Seeking Holiness: the Contribution of Nine Vernacular Narrative Texts from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Centuries

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2016 Seeking Holiness: The Contribution of Nine Vernacular Narrative Texts from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Centuries Stephanie Grace Petinos The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1611 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] SEEKING HOLINESS: THE CONTRIBUTION OF NINE VERNACULAR NARRATIVE TEXTS FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURIES by STEPHANIE GRACE PETINOS A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in French in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2016 i © 2016 Stephanie Grace Petinos All Rights Reserved ii SEEKING HOLINESS: THE CONTRIBUTION OF NINE VERNACULAR NARRATIVE TEXTS FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURIES by Stephanie Grace Petinos This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in French to satisfy the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosohpy May 20, 2016 ____________________________________ Francesca Canadé Sautman Chair of Examining Committee May 20, 2016 ____________________________________ Julia Przybos Executive Officer ____________________________________ Michael Sargent ____________________________________ E. Gordon Whatley Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract SEEKING HOLINESS: THE CONTRIBUTION OF NINE VERNACULAR NARRATIVE TEXTS FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURIES By Stephanie Grace Petinos Adviser: Francesca Canadé Sautman Spirituality has been increasingly studied to determine the laity’s role within Church history in the Middle Ages. However, secular literature is often overlooked as a source of understanding lay spirituality, even though it is a crucial aspect of cultural and social history. I fill this gap by analyzing nine important vernacular texts to uncover several distinctive definitions of holiness, all of which blend the religious and the secular. Close reading of these texts reveals various paths to holiness, which undermine the Church’s attempts at sole control over spirituality. This study demonstrates that secular authors were concerned with exploring spiritual matters; that their notions of holiness transform, and often oppose, values sanctified by the Church; and, ultimately, that their constructions of holiness close the gap between religious and secular worlds by permitting lay persons access into religious realms not granted by the Church while, at the same time, not betraying their secular values. I explore the varying definitions of holiness in five chapters. The first chapter, “Sacred and Secular Spaces,” explores secular spaces that take on religious functions—for example, the domestic space as site of miracle in Ami et Amile—and traditionally religious spaces that become secularized—when a quasi-magical, folkloric cure is administered in a hermit’s chapel in Eliduc. The second chapter, “Renunciation,” examines instances where secular heroes/heroines withdraw from temporal society to pursue the religious life; it is on the spiritual path that these individuals reap secular benefits such as autonomy, an elevated reputation and land holdings. Chapter three, “Women as Victim and Vehicle of Redemption,” concentrates on how victimization results in three heroines becoming the vehicles for redemption for those around them. They challenge traditional womanly passivity in moments of rebellion that grant them agency and influence. The fourth chapter, “The Ecology of Relics,” analyzes moments of divine touch through miraculous instances, particularly bodily restoration. Those who are touched become relics, and are thus religious objects in addition to living beings. The final chapter, “Conversion,” focuses on the fourteenth-century text La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, which features several individuals who convert from Islam to Christianity. This chapter concludes that conversion falls into distinguishable patterns that frequently divide along gender lines. I posit in the conlusion that all of the examined texts, in addition to Perceval, can be reconsidered under the guise of intra-religious conversion. iv The intersections of the sacred and the secular that I outline in these chapters establish a new lens through which to read these non-religious texts, incorporating a heretofore neglected tradition into the conceptualization of religious and social history. v Acknowledgements First and foremost, thank you to my husband, Antoni, my parents and my entire family for ceaselessly supporting me throughout my graduate studies and the dissertation process. A huge thank you to Dr. Sautman for her encouragement, guidance and tireless dedication to me as an emerging medievalist scholar. A big thank you to Dr. Sargent and Dr. Whatley for their support, generosity and insight. This dissertation features material adapted from published articles. A portion of chapter two has been adapted as an article entitled, “Renunciation as point of departure in Marie de France’s Eliduc,” Anamesa 13:2 (Fall 2015): 10-20. A portion of chapter three has been adapted as an article entitled, “Woman as Victim and Vehicle of Redemption in the Search for Holiness: Marie de France’s Fresne,” Hortulus 12:2 (Spring 2016). A section of chapter four has been adapted as a forthcoming article, entitled, “The Ecology of Relics in Philippe de Remi’s Le Roman de la Manekine.” Ed. Heide Estes. Medieval Ecocriticisms. Amsterdam University Press (2017). vi Table of Contents Title page ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i Abstract --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- iv-v Acknowledgements --------------------------------------------------------------------------- vi Introduction ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Chapter One: Sacred and Secular Spaces ------------------------------------------------- 14 Chapter Two: Renunciation of Power and Family Attachments------------------------ 45 Chapter Three: Woman and the Search for Holiness: Woman as Victim and Vehicle of Redemption ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 92 Chapter Four: The Ecology of Relics ----------------------------------------------------- 132 Chapter Five: Conversion ------------------------------------------------------------------ 167 Conclusion ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 199 Bibliography --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 213 Appendix: Summary of each text ---------------------------------------------------------- 224 vii Introduction Understanding holiness—and thus, also identifying and neutralizing the unholy—is a preoccupation particularly evident in Western Europe from the late eleventh century through the late Middle Ages. It is during this time period that a series of religious reforms profoundly changed Western Christianity from the inside out.1 My thesis thus focuses on the place of holiness following these events within a corpus of fictional medieval narratives. I thus examine a group of nine texts from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, in which representations of the sacred emerge in relation to the search for holiness, producing distinctive views—at their time, for their authors, and perhaps audiences—of its essence and of the coexistence of the spiritual and the secular. The twelfth-century-texts in my corpus are Le conte du Graal ou le roman de Perceval by Chrétien de Troyes, the Lais Yonec, Fresne and Eliduc of Marie de France and the anonymous epic Le Moniage Guillaume. The thirteenth-century texts are the epic Ami et Amile, Le Roman de la Manekine by Philippe de Rémi, sire de Beaumanoir and the anonymous romance Robert le Diable. The fourteenth-century text to be discussed is the anonymous romance/epic La Belle Hélène de Constantinople.2 1 Several scholars have attempted to explain the motivation behind the religious reforms of the central Middle Ages. Rachel Fulton, for example, cites the apocalyptic disappointment following the failure of the second coming of Jesus Christ after the year 1000 as a possible motivating factor, while others note that reform stemmed from the belief that monasteries had become too worldly, luxurious and complacent and called for a stricter adherence to the Rule of Saint Benedict. 2 The editions I use to cite the texts, in the order in which I present the texts above, are: Chrétien de Troyes, Le conte du Graal ou le roman de Perceval, ed. and trans. Charles Méla (Paris: Lettres Gothiques, 1990); Nathalie Desgrugillers-Billard, ed., Oeuvres complètes de Marie de France: Les Lais, texte original en ancien français Manuscrit Harley 978, British Museum, (Paris: Éditions paleo, 2007); Wilhelm Cloetta, Les deux rédactions en vers du Moniage Guillaume: Chansons de geste du XIIe siècle (Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didiot et Cie, 1968); Ami et Amile: Chanson de Geste, Ed. Peter F. Dembowski (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1969); Philippe de Remi, Le Roman de la Manekine. Edited from Paris BNF fr. 1588 and Translated by

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