Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. Jerome, âLetter CVIII,â St. Jeromeâs Letters and Works, NPNF, 2d series, vol. 6 (New York, 1893), ch. 14, p. 202 (emphasis mine); âCVIII. Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae,â in Saint JĂ©rĂŽme, Lettres (Collection des UniversitĂ©s de France), ed. and trans. JĂ©rĂŽme Labourt (Paris, 1955), vol. 5, ch. 14, p. 176. The Life of Melania the Younger also notes that when she visited âthe Cellsâ of Nitria, âthe fathers of the most holy men there received the saint as if she were a man. The truth, she had been detached from the female nature and had acquired a masculine disposition, or rather, a heavenly one.â Elizabeth A. Clark, trans., The Life of Melania the Younger: Studies in Women and Religion, vol. 14 (New York and Toronto, 1984), pp. 53â54.
2. Gregory of Tours, Life of the Fathers, Translated Texts for Historians, Latin Series I, trans. Edward James (Liverpool, 1985), ch. 19, p. 124. Palladius also notes the special strength of women in his Lausiac History: âI must also commemorate in this book the courageous women [âmanly womenâ] to whom God granted struggles equal to those of men, so that no one could plead as an excuse that women are too weak to practice virtue successfullyâ (Palladius, The Lausiac History, trans. Robert J. Meyer. [ACW 34] [Westminster, 1965], ch. 41, p. 117). A number of other saintsâ Lives of this early period emphasize that these women transcended the weakness of their sex and acted in a virile manner rather than as women. See, for example, the vita of St. Austreberta, which notes: âShe thought her time for martyrdom had come. Proving that the heart in her breast was in no way feminine but virile, she drew the finely woven veil she wore on her head smoothly about her throat, extended her hands and bowed her head to expose her neck to the blow. And, as they tell it, he [Amalbert] stood astounded and immobile, admiring such fortitude in a woman as he had never seen in a manâ (SWDA, p. 313). For this topic of the virile woman in early Christianity, see also Kerstin Aspegrenâs The Male Woman: A Feminine Ideal in the Early Church, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Upsala Womenâs Studies: A. Women in Religion, 4, ed. RenĂ© Kieffer (Uppsala, 1990); and for the central and late Middle Ages, see Barbara Newmanâs fascinating study, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia, 1995).
3. Leander of Seville, The Training of Nuns, in vol. 1 of The Iberian Fathers, FC 62, trans. Claude W. Barlow, (Washington, D.C., 1969), p. 192.
4. See Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago and London, 1984), pp. 12â14. Here Kieckhefer makes the important distinction between imitanda and admirandaââthe imitable deeds of the saint and those which should arouse a sense of wonder.â
5. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879, 1980), p. 1625.
6. J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden, 1957), fascicule 10, p. 937.
7. Thomas Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orleans, 800â1200, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought (Cambridge and New York, 1990), p. 10.
8. Hippolyte Delehaye, Sanctus: Essai sur le culte de saints dans lâantiquitĂ© (Brussels, 1927), p. 235.
9. John M. Mecklin, The Passing of the Saint: A Study of a Cultural Type (Chicago, 1940), p. 17.
10. Ibid., pp. 5â7, 17. In this tradition S. Bonnet provides the following definition: the saint is âa response to the spiritual needs of a generation. He is moreover a man who is the eminent representation of the ideas which Christians of a given time have developed of sanctity.â S. Bonnet, Saint-Rouin, histoire de lâermitage et du pĂšlerinage (Paris, 1956), p. 75, cited by AndrĂ© Vauchez, La SaintetĂ© en occident aux derniers siĂšcles du moyen Ăąge: dâaprĂšs les procĂšs de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques, (Rome, 1981), p. 8.
11. Petroff, Body and Soul, p. 161.
12. Eric Waldram Kemp, Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (London, 1948), p. 35; Vauchez, La SaintetĂ© en occident, pp. 13â67.
13. Kemp, pp. 29, 36â39, 169; Vauchez, pp. 13â24. See the Council of Mainz (813), ch. 51. âNe corpora Sanctorum transferantur de loco ad locum. Deinceps vero corpora Sanctorum de loco ad locum nullus praesumat transferre, sine consilio Principis, vel Episcoporum, & sanctae Synodi licentia.â Jacques Sirmond, ed., Concilia Antiqua Galliae (Paris, 1629, reprint Scientia Verlay Aalen, 1970), 2:286.
14. Kemp, Canonization and Authority, pp. 52, 55.
15. See Vauchez, La SaintetĂ© en occident, especially pp. 39â120; Pierre Delooz, Sociologie et canonisations, Collection scientifique de la facultĂ© de droit de lâUniversitĂ© de LiĂšge (LiĂšge and The Hague, 1969), pp. 23â40; Kemp, Canonization and Authority, pp. 82â150.
16. Kemp, Canonization and Authority, pp. 82â106; Delooz, Sociologie et canonisations, pp. 23â40.
17. See Delooz, p. 257.
18. For example, in his study LâIdĂ©al de saintetĂ© dans lâAquitaine carolingienne, Joseph-Claude Poulin notes that in Aquitaine all of the saints who merited a biography in the Carolingian period were in fact men (pp. 42â43).
19. Galatians 3:28.
20. RenĂ© Metz, âLe Statut de la femme en droit canonique mĂ©diĂ©val,â in Recueils de la sociĂ©tĂ© Jean Bodin pour lâhistoire comparative des institutions (Brussels, 1962), 12, pt. 2:61.
21. See Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, âThe Power of Women through the Family in Medieval Europe: 500â1100,â in Clioâs Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women, ed. M. Hartman and L. W. Banner (New York, 1974), pp. 103â18; Suzanne Fonay Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900 (Philadelphia, 1981), especially pp. 27â74; David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1985), pp. 29â78.
22. See Herlihy, Medieval Households, pp. 82â98.
23. While there has been a great deal of interest in women saints in the later Middle Ages, until recently there have been relatively few studies which have focused on the mulieres sanctae of the early Middle Ages. See especially Suzanne Wempleâs classic study Women in Frankish Society; Patrick Corbet, Les saints ottoniens, SaintetĂ© dynastique, saintetĂ© royale et saintetĂ© feminine autour de lâan Mil, Beihefte der Francia 15 (Sigmaringen, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1986); Robert Folz, Les Saintes reines du moyen Ăąge en occident (VIeâXIIIe siĂšcles), Subsidia Hagiographica, no. 76 (Brussels, 1992); and Stephanie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Rochester, N.Y., 1992). See also Jo Ann McNamara and John E. Halborg, trans., with E. Gordon Whatley, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (SWDA) (Duke University Press, 1992); and Joyce E. Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins (London and New York, 1991). There have been a number of important monographs on saints in general (without a special focus on female saints) which also examine the early medieval period. For a discussion of recent works on saints during this period, see notes 28 and 29 below.
24. See especially R. I. Mooreâs fascinating monograph, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950â1250 (London and New York, 1987). In this study he notes many of the same societal changes which I have found in regard to women saints and âdeviants.â I would like to thank Lee Patterson for recommending this work to me. See also R. W. Southernâs classic study, The Making of the Middl...