27 The obvious reason almost all martyrs documented lived during the first four centuries of the Gregorian calendar was the 21 Le Goff, In Search of Sacred Time, pp. 9-10. 22 Atterving, “She said she was called Theodore”, p. 197. 23 Duffy, ‘Introduction to the 2012 Edition’, p. xiv. Epstein, The Talents of Jacopo da Varagine, p. 116. 24 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 3. 25 Duffy, ‘Introduction to the 2012 Edition’, p. xi. 26 Ibidem, p. xi. Atterving, “She said she was called Theodore”, p. 17. 27 Some chapters contain stories of multiple saints (e.g. those on siblings or mothers with their children).
development of Christianity from a marginal but tolerated religion to a recognized one, eventually becoming the official religion in a large part of Western Europe. The number of Christians tortured greatly diminished, with the thirteenth century Dominican preacher Peter of Verona, who was killed by a heretic assassin, being one of few exceptions.28 According to Steven Epstein, Jacobus had a ‘Genoese mind’: he was a hard worker with an ambition to produce in the name of God and had a desire to order and systemize (“It cannot be a coincidence that the greatest collection of saints’ lives and the most important Latin dictionary of the Middle Ages were written by Genoese Dominicans.”29). At the same time, Jacobus was “a widely read and well-travelled Dominican preacher comfortable in the academic and spiritual milieu of Europe.”30 Whilst his work must be geographically contextualized in the cultural milieu of Genoa, Italy, this must be balanced with the wider context of European intellectual traditions. Jacobus was aware of this pan-European Christendom, keeping indications of his Genoese frame of reference to a minimum.31 Hagiographies were ecumenical sources, and efforts were made to unionize Christians under different Christian traditions. On this, Coon says the following: “Hagiographers used the miraculous deeds and heroic virtues of holy women and men as cultural and religious symbols for eclectic audiences from Ireland to Syria.”32 Saints and their lives were universal phenomena used to create an understandable language of faith across an eclectic and diverse bundle of meanings. The Legenda was so vigorously spread throughout western Europe, I consider it a part of a larger pan-European trend and have found less need to specify geographically. History of the body and gender theory Up until the 20th century, historians used to write histories ‘without bodies’; as disembodied thoughts and ideas, and bodies were only discussed as a part of medical history. In the 1980s and 1990s, history of the body became a separate field of research, used primarily to better understand the workings and intersections of gender, sex, and sexuality in their historic contexts. It was built on Foucauldian discourse theory, which defines discourse as regulated systems of statements and points out that what unites these statements is always temporary. Since discourses create meaning, they have the power to establish and give organized existence to objects. There is thus no underlying objective reality which is being reflected by discourse. Language, then, is not a neutral transmitter of existent meanings, it is an active producer of meanings, and also creates “identities, subject positions, and institutional sites from which a 28 Le Goff, In Search of Sacred Time, p. 23. 29 Atterving, “She said she was called Theodore, pp. 5-6. 30 Ibidem. 31 Idem, pp. 7-8. 32 Coon, Sacred Fictions, p. 10.
person can speak or be addressed,”33 and “[b]odies indeed cannot gain significance outside discourse.”34 The body can thus not be taken as an originating point. It must be seen and analysed as something that is socially inscribed upon. The theory has thus made it possible to use the concept of the body as a way to understand the link between gender and (biological) sex, and to discuss gender as a product of social and cultural construction, emphasizing the “cultural and historical variability of the body instead of viewing it as a fixed biological given”35 and turning it into a “historically and culturally specific entity, shaped and reshaped in different discourses and discursive practices.”36 The way in which bodies are theorized have very real life implications. Discourse theory therefore does not propose a dismissal of the tangible, physical form. On the contrary. By taking it into account, room is made to include the impact of traditions, knowledge, instruments, locations, and a multitude of institutions on the body into account: “All these aspects together define how bodily sex has been enacted or made available to be ‘read’ and what sorts of sex result from these readings, and all of them are historically and geographically specific.“37 I find that intertwining gender theory and history of the body is crucial, not just for analysing past male and female experiences, but also in connecting contemporary historiography and its object of study. By analysing gender roles and sexual symbolism in different ages, it becomes possible to historicize the relation between body and gender and substantiate the theory that gender is performative. I find problematizing contemporary notions of gender an important step to further reject the essentialist idea that modern day inequalities are due to fixed, inherent qualities in men and women.38 It is the historians’ task to take what is traditionally viewed as an ahistorical psychoanalytic framework and show that this is very much historical. Furthermore, Merry Wiesner-Hanks has stressed the importance of analysing Judeo-Christian notions of normality through the lens of gender, as it has been a formative factor in what has shaped global masculinity and femininity.39 Returning to our Christian roots allows us to recognize deeply embedded ideas and concepts which are used in western discourses today. By using queer- and gender theory to analyse religious traditions, we can recognize their 33 Coon, Sacred Fictions, p. 26. 34 Mak, Doubting Sex: Inscriptions, Bodies and Selves in Nineteenth-Century Hermaphrodite Case Histories (Manchester, 2013), p. 8. 35 Willemijn Ruberg, History of the Body (London, 2019), p. 1. 36 Helen Malson, ‘Towards a Feminist Post-Structuralist Perspective’, in The Thin Woman: Feminism, post-structuralism and the social psychology of anorexia nervosa (London, 1998), p. 29. 37 Mak, Doubting Sex, p. 8. 38 Joan W. Scott, ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, in: The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 5 (1986), pp. 1054-1055. 39 Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women, Gender, and Church History, in: Church History, Vol. 71, No. 3 (2002), pp. 606-608.
