Proving Woman (21 page)

PROVEN LIKE GOLD IN A FURNACE

Afflicted in few things, in many they [the just] shall be well rewarded: because God hath tried them,

and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace

he hath proved them, and as a victim of a holocaust

he hath received them.

(Wis. 3.5–6)

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of

the living God.

(Heb. 10.31)

Caesarius attempted to align aspects of Elisabeth’s life with select biblical and patristic models that would imbue her struggles
with a pristine dignity and authority. Certain paradigms immediately suggest themselves. Not surprisingly, he repeatedly compares
her to the good wife of Proverbs 31. Likewise, Elisabeth’s exemplification of active charity within the context of a contemplative
life evokes the analogy of Mary and Martha.
⁸⁸
Caesarius further associates Elisabeth with the kind of substitutive white martyrdom fruitfully employed by James of Vitry
and Thomas of Cantimpre è , citing Gregory the Great’s reflection on how martyrdom can be achieved through alternative means,
such as self-maceration or compassion toward one’s neighbor.
⁸⁹
Yet after Ludwig’s death, the primary and most powerful motif enlisted is what Thomas of Cantimpréhad referred to earlier
as purgative probation. As was already evident in James of Vi-try’s life of Mary of Oignies, this biblical image likens the
various trials to which the just person is subjected to the proving of gold in a furnace as a means of assessing its purity.
This analogy is animated by one of the precious metal’s most celebrated, if contradictory, attributes: its unchanging nature
and its ability to improve under seemingly deleterious conditions. Such qualities are further sustained by classical tradition.
According to Pliny, “gold is the only thing that loses no substance by the action of fire, but even in conflagrations and
on funeral pyres receives no damage. Indeed as a matter of fact it improves in quality the more often it is fired, and fire
serves as a test of its goodness, making it assume a similar hue and itself becoming the colour of fire.”
⁹⁰
Likewise, a saint, subjected to parallel trials, will emerge unscathed, or even stronger.

The Book of Job provides a memorable model of how and why God visits his merciless mercy of probation on the just. Job is
a good and pious man whom God permits Satan to assay in order to demonstrate his constancy during adversity as well as prosperity.
He is suddenly visited with so compelling a configuration of calamities that his closest friends conclude that he is a secret
sinner and urge him to seek God’s pardon. Protesting his own righteousness, Job asserts that God “has tried [
probavit
] me as gold that passeth through the fire” (Job 23.10). In his extensive
Moralia
on Job, Gregory the Great will suitably gloss Job’s comment, explaining that “gold advances to the clarity of its nature,
while losing its filth. Therefore like gold passing through fire, the soul of a just person is proved, from whom vices are
extracted and merits increased by the conflagration of tribulation.” In Job’s case, however, Gregory notes that he was called
“just” before God’s “scourges” (
flagella
) were applied, which implies that there were no vices to be eliminated, only merits to be augmented. Even so, Gregory clearly
envisages a scenario in which the just achieve their true nature, ever present but effaced or in need of development, only
through suffering.
⁹¹
Later in the same work, Gregory would again compare God’s “scourges” to the testing of gold (Wis. 3.6), stressing that it
is only through extreme adversity that the strengths of an individual are revealed.
⁹²
Thus Aquinas would emphasize that the story of Job concerned God’s affliction of an already perfect man. But even as the probationary
fire is operative in manifesting to humanity gold’s true virtue, Job’s adversities were necessary for revealing his true metal
to society at large. God himself did not need such assurances.
⁹³
The need for external proof would be particularly pressing in the High Middle Ages, when the papacy’s official role in both
assessing and then revealing a holy person’s inner virtues was progressively stressed.

