A Companion to Colette of Corbie ed. by Joan Mueller, Nancy Bradley Warren (review)

Colette of Corbie (1381–1447) has received less attention that one would expect given her fascinating and significant religious career. Colette’s two oldest vitae, one by her confessor Pierre de Vaux written shortly after her death and the other by her devoted companion Sister Perrine de la Roche and Baume in ca. 1471, were edited by Franciscan Reverend Ubald d’Alençon in 1911. A book-length study by Elisabeth Lopez appeared in a 1994 study, translated by Joanna Walter in 2010 as Colette of Corbie (1381–1447): Learning and Holiness. These, with a few articles, represent the sum of scholarship devoted to this anchoress and saint. A Companion to Colette of Corbie with its seven essays is therefore a welcome addition to the scholarship. The collection offers a thorough introduction to the career of this remarkable and forceful woman for non-specialists, but it also contextualizes her activity from different perspectives in enough detail to interest specialists. It therefore nicely complements Lopez’s study by filling in how Colette’s career fit into contemporary movements.

The collection begins with Nancy Bradley Warren’s “The Life and Afterlives of St. Colette of Corbie: Religion, Politics, and Networks of Power.” Considering Colette as part of an “international, transfactional network of female supporters, patrons, and nuns” (7), Warren follows this amazingly energetic woman as she founds and reforms monasteries in France, Burgundy, the Empire, the Low Countries, and Switzerland over a period of several decades. Warren’s discussion of Colette’s reforming networks is vivid and fascinating. Still, the historical context that she creates for the reformer, whom she characterizes as “bipartisan,” is a bit confusing. It was hardly unusual for those seeking patrons to approach potential supporters on either side of the Armagnac-Burgundian divide. The murderous factional animosity was fanned within towns by individual overlords who changed sides when opportunity beckoned—this was not an ideological fight and the camps were constantly morphing—while women whose families tended toward one side or the other often mingled to promote peace. Religious orders were not particularly associated with one side or the other. It is especially odd that Warren continues to refer to Colette as bipartisan post-1440 (20), by which point Charles VII and Philip of Burgundy had already reconciled with the Treaty of Arras, reuniting the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. There is nothing strange about the Duchess of Burgundy, Isabelle of Portugal, supporting the foundation of a community in Corbie during the last few years of the future saint’s life, along with Charles VII, the queen, and the dauphin. And although the point that Colette brought honor by association to the House of Burgundy is well taken, the comment that she could “provide divine legitimacy to the Burgundian dynasty and its political aspirations, including its aspiration to the throne of France” is very odd (11). Although John the Fearless successfully controlled the insane king Charles VI at various times, at no time did he (or his son) ever aspire to the throne. In short, a more exact analysis of Colette’s historical situation would have been useful. The chapter’s coda, in contrast, offers wonderful information, discussing Colette’s mischaracterization as a domestic, apolitical woman by an early twentieth-century writer.

Monique Sommé’s “The Dukes and Duchesses of Burgundy as Benefactors of Colette de Corbie and the Colettine Poor Clares” details Colette’s foundations in Burgundy and the support she received from the last three Burgundian dukes and their duchesses. It may seem strange at first glance that Colette would have received Burgundian support for seven of the seventeen communities that she reformed or founded there when her home of Corbie lay within the jurisdiction of the king of France (Sommé—or perhaps her translator—claims that the region was under the jurisdiction of the king until the Treaty of Artois in 1435, which surely must mean the Treaty of Arras...