importance in the historical socio-cultural constructions of femininity and masculinity, and better understand how cultural meanings are inscribed upon gendered bodies. The medieval body is an enigmatic site with multiple significances for both female and male participants in medieval discourse. By treating it in this manner, I would like to offer a 'body-focused’ history of the Late Middle Ages, analysed through the lens of gender theory. I have found that both the importance of the martyrs’ body as necessary vehicle to achieve spiritual greatness and the historical connection between female body and constructions of feminine sanctity have often been discussed in the works of gender historians and historians of the body.40 For a more rounded application of gender theory, I find it important to take both sexes into account. Masculinity and femininity are always constructed in relation to each other, and I thus find it of utmost importance to analyse them in this manner. In my thesis, I will investigate the roles that bodily experiences played for the male and female martyrs of the Legenda, and in what ways these were specifically coupled to their gender and sexed bodies. By comparing sex-specific characteristics in Jacobus’ stories, I have tracked similarities and deviations in the way he chose to depict the martyrs’ bodies. I will show that masculine sanctity was construed as something fundamentally different from feminine sanctity. 40 Most notably Emma Gatland’s Women from the Golden Legend (2011). Other studies will be mentioned throughout this thesis, including (but not limited to) works by Anke Bernau, Elizabeth Castelli, Eileen Marie Harney, and Alexandra Locking.
1
”Mortification of the flesh”
41___
Throughout the Legenda, Jacobus comments on why certain saints should be venerated more highly than others. In the case of Laurence, he prizes him multiple times on the intensity of his martyrdom, which he thought “stood out above the passions of the other martyrs.”42 We are told that Laurence was whipped with live scorpions, stripped, beaten with clubs and lead-laden whips, and had hot blades pressed into his sides. Laurence describes these forms of torture as “the banquet I have always desired,”43 after which the provoked prefect ordered, “that his limbs, cut and torn by the blows of the scourges, be placed over a fire and alternately turned from one side to the other, so that, by means of the iron grill, which, because of its continual firing, had power in itself to burn, the pain would be made more violent and would last longer.”44 Words are not spared as to describe the violence that was inflicted upon his body. Quoting Ambrose, Jacobus compares Laurence to a mustard seed, “because, rubbed and crushed by many sufferings, he merited to spread throughout the whole earth the fragrance of his mystery. Previously he was unimpressive in body, unknown and unrecognized, a nobody: after he was tortured, torn apart, roasted, he infused all the churches throughout the world with the aroma of his nobility.”45 He continues clarifying his praise: “Anyone who dies by the sword dies once; one who is thrust into a furnace is liberated by one push; but Laurence was smitten with long and multiple tortures, so that he was dying all through his suffering yet did not die to end it. We read that the holy youths walked in the flames to which they were sentenced and trod upon glowing balls of fire, but Laurence earned more glory than they. If they walked amid the flames, he lay stretched over the fire of his torture; and if they could trample down the fires with the soles of their feet, he contained the fire by the way his body was spread over it. They stood in pain with their hands uplifted, praying to the Lord; he, prostate in his pain, prayed to the Lord with his whole body.”46 Bodily martyrdom was thus presented as a way to extend prayer further than soul. The entire body had to able to withstand and endure intense pain and suffering to receive the highest form of praise, fundamentally intertwining the meaning of flesh and inviolability. In the first half 41 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 582. 42 Idem, p. 456. 43 Idem, p. 452. 44 Idem, p. 456. 45 Idem, p. 457. 46 Idem, p. 456.of this chapter, I will argue that the gruesome and lengthy descriptions of bodily mutilation and torture in the Legenda aurea substantiate the idea that the compendium was primarily focussed on the body.47 Jacobus was fascinated with the manifold attacks upon his martyrs’ bodies – Alain Boureau counted eighty-one different forms of torture throughout the Legenda.48 While almost all of Jacobus’ martyrs condemn their bodies for being the main source of weakness and temptation, in the Legenda, the martyrs’ body and the act of ultimately renouncing the body, are essential for their salvation. The spiritual sanctification of these saints and their post-mortem praise were fundamentally dependant on and indissolubly linked to their bodies. In the second half of this chapter, I will argue that gender difference was created, in part, through these attacks upon the martyr saints’ bodies. The gendered physique of the saint meant that there was a certain difference in the kinds of suffering that were available and imaginable for female martyrs and for male martyrs. Whereas a direct imitation of Christ was relatively easily imaginable for men because of their corporeal similarities, women and their female bodies had to be connected to that of Christ in a different manner. I will show the recurring torture methods Jacobus chose to depict explicitly point towards the sex-specific characteristics of the saints, and that, through their physical martyrdom, the body of the saint was a place where gender difference was created. Imitatio Christi in the Late Middle Ages Throughout the Middle Ages, there were conflicting views as to what exactly constituted imitatio Christi, a term which generally points to the idea that you could acquire cultural and religious capital through imitating Christ. According to Lester Little, the most important shift was “precisely in the nature of the human Christ in the Latin West between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries … . The incarnate Christ’s earthly life, especially the sufferings He endured, became the new focal points of devotion, the new models to follow.”49 The focus of religious practice had shifted from the fear-invoking God of the Old Testament to the more merciful and compassionate figures of Christ and Mary. Moreover, according to Dawn Marie Hayes, the Old Testament contained the physical space of the temple, whereas the New Testament “personalized and particularized the individual Christian’s body as a temple.”50 This was the 47 The appendix following my conclusion (pp. 56-60) contains a chart of the multiple forms of torture the martyrs in the Legenda aurea were subjected to. 48 Alain Boureau, La Legende doree: La systeme narrative de Jacques de Voragine (Paris, 1984), pp. 118-120. 49 Lester K. Little, ‘Imitatio Francisci: The Influence of Francis of Assissi on Late Medieval Religious Life’, in: Defenders and Critics of Franciscan Life: Essays in Honor of John V. Fleming, eds. Micheal F. Cusato and Guy Geltner (Leiden, 2009), p. 197. 50 Dawn Marie Hayes, Body and Sacred Place in Medieval Europe, 1100-1139 (London, 2003), p. 3.
