Proving Woman (18 page)

¹⁰⁶
SVMO
, p. 577; trans. King, pp. 19–21. This kind of division and disposition of bodies spread from north to south over the course
of the thirteenth century. See Elizabeth Brown, “Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: The Legislation of Boniface
VIII on the Division of the Corpse,”
Viator
12 (1981): 221–70, esp. 228–35; Bynum,
The Resurrection of the Body
, pp. 200–213.

¹⁰⁷
Jacques Lacan,
The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Bk. VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959
–
1960
, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1992), pp. 270–83.

¹⁰⁸
Peter Brown, “Eastern and Western Christendom in Late Antiquity: A Parting of the Ways,” in
Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), p. 185.

¹⁰⁹
See Lateran IV, c. 62, Tanner, 1:263–64. Also see chap. 4, pp. 120, 128, below.

¹¹⁰
VMO
, p. 549; trans. King, p. 10.

¹¹¹
See Bynum,
Holy Feast
, pp. 120–21.

¹¹²
Regarding the heretical rejection of purgatory, see ibid., p. 252. On women’s suffering as a catalyst for freeing souls from
purgatory, see ibid., pp. 127, 129, 133, 171, 234. Cf. Barbara Newman, who describes these women as “Apostles of the Dead,”
in
From Virile Woman to
WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1995), pp. 109 ff. For a general discussion of the role of visions of the dead
in women’s lives, see Roisin,
L
’
Hagiographie cistercienne
, pp. 196 ff. Cf. Jean-Claude Schmitt’s view that the church encouraged the circulation of ghost stories since they substantiated
claims regarding the afterlife (
Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society
, trans. Teresa Fagan [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998], pp. 4–5).

¹¹³
See
VMO
, p. 553, trans. King pp. 26–27; p. 579, trans. King, p. 52; cf. p. 559, trans. King, pp. 53–54. See Jo Ann McNamara, “The
Need to Give: Suffering and Female Sanctity in the Middle Ages,” in Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Szell,
Images of Sainthood
, pp. 199–221, esp. 213 ff. On women’s important intercessory role in purgatory, see Newman,
From Virile Woman
, pp. 109–36.

¹¹⁴
SVMO
, p. 574; trans. King, p. 8.

¹¹⁵
VLA
, p. 197, trans. King, pp. 34–35; p. 205, trans. King, pp. 78–79. Cf.
VLA
, pp. 205–6, trans. King, pp. 82–83; and her efforts for Prior Simon of Foigny, p. 57 n. 44, above. She also intervened for
humbler personages, including her own sister (p. 198; trans. King, pp. 40–42). See McNamara, “The Need to Give,” pp. 214–15.

¹¹⁶
VLA
, p. 198; trans. King, pp. 37–38.

¹¹⁷
De apibus
2.51.8–9, pp. 474–76.

¹¹⁸
VCM
, pp. 651–52; trans. King, pp. 4–6. In fact, Christina died three times, the second time obediently returning at the behest
of a nun (
VCM
, p. 659; trans. King, pp. 30–31). Cf. an anecdote in
Concerning Bees
of a Dominican who chooses years of painful sickness over three days in purgatory, having had a brief sampling of the latter
(
De apibus
2.51.11, p. 477). As Thomas of Cantimprénotes at the outset of Christina’s vita, James of Vitry had already alluded to her
death, reanimation, and mission to the dead in his life of Mary of Oignies (
VCM
, p. 651, trans. King, pp. 1–2;
VMO
, p. 549, trans. King, p. 9). See Barbara Newman’s analysis of Christina as a “demoniac saint,” in “Possessed by the Spirit:
Devout Women, Demoniacs, and the Apostolic Life in the Thirteenth Century”
Speculum
73 (1998): 763–68.

¹¹⁹
VCM
, p. 658, trans. King, p. 27; p. 652, trans. King, p. 9. She was also the recipient of the kind of relic-like somatic miracles
alluded to above. Her breasts, for example, miraculously exuded oil (p. 654; trans. King, p. 12).

¹²⁰
VCM
, p. 655 (bis), trans. King, p. 17, 18; p. 659, trans. King, p. 32. Also note her special friendship with Count Louis of
Looz, who made confessions (nonsacramental) to Christina to enlist her prayers on his behalf. Christina would, in turn, share
in his punishments in purgatory (pp. 657–58; trans. King, pp. 24–26). See Robert Sweetman’s discussion of Christina as a kind
of living sermon, in “Christine of Saint-Trond’s Preaching Apostolate: Hagiographical Method Revisited,”
Vox Benedictina
9 (1992): 67–97, esp. pp. 72–77.

