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THE SPOUSE OF CHRIST IN THE HEREAFTER: A HISTORICAL EXPLORATION

OF NUPTIAL IMAGERY AND THE ESCHATOLOGY OF CELIBATE

IN RELIGIOUS LIFE

Thesis

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Master of Arts in

By

Gabrielle Kristen Bibeau, FMI

Dayton, Ohio

August 2019

THE SPOUSE OF CHRIST IN THE HEREAFTER: A HISTORICAL EXPLORATION

OF NUPTIAL IMAGERY AND THE ESCHATOLOGY OF CELIBATE CHASTITY

IN RELIGIOUS LIFE

Name: Bibeau, Gabrielle Kristen

APPROVED BY:

Sandra Yocum, Ph.D. Committee Chair Professor of and Culture

Meghan Henning, Ph.D. Committee Member Assistant Professor

William Johnston, Ph.D. Committee Member Associate Professor

Daniel Speed-Thompson, Ph.D. Department Chair

ii

© Copyright by

Gabrielle Kristen Bibeau

All rights reserved

2019

iii ABSTRACT

THE SPOUSE OF CHRIST IN THE HEREAFTER: A HISTORICAL EXPLORATION

OF NUPTIAL IMAGERY AND THE ESCHATOLOGY OF CELIBATE CHASTITY

IN RELIGIOUS LIFE

Name: Bibeau, Gabrielle Kristen University of Dayton

Advisor: Dr. Sandra Yocum

This thesis is a narrative of how nuptial imagery has been used in monastic and religious life by men and women as an expression of their unique love relationship with

God. It begins with a close look at how the was used by St. Bernard of

Clairvaux and other mystics as symbolic of their mystical marriage with Christ and their eschatological longing for heaven. The focus then turns towards examining shifts in the twelfth century regarding the practice of celibacy and the understanding of gender, shifts that contributed to the “bride of Christ” being solely identified—in a concrete and literal way—with the . This thesis shows how the nun as the bride of Christ was enacted in , particularly habit and profession ceremonies, before this imagery was abandoned by many women religious in the United States after Vatican II. Finally, the author examines whether nuptial allegory can be re-appropriated by men and women religious in a non-patriarchal way as a helpful expression of the eschatological nature of religious life.

iv

I dedicate this thesis to my religious sisters who have patiently listened at many dinner table conversations as I excitedly tell them about my research findings, and to my parents

who were the first to teach me what it means to love .

v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Sandra Yocum, for her support and guidance in the process of researching and writing this thesis. She frequently offered helpful research suggestions and critiques that only made my argument stronger. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to the Marianist Brothers and in Cupertino,

California who fed and housed me for ten days while I wrote two chapters of this thesis. I had many dinner table conversations with various brothers in that community who encouraged me and asked me a variety of questions that helped me refine my argument. I do not think this thesis would be what it is if I had not had that time of dedicated focus and walks in the California sunshine. Lastly, I want to thank the staff at the Marian

Library, especially Andrew Kosmowski, SM, for helping me find some of the rarer primary documents that were so instrumental in understanding how nuptial imagery was enacted in profession and from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………...……iv

DEDICATION………………………………………………………………………....…v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………..…vi

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………...... 1

CHAPTER I: THE DEVALUING OF EROS: SHIFTING INTERPRETATIONS OF THE SONG OF SONGS’ NUPTIAL IMAGERY FROM MEDIEVAL MONASTICS TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY……………………………...5

1.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………5

1.2 The Eschatological Life of the ………………………………….....6

1.3 the Great and the Monastic Interpretive Tradition of the Song ………………………………………………………………..8

1.4 , Eros, and the Song………………………………...... 11

1.5 Nuptial Metaphor in and Teresa of Avila………………...15

1.6 Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Shifts in Interpretation of the Song……..20

1.7 John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and the Song of Songs……………...... 22

1.8 Conclusion: the Devaluing of Eros…………………………………………..25

CHAPTER II: HEROIC CELIBACY OR VIRGINAL IDENTITY? THE GENDERING OF VIRGINITY AND THE SPONSA CHRISTI AFTER THE TWELFTH CENTURY…………………………………………………………………….…26

2.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………….26

2.2 The Origins and Concept of Virginity……………………………………….26

2.3 Virginity and Male Monastics……………………………………………….28

2.4 The Twelfth Century and the Rise of Heroic Celibacy…………………...... 30

2.5 The Feminization of Virginity and Sponsa Christi……………….………….34

vii

2.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………………...... 38

CHAPTER III: AS BRIDES OF CHRIST: THE ENACTMENT AND FUNCTION OF BRIDAL IMAGERY IN WOMEN’S MONASTIC AND RELIGIOUS LIFE……………………………………………………………….39

3.1 Introduction…………………………….…………………………………….39

3.2 Bridal Imagery in Profession and Clothing Ceremonies of Nuns……………39

3.3 Descriptions of Ceremonies………………………...………………………..44

3.4 Evaluating the Use of Nuptial Imagery……………………………………...52

3.5 Conclusion…………………………….……………………………………..58

CHAPTER IV: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF BRIDAL IMAGERY AND THE FUNCTIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF CELIBATE CHASTITY AFTER VATICAN II……………………………………………………………………..60

4.1 Introduction…………………………….…………………………………….60

4.2 The Sixties and the Disappearance of Bridal Imagery……………………….60

4.3 Reasons for Abandoning Bridal Symbolism…………………………………63

4.4 Centrality of Ministry …………………………….…………………………66

4.5 Availability for Mission: the Function of Celibate Chastity………………....73

4.6 Remnants of Nuptial Symbolism in U.S. Women’s Religious Life…...…….76

4.7 Conclusion: The Problem with Availability…………………………………78

CONCLUSION: REVIVING A SENSE OF THE HEREAFTER………………………81

5.1 Introduction …………………………….…………………………………....81

5.2 Nuptial as Non-Patriarchal……………………………………….81

5.3 Eschatological Nature of Nuptial Mysticism…………………...……………83

5.4 Nuptial Mysticism and Apostolic Fruitfulness…………………...... ………..85

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………….…………………………………..……...89

viii INTRODUCTION

As a young woman religious, I have frequently heard stories from older sisters about their experience of religious life before the . Their experience of wearing heavy habits, abiding by strict rules of silence and schedules, and other peculiar traditions were both intriguing and foreign to the religious life I live now.

One of the pre-Vatican II customs I learned about from my older religious sisters is that they used to wear wedding during their ceremonies, which was when they received the for the first time. When I first learned about this practice,

I was shocked, and, frankly, repulsed. It struck me as a bizarre and potentially repressive practice.

The more I reflected on this custom, especially after seeing old photographs of the sisters whom I know well wearing full bridal as in the 1960s, the more I wanted to understand why this practice existed in the first place. I wondered what this bridal symbolism meant, how the wearing of wedding gowns started, and whether or not this nuptial symbolism related to the vow of chastity. However, I also wanted to know why my Marianist sisters—and all the other sisters I know from other congregations—no longer feature this kind of nuptial imagery in their ceremonies and in their self- understanding as women religious. Furthermore, I wanted to know whether male religious had ever adopted a nuptial understanding of their vow of chastity, and whether or not gender played a role in how this vow is understood.

This thesis attempts to answer some of these questions. In my research, I have explored some of the major figures who adopted a nuptial mystical understanding of their

1 religious life, especially Bernard of Clairvaux, whose Sermons on the Song of Songs are a rich contribution to this nuptial-mystical . Bernard’s mystical writings led me to explore those who came before him, particularly Origen and Gregory the Great, as well as some major figures of nuptial-mysticism who came after him, namely John of the

Cross, Teresa of Avila, and John Paul II. Chapter one of this thesis explores these various figures and their contributions to the nuptial-mystical tradition, particularly

Bernard. After exploring these figures’ nuptial-mysticism, as well as the monastic culture in which this tradition took root, one cannot ignore the close connection between eschatological anticipation and nuptial metaphor. Indeed, a major point of this chapter is that religious life is an eschatological life, and celibate chastity is a way to live in this life the type of relationship with God that all will enjoy in the next.

In chapter two, I explore what happened to this nuptial-mysticism among male religious after Bernard’s time. I begin by examining the early Church’s understanding of virginity and the extent to which virginity was an identity applied to both men and women monastics in the first millennia of the Church. Next, I explore some of the significant events of the twelfth century in the context of religious life, particularly the mandate of celibacy for the secular and the increasing numbers of becoming priests. Both of these trends, combined with an increasingly literal understanding of nuptial metaphor, would make it difficult for male religious to conceive of themselves as either virgins or spouses of Christ in the way that Bernard regarded himself and his monks. The result of these shifts is that only nuns were able to adopt a nuptial-mystical understanding of chastity, and as a result, nuns become literally identified as spouses, or brides, of Christ.

2 In chapter three, I explore how this literalization of nuns as brides of Christ functioned in community rituals of profession and habit reception, and I demonstrate how nuptial identity functioned in ways that could be either a source of empowerment or a means of control by Church leadership. One of the major issues that arises from the negative way this bridal imagery functioned is the strict enforcement of upon women religious at various times in the Church’s history. Essentially, this chapter is an attempt to show how the literalization of the nun as the bride of Christ frequently became a patriarchal tool to control nuns.

In chapter four, I turn to more recent history by examining how both nuptial symbols and nuptial-mystical spirituality largely disappeared from the majority of women’s religious communities in the United States. This exploration of nuptial imagery is intertwined with an examination of a variety of primary sources to understand the changing understanding of the vow of chastity after Vatican II. I pay particular attention to the increasingly prominent understanding of the vow of chastity as assuring one’s availability for ministry, and I discuss why this view of chastity is problematic.

In my conclusion, I attempt to weave all these pieces together to make the case that nuptial metaphor is a powerfully valid way to understand the vow of chastity because it both captures the eschatological nature of religious life as witnessing to hope in the hereafter, while also being apostolically fruitful because it is rooted in an intimate love relationship with God that cannot help but overflow into love and service to others. My hope is that the spirituality of nuptial metaphor—not the literal externalizations of it, such as the wearing of bridal gowns—might be redeemed and re-appropriated to the extent that it offers a life-giving understanding of celibate chastity and religious life itself.

3 Before concluding this introduction, I would like to make a few notes about some of the terminology I use in this thesis. First of all, when I use the term, “nuptial mysticism,” I am always using it in the sense of the nuptial relationship between the

(i.e. the individual Christian or the individual religious man or woman) and God or

Christ. I say this because I know that in recent years, this term has been used to primarily refer to the relationship between Christ and the Church, or even the relationship between a and the Church, so I want to be clear from the start about how I use this term.

Secondly, I have noticed that in common speech, many people often use the word

“chastity” to mean celibacy. This terminology is not technically accurate, since chastity is a virtue that is to be lived by all Christians, both married and unmarried. For men and women religious who profess vows, chastity necessarily implies celibacy; for married people it does not. Thus, I will usually say “celibate chastity” to refer to the chastity that is lived by men and women religious. I will also usually refer to the vow as either the

“vow of chastity,” which is the language the Church uses, or the “vow of celibate chastity,” which is a more precise way to describe the chastity of religious life.

4 CHAPTER I

THE DEVALUING OF EROS: SHIFTING INTERPRETATIONS OF THE SONG OF

SONGS’ NUPTIAL IMAGERY FROM MEDIEVAL MONASTICS TO THE

TWENTIETH CENTURY

1.1 Introduction

Throughout Christian history, the Song of Songs has been one of the most widely commented upon texts in Scripture. For the first 1500 years of the Church’s existence, the predominant interpretation of the Song was allegorical, and the most common allegorical interpretations of the Song were either that it was a love song between Christ and the

Church or between Christ and the individual soul. This latter sense, that the Bride is the soul and the Bridegroom is Christ, is the focus of this chapter. This “nuptial-mystical”1 interpretation was popularized by a variety of monastic interpreters, the majority of whom were monks. It may seem odd that the Song’s most enthusiastic admirers were celibate men, considering the Song’s erotic and romantic content. However, to understand why these men were so enraptured by this interpretation, one must understand that these monks experienced a love for God that was, indeed, erotic. By erotic, I mean eros in the theological sense of the word, as a burning, desiring love for God. I would argue that eros was what compelled many of these monks to pursue the monastic life in the first place, wherein celibacy was a key component that facilitated greater attachment to God. For these medieval monks, eros was fundamentally eschatological; it was this love that fueled

1 Please note that for the rest of this paper, when I use the term “nuptial-mystical interpretation” I am referring to this interpretation of the Bride as the soul and the Bridegroom as Christ.

5 their monastic , which they believed to be a participation in the Kingdom of

Heaven. In light of this, the Song was a fitting expression of their eschatological longing.

In contrast to this nuptial-mystical interpretation, which emphasized eros as a yearning love for God, nineteenth and twentieth century scriptural scholarship has primarily emphasized a literal interpretation of the Song as a marital love song. One example of this trend towards a literal interpretation is found in St. John Paul II’s addresses that comprise his well-known “theology of the body.” In several of these addresses, he emphasizes the Song’s literal meaning to support a theology of complementarity between men and women. In contrast to the medieval monastic understanding of eros, John Paul II’s approach depicts eros primarily as a human reality rather than a love centered on God and yearning for union with God in the eschaton.

This chapter examines how the nuptial-mystical interpretation of the Song of

Songs in Western is rooted in the unique context of monasticism, which had a rich sense of the eschatological, as well as exploring how this interpretation’s diminishment by the time of John Paul II is a result of our modern underestimation of eros in the divine-human relationship.

1.2 The Eschatological Life of the Monastery

Before considering several monastic interpretations of the Song of Songs, it is important to understand the context and culture of monastic life. Jean Leclercq’s The

Love of Learning and the Desire for God is an indispensable resource for this task. As

Leclercq explains, medieval monastic life had a fundamentally eschatological

6 orientation.2 Monks understood themselves as being dwellers of the “heavenly

Jerusalem,”3 as they tried to live in the monastery a life in God that they would one day live in Heaven. As Bernard of Clairvaux writes, monks “imitate, according to their powers, by a virtuous and orderly life, the way of life of the above.”4 They are singly focused on the eternal, and all their actions, their entire ora et labora—, labor, and study—are directed towards eternal life with God.

This eschatological life of monastics5 was driven by their intense desire for union with God that they believed would be consummated in the eschaton. This desire is expressed in monastic literature, whose aim is to “possess, increase, and…communicate desire for God.”6 The main activity that fueled monks’ desire was , which provoked in them an even greater love for God.7 Their contemplation was usually based in Scripture, which pervaded the life of the monastery through practices like Lectio

Divina and praying the Divine Office. As Leclercq explains, in this thick Scriptural environment, monks found themselves drawn towards certain in the Hebrew

Scriptures. When they would read about the longing of Israel and the prophets for the

Promised Land or the , monks could relate this longing with their own

2 Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study in Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 68. 3 Ibid., 66. 4 Qtd. in Ibid., 68. 5 I use the term “monastics” to refer to both men and women. Although Leclercq’s narrative of monastic life is focused on monks, I would argue that nuns also viewed their lives in this way. Thus, when I use the term “monastic life,” it is inclusive of men and women. However, I will frequently use the term “monks” in this chapter because these are the main figures described by my sources, but it is not meant to exclude similar descriptions of nuns’ monasticism. 6 Leclercq., 83. 7 Ibid., 85.

7 eschatological yearnings.8 This resonance partially explains why so many monastics were captivated by the Song of Songs.

1.3 Gregory the Great and the Monastic Interpretive Tradition of the Song

The Western monastic interpretive tradition of the Song of Songs began with

Gregory the Great, whose commentaries on the Song would influence all the nuptial- mystical interpretations that followed. This nuptial-mystical interpretation that became part of the monastic literary tradition emphasized “God’s relations with each soul,

Christ’s presence in it, and the spiritual union realized through charity,” which made commentaries on the Song “the equivalent of treatise[s] on the love of God.”9 At this point, it is worth noting that the monastic tradition of Song commentaries was quite different from that of scholastic commentaries. While scholastic commentaries attempt to present a clear doctrine that appeals to one’s intelligence, commentaries on the Song in the monastic tradition aim to “touch the heart rather than to instruct the mind.”10 This point will become more important later when I explore how John of the Cross’s nuptial- mysticism displays more scholastic influences.