place where the transcendental presence of God had become visible and, more importantly, tangible in the bodies of Christ and Mary, thereby providing a physical model easier to imitate. In late medieval devotional literature, Christ’s fleshliness was emphasized. Bynum has stated that “Renaissance sermons often emphasized the bleeding of Christ’s penis at the circumcision as special proof of this true – that is, his fleshly – humanity.”51 Rachel Fulton agrees, stating that the presence of Christ’s body in the later Middle Ages must be understood in its multiplicity; “at once historical and glorified, sacramental and edible.”52 She underscores the importance of understanding Christ as flesh for late medieval audiences: “For those who prayed to Christ and Mary, particularly those men and women who were the authors of the prayers and meditations with which we have been concerned, this was precisely the point: God became flesh, our flesh, human flesh, body, and dwelt among us, and that flesh was itself a creature of God, as much as the soul. To love God, as Bernard of Clairvaux so famously put it, the first step accordingly was love of self, and not simply self as person but self as flesh.”53 In the Legenda, Jacobus stresses Christ’s humanity in several ways. According to Andrew, His humanisation made sense: “[S]ince he was giving his own immortality to man, it was by a fitting exchange that he took human mortality, because if God had not become man, man could not have become immortal.”54 When the devil visited Andrew disguised as a beautiful woman, he asked him at what point earth was higher than heaven. Andrew responded: “It is in the empyrean heaven, for there the body of Christ resides; and the body of Christ is higher than any heaven, yet it was formed of our flesh, and our flesh was made of earth. Therefore, at that point earth is higher than the heavens.”55 The image and concept of God had been humanised in Christ, and Christ’s body hurt and bled as ours do. Jacobus notes that He had shed his blood five times, and the importance of honouring this act: “The first was the circumcision, as this was the beginning of our redemption. The second was when he prayed in the garden, and this showed his desire for our redemption. The third, the scourging, merited our redemption because by his bruises we are healed. The fourth was his crucifixion, and this was the price of our redemption, since he made payment for what he had not taken away. The fifth was when the soldier opened his side with a spear, and this was the sacrament of our redemption, for blood and water issued forth: this prefigured our cleansing by the water of baptism, because that sacrament has its efficacy from the blood of Christ.”56 Christ’s body was believed to appear to Christians, and, 51 Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1991), p. 84. 52 Rachel Fulton, From Judgement to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, ca. 800-1200 (New York, 2002), p. 416. 53 Idem, p. 467. 54 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 17. 55 Idem, p. 20. 56 Idem, p. 74.
moreover, to be touched and embraced by his mortal brides and valiant soldiers, something I will expand upon in the following chapter. Through the humanisation of Christ, the concept of imitatio Christi became increasingly associated with recreating the bodily suffering of Christ, his passions and sorrows, rather than simply remembering or pitying him. Christ was no longer merely a spiritual or metaphorical model; His life had become a somatic, literal one. This renewed emphasis on Christ’s humanity paralleled the evolution of the vita apostolica. The first Apostles had previously been considered a group of followers, making of their devotion to Christ a more corporate, less literal, and less demanding matter. In the later Middle Ages, however, monastic life increasingly became centred on understanding how the Apostles actually lived. Their devotion started to stress the suffering of the individual in following Christ and His suffering. As a result, the concept of religion evolved: “The new forms of devotion included the veneration of the cross, the crucifix, the blood, pain and suffering of Jesus, a greatly expanded devotion to Mary and her infant Son, and far more individual prayer. All this had in common an astonishing literalism that fostered a spirituality of imitating every last detail of the life of Jesus.”57 The most important development in the way in which Christianity was practiced within monastic orders was moving away from cloisters and into society to preach and beg like the Apostles had done.58 The mendicant friars aimed to imitate Christ through a life of poverty, preaching, and even following him to martyrdom if necessary. An important figure in this resurgence was Francis of Assisi, the thirteenth century Catholic friar, deacon, and preacher who founded the Franciscan orders. Many Franciscan monks believed that his life had conformed with that of Christ, not only in his virtues and his role as peacemaker, but also in a very literal and somatic sense, in receiving the sacred stigmata: wounds that were inflicted miraculously in his hands, feet, and side – such as Christ in his crucifixion. He was believed to have transformed into Him and was perceived as being “an, or the, other Christ: Franciscus alter Christus.”59 The embodiment of Christ in the flesh was renewed in Francis’ body, providing a new model with values known since the first century. Though not to discount his spirituality, “he and his disciples understood Francis’ activity in this world as his holiness.”60 Francis’ sanctification was, in part, due to “[p]racticing severe asceticism and keeping his body at the point of death for many years at a time, he denied himself sleep, shelter, and food to such extremes that those of his followers with less robust physiques could not imitate him. According to his first biographer, Thomas of Celano, as Francis lay dying, he apologized to his body for his harsh treatment.”61 His 57 Little, ‘Imitatio Francisci’, p. 198. 58 Ibidem. 59 Idem, p. 195. 60 Margaret R. Miles, The Word Made Flesh: A History of Christian Thought (Oxford, 2005), p. 160. 61 Ibidem.
