Saints' Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender. Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography by John Kitchen (review)

BOOK REVIEWS597 which his immediate sources refer to by its differing Hebrew (n. 135) and Septuagint (n. 136) numbering. One could perhaps excuse an ancient historian— even a very good one—for missing this kind of technical, patristic detail, for using Migne or Mansi when newer and better editions exist, or for confusing Pope Leo with a usurper of the previous century (n. 6 on p. 162, where the pope "absent from"—actually not given a separate entry in—the New Catholic Encyclopedia is not "saint and bishop Leo," but the antipope Felix II). But it is precisely because Late Antiquity must be studied with disciplines that have traditionally had little to do with one another that problems like the relationship of paganism and Christianity in the fourth through eighth centuries still far elude our understanding. MacMullen's book brings much to the surface: a careful reading will repay any reader interested in the subject. William E. Kxingshirn The Catholic University ofAmerica Saints' Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender. Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography. ByJohn Kitchen (NewYork: Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. xv, 255. $49.95.) Modern scholarship has usually classified Gregory of Tours as an influential historian of the early Franks and Fortunatus as a poet noted for the fluency of his versification.Yet both were also distinguished authors of saints' Hves. John Kitchen's study is an important contribution to the ongoing revival of their reputations as hagiographers. In particular, Kitchen examines current debates over the existence of a distinctive notion of female sanctity during the early medieval period. In his book he adopts two approaches. One is to compare an author 's Lives of male saints with his Life of a female saint. In his book entitled Life of the Fathers Gregory included twenty Lives. One discussed Monegund, who had abandoned her husband to take up residence at the church of St. Martin in Tours. In this Life Gregory did not deviate from the formulas he employed in his other Lives except in the preface, in which he explicitly noted Monegund 's "inferior sex" and associated it with male characteristics of holiness: "Monegund is consistently presented . . . neither as a man nor as a woman. She is . . . the same sexless figure we find throughout this collection" (p. 113). Fortunatus likewise composed one Life of a woman. This hero was the famous Radegund, who had been married to a Frankish king before founding a convent at Poitiers. Although in his other Lives Fortunatus had depicted the asceticism of male saints as controlled and restrained, in his Life of Radegund he highlighted her self-inflicted suffering and stressed the importance of selfmortification . In his discussions Kitchen is acutely sensitive to differences in attitudes , or perhaps rhetorical strategies, between Gregory and Fortunatus. He also consistently challenges some of the lazy generalizations of modern scholars about the appearance of a new, specifically female voice or outlook: "women who attained sanctity regarded themselves positively as male" (p. 131). 598BOOK REVIEWS Kitchen's second approach is to compare a man's Life of Radegund with a woman's Life of Radegund. Baudonivia was a nun at Radegund's convent. Her supplement to Fortunatus' Life was also a subtle modification of Fortunatus' interpretation. In the introduction to her Life Baudonivia was completely indifferent to Radegund's gender. Because Gregory and Fortunatus had been likewise oblivious only when writing about men, Baudonivia's "standard indifference to gender constitutes a real distinctiveness" (p. 140). Baudonivia was furthermore noticeably more circumspect in mentioning Radegund's ascetic behavior, and the Radegund that she described was hence more deeply spiritual . Yet Baudonivia also included examples of Radegund's responsibility for typically male activities, such as her militant antagonism to paganism and the employment of punitive miracles within her community. Kitchen's book is primarily a literary study of hagiographical texts. Its obvious strengths are its meticulous comparison of various Lives and its insistence upon including texts that are not explicitly about women in a study of female views of holiness. At the end of his analysis Kitchen is admirably direct in his conclusions about ideas of sanctity. "The present search for a distinctiveness that is determined purely on the...