Proving Woman (15 page)

If the association between salubrious extraterrestrial penance and contemporary mechanisms of torture has an eerie resonance,
more chilling still is the fourth instance. This concerns a convicted criminal, about to be beheaded for his crimes, who persuades
the judge and executioner to a degree of complicity in his penance. Asking for a slight postponement before his execution,
he sends a young relative for a many-toothed iron instrument—the like of which women used to crimp their linen—appropriately
called the
dentrix
. The prisoner encourages the relative to dismember him slowly with this instrument, leaving the head until last. When only
the head remains on the mutilated trunk, the prisoner says, with a cheerful expression, that he would do it all again two
or three times, if this would enhance his torment. After praying for the surrounding people and giving alms, he is finally
decapitated.
¹⁴³
This account is followed by an instance in the episcopal court of Peter of Corbeil, bishop of Sens, who assigns penance to
a father for the murder of his daughter. The penitent will, in turn, argue that the penance is insufficient.
¹⁴⁴

Thomas is writing at a time when the word
poena
(punishment or penalty) is being expanded to accommodate all forms of pain, anticipating our English noun. The various stories
complement this trend, pointing to the purifying power of pain regardless of the venue or tribunal through which it is administered.
The vision of the knight being tortured by two demons, moreover, is a reminder that God manifests his mercy by permitting
this kind of temporary and purgative punishment as opposed to the enduring torments of hell. The third story, in particular,
treating the extraordinary dismemberment of a repentant criminal, bears a strong resemblance to a tale of martyrdom. Nevertheless,
any possible indebtedness to the theme of martyrdom still turns upon a central reversal that is essential to an understanding
of the potential political ramifications of the episode. Like a martyr, the convicted culprit embraces his torment. But while
in traditional tales of martyrdom the saintly defendant is ultimately blameless and it is the tribunal that is at fault, Thomas’s
protagonist is indeed a criminal, and the tribunal is blameless. Moreover, unlike the pagan tribunals responsible for the
deaths of the early Christian martyrs, Thomas’s forum demonstrates solicitude for the salvation of the sinner, sympathetically
permitting a postponement to facilitate the prisoner’s extraordinary penance. Thomas, wisely, leaves the dismemberment and
torture to the criminal’s imaginative genius and his loyal relative’s execution. Even so, the implication remains that—unlike
the martyrs of yore, who died bravely but defiantly at the hands of their persecutors, of whom they were rightly contemptuous
(an attitude not unlike that of contemporary Cathars toward their executioners)—the new-style martyr is one who cheerfully
submits to pain at the hands of a stern but ultimately benign tribunal. Indeed, even without an appeal to the imagery of martyrdom,
there is the distinct danger that the tribunal’s role as purveyor of penitential pain would sanction its activities—an effect
that would be enhanced by Thomas’s successive movement from the secular to the ecclesiastical court. The penal and the penitential
can accurately be described as merging.

The masculine cast to this series of exempla is striking. In addition to the focus on judicial tribunals, which are by definition
male, Thomas isolates sins committed by secular men that have a distinctly masculine aura: rapine, theft, debauchery, murder.
This set of offenses, constituting both heinous sins and crimes, would be rightly tried and punished by both secular and ecclesiastical
tribunals, a fact that further tends to conflate the operation of ecclesiastical and secular tribunals, and ultimately divine
and human justice.

Yet there is a larger scope for female participation in this system in three anecdotes from the subsequent set of four, which
treat the religious life and complete the chapter. A sick layman urgently seeks the religious habit and dies immediately thereafter.
His soul is subsequently seen being ushered into heaven by a pious nun.
¹⁴⁵
Then follows an instance concerning an apostate Dominican, whose damnation was also witnessed by a pious nun.
¹⁴⁶
A final anecdote discusses the remarkable example of the Beguines of Nivelles, who in 1226 were miraculously burned by holy
fire in whichever member they had sinned. Hence gluttony or loquacity was punished in the tongue, whispering in the ear, illicit
touching in the hand, wandering in the shin, and salacious thinking in the breast. This occurrence, moreover, is the only
one of the eight incidents to which Thomas can testify personally.
¹⁴⁷

