Proving Woman (2 page)

This is not to say that female spirituality is framed by inhibiting factors alone. Nor do I think that every feature of this
frame is as repressive and potentially punitive as are the components I am isolating. Some readers may regard my focus as
negative, even depressing—a characterization I would, again, not entirely contest. In general, this is not a story of transcendence.
Although there are a number of striking instances of individuals resisting coercive powers, it is largely a story of constraint,
where individuals are often complicit with their constraining forces. Some may think this perspective is unnecessarily pessimistic;
but here, I would have to disagree. In the wake of Caroline Walker Bynum’s landmark study
Holy
Feast and Holy Fast
, a number of works have appeared that celebrate the rich meaning of medieval women’s spiritual lives.
⁴
The areas that I am examining form part of the background against which this more promising narrative of female spiritual
transcendence may emerge. An unset jewel gives little indication of the ring as a whole; so it is when only the positive,
volitional aspects of female spirituality are considered.

My emphasis on the clerical role in the construction of sanctity and heresy should not be construed as meaning that female
spirituality was invented by a handful of clerical masterminds. Certainly the clergy was largely responsible for the rules
with which women possessed of pronounced spiritual inclinations either conformed or contended. When viewed optimistically,
rules in general can be construed as the very conditions for most kinds of creativity, even as the sonnet or the fugue is
inseparable from the intractable dictates governing their respective forms. More-over, in life as in art, a different, but
no less puissant, order of creativity is unleashed when rules are deliberately broken. Either way, censorship itself is capable
of generating a certain kind of creative expression—whether its strictures meet with compliance or defiance. But the main
disadvantage of our particular rule-bound landscape is that we can seldom discern the extent of the women’s participation
in what is generally understood to be their own creative performances since the clerical hand constructs or at least shapes
the vehicle through which women’s creativity is conveyed. Thus the female spirituality to which the historian is privy may
be regarded as something of a command performance with mandatory collaboration with a cleric as a given. The performance itself
may be alternately amplified and muffled by the powerful clerical collaborator. Either alternative is possible. But it is
impossible to know the extent of his intervention since a tacit condition of the performance is that it occur behind a screen.
It is often virtually impossible to know who is performing at any given time—the priest or his penitent. Thus if the utopian
expectation of identifying an unmediated female voice must ultimately be abandoned, this is not to deny the existence of
a female spirituality, one that was meaningful and fulfilling to its female practitioners. This recognition and acceptance
of women’s veiled performance is alternately exhilarating and debilitating—every bit as full and as empty as Abelard’s graceful
resolution to the problem of Universals: “that the name of the rose is meaningful to the understanding although there are
now no roses remaining . . . otherwise the proposition ‘there are no more roses’ would not be possible.” 5 There are no more
roses—no more unmediated spirituality for us to apprehend; but there
were
roses, and this compromise formation means everything to the historian.

Yet supposing we hypothesize an ideal world where each medieval woman was literate and self-determining, free to enjoy and
express her spirituality as she saw fit. Even if this were the case, her voice, like any sound, cannot exist in a vacuum.
This study attempts to describe the atmosphere that enables and constrains, but ultimately conveys female speech.

¹
Cf. Henry Ansgar Kelly’s objection to the tendency to approach inquisition as a method reserved for heresy alone, rather
than recognizing it as a widespread procedure put to many different uses, in “Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy: Misconceptions
and Abuses,”
Church
History
58 (1989): 439–51. Also see Richard Kieckhefer’s reminder that the prosecution of heresy itself was discussed in terms of
the officers,
inquisitores hereticae pravitatis
, as opposed to an institution known as the “inquisition,” which develops only in the early modern period (“The Office of
the Inquisition and Medieval Heresy: The Transition from Personal to Institutional Jurisdiction,”
Journal of Ecclesiastical History
46 [1995]: 36–61). Kieckhefer’s point is well taken. However, I am convinced that a common ideology—fostered by papal sanctions,
inquisitorial manuals, and even the sharing of inquisitional records in order to track a person’s guilt—represents an enterprise
sufficiently coherent and united to warrant the name “inquisition.” Cf. Edward Peters’s similar assessment in
Inquisition
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 67–68.

²
Peter Dinzelbacher,
Heilige oder Hexen? Schicksale auffälliger Frauen in Mittelalter und
Frühneuzeit
(Munich: Artemis and Winkler, 1995); Richard Kieckhefer, “The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft, and Magic in Late
Medieval Europe,”
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance
Studies
24 (1994): 335–85; Aviad Kleinberg, “Proving Sanctity: Selection and Authentication of Saints in the Later Middle Ages,”
Viator
20 (1989): 183–205.

