Proving Woman (40 page)

his blessing, helped her to her feet, and motioned her to get into bed . . .

and the Angel lay down at his votary’s side. . . . He flew without wings several times before the night

was over . . . which he supplemented with a running commentary on the glories of heaven.

(Boccaccio,
Decameron
)
⁴⁵

The cases of Guglielma of Milan and Armannus Punzilupus of Ferrara are vivid instances in which formal inquiries were responsible
for exposing some very dubious claims to sanctity. Yet however vitiated their orthodoxy may have been, there is no doubt that
the putative saints in question had been genuinely pious, at least according to their own lights. But there were also instances
where individuals appropriated the symbols of holiness for personal gain.
⁴⁶
Certain kinds of fraud were particularly germane to men. The kind of pretense described by Caesarius was in keeping with a
long tradition of clerics posing as believers to penetrate an orthodox cell and akin to the kind of tricks permitted to inquisitors.
Boccaccio’s “angel” was only a very flamboyant instance of yet another trope already associated with men in the pastoral epistles:
the predatory charlatan who assumed a posture of holiness in order to seduce vulnerable women. The female fraud is generally
depicted as subscribing to a still more ambitious and dangerous program, seeking to impose her claims on the church at large—men
and women, clergy and laity alike. If successful, she could achieve a visibility and power allegedly supported by a divine
warrant—one that was otherwise out of reach by virtue of her gender.

Lucia of Narni was believed to have been temporarily successful in perpetrating just such a scheme. Despite herculean efforts
at obtaining proof, Ercole d’Este seems to have been incapable of quelling the gossip that beset his court prophet. But almost
immediately after the death of her patron, Lucia’s claims to sanctity were demolished once and for all. According to rumor,
Lucia was surprised by some of the other sisters while she was in the process of manually renewing her stigmata. Although
this charge was never formally proven, she dropped from public view.
⁴⁷
Inquiries of varying degrees of formality led to similar exposures. What follows are three cases of putative women mystics:
the first involving a clear-cut fraud; the second, possible fraud; and a third hovering in a gray zone of indeterminacy. Each
of these women attempted to attract a following, and all of them would fail in their attempts for different reasons. Yet these
notable failures are interesting since they demonstrate what the women themselves thought was necessary for being renowned
and venerated during their own lifetimes.

The first instance occurred in the thirteenth century in the diocese of Metz. According to the chronicler Richer of Sens,
a certain woman of the city of Marsal, appropriately named Sybil, successfully imitated the spiritual practices of the local
Beguines, thereby conning the entire diocese.
⁴⁸
Some highlights of her fraudulent repertoire were her three-day raptures, during which she ostensibly refused food and drink,
only to indulge herself late at night;
⁴⁹
conversations with angels (after which aromatic spices were spread to simulate the angelic presence in keeping with the expectations
of certain contemporary theologians);
⁵⁰
struggles with demons (punctuated by the feathers of torn pillows); and conversations between demons and angels (with Sybil
ventriloquizing each voice).

For obvious reasons, most of Sybil’s chicanery was perpetrated in private, with the admiring populace on the outside of a
closed door, but there was one important exception. Sometimes in the evening, she would sally forth, dressed in a hairy demonsuit
in order to terrify the surrounding countryside with vociferous threats against that pious virgin Sybil. (She fondly referred
to this garb as her
larva
—an especially appropriate term since it could mean either a devil or a mask.) Thus disguised, she once railed against Sybil’s
intervention on behalf of a recently deceased individual, reputed to be wicked, whose soul she swept up in a three-day rapture,
ultimately preserving the deceased from the flames that he had so richly deserved. Sybil’s sartorial aspirations also simulated
celestial glory. On the day after her successful demonic caper, the bishop entered her chamber to discover her rosy-faced,
“as if sleeping with the most subtle, white material around her, and her head covering was so subtle that it seemed never
to have been made by human hands. Moreover, she lay sleeping, having so subtle a breath, that scarcely could it be perceived
by anyone whether she breathed or not.”
⁵¹
In answer to the bishop’s questions, her host volunteered that Sybil was often discovered appearing thus after her celestial
raptures. The angels themselves were said to provide her with these otherworldly ornaments, in addition to making her bed.
The bishop was impressed with Sybil’s claims. Thus both he and his followers scrupulously made use of the water that they
had been told was blessed by the angels and had the power to fend off demons, sprinkling it over themselves as well as imbibing
it. Apparently the bishop toyed with the idea of building Sybil a church where she could live what he characterized as a completely
otherworldly existence “because she did not eat, drink, or humanly live.” (Presumably this meant that the bishop intended
to construct an anchorhold for her, perhaps attached to a new chapel.) Then people would be able to flock from all over and
observe the marvels that God worked through Sybil.

