Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary: Women Seeing the Resurrection in Isabel de Villena’s Vita Christi and in the Vita Christi Tradition

This article sets out to explore in the context of the gaze how Sor Isabel de Villena approaches two post-Resurrection appearances of Christ in her Vita Christi. Sor Isabel was an illegitimate noblewoman, related to the royal families of Castile and Aragon, who became a Poor Clare nun and wrote her Vita Christi for the sisters in her charge in the Santa Trinitat convent in Valencia. Her lengthy narrative includes far more than a mere life of Christ, for it begins with the Conception of Mary and ends with her Coronation in heaven. Within it, Sor Isabel, like other writers in the Vita Christi tradition, shows Christ appearing first to the Virgin Mary and, then, to another Mary, the Magdalene.¹

In this article, I will compare Sor Isabel’s version of Christ’s post-Resurrection appearances with how other writers in the same tradition narrate them only to the extent that these cast light on how she approaches gaze.² The earliest of the lives of Christ to which Sor Isabel had access in the convent is the Meditaciones Vite Christi (MVC) by John of Caulibus, who is thought to have written the MVC around 1300.³ She also had access to other Vitae Christi, such as that of the Carthusian Ludolph of Saxony (1300–68) and the Vida de Jesucrist by Francesc Eiximenis (1330–1409), a Franciscan.⁴ Eiximenis, like Sor Isabel, lived at court in Valencia. Sor Isabel knew Joan Roíç de Corella (1435–97), a Valencian nobleman, whose daughter was a nun in the Santa Trinitat convent (Ferrando Francés 169–71). He translated Ludolph the Carthusian’s Vita into Catalan and, although his fourth volume, Lo quart del Cartoxà, was published only in 1495, after Sor Isabel’s death, Albert Hauf i Valls speculates that she may have known a manuscript version.⁵

Sor Isabel de Villena was attuned to the sights and sounds around her in Valencia and drew upon them to frame her piety (Twomey The Fabric). Valencia was becoming an intensely visual society in the late-medieval period (Marsilla García 143) and, when she wrote, for instance of the colour red, her narrative was influenced by the robes and hangings she saw in the convent church, as well as by the clothing worn by postulants, principally of noble background (Twomey, The Fabric 85–107), at the convent. When she wrote of the veil which the Virgin used to wrap the infant Christ or to cover his naked shame at the Crucifixion, she had in mind the fashionable veil or “tovallola” of the day (Twomey, The Fabric 78–81). It is hardly surprising that Isabel de Villena drank in the material she saw around her, for, in the Middle Ages, seeing was the main vehicle of salvation (Lentes 360–61) and visual piety was an essential tool for the Christian who wished to be assured of eternal life. Salvation was, for example, achieved through devotional gaze at the elevation of the Eucharist, on pious relics, or on icons.⁶ “Medieval objects were offered to the senses” (Pentcheva 1), as was meditative material. I have already discussed the veneration of Christ’s infant body by the Virgin Mary and its eucharistic overtones (The Fabric 68–74) and do not intend to repeat the same arguments here, however, in this article I will show how visual devotion informs the scenes in which Christ appears to his mother, Mary, and to Mary Magdalene, and I will argue that the appearances must be set within the context of visual piety.⁷

Medieval preachers argued that sight was to be guarded because the eye adapted to what it saw (Lentes 361). They distinguished between the eye of the body and the inner eye, which could be trained to respond to objects of visual piety to improve chances of salvation. Whilst Lentes concerns himself primarily with gazing on prayer books and religious icons, his typology of the gaze might provide a new insight into the...