stigmata was the first ever recorded case of a physical duplication of Christ’s suffering, and he himself emphasized that this stigmata and, by extension, the absolute denunciation of the body and its needs, should be understood as fundamental parts of re-enacting His life and passions. Gruesome physicality in the Legenda Francis’ physical suffering generated admiration and appreciation amongst members of the mendicant orders, including Jacobus, who was a Dominican prior.62 The story of Francis’ stigmata and the ways in which he associated this with his spirituality had led to a renewed interest in the martyrs of the first four Christian centuries, who too had imitated Christ’s passions in a more literal sense. Hagiographers emphasized their bodily suffering because, according to late medieval religious discourse, this was exactly what bound them to Christ. Pain is something that cannot exist outside of discourse as a pure sensory experience but is something that is culturally constructed. Martha Easton borrows the term ‘philopassianism’ from Esther Cohen, “the deliberate attempt to feel as much pain as possible,” to describe the experience of pain in the later Middle Ages.63The body had become the symbolical vehicle which could help a person achieve spiritual greatness. Easton has analysed the earliest surviving extensively illustrated manuscript of the Legenda aurea, and has found that the images of violence, torture and death “are part of a tradition of honouring the violent end of a martyrs’ life as the supreme example of their holiness; in this way the martyr is most like Christ, witness to the paradox of divinity revealed through the crucible of human suffering.”64 Jacobus uses violence as an important signifier of religion and sanctity. In the Legenda, he has incorporated extremely graphic and elaborate descriptions of the tortures martyrs were subjected to. In the case of Quentin, whose martyrdom Jacobus chose to dedicate two paragraphs to, we barely even learn of the saints’ spiritual practice. We are told in the first sentence that he “performed many miracles,”65 yet the nature of these miracles remains unexplained. The remainder of the paragraph is dedicated to his martyrdom: “[H]e was stretched on the rack until his veins burst, then was whipped with raw thongs, then had boiling oil, pitch, and grease poured over his wounds.”66 Quentin mocks the judge, who then has lime, vinegar, and mustard forcibly poured into his mouth. Nails are pounded into his head and legs, 62 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 610. Jacobus accounts Francis receiving the stigmata: “The servant of God had a vision in which he saw above him a crucified Seraph, who imprinted the signs of crucifixion upon him, so that he himself seemed to have been crucified. His hands, feet, and side were marked with the signature of the cross, but he with great care hid the stigmata from the eyes of all.” He includes accounts of witnesses who had seen the stigmata imprinted on his body. 63 Martha Easton, ‘Pain, Torture and Death in the Huntington Library Legenda aurea’, in: Gender and Holiness, eds. Samantha J.E. Riches and Samantha Salih (London, 2002), p. 51. 64 Idem, p. 50. 65 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 651. 66 Idem, p. 652.
ten pegs are driven under his fingernails, and, finally, he is beheaded. The accounts of his spirituality have been diminished insofar that the physical aspect of his sanctity is all that remains, further stressing the importance of the body. Several saints in the Legenda make the fight against and rejection of pagan religion equal parts tangible, fleshly, and disgusting. After smashing her parents’ idols, Christina’s father orders for her “flesh to be torn off with hooks and her tender limbs to be broken.”67 She immediately picks up the pieces of her flesh and throws them in her father’s face, saying: “Take that, tyrant, and eat the flesh that you begot!”68 She perseveres through multiple other forms of torture, after which her breasts and tongue were cut off. Christina then threw the severed tongue in the face of her judge, “hitting him in the eye and blinding him.”69 Laurence, whose martyrdom I have elaborated upon at the beginning of the chapter, was laid to rest on an iron bed, stripped, with burning coals under it, and had heated iron pitchforks pressed upon his body. He then calls out to Decius, his torturer: “Learn, wretched man, that your coals are refreshing to me but will be an eternal punishment to you, … and being roasted I give thanks!”70 He continues: “Look, wretch, you have me well done on one side, turn me over and eat!”71 Christopher underwent several tortures by the rule of the king of Canaan. When the king ordered four hundred bowmen to shoot arrows at him, the arrows “hung in mid-air and not a single one of them could touch him.”72 The king then came to mock him, thinking he had been mortally wounded, one of the arrows came through the air, struck him in the eye, and blinded him. Christopher informed him: “Tyrant, I will be dead by tomorrow. Then make a paste with my blood and rub it on your eyes and you will recover your sight!”73 After Christopher had been beheaded, the blood indeed restored the tyrant’s sight, “and by removing the body’s blindness also illumined his mind.”74 The bodies of these saints serve as weapons, are (quite literally) offered up for consumption, or are used as medicine. One of the reasons that these vehement atrocities could be presented, accepted, and appreciated, was because they served as a legitimization of sanctification. William Ian Miller argues that the extreme corporeality present in these stories was necessary to bring across their symbolic message: “The virulent and almost panicky attacks on lust, sin, and fleshly vice could hardly have dispensed with the intensification and passion that the language of disgust provided; without recourse to foul odours sermonizing would have been bland fare indeed.”75 Oftentimes in late medieval literature, parts of the bodily martyrdom 67 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 387. 68 Ibidem. 69 Idem, p. 388. 70 Idem, p. 453. 71 Ibidem. 72 Idem, p. 400. 73 Ibidem. 74 Ibidem, quote by Ambrose. 75 William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (Massachusetts, 1997), p. 151.