Sybil was eventually exposed when simulating a debate between angels and demons that ostensibly occurred while she was in
rapture. Since she had predicted her rapture ahead of time, a number of clerics were in attendance, including the bishop,
although she insisted (as always) on being left alone behind a locked door. Wishing to follow the argument more closely, a
certain Dominican approached the door, where he discovered a convenient chink through which he could observe the room. What
he saw was Sybil staging this remarkable colloquy by herself, while making the bed. The clerics broke down the door and discovered
her many props, along with the food under her bed. Sybil’s bid for attention created a huge scandal. The mob wanted her put
to death; the local Beguines wept, covering their faces and fleeing for shame. Even the bishop, who had, after all, looked
particularly foolish, wanted her put to death, although he eventually yielded to “saner counsel.” He settled for having Sybil
imprisoned on a bread-and-water diet, where she soon died.

How does one explain Sybil’s surprising, albeit temporary, success? She could certainly not have managed without the help
of her “familiar priest,” who supplied the paraphernalia to simulate the angelic presence and brought her food during the
night to sustain her after her three-day raptures. (The priest told her hosts to ignore any noise they might hear: it was
only the demons.) But time was also on Sybil’s side. Richer, writing between 1254 and 1264, implies that Sybil’s bid for sanctity
was more or less concurrent with the heretical purge of Robert le Bougre, who was active between 1233 and 1239.52 Robert was
one of the earliest papal inquisitors, whose methods were no more systematic, and no less ruthless, than were those of his
contemporary Conrad of Marburg. Hence the papal inquisition was still in its infancy, and the dissemination of inquisitional
procedure in its various guises was just beginning.

This is not to say that the clerics involved were entirely bovine and instantly willing to credit the authenticity of Sybil’s
flamboyant mystical experiences. We are told that both the Franciscans and the Dominicans came to observe her but were never
able to catch her at her game. Like-wise, the bishop and his entourage, “wishing to test if it was so that she would not eat
or drink and if she were rapt in spirit, as she said, had Sybil transferred into another house.”
⁵³
It was a good plan, but they were ultimately outmaneuvered by Sybil. After remaining there for three days simulating rapture
and starving herself, Sybil could stand it no longer. She told the bishop that if she remained in that locale, demons would
tear her to pieces. The bishop—concerned, credulous, perhaps unschooled in undertaking a systematic examination, but clearly
incapable of exerting the kind of pressure that would secure the evidence he sought—relented and had the wily woman carried
back to her former abode. There were no more tests after this, and Sybil, becoming progressively more brazen, went on to commission
her hairy demon suit.