¹²¹
VCM
, p. 652; trans. King, pp. 8–9.

¹²²
VCM
, p. 652, trans. King, p. 9; p. 653, trans. King, p. 11; pp. 653–54, trans. King, p. 12.

¹²³
Kaïppelli, “Une somme contre les he è re è tiques” c. 12, p. 328.

¹²⁴
See Elliott,
Fallen Bodies
, pp. 147–50.

¹²⁵
See Bynum,
Holy Feast
, pp. 242–43; Newman,
From Virile Woman
, pp. 126–31. Note that the most extreme of these contenders, Hadewijch (fl. early thirteenth century) and Marguerite Porete
(d. 1310), were both considered unorthodox by some of their contemporaries. Hadewijch hints that she was persecuted during
her lifetime, while Marguerite was put to death for her writings.

¹²⁶
See
Gestorum Treverorum continuatio quarta
, ed. G. Waitz,
MGH SS
, 24:401, trans.
WE
, p. 268; cf. Mansi, ann. 1231, 23:241–42. Lucardis and her companions may have been members of the so-called Luciferian sect,
whose allegedly orgiastic rituals are described by Gregory IX. He concludes, “They assert in their raving that the Lord of
the heavens violently, and lamentably against justice, thrust Lucifer down into the depths of hell,” Auvray, 13 June 1233,
no. 1391. See Balthasar Kaltner,
Konrad von
Marburg und die Inquisition in Deutschland
(Prague: F. Tempsky, 1882), pp. 144, 161–63; Lea,
Inquisition
, 2:334, 335.

¹²⁷
SVMO
, p. 576; trans. King, p. 17. Cf. the incident in
VMO
, p. 553; trans. King, p. 26. A widow whose husband had also been involved in shady business practices, however, fared much
better with Mary’s intervention (
VMO
, p. 559; trans. King, p. 53).

¹²⁸
De apibus
2.54.17–18, pp. 528–30.

¹²⁹
See Strohm’s “Queens as Intercessors,” in
Hochon
’
s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-
Century Texts
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 95–115. Also see Lois Huneycutt, “Intercession and the High Medieval
Queen: The Esther Topos,” and John Carmi Parsons, “The Queen’s Intercession in Thirteenth-Century England,” in
Power of the Weak: Studies
on Medieval Women
, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 126–46, 147–77.

¹³⁰
What might be perceived as female resistance generally accentuates the basic mechanisms at work. Thus Mary of Oignies fends
off demons at a woman’s deathbed, praying: “ ‘Lord I stand surety for this soul for although she has sinned, she has confessed.
If perhaps anything remains in her through neglect or ignorance . . . You have left her some time for contrition’ ” (
VMO
, p. 559; trans. King, pp. 50–51). This particular instance merely reminds God (actually the reader) of the beneficent effects
of the sacrament of penance.

¹³¹
See n. 132, below, and nn. 112 and 113, above.

¹³²
Jacques Le Goff,
The Birth of Purgatory
, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), esp. pp. 209–34; cf. idem,
Your Money or Your Life: Economy and
Religion in the Middle Ages
, trans. Patricia Ranum (New York: Zone Books, 1988).

¹³³
De apibus
2.57.62, p. 587.

¹³⁴
For her penitential exercises, see
VMO
, pp. 551–52; trans. King, pp. 21–22. For their effect on demons, see p. 553, trans. King, p. 28; pp. 553–54, trans. King,
pp. 31–32; p. 561, trans. King, p. 61. The devil calls Mary a glutton for her modest (and physically painful) repast, hoping
to goad her to dangerous ascetical excesses (p. 552; trans. King, p. 23). The chunk she carved from her side was also expiation
for former enjoyment of food.

¹³⁵
VMO
, pp. 563–64; trans. King, pp. 71–72. Note that sickness is also represented as a divine grace in the prologue to the life
(p. 547; trans. King, pp. 6–7).

¹³⁶
VMO
, p. 556, trans. King, pp. 41–42; cf. an incident when Mary routs the devil with the sign of the cross (p. 554; trans. King,
p. 32). On the efficacy of this sign against demons, see
De
apibus
2.57.33–34, pp. 562–63.

¹³⁷
See chap. 4, pp. 170–71, below.

¹³⁸
De apibus
2.51.1, pp. 467–68.

¹³⁹
So confident was he about the extent of his sufferings that he predicted (rightly, it would seem from Thomas’s rapportage)
that he would bypass purgatory altogether (ibid. 2.51.3, p. 468).

¹⁴⁰
Ibid. 2.51.3, pp. 468–69.