of saints were depicted as “so shamefully degrading that no pride in the attainment of humility could ever rationally compensate for the misery endured to attain it.”76 Many of the Legenda’s martyrs were enraged throughout the process of their martyrdom, constantly provoking their torturer and almost begging for more severe punishment. Andrew was threatened with several tortures, to which he responded: “Make them the worst you can think of! The more bravely I bear suffering in his name, the more acceptable I shall be to my king.”77 Vincent was held captive, starved, stretched on the rack and torn from limb to limb under Dacian’s command. When Dacian asked him,“[t]ell me, Vincent, how does your miserable body look to you now?”, the saint smiled, and replied: “Indeed, this is what I have always longed for.’”78 He continues provoking his persecutor: “O happy me! The harder you try to frighten me, the more you begin to do me favours! Up, then, wretch, and indulge your malicious will to the full! You will see that by God’s power I am stronger in being tortured than you are in torturing me!”79 Dacian then commanded the torturers to “[drive] iron hooks into the saint’s sides so that the blood spurted from his whole body and the entrails hung out between the dislocated ribs.”80 He remained unsatisfied and accused Dacian of being falsely merciful, commanding him not to “forgo a single jot or tittle of your tortures, then you will have to admit yourself defeated in all of them!”81 He was then taken to a gridiron, which held a fire underneath it. Jacobus spares no words to describe what happened to his flesh: “Willingly mounting the grill he was seared, singed, and roasted, and iron hooks and red-hot spikes were driven into his body. Wound was piled upon wound, and, as the flames spread, salt was thrown on the fire so that the hissing flames could make the wounds more painful. The weapons of torture tore past his joints and into his belly, so that the intestines spilled out from his body.”82 The experience of pain was described as something by these sanctified and admired spiritual leaders as something they could not possibly get enough of. By not resisting, not even merely enduring these physical attacks, the absolute denunciation of the flesh took centre stage in these martyrs’ stories. More importantly, these tortures were the very thing that granted them empyrean enlightenment. Worldly pain exchanged for spiritual afterlife The ways in which Jacobus described his chosen saints reveal the fundamental necessity of bodily suffering for sanctification and suggest the certainty of the translation from physical 76 Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, p. 159. 77 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 17. 78 Idem, pp. 105-106. 79 Idem, p. 106. 80 Ibidem. 81 Ibidem. 82 Ibidem.
punishment to eternal salvation. Quoting either Maximus or Ambrose,83 Jacobus addresses Laurence’s torturers: “Although you reduced his members to ashes, the fortitude of his faith was not reduced: he endured the loss of his body but won the prize of salvation.”84 In the midst of Margaret’s martyrdom, she exclaims that “[t]his torture of the flesh is the salvation of the soul!”85 James did not mind the slow and painful dismemberment of his body parts: “Destroy the old house, a more splendid one is being prepared.”86 Hippolytus’ account suggests no worldly sacrifice could compare to the alternative of eternal post-mortem torment and punishment, for he “did not resist having his limbs torn asunder, lest he be mangled with eternal hooks.”87 When James the Dismembered was offered aid by physicians, he harshly declined: “Far be it from me to be guilty of so unspeakable a deception! No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God!”88 The primary way in which martyrs could overcome the world and its spiritual obstacles was by renouncing the body. Fulton states that, “it was not the pain itself but the fact of having been marked as Christ’s own through pain that underpinned devotional practice, a conviction that to appear before the Judge without such markings was tantamount to ensuring one’s instant damnation.”89 Amy Ogden says the following: “Just as Christ’s passion demonstrates what his words did not fully communicate, the graphic image of the saints’ suffering – or more frequently, the painless destruction of their bodies – reinforces and ultimately proves both the truth of their verbal expressions of faith and the inherent violence and cruelty of this life.”90 And so Ignatius declared: “I am the wheat of Christ! May I be ground fine by the teeth of the beasts, that I may be made a clean bread!”91 Vincent was praised because he “burn[ed] up vices, getting rid of them by mortification of the flesh; he conquered the fires of torture by dauntless endurance of pain and held on to victory over the world by despising it.”92 Jacobus continues, telling us he was “racked, beaten, scourged and burned but still unconquered: his courageous stance for the holy Name is unshaken, the fire of zeal heats him more than the hot iron, he is more bound by the fear of God than by fear of the world, he is determined to please God rather than the judge, he longs to die to the world rather than to God.”93 Ignatius refused to convert to paganism, and, in return, had his 83 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 457. Jacobus often expresses uncertainty on the origin of his source material: “Again Maximus, or, according to some, Ambrose …” 84 Ibidem, quote by Ambrose. 85 Idem, p. 369. 86 Idem, p. 731. 87 Idem, p. 462, quote by Ambrose 88 Idem, p. 731. 89 Fulton, From Judgement to Passion, p. 466. 90 Amy V. Ogden, ‘The Centrality of Margins: Medieval French Genders and Genres Reconfigured’, in: French Forum, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Pennsylvania, 2005), p. 11. 91 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 143. 92 Idem, p. 105. 93 Idem, p. 107.
