Saintly Spouses: Chaste Marriage in Sacred and Secular Narrative From Medieval Germany (12th and 13th Centuries) by Claudia Bornholdt (review)

The focus of Bornholdt’s monograph is the phenomenon of chaste marriage—that is, broadly, a bond of spiritual rather than physical love between husband and wife—and its place in the theology and practice of twelfth-century Europe, in particular its translation to vernacular literature. This is a fascinating and important subject matter, and Bornholdt’s exploration of it leads to intriguing connections and directs the reader’s attention to understudied texts. The primary focus is on the German Alexius tradition (read very little in comparison to the French texts), vitaeof Emperor Henry II and his wife Cunegunde and the so-called “bridal-quest epics” of the Münchener Oswaldand Orendel, but various other items, from the Acts of Thomasto the vitaof Christina of Markyate and the Julianaof Priester Arnolt, are also brought into consideration. Bornholdt’s aim is straightforward: she hopes to demonstrate that chaste marriage finds particular resonance in the theological climate of twelfth-century Germany. It is her thesis that the legends of Alexius, Henry, and Oswald central to her work developed and transformed throughout the centuries in order to emphasize the increasing importance of mutual love and consent of both partners in a chaste union. This emphasis on mutuality reflects the development of female spirituality in the twelfth century and allows the author to foreground the role of (primarily religious) women in the reception and even composition of literary works in the vernacular.

Central to Bornholdt’s work is the bold hypothesis that there existed a now no-longer extant twelfth-century German Alexius narrative, most probably composed by a woman. She argues that Konrad von Würzburg’s Alexiusof ca. 1275 was not the beginning of German-language Alexius tradition, but that the Alexius A, transmitted in manuscripts of the fourteenth century, should in fact be considered the earliest German Alexius text. This theory is based on the closeness of the German text to the Latin Alexius A, which she demonstrates was popular in modern-day Bavaria and Austria in the twelfth century, particularly in established areas of female spirituality. The subject matter of the Alexius A, both in Latin and German, with its increased emphasis on the role of Alexius’s wife and mutual chastity, is moreover peculiarly appropriate to the needs and interests of female religious in this period. Supported by the fact that one MS of the German text ends with a prayer that uses the feminine pronoun, thus strongly suggesting that the scribe of that MS was a woman, Bornholdt further argues that the original, no-longer extant German Atext may well have been composed by a woman, most probably in a Premonstratensian monastery. It is refreshing to read an argument that is so unfashionably bold when it comes to dating and composition, and its fundamental components make perfect sense. More problematic, however, is the author’s tendency toward simplification of various textual and theoretical complexities, particularly with regard to dating; the plausibility of her hypothesis is undermined by an insufficient investigation of other possibilities. I would have liked much more investigation of the extant fourteenth-century manuscripts of the German Alexius A, for example, to which very little space is devoted. If this text is so very well-suited to the needs of the twelfth century, then why its continued popularity? The author constructs her argument from the basic assumption of an original twelfth-century German text, then finds evidence for it, yet working from evidence to conclusion would have made her argument more persuasive. As it stands, the absence of real, nuanced exploration of other options leads the author’s own stance dangerously close to conjecture.

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