Gregory the Great’s commentary on the Song of Songs neatly aligns with the characteristics of the monastic interpretive tradition described by Leclercq. Although he would become a highly successful and well-respected Pope, Gregory always considered himself to be a at heart, and he often experienced inner conflict between the active life of the papacy and his love for the contemplative life of the monastery. When reflecting on his decision to become a monk, Gregory wrote that it resulted from being

8 Ibid., 104. 9 Ibid., 107. 10 Ibid.

8 “inflamed with desire for heaven.”11 This “desire for heaven” may have been the catalyst for Gregory to compose his Exposition on the Song of Songs, which would cement the

Song as a fixture of medieval monastic commentaries for nearly a millennium. This

Exposition is part of why Leclercq calls Gregory the “Doctor of Desire,” and one of the greatest influences on monastic culture.12

In his Exposition, Gregory notes that God uses the language of human love in the

Song to enkindle in hearts a “yearning for love,” and this erotic imagery teaches us

“with what intensity we should burn in love of Divinity.” 13 He favors an allegorical interpretation of the Song because it is this interpretation that lifts the soul to God.14 In this allegorical interpretation, then, the Song is a “song of union with God,” much like a song that is sung at a wedding that celebrates the union of the Bride and Bridegroom.15

Gregory has two main interpretations of the Bride and Bridegroom of the Song. One is that the Bride signifies the Church, and the Bridegroom signifies Christ. For Gregory, the

Church as Bride signifies the desire of the entire Church for the future coming of Christ, her eternal Bridegroom.16 However, the interpretation Gregory favors is a nuptial- mystical interpretation in which the Bride is the individual soul and Christ is the

Bridegroom.

11 Gregory the Great, On the Song of Songs, trans. DelCogliano (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2012), 9. 12 Love of Learning, 31. 13 Gregory, 110. 14 Ibid., 109. 15 Ibid., 114. 16 Ibid., 72. In identifying the Bride with the Church, Gregory is borrowing from Origen, who favored this interpretation; for more, see Roland E. Murphy, The Song of Songs: A Commentary on the of Canticles or the Song of Songs, ed. S. McBride Jr. (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1990), 17.

9 Gregory alternates the identity of the Bride throughout his Exposition and varies the meanings of different symbols in the Song according to her shifting identity. For each verse, he considers, first, the meaning of the verse when the Bride is the Church. For example, when the Bride is the Church, the “kiss of the mouth” of the Bridegroom to the

Bride (Sg. 1:1a) signifies the Word coming to the Church in Scripture and in the

Incarnation.17 However, when the Bride is the soul, this “kiss of the mouth” is the grace of interior understanding that leads to the soul’s “intimate friendship” with Christ.18

Similarly, in this same verse, the breasts of the Bridegroom (Sg. 1:1b) are, to the Church as the Bride, the preaching of the Incarnation. For the soul as the Bride, the breasts of the

Bridegroom signify the knowledge of God we receive in contemplation.19 In other words,

Gregory’s interpretation begins with the Church and narrows to the individual soul; his interpretation begins with the exterior (the visible, collective Church) and ends with the interior (the soul of each member of the Church). Gregory’s journey to the interior is meant to facilitate contemplation, and thus greater love for God.20

The nuptial-mystical interpretation of the Bride as the soul and the Bridegroom as

Christ in the monastic tradition is partly facilitated by language, since the Latin word for soul—anima—is gendered female, thereby making the soul as the Bride more natural.21

However, this interpretation is also facilitated by the eschatological lives of the monks who wrote these commentaries. As Leclercq explains, what medieval monks saw above all in the Song of Songs was “the expression of [eschatological] desire.” He continues:

17 Ibid., 118. 18 Ibid., 120. 19 Ibid., 119; 123-24. 20 Ibid., 77. 21 Jean Leclercq, Monks and Love in Twelfth-Century France: Psycho-historical Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 32.

10 The Canticle is a poem of the pursuit which is the basis for the whole program of monastic life: quaerere Deum [the pursuit of God], a pursuit which will reach its end only in eternity but which already obtains fulfillment here in an obscure possession.22

The Song of Songs is a poem of pursuit that is highly eroticized; however, in the monastic nuptial-mystical interpretation, this eroticism is not vulgar or base. It flows not from lust, but from an ardent desire and love for God that finds its closest analogy in the intense, erotic love between human spouses. As Denys Turner emphasizes in his book Eros and

Allegory, medieval monks were not attracted to the Song of Songs in spite of its eroticism, but because of it, for this erotic language was what best expressed their desire for union with God.23

1.4 Bernard of Clairvaux, Eros, and the Song

The pinnacle of the monastic nuptial-mystical interpretation of the Song is arguably Bernard of Clairvaux’s eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs. Of all the commentators explored in this chapter, Bernard is the one who most reveled in the erotic and sensual language of the Song. Although there are times when Bernard refers to the

Bride as the Church, the interpretation he favors is the Bride as the soul, with Christ as her Bridegroom. Bernard plainly states the importance of the Song for the monastic life in his third sermon, when he tells his monks that the Song is “the book of our own experience.”24 As Bernard vividly details the layers of meaning of the breasts of the Bride and the Bridegroom, the significance of the latter’s kiss, the mystery of Christ as the spouse of their , and other erotic images, it is striking to remember that he is

22 Love of Learning, 108. 23 Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs, Cistercian Studies Series, vol. 156 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 40. 24 Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs I, trans. Killian Walsh, Cistercian Fathers Series, vol. 4 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1976), Sermon 3.1.

11 speaking exclusively to an audience of celibate men. As Leclercq writes, “it was not in his letters to women—noble ladies or nuns—that [Bernard] gave free vent to the love which burned in his heart, but it was to his monks…Each [monk] recognized in what

Bernard said the expression of his own faith and his own aspirations.”25

Before examining more closely some specific passages of Bernard’s sermons, it is important to note several historical shifts surrounding Clairvaux in the twelfth century, which helps explain, in part, why Bernard focuses on and develops the erotic language of the Song. One shift was that, unlike Benedictine monasticism of the past, which mainly drew new monks and nuns from children who grew up at the monastery, Cistercian monks mostly came to the monastery as adults. Most of them had lived in the secular world for a significant amount of time before entering the monastery, and therefore, they likely had experienced falling in love and romantic relationships. They also would have been exposed to secular courtly-love literature, which had become hugely popular and influential in the twelfth century. This courtly-love literature certainly featured nuptial and erotic language, which leads Leclercq to theorize that Bernard’s erotic imagery was partially a purposeful allusion to this newly influential genre. Lastly, marriage was beginning to be recognized as , which suggests that both the Church and society were beginning to view marriage more positively.26 This positive outlook on marriage as a holy institution would have made Bernard’s use of nuptial imagery even more fitting; if marriage were not so highly valued, religious figures like Bernard probably would not have used it as an analogy for one’s love relationship with God.

25 Monks and Love, 53. 26 Caroline Walker Bynum, as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 142.

12 True to the monastic tradition of Song commentary, Bernard emphasizes that the focus of his sermons is the affect (the heart) rather than the intellect (the mind).27

Throughout his sermons, Bernard appeals to the affect by alluding to, and expanding upon, the sensual imagery of the Song. One of his favorite passages of the Song, which he lingered over and often returned to, was “let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth” (Sg.

1:1a). In his seventh sermon, Bernard explains that the Bride uttering these words is the

“soul thirsting for God” speaking to the Bridegroom, who is the Word.28 He defends this interpretation by explaining why it is appropriate to speak of the soul that loves God as being a Bride:

No sweeter names can be found to embody that sweet interflow of affections between the Word and the soul than bridegroom and bride. Between these, all things are equally shared, there are no selfish reservations, nothing that causes division. They share the same inheritance, the same table, the same home, the same marriage-bed, they are flesh of each other’s flesh…Therefore, if a love relationship is the special and outstanding characteristic of the bride and groom, it is not unfitting to call the soul that loves God a bride.29

In Bernard’s ninth sermon, he begins making direct comparisons between the experiences of the Bride in the Song and the experiences of the monks of Clairvaux. He connects the desire of the Bride for her Bridegroom with the monks’ desire for God, a desire that compels them to perform their various observances, such as living chastely, studying, praying often, and obeying their . In this same sermon, Bernard moves from the kiss to the next part of the verse, which reads, “your breasts are better than wine” (Sg. 1:1b). In one interpretation of this passage, he ascribes the breasts to the

27 Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs IV, trans. Irene Edmonds, Cistercian Fathers Series, vol. 40 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Studies Publications, 1980), Sermon 67.3. 28 On the Song of Songs I, Sermon 7.2. 29 Ibid.

13 Bride, and then imagines that the Bridegroom’s kiss causes her breasts to fill with milk.

He compares the milky fullness of her breasts to the monks’ experience in prayer: “Often enough when we approach the to pray, our hearts are dry and lukewarm. But if we persevere, there comes an unexpected infusion of grace, our breast expands…and our interior is filled with overflowing love.”30 Towards the end of the sermon, he elaborates on the Song’s assertion that these breasts are “better than wine,” which he interprets as meaning that the “spiritual delights” of the breasts are longer lasting than the “carnal pleasures” symbolized by wine. He gives this interpretation an eschatological focus, writing: “This analogy may be applied to the world as well as to the flesh; for the world with all it craves is coming to an end…Not so, however, the breasts we have spoken of.

For when these have been drained dry, they are replenished again from the maternal fount within, and offered to all who will drink.”31

In our modern, highly sexualized society, this unabashedly erotic language applied to God would possibly be deemed offensive and obscene. But Bernard uses this language unapologetically. Leclercq and others theorize that Bernard uses erotic language deliberately to acknowledge the monks’ natural sexual impulses as they embrace lives of celibacy. As Leclercq theorizes, Bernard thought it better to “face these human impulses at the conscious, voluntary level in to control them, than to strive to continuously repress them.”32 In other words, Bernard understood that it is impossible to suppress sensuality or sensual love, which is why he chose to present the humanity of Jesus as the

30 Ibid., Sermon 9.7. 31 Ibid., Sermon 9.10. 32 Monks and Love, 97.

14 object of this love.33 Leclercq calls this redirection of monks’ sensual love towards Jesus sublimation, by which the “strong emotive power [of human love] is channeled into motivation for service of Christ in love.”34 This “sensual love,” and “human love” expressed in the Song is eros, which is the burning, desirous love that typically characterizes human lovers. However, for these monks, eros is not directed towards another person; rather, it is directed towards God. Thus, for Bernard and his monks, the monastic ascetical practice of celibacy was not about suppressing one’s desires and erotic energy but lifting this desire toward God and toward their “End,” which is “God possessed fully and eternally.”35 In essence, this erotic love for God, symbolized by

Bernard in the nuptial-mystical allegory of the Song, is fundamentally eschatological.

1.5 Nuptial Metaphor in John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila

Four hundred years after Bernard wrote his last sermon on the Song of Songs,

John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila offered their own contributions to the monastic tradition’s nuptial-mystical interpretation of the Song. Because Teresa, and especially

John, stand on the threshold between the medieval and the early modern, their mysticism displays characteristics of both the medieval monastic tradition and modern theological discourse. What this section focuses on, however, is how they drew upon the monastic tradition of Song commentary in their mystical interpretation of the Song.

Much like Gregory and Bernard, John and Teresa aimed to speak to the heart rather than the mind. Teresa, for example, explicitly emphasizes spiritual experience

33 On the Song of Songs I, xix; Walsh quotes Bernard in this regard, saying, “Your affection for your Lord Jesus should be both tender and intimate, to oppose the sweet enticements of sensual life,” (from Sermon 20:4). 34 Monks and Love, 103. 35 Love of Learning, 72.

15 rather than intellectual experience,36 while John frequently explains that contemplation cannot be achieved through use of the intellect, since it involves experiencing God in silence and darkness.37 What most closely associates John and Teresa with their monastic ancestors, however, is their nuptial-mystical interpretation of the Song. Like their monastic forebears, this interpretation flowed out of their powerful longing for union with God and their understanding that the human heart’s longing for God is only the

“smallest echo of a far deeper longing, in God, for us.”38 As Gillian Ahlgren writes, John and Teresa lived their lives confident in the “power of desire, rightly ordered and intensely focused.”39 And for both John and Teresa, the Song of Songs was a powerful expression of their desire for God.

In Teresa’s case, her on the Song of Songs is different from the commentaries that came before because she did not have direct access to a translation of the Song.40 She was thus unable to make many specific allusions to the text of the Song.

Rather, she mostly takes general images from it and offers reflections on them, which

36 Elizabeth Rhodes, “Teresa of Jesus’s Reform of the Religious Man,” in Gender, Catholicism, and Spirituality: Women and the Roman Church in Britain and , 1200-1900, ed. Laurence Lux-Sterritt and Carmen M. Mangion (Hampshire, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) 75. 37 John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1979), 394. 38 Gillian T.W. Ahlgren, Enkindling Love: The Legacy of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 12-13. 39 Ibid. 40 Because the Spanish banned translation of the in the vernacular, and because Teresa could not read Latin, she was unable to read the text itself. Instead, she was able to incorporate some imagery of the Song from allusions to it in the Divine Office and from sermons on it given by priests. See Kieran Kavanaugh’s Introduction to Teresa’s Meditations in Teresa of Avila, “Meditations on the Song of Songs,” in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, vol. 2 (Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976).

16 were written for her sisters. She claims that she wrote these meditations partially out of embarrassment that her sisters would giggle in Church when a priest would talk about the

Song, suggesting they did not fully understand the depth of the text’s meaning.41

While Teresa embraces a nuptial-mystical interpretation of the Song as the love relationship between the soul and Christ, her Meditations are largely devoid of the erotic language of Bernard. This may have been due to her writing during the Spanish

Inquisition, which would have made her careful to avoid accusations of blasphemy, especially since she was a woman.42 However, like Bernard, she connects the Song to her monastic state of life, which entailed taking Christ as her Spouse. As she writes in the

Meditations, “in what better way could we be occupied than to prepare rooms within our souls for our Spouse and reach the stage in which we can ask Him to give us this kiss of

His mouth?”43 This language echoes Bernard’s frequent allusions to Christ as the Spouse of the monks’ souls; however, Teresa’s language suggests that she is using this allusion in a more literal way, for she does not say that Christ is the Spouse of our “souls,” like

Bernard, but that he is simply “our Spouse.”

Despite the slight differences in how Teresa talks about her spousal relationship with Christ, her Meditations feature the same eschatological eros found in Bernard. A particularly good example of this eros is when she writes:

Hence, my Lord, I do not ask You for anything else in life but that You kiss me with the kiss of Your mouth, and that You do so in such a way that although I may want to withdraw from this friendship and union, my will may always, Lord of my life, be subject to Your will and not depart from it; that there be nothing to

41 Teresa of Avila, “Meditations on the Song of Songs,” in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, vol. 2 (Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976), 1.5. 42 See Kavanaugh’s introduction to the “Meditations,” in the Collected Works, 212. 43 “Meditations,” 2.7.

17 impede me from being able to say: "My God and my Glory, indeed Your breasts are better and more delightful than wine.44

This use of nuptial imagery pulled from the Song is, like Bernard, her attempt to use human language and experience to describe a reality that goes beyond words, namely her ardent desire, her erotic love, for God.

John of the Cross’s Spiritual Canticle and commentary, while offering the same themes as Teresa about nuptial union and desire for God, reads very differently from

Teresa’s Meditations. For one thing, John’s writing is not a commentary on the Song, per se. Rather, it is a commentary on a poem he wrote while imprisoned by the Calced

Carmelites, which he titled the Spiritual Canticle.45 This poem is basically a re-writing of the Song of Songs, since it is also a love song between a bride and groom and it uses much of the same imagery found in the Song.

As both a Carmelite monastic who became well-versed in scriptural and monastic literature, and as a priest trained in a clerical school, John’s commentary bares the imprint of both monastic and scholastic theology. In particular, John is faithful to the monastic tradition’s nuptial-mystical interpretation of the Song, represented by the Spiritual

Canticle, as the relationship between the soul as Bride and Christ as Bridegroom.46 His entire commentary on the Spiritual Canticle explores the dynamics of this nuptial relationship by drawing upon his own love relationship with God.

What shines forth from John’s Canticle is eros. It is clear that John was on fire with love for God had a relationship with God that was so intimate, it could only be

44 Ibid., 3.15 45 John of the Cross, 399. 46 Ibid., 394.

18 expressed in the loving and mysterious language of poetry.47 In his commentary on the

Spiritual Canticle, John parallels love of God with a longing for union with Him: “He who is in love is said to have his heart stolen or seized by the object of his love…whether the heart has been truly stolen by God will be evident…if it has longings for God.” He describes this longing of the soul as being “like a hungry man craving for food, or like a sick person moaning for health…such is the truly loving heart.”48 By equating longing for

God with love, John is conveying that love for God is erotic, for it inherently involves desire for union with the soul’s Beloved. Again, this emphasis on eros, on desire for eschatological union with God, places John squarely in continuity with the monastic tradition of Song commentary.