shoulders beaten in with leaded scourges, his sides torn with nails, his wounds rubbed with sharp stones; was forced to walk barefoot over live coals; then had his back torn open with hooks and salt poured into his wounds, was bound to a stake by chains, and jailed in the bottom of a dungeon without food nor drink for three days. He told Trajan, his executioner, “Neither fiery flames nor boiling water can quench the love of Christ Jesus in me! … The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come!”94 When he is threatened to be mauled by wild beasts, Ignatius figures himself more a snack than a person, exclaiming: “O salutary beasts that are being readied for me! When will they come? When will they be turned loose? When will they be allowed to feast on my flesh? I shall invite them to devour me! I shall beg them to begin, lest they be afraid to touch my body as they have been with some others. I shall use force; I shall throw myself upon them! Pardon me, Romans, I beg of you! I know what is best for me – fire, crosses, wild beasts, my bones scattered about, limb being torn from limb and flesh from bone, all the devil’s tortures piled upon me, if only I may gain Christ!”95 Part of what made these martyrs so noteworthy was that certain knowledge of the afterlife had been passed on to them. Apollonia, described as a “fearless martyr”, was said “not to be conquered by the torments visited upon her nor by the heat of the flames, because her spirit was on fire with the far more ardent rays of truth. So it was that the material fire, ignited by the hands of mortals, could not overcome the heat infused by God in that indefatigable breast.”96 Agatha, in the midst of being tortured for ridiculing consular official Quintianus and his gods, exclaims: “These pains are my delight! It’s as if I were hearing some good news, or seeing someone I had long wished to see, or had found a great treasure. The wheat cannot be stored in the barn unless it has been thoroughly threshed and separated from the chaff; so my soul cannot enter paradise unless you make the headsmen give my body harsh treatment.”97 After a lengthy description of the torture of Vincent, we learn of a more tangible foreshadowing of this supposed afterlife: “The King for whom the soldier suffers commutes his suffering to glory. The darkness of the dungeon is dispelled by dazzling light, the sharpness of the potsherds is changed into the softness of flowers, the shackles fall from his feet, the saint enjoys the solace of angels; and when he walks on the flowers and joins in the angels’ chant, the lovely melody and the wonderful perfume of the flowers spread abroad.”98 By including accounts of martyrdom of non-canonized Christians, Jacobus granted his contemporary readers objects of comparison as to find out what made his saints so worthy of praise. When Adrian and his companions saw Christians being whipped with raw thongs, their 94 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 142. 95 Idem, p. 141. 96 Idem, p. 269. 97 Idem, p. 155. 98 Idem, p. 106.
mouths beaten in with stones, Adrian asked them what reward they awaited in return. They responded: “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him perfectly.”99 For most Christians, this promise of eternal salvation was somewhat abstract; a belief in something that could not be seen nor understood by humans. The very body of the martyr and the gruesome descriptions of its suffering, then, served as a more concrete and imaginable representation of this abstract concept of salvation. As God had been humanised in Christ, the martyrs’ flesh came to represent a tangible example of the Christian values and integrity needed to go to heaven. Thus far, I have argued that the ways in which the martyr’s body suffered made the saint deserving of praise and veneration. Oftentimes the martyrs’ speech directly connects the physical body and its passions to higher spirituality, which explains the contemporary need for the lengthy, gruesome descriptions with which these tortures are described. Within the Franciscan and Dominican monastic orders, the meaning of imitatio Christi evolved into a more literal, somatic one. By taking contemporary notions of what constituted sanctity into account, I have historically contextualized the Legenda within the Late Middle Ages and shown that this compendium was exemplary of this trend of somatic sanctity. I will now continue to explain how, in the depiction of martyrdom, gender difference was constructed. I will start off by showing how, in late medieval religious discourse, certain forms of imitatio Christi were available for men and not women and vice versa. Gender-specific imitatio Christi Several of Jacobus’ martyrs suffered certain forms of physical punishment reminiscent of or even specifically referring to the imitation and embodiment of Christ. James the Dismembered, who first had his toes individually chopped off and then his feet, exclaimed: “Christ’s foot was pierced and blood poured out!”100, reminding the reader his wounds were analogous to those of the Lord. A quarter of the male martyrs were subject to being beaten with iron hooks, nails, or iron-leaded whips, as Christ, too, had been.101 Seven martyrs were stoned.102 Stephen, referred to by Jacobus as the Protomartyr, “stood while praying for himself, but praying for those who stoned him he knelt, as though he desired that the prayer he offered for them be heard even more than the prayer he poured out for himself,”103 which referred to Christ who forgave his executioners. A considerable number of martyrs was crucified: Andrew, Matthias, Paul, Peter (who, in honour of Christ, was crucified downward), Nazarius, Philip, Bartholomew, Celsus, 99 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 546. 100 Idem, p. 731. 101 Twenty-four out of the one hundred and one male martyrs. See appendix. 102 See appendix. 103 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 48.
