Proving Woman (46 page)

²⁶
Philip of Clairvaux, “Vita Elizabeth” c. 13, p. 371.

²⁷
Ibid. c. 18, p. 373.

²⁸
Ibid. c. 21, p. 375.

²⁹
Ibid. c. 23, p. 376. William, not present for the event, was relying on the testimony of Elisabeth’s mother and sisters,
with whom she lived.

³⁰
Ibid. c. 29, p. 378.

³¹
Ibid. c. 30, p. 378.

³²
Gilbert of Tournai,
Collectio de scandalis ecclesiae
c. 25, ed. Autbertus Stroick,
AFH
24 (1931): 62. On Franciscan territorialism concerning the stigmata, see AndréVauchez, “Les stigmates de Saint Fran ç ois
et leurs detracteurs,”
MEFRM
80 (1968): 608–12. When defending Francis’s stigmata, Peter Thomas denies that Paul’s remarks about bearing the stigmata on
his body should be taken literally (Gal. 6.17), insisting on Francis’s singularity (Gaudens Mohan, ed., “Petrus Thomae on
the Stigmata of St. Francis,”
Franciscan Studies
8 [1948]: 286, 294).

³³
Vauchez, “Les stigmates,” p. 609.

³⁴
Guillaume de Nangis,
Gesta Philippi tertii Francorum regis
ann. 1276, in
Recueil des historiens
des Gaules et de la France
, ed. Danou et Naudet (Paris: Imprimerie Royal, 1840), 20:502; see A. Mens, “L’Ombrie italienne et l’Ombrie braban ç onne:
Deux courants religieux paralle`les d’inspiration commune,”
Etudes Franciscaines
, annual supplement, 17 (1967): 27 n. 51. On this episode, see Dyan Elliott, “Women and Confession: From Empowerment to Pathology,”
in
Gendering
the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages
, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 37–38.

³⁵
AA SS
, April, 2:304–5. A translation of this letter is found in Thomas a` Kempis,
Lydwine of
Schiedam, Virgin
, ed. and trans. Vincent Scully (London: Burns and Oates, 1912), pp. 16–22.

³⁶
AA SS
, April, 2:305.

³⁷
Lydwine exemplifies Bynum’s contention regarding illness as something to be endured, not cured (“The Female Body and Religious
Practice in the Later Middle Ages,” in
Fragmentation
and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion
[New York: Zone Books, 1991], p. 189). This pattern was increasingly articulated over time. For instance, Stephen of Bourbon
describes how a holy woman, known from other sources to be the French Alpaiïs of Sens (d. 1211), was so horribly afflicted
by ulcers that her innards appeared outside, paralleling Lydwine’s later condition. Alpaiïs was healed by the Virgin Mary,
while Lydwine’s sanctity was manifested by her not being healed. See Stephen of Bourbon,
Anecdotes historiques, l
è
gendes et
apologues tir
è
s du recueil in
è
dit d
’
Etienne de Bourbon
no. 19, ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1877), pp. 26–28; also see James of Vitry,
Historia occidentalis of Jacques
de Vitry
, ed. John Frederick Hinnebusch (Fribourg: University Press of Fribourg, 1972), pp. 87–88; Vincent of Beauvais,
Speculum historiale
29.23, in
Speculum quadruplex; sive Speculum
maius
(Douai: B. Belleri, 1624), 4:1193, and Caesarius of Heisterbach,
Dialogus miraculorum
7.20, ed. Joseph Strange (Cologne, Bonn, Brussels: J. M. Heberle, 1851), 2:25; trans. H. Von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland,
The Dialogue on Miracles
(London: Routledge, 1929), 2:150–51. Caesarius does not mention her cure. Cf. Stephen of Bourbon’s account of a nun at Puy
suffering a similar condition and likewise healed by Mary (
Anecdotes
no. 320, p. 270).

³⁸
Amy Hollywood, for example, shows the ways in which the account that Beatrice of Nazareth (d. 1268) gives of her spirituality
is rendered in much more physical terms by her hagiographer. See “Inside Out: Beatrice of Nazareth and Her Hagiographer,”
in
Gendered Voices: Medieval
Saints and Their Interpreters
, ed. Catherine Mooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 78–98.

³⁹
On Lucia’s sojourn in Ferrara, see G. Marcianese,
Narratione della nascita, vita, e morte
della B. Lucia da Narni
c. 32 (Ferrara: V. Buldini, 1616), pp. 144 ff. On Ercole’s political deployment of Lucia, see Zarri,
Le sante vive
, pp. 51–62. For Lucia’s correspondence with the duke concerning her relocation to Ferrara, see Luigi Gandini, ed.,
Sulla venuta in Ferrara della beata
suor Lucia da Narni
(Modena: Societa` tipografica, 1901). On Lucia’s unconsummated marriage, see Dyan Elliott,
Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 218, 220–22.

