Women, Religion and Leadership

Female Saints as Unexpected Leaders

Barbara Denison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781315468471
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Women, Religion and Leadership focuses on women from the traditional context of women as leaders with chapters observing various aspects of leadership from specifically chosen religious female leaders and going on to examine the legacies they leave behind.

This book seeks to identify and analyse the gendered issues underlying the structural lack of recognition for women within the church and to examine the culturally constructed narratives related to these women for evidence of their leadership despite the exclusionary rules applied to force their submission to the dominating forces. Finally this book intends to draw out of these women's stories the various lessons of leadership that invoke current relevancies among prevailing leadership paradigms.

Written by experts from disciplines as varied as leadership and communication studies to sociology, and history to medievalist and English scholars; Women, Religion and Leadership will prove key reading for scholars, academics and researchers is these and related disciplines.

1
Performing Sanctity

Exemplary Leadership in the Lives of Medieval Female Virgin Martyrs

Shari Horner

Performing Sanctity

Surely, the most famous example of young female leadership in the Middle Ages is Joan of Arc. Joan’s story is, even today, well known: inspired by mystical voices as a young teenager, she set out across France to seek the dauphin, Charles VII, in order to ensure his rightful ascent to the throne. Though she met with extraordinary success militarily, Joan was nevertheless burned at the stake as a heretic in 1431, following a Trial of Condemnation that was largely political in nature.¹ As the trial records show (for both her Trial of Condemnation and the Trial of Rehabilitation some 30 years after her death), Joan demonstrated unparalleled military and spiritual leadership in her efforts to reach the dauphin and to persuade him to grant her the military power to lead troops to Orleans, resulting in the siege being lifted and Charles being crowned King of France. Though she would be killed only two years later, following a lengthy imprisonment and trial, she nevertheless rose to what seems to us now as unimaginable power for a teenage peasant girl in the fifteenth century.²

For a young woman in the fifteenth century, however, perhaps such power was not unimaginable. In Joan’s trial records, she testifies that she was initially inspired to action by mystical voices speaking to her—specifically, the voices of Saints Michael, Katherine, and Margaret. And indeed, there was significant precedent for authoritative female mysticism in Europe in the centuries preceding Joan’s own experiences, as Lilas G. Edwards explains,

Many women had achieved renown and respect through their transcendent relationships with the divine. A range of women visionaries, including Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Marguerite Porete, Bridget of Sweden and Margery Kempe, to name a few, make it possible to see Joan of Arc in the context of a movement: a wave of popular female mystics whose lives and visions brought them renown or infamy in their societies.³

Other aspects of Joan’s life would have resonated deeply within the mystical tradition—especially her commitment to virginity, made in response to her first mystical message, from St. Michael, when she was just 13 years old. Subsequently, Joan reported at her Trial of Condemnation that she was in frequent, often daily contact with Saints Michael, Katherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch. St. Michael was wholly appropriate as a mystical advisor to Joan; as Edwards notes, “As an archangel and the guardian of France, Michael symbolized both the divinity of the French cause and Joan’s mystical link to God.”⁴ Thus St. Michael ensured legitimacy for Joan. Saints Katherine and Margaret, however, provided another kind of model—that of the powerful female virgin martyr, fighting against formidable opponents and facing excruciating death, with faith as their only weapon.⁵

Young female virgin martyrs, including Saints Katherine, Margaret, and Cecilia, are, in fact, the focus of this essay. While Joan of Arc demonstrated extraordinary leadership abilities before her detractors imprisoned and finally burned her at the stake, she was herself continually motivated by inspiration from the saints—they spoke to her, directed and instructed her, and provided concrete and specific models for bodily and spiritual behaviors. Though legendary, virgin martyrs such as Katherine, Margaret, and Cecilia exemplified the public display of female leadership that resonates in Joan’s own biography. The saints that Joan of Arc venerated and emulated exemplified the same qualities that she herself displayed—youth, virginity, intense spirituality, the ability to rhetorically command public space, the ability to debate and triumph over large number of male scholars and clerics, a public and graphic death, and, especially, a focus on the body to produce meaning to audiences both within and outside of the narrative.