However, the influences of scholastic theology on John are also apparent in the highly systematized way he presents his commentary on the Spiritual Canticle, especially when he relates the Canticle to aspects of Church doctrine.49 As Kieran Kavanaugh explains, John’s prose is often “didactic and discursive…concerned with the practical goals of teaching, of pointing out the way that leads to perfection.”50 One can see this discursive and didactic tone in the commentary’s “orderly analysis of the evolution of the spiritual life,” in which John analyzes prayer and its effects.51

One example of this discursive and didactic tone is found in allusions John makes to the Summa in his commentary. In one place, John relates a line of his Canticle, where the soul says “Tell Him that I sicken, suffer, and die,” to Aquinas’ three powers of the

47 Ibid., 30-31. 48 Ibid., 444. 49 Ibid., 400. 50 Ibid., 34. 51 Ibid., 400-401.

19 mind, which are the intellect, the will, and the memory. He writes that the soul “sickens through the intellect,” “suffers through the will,” and “dies through the memory.”52 Then, several paragraphs later, John takes great pains to relate the three theological virtues to these faculties of the mind.53 Kavanaugh argues that such attempts at doctrinal exposition can take away from the spontaneity of both the poem and the commentary.54 Many of these allusions to the Summa and other Church teachings feel forced and abstract. They are so unlike Bernard’s Song commentaries, which had an air of spontaneity and playfulness. This didactic tone of John’s signals that John is bringing something new to this nuptial-mystical interpretive tradition by applying the Song to matters of doctrine rather than solely to spiritual experience.

1.6 Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Shifts in Interpretation of the Song

After John of the Cross, there are few, if any, figures who develop or contribute to this nuptial-mystical tradition of interpretation of the Song of Songs. Instead, once critical methods of scriptural study became normative in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Song began to be strictly interpreted in its literal sense as a marriage song between a man and a woman.55 Allegorical interpretations of the Song have recently been criticized as being “fanciful…lack[ing] objectivity [and] any means of validation.”56 One anonymous scholar criticizes allegorical interpretations of the Song based on its nuptial- mystical tradition, which he says displays a “weak emotionalism” that may be “suitable

52 Ibid., 426. For reference to Aquinas, see John O’Callaghan, “From Augustine’s Mind to Aquinas’ Soul,” n.d., accessed December 10, 2018, https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/ti00/ocallagh.htm. 53 Ibid., 427. 54 Ibid. 55 Murphy, 33. 56 J. Paul Tanner, “The History of the Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” Bibliotheca Sacra 154 (1997), 30.

20 to women and those of an effeminate and passionate disposition, [but] is not the language of men.”57 Others have criticized this nuptial-mystical interpretation as being an outgrowth of sexual repression and the that sex is evil, or that marriage is “lesser” than the monastic of Song interpreters.

The Hermeneia commentary on the Song summarizes these criticisms by quoting

Scripture scholar Marvin Pope:

From the early days of the Church, Solomon's salacious Song…had to be interpreted in a way that would eliminate the evil impulse and transform and spiritualize carnal desire into praise of virginity and celibacy and sexless passion of the human soul…Celibate Christian theologians were thus able by allegory to unsex the Sublime Song and make it a hymn of spiritual and mystical love without carnal taint. Canticum Canticorum thus became the favorite book of ascetics and monastics who found in it, and in the expansive sermons and commentaries on it, the means to rise above earthly and fleshly desire to the pure platonic love of the soul for God.58

Pope’s appraisal of the Song is, no doubt, overly-simplistic and lacks nuance. While there has certainly been negativity towards the body and sexuality in the history of the Church,

Pope’s argument that this interpretive tradition was written by celibates to show the superiority of their vocation and to apologize for the Song’s sexuality, is, in itself, quite fanciful. Rather, I would argue that by using the language of human sexuality and applying it to one’s love for God, this mystical tradition affirms that there is something inherently good about human sexuality.

Furthermore, when interpreters like Bernard use the Song as a means of sublimation, where they focus on God as the object of their desire rather than a human spouse, they are not suggesting that sexual coupling in marriage is evil. One must remember who these interpreters are writing to: monks and nuns. In other words, they are

57 Sacerdos, “The Spouse of the Soul,” The Furrow 12, no. 12 (1961), 727. 58 Qtd. in Murphy: 16.

21 writing to people who have chosen not to marry. It makes sense that these interpreters would employ a nuptial-mystical interpretation of the Song when speaking to a group of people who have decided not to claim a human spouse. And, as Leclercq affirms, for many of these monastics, “celibacy [was] not seen as rejection of marriage but as an alternative.”59 In other words, celibacy and life in community were not a result of contempt for marriage, but were rather the means by which monks and nuns lived out their love relationship with God. This is why the nuptial language of the Song was so powerful for them.

The scholarly consensus of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has continued to be that the Song is what it appears to be: a song about human marriage. This literal interpretation is valid and reasonable, and it can certainly coexist with an allegorical interpretation. However, the literal sense of the Song has often been emphasized to the exclusion of any other interpretation. As a result, there have been few creative engagements with the Song in recent centuries, and its influence on Church theology and liturgy has drastically declined.

1.7 John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and the Song of Songs

One highly influential twentieth century figure who favored a literal interpretation of the Song is Pope John Paul II. He commented on the Song during several of his

Wednesday addresses, also called “Wednesday catecheses,” delivered between 1979 and

1984, in which he taught what is frequently known as the Theology of the Body. In his

Theology of the Body, John Paul II explored what it means to be embodied persons in relation to God, the goodness of the body and sexuality, the complementarity of men and

59 Jean Leclercq, Monks on Marriage (New York: Seabury Press, 1982), 32.

22 women, and how this Theology of the Body informs Church teaching on moral issues. In the context of these sermons, John Paul II departed from the nuptial-mystical interpretive tradition of the Song by exclusively using it as a model of sacramental marriage, not erotic and eschatological love for God.60

When John Paul II turned his attention to the Song of Songs during his

Wednesday catechesis on May 23, 1984, he made it immediately clear that he was not going to be adopting the nuptial-mystical interpretation of Bernard. He explains that “it is not possible to detach [the Song] from the reality of the original ,” by which he means marriage.61 He continues by analyzing aspects of the Song to demonstrate how it reveals the complementarity of men and women, which had been the focus of previous audiences in his interpretation of the Creation story in Genesis. For example, he says that the alternation between the words of the Bride and Bridegroom in the Song signifies their complementarity as men and women.62 In a later Wednesday address, he applies the Song to this notion of complementarity again when he writes that the Bridegroom addressing the Bride as “sister” (Sg. 4:9) expresses both “the union of mankind and at the same time…her difference and feminine relationality.”63

While John Paul II does talk about desire, even using the term eros, he only uses eros in the context of love between husband and , not as an aspect of one’s love for

God. For example, in his address of June 6, 1984, he equates the “jealous love” expressed in the Song (Sg. 8:6) with “human eros,” which he contrasts with the non-jealous

60 Fergus Kerr, Twentieth Century Catholic Theologians (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 177. 61 John Paul II, Theology of the Body (The Catholic Primer, 2006), accessed December 10, 2018, 280. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 283.

23 “agape” love mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.64 This contrast suggests that

John Paul II views eros primarily as a love between humans, rather than a love and longing of humans for God (and vice-versa). By taking eros out of its traditional context as being love for God, John Paul flattens eros, making it primarily related to the love between human spouses. On the whole, John Paul’s Theology of the Body lacks a sufficient eschatological account of eros. This theology is devoid of the not yet, while placing so much focus on what was, namely, the original meaning of the body conveyed by the story of Creation. As Mona Sabouri writes in her study of John Paul II’s use of nuptial imagery, he “shifts the focus of [nuptial] mysticism from the otherworldly to the embodied and intimate union between man and woman on earth.”65 His eros, then, points towards the human couple rather than pointing towards one’s “End” in God, which is union with God in heaven.66

John Paul II’s use of the Song of Songs departs from the monastic tradition even further in the way it serves a specifically didactic purpose, which was to defend the moral teaching of Humanae Vitae, the encyclical on human sexuality that was released ten years before he became Pope. Fergus Kerr theorizes that John Paul II’s entire Theology of the

Body was meant to address the poor reception of Humanae Vitae and to better explain why this encyclical condemned the use of artificial birth control, among other practices.

64 Ibid., 286. 65 Mona Sabouri, “Revising Catholic Sexual Ethics: Nuptial Mysticism and John Paul II’s Theology of the Body” (McGill University, 2011), 40. 66 This is not to say that marriage does not have any eschatological meaning or significance. Although it is true that in heaven we will neither “marry nor be given in marriage,” (Mt. 22:30), one can hope that the virtues cultivated in marriage on earth persist in heaven. This lack of an eschatological account of marriage and the body in John Paul II’s theology of the body has been pointed out by David Cloutier in his article “Composing Love Songs for the Kingdom of God?: Creation and Eschatology in Catholic Sexual Ethics,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 24, no. 2 (2004).

24 John Paul even says himself that his commentary on the Song is meant to be a premise to his defense of Humanae Vitae’s teachings.67 This purpose is strikingly different from that of Gregory and Bernard, who, as mentioned previously, explicitly stated that their Song commentaries were meant to touch the heart, not instruct the mind. Their commentaries were meant to inflame one’s love for God, not to defend Church teaching.

1.8 Conclusion: The Devaluing of Eros

In our modern, Western world, I think most people tend to think of eros exclusively as the sexual love between humans, whether they are married or not. Eros is associated with that which is overtly sexual, obscene, even pornographic, which is perhaps why we tend not to think of eros as describing our love for God. This

“devaluation” of eros is unfortunate because it denies the role that desire, and our sexuality, plays in our spiritual lives. I think this is especially true for Christians, whose ultimate desire is eternal life with God. For this reason, I believe that a proper appreciation of eros is essential for an eschatological living of , and I think the Song of Songs is the most fitting scriptural text that can teach us about eros that is this burning love for God. A re-appropriation of the nuptial-mystical interpretation of the

Song as the relationship between Christ and the soul may be one path towards this greater appreciation of eros in the spiritual life. In the upcoming chapters, I will explore how this nuptial-mystical tradition has evolved in monastic and religious life of men and women to be less a spirituality and more a literal designation of nuns being Christ’s Brides.

67 John Paul II, 280. He writes “I would now like to conclude that topic [human love in the divine plan] with some considerations especially about the teaching of Humanae Vitae, premising some reflections on the Song of Songs and the Book of Tobit.”

25 CHAPTER II

HEROIC CELIBACY OR VIRGINAL IDENTITY? THE GENDERING OF

VIRGINITY AND THE SPONSA CHRISTI AFTER THE TWELFTH CENTURY

2.1 Introduction

The previous chapter explored the nuptial-mystical tradition of the Western church as exemplified by Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs. As noted previously, after this flowering of nuptial-mystical literature from Bernard and his medieval monastic contemporaries, very little contributions were made to this mystical tradition by male religious or monastics aside from than John of the Cross. Which leads me to wonder: why did this tradition, which had gained such popularity and traction during the time of Bernard, and had been developed since the patristic age, come to a practical stand-still? This chapter attempts to answer this question by looking closely at some of the shifts that occurred in men’s religious life during the twelfth century, when virginity as a mystical and eschatological sign morphed into being understood merely as abstinence as a discipline that demonstrated one’s masculinity.

2.2 The Origins and Concept of Virginity

It is well documented that the concept of virginity and the existence of consecrated virgins existed from the beginning of the Church. These virgins were primarily women, typically young women, but men also embraced a permanent state of virginity.1 In the first few centuries of the Church, a permanent state of virginity was valued as an “eschatological sign of what the whole baptized community was to

1 Edward Foley, Rites of : Pastoral Introduction and Complete Text (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1989), 9.

26 become.”2 It was also commonly understood that embracing a life of virginity was a particular way of living one’s baptismal vocation.3 By the fourth century, when the legalization of Christianity made the possibility of martyrdom less likely, embracing a life of virginity became a substitute for martyrdom.4 It was also around this time that the desert began, which would grow into the eremitic and cenobitic movements that birthed monasticism

The concept of virginity that existed in the early Church and through the Middle

Ages was more fluid than our modern construct, that narrowly defines a virgin as someone who has never had sexual intercourse. The fluidity of the pre-modern understanding of virginity is partly due to the fact that there was no strict physiological definition of virginity, unlike today. In the first centuries of the Church, someone who had, indeed, had sexual intercourse, could be considered a virgin if they embraced a life of celibacy in service to the Church.5 Take, for example, the fact that Mary Magdalene was among the cult of women venerated as virgins, even though she was commonly believed to have been a prostitute (despite lack of biblical evidence supporting this fact).

One can also point to the veneration of Margaret of Cortona as a virgin, despite that she was known to have led a life of sexual promiscuity before her conversion. Felicitas and Symphorosa were also among the litany of early virgins, despite having had children.6 Other than the lack of a physiological understanding or definition of virginity,

2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 8. 4 Sandra Marie Schneiders, IHM, "Reflections on the History of Religious Life and Contemporary Developments," in Turning Points in Religious Life, ed. Carol Quigley, IHM (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1987), 23. 5 Ibid., 88. 6 Lifshitz, 89.

27 it was also commonly understood by early Christians that one’s virginity could be restored by embracing a holy life. In this sense, then, the category of “virgin” could apply to any female .7

What these examples above point to, along with the fluidity of the category of virgin, is that virginity was a spiritual reality more than a physical one. It was more than just an ascetical practice of abstention; rather, it involved assuming an identity, namely the identity of being a spouse of Christ. The fact that there is evidence of veiling of virgins as early as the second century shows that this virginal identity was a spousal identity, because wearing a was a sign that a woman was married.8 The veiling of virgins thereby suggested that choosing virginity meant embracing a state of life comparable to marriage.9 As a result of this veiling, virgins first began being called

“spouses of Christ” or sponsae Christi by in the second century.10 The of sponsa Christi would continue to refer to women choosing a life of virginity throughout the rest of Church history.

2.3 Virginity and Male Monastics

Although those upheld by the early Church as virgins were women, many men also embraced a life of virginity. Like female virgins, this “virginity” was primarily a spiritual identity, rather than a description of sexual inexperience, for these men may or may not have had sexual intercourse before embracing virginity. In the early history of the Church, various Christian authors praised the virginity of both male and female

7 Ibid,, 89. 8 Schneiders, “Reflections,” 22. 9 Ibid. 10 Dyan Elliott, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200-1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 14.

28 saints.11 Aldhelm of Mamesbury’s De virginitate from the seventh century, for example, offers inspirational models of male virgins.12 The eighth century monk Smaragdus similarly writes to his monks about the sweetness of a life of virginity.13

Embracing the identity of “virgin” also entailed ritual enactment for men that was similar to the veiling of virgins. This similarity can be found in early rituals of monastic profession and clothing ceremonies. These early ceremonies were marked by receiving the habit, particularly the , which is a garment with a hood. The giving of the cowl to the monks was described as a “veiling,” which is the same language used for the ritual for female virgins.14 Some of the ritual accompanying the reception of the cowl, as well as other parts of the habit, were also taken from prayers from the ceremony for the of virgins.15 The cowl was even described as being the “habit of chastity” and a “sign of to Christ.”16 The latter description of the cowl as a sign of

“dedication” creates another parallel with the veil of virgins, for their veil was also a sign of their dedication to Christ; indeed, it was a sign of their marriage to Christ, as a sponsa

Christi. The description of the cowl as a “veiling,” and the borrowed elements from the ceremony for consecrated virgins suggests that embracing the identity of a monk also

11 Felice Lifshitz, "Priestly Women, Virginal Men: Litanies and Their Discontents," in Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, ed. Lisa Bitel and Felice Lifshitz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 96. 12 Ibid., 97. 13 Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, The Crown of Monks, trans. David Barry, OSB (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), 71. 14 Giles Constable, Culture and Spirituality in Medieval Europe (Brookfield, VT: Aldershot, 1996), 792. 15 Benoit Thivierge, OCSO, e itue ister ien e rofession onasti ue n ommentaire Histori ue o ogi ue Et iturgi ue u itue ister ien e rofession onasti ue Et es ormu aires e n i tion u oine Et e a ou e, S.T.D. diss., Pontificium Institutum Liturgicum, 1992 (Rome), 39. 16 Constable, 812.

29 meant embracing the identity of a virgin. The reception of the cowl at the monastic profession ceremony was thus a sign that the “proper significance of monasticism was virginity.”17

As already explored in chapter one of this thesis, one of the most powerful allegories used by monks who embraced this virginal identity was the nuptial allegory of the Song of Songs to describe the monk’s relationship with Christ the Bridegroom. This allegory is a key element of the monastic mystical tradition, as found in the writings of

Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory the Great, and reaching its pinnacle with Bernard of Clairvaux. Each of these figures used the Song of Songs in various ways as an image of the virginal soul’s mystical marriage to God. This nuptial- mystical tradition was allegorical rather than literal, which is why it was readily adopted by men as well as women; it was well understood that this nuptial relationship was a spiritual reality that flowed from corporeal practices, namely a life of celibacy. In essence, male monastics could take on virginity as an identity, including nuptial imagery, because at this time, virginity and nuptial allegory were not exclusively female categories. This would change after the twelfth century.