³
Barbara Newman, “
La mystique courtoise
: Thirteenth-Century Beguines and Religious Women,” in
From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), pp. 137–67.

⁴
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); eadem,
Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion
(New York: Zone Books, 1991). Among these later studies are: John Coakley, “Gender and the Authority of Friars: The Significance
of Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans,”
Church History
60 (1991): 445–60; Karma Lochrie,
Margery Kempe and Translations
of the Flesh
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); Dyan Elliott,
Spiritual
Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993); Elizabeth Petroff,
Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Amy Hollywood,
The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechtild of Magdeburg,
Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); Barbara Newman,
From Virile Woman
; eadem, “Possessed by the Spirit: Devout Women, Demoniacs, and the Apostolic Life in the Thirteenth Century,”
Speculum
73 (1998): 733–70. There are also a number of valuable collections that foreground female spirituality. See particularly Catherine
Mooney, ed.,
Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, eds.,
Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991)—especially the contributions by John Coakley and Jo Ann McNamara. Cf. the new
perspectives offered in Juliette Dor et. al., eds.,
New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Li[egave]ge
and Their Impact
(Brussels: Brepols, 1999).

⁵
“. . . ut rosae nomen [non] iam permanentibus rosis, quod tamen tunc quoque ex intellectu significativum est . . . alioquin
propositio non esset: nulla est rosa,” Abelard (d. 1142), “Incipiunt glossae secundum magistrum Petrum Abaelardum super Porphyrium,”
Philosophie und Theologie
des Mittelalters
21 (1933): 30. Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.

Chapter One

Sacramental Confession as Proof of Orthodoxy

Oral confession to a priest, introduced by Innocent [III],

is not as necessary to people as he claimed. For if anyone

offends his brother in thought, word or deed, then it suffices to repent in thought, word or deed alone.

It is a grave and unsupported practice for a priest

to hear the confessions of the people in the ways

in which the Latins use.

For [the devil] introduced private confession,

which cannot be justified

(Condemned doctrines attributed to John Wyclif by the

Council of Constance, 1415)
¹

THESE TENETS attributed to English theologian John Wyclif (d. 1384) were condemned at the Council of Constance—the same council
at which Wyclif’s Bohemian follower, Hus, was arraigned and burned. Nevertheless, they voice an uncomfortable truth: that
auricular confession was first mandated for the entire church by Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Moreover,
irreverent reflections on this decree were by no means unprecedented. Heretical groups, such as the Waldensians, had long
maintained that confession of sins to God alone sufficed.
²
Likewise, in 1321 the Parisian theologian John of Pouilly was believed to have preached at a council in Reims that the pope
did not possess the authority to enjoin annual confession on Christendom in the first place.
³

But other witnesses, better credentialed ones, corroborated aspects of these contentions. The perfectly orthodox canon lawyer
Panormitanus (d. 1445), for example, stated rather matter-of-factly that no overt authority indicates that God or Christ explicitly
instituted confession to a priest.
⁴
The paucity of scriptural support for Lateran IV’s mandate was complemented by the fact that evidence for auricular confession
is embarrassingly thin before the appearance of the penitentials in the seventh century. Even after their advent, the practice
of auricular confession does not seem to have been widespread.
⁵
Furthermore, despite the quickening of twelfth-century interest in confession for its salient role in the larger penitential
process, religious authorities never suggested that confession was in accordance with divine law. When thirteenth-century
theologians, in the wake of Lateran IV, attempted to do so, it was only with the greatest difficulty.
⁶
The matter was, however, finally, although awkwardly, settled when the Council of Trent elevated the belief in the divine
origin of confession to an article of faith.
⁷

But the invention of auricular confession as a mandated sacrament did not exist outside of time. As part of the newly articulated
sacramental system, confession was a response to a set of contemporaneous spiritual concerns. From the ecclesiastical hierarchy’s
perspective, it was linked with the fight against heresy; on an individual level, it reflected the turn toward interiority
that contemporary piety favored. Moreover, sacramental confession further resonated with the rise of judicial confession in
an ever expanding number of ecclesiastical and secular tribunals. A certain amount of interpenetration between different confessional
systems was inevitable. The present chapter will examine how the contemporary emphasis on confession fostered a steady movement
between fora, before turning to the ways in which female spirituality was deeply implicated in this confessional culture.