These exempla focus exclusively on the operation of divine justice with respect to an assortment of religious personnel. The
female role is comparatively slight, but nevertheless telling, and in keeping with what has already been glimpsed with regard
to the rapport between women’s supernatural gifts and church doctrine. From the episodes concerning the two visionaries who
oversee the respective damnation or salvation of the male religious in question to the unfortunate Beguines who experience
purgatorial fire while on earth, women are presented as key witnesses to the operation of divine justice. Even as women’s
new relationship to confession infuses new meaning into the concept of confessor saint, so this quasi-judicial role as witness
hearkens back to, and yet transforms, the original meaning of martyr, which was “witness.”
¹⁴⁸
Moreover, by virtue of the subtle erasure of the boundaries between divine and human justice that occurs throughout this chapter,
women’s supernatural powers play, by implication, a salient, albeit at times covert, role in sustaining both systems.

¹
Antoninus of Florence,
Confessionale Anthonini
3.23 (Paris: Jehan Petit, 1507?), fol. 32v.

²
VMO
, p. 547; trans. King, p. 3.

³
On the Beguine movement and its relation to Cistercian spirituality, see Ernest McDonnell,
The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture
(New York: Octagon, 1969), esp. pp. 170–84; Simone Roisin,
L’Hagiographie cistercienne dans la dioc[egrave]se de Li[egrave]ge au XIIIe si[egrave]cle
(Louvain: Biblioth[egrave]que de l’Université, 1947); eadem, “L’efflorescence cistercienne et le courant féminin de piétéau
XIIIe si[egrave]cle,”
Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique
39 (1943): 342–78; and G. Meersseman, “Les fr[egrave]res pr ê cheurs et mouvement dévot en Flandre au XIIIe si[egrave]cle,”
AFP
18 (1948): esp. 80 ff. Also see the following note.

⁴
On the formation of the Beguines, see Walter Simons,
Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities
in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200
–
1565
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 35–60. See Carol Neel’s contention that the Beguines were a natural
extension of Cistercian communities, reinvented as a spontaneous group by James of Vitry, in her “The Origins of the Beguines,”
in
Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages
, ed. Judith Bennett et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 240–60.

⁵
See chap. 1, pp. 14–15, above.

⁶
See Pierre-Marie Gy’s discussion of how “confessor” and “penitent” are constituted in relation to one another (“Les définitions
de la confession apr[egrave]s le quatri[egrave]me concile du Latran,” in
Aveu
, p. 288).

⁷
See, for example, Aquinas, quodlib. 1, q. 6, art. 1 [10],
Opera omnia: Quaestiones de quolibet
, ed. Ordo Fratrum Praedicatorum (Rome: Commissio Leonina, 1996), 25,2:190–91.

⁸
On the significance of this work, see AndréVauchez, “Proselytisme et action antihérétique en milieu feminin au XIIIe sie`cle:
la
Vie de Marie d
’
Oignies
(d. 1213) par Jacques de Vitry,” in
Propagande et contre-propagande religieuses
, ed. Jacques Marx (Brussels: Editions de l’ Universitaire, 1987), p. 95. Also see John Frederick Hinnebusch’s introduction
to
Historia Occidentalis of
Jacques de Vitry
(Fribourg: University Press of Fribourg, 1972), p. 9 and n. 3. On the relationship between James and Mary, see McDonnell,
Beguines and Beghards
, pp. 20–36; Elizabeth Petroff,
Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 147–51. On James, see Philipp Funk,
Jakob von Vitry: Leben und Werke
(Leipzig and Berlin: Walter Goetz, 1909); Brenda Bolton, “
Mulieres sanctae
,” in
Women in Medieval Society
, ed. Susan Stuard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), pp. 144–49.

⁹
Vauchez’s analysis emphasizes the ascetical appeal of the life as opposed to its sacramentality (“Proselytisme,” pp. 95–110).

¹⁰
For a description of Fulk’s expulsion and arrival in Li[egrave]ge, see James of Vitry,
VMO
, p. 547; trans. King, p. 3. Cf. Vauchez, “Proselytisme,” pp. 97–98. For an account of the chaotic nature of the see of Toulouse
at the time of Fulk’s accession, see William of Puylaurens (fl. 1242–48),
Chronique. Cronica Magistri Guillelmi de Podio Laurentii
c. 7, ed. and trans. Jean Duvernoy (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1976), pp. 42–46. On
the experiences of James and Fulk preaching the Albigensian Crusade, see ibid., c. 28, pp. 102–13. On Fulk’s antiheretical
activity, see Yves Dossat, “La répression de l’hérésie par les év ê ques,”
Cahiers
de Fanjeaux
6 (1971): 230–33; on his brutal summary procedure against heretics and exhumations of heretical bodies, see William Pelhisson,
Chronique (1229
–
1244), Suivie de r
è
cit des troubles
d
’
Albi (1234)
, ed. and trans. Jean Duvernoy (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1994), pp. 42–45; Dossat,
“La répression,” pp. 237–38).