2.4 The Twelfth Century and the Rise of Heroic Celibacy

During the twelfth century, Church leaders were finally able to impose mandatory celibacy for the secular clergy18 in a movement that Jo Ann McNamara calls the

17 John Bugge, Virginitas: An Essay in the History of a Medieval Ideal (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 80. 18 By , I am referring to priests who were not monks and therefore did not take and live in a monastery. Neither were they among the growing , the Dominicans and , who took specific vows of chastity. The secular clergy were the ordinary priests that were directly under the authority of a .

30 “monasticization of the clergy.”19 In 1123, the First Lateran Council forbade and decreed that priests who were married must separate from their ; this decree was reinforced by the Second Lateran Council’s declaration in 1139 that all clerical marriages were invalid.20 There were two main reasons for enforcing celibacy upon the secular clergy. The first purpose of celibacy was to “prevent the alienation of church property through descent,” and therefore was designed “to prevent the creation of a hereditary priestly caste.”21 The second reason for celibacy was the growing desire among the church hierarchy—and the ordinary faithful—for priests to be “unsullied” by sexual activity.22 This latter reason also flows from the growing importance placed upon the , and thus the priests who administer them, as people increasingly wanted higher standards for priests who offer elements of the faith considered to be so holy and important.

Once the secular clergy were forced to be celibate, they began to face a crisis of masculinity. As Jaqueline Murray describes it: “when secular priests were deprived of their wives, what mechanisms were open to them to prove their manhood in a world that looked for clear and visible markers of gender,” particularly “sexual intercourse and

19 Jo Ann McNamara, "The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050- 1150," in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A. Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 7. 20 Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2017), 56. 21 R.N. Swanson, "Angels Incarnate: Clergy and Masculinity from Gregorian Reform to ," in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. D.M. Hadley (London: Longman, 1999), 162. 22 Ibid.

31 engendering children?”23 The answer to this question, as Murray describes it, was to think of celibacy as a heroic battle to control one’s lust and fight sexual temptation.24 And the more virile the man, the more he must fight against temptation to remain chaste and celibate. Thus, lust itself was a sign of manhood, especially if these men did not act upon their lust.

At the same time that the secular clergy were being “monasticized,” were becoming “clericalized” as more monks were being ordained. Monasticism began as a lay movement, and it maintained its lay character throughout the early Middle Ages.

For example, , widely considered the father of Western monasticism, was a lay monk. One study shows that in the ninth century, only a third of monks were priests or .25 But after this century, the numbers of monks becoming priests grew rapidly. This “clericalization of the monastery” stemmed from the increasingly important role of the Sacraments in Christian life—particularly the —and the growing demand for Masses being said for the souls of the dead.26 This clerical movement in the monasteries culminated in the Council of Vienne’s declaration in 1311 that, in general, monks had to be ordained, thereby bringing an end to what had been, to that point, a primarily lay vocation.27

Once becoming a monk also meant becoming a priest, and once becoming a priest meant embracing celibacy, like a monk, the distinction between priesthood and monastic

23 Jacqueline Murray, "Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle for Chastity, and Monastic Identity," in Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 26. 24 Ibid., 27. 25 Foley, 18. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid.

32 life became less clear. In light of this confusion about priestly identity and monastic identity, I find Brian Daley’s observation especially helpful: “the chief danger of [the combination of religious life with ordained ministry] is that one aspect will so dominate the other as to rob it of its central characteristics.”28 When the majority of monks became ordained, I would argue that characteristics of the priesthood did overshadow characteristics of the monastic life, especially the traditional monastic notion of virginity.

For after the monastery became clericalized, monks began to speak about celibacy rather than about virginity, and this celibacy was described using the same language of masculine heroism that secular priests used.

One can see this shift towards “heroic celibacy” in monastic rituals that developed after the twelfth century, especially ceremonies of profession and receiving the habit. For example, whereas the habit had originally been described as the “habit of chastity” and a sign of “dedication to Christ,” after the twelfth century, it is described as a sign that the monk is a “soldier of Christ” in the battle for perfect continence.29 These military metaphors continue to be used to describe habits of monastic and mendicant men well after the Reformation. For example, a Cistercian clothing ceremony from 1689 includes an invocation by the that the cowl would protect the monk from evil and be an

“armor,” presumably an armor against sin and temptation.30 Likewise, a Benedictine

Ceremonial from 1640 also invokes military metaphors in the prayer the abbot says when

28 Brian Daley, “The Ministry of Disciples: Historical Reflections on the Role of Religious Priests,” Theological Studies 48 (1987): 623. 29 Murray, 29. 30“ut haec indumenta ita benedicere & sanctificare digneris quòd sint ei ad operimentum peccatorum suorum, fortisque armatura, ac tuta defensio contra aereas potestates” from Rituale Cisterciense (Paris: 1689), PDF published electronically, 385.

33 he gives the habit to the .31 For a more recent example, a ceremonial of the Order of Minor in 1868 describes the ’s cape as being a protection from the devil and the cincture as a protection of his purity.32 These are just a few examples of a trend in ceremonies that persisted well into the twentieth century.

Once monks abandoned the concept of virginity and adopted the understanding of celibacy as a heroically masculine discipline, nuptial mysticism became untenable because nuptiality had been so intertwined with virginal identity. For although virginity had bodily implications (abstinence from sex), it was more than just an ascetic discipline; virginity also meant having a particular love relationship with Christ as a sign of one’s hope in the eschaton. As a result of these shifts, after the twelfth century, there are far fewer references in male monasticism to the nuptial-mystical tradition that flowered under Bernard.

2.5 The Feminization of Virginity and Sponsa Christi

At the same time that discourse around celibacy for monks shifted away from virginal identity and towards the battle for celibacy, virginity itself shifted to being an exclusively female category.33 John Bugge argues in his book Virginitas: An Essay in the

History of a Medieval Ideal that this “feminization of virginity” was actually a result of

31 “Deus qui Beatissimum Benedictum Patrem nostrum abstractum a mundi turbinibus tibi soli militare, tribue quaesumus huic famulo tuo sub ejus magisterio ad servitium tuum festinanti perseverandi constantiam…” from Caeremoniale Monasticum Congregationis Hispanicae Ordinis S.P.N. Benedicti (Vienna: 1640), PDF published electronically, 383. 32 For the cape: “Pone Domine caputium salutis in capite ejus, ad expugnandas diabolicas fraudes;” for the cincture: “ rae ingat te ominus ngu o ur tat s, et extinguat in lumbis tuis humorem libidinis, ut maneat in te virtus continentiae et castitatis” from Caeremoniale Iuxta Ritum Romanum Minorita Observanti (Rome: 1868), PDF published electronically, 468. 33 Bugge, 106. John Bugge calls this shift the “feminization of virginity.”

34 Bernard’s sexually embodied nuptial-mysticism, which had been a departure from the more abstract nuptial-mysticism of the people who came before him. Bernard’s sexualized nuptial-mysticism drew greater attention to the bodies—and thus, the genders— of both the virginal soul and the Bridegroom (Christ).34 This sexualization, together with a shift in popular piety that placed the humanity of Christ at the center of religious imagination,35 cemented virginity, and thus the sponsa Christi persona, as exclusively female.

As this thesis has already explored, since the beginning of the Church, the nuptial- mystical tradition of the virginal soul’s mystical marriage to Christ had been applied to both men and women in the monastic tradition. It was understood that this nuptial- mysticism was both allegorical and spiritual, and thus it was not strictly gendered.36

Furthermore, the abstract language of the nuptial-mystical tradition before Bernard enabled this gender fluidity. Bugge writes that this abstract type of nuptial-mysticism is based on a “pneumatic interpretation of the Song” that emphasized the marriage of the soul with the Word. 37 This “pneumatic interpretation” would include Gregory the Great, who spoke of the mystical marriage in the Song of Songs as being ethereally a “union with God or the soul’s marriage with the Word,” which is an obviously more abstract way to refer to Jesus.38

Bernard’s nuptial-mysticism, although definitively allegorically in line with the pneumatic tradition, employs more corporeal language. While Bernard also talks about

34 Ibid., 83. 35 Ibid., 82. 36 Ibid., 80 uses the term “ontologically asexual” to describe this non-gendered concept of virginity. 37 Ibid., 91. 38 See p. 8 of this thesis

35 the soul’s union with the “Word,” he uses physical and sexual language to describe this union in a way that mystical writers before him never did. This corporeal language emphasizes the bodiliness of both Christ and the virginal soul, even though he still emphasizes that it is the sou ’s marriage to Christ, which is an allegorical rather than a literal reality. Bugge argues that this attention to the bodiliness of the Bridegroom and the

Bride in the Song inevitably draws attention to their genders. Bernard’s nuptial mysticism, while still being an allegory of union between the Word and the virginal soul, nonetheless is perceived as being a union between a female virginal soul, and the man,

Christ. 39 Thus the sponsa Christi, and the concept of virginity along with it, becomes gendered as exclusively female.40

Bugge argues that the popularity of Bernard’s mysticism, combined with other cultural currents, contributed to this feminization of virginity and the sponsa Christi. At the time of Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, devotional literature for women was an increasingly popular genre, especially among monastic women. Bugge explores one particular group of female devotional writings in England, commonly called the

Katherine Group of devotional literature, named after some of its writings which tell the legend of St. Katherine.41 The writings that comprise the Katherine Group date from the thirteenth century and they “highlight the virtues of a virgin life for women” and encourage women to embrace a life of virginity as nuns.42 These writings frequently depict the intimate relationships nuns have with Christ as his brides, and these depictions

39 Bugge, 135. 40 Ibid. 41 Bugge, 3. 42 Emily Huber and Elizabeth Robertson, “Introduction to the Katherine Group,” University of Rochester Middle English Text Series, 2016, Accessed April 24, 2019, https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/huber-robertson-the-katherine-group-introduction

36 are highly eroticized, modeled after the nuptial writings of Bernard of Clairvaux.43

Women are certainly the intended audience for these writings, but although these writings have various anonymous authors, scholarly consensus is that most of these authors were male.

Bugge argues that the Katherine Group of writings, which became extremely popular among monastic women and others, cemented the image of the nun as the literal sponsa Christi. In the Katherine Group literature, Bernard’s mysticism is applied solely to the life of virginity as lived by nuns, with the result that the traditionally allegorical and pneumatological mysticism of Bernard is morphed into a literal depiction of the nun’s soul marriage with Christ. Bugge writes that some of the Katherine Group writings feature “an entirely new concentration upon [Christ’s] humanity,” particularly by depicting the heavenly Bridegroom of the nun as “a vulnerable and afflicted suffering

Jesus.”44 The Katherine Group literature proved to be influential for a number of nuns, particularly in England, and this literature spun off into other genres, such as the

“Wooing Group” of prayers and writings that rarely mentions that it is the sou ’s marriage to Christ. Instead, it is the nun herself who is depicted as being wooed by

Christ, and the writings dwell upon the emotional (and indeed, erotic) response of the nun to this marriage.45 While Bernard sparked this trend of eroticized nuptial-mystical literature, those who came after him used his nuptial-mysticism in ways that were more narrowly gendered, for as Bugge emphasizes, “in a proper reading of Bernard, the mystical marriage is predicable of both men and women since the soul admits of no

43 Ibid. 44 Bugge, 96. 45 Ibid., 105.

37 sexuality.”46 But after the Katherine Group literature’s popularization of this more literal reading, it became “unthinkable to speak of the monk as the ‘bride of Christ.’”47

2.6 Conclusion

By the end of the , significant shifts occurred in the Church that radically altered the way that men and women monastics conceived of their relationship with Christ as celibates. Whereas the early Church spoke of this chosen celibacy as virginity, which was both an identity available to both men and women, the blurred distinctions between priesthood and monastic life in the twelfth century resulted in monks abandoning the concept of virginity, which had implied mystical marriage to Christ, to instead embrace celibacy as a heroic discipline that accentuates their masculinity. This trend of heroic celibacy, combined with the sexualized aspects of Bernard’s mysticism, led to the irrevocable gendering of the sponsa Christi as female. Thus, by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the sponsa Christi, the virginal soul of the great nuptial-mystical tradition, only alluded to women, particularly nuns, in a literalization of the sponsa metaphor. The next chapter will explore how this literal understanding of a nuptial- mystical relationship with Christ was enacted in the lives of nuns and how it shaped both nuns’ spiritualties and their treatment by the Church hierarchy.

46 Ibid., 93. 47 Ibid.

38 CHAPTER III

NUNS AS BRIDES OF CHRIST: THE ENACTMENT AND FUNCTION OF BRIDAL

IMAGERY IN WOMEN’S MONASTIC AND RELIGIOUS LIFE

3.1 Introduction

The previous chapter examined the shift in attitudes towards celibacy and virginity in the twelfth century that produced a “heroic celibate” ideal among men and a feminization of virginity for women, thereby precluding monks from conceiving of themselves as virgins or as spouses of Christ. These changes also resulted in the sponsa

Christi allegory being literalized in the lives of nuns, such that “spouse of Christ” no longer referred to the ungendered soul, but rather to the virginal nun. This chapter will explore how this literalization of the nun as the sponsa Christi was enacted in ritual, and how the nun as sponsa Christi could simultaneously be an empowering metaphor and a means of control by Church authority.

3.2 Bridal Imagery in the Profession and Clothing Ceremonies of Nuns

By the thirteenth century, the nun as the bride of Christ had been cemented in the religious imagination of the Church and of those in monastic life. At this point, when nuptial metaphor was used to refer to the nun, this metaphor was no longer qualified by saying that Christ was the spouse of the soul, which had been the practice of Bernard.

Now it was the nun literally as Christ’s bride. This literalization can best be observed in two of the most significant rituals that marked the life of a nun: the reception of the religious habit at the beginning of novitiate and the profession of vows. Before examining these rituals in depth, it is helpful to first examine the history of how these rituals

39 developed. There are two traditions that influenced the development of these rituals for the clothing and profession of nuns as they existed after the 13th century: the ancient monastic profession ceremony and the ceremony for the consecration of virgins.

The previous chapter of this thesis already mentioned that there is evidence for the veiling of virgins as early as the second century, although it is unclear if this veiling occurred in a unique ceremony. The earliest evidence of a specific ceremony for the consecration of virgins is found in one of the writings of of Milan in the fourth century, where he describes the consecration of his sister.1 The ceremony at this stage was a simple affair, featuring a few prayers and the giving of the veil by . It was also around the fourth century that the word consecratio, as opposed to velatio or benedictio, begins to be used to describe these ceremonies.2 While the veil was certainly a nuptial symbol, signifying the virgin’s state of life as equivalent to marriage, this change of language to “consecration” suggests that the meaning of the consecration of virgins was not only nuptial, but also baptismal, since itself is a consecration.3

Thus, this consecration seems to have been not just for a virgin to achieve a status as

Christ’s bride, but also to intensify her baptismal commitment and signify her acceptance of a call to a virginal state of life lived within the Church.

As the ceremony for consecrated virginity began to solidify in the fourth and fifth centuries, monastic communities of men and women were also developing, along with unique rituals for entrance into the monastery. Unlike the ceremony for the consecration

1 Adrien Nocent, "The Consecration of Virgins," in The Sacraments, ed. Aime Georges Martimont, vol. 3, The Church at Prayer (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988), 211. 2 Foley, 14. 3 Ibid. Foley argues that the baptismal meaning of the ceremony of consecration of virgins was just as significant, if not more so, than the nuptial meaning, particularly because at this point in the Church, marriage was not recognized as a sacrament.

40 of virgins, there was no nuptial imagery in the monastic profession of men and women other than the subtle symbolism of “veiling” through the cowl and the veil.4 Instead, the predominant symbolism of monastic profession was baptismal. The earliest ceremonies of monastic profession are found in the Rule of the Master, an early monastic rule dating to the early sixth century,5 and in the Rule of Benedict, which came later in the sixth century and was heavily influenced by the Rule of the Master.6 Both Rules contain numerous allusions to Baptism. For example, the profession rite in the Rule of the Master begins with an examination of the prospective monk, where the abbot asks him various questions about his intention to join the monastery; this examination closely resembles the Baptismal scrutiny.7 The Rule of Benedict ends the ceremony with the new monk stripping off his clothing and putting on the new habit of the monastery, which alludes to the garment the newly baptized would wear.8

This connection between the baptismal garment and the monastic habit would become even stronger in the ninth century, when an element was added to the ceremony that entailed the abbot saying, “put off the old man” as the monk took off his clothing, and then saying “put on the new man” as he put on the habit. This new element closely resembles the prayer said as the newly baptized puts on their garments during the rite of

4 See page 29 of this thesis. 5 Foley, 14. 6 Nocent, 286. 7 Constable, 790. 8 "The Rule of St. Benedict," Benedictine of Christ in the Desert, accessed March 18, 2019, https://christdesert.org/prayer/rule-of-st-benedict/chapter-58-the-procedure-for- receiving-brothers/, 58.26.