Cosmos, and Damian all faced death in a manner tantamount to that of Christ. Andrew took his time to greet the cross ecstatically: “Hail, O cross sanctified by the body of Christ and adorned with his limbs as with precious stones! Before the Lord was lifted up on you, you were greatly feared on earth, but not you draw down love from heaven and are accepted as a blessing. I come to you assured and rejoicing, so that you may joyfully accept me, the disciple of him who hung upon you, for I have always loved you and yearned to embrace you. O good cross, honored and beautified by the limbs of the Lord, long desired, constantly loved, ceaselessly sought, and now prepared for my wishful heart! Take me away from the world of men and return me to my Master, that he, having redeemed me by means of you, may receive me from you.”104 We can thus recognize a pattern: for men, the connection between physicality and spirituality was defined through certain forms of pain which referred to their male body and, by extension, Christ’s body. Jacobus depicted his male martyrs as being able to directly imitate Christ and his male body in his passions and suffering precisely through their male bodies. I will now continue to argue that, whereas physical suffering was a fundamental part of all martyrs’ lives, in the Legenda, this very suffering was deeply gendered. The forms of torture depicted were specifically and explicitly linked to the gendered and sexed body of the saint. As the female body could not suffer in a manner directly referring to Christ, other ways had to be sought to sanctify the female martyrs and identify them with Christ. I would first like to discuss several ways in which gender-specific models were created within these monastic orders. First of all, Francis was known for presenting both masculine and feminine qualities and characteristics, thus providing both male and female Christians a model worthy of imitation. Certain ideals for which Francis was renowned were personified as women, the most important amongst them being obedience, poverty, and chastity.105 This was accepted as a restoration of the shared masculine and feminine personality of Christ, which was to be understood as being equal but separate: “he was apolitical, a pacifist, a nurturer of souls, a friend of women and lepers; his judgements were spiritual and otherworldly, not physical and political. Christ’s celibacy proclaimed his prophetic status, while abrogating his virility in a world that honoured sexual potency and fruitfulness in marriage.”106 Yet, at the same time, “Francis’s 104 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 17. 105 Christina Cedillo, ‘Habitual Gender: Rhetorical Androgyny in Franciscan Texts’, in: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Indiana, 1992), p. 74. 106 Coon, Sacred Fictions, p. 14.
feminine traits cannot be nullified by his sex; they inscribe his body as female without the added cultural aspersions of female corporeality that women cannot avoid.”107 He did not detach this aspect of his spirituality from his worldly, authoritative position as a preacher and deacon, and was thus never wholly departed from his male body and the opportunities it granted him. Christina Cedillo refers to this phenomenon as ‘rhetorical androgyny’, “a scheme that functions to persuade readers that androgyny is a workable aim even as it remains a solely spiritual ideal that encourages preservation of social gender norms.”108 Secondly, Clare of Assisi was an important figure whose life served as a physical example of a specifically feminine type of imitatio Christi. Clare was considered by many to be Francis’ contemporary female counterpart. She was one of his first followers and founded the Order of the Poor Ladies, a monastic religious order for Franciscan nuns, and wrote their Rule of Life. Religious women were attracted to convents such as these because they allowed them more freedom than they were supposed to have according to the authority of church hierarchy. Within the enclosure, they were granted more freedom of movement, the authority to rule over other women, write their own Rules, and perform miracles. Yet women were not allowed to wander begging as did the male followers. Clare and her sisters were thus confined within the cloister, something that already separated them from being able to wholly incorporate the new ideals of literal imitation of Christ and the Apostles. Women were generally forbidden to beg and preach, and so the new models did not count for them: “no matter what the rhetoric said, a religious woman’s place was to be in a cloister.”109 Clare praised Francis for providing a satisfactory model for following Christ and encouraged her sisters to follow that model. Because of the recent literality of the concepts of imitatio Christi and vita apostolica, however, it became difficult to imagine how women could accurately perform according to these models.110 According to her later (and, not surprisingly, male) interpreters, she did not find Christ a wholly acceptable model for women and strove to follow the model of Mary instead, meaning a separate role model was created for women. Where Francis became a model for men (following Christ), Clare became the model for women (following Mary). Through Clare, then, the association between feminine sanctity and Mary’s virginal purity was renewed in the monastic orders. I would like to argue that the Legenda is a prime example of this newly emphasized virtue within the monastic orders. As I have illustrated before, rejecting “fundamental norms of bodily dignity, inviolability, and self-respect” made it possible to overcome the claims of the body in a way other than living a celibate life, which, 107 Cedillo, ‘Habitual Gender’, p. 76. 108 Idem, p. 66. 109 Miles, The Word Made Flesh, p. 161. Little, ‘Imitatio Francisci’, p. 200. 110 Ibidem.