Over time, procedures for monitoring the public claims of an alleged living saint seem to have been elaborated, as indicated
in descriptions of Magdalena Beutler’s mystical death of 1431.54 The incident is given particular attention in Nider’s
Formicarium
, receiving pride of place among his lively parade of bogus female mystics.
⁵⁵
According to his account, Magdalena was a Clarissan nun of Freiburg who was prone to lengthy raptures. On one memorable occasion,
she disappeared for three days, during which time it was alleged that she had been raptured not only in soul but also in body.
Nider adds that either this was the literal truth or she had hidden herself for the stipulated period, since she was not discovered
during the ensuing search.
⁵⁶
In any case, she eventually returned with a celestial page of parchment detailing how the nuns should reform themselves to
avert divine vengeance. The nuns gave up their illicit personal effects, vengeance was averted, and her reputation for prophecy
spread throughout the country. And then on Christmas Day, she received a new and startling message, which she took pains to
broadcast: on a certain date (which Magdalena specified) around the feast of the Epiphany, she would die corporeally and migrate
from the world. The devoted nuns believed Magdalena and followed her directions for the funeral to the letter. A newly painted
sarcophagus was prepared, a great many candles were ordered, and the news of the event flew not only around Constance but
through the adjacent dioceses of Strasbourg and Basel. Some believed, others doubted, but a huge multitude assembled from
every rank, both clerical and lay. Nider, whose monastery in Basel was only a day’s journey from Constance, thought the situation
deserved monitoring and decided to send the monastery’s procurator to testify to the events. The men of the city council,
moreover, prudently sent suitable witnesses and their own physician.57We know from another source that, in addition to the
men named by Nider, the dignitaries in attendance included the count, the deacons from Freiburg and Rheinfelden, the head
of the school for the Augustinians, the priors of the Carthusians of Basel and Freiburg respectively, the mayor and his predecessor,
and the most important city councillors.
⁵⁸

Therefore with all the sisters standing around in the choir that morning and the said men, and many other mature ecclesiastics
and regulars, and with the plebs outside the church expecting a great prodigy, Sister Magdalena came and inclined her head
on the breast of a certain sister, immediately showed that she was rapt in ecstasy, whether truly or in pretense, and thus
lay for some time sufficiently immobile. And when certain women doubted whether she was dead or alive, the doctor publicly
touching her pulse announced that life was present. Nevertheless she sent forth a certain voice, no longer virginal as earlier,
but somewhat coarse, saying: To the sarcophagus.
⁵⁹

After a seemly period of repose, Magdalena got up from her sarcophagus and asked for food. A few believed that she had died,
but the majority remained unconvinced. While some of the skeptics were prepared to laugh at their own gullibility, most were
angry and created a disturbance in the monastery.

A hoarseness of voice is one of the symptoms of demonic possession, at least according to William of Auvergne.
⁶⁰
But the fact that Magdalena is described as retaining her pulse throughout her rapture, nevertheless appearing to believe
in her own “death,” would suggest that Nider thought she was the victim of a
phantastica luminaria
—an imaginary illumination, something he describes as more dangerous than demonic possession.
⁶¹
That Magdalena was still alive eight years after the event further undermines her credibility, at least from Nider’s perspective.
⁶²
Nider concludes his account by alluding to a similar instance of predicted death that failed to materialize, this time by
a Beguine in Poland, which created a similar tumult among the disillusioned.
⁶³

Of course, it is possible that Nider misunderstood the event, and that Magdalena’s motives were less entrepreneurial than
one might at first imagine. Catherine of Siena experienced a mystical death, which her confessor, Raymond of Capua, portrayed
as an actual physical passing that endured for four hours and was witnessed by the women in the community. In the heterodox
Beguine treatise
Schwester Katrei
, a three-day mystical death is described as an essential stage in the movement toward a permanent union with God.
⁶⁴
(And three days was also the magic number for Sybil’s raptures, during which time she barely breathed.) We further learn from
Magdalena’s vita that, as with Christina Mirabilis, this was not the first time Magdalena had “died.” She also had, apparently,
expired as a child and was already in her grave-clothes when her mother besought God to bring her daughter back, promising
to dedicate her to the monastic life. Magdalena was also prone to spells of such profound catalepsy that she was several times
taken for dead. Perhaps “death” in Magdalena’s lexicon was a relatively temporary state.
⁶⁵
Yet there was an anomalous vita of Magdalena in existence long
before
her death, a vita in which she probably collaborated and which explicitly refers to her as saintly (
heiligmaessig
). This seems to indicate a level of hubris that is not easy to reconcile with holy humility.
⁶⁶
But whatever inspiration may have guided Magdalena’s behavior, the event she staged did not pass muster with current standards
of proof.