¹⁴¹
Ibid. 2.51.4, pp. 469–70.

¹⁴²
Thomas’s editor, Colvener, makes this observation in his marginal comments in ibid., p. 470.

¹⁴³
Ibid. 2.51.5, pp. 471–72.

¹⁴⁴
Ibid. 2.51.7, pp. 473–74.

¹⁴⁵
Ibid. 2.51.8, pp. 474–75.

¹⁴⁶
Ibid. 2.51.9, pp. 475–76. This is followed by a section exhorting individuals not to despair since penance will revivify
them (2.51.10, pp. 476–77). The third incident concerns the Dominican discussed in n. 118, above.

¹⁴⁷
Ibid. 2.51.12, pp. 478–79.

¹⁴⁸
Ranft, “The Concept of Witness,” pp. 9–23.

Chapter Three

Elisabeth of Hungary: Between Men

This book contained legends of the saints. Good God!

(I speak the words reverently) what legends they were. . . .

The dread boasts of confessors, who had wickedly

abused their office, trampling to deep degradation

highborn ladies, making of countesses and princesses

the most tormented slaves under the sun. Stories like that

of Conrad and Elizabeth of Hungary, recurred again and again, with all its dreadful viciousness, sickening

tyranny and black impiety: tales that were nightmares

of oppression, privation, and agony.

(Charlotte Bronteï,
Villette
)
¹

AN OUTRAGED PROTESTANT, Charlotte Bront ë could not have chosen better than to target the relationship between Elisabeth and
her confessor, Conrad of Marburg, in order to sustain her objections to the penitential system’s abuse of women. For Conrad’s
unquestioned ascendancy over his holy penitent resulted from a constellation of factors that consolidated the confessor’s
power far beyond what we have hitherto witnessed in the contemporaneous Beguine milieu, endowing it with an impregnability
open to abuse. Elisabeth was peculiarly susceptible by virtue of the subordination implicit first in her status as matron
and then in her vulnerability as widow, and the special authority that Conrad exerted over her in both of these states. Her
spirituality was largely shaped by Conrad’s exacting vision of his role as spiritual director, which was, in turn, informed
by his inquisitorial function. Conrad employed the same basic strategies for exposing heretical depravity and orthodox sanctity.
The inquisitional influence was enhanced by the fact that behind Conrad stood Gregory IX and Raymond of PeÑafort as promoters
of Elisabeth’s cult—chief architects of the papal inquisition against heresy. Hence, as with the Beguines, who would develop
a special affinity for the cult of this regal penitent, Elisabeth’s spirituality needs to be understood in the larger context
of the struggle against heresy.
²
But Elisabeth’s contribution to this struggle resided not so much in the proving of particular doctrinal positions as in her
exemplary and unquestioning submission to ecclesiastical authority in its sternest aspect.

The daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary and his wife Gertrude, Elisabeth was brought up from infancy in the court of her
future husband—Ludwig, the future landgrave of Thuringia—whom she married when she was about fourteen. This short but extremely
happy union produced three children. The couple seem to have been genuinely in love—a refreshing contrast to most hagiographies.
Ludwig had resisted familial pressures to give up the prospect of marriage to Elisabeth after shifting diplomatic strategies
made a connection with Hungary less desirable. He purportedly maintained that he would sooner relinquish a mountain of gold.
³
Unlike most female saints, who are represented as finding marriage and husbands equally irksome and seem to spend much of
their time evading the marriage bed, Elisabeth construed her prayerful vigils as genuine austerities precisely because they
kept her from the side of her beloved husband.
⁴
Elisabeth also experienced intense grief on hearing the news of Ludwig’s death on Crusade, which is unusual for the pious
matrons of the High and later Middle Ages.
⁵

Despite her cheerful accession to the married state, Elisabeth was unswervingly committed to the subversion of her social
position through total self-abnegation. Her religious practices might have been regarded as rather irritating from the husband’s
perspective as, for example, when Elisabeth’s attendants mistakenly grabbed the sleeping master’s foot in attempting to awaken
the mistress for prayer.
⁶
And yet Ludwig was genuinely sympathetic to his wife’s piety, holding Elisabeth’s hand while she rose from bed to pray at
night.
⁷
Ironically, Ludwig’s indulgence is perhaps best revealed by the power he was prepared to accord her confessor, Con-rad—who
in 1226 exacted a vow of obedience (still deferring to the husband’s superior claims, however) and a conditional vow of chastity
in the event of Ludwig’s death. Immediately after Ludwig’s premature death, Elisabeth was spurned by her in-laws and actually
driven from the castle in Wartburg. From this time on, Conrad’s power over Elisabeth was absolute. His rigor exacerbated Elisabeth’s
own tendencies toward extreme self-mortification. Her ascetic feats brought about an early death in 1231 at the age of twenty-four.
She was canonized in 1235, an event that occasioned the production of some excellent contemporary sources.
⁸