according to Miller, was deemed a trend easier and more popular to partake in.111 In the Legenda, however, only men were granted the privilege of being able to choose for a divine life not wholly centred around celibacy. Women were ultimately bound to this renewed emphasis on their virginity through Clare, who was linked to the Virgin Mary. As I will illustrate throughout the rest of this thesis, time and time again Jacobus’ female martyrs were martyred solely for refusing someone access to their body. Their subsequent martyrdom was often specifically connected to their feminine body, the ways in which I will illustrate in the next part of this chapter. Sexual martyrdom In the second chapter, I will explore how virginity and chastity were conceptualized as being feminine by Jacobus. I will point out that the stories of the martyrdom of women heavily involved implications of their sexuality. There is a similar trend to be recognized of sexual tortures which are exclusively inflicted upon women, which specifically refer to their female body. In the Legenda, multiple stories contain what Kathryn Gravdal refers to as a sexual plot, where “the saint is sexualized through the threat of rape, forced prostitution, the eroticized display of the saint’s naked body, and so forth.”112 According to her, the female saint can identify herself with Christ through a “specifically female form of imitatio Christi, in which the attempted seduction of the saint imitates the temptation of Christ.”113 In her dissertation, Eileen Harney has researched depictions of four female martyrs in a multitude of hagiographies and has discerned a recurring link between female bodies and specifically sexual martyrdom in medieval hagiography: “The torments, such as breast mutilation and rape, assigned or attempted upon these women have overt sexual implications. Seemingly less sexualized punishments, such as burning and whipping, are also inflicted upon the women’s bodies.”114 Moreover, “[i]n each conquering, the virgins are depicted as overcoming or encountering attacks not only against their faith, which is the fundamental issue for them, […], but also against their female bodies and sex-specific attributes.”115 Recurring themes and motives include breast amputation, familial wrath, forceful romantic encounters, and public stripping.116 Seeing as these sex-specific 111 Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, p. 159. 112 Kathryn Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law (Pennsylvania, 1991), p. 22. 113 Ibidem. 114 Eileen Marie Harney, The Sexualized and Gendered Tortures of Virgin Martyrs in Medieval English Literature (P.H.D. thesis), University of Toronto (2008), p. 7. The martyrs whose lives she has analysed are Agatha of Catania, Agnes of Rome, Juliana of Nicomedia, and Katherine of Alexandria. 115 Idem, p. 266. 116 I have illustrated this throughout this and the following paragraph. The appendix contains a clear overview.
characteristics were the “more memorable qualities of these legends,”117 it remains important to investigate as to why this was so, and what the relationship was between female body plays and feminine piety. Several women, namely Juliana, Christina, Euphemia, and multiple women who converted to Christianity throughout the saints’ stories, were subject to hair-related tortures. Their hair was either cut off or they were hung up by it, reminding the audience of their specifically feminine physique. Juliana, Margaret, Christina, Perpetua, Felicity, Lucy, the unnamed virgin of Antioch, and Agnes were publicly stripped. Four male martyrs were stripped (Secundus, Cyriacus, Laurence, Hippolytus), meaning relatively more female than male martyrs had their garments forcibly removed.118 Being stripped was something which specifically referred to Christ, who was “stripped of his garments to clothe with his pardon the nakedness of our primal privation,”119 and “to cover our first parents’ nakedness.”120 While this form of imitatio Christi seems applicable to either gender, stripping a woman seems to have different implications than stripping a man in the Legenda. When Hippolytus was unclothed under Decius’ command, he called out: “You haven’t stripped me, rather you’ve clothed me!”, to which Decius responded: “How can you be so stupid, not even blushing at your nakedness?”121 Whereas men were stripped to create a spectacle of shame, the stripping of a woman thus had overt sexual implications. The female martyrs are often stripped under the command of a figure to whom she has refused access to her body. Agnes was subjected to torture by the prefect’s son who had fallen in love with her, and God made her hair grow so long “that it covered her better than any clothing,” as to preserve her modesty.122 Margaret was guarding sheep when the prefect Olybrius “caught sight of this very beautiful girl. He burned with desire for her immediately and sent his men after her, saying: ‘Go and seize her! If she’s freeborn, I’ll make her my wife; if she’s a slave, she’ll be my concubine!”123 Of course, Margaret refused to wed, and the reader is reminded by the audiences’ speech of the physical sacrifice this girl had made in the name of her faith: “Vain girl, pity your beauty and adore our gods, and all will go well for you! … Oh, what beauty you have lost by not believing in the gods!”124 Juliana, too, was stripped and tortured because she refused to marry a pagan. In the story of Anastasia, her three serving maids were stripped in front of a certain prefect, “so that he might at least enjoy the sight of their nudity.”125 117 Harney, The Sexualized and Gendered Tortures of Virgin Martyrs, p. 9. 118 As mentioned before, the Legenda contains 76 male and 25 female martyrs. 119 Da Varagine, The Golden Legend, p. 69. 120 Idem, p. 707. 121 Idem, p. 461. 122 Idem, p. 103. 123 Idem, p. 368-369. 124 Idem, p. 369. 125 Idem, p. 44.