The lives of female virgin martyrs were among the most popular literature in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries in England.⁶ Featuring legendary martyrs from the earliest centuries of Christianity, these narratives tend to follow the same trajectory: a young woman has privately committed herself to Christ. She attracts the attention of an older male tyrant, a non-Christian, who desires her sexually. When she resists, claiming her vow of chastity, and urging him to convert to Christianity, he becomes enraged and orders her imprisonment, torture, and eventual martyrdom. There are variations; for example, sometimes her father instigates the torture because he wants her to marry and sometimes the methods of torture differ. In general, though, these texts are short, graphic displays of violence done to the female body. Except for the virgin’s imprisonment, these scenes play out in the public square. The saint herself is assertive and outspoken, easily able to out-argue her persecutors and convert many thousands of onlookers to Christianity. She is impervious to torture, often finding such violence pleasurable since it hastens her eventual death and ascent to heaven. Such narratives, therefore, rely upon a number of paradoxes: the seemingly powerless young woman is shown to have great power over not just her persecutors but also thousands of onlookers. She produces conversion and belief through the very thing that is supposed to be the least significant: her body. Though she asserts repeatedly that her body does not matter in contrast to her spiritual belief, nevertheless, the public spectacle of her tortured body is the vehicle that allows her to dismantle the power structures imposed by her heathen persecutors.⁷

The Life of St. Katherine of Alexandria was among the most popular Lives of virgin martyrs throughout the Middle Ages, as evidenced by the fact that more textual and visual sources survive for her than for any other female saint (excluding the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene).⁸ Like all virgin martyrs, Katherine is young, beautiful, and frankly combative. As in other saints’ lives, the narrative frequently draws readers’ attention to her physical body as the outward sign of her spiritual power. Katherine excels in her scholarly ability to debate with great rhetorical sophistication, persuading those who disagree with her to accept her viewpoints readily. In the early thirteenth-century version of her life, believed to have been written for female religious recluses, she boldly confronts Emperor Maxentius when she learns that Christians are being forced to sacrifice to his false gods against their will:

[S]he was so inflamed with anger that she was nearly out of her mind. She summoned as many servants as she wanted, and went over. There she found a great crowd howling and yelling and crying in complaint with grievous laments, who were Christians and faithful to God’s law, but for fear of death made that sacrifice to the devil as the heathen did. … After that, she armed herself with true belief, and drew the holy sign of the cross on her breast, and in front of her teeth and tongue, and came leaping forth all inflamed by the fire of the Holy Spirit … and began to cry out in a loud voice.

(263–4)

Katherine’s physical and mental intensity are notable here; the passage draws attention in particular to the ways that her bodily actions intersect with her spiritual beliefs, as she not only marks her own body with the sign of the cross but also “leap[s] forth” and cries out loudly. Her faith is manifested in her physical aggression, on display for spectators within the narrative as well as for readers. In a lengthy speech, she defends the Christians and condemns the emperor for worshiping false idols, much to his surprise. A later fifteenth-century version, by Osbern Bokenham, omits the long speech but instead describes her verbal prowess: “She thus began, standing before the temple gate, to expand her thesis with diverse illustrations, and with syllogisms and arguments she eloquently made her point.”⁹ Thus in relatively short order, she completely overwhelms Maxentius. Drawing the sign of the cross over her breast, teeth, and tongue has provided her with the spiritual and verbal strength to outmaneuver him rhetorically.

In response, Maxentius summons 50 renowned male scholars to debate with Katherine, in the expectation that they will quickly overwhelm her arguments. While she awaits their arrival in prison, the archangel Michael speaks to her:

[God] promises you that he will pour into your mouth flowing waters of wise words, which will quickly put your enemies to flight. And they will be so amazed by your wisdom, that they will all turn to Christ and come, through martyrdom, to the Lord in heaven. Many will turn to the true faith through their example.

(268)

The angel thus again refers to the power of Katherine’s body (her mouth) to predict that she will inspire many to follow her into martyrdom and heaven, and that those martyrs will inspire others. Subsequently, Katherine is brought before the 50 scholars, who challenge her to speak first. She does so at great length, dismissing as empty and meaningless books by non-Christian philosophers such as Homer, Aristotle, Plato, and others, before moving into an extended explanation of the history of Christianity and the power that she finds in Christ. The amazed scholars can barely summon up a few questions for her; in Bokenham’s version of the story, “All the philosophers were so astonished by her speech that none could bring forth a word, but they all stood as still as new-shorn sheep.”¹⁰

Unsurprisingly, the scholars’ response enrages Maxentius. He expresses his anger at their inability to debate effectively in ways that are specifically gendered:

What now, you wretched men, and weaker than the weak, dimwits and deadwits? Do you not have both teeth and tongue to move? Is your strength now so much subdued and your minds so overcome that the might and the arguments of so meek a maiden can overmaster you all? Ah, if fifty women--or even more!--had thrown one of you with words, would this not be a great humiliation and sheer shame to all who boast of learning? Now is the greatest of all shames: that a single maiden out of her own mouth has so out-argued, tamed and tied all of you.