HERESY AND LATERAN IV

Lateran IV was largely framed in response to heresy, particularly that of the dualist Cathars of southern France. A number
of canons are very explicit about this purpose. On a disciplinary level, Canon 3 outlined a series of depositions and confiscations
that a heretic must suffer. Bent on en-listing the orthodox laity’s active persecution of their heretical neighbors, the canon
not only articulated dire consequences for temporal lords who refused to act against heretical subordinates, but it further
consolidated Innocent III’s earlier use of the Crusade for suppressing heresy.
⁸

Other initiatives of a more symbolic nature were equally implicated in the council’s antiheretical impetus. For instance,
from a doctrinal perspective, the council’s opening canon is a detailed declaration of faith that coins the term “transubstantiation”
to describe the change that comes over the eucharistic bread and wine at the moment of consecration.
⁹
This insistence on the material presence of Christ was intended as a direct rebuttal to the Cathars’ rejection of the sacrament—a
rejection that was grounded in their dualistic abhorrence of the material world and incumbent denial that Christ had ever
assumed an incarnate body.
¹⁰
Indeed, the council’s general attempt to mount a defense via the sacramental system is also evident in its efforts to stabilize
the institution of marriage, which was under attack by heretical dualists. Its inclusion on the definitive list of sacraments,
developed over the course of the twelfth century, was clearly a response to both heretical dualism and antisacramentality.
¹¹

Omnis utriusque sexus
, Canon 21’s groundbreaking ordinance on confession, should be placed on a continuum with these other measures:

All the faithful of either sex, after they have reached the age of discernment, should individually confess all their sins
in a faithful manner to their own priest at least once a year, and let them take care to do what they can to perform the penance
imposed on them. Let them reverently receive the sacrament of the eucharist at least at Easter unless they think, for a good
reason and on the advice of their own priest, that they should abstain from receiving it for a time. Other-wise they shall
be barred from entering a church during their lifetime and they shall be denied a Christian burial at death. Let this salutary
decree be frequently published in churches, so that nobody may find the pretence of an excuse in the blindness of ignorance.
¹²

Even as the universal mandate to confess was unprecedented, so were the methods through which it was enforced, essentially
calling for ipso facto excommunication.
¹³

A stable confessional relationship with the same priest would clearly facilitate the task of surveillance. Thus, some fifty
years later, when proffering a six-point rationale for
Omnis utriusque
, Bonaventure (d. 1274) reasons in his fourth point that “the obedient are discerned from the disobedient or heretics through
the observance of such a statute.”
¹⁴
Local synodal injunctions made it clear that priests were obliged to keep track of those who did not comply, although the
degree to which these lists circulated to higher disciplinary bodies remains less clear.
¹⁵
It quite apparent from heretical trials that certain members of the laity understood confession as a type of surveillance.
Authors of manuals for inquisitors complained that suspected heretics would come to confession hoping to pass as orthodox—a
ruse that can, indeed, be found among inquisitional records. 16 Moreover, from its formal inception, auricular confession
was also almost immediately used catechismically for remedial instruction in the faith. Such soundings, which measured the
depth of orthodox indoctrination, would further disclose heretical leanings.

Amid this aura of innovation, however, it should also be noted that Canon 21 in many ways evolved from a recognizable body
of doctrines and practices.
¹⁷
As early as the mid–tenth century, one finds isolated instances of bishops encouraging annual confession,
¹⁸
while in the early years of the thirteenth century a small number of bishops attempted to introduce regular auricular confession
into their synods.
¹⁹
The penitential movement, distinguished by a desire to confess sins and perform penance in the world, had steadily gained
ground since the eleventh century. The twelfth century had also manifested a new interiority and sensitivity to the realm
of the conscience, particularly stressing the centrality of inward contrition in the remission of sins.
²⁰

The contritionist position, first articulated by Peter Abelard, maintained the sufficiency of inward remorse for the forgiveness
of sins, a stance that could theoretically dispense with outward confession altogether. 21 While this contention would be
modified by subsequent scholars, theologians would nevertheless continue to prioritize inward contrition over outer confession
until the mid–thirteenth century.
²²
Canon 21 of Lateran IV helps to undermine the contritionist platform by isolating and foregrounding verbal confession against
the rest of the penitential process. Thus alternative views, such as Abelard’s perception of the sinner spurning God (
peccatum-contemptus
) as reconciled by a penitence of love (
poenitentia-amor
), gave way to the perception of the penitent as arraigned before his or her priestly judge.
²³
The rising power of the priest is signified by the standard formula for absolution that emerged. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274)
will thus defend the phrase “I absolve you” as the correct form for the sacrament of penance, rather than the more deflected
“May Almighty God grant you absolution.” By John Gerson’s time (d. 1429) the matter was settled. But John will concede in
his miniature treatise on the subject that the priest might add “by the authority of the church,” although this was by no
means necessary.
²⁴