41 Baptism.9 The theological significance of monastic profession conveyed by these ceremonies is primarily that monastic life is an extension of Baptism.

What is interesting about this era for monastic women is that their profession and clothing ceremonies were identical to those of male monastics, the only difference being that women would receive a veil instead of a cowl.10 And although these nuns were vowing a life of virginity, they did not partake in the ritual for the consecration of virginity, which was a different vocation than monastic life. Consecrated virgins did not typically live in a community with other women as monastics did; rather, they lived in their family homes, were free to inherit and dispose of personal goods, and they may or may not have followed a type of “rule” written by their local Bishop, which they lived out independently of each other.11 Therefore, although consecrated virginity was in some respects a pre-cursor to the monastic movement since it was the first recognizable way to live a life dedicated to virginity in the Church, consecrated virginity was also a separate vocation.

In the following centuries, it became more common for monastic women to also become consecrated as virgins, which took place in a ceremony that was separate from monastic profession.12 This practice became so common that by the middle of the tenth century, the Romano-German Pontifical had two separate rituals for virginal consecration: one for nuns and one for women living in the world.13 Thus by the tenth century, it was no longer just consecrated virgins who were the brides of Christ, but nuns,

9 Constable, 791. 10 Ibid., 784 11 Stephanus Hilpisch, A History of Benedictine Nuns, trans. M. Joanne Muggli (Collegeville, MN: St. John's Abbey Press, 1958), p.2-3 12 Nocent, 211. 13 Ibid., 213.

42 too. Although monastic women were increasingly being identified as consecrated virgins, there was still a distinction made between monastic profession and virginal consecration, for they continued to be two separate ceremonies. This distinction would change by the thirteenth century when the ceremony of consecrated virginity for women in the world disappeared altogether.14 Subsequently, there was no longer a separate ceremony for virginal consecration for nuns; instead, the nuptial elements of this ceremony became incorporated into the ritual of monastic profession, becoming a hybrid ceremony. The result was that in the thirteenth century, professions became “marriage ceremon[ies],” as the nuptial themes began multiplying and strengthening, most vividly demonstrated in the new practice of nuns receiving wedding rings as a sign of their marriage to Christ.15

Thus, what began as a ceremony that was largely identical for men and women monastics was, by the thirteenth century, drastically different in both substance and theology.

These ceremonies signify that the sponsa Christi tradition was no longer an allegory for the soul’s intimate relationship with Christ, particularly as an image of a monk, nun, or ’s vocation to a life of virginity. Rather, in the thirteenth century, ceremonies for monastic profession of nuns became literal weddings to Christ.

This meshing of the ceremonies for consecrated virginity and monastic profession was perhaps an inevitable result of the literalization of the nun as the sponsa Christi that began after Bernard. As the nun became more literally identified as the bride of Christ, this identity was fittingly enacted in a ritual that expresses this mystical marriage by closely imitating a human marriage.

14 Nocent, 215. 15 Ibid., 211.

43 3.3 Examples of Nuptial Symbolism in Profession and Clothing Ceremonies

I have examined nearly twenty ceremonials from various religious communities of women from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries to shed light on how the sponsa Christi identity of nuns was ritually enacted. With more time and access to more primary documents, further study would hopefully verify my findings, which are that these ceremonies reinforced the nuns’ identities as a literal bride of Christ, and that nuptial imagery actually became more prominent throughout the nineteenth century in response to changing gender roles and marriage practices.

The earliest ceremonial16 I had access to was from 1624 for the Visitation Nuns in

France, who were founded by Jeanne de Chantal and . Their ceremonies for reception of the habit, which took place when a woman became a novice, and profession of vows, which took place after novitiate, contain some elements from the traditional ritual of monastic profession, but they more prominently feature various elements from the rite of virginal consecration. Nuptial allusions are sprinkled throughout both the clothing ceremony and the ceremony of profession. For example, the clothing ceremony begins with a brief examination of the novice by the priest who asks her what she is seeking. 17 After she responds, “To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,”18 the priest offers a brief exhortation about what she is assenting to, in which he

16 Many religious communities had a separate manual—called ceremonials— that would proscribe how they would recite the Divine Office, conduct meetings, operate the household, and detailed the ritual for accepting a woman as a , her clothing as a novice, and simple and solemn profession of vows. 17 Vive Iesus: Coustumier Et Directoire Pour Les Soeurs Religieuses De La Visitation Saincte Marie (1637), Reprints (Bruxelles: Archives G n rales Du Royaume, 1999), 14. The ceremonial specifies the “père spirituel,” the Spiritual Father, which was likely a priest close to the community. 18 Ibid., 15. “Que j’habite en cette Maison du Seigneur tout le temps de ma vie.”

44 says, among other things, that to enter the monastery is to live without any other intention than “to please God…in order to conform to the image of the crucified Son of God,

[your] unique and sovereign Husband.”19

After the examination, the priest blesses the white veil to be worn by the novice and he says a prayer in Latin in which he alludes to Paul’s direction that women cover their heads,20 which this prayer says is a sign of “” and “submission.” The prayer also mentions, again, that Christ is her “sweet bridegroom” (tuae dulcis sponsi).21 After the of the veil, the new novice receives a candle, and the priest again states that

Christ is her bridegroom, which in this particular instance is an allusion to the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25.22 Other than the examination of the novice, the most prominent remaining element from the monastic tradition is when the priest says, as he puts on her veil, “take off the old man,” and then “put on the new man,” which is followed by the novice going into the sacristy and changing into her full religious habit.23

For these Visitation nuns, many of the same nuptial allusions are present in the ceremony of profession of vows that are contained in the clothing ceremony. The ceremony of profession also uses lit candles, and this ceremony, too, features a veiling ritual, where the nun receives a different veil than what she had worn as a novice.24 Other than these elements, there are no explicit references to her as the bride of Christ or that

19 Ibid., 16. “Je sais bien que vous avez t souvent avertie que celles qui entreprennent de vivre céans ne doivent avoir aucune autre intention que de plaire à Dieu par ces moyens-là, afin d'être conformes à l'image du Fils de Dieu crucifié, leur unique et souverain Époux.” 20 See 1 Corinthians 11:3-12 and 1 Timothy 2:9-15 21 Vive Iesus, 19. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 20. 24 Ibid., 58.

45 Christ is her Bridegroom. There are allusions to this, however, when the nun says in her formula of profession: “I take Jesus… as the sole object of my love.”25 Interestingly enough, the ceremonial does not mention the sister receiving a ring at profession, which had been a practice of at least some other women’s communities before this time.26

The ceremonials from other women’s communities that I found from after 1624 contain many of these same nuptial elements and themes. For example, the Religious of

Charity of Notre Dame in Paris in 1635 also began their clothing ceremony with an examination of the woman becoming a novice. The novices also received a veil and a candle, only this time, after receiving the candle, the choir would chant the antiphon

Prudentes Virgenes, which is a traditional element of the rite of consecration of virgins and a direct reference to Matthew 25.27 The prioress played a larger role in this ceremony than in that of the Visitation nuns, for she was the one who would say the prayer “strip off the old man…put on the new man” as the novice clothed herself in the habit.28 The profession ceremony was also very similar to that of the Visitation nuns. However, unlike the Visitation nuns’ ceremonial, there are few direct references to these nuns as brides of

Christ, other than in the closing prayer of the profession when, in a prayer addressed to

God, the priest refers to the newly professed as “your brides” (tuae sponsae).29

The Carmelite Nuns of Madrid in 1687 had a simpler clothing ceremony than what we have seen previously. For one thing, although the new novices received the monastic habit, they only received the cord and , not the veil, which they did not

25 Ibid., 59. “Je choisis Jesus…pour l’unique objet de ma dilection.” 26 See page 44 of this thesis. 27 Nocent, 216. 28 Reigle de S. Avgvstin que les Religieuses de la Charite Nostre Dame tiennet & observent, 1635, Clugnet Collection, University of Dayton Marian Library, 268-69. 29 Ibid., 309.

46 receive until profession of vows. As a result, the clothing ceremony is devoid of nuptial allusions. The profession ceremony, on the other hand, looks more similar to the ones we have already examined. It begins with the examination of the nun asking for profession, and includes the veiling and the giving of a lit candle. What is new in this ceremony, however, is the choir singing the antiphon Veni Sponsa Christi right before the veiling, which is not in other ceremonies I found before this time.30

The Port Royal ’ ceremonial from 1721 contains the same elements as these other ceremonials as well as a few innovations. In the habit ceremony, the novice is escorted down the aisleby a parent or godparent in a clear allusion to a wedding procession.31 As the priest blesses the habit, he refers to it as a “nuptial robe,” i.e. a wedding .32 In the profession ceremony, the novice prostrates before the priest as he prays to each member of the . In his prayer to the Father, he refers to Christ as the novice’s Bridegroom, and in his prayer to the Son, the priest refers to the nuns as Christ’s

“brides” (vos épouses).33 At the end of the ceremony, the newly professed joins the rest of her sisters in the cloister, behind the grill of the , as the choir sings “let us rejoice and praise the Lord with gladness, and give glory to God, because the wedding of

30 Manual de la religiosas Carmelitas Descalzas, 1687, Rare Book Collection, University of Dayton Marian Library, 273. 31 Les Constitutions Du Monastère de Port Royal du Saint Sacrement (Paris: 1721), PDF published electronically, 283. 32 Ibid., 292. Referring to the : “qu'ils lui servent de robe nuptiale lorsqu'on c l brera les noces de l'Agneau.” 33 Ibid., 318.

47 the is come, and his spouse is prepared: happy are those who are called to the wedding banquet.”34

Ceremonials in the nineteenth century began adding more nuptial allusions while maintaining the traditional symbols of veil and candle. The ceremonial of the Daughters of Mary of Agen, France in 1821, for example, contains these traditional elements and includes the novice being escorted by a godparent at her clothing ceremony. One innovation, however, occurs during the clothing ceremony. It was common in other clothing ceremonies for the new novice to cut her hair before receiving the veil. This ceremonial, however, includes a prayer to be said by the nuns’ superior as she cuts the novice’s hair: “My daughter, by cutting your hair we proclaim to you that you must distance from yourself thoughts of the world, to think only of Jesus Christ, your spouse.”35

At the beginning of the profession ceremony, when the novice is greeted after the entrance procession, the priest says in his brief address to the novice that to by professing vows, she is to “tak[ing] God as your spouse.”36 After this address, the novice prostrates herself before a crucifix as a song is sung. Then the priest asks her, “My daughter, do you truly feel deep in your heart that you are dead to the world, and that you now have no other desire than to be espoused to Jesus Christ?” 37 Later, after the novice pronounces

34 Ibid., 324. “r jouissons-nous et louons le Seigneur avec allégresse, et donnons gloire à Dieu, parce que les noces de l'Agneau sont venues, et que son épouse est préparée : heureux ceux qui sont appel s au banquet de ses noces.” 35 "The Former Ceremonial of the Daughters of Mary (1821)," in The Chaminade Legacy, comp. Jean-Baptiste Armbruster, trans. Stefanelli, vol. 6 (Dayton, OH: North American Center for Marianist Studies, 2014), 100. 36 Ibid., 101. 37 Ibid., 101-102.

48 her vows, the celebrant plainly states, “You will have Jesus Christ for your Spouse.”38

Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, we see the newly professed receiving a ring after her profession and veiling.39 Although the ring was an element in some monastic professions in the thirteenth century as a sign of the nun’s marriage to Christ, none of the other ceremonials I have heretofore discussed mention a ring. However, all the ceremonials I found that are dated after 1821 include a ring in the ceremony of profession. Nevertheless, what we see in this ceremonial of the Daughters of Mary is bolder and more vivid statements that the nun is the bride of Christ.

This trend towards more heightened nuptial allusions continues throughout the nineteenth century. The 1855 ceremonial of the of the Heart of Mary in

Paris borrows heavily from the ceremonial of the Visitation nuns. It also includes the antiphons Prudentes virgines40 and Veni Sponsa Christi,41 and there are numerous chanted allusions to the “wedding of the Lamb.”42 When the newly professed receives her ring, the prayer that accompanies it explicitly states that it is a sign that she is the “spouse of God.”43 The 1887 ceremonial of the Notre Dame Sisters of the African Missions (the

White Sisters) contains its own innovations as well, for it is the first ceremonial I found that specifies that the novice should wear a bridal gown on the day she receives the

38 Ibid., 102. 39 Ibid., 103. 40 Cérémonial monastique a l'usage des religieuses bénédictines du Très-Saint Coeur de Marie, 1855, Rare Book Collection, University of Dayton Marian Library, 206. 41 Ibid., 260. 42 Ibid., 255. 43 Ibid., 260. “Accipe ergò ànnulum Fidei, donárium nuptiále Spíritûs Sancti, in signum unitátis et charitátis, ut Sponsa Dei efficiáris.”

49 habit.44 The ceremonial also indicates that, during the rite of reception of the habit, the

Reverend Mother should give a crucifix to the new novice while saying, “here is the image of the One who becomes your Spouse.”45

Lest one think nuptial allusions were only true of European women religious, ceremonials from various communities in the United States show that the nuptial imagery was just as prominent across the Atlantic. The 1884 ceremonial for the Sisters of St.

Joseph in the United States, published in New York, contains the following bold statement by the priest after the novice receives the habit for the first time: “At this moment…you have Jesus Christ for your Spouse.”46 The 1888 ceremonial of the

Franciscan Sisters of Rochester, Minnesota, contains the first instance I found of spousal imagery being included in the actual formula for the profession of vows, which reads:

I, Sister Mary N., in the presence of Almighty God, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of our holy Father St. Francis, of all the Saints, and before you, (Right) Reverend Father, vow to observe for the remainder of my life , Chastity and Obedience…O, Eternal Father! Henceforth Thou alone art the Lord of my heart. I take my loving Jesus for my spouse and I attach myself to him alone and entirely forever…47

In this same ceremony, the priest gives her a ring and as he puts it on her finger, he says,

“Be wedded to Jesus Christ, Son of the Father…”48 Similarly, the 1911 ceremonial of the

Religious of the of Jesus in the United States indicates that, immediately

44 r monia e a vêture et e a rofession re igieuse e a ongr gation es Sœurs e Notre-Dame des Missions d'Afrique, 1887, Clugnet Collection, University of Dayton Marian Library, 4. 45 Ibid., 15. “Voilà l’image de Celui qui devient votre Époux.” 46 Constitutions of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph (New York: 1884), PDF published electronically, 189. 47 Rules and Constitutions of the Sisters of the of St. Francis Established at Rochester Minnesota (Cincinnati: 1888), PDF published electronically, 87. 48 Ibid., 89. The entire prayer reads, “Desponso te Jesu Christo, Filio Summi Patris, qui te illæsam custodiat. Accipe, igitur, annulum fidei, signaculum Spiritus Sancti, ut sponsa Dei voceris et si ei fideliter servieris in perpetuum coroneris.”

50 after a sister pronounces her vows, she should be asked by the priest whether she consents to taking Christ as her Spouse.49 Christ the Bridegroom is invoked numerous other times in this ceremonial, particularly in the examination at the beginning of profession and when the sister receives a ring at perpetual vows.50

It is clear that nuptial imagery in habit and profession ceremonies contain more vivid and more frequent nuptial allusions as they approach the twentieth century. The greater prominence of nuptial imagery may be due to the increasing importance, and the growing frequency, of marriage in Western society, for marriage becomes vastly more common in the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. For example, by the end of the nineteenth century, close to ninety percent of European women would marry, whereas a century before, only sixty percent would marry.51 In addition, the nineteenth century was a time when marriage was being romanticized in entirely new ways as marriage commonly becomes more a matter of love than a primarily “contractual” institution.52 These changing cultural trends and attitudes towards marriage may partially explain why nuptial imagery became more prominent in habit and profession ceremonies: these religious communities of women were mirroring the culture’s romanticization of marriage in general.

49 Ceremonial for benediction of the , clothing and profession for the Religious of the Sacred Heart, 1911, U.S. Catholic Special Collection, University of Dayton Roesch Library, 40. 50 Ibid., 41. 51 Patricia Branca, Women in Europe Since 1750 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), 71. 52 Ibid., 72.