The codependency of virtue and tribulation raises some interesting questions about the identity of the actual agents of persecution.
In the story of Job it is Satan who administers the various scourges prepared for Job’s probation. Indeed, as Gregory the
Great emphasizes, Satan does nothing by his own initative, relying solely on God’s permission. Thus Gregory concludes with
the reflection that although Satan’s will is necessarily wicked, the power he exercises is never unjust, as it comes directly
from God.
⁹⁴
Satan would, in turn, utilize human agents in the pursuit of his persecutory ends, even though they were generally unaware
that they were enlisted in diabolical service. For instance, Job’s friends, who could not but mistrust his protestations of
innocence, inadvertently contributed to his sufferings. Although an argument could be made that they played an estimable role
in Job’s probation and are deserving of praise, and Gregory the Great does present their activities as furthering the divine
plan, he casts them as heretics, subordinating them to God’s own restive subordinate, Satan.
⁹⁵
Indeed, for Nicholas of Lyre (d. 1340), their heresy resided in their actually questioning the whole probationary process
by doubting that such temporal reversals advance an individual’s spiritual progress.
⁹⁶

While Caesarius attempts to stabilize Elisabeth’s trials in terms of God’s proving of the just, the ultimate source of her
travails was in constant flux. The image of probation is first introduced in the context of the various persecutions Elisabeth
endures at the hands of her husband’s vassals, who acted “by the suggestion of Satan, who moved the Lord against the just
Job so that he would afflict him without cause (cf. Job. 2.3).”
⁹⁷
Fortunately, however, Elisabeth was “not consumed in the fire of such great tribulation and such vehement persecution by the
vice of impatience, but was proved [
probata
], so as the psalmist said: thou hast tried me by fire; and iniquity was not found in me (Ps. 16.3).”
⁹⁸
Caesarius especially commends Elisabeth’s indomitable cheerfulness throughout the course of her misfortunes, underlining her
own awareness of the immense benefits to be accrued through such trials.

Just as is proved [
probatur
] in divine Scriptures, tribulation with patience gladdens, proves, purges, and glorifies [
letificat, probat, purgat,
et glorificat
] the just. . . . That tribulation should prove [
probet
] the just, Ecclesiasticus testifies: For gold and silver are tried [
probatur
] in the fire, but acceptable men, that is, men who are worthy, in the furnace of humiliation (2.5). Also the angel said to
Tobias: And because thou wast acceptable to God, it was necessary that temptation should prove [
probaret
] thee (Tobias 12.13). How much the patience of blessed Elisabeth was tried through wicked men was said above. That the fire
of tribulation purges [
purget
] the just Augustine teaches, saying thus: That what the furnace does to gold, the flail to grain, and the file to iron, so
does tribulation act on the just. Just as he [Augustine] also says: The furnace of tribulation burns the wood of vices and
purges [
purgat
] the virtues of gold. Whatsoever was burnable in blessed Elisabeth, the fire of tribulation consumed, so that the gold of
her merits and virtues shone more fully. That tribulation glorifies the just you have in the psalm, when the Lord says about
the just man: I am with him in tribulation, I will deliver him, and I will glorify him (Ps. 90.15). . . . How much Elisabeth
is glorified in heaven on account of momentous tribulations, which she endured on earth, the glory of her miracles adequately
declares.
⁹⁹

Thus the vassals’ impulse may spring from evil, but they cannot fail to do good.

The difficulties of discussing Conrad under the rubric of probation are instantly apparent. The very extremity of his disciplinary
regime could easily recommend him as someone bent on evil, who only inadvertently exercises God’s will. This would be commensurate
with the way he is understood in a number of contemporary chronicles. Thus the
Annals of
Worms
, for example, heralds Conrad’s antiheretical purge as follows: “The most wretched plague and harshest sentence [
sententia durissima
] followed through divine permission.” When it was at an end, Germany was likewise said to rejoice in its liberation “from
that inordinate and unheard of judgment [
ab isto iudicio enormi et inaudito
].”
¹⁰⁰
The
Gesta
of the archbishops of Trier refers to Conrad’s death as the end of a great persecution, the like of which had not been witnessed
since the time of the heretical emperor Constantius or Julian the Apostate.
¹⁰¹
Certainly Elisabeth’s tendency to associate the blows she received from Conrad with those visited on Christ by his tormentors,
alluded to above, would lend credence to this perception of Conrad as an evil man whose purgative ministry is purely adventitious.