A CRISIS IN PROOF AND THE RISE OF JUDICIAL CONFESSION

Foucault has identified Lateran IV as a central moment in establishing “confession as one of the main rituals we rely on for
the production of truth.”
²⁵
There is no question that confession was thus established as the essential marker or “proof” of orthodoxy. A similar claim
might also be made for the eucharist, since Canon 21 likewise mandated its reception for the faithful. Even so, a subtle hierarchy
was simultaneously inscribed within this set of proofs: a Christian could withhold him-or herself from the eucharist by reason
of piety without necessarily arousing suspicion, but not from confession—a consideration at odds with the acknowledgment of
many authorities that one need not confess unless he or she has committed a mortal sin.
²⁶
Indeed, the close association of confession and communion suggested in the wording of Canon 21 generated the view that the
one was a precondition for the other, bringing the two practices closer together.
²⁷
Two of Bonaventure’s rationales for
Omnis utriusque
,for example, sequentially link confession and the eucharist. Thus he argues that confession will, on the one hand, permit
the priest to know who is worthy of receiving the sacrament of the altar, while, on the other hand, allowing the faithful
to purge themselves before approaching the Lord’s body.
²⁸
Aquinas will similarly argue that an unconfessed sinner com-pounds his sin by receiving the sacrament.
²⁹
The two sacraments will eventually be formally joined at the Council of Trent when this hitherto recommended sequence becomes
a precept in the event that a person is conscious of a mortal sin.
³⁰

The emergence of auricular confession as a preferred proof of orthodoxy coincides with the beginnings of an immense shift
in contemporary systems of establishing proof, most concretely represented in the decline of the ordeal and the gradual rise
of the inquisitional procedure.
³¹
Traditionally, Germanic kingdoms had looked to the ordeal for illumination in many situations of uncertainty. Functionally,
the ordeal was understood to make the hidden manifest by a direct appeal to God. Through a solemn invocation (called a
conjuratio
in many liturgies), God was besought to speak through the verdict. The outcome of the ordeal was thus perceived as divinely
ordained proof—hence the appellation
iudicium Dei
. It was, as Peter Brown has characterized it, a “controlled miracle.” The utility of the ordeal spread far beyond proofs
that one might designate as simply legal, or, to put it in a way that more truly captures the medieval sense of justice, necessarily
extends our modern understanding of the law.
³²

Despite the occasional ecclesiastical qualms over the legitimacy of ordeals, clerics accepted them as part of the normative
legal procedure throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In fact, the ordeal continued to be applied to church affairs
well into the thirteenth century.
³³
But despite the seemingly unapologetic continuance of such procedures, a crisis of doubt was gaining momentum that would eventually
precipitate the decline of this formerly indispensable mechanism of proof.
³⁴
Lateran IV again achieves prominence as the formal channel for the articulation of change and the mechanism of displacement.
Canon 18 forbade clerical participation in the ordeal, thereby robbing the ritual of its efficacy.
³⁵
In keeping with the growing separation between a sacred and a profane realm, a stricter delineation of which arose during
the Gregorian Reform, the clergy retreated into the sacred, taking their holy implements with them. The change is interestingly
signaled by the new protections that were instituted around the eucharist—which could no longer be administered prior to the
ordeal, let alone be used as an ordeal in its own right. Thus Aquinas, citing Pope Stephen V (d. 885), an early critic of
ordeals, would assert:

“The sacred canons do not allow of a confession being extorted [
extorqueri
] from any person by trial with hot iron or boiling water. It is for our state authorities to judge of public crimes which
are committed and made evident by spontaneous confession or the proof of witnesses: private and unknown crimes are left to
him who alone knows the hearts of the sons of men.” . . . Tempting God [
Dei tentatio
] seems present in all such ordeals, and so their practice cannot be free from sin. And it would seem the graver were anybody
to receive the death-sentence through this sacrament, which was instituted to be a saving remedy. Consequently Christ’s body
should absolutely never be given to a suspect as part of his examination.
³⁶