⁴⁰
Ercole d’Este,
Spiritualium personarum feminei sexus facta admiratione digna. Transumpta
quedam ex parte Sororis Lucie quarundamque aliarum Sororum nuncupate de tercia Regula diui
patris Dominici ordinis predicatorum primi fundatoris: quorum originalia cum quibusdam notabilibus
testimoniis habentur in Conuentu Nurmburgensi eiusdem ordinis
(Nuremberg, 1501?), fol. 2r; these proofs also appear in Marcianese,
Narratione . . . della B. Lucia da Narni
c. 37, pp. 169–81. Ercole’s defense extends to other holy women of the region, for instance the raptures and enactment of
the passion of a certain Steffana of Quinzano (fol. 3r). He also affirms the contemporary cults of Sister Columba of Perusia
and Susana of Mantua (fols. 2v–3v) His own seal is affixed to the end of the entire statement (fol. 3v).

⁴¹
These include Theobald of Nuremburg (Este,
Spiritualium personarum
, fol. 3v); Nicolaus Maria Estensis, bishop Adriensis (fols. 4v–5r); Peter Tranensis, bishop of Ferrara and doctor of theology
and arts (fols. 5r–6r); and some canon lawyers from Ferrara (fols. 6r–v).

⁴²
Albert Huyskens, ed.,
Quellenstudien zur Geschichte der hl. Elisabeth Landgra
ïfi
n von Thu
ï
ringen
(Marburg: N. G. Elwert’sche, 1908), testimony of four handmaids, p. 138. Cf. Gregory IX’s parallel allusion (“Die heilige
Elisabeth und Papst Gregor IX,” ed. Karl Wenck,
Hochland
2 [1907]: 145). Hippolyte Delehaye uses the famous example of Elisabeth hiding, in her bed, a leper who is then transformed
into Christ to demonstrate this constant devolution from the abstract to the concrete. Originally when Ludwig saw the leper,
the eyes of his soul were opened and he saw Christ. But later accounts will insist on the physical reality of the leper (
Legends of the Saints
, trans. Donald Attwater [New York: Fordham University Press, 1962], p. 68). Since Paul was arguing against circumcision,
a literal interpretation was probably the furthest thing from his mind. For bibical passages that similarly refer to the
law (etc.) being written in hearts, see, for example, Prov. 3.3, Jer. 31.33, 2 Cor. 3.2.

⁴³
Michel de Certeau,
The Mystic Fable
, vol. 1,
The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
, trans. Michael Smith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 26; on the relationship between a female mystic’s
illness and the production of mystical texts, see ibid., p. 191; Elliott, “
Dominae
or
Dominatae
?” p. 64.

⁴⁴
Caesarius of Heisterbach,
Dialogus miraculorum
5.22, 1:306; trans. Scott and Bland, 1:350.

⁴⁵
Giovanni Boccaccio,
The Decameron
4th day, 2d story, trans. G. H. McWilliam (Harmonds-worth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1981), p. 348.

⁴⁶
There has been some work on fraudulent sanctity for the early modern period. See Gabrielle Zarri, ed.,
Finzione e santita` tra medioevo ed eta` moderna
(Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1991); Anne Schutte,
Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of
Venice, 1618
–
1750
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Judith Brown,
Immodest
Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

⁴⁷
See Luigi Jacobilli,
Vite de
’
santi e beati dell
’
Vmbria
(Foligno: Appresso Agostino Alterij, 1661), 3:46; Marcianese,
Narratione . . . della B. Lucia da Narni
c. 42, p. 217. Lucia was demoted as prioress and kept in quasi-imprisonment until her death in 1544. Her degradation occurred
soon after the death of Ercole in 1505. For growing ambivalence toward mystical phenomena, see Alison Weber, “Between Ecstasy
and Exorcism: Religious Negotiation in Sixteenth-Century Spain,”
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
23 (1993): 221–34.

⁴⁸
Richer of Sens,
Richeri Gesta Senoniensis ecclesiae
4.9, ed. G. Waitz.
MGH SS
, 25:309–10.

See Peter Dinzelbacher,
Heilige oder Hexen? Schicksale auffa
ï
lliger Frauen in Mittelalter und
Fru
ï
hneuzeit
(Munich: Artemis and Winkler, 1995), pp. 77–78. Cf. Elliott, “Women and Confession,” pp. 38–40.

