History of Franciscan Theology

Chapter Seven The Feminine Side of Franciscan Theology

Franciscan Women and the Theological Enterprise Margaret Carney, O.S.F. As the Franciscan family turns its collective gaze towards the twenty-first century, the development of volumes such as this one offers a special service. From the middle ages to the present the Franciscan Orders have contributed significantly to multiple areas of human and ecclesiastical endeavor. The opportunity to summarize the outstanding contributions to the growth of theological understanding from within Franciscan circles is a welcome one. Those who have assumed the responsibility for the project have seen to the inclusion of the great masters of Franciscan theology and philosophy. They have also requested a major section that addresses the contribution of Franciscan women to theology. This request indicates keen sensitivity to the massive changes in sensibility taking place as women seek rightful recognition and access in every sphere. It also opens a space within this volume to address a question regarding the future of Franciscan theology in addition to offering an outstanding chronicle of its past. The determination to include an article on the women's contribution to Franciscan theology also poses a unique problem. Each of the other contributions has the work of a single individual as its focus or its starting point. As is so often the case with the historical approach, achievements of threshold figures dominate the landscape of thought and knowledge. Entire epochs, schools of thought, approaches to life bear their name. Thus we speak of a "Bonaventurian" approach to prayer or the "Scotistic" underpinnings of the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry. While these giants often represent the culmination or embodiment of countless other individuals' works from which they took direction or assistance, their greatness of achievement dwarfs that of contemporaries and predecessors alike. They become the standard–bearers by which we 332 / Margaret Carney, O.S.F. test a certain authenticity or validity in our efforts both to maintain and enhance the tradition. The table of contents for this volume, therefore, repre-sents the litany of such figures, the men upon whom the development of Franciscan theology rests as recorded in our source books and research texts. Seeing no woman's name in the list is itself a starting point for this article. If women have made a contribution to Franciscan theological thought, how is it to be identified in the absence of a single universally–recognized female name by which to guide our reflections? This absence points to the need to approach this reflection in a different key. It will thus be the burden of this short essay to reflect upon certain aspects of the historic exclusion of women from the theological enterprise. This exclusion has impoverished not only the Franciscan school but the whole of the Church's search for selfunderstanding . It will also be the task of this article to indicate some of the ways in which the experience and work of our Franciscan female predecessors has indeed touched our tradition, albeit indirectly. Women and the Early Development of the Tradition Women were excluded from the medieval universities.1 This simple fact can hardly be appreciated sufficiently for its impact upon the course of theological history and for the stamp it still places upon ecclesiastical life. When making a survey of the many fields of work in which women participated in the middle ages, one is struck by the diversity of public roles played by women in commercial 1 Numerous studies document the levels of education available to medieval women, their roles as patrons of education, examples of those outstanding medieval women who did enjoy a high level of education, and additional sources on the exclusion of women from university faculties. Some secondary sources which may be of interest for additional insight into this fundamental situation include: Joan M. Ferrante, "The Education of Women in the Middle Ages in Theory, Fact and Fantasy," Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women in the European Past, ed. Patricia H. Labalme (New York: New York University Press, 1980) 9-35; Eileen Power, "The Education of Women," Medieval Women, ed. M. M. Postan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) p. 76-88; Michale van Cleave Alexander, "Women and Education," The Growth of English Education, 1348–1648: A Social and Cultural History (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1990); Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1983). Franciscan Women and the Theological Enterprise / 333 enterprises.2 It is...