Elisabeth’s short life was, significantly, dominated by the forces behind the disparate confessional/inquisitional tribunals
that were taking shape at precisely this time. Ludwig seems to have written to the papacy when Elisabeth’s first confessor
died, purportedly requiring not just a mere confessor but a man of learning as well. It was probably on the recommendation
of Hugolino of Ostia, the future Gregory IX—who had visited Germany between 1207 and 1209 and thus was familiar with the court
of Thuringia—that Conrad of Marburg made his way there in 1225.9 Conrad had initially distinguished himself as a preacher
of the Crusade under Innocent III. As was the case with James of Vitry, his Crusade preaching naturally shaded off into preaching
against heresy, even as the church itself had turned the Crusade from its original objective of converting or killing non-Christians
outside of Europe to the maintenance of internal boundaries. Certainly this kind of continuum is suggested in Caesarius of
Heisterbach’s vita of Elisabeth.

Conrad first received this authority for preaching against the Saracens from the lord Pope Innocent [III]. . . . Then under
his successors of blessed memory, Pope Honorius [III], and from him who today holds the Roman pontificacy, namely, the lord
Gregory [IX] [he received] similar but greater authority, preaching sometimes for the correction of morals and sometimes for
the repression of heretics.
¹⁰

This may even have been the same Conrad who, according to Caesarius of Heisterbach’s
Dialogue on Miracles
, tried heretics through the ordeal of burning iron at Strasbourg sometime in the second decade of the thirteenth century.
¹¹

Many aspects of Conrad’s background remain a mystery: although he was consistently addressed as “Magister,” and described
by contemporaries as a man of erudition and a great preacher,
¹²
there is no evidence that Conrad actually attended university. In fact, there were no universities in Germany in this period,
while the assertion that he attended the University of Paris originated in the fourteenth century.
¹³
Conrad also seems to have been unaffiliated with any particular religious order. Caesarius of Heisterbach alleges that Conrad
was a secular priest, although subsequent chroniclers would associate him with the different mendicant orders, particularly
the Dominicans.
¹⁴
But what seems to have recommended Conrad to Elisabeth, herself a supporter of the fledgling Franciscan movement, was his
absolute commitment to poverty. As Elisabeth herself attests, “Indeed I could have made [a vow of] obedience to some bishop
or abbot, who have possessions, but I thought it better to make it to Master Conrad, who has not, but lives entirely from
begging, so that he should have utterly no consolation in this life.”
¹⁵
Elisabeth could enact no more dramatic rejection of her social position and affluence than by her voluntary submission to
a poor man of low birth.
¹⁶

Pope Gregory IX assumed protection of Elisabeth upon Ludwig’s death in 1229, perhaps having been informed by Conrad of the
ill-treatment she was receiving at the hands of her in-laws and her husband’s vassals.
¹⁷
Gregory may well have been acquainted with Elisabeth from his earlier sojourn in Thuringia. He was certainly her correspondent—though
the only surviving letter, written after her husband’s death, is not very revealing, simply exhorting her to persevere in
her pious undertakings.
¹⁸
It was Gregory who entrusted the widowed Elisabeth to Conrad, naming him as her particular defender.
¹⁹
After the burial of Ludwig, Elisabeth left for Marburg, where she assumed a gray tunic signifying her renunciation of the
world—including not only her property, but even her children.
²⁰
It was at this time that she solemnized the vow of obedience and chastity that she had taken several years earlier. With Ludwig’s
death, the vow of obedience would become absolute, even as the vow of chastity was now perpetual.
²¹

