The Embodied Word: Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350-1700

Chapter Two

Chapter Two MedievalLegaciesandFemaleSpiritualities acrossthe“GreatDivide” Julian of Norwich, Grace Mildmay, and the English Benedictine Nuns of Cambrai and Paris Memory, Words, and the “Fragile, Slippery Dream” of the Past In an essay on the Chinese Manchu prince Yihuan’s poetry about the destruction of the Summer Palace by British and French troops in 1860, Vera Schwarz elegantly declares that “[p]recisely because the past is a fragile, slippery dream, it can hardly be contained by something as exacting as words.”1 In this chapter, I consider the ways in which words can, and cannot, contain the fragile dream of the remembered past, especiallyinteractionswiththedivineexperiencedinthepast .Iamalsointerestedinwhatbeyondwordsisnecessaryintheconstitutionofmemory as well as in the constitution of dynamic relations of past and present that exceed memory. Particularly, I am interested in the bodies that are 61 necessary: bodies of writers and readers that translate fleshly experience into words and words into enfleshed experience once more. Or, to put it another way, my focus is on the shifting and intersecting lines demarcating embodied writers and readers, the divine Logos, and a textual corpus. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Julian of Norwich’s Showings , along with Brigittine texts and St. Catherine of Siena’s writings, summons us to rethink how we understand relationships of bodies and texts,selvesandothers.Suchrevisionsinturncanhelpustoreinterpret our ways of understanding religious categories and historical periods. This chapter proceeds by first considering the place of Julian’s Showings specifically, and the place of forms of devotion strongly associated with medieval female piety more generally, in the spirituality of the English BenedictinenunswhoformedcommunitiesinCambraiand Paris in the seventeenth century, communities that played a vital role in preserving the texts of the Showings.2 Julian’s writings and other medieval texts act as vectors for carrying the past into the present, giving past lives new life inthe embodiedexperiences of individual nuns as well as inthe collective experiences of the corporate body of the monastic community. That there would also be strong affinities between Julian’s Showings , the medieval devotional traditions that text characterizes, and the writings produced in communities of nuns who did so much to preserve the Showings is readily comprehensible, though the place of medieval texts and medieval female spirituality in early modern monasticism is still relatively little studied. That similar affinities would emerge in the nearlyonethousandmanuscriptpagesofmeditationsandspiritualautobiography written by Grace Mildmay, a Protestant gentry woman who livedfrom1552to1620,isperhapsmoresurprising,thoughtheexample of Aemilia Lanyer considered in the first chapter suggests it should not be so. In the second part of this chapter I thus turn to a comparative explorationofresonancesamongJulianofNorwich ’sShowings,GraceMildmay ’s writings, and texts associated with the English Benedictines of CambraiandParis.GraceMildmay’smeditationsandspiritualautobiography illuminate the influential legacies of medieval affective and contemplative piety in a religious tradition that is often understood as de62 The Embodied Word fining itself in opposition to such forms of devotion.3 As we shall see, particularly important continuities emerge in the ways in which bodies, especiallysufferingbodies,andwordsshapeeachotherandshapecommunities .Themedievalpastbecomesnotmerelytheotheragainstwhich ProtestantfaithisdefinedbutinsteadsomethingincorporatedintoGrace Mildmay’s Protestant spirituality. On an overarching level, at the heart of this chapter lies a desire to begin to grasp what remains constant, as well as what changes, in the ways in which medieval and early modern women both Catholic and Protestant experience and theorize relationships between humans and God. My endeavor is to elucidate how such human/divine relations exist within, transform, and at times transcend history. At the same time, my aim is to shed light on the ways in which individual experiences of the divine,especiallygendered,bodilyexperiencesexpressedtextually,signify for others both personally and sociohistorically. Porous Bodies and the (Re)Incarnate Word: The English Benedictine Nuns of Cambrai and Paris The English Carmelites of Antwerp who feature in the introduction are part of a large network of English monastic communities residing on the Continent after the Dissolution. In addition to the Antwerp Carmel, therewereEnglishCarmeliteandFranciscanfoundationsestablishedin France and the Low Countries, and the English Brigittines of Syon lived at various locations on the Continent, ending up, as I discuss in the next chapter, in Spanish-controlled Lisbon. There were also several English BenedictinenunneriesacrosstheChannel,includingthetwoonwhichI willfocusinthischapter.Thevibrantdevotionalandtextualculturesthat characterize the Antwerp Carmel have counterparts in these other English nunneries in exile. The Abbey of Our Lady of Consolation was established at Cambrai in 1620 when nine women came over from England. Of these women, HelenMore(inreligionDameGertrude)was“consideredthechieffoundress , the pecuniary means having been mainly furnished by her father Legacies and Spiritualities across the “Great Divide...