51 3.4 Evaluating the Use of Nuptial Allegory

So far, this chapter has explored how nuns’ identity as sponsae Christi was ritually enacted, but when exploring the question of how this identity functioned in the lives of nuns over the centuries, a tension becomes clear. In one sense, at least some religious women found their identities as brides of Christ to be empowering, for they were able to derive spiritual authority from this intimate relationship with Christ.

However, in another sense, their identities as sponsae were also used as a form of control by the leadership of the Church, particularly in the enforcement of papal cloister.

In terms of the empowering potential of the sponsa Christi identity, Carolyn

Walker Bynum’s study of the nuns of Helfta in the thirteenth century suggests that one way these nuns became renowned spiritual guides and mystical visionaries was through their identities as brides of Christ. Bynum points out that as clerical status became more important in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, women were increasingly alienated from preaching, teaching, and leadership roles which were only meant for an exclusively male clergy.53 However, in the face of these challenges, the nuns at Helfta “derive[d] their authority…not from [clerical] office but from their mystical union with Christ and the accompanying visions.”54 This mystical union was frequently described as a nuptial union, for these nuns’ visions were pervaded with images of themselves as Christ’s brides.55 The nuptial imagery and visions contained in the writings of the nuns of Helfta in the thirteenth century parallel a larger trend, for in this century, “women elaborated nuptial mysticism much more fully than did the twelfth-century males with whom it

53 Jesus as Mother, 250. 54 Ibid., 249. 55 Ibid., 253.

52 originated.”56 This trend corresponds with the literalization of the nun as the bride of

Christ, and perhaps so many religious women claimed this identity because it was the only claim to authority that was allowed them by the Church.

Two of the most influential female saints from the mid to late Middle Ages—

Catherine of Siena and —offer some helpful illustrations of the way some holy women derived empowerment from their identities as sponsae Christi. Clare is well known as the companion of who wanted nothing more than to create an order of nuns that would embrace the same radical poverty as the Franciscan friars. Well before meeting Francis, Clare vowed her virginity to God and refused several offers of marriage over the years. Upon meeting Francis, she began to realize that poverty was key to her vow of virginity, and she frequently invoked the theme of espousal to Christ to her sisters after she began the .57 As Poor Clare Sister Marie Beha explains, for

Clare, “the heart of the virgin is poor because it is open and empty, giving itself to

God…[thus] the motivation for choosing poverty and virginity is the same: both center the heart on Christ and Christ alone.”58 Clare’s linking of poverty, virginity, and espousal to Christ was particularly inventive. For her, being a spouse of Christ entailed a complete and total renunciation of goods, for only such a detachment from worldly things could enable a greater attachment to Christ.

Clare’s quest to live her vision of poverty in order to live in greater intimacy with

Christ did not come without difficulty. When Clare began her , she desired to live the same type of radical poverty and renunciation of goods as the Franciscan

56 Ibid., 18. 57 Marie Beha, "Come Spouse of Christ," Review for Religious 62, no. 2 (2003), 158. 58 Ibid., 159.

53 friars, but she was met with resistance by Church authorities who did not believe it was appropriate for women to live such a life of poverty. Nevertheless, Clare fought for her right to live this vision of poverty, seeing it as essential to her life of intimacy with

Christ. Eventually, she appealed to the Pope for her right to observe her vision of poverty, which he granted her.59 This challenge to her detractors and appeal to authority is a remarkable showing of strength on behalf of Clare. Her identity as a spouse of Christ compelled her to fight for the right to observe the poverty that was essential for her to live this intimate relationship with Jesus.60

Catherine of Siena is an even more remarkable example of how she derived authority from her close union with Christ. Catherine would frequently allude to herself as being Christ’s bride, and she even had a vision of a mystical wedding with Christ in which he gave her a wedding ring.61 Catherine is well known for her amazing feats of moral strength, particularly her admonitions to the pope during the Great , and it may be that she saw her status as a bride of Christ as giving her this spiritual and moral authority. This identity would even lead her to circumvent the contrasting authority of some of the priests in her life, such as when, on two different occasions when a priest refused to give her communion, she had a mystical vision in which Christ gave her communion himself.62

59 Jo Ann Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 307. 60 Beha, 159. 61 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 246. As an interesting note, Bynum writes that to “underlin[e] the extent to which the marriage was a fusion with Christ's physicality [..] Catherine received, not the ring of gold and jewels that her biographer reports in his bowdlerized version, but the ring of Christ’s foreskin.” 62 Sisters in Arms, 346.

54 It is also clear, however, that while this nuptial identity could be empowering, it was also undoubtedly used by the Church’s hierarchy as a tool of control. This is especially seen in the Church’s definitive enforcement of enclosure for nuns, which was imposed in 1298 with the papal decree . This prohibition of the nuns from leaving their monastery, and from allowing others in, was partly a result of the nun being so literally identified as the bride of Christ. There had already been people in the Church arguing that Christ’s spouses should be enclosed even before this decree was pronounced.

For example, Idung of Prüfening, a Cistercian from the late twelfth century, wrote:

Reason, authority, precedents, the veiling of the head, the consecration, the betrothal itself (which is signified by the pledge of the ring and which is so important that, as we have said, only the bishop and not just any priest should officiate)—what do all these things imply but that the heavenly bride should be protected by enclosure so careful that she be not leered at by an immodest eye?63

Although their identities as Christ’s brides were not mentioned in the actual as a reason for their enclosure,64 the definitive commentary on Periculoso at that time did use this as an argument. Canonist Joannes Andrae’s commentary from 1305 on the bull

Periculoso emphasizes that enclosure is important for nuns to maintain their fidelity to

Christ, their spouse.65 Since his commentary was the standard for the following decades, this argument likely contributed to the belief that nuns should be enclosed because they are married to Christ.66

63 Megan Macrina Walker, "Can a Woman Be a Monk? On Gender and Monastic Identity," Cistercian Studies Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2007), 416. 64 James A. Brundage and Elizabeth M. Makowski, "Enclosure of Nuns: The Decretal Periculoso and Its Commentators," Journal of Medieval History 20 (2004), 154-155. 65 Elizabeth Makowski, Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators 1298-1545 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 60. 66 Ibid., 49.

55 When looking at the Constitutions of these various monastic and religious communities of women, it becomes clear that their identities as sponsae were also used as a means of control within their very own religious communities. Even into the late nineteenth century, as spousal imagery became more prominent in ritual, this imagery frequently appears in communities’ Constitutions to encourage discipline and conformity.

For example, the Constitutions of the Sisters of St. Francis Oldenburg, Indiana from 1890 invokes spousal imagery in admonitions such as: “the neatest cleanliness, as it becomes spouses of Christ, shall be observed by each Sister in her own person, about the and in the church.”67 In another place, the Constitutions say that the vow of chastity makes a religious a “spouse of Christ,” and as such, they should “avoid as much as possible all conversation with and company of the other sex and all unrestrained and indiscreet deportment, touch, sight and hearing.”68 In yet another place, the Constitutions say, “The Sisters shall accept, for the love of God, admonitions, corrections and humiliations … and beware of complaints, murmurings, and excuses, which are unbecoming to a Spouse of Christ.”69 There are at least three other examples of admonitions very similar to these which invoke these sisters’ identities as Christ’s spouses as a means of discipline.

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet’s Constitutions from 1884 features the same kind of disciplinary language as the Constitutions of the Oldenburg Franciscans.

For example, page twenty-seven includes the direction that

67 Constitutions of the Sisters of St. Francis of Oldenburg, 1890, PDF published electronically: 58. 68 Ibid., 62. 69 Ibid., 114.

56 The Sisters should remember that they have the honor of being the spouses of Jesus Christ, the temples of the Holy Ghost; and consequently should show the greatest respect towards one another; and treat one another on all occasions, and in all places, with all modesty, civility and decorum.”70

Relatedly, the Constitutions extols the virtue of humility, and to practice this virtue, sisters should show “perfect sweetness of temper in their conversations…submitting freely to the opinions and guidance of others, in manifesting an unfeigned esteem and condescension to one another, as…true spouses to Jesus Christ.”71

The 1905 Constitutions of the Sisters of St. Francis of the of Little Falls, Minnesota is yet another source that demonstrates this use of spousal imagery. There are connections made between being a spouse of Christ and maintaining cleanliness: “Poverty, however, should not prevent the Sisters to preserve the greatest cleanliness, not only in and in the Chapel, but also in the cells, as well as in the clothing, and in the house furniture; as is becoming a Spouse of Jesus Christ.”72

Spousal imagery is invoked again later, this time in reference to the apostolate, which seems to have been hospital work:

The Sisters must be careful to keep silence and preserve recollection as far as possible, in the rooms of the sick, therefore never to hold unnecessary conversation with the patients. When they have to speak, either in the rooms or the corridors, it should always be done in a low tone of voice, not to disturb and tire the patients. They should always conduct themselves in a becoming manner as Spouses of Jesus Christ.73

The 1913 Constitutions of the Sisters Servants of the of Monroe, Michigan contain still more examples of how spousal imagery was invoked in

70 Constitutions of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, 1884, PDF published electronically, 27. 71 Ibid., 16-17. 72 Constitutions of the Sisters of St Francis of the Immaculate Conception, 1905, PDF published electronically, 18. 73 Ibid., 62.

57 disciplinary ways. One striking example is where the Constitutions remind the sisters that their actions are constantly being watched by their Spouse, Jesus, which is why they must always have a “firm and constant custody of the senses, especially the eyes.”74 Several pages later, a different directive states that sisters are prohibited from reading any novels or other literature without permission from their superiors, for “any sister who indulges in the reading of light literature forfeits that intimate union existing between the religious and her Divine Spouse.”75

Each of these examples is strikingly similar in tone despite coming from different

Congregations in different decades in various parts of the United States. And remarkably,

I have only provided a sampling of the dozens of instances where bridal imagery is invoked in the nearly twenty constitutions I had access to that were written between 1872 and 1913.

3.5 Conclusion

The literalization of nuns as brides of Christ seems to have produced both positive and negative outcomes for sisters by the mid-twentieth century. It has been positive in the sense that some women religious, particularly in the later Middle Ages, found their identities as Christ’s brides to be empowering and encouraging. However, it is also apparent that from the time papal cloister was invoked, through the first part of the twentieth century, bridal imagery was also being used as a form of control; nuptial imagery functioned to domesticate sisters, convincing them that docility, cleanliness, soft-spokenness, and decorum are what it means to be brides of Christ. This disciplinary

74 Constitutions of the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Monroe, MI, 1911, PDF published electronically, 21. 75 Ibid., 22-23.

58 use of bridal imagery is, in my view, so unlike how nuptial metaphor functioned for early virgins in the Church and for great mystical writers like Bernard, for whom spousal imagery offered a life-giving way of understanding one’s intimate relationship with

Christ. The next chapter will explore how this imagery was eventually abandoned by many American women religious after Vatican II.

59 CHAPTER IV

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF BRIDAL IMAGERY AND THE FUNCTIONAL

UNDERSTANDING OF CELIBATE CHASTITY AFTER VATICAN II

4.1 Introduction

After centuries of increasingly vivid nuptial imagery in profession and clothing ceremonies, this imagery largely disappears from women’s religious communities in the

United States after the Second Vatican Council. The disappearance of bridal gowns at novitiate ceremonies and spousal references in profession rituals was the result of multiple factors, all of which will be discussed in this chapter. In general, it is clear that after the Council, women’s religious communities did not just reject the external symbols expressing nuptial metaphor: they rejected the metaphor itself, including the spirituality that went with it. This rejection of nuptial symbolism was, in my view, due to a complex number of reasons: embarrassment about the foreignness of certain distinctly Catholic symbols in American culture; concerns about nuptial metaphor being patriarchal; and especially a radical re-appraisal of the meaning of religious life and the vow of chastity that stemmed from the belief in the primacy of ministry.

4.2 The Sixties and the Disappearance of Bridal Imagery

Around the mid-1960s, many religious women’s communities in the United States started to abandon nuptial imagery in their profession and clothing ceremonies. Similarly, as communities began revising their constitutions in the late sixties and early seventies, they also deleted many of the nuptial references that had previously been there. Sister

Gretchen Trautman, Provincial of the United States Province of the Daughters of Mary

60 Immaculate (Marianist Sisters), states that when she entered the novitiate in 1967, she was among the first group of Marianist Sisters not to wear a bridal gown for the ceremony.1 In the official ceremonial for the Marianist Sisters in the United States, which was written in 1977, there is not a single nuptial allusion in the novitiate entrance or profession ceremonies.2 Likewise, while previous constitutions of the Marianist Sisters featured bridal imagery in several places, the revised constitutions from 1984 contain not a single nuptial reference.3

The Marianist Sisters are only one example of what was a larger trend of women religious abandoning nuptial imagery. Another example would be the Ursuline Sisters of

Mount St. Joseph in Kentucky, who abandoned the practice of wearing bridal gowns at novitiate ceremonies in the late 1960s.4 The Religious of the Sacred Heart (RSCJ), who in Chapter Three were noted for their prominent nuptial imagery, later deleted this imagery from their profession and novitiate ceremonies,5 as well as from their

Constitutions.6 The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet followed the same trend. Their constitutions in 1884 were notable for their use of bridal imagery, usually in disciplining ways,7 but their most recent Constitutions from 1985 contain not a single spousal

1 Sister Gretchen Trautman, FMI, interview with the author, March 1, 2018. 2 Marianist Ceremonial, 1977. 3 Rule of Life of the Congregation of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate (Marianists), 1984, PDF published electronically. 4 "Brides of Christ," Ursuline Sisters of Mount , August 10, 2012, accessed April 22, 2019, https://ursulinesmsj.org/blog/brides-of-christ. 5 Ceremonial of the Religious of the Sacred Heart, 1985, U.S. Catholic Special Collection, University of Dayton Roesch Library. 6 Constitutions of the Society of the Sacred Heart, 1982, PDF published electronically. 7 See page 57 of this thesis for examples of how this imagery was used

61 reference.8 Considering that the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet continues to be one of the largest congregations of sisters in the United States, their abandonment of nuptial imagery would have impacted a large percentage of American sisters overall.9

The disappearance of bridal imagery from these communities of sisters is all the more striking because this imagery had been featured so strongly in the postwar era of religious life. The book Visual Habits: Nuns, Feminism and American Postwar Popular

Culture describes how vocation literature aimed at teen girls in the postwar era highlighted sisters’ identities as brides of Christ. For example, the author writes that a common trope of postwar vocation literature was to describe entering the convent as

“keeping a date” with Jesus.10 This bridal imagery in vocation literature was useful—and extremely effective—because it painted a romantic picture of convent life at a time when women faced increasingly intense pressure to marry.11 However, by the late 1960s, sisters describe being “embarrassed” by this nuptial imagery, and it is no longer featured in vocation literature.12 The fact that bridal imagery was so prominent one decade and practically nonexistent the next is a striking example of how quickly changes were occurring in religious life and the itself, an institution that had been characterized by its resistance to change.13

8 Constitutions of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, 1985, PDF published electronically. 9 The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet currently have over 1400 vowed sisters in the United States. See “Who We Are,” Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, Accessed April 22, 2019, https://www.csjsl.org/about-us/who-we-are. 10 Rebecca Sullivan, Visual Habits: Nuns and American Postwar Popular Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 143. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 One illustration of how quickly change was occurring is from an anecdote shared by Sr. Gretchen Trautman. She describes how the first year she entered the convent, in 1967,

62 4.3 Reasons for Abandoning Bridal Symbolism

There were several reasons for abandoning bridal symbolism in these rituals, one of which was a general embarrassment about its sentimentality and antiquatedness. As previously mentioned, Visual Habits refers to the embarrassment that post-Conciliar sisters felt about “bride of Christ” imagery. Similarly, Patricia Wittberg in her book Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders writes that sisters began viewing nuptial symbolism as “embarrassing [and] outdated.”14 Other conversations I have had with sisters and former sisters from the late 1960s echo this feeling of embarrassment.15

These various sources that mention sisters’ embarrassment at nuptial symbolism do not explain why they are embarrassed. However, these sisters’ embarrassment about nuptial imagery may be an extension of the general dis-ease that many American

Catholics were feeling about their subculture identities in the 1960s, along with the external symbols that placed them in the “box” of the Catholic ghetto.16 Wearing bridal gowns at one’s novitiate ceremony is certainly a distinctly Catholic, and highly visible, symbol. In that sense, foregoing bridal gowns may have happened for the same reason

when her parents came to visit her at the convent, she was not allowed to eat with them; they ate in a separate room adjoining the sisters’ dining room. The following year, they visited her again and she was allowed to eat with them, but she and her parents ate in a separate room from the sisters’ dining room. And the year after that, her family visited her again and they ate with Gretchen and the rest of the community in the sisters’ dining room. 14 Patricia Wittberg, The Rise and Fall of Catholic Religious Orders: A Social Movement Perspective (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), 251. 15 Connie Ordower, conversation with the author, April 14, 2019. Connie is a former Marianist Sister who was in the same novitiate class as Sister Gretchen. She remembers a sister in the class before her feeling “mortified” by wearing a bridal gown at her novitiate ceremony. Connie was glad she did not have to wear one when it became time for her to become a novice. 16 Phillip Gleason, “What Made Catholic Identity a Problem?” Marianist Award Lectures (January 2004): 11-12. Accessed April 22, 2019, https://ecommons.udayton.edu/uscc_marianist_award/12/

63 that many sisters stopped wearing the religious habit, which one sister referred to as a

“sub-culture costume.”17 Bridal gowns, like the habit, was an external symbol of a distinctly Catholic identity that was a “barrier to the assimilation of religious to the surrounding culture.”18 It was a unique symbol that was probably seen as bizarre by non-

Catholic American society. Thus, at least some American sisters were just as concerned about American society’s view of these nuptial symbols as the rest of American Catholics were about external signs of their Catholic subculture.