¹¹
For a summary of Cathar beliefs, myths, and rituals, see Malcolm Lambert,
Medieval Heresy:
Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation
, 2d ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 106–11, 114, 121–22; idem,
The Cathars
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 141–65.

¹²
James commends the goodness of marriage earlier in the life. See
VMO
, pp. 547–48; trans. King, pp. 3–4.

¹³
Vauchez, “Proselytisme,” pp. 98, 102–3. Also see Herbert Grundmann,
Religious Movements
in the Middle Ages
, trans. S. Rowan (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), pp. 76, 242. On the marriage of Mary and her husband,
John, see Dyan Elliott,
Spiritual Marriage:
Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock
(Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 239, 253, 254, 258–59.

¹⁴
Caroline Walker Bynum,
Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to
Medieval Women
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 64, 252–53, 329 n. 139.

¹⁵
VMO
, p. 548; trans. King, p. 8. On women and eucharistic devotion, see Bynum,
Holy Feast
; Roisin,
L
’
Hagiographie cistercienne
, pp. 111–14.

¹⁶
VMO
, p. 547; trans. King, p. 3.

¹⁷
VMO
, p. 551; trans. King, p. 20.

VMO

¹⁸
VMO
, p. 551, trans. King, pp. 20–21; cf.
VMO
, p. 567, trans. King, p. 88.

¹⁹
See Raymond of Peñafort,
Summa de poenitentia et matrimonio
3.34.6 (Rome: Joannes Tallini, 1603), p. 442.

²⁰
VMO
, p. 551; trans. King, p. 21.

²¹
VMO
, p. 552; trans. King, p. 22. On Mary’s wounds as anticipating the stigmata of Francis of Assisi, see chap. 4, n. 181, below.

²²
VMO
, p. 551; trans. King, p. 20.

²³
VMO
, p. 562; trans. King, pp. 67–68.

²⁴
Thomas claims to have loved James from the time he was fifteen when he first heard him preaching (
SVMO
, p. 581; trans. King, p. 36).

²⁵
See Carolyn Muessig’s summary and analysis of serm. 25 from James of Vitry’s
Sermones
feriales et communes
against the Cathars in “Les sermons de Jacques de Vitry sur les cathares,”
Cahiers de Fanjeaux
32 (1997): 69–83.

²⁶
SVMO
, p. 579; trans. King, p. 31.

SVMO

²⁷
SVMO
, p. 580; trans. King, pp. 32–35.

²⁸
De apibus
2.53.32, p. 513. His sins must have been considerable, since this pivotal confession occurred on a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land.

²⁹
Ibid. 2.30.48, p. 354. For examples of particular cases Thomas handled in this capacity, see 2.30.3, p. 321; 2.30.9, p. 324;
2.30.55, p. 359.

³⁰
VLA
, p. 202; trans. King, p. 59.
VLA
was written after 1246. Also see Guido Hendrix, ed.,

“Primitive Versions of Thomas of Cantimpré’s
Vita Lutgardis
,”
C
î
teaux
29 (1978): 153–206. The supplement to James of Vitry’s life of Mary of Oignies was written between 1227 and 1231; the life
of Christina Mirabilis was written ca. 1232; and the life of Margaret of Ypres was written ca. 1240.

³¹
For dating, see Simone Roisin, “La méthode hagiographique de Thomas de Cantimpré,” in
Miscellanea Historica in Honorem Alberti de Meyer
(Louvain: Biblioth[egrave]que de l’Université, 1946), 1:548–49.

³²
Thomas did not know Margaret personally. The details for her life were supplied to him by Friar Zeger (
VMY
, p. 107; trans. King, p. 17). On Margaret’s background and vocation, see G. Meersseman, “Les fr[egrave]res pr ê cheurs,”
pp. 72–79.