From Virile Woman to WomanChrist
Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature
Publication Year: 1995
Why did hagiographers of the late Middle Ages praise mothers for abandoning small children? How did a group of female mystics come to define themselves as "apostles to the dead" and end by challenging God's right to damn? Why did certain heretics around 1300 venerate a woman as the Holy Spirit incarnate and another as the Angelic Pope?
In From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, Barbara Newman asks these and other questions to trace a gradual and ambiguous transition in the gender strategies of medieval religious women. An egalitarian strain in early Christianity affirmed that once she asserted her commitment to Christ through a vow of chastity, monastic profession, or renunciation of family ties, a woman could become "virile," or equal to a man. While the ideal of the "virile woman" never disappeared, another ideal slowly evolved in medieval Christianity. By virtue of some gender-related trait—spotless virginity, erotic passion, the capacity for intense suffering, the ability to imagine a feminine aspect of the Godhead—a devout woman could be not only equal, but superior to men; without becoming male, she could become a "womanChrist," imitating and representing Christ in uniquely feminine ways.
Rooted in women's concrete aspirations and sufferings, Newman's "womanChrist" model straddles the bounds of orthodoxy and heresy to illuminate the farther reaches of female religious behavior in the Middle Ages. From Virile Woman to WomanChrist will generate compelling discussion in the fields of medieval literature and history, history of religion, theology, and women's studies.
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Cover
Title Page, Copyright
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pp. iii-iv
Contents
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p. v-v
List of Illustrations
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p. vi-vi
Introduction
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pp. 1-18
Plus ça change, plus c'cst la mcmc chose. From the earliest years of Christianity, the Chureh has had a problem with women. Yet, age after age, women have flocked to the Church—not only as nominal or compulsory members, but as uncommonly fervent ones; not only as docile followers ...
Chapter 1. Flaws in the Golden Bowl: Gender and Spiritual Formation in the Twelfth Century
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pp. 19-45
In the early 11305 Peter Abelard received three letters from Heloise, once his mistress and wife, now his sister and daughter in religion. The first two made such painful reading that he must have thought twice before scanning the third, in which Heloise resolutely turned from the subject of tragic ...
Chapter 2. Authority, Authenticity, and the Repression of Heloise
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pp. 46-75
In the annals of medieval scholarship, questions about the authenticity of sources are not rare. Few texts, however, have languished in the limbo of aporia as long as the letters of Heloise to Abelard. For two centuries now these three epistles have been subjected not only to suspicion, but to the ...
Chapter 3. "Crueel Corage": Child Sacrifice and the Maternal Martyr in Hagiography and Romance
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pp. 76-107
Once upon a time in India, we read in thcjataka stories, the future Buddha was born as a prince named Vessantara, who distinguished himself by his great generosity. After giving alms of all that he owned, the prince with his wife and children went off to the Himalayas to live the life of an ascetic....
Chapter 4. On the Threshold of the Dead: Purgatory, Hell, and Religious Women
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pp. 108-136
In the middle of the way from the savage wood to the face of God, at the summit of purgatory, on the threshold of heaven, Beatrice reminds Dante of another threshold long since crossed. Like Persephone, like Isis, like Inanna, she once "visited the threshold of the dead." A blessed spirit, she ...
Chapter 5. La mystique courtoise: Thirteenth-Century Beguines and the Art of Love
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pp. 137-167
Around 1250 a German poet, Lamprecht of Regensburg, wrote about women's mysticism under the telling name of kunst—knowledge or art. He expressed the usual consternation over female hegemony in this sphere: ...
Excursus 1. Hadewijch and Abelard
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pp. 168-171
In the eighth of her visions Hadewijch is shown the "Countenance of eternal fruition" at the top of a mountain. There too she encounters a guide, a nameless saint, who offers to show her four ways to attain the summit. This man calls himself "the champion and vassal of this true Countenance" ...
Excursus 2. Gnostics, Free Spirits, and "Meister Eckhart's Daughter"
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pp. 172-181
Among the many dubiously orthodox texts that circulated in Meister Eckhart's name is a tract called Schwester Katrei, which in some manuscripts bears the inscription: "This is Sister Catherine, Meister Eckhart's daughter of Strassburg."l The tract takes the form of a dialogue between a beguine ...
Chapter 6. WomanSpirit, Woman Pope
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pp. 182-223
When Francesco Sforza married Bianca Maria Visconti, heiress to the Duke of Milan, in 1441, his family's fortune was made. Not long after their wedding, the couple celebrated by commissioning a deck of hand-painted playing cards, bearing the emblems of both families, from the bride's favorite ...
Chapter 7. Renaissance Feminism and Esoteric Theology: The Case of Cornelius Agrippa
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pp. 224-243
Of the myriad "defenses of women" produced in Renaissance Europe, the most flamboyant and fascinating is one of the first. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Netteshcim (1486-1535), already a polymath and occultist of some fame, was but a young man of twenty-three, preparing to teach his ...
Epilogue
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pp. 244-248
Male pride, an understandable flaw; female pride, an unnatural vice. The Speculum uirginum. was written around 1140, but with a few deft adaptations, these words could have been penned in 1540 or 1940. Indeed, there are large portions of the globe where they could be written still....
List of Abbreviations
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pp. 249-250
Notes
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pp. 251-312
Appendix A. Religious Literature of Formation, 1075–1225
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pp. 313-316
Appendix B. Glossary of Religious Women
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pp. 317-320
Works Cited
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pp. 321-344
Index
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pp. 345-355
E-ISBN-13: 9780812200263
Print-ISBN-13: 9780812215458
Page Count: 424
Publication Year: 1995
Series Title: The Middle Ages Series