Gregory IX’s veneration of Mary of Oignies, which allegedly resulted in his miraculous release from the spirit of blasphemy,
had basically been private and would, perhaps, have gone unnoticed, if not for the rather indiscreet zeal of Thomas of Cantimpré,
who exposed the pope’s temptation to the world. At James of Vitry’s request, Gregory further affirmed the Beguine way of life
through a papal bull.
²²
In contrast to this private devotion and only very modest validation of the Beguine lifestyle, however, Gregory IX is at particular
pains to promote Elisabeth’s cult. To this end, Gregory had his own penitentiary, none other than Raymond of PeÑafort, write
repeatedly to Conrad, urging him to assemble the miracles that had occurred after her death and send them to Rome.
²³
When Conradbungled the job, Gregory, doubtless acting through Raymond, attempted to remedy the situation by sending a specific
interrogatory for examining the witnesses to her miracles—the first of its kind, which would soon become the standard.
²⁴
After Conrad’s death in 1233, Gregory gladly reopened the case at the urging of Elisabeth’s brother-in-law, the former landgrave
of Thuringia, who had left the world to become a member of the Teutonic order as a result of Elisabeth’s posthumous intercession
on his behalf.
²⁵
Early in 1235, a papal commission inquired into Elisabeth’s life and miracles, paving the way for a smooth canonization in
the very same year.
²⁶
Luminaries such as Emperor Frederick II—whose precedential legislation on heresy was subsequently a model for secular rulers
throughout continental Europe—strove to attend.
²⁷
Moreover, to safe-guard the new cult against possible detractors, an extremely legalistic summary of the proceedings was crafted,
probably by Raymond of PeÑafort. 28 Gregory further granted especially liberal indulgences (a year and forty days) to the
faithful who made pilgrimages to the tomb, thus taking particular pains to foster Elisabeth’s cult.
²⁹

Efforts were made to accentuate the extent of Gregory’s implication in Elisabeth’s personal history. Conrad wrote a letter
to Gregory describing Elisabeth’s life soon after the unsuccessful attempt to compile her miracles. In it, he repeatedly made
reference to the way in which Elisabeth had been entrusted to him by Gregory himself—a claim that served to secure Gregory
within the ambit of Elisabeth’s cult as well as posthumously to consolidate and justify Conrad’s role in her life. In an account
that circulated under the popular title “The Book of the Four Handmaidens,” a slightly expanded version of the original depositions
made by Elisabeth’s personal attendants to the papal commission in 1235, we find a telling accretion:

But in her tribulations she had, after God, a consoler in Pope Gregory IX, who paternally and benignly comforted her with
the letters he wrote, exhorting her to perseverance in chastity and patience, proposing to her the different examples of saints
and firmly promising her eternal glory. Who also receiving her person and her goods under the spiritual protection of the
apostolic see recommended her to the often mentioned Master Conrad, giving him as defender to her.With him mediating, she
received in estimation of her dowry the aforesaid money, all of which she expended by his counsel in alms.
³⁰

Again, the anonymous author emphasizes that Conrad’s power over Elisabeth was contingent upon papal intervention. A mid-fourteenth-century
life of Gregory IX dispenses with Conrad altogether, casting the pontiff as the main impetus behind Elisabeth’s vocation and
spiritual attainments.
³¹

What we are in essencewitnessing in the course of Gregory and Conrad’s joint sponsorship is a symbolic, but nevertheless purposeful,
reallocation of the husband’s prerogatives over Elisabeth. With the death of Ludwig, Elisabeth’s now permanent vow of obedience
to Conrad would be colored by the heightened level of obedience exacted in marriage as a result of recent developments in
medieval canon law. Beginning in the twelfth century, the introduction of Roman law had gradually tightened the husband’s
control over his wife.
³²
This tendency peaked in Raymond of PeÑafort’s
Summa
, wherein Raymond upholds the husband’s lordship over his wife, even when it could potentially intrude on her salvation. Thus
the husband is permitted to retract his wife’s pious vows, even if he had formerly authorized them, since “in obeying her
husband, she obeys God [
obediendo viro,
obedit Deo
].” The conflation between husband and God would be accelerated by theological formulations like those of Aquinas, who would
use the analogy of the wife’s offense against her husband to address the equally hierarchic situation of the sinner’s offense
against God.
³³

Other conditions surrounding the vow of obedience would further strengthen the priest’s quasi-matrimonial prerogative over
his female penitent. Such vows derived from the parallel vows associated with an entrance into monastic life. But the vow
of a female religious would be further implicated in the wider mesh of the bridal imagery so intrinsic to the ritual veiling
of virgins.
³⁴
The nun’s vow was, of course, enacted in the context of community and did not require an intense personal relationship with
a particular spiritual director for its fulfillment. For lay-women living in the world, however, such vows tended to bind
the confessor and penitent in an intimate relation that fully participated in a heterosexual hierarchy approximating marriage.
These matrimonial overtones between confessor and penitent, already suggested in Friar Zeger’s relationship with Margaret
of Ypres, will become very explicit in the lives of later mystics, such as the Prussian saint Dorothea of Montau.
³⁵
It was doubtless an awareness of the intimacy fostered by such relations that prompted Francis of Assisi to forbid his friars
to accept such vows from women.
³⁶