⁴⁹
Fraudulent raptures can also be deployed by orthodoxy, as in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s account of a certain cleric feigning
rapture to infiltrate a heretical ring cited in the above epigraph. But generally such pretense is associated with false prophets—especially
those anticipated in the period of the Antichrist. See Peter d’Ailly’s
De falsis prophetis
, in L. Ellies du Pin’s edition of Gerson’s works,
Joannis Gersonii opera omnia
(Antwerp: Sumptibus societatis, 1706), vol. 1, col. 521.

⁵⁰
See William of Auvergne’s
De universo
pt. 2, 2, c. 152, in
Opera omnia
(Paris: A. Pralard, 1674; reprint, Frankfurt am Main: Minerva, 1963), 1:1002.

⁵¹
Richer,
Gesta
4.19, p. 309. Cf. an incident in Sulpicius Severus’s life of Saint Martin in which an individual who claims communication
with angels promises to appear in an angelic robe, thereby proving “the power of God” (
Vie de Saint Martin
c. 23, ed. Jacques Fontaine,
SC
, no. 133 [Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1967], 1:304–7; trans. Alexander Roberts,
The Life of Saint
Martin
,
LNPNF
, vol. 11 [Ann Arbor, Mich.: Eerdman’s, 1964], p. 15).

⁵²
Richer, by his own admission striving for gender balance in perfidious potential, introduces his account of Sybil immediately
following the relation of Robert’s very different fraudulent practices (see p. 229, below).

⁵³
Richer,
Gesta
4.19, p. 309.

⁵⁴
On Magdalena’s life, see Karen Greenspan’s introduction to her edition of Magdalena’s mystical work “
Erklaerung des Vaterunsers
: A Critical Edition of a Fifteenth-Century Mystical Treatise by Magdalena Beutler of Freiburg” (Ph.D. diss. University of
Massachusetts, 1984), pp. 12–32; also see Dinzelbacher,
Heilige oder Hexen?
, pp. 91–94.

⁵⁵
These include a nun who confessed she had been feigning revelations for attention and a woman who organized an event at which
she was supposed to receive the stigmata (
Formicarium
3.1 [Douai: B. Belleri, 1602], pp. 185–86). For his account of Joan of Arc and her impersonator, see chap. 7, pp. 294–95,
below.

⁵⁶
Ibid. 3.8, p. 230; see Greenspan, “
Erklaerung
,” introd., pp. 30, 43–49, 52. Magdalena attempted to seize control of the mechanisms of proof, asking to see her confessor
“and other learned men” in order to explain her absences. According to her vita, they were satisfied with these explanations
(ibid., pp. 49–51).

⁵⁷
Nider,
Formicarium
3.8, pp. 230–31.

⁵⁸
Greenspan cites the evidence of Magdalena’s vita (“
Erklaerung
,” p. 73 n. 30).

⁵⁹
Nider,
Formicarium
3.8, p. 231.

⁶⁰
William of Auvergne,
De universo
pt. 2, 2, c. 36, in
Opera
, 1:881.

⁶¹
Formicarium
3.1, pp. 181, 184. On her mystical death, see Greenspan, “
Erklaerung
,” introd.,pp. 69–82. Greenspan notes that nineteenth-century scholarship dismissed Magdalena as a hysteric (pp. 5–6). For
the association of mysticism, hysteria, and degenerative eroticism at the fin de sie`cle, see Cristina Mazzoni,
Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism, and Gender in European Culture
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 17–44, 54–89.

⁶²
Formicarium
3.8, p. 234.

⁶³
Ibid. 3.8, p. 235. Some revelations of one’s own demise are legitimate, as in the case of Vanna of Orvieto (see the third
epigraph at the start of this chapter).

⁶⁴
Karen Scott, “Mystical Death, Bodily Death: Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua on the Mystic’s Encounter with God,”
in
Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters
, ed. Catherine Mooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 140, 152–53, 159–60, 165; Barbara Newman,
From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion
and Literature
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 173–74; Robert Lerner,
The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), p. 218.

⁶⁵
On her ill-health and its relation to her punishing fasts, see Greenspan, “
Erklaerung
,” introd.,pp. 22, 26; cf. 28. Nider thinks that Magdalena inherited from her mother the ability of abstracting herself from
her body (Nider,
Formicarium
3.8, p. 232). According to Magdalena’s vita, her father was also subject to trances (Greenspan, “
Erklaerung
,” introd., p. 21).