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The Catholic Historical Review 88.3 (2002) 583-584



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Book Review

The Life of Saint Douceline, a Beguine of Provence


The Life of Saint Douceline, a Beguine of Provence. Translated from the Occitan by Kathleen Garay and Madeleine Jeay, with introduction, notes, and interpretive essay. [Library of Medieval Women.] (Rochester, New York: D. S. Brewer. 2001. Pp. vii, 180. $75.00.)

Like most thirteenth-century holy women, the ascetic Douceline of Digne (ca. 1215-1274), founder of two beguine communities near Marseilles and sister of the Spiritual Franciscan preacher Hugh of Digne, failed to achieve canonization. Remarkably, however, one of her houses managed to survive until 1414, despite the vigorous repression of beguines and Spirituals in southern France, and Douceline herself is still the object of a local cult. Even more unusual is her vernacular vita, one of a handful whose authorship can be confidently ascribed to a woman. In Douceline's case, the evidence points strongly to her prioress, Philippine Porcellet. The vita survives in a single manuscript, now in Paris, edited by J. H. Albanés in 1879. Kathleen Garay and Madeleine Jeay here present its first English translation.

Although Philippine (if she was indeed the author) wrote in Occitan, she shows herself quite familiar with the conventions of Latin hagiography. If her life of Douceline lacks the complex theological schemas that have been detected in the work of Thomas of Cantimpré, it has all the expected chapters on the saint's austerities, virtues, raptures, death and translation, and posthumous miracles. Douceline was especially famous for her habit of levitating, made somewhat more credible by the admission that "her feet would not be touching the ground except for her two big toes" (p. 49). While she stood en pointe in ecstatic trance, devotees came to be healed by kissing the soles of her feet. Just as frequently, however, skeptics tested the authenticity of her trance by pricking her with needles, jabbing her with awls, and even pouring molten lead over her feet—the last torture inflicted by no less a personage than Charles of Anjou. Absorbed in her visions, the saint felt no pain until she returned to normal consciousness. These highly public raptures won her many aristocratic and ecclesiastical patrons, including John of Parma, Minister General of the Franciscans. [End Page 583]

Though fiercely devoted both to St. Francis and to the institutional survival of her houses, Douceline somewhat quixotically declined to affiliate herself with the Poor Clares. Perhaps, as the translators suggest, she feared that a cloistered life would hinder her apostolate of caring for the sick poor. Deeply Franciscan at heart, Douceline revered poverty and distrusted liturgical splendor; she actively discouraged her "ladies" from acquiring literacy in order to chant the divine office (p. 34). Her practice of chastity was severe to the point of obsession: once she beat a seven-year-old girl until the blood ran for the crime of looking at some workmen. The girl, we are told, was duly grateful for this beating to the end of her days.

Garay and Jeay provide a useful introduction and a judicious interpretive essay, despite a few gaffes ("aesthete" for "ascetic," "hagiobiography" for "hagiography") that escaped editorial notice. They present numerous points of comparison with the lives of other holy women, especially the Netherlandish beguines. But it remains for future studies to compare the life of Douceline with contemporary female-authored vitae, such as Agnes of Harcourt's life of Isabelle of France (d. 1270), sister of Louis IX and foundress of Longchamp, or the Francoprovençal life of Beatrice of Ornacieux (d. 1303) by the Carthusian prioress Marguerite of Oingt. The Life of Saint Douceline makes a valuable contribution to our knowledge of medieval women's piety and hagiography. It is regrettable that its high price will preclude classroom use.

 



Barbara Newman
Northwestern University

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