(273)

For Maxentius, it is shameful and humiliating for men to be not only out-talked by a woman but also in fact rendered speechless and “tongueless” in Bokenham’s version of this life, especially because “a single maiden” has used her tongue to subdue theirs. The scholars, however, seem to finally find their voice in response to his rebuke; the lead scholar acknowledges Katherine’s superior intellect, and explains that her power comes from a “heavenly spirit” and “no human argument” (273). In naming Christ, she has superseded earthly power and he admits, “all our worldly wisdom went away.” The scholars reject not just the heathen gods and false idols in favor of Christ; they likewise reject the emperor’s earthly control over them: “And we tell you this, emperor, and make it known, that we leave your law and your whole belief and all turn to Christ” (273). Thus, throughout the rest of the narrative, the balance of power shifts: as Katherine continues to convert those around her to Christianity, including most importantly, the queen, her power on earth increases. Conversely, Maxentius’s power declines, as he becomes increasingly inarticulate and animalistic: he is “like a madman” (274); he loses “power over his senses,” (275); he is “the mad wolf, the heathen dog” (278), “on the point of insanity” (279), and “like one who was drunk with the devil’s poison [and] did not know what to say” (282). Katherine’s spiritual power creates lasting political change.

Following the scholars’ conversion, they are publicly burned alive, but they go willingly and without suffering to their deaths. When Katherine continues to refuse the emperor’s demands that she worship his gods, he orders her to be

stripped stark naked and her bare flesh and her beautiful body beaten with knotted scourges … so that her lovely body was all lathered with blood. But she bore it lightly, and suffered it laughing. He commanded her then to be thrown into prison.

(275)

In prison, however, the trajectory of power continues to shift when the queen and her chief knight Porphirius visit Katherine and are themselves converted. Porphirius, in fact, subsequently converts 200 more knights, who “at once gave up their miserable faith, and threw away their meaningless law completed, and turned to Christ” (277). Again, the heathens reject the emperor’s false earthly rule in favor of Christian law and significantly, Katherine and the queen gain in power over those around them as Maxentius’s power disintegrates. In fact, it is the queen who then causes the conversion of many more heathens when she publicly rejects Maxentius’s rule:

And many among that whole heathen people … all turned together and began to cry out, ‘Truly, very worthy and worth all worship is this maiden’s God, Christ, true Son of God.’ And from now on we know and acknowledge him to be Lord and high Savior; and our filthy idols are all accursed, for they can neither help themselves nor those who serve them.

(280)

The queen and later Porphirius and his men are soon tortured and martyred for their faith.

Katherine is next. By this point, Maxentius is out of his mind with anger over his inability to silence Katherine and to counteract the mass conversions. The public nature of their battle is everywhere apparent, as he advises her to worship his gods or “to die so horribly that all who see it will be appalled” (282). He orders her to be taken outside of the city and executed, but on her way, she soon realizes that there are “many heathens following her wringing their hands and crying bitterly...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Performing Sanctity: Exemplary Leadership in the Lives of Medieval Female Virgin Martyrs
• 2 Hilda of Whitby (614–680): Unexpected Leadership by the “Mother of Bishops”
• 3 Clare of Assisi (1191–1253): Breaking Through Societal Barriers for Women
• 4 Catherine of Siena (1347–1380): Political Persuasion and Party Leadership of the Intellective Mystic
• 5 Kateri Tekakwitha (1656–1680): She Who Bumps Into Things and the Power of Servant Leadership
• 6 Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821): A Proto-Feminist Servant-Leader for the Nineteenth Century—and Today
• 7 Catherine McAuley (1778–1841): Exhibiting Mercy Through Service and Authentic Leadership
• 8 Katharine Drexel (1858–1955): Philanthropist and Transformational Leader
• 9 Edith Stein (1891–1942): Empathic Leadership: Saint Edith Stein’s Phenomenological Perspective
• 10 Pauli Murray (1910–1985): A Person and Her Typewriter
• Index