Relatedly, giving up the bridal gown may have also been part of the general trend after the Council of women religious de-emphasizing symbols that distinguished them from the rest of the Catholic . After Vatican II’s pronouncement that all members of the Church—religious, clergy, and lay—are called to holiness, men and women religious began to be concerned about theology and symbols that set religious apart from lay people.19 This concern was another reason why a large portion of U.S. women religious abandoned the religious habit.20 Thus, the traditional symbol of the nun as the bride of

17 Jeanne Reidy, “Nuns in Ordinary Clothes,” in The New Nuns, ed. M. Charles Borromeo Muckenhirn (New York: Signet Books, 1967), 51. 18 Sandra Schneiders, writing about the religious habit in New Wineskins: Reimagining Religious Life Today (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 26. 19 Gabrielle Bibeau, “Visibility and Assimilation: Adoption of Secular by U.S. Sisters after Vatican II,” unpublished paper, 8. In reading primary sources and interviewing sisters for this paper, I found that “by far the most commonly cited reason to adopt secular clothing was to avoid separation from the laity and modern society as a foreign and elite class of the Church.” 20 New Wineskins, 26. Schneiders writes that the habit was “the symbol of an implied superiority and uniqueness” compared to the rest of the laity. Although I could not find a study on the exact numbers of sisters who still wear habits, Elizabeth Kuhns in her book The Habit writes that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) represents 80% of all Catholic sisters in the United States, and their member congregations mainly do not wear habits. Thus, it seems that a majority of U.S. sisters do not wear habits. See Kuhns, The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 167.

64 Christ—the veil—stopped being worn by the majority of U.S. sisters. It is quite possible, then, that the abandonment of nuptial imagery in public ritual was included as part of the general trend of de-emphasizing symbols that made religious distinct from the laity, for the bridal gowns at novitiate, the veil, and adopting the title of sponsa Christi are all symbols unique to women religious and not the laity as a whole.

Some sisters since the Council have also cited feminist reasons for abandoning nuptial symbolism. Sister Sandra Schneiders, I.H.M., writes in her 2001 book Selling All that some sisters became suspicious of nuptial metaphor because they saw it as patriarchal. To these sisters, nuptial imagery is primarily an “attempt by the Church to assimilate unmarried women [religious sisters] into the patriarchal marriage structure.”21

Chapter three of this thesis demonstrates that there is truth to this suspicion, particularly when the Church hierarchy began citing nuns’ symbolic identity as brides of Christ to support strict enclosure.22 Although Schneiders points to feminist sensibility as one reason for denying nuptial symbolism, it does not appear to have been the main reason for abandoning this symbolism in the first place. None of the primary documents I have seen from the mid to late 1960s cite feminist reasons for abandoning this imagery, even though these primary sources were written after the hugely influential Feminine Mystique brought feminism to the consciousness of many people, including sisters, when it was first published in 1963. Rather, the predominate reasons at the time seem to have been what were already mentioned—embarrassment and the desire to de-emphasize unique symbols of Catholicism and religious life. Although feminist concerns may be one of the

21 Sandra Schneiders, Selling All: Commitment, Consecrated Celibacy, and Community in Catholic Religious Life (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), 177. 22 See page 56 of this thesis. Link to page number in this thesis for this reference

65 ways that women religious reinforce their rejection of nuptial symbolism, it does not seem to have been a primary reason for rejecting this symbolism in the first place.

4.4 Centrality of Ministry

So far, this chapter has focused primarily on how and why the external signs of nuptial metaphor—particularly bridal gowns, the veil, and other ritual enactments in profession and novitiate ceremonies—have been abandoned after Vatican II. However, it was not just the external manifestations of nuptial metaphor that were abandoned, but the metaphor itself, particularly the mystical spirituality from which the external symbols originally evolved. This abandonment resulted from a series of shifts after Vatican II in women religious’ understanding of the value of “the world” and ministry in the world as the meaning and purpose of religious life.

Although the emphasis on ministry as the foundation of religious life began in the

1960s, religious life in the United States was already strongly apostolic, and had been so for decades. Indeed, women religious congregations in the U.S. were defined by their apostolates and institutionalized ministries well before the 1960s. This was certainly true of women religious. Beginning after World War I, the emphasis on parochial schools for the growing Catholic population in the United States put increasing demands on women religious to be school teachers.23 This trend would intensify during the Baby Boom after

World War II, when the growing numbers of Catholic children demanded more Catholic

23 Patricia Byrne, “In the Parish But Not of It: Sisters,” in Transforming Parish Ministry, ed. By R. Scott Appleby, Patricia Byrne, Debra Campbell, and Jay P. Dolan (Crossroads: New York, 1989), 117.

66 schools staffed by sisters.24 And for sisters who were not teachers, the majority of them staffed Catholic hospitals.25 The rising demand for sisters in these various ministries in the twentieth century ended up cementing sisters as the “labor force” of the Catholic

Church.26

Although sisters had active lives as teachers and healthcare workers, they understood that the primary purpose of their lives was to live a life of holiness and

“religious perfection,” and the apostolate was secondary to this purpose.27 As a result, religious sisters were expected to observe a strict horarium of prayers and community exercises, as well as to be separated from “the world,” presumably to be protected from its evil influences. Before the changes in religious life that came after Vatican II, sisters were bound by what was essentially a modification of cloister that existed to isolate them from the rest of society.28 For example, many communities of sisters were not allowed to read newspapers; they were required by to have a companion with them when they left their houses; even their mail was opened and read by their superiors before the sisters received it.29 Likewise, sisters were cautioned against having too much contact with other adults, such as parents of school children, for fear that such contact may

“defile [their] minds.”30 All of these regulations effectively “trained [sisters] to view the sacred and secular as ‘separate and distinct realities’” and to view the “world” with

24 Ibid., 135-6. The author writes that the Sisters of the Presentation in San Francisco opened six schools between 1947 and 1951, “which was as many in four years as they had in the preceeding twenty-two.” 25 Ibid., 196. 26 Ibid., 117. 27 Amy Koehlinger, The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 2007), 25. 28 Byrne, 128. 29 Ibid., 129-131. 30 A sister qtd. in Ibid., 131.

67 suspicion and wariness.31 The conflicting demands of avoiding contact with the world and the need to be apostolically vital created a tension in many sisters between their commitment and love for their ministries, which provided a “sense of purpose,” and the expectation that they abide by their community’s rules.32

This stance of suspicion towards the world would begin to change in the decades before Vatican II with a growing movement of theologians and ministers in the Catholic

Church recognizing the goodness of “the world.” This positive stance towards the world would be inscribed in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,

Gaudium et Spes, in 1965. One striking example of this positive stance towards the world is in paragraph thirty nine of this Constitution, which reads: “the expectation of a new earth must not weaken but rather stimulate our concern for cultivating this one. For here grows the body of a new human family, a body which even now is able to give some kind of foreshadowing of the .” This document’s statement on the world’s ability to

“foreshadow” the Kingdom implies that there is good in the world, not solely in the

Church, and it offers a striking contrast to the strict separation between sacred and secular that had been inscribed into the lives of religious sisters. Likewise, this document, and this excerpt in particular, emphasizes the need for the Church to be in dialogue with, and active in, the world itself.

As a result of this growing belief in the world’s goodness and in the necessity of being actively involved in the world, sisters began to reassess their previously separate and negative stance towards the world. They questioned their previously cloistered lifestyle, and they began to desire a more active role within the world by embracing a

31 Koehlinger, 25. 32 Ibid., 26.

68 greater variety of ministries than had been open to them previously. In this light, it is no accident that Cardinal Suenens’ 1962 book about the apostolate of women religious was called The Nun in the World. In this book, Suenens spoke to the tension that many sisters felt between the demands of religious life, such as the observance of their rules and community prayers, and the demands of their apostolate. He wrote that sisters should conceive of the religious life and the apostolic life as being nearly identical; as a result, sisters should not be concerned about “defending the religious life against the encroachment of the apostolate.”33 Rather, as he says, “the only reason for consecrating one’s life to God for the of the world is to achieve a greater apostolic radiancy than one could achieve in the world.”34

This assertion by Suenens is critically important; rather than a life of holiness or religious perfection, he is arguing that the reason for religious life’s existence is related to the apostolate, namely apostolic radiancy.35 His assertion about the apostolic purpose of religious life became hugely influential: his book is described as being “devoured” by

American sisters,36 “passed around in communities, assigned to women in formation, and placed on countless reading lists.”37 An article in the popular periodical Review for

Religious from 1964 lists The Nun in the World as the second most commonly cited

33 Léon Joseph Cardinal Suenens, The Nun in the World: New Dimensions in the Modern Apostolate, trans. Geoffrey Stevens (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1962), 62. 34 Ibid. 35 Admittedly, I am not sure what he means by “radiancy.” This is a translation from French, which I did not have access to. Perhaps it means apostolic witness or vitality or efficacy. Nevertheless, it is a striking statement. 36 Byrne, 157. 37 Koehlinger, 38-9.

69 resource influencing sisters’ views about religious life, second only to Review for

Religious itself.38

This desire to be more present in the world inevitably led religious sisters to value ministry’s place in their lives even more than they previously did, to the extent that the rest of their lives began to be organized around, and subordinated to, their ministries. In

Selling All, Sandra Schneiders writes that the traditionally monastic elements of religious life, which included common prayer, some form of cloister, and a community horarium, changed as a result of the “reappropriation of ministry as intrinsic to [apostolic religious] life itself.”39 These changes were made because these customs “impeded efficiency in apostolic occupations.”40 This relaxing of traditional elements of community life gave way to a wave of experimentation in community living that began to occur in the 1960s.

An article in Newsweek from 1966 explores how sisters’ living situations began to change to accommodate sisters’ desired ministries, particularly ministries with the poor.41 The author describes a group of three sisters in Milwaukee who moved out of their large convent and into a house in the slums in order to “get out onto the streets to share the lives of people of the neighborhood.”42 These changes in community living are all indications that ministry had become so central to the lives of religious sisters that their entire lives of prayer and community were structured to enhance sisters’ ministerial effectiveness.

38 Mary Wilma, “Attitudes of Religious Towards Change,” Review for Religious, 23 no. 2 (1964), 194. 39 Selling All, 146. 40 Byrne, 161. 41 Michael Novak, “The New Nuns,” Saturday Evening Post (July 30, 1966), 66. 42 Ibid., 22.

70 As a result of these shifts in sisters’ understanding of the world and belief in the primacy of ministry, religious women in the United States began to radically change their conception of the apostolate as they shifted away from traditional works of teaching and and towards a variety of ministries, most notably direct service with the poor. In 1965, for example, around sixty percent of women religious in the United States were teachers. Ten years later, this percentage dropped to forty percent, and sisters’ notion of “educational ministry” broadened to include social justice advocacy.43 Sisters became involved in a variety of ministries that were uncommon or impossible in the years just before the council, such as working with people addicted to drugs and alcohol, as well as with prisoners.44 Although it should be noted that some sisters in the past did do some of this direct service to the poor, such as visiting prisoners,45 it was a small minority compared to the overall trend of sisters to specifically be teachers and nurses. Thus, the fact that a majority of sisters in 1975 were not teaching in schools was a major shift from what had been the status quo for so long. This shift in their apostolic works were all part of what Claretian Father John Lozano calls the emergence of a “radically apostolic form of religious life for women.”46

43 Jeannine Grammick, “From Good Sisters to Prophetic Women,” in Midwives of the Future: American Sisters Tell Their Story, ed. Ann Patrick Ware (Leaven Press: Kansas City, , 1985), 232, 44 Ibid. 45 For example, the in Chicago were known to visit prisoners as part of their ministry, beginning in 1846; however, it is likely that they did not continue this type of ministry as the pressure upon sisters to be teachers and hospital staff increased. See Margaret McGuinness, Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America (New York University Press: New York, 2013), 53. 46 John Manuel Lozano, “The Theology of the ‘Essential Elements’ in the Teaching of the Church,” in Religious Life in the US: The New Dialogue, ed. Robert Daly (Paulist Press: New York, 1984), 102.

71 Indeed, ministry had become so important to the understanding of religious life that some sisters began to construct an entire theology of religious life centered on the primacy of ministry. One of these sisters is Margaret Brennan, who had been the Superior

General of the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary community in Monroe,

Michigan. In an article from a 1984 edited volume, well after these ministry-centric trends in religious life began to occur, Brennan proposes a “theology of mission” as the paradigm for religious life as opposed to the “theology of consecration” that had been posed by Church documents since the Council. Brennan explains that the theology of consecration, “separates and stratifies the religious from the other ;” it

“sees the social impact of the vows in terms of witness to values that challenge society, stressing the ‘being’ of religious over the ‘doing;’” and upholds the as “a way of life that foretells the hereafter rather than influencing the transformation of society.”47

In contrast, Brennan elucidates what she calls a “theology of mission” to explain the religious life, and she says that this theology has been adopted by most U.S. women religious. She explains that a theology of mission:

is aware more deeply that religious life does not belong to the hierarchical structures of the Church, but rather to its life of mission and holiness. Within this understanding, women religious have sought to find and experience the meaning of their lives in what this mission and holiness calls them to today. Religious re- interpret their lives in terms of the Church in mission, and as a result, [they] find that their understanding of ministry, their pursuit of holiness, their living of the vows and community life must be grounded in this realization.48

47 Margaret Brennan, “Reflections of a Woman Religious,” in Religious Life in the US: The New Dialogue, ed. Robert Daly (Paulist Press: New York, 1984), 135. 48 Ibid., 136.

72 In other words, a theology of mission entails that women religious derive the meaning of their entire lives—community, vows, prayer, ministry—from the viewpoint of “the

Church in mission.” I do not believe these of religious life that Brennan explains are necessarily exclusive, even if she thinks they are. However, Brennan’s viewpoint reflects this overall trend of women religious in the United States since

Vatican II to place ministry at the center of their lives, to the point where all other aspects of their religious lives are defined in its shadow.

4.5 Availability for Mission: the “Function” of Celibate Chastity

As post-Conciliar religious increasingly emphasized ministry as the focus of their lives, other distinct aspects of religious life—particularly the vows—became less emphasized. One sister writes that as the renewal of religious life progressed after the

Council, fewer people were writing about the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Instead, it was ministry that “became a vital concern to nuns’ coalitions.”49 And even when people did write about the vows, they typically wrote about them in relation to the apostolate. This was certainly true of the vow of celibate chastity, which began to be interpreted as primarily about availability for ministry. This view of celibacy is a result of the central importance of ministry, for if ministry is the reason for religious life’s existence, then it follows that the meaning of the vow of chastity (along with the other vows) would be defined and evaluated in light of its relationship to ministry.

One sister who commonly spoke about the vow of celibate chastity as being about availability and freedom for ministry was Sister Marie Augusta Neal, who wrote many

49 Grammick, 232.

73 articles about religious life in the years after the Council.50 In 1971, she offered this view when she wrote:

the vow of chastity in celibacy is…an essential means for those radically committed to sharing actions associated with the relief of human oppression so that they can be hostages, can move when needed and, in general, take the risks necessitated by the problems without endangering others.51

Neal sees the vow of chastity primarily as being about availability; that is, since celibacy frees a religious from the obligations of a family, religious are available to go wherever the mission calls.