Caesarius does his best to cushion his old friend from such aspersions, while still implicating him in the salubrious aspects
of the purgative process. The discussion of the vassals’ abuse, for example, carefully foregrounds the role of God, rather
than Satan, as the more immediate agent of persecution. In addition, Conrad’s probationary function often remains more implied
than overt. Even so, certain tactical adjustments were also deemed necessary. When he cites, almost verbatim, Isentrud’s comment
regarding Conrad’s efforts at breaking Elisabeth’s will in order to test her constancy, he silently substitutes the verb
probare
for its more ambiguous synonym
temptare
, firmly assimilating Conrad’s activities with the larger program of probation while purging it of possible diabolical associations.
¹⁰²
Moreover, an explicatory rationale is also appended: “so that from this her merit would more fully grow in obeying him.”
¹⁰³
Caesarius continues the near verbatim account of the dismissal of Elisabeth’s handmaidens, one by one. The narrative is, however,
interrupted by two interlocking biblical allusions:

That strong woman, because she put out her hand to strong things (Prov. 31.19), knowing that Christ, who is the fortitude
of God, said: I did not come to do my will, but the will of my father who sent me (John 4.34), sustained all these things
without a murmur of the heart and contradictory response.
¹⁰⁴

This nexus of associations implicates Elisabeth in an inescapable web of obediences. The strong woman of Proverbs is the ideal
wife, subjected by nuptial coverture, but still tending cheerfully and loyally to her husband’s home. More insistent still
is the Christological analogy, which likens Elisabeth’s wordless compliance with Conrad’s will to Christ’s pious submission
to God. Thus, beginning with the implied temporal control of the husband, Caesarius proceeds to assimilate Conrad’s authority
to that of the Godhead so that the natural order becomes coextensive with the supernatural.

But aspects of Conrad’s disciplinary regime were sufficiently severe to require Caesarius’s own brand of purgation via judicious
censorship, although the results are mixed. When discussing the dismissal of Elisabeth’s attendants, for example, Caesarius
deliberately represses the surveillance and espionage function of their replacements (who are more neutrally referred to as
feminae religiosae
). As a result, however, the austerities and blows that attend their arrival, and remain in the narration, necessarily seem
unmotivated. Elisabeth’s association of these blows with those received by Christ, which would automatically conjure up the
agents administering the blows, was, likewise, wisely repressed.
¹⁰⁵
Caesarius also styles Conrad as Elisabeth’s
institutor
or “teacher,” perhaps because medieval pedagogy was frequently sustained by floggings.
¹⁰⁶
Finally, when the beatings are again evoked for the final time, Caesarius makes a last-ditch effort to ensure that Conrad’s
actions are correctly valued, if not fully empathized with: “There is scarcely a doubt but that the austerity of the same
Conrad was the occasion of great merit to blessed Elisabeth. For just as she confessed above, she feared him exceedingly,
and fear is a great punishment.” 107

If Caesarius did little to disguise the harshness of Conrad’s spiritual mentorship, it may have been because the nature of
the mentorship fell within a pattern that he recognized and admired. By insisting on the spiritual benefits that Elisabeth
derived from her confessor’s harshness, Caesarius was automatically aligning their relationship with the ancient model of
spiritual direction kept alive in the
Vitae patrum
, a tradition that Caesarius liberally evokes in his sermon written on the occasion of the translation of Elisabeth.
¹⁰⁸
John Cassian (d. 435) had urged that the quintessential monastic virtue of discretion can be learned only in the context of
humility, which entailed total submission to the judgment of another.
¹⁰⁹

The first proof of this humility will be if not only everything that is to be done but also everything that is thought of
is offered to the inspection of the elders, so that, not trusting in one’s own judgment, one may submit in every respect to
their understanding and may know how to judge what is good and bad according to what they have handed down. This instruction
will not only teach a young man how to walk on the right paths by the true way of discretion but will also preserve him unhurt
from all the snares and traps of the enemy. Whoever lives not by his own judgment but by the example of our forebears shall
never be deceived.
¹¹⁰