Availability and freedom for ministry are common phrases used to describe the vow of chastity in post-Conciliar sources. One sister, Mary Evangeline McSloy, who was the assistant president of the Sisters Formation Conference, went so far as to suggest in a

1967 article in Newsweek that the traditional vows of —poverty, chastity, and obedience—should be replaced by a single vow of availability.52 When examining trends in religious life in 1969, one male religious writes that “consecrated chastity…will be better understood as a service to the people,” and that it implies “direct and immediate availability.”53 Nearly twenty years later, in 1987, this explanation remained influential, as seen in one sister’s assertion that celibacy frees religious men and women for mission, for “vowed celibates are enabled to move, to respond to the needs of God’s people with a

50 Several books in my works cited list contain articles that she wrote, namely Widening the Dialogue: Reflections on Evangelica Testificatio, The New Nuns, The Changing Sister and Religious Life in the U.S. Church: The New Dialogue. 51 Marie Augusta Neal, “Sociological Implications for Renewal in Religious Life,” in Widening the Dialogue: Reflections on Evangelica Testificatio (Canadian Religious Conference: Ottawa, 1974), 82. 52 Newsweek December 25, 1967. 53 G. Pinard, “The Religious in the ‘World of the Twenty-Fifth Hour,” in New Trends in Religious Life (Canadian Religious Conference: Ottawa, 1969), 90.

74 facility not possible for most people.”54 Today, the vow of chastity is still frequently interpreted as being about availability for mission. One young sister, Tracey Horan of the

Sisters of Providence of St. Mary of the Woods, writes in an article in Global Sisters

Report that for her, the vow of chastity is a “yes to a love without bounds, a broader sense of availability to those around me in my ministry and community.”55 Although she does not use the term “availability,” in a recent interview on the radio program 1A, Sister

Simone Campbell, who is an influential sister in the social justice movement, essentially offers the same explanation about the vow of chastity as providing the freedom to be more available for ministry.56

By interpreting the vow of chastity as primarily about availability, the vow of chastity became primarily functional. For sisters after the Council, the vow of chastity no longer had meaning in itself; rather, it existed to facilitate the apostolate. Marie Augusta

Neal explicitly states this functional view of the vow in 1971 when she writes that,

“chastity, for religious, has no value in itself outside its function for realizing the

Kingdom” (emphasis added).57

This functional understanding of chastity had a significant impact on nuptial spirituality, because once the vow of celibate chastity began to be interpreted as purely functional, nuptial spirituality became untenable. Once sisters began to view their celibacy as simply about freedom for ministry, nuptial metaphor was no longer necessary

54 Juliana Casey, “Toward a Theology of the Vows,” in Turning Points in Religious Life, ed. Carol Quigley (Glazier: Wilmington, DE, 1987), 107. 55 Tracey Horan, “Saying ‘yes’ to a Priceless ‘Nun Cut,’” http://www.globalsistersreport.org/column/horizons/spirituality/priceless-nun-cut-50236 56 “Can the Catholic Church Heal Itself?” from 1A, February 21, 2019, accessed Aprl 22, 2019 https://the1a.org/shows/2019-02-21/can-the-catholic-church-heal-itself Relevant portion begins around 36:40. 57 Neal, 81.

75 for explaining why they lived celibate lives. In this post-Conciliar conception of the vow of chastity, sisters’ chastity did not result from their identities as brides of Christ; rather, it was a result of the needs of the apostolate. Celibate chastity existed to make sisters more available for ministry; it was no longer about living a primary love relationship with

God.

4.6 Remnants of Nuptial Symbolism in U.S. Women’s Religious Life

Curiously, one of the nuptial symbols that did not disappear after the Council is that of the ring, which was commonly received at perpetual profession. Currently, the vast majority of women’s religious communities still receive a ring at either temporary or perpetual profession, and the common practice is to wear this ring all the time.58 On April

11, 2019, I polled a group of women religious under the age of fifty about their communities’ practices regarding rings at profession. I received responses from sisters in seventeen different religious communities of various sizes and in different parts of the

United States, and I even received a response from one sister in Australia. Each of these sisters’ communities still receive rings at either temporary or perpetual profession, although perpetual profession is the most common practice.

Although only one of these eighteen sisters explicitly stated that the ring was a nuptial symbol,59 the language of the other sisters still points to the intimacy of relationship and fidelity that nuptial symbolism traditionally evoked. Some of the sisters who responded to my poll included text from their ritual for receiving the ring. For

58 I can safely say that this is the vast majority of women’s religious communities because I have never heard of a community of sisters that on’t receive a ring at either perpetual or temporary profession. 59 It is notable, though, that the one sister who did write that the ring was a nuptial symbol was the only sister who responded that lives outside of the United States, in Australia. Anna Nicholls Facebook post, April 11, 2019.

76 example, in the ritual of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary of Villa Maria, Pennsylvania, the provincial says the following words as the newly professed receives her ring:

“Receive this ring as a symbol of God’s love for you and of your dedication to the service of God’s people as a member of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary.”60 Sisters in other communities wrote about what their ring means to them or to their communities. Most of the sisters who responded said that the ring is a sign of their commitment to God and to their Congregation. Others were more specific. One sister, a Dominican, wrote that the ring is a sign of her “total offering of self to Jesus and congregation till death.”61 Another sister, a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, wrote that the ring means “I am totally

‘taken’ (in a Eucharistic way?) I belong fully to God and my FSPA sisters.”62 In my community, the Daughters of Mary Immaculate (Marianist Sisters), the silver ring we receive at perpetual profession is a sign of a sister’s “definitive consecration to God and of her alliance with Mary.”63

The continued practice of receiving rings at profession as a sign of religious consecration and commitment suggests that nuptial symbolism in religious life is not completely dead. Rather, some of the essential elements this symbolism conveyed—love for God, perpetual commitment, belonging to Christ and to one’s community—remain intact in women’s religious life, even if these descriptors of religious consecration are not conveyed as loudly as the centrality of ministry. While women religious have been defined by their availability in the post-Vatican II era, the profession ring continues to be,

60 Eilis McCulloch, Facebook post, April 11, 2019. 61 Lystra Long Facebook post, April 11. 62 Julia Walsh Facebook post, April 11, 2019. The parentheses were part of her post. 63 FMI Rule of Life I.14

77 paradoxically, a sign of a sister’s unavailability. She is not available to marry, for she has already claimed herself as belonging to God and to her community.

4.7 Conclusion: The Problem with Availability

One of the problems with interpreting the vow of chastity as availability is that the presumption it is based upon—that a celibate religious is more available for ministry than other (presumably married) people—is not necessarily true. Kenneth Westhues points out the inaccuracy of this presumption in his book The Religious Community and the Secular

State, published in 1969. He explains that now that families are having less children, married men and women are even more available than in times past to work in various ministries, including religious ministries, which are now more of an option for laity since the Council.64 Currently, the large number of married lay people with children in social services, teaching, and pastoral ministry adds credence to his assertion. For example, in

2012, eighty-six percent of the 37, 929 non-ordained ecclesial ministers were lay people, whereas fourteen percent were vowed religious.65 And of the lay people who comprised this eighty-six percent, seventy-one percent were married.66 Therefore the vast majority of non-ordained ecclesial ministers working in parishes are married, far outnumbering the number of vowed religious.

Describing the vow of chastity as availability has typically been compared to the lack of availability of a married person, as if the only life options are religious life or married life. However, this assertion ignores the fact that there are record numbers of

64 Kenneth Westhues, The Religious Community and the Secular State (Lippincott: Philadelphia, 1969), 119. 65 “Lay Ecclesial Ministers in the United States,” (Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate: Washington DC, February 2015), 5. https://cara.georgetown.edu/lemsummit.pdf 66 Ibid., 21.

78 people in the United States choosing to remain single.67 When religious men and women began writing about the vow of chastity as availability in the 1960s and 70s, perhaps they could not conceive of singleness being such a commonly chosen lifestyle. Of course, one cannot know how many of these single people are celibate, but celibacy in itself does not allow for greater freedom for ministry. Any of these single people could be sexually active but still readily available to move at a moment’s notice, to work countless hours per week, and to do the kind of radical work with the marginalized that women religious have been doing since the Council. Therefore, celibate chastity in itself does not necessarily make a religious more available than either a married person or a single person.

It is also a false assumption that the vow of celibate chastity will automatically make religious men and women totally free for ministry. This vow, like all the vows, implies commitment to a religious community which sometimes inhibits one’s freedom for ministry. For example, a sister could be free for decades, moving from mission to mission, doing very good work, until she is suddenly elected to the leadership team of her congregation. Now her full-time job must be service to her congregation, not to the ministry she was doing. Furthermore, prayer is a central aspect of religious life, and setting aside time to pray each day is imperative for religious. Allowing time for prayer in one’s day inevitably entails taking time away from one’s ministry. Similarly, community life is an important aspect of religious life, and presence in the community at meals, prayer, and for quality time is important for building up the life of the community. In this

67“Unmarried and Single Americans,” United States Census Bureau, September 2017, Accessed April 22, 2019, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for- features/2017/single-americans-week.html

79 instance, community life can also make a religious less “available” for ministry. Each of these scenarios can, and do, happen often.

At this point, the question must be asked: why take a vow of celibate chastity as a religious if it is solely about availability for ministry when one can be just as—or even more—available for ministry as a single person? The answer to this question is not favorable for religious life if the presumption is that celibate chastity only exists for ministry. If someone enters religious life believing that the primary meaning of the vow of chastity is availability, he or she will likely be disappointed to find that the demands of community life and religious consecration do not make them as available as they thought.

All these considerations suggest that if religious life is to continue being a meaningful part of the Church, then the vow of chastity must have meaning in itself apart from any consideration of its function.

80 CONCLUSION

REVIVING A SENSE OF THE HEREAFTER

5.1 Introduction

I ended the previous chapter with the conclusion that the vow of celibate chastity has meaning in itself apart from any function it may serve, particularly the presumption that the vow frees religious to be more available for ministry. To conclude this thesis, I would like to argue that the nuptial-mystical tradition exemplified by Bernard of

Clairvaux can help religious men and women appreciate the eschatological nature of the vow of chastity, which was why people in the beginning of the Church embraced a life of virginity in the first place. The entire nuptial-mystical tradition of the Church suggests that the meaning of this vow is a total commitment of self to God that is akin to human marriage, and this commitment witnesses to the union that all will have with God in the

Kingdom to come. I believe that men and women religious can embrace a nuptial mystical understanding of celibate chastity that is not patriarchal, but that is grounded in witnessing to the next life while also being apostolically fruitful.

5.2 Nuptial Mysticism as Non-Patriarchal

As this thesis mentioned in chapter four, one of the reasons that many women religious continue to reject nuptial mysticism is because they believe it is inherently patriarchal, particularly since nuns as “brides of Christ” has been invoked in ways that enforced cloister and convent conformity. I believe this is a valid critique: nuptial imagery has operated as a patriarchal tool to control and domesticate sisters in the past.

However, I would argue that nuptial metaphor was not necessarily patriarchal in the early

81 centuries of the Church because it had been embraced by both women and men religious.

Bernard’s nuptial mysticism demonstrates this point, since his entire nuptial-mystical theology derived from his experience as a celibate man and was directed to an entire group of celibate men. There is no indication that Bernard was writing these Sermons on the Song of Songs with women religious in mind; rather, he made it clear that Christ was the spouse of these men, his fellow monks.1

The example of Bernard and other male Cistercians, as well as John of the Cross,

Origen, Gregory, and other holy men who found nuptial mysticism meaningful strongly suggests that nuptial metaphor does not—and I would argue, should not—only apply to women. In my estimation, nuptial mysticism is in danger of being patriarchal when it is narrowly applied to women religious, because this narrow application takes what is meant to be a spiritual metaphor to a literal level. This view is a major component of chapter three of this thesis: it was the literalization of nuns as the Brides of Christ that enabled the patriarchal abuse of nuptial spirituality.

Going forward, I would like to challenge religious men to think critically about how they perceive nuptial mysticism in their understanding of the vow of celibate chastity. In my work on this thesis, I have spoken to more than a few male religious who believe that nuptial metaphor only applies to women. Some of these men admit they are uncomfortable with the idea of themselves having a nuptial-mystical relationship with

God. On one level, I think this discomfort with the idea of themselves as a “spouse of

Christ” is because they are men and Christ is male. Discomfort for this reason conveys a quite literal understanding of nuptial metaphor itself, which, as this thesis has already

1 See page 11 of this thesis.

82 mentioned, is a spiritual reality that transcends gender. On another level, if calling themselves a “spouse of God” in general causes discomfort, it may also be due to a hardened notion that God is gendered male, which is problematic because this discomfort stems from literal notions both of nuptial metaphor and of God’s gender.

5.3 Eschatological Nature of Religious Life

In the publication Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, Jesuit Michael McCarthy writes about the eschatological nature of the vow of celibate chastity, namely that celibate chastity itself is a sign of hope in the world to come. In exploring this eschatological understanding of celibate chastity, however, he also argues that many Christians— including men and women religious—pay very little attention to this world to come, to the eschaton. This lack of attention is largely a result of Western secular culture functioning as if this life is all that matters or exists. McCarthy borrows from the thought of Charles Taylor when he writes:

since the Reformation, religious culture in the West has tended to identify flourishing in this life as its exclusive aim, and references to anything beyond that have fallen into suspicion…[in an] ‘immanent revolt’ against a religiosity that had been perceived to exaggerate the transcendent. Taylor argues that it is a mark of the ‘secular age’ in which we live that people—even religious people—can now live without reference to the transcendent.2

He argues that if religious men and women participate in this “immanent revolt” against transcendent religiosity, this poses a problem for the vow of chastity, because if this world is all that matters, then “the kind of renunciation that constitutes the vow of chastity makes very little sense.”3

2 Michael McCarthy, “Let me love more passionately: religious celibacy in a secular age,” in Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 43 no.2 (July 2011): 9. 3 Ibid.

83 I would argue that men and women religious have sometimes fallen into secular society’s preoccupation with immanence. One survey of religious men and women in

Canada in 1968 found that religious “are of the opinion that eschatology should begin here below and take the form of earthly happiness…[for] the Gospel is the Good News of salvation here below.”4 Similarly, another male religious wrote about how religious should embrace the secular and even become “secularized” themselves, because the

Church resides in the temporal order. He also points to how the secular realm has become sacralized, and that much of what is regarded as sacred within the Church is viewed as

“‘churchy,’ pietistic, superstitious, or irrelevant.”5

The term “irrelevant” is noteworthy because in my research of post-Vatican II sources related to religious life, relevance to the modern world frequently appeared as a major concern. For example, Sister Mary Luke Tobin, who was the congregational leader for the Sisters of Loretto and one of the few female attendees of Vatican II, wrote in 1964 that religious life, like the Church itself, should seek to be relevant to the modern world.6

Three years later, Sister M. Charles Borromeo echoed Tobin’s call for relevance in an article titled, “Can Sisters Be Relevant?” in which she makes the case that sisters must be relevant to the modern world so they can effectively preach the Word of God.7

This lack of attention to the eschaton has a profound impact upon the meaning of religious life, which has been understood as being an eschatological life since its

4 Louise Roy, “Facts Concerning the Research,” in New Trends in Religious Life (Canadian Religious Conference: Ottawa, 1969), 16. 5 Richard Reichert, “Secularization and Renewal,” Review for Religious 27 no. 5 (September 1968): 857. 6 McGuinness, 166. 7 M. Charles Borromeo Muckenhirn, “Can Sisters Be Relevant?” in The New Nuns, ed. M. Charles Borromeo Muckenhirn (New York: Signet Books, 1967), 46.

84 beginning. As one male religious writes in 1984, the eschatological understanding of religious life is often “ignored” because it “has come in many minds to denote something vague, distant, static and theoretical.”8 This is despite not only the importance of the eschatological dimension of religious life in the history of the Church, but also the teaching of Vatican II that affirms this understanding. Indeed, Gaudium et Spes clearly states that religious life gives a "clear witness to the desire for a heavenly home and to keep that desire green among the human family.”9

As McCarthy writes, for religious to embrace this eschatological understanding of their vocation, they are risking being perceived as being “entirely other to the world,” and even “pathological,” both of which are the opposite of relevant.10 This perception of otherness stems from the fact that religious life, as an eschatological life, involves embracing a lifestyle and an imagination that is entirely foreign to the secular world.

However, McCarthy quickly points out that this “otherness” is what characterized Jesus and the ancient ascetics of Christianity.11

5.4 Nuptial Mysticism and Apostolic Fruitfulness

In 1964, one sister in leadership in her community wrote to her sisters that they needed to focus on “the love of man [sic] and of God—in this order.”12 She wrote this to her sisters to challenge any “isolationist tendencies” in sisters’ spiritualties that emphasized intimate relationship with God to the exclusion of addressing the “social problems and challenges of our decade,” as if to put God first necessarily implies

8 A. Paul Dominic, “Apocalyptic Sources of Religious Life,” Review for Religious 43 no.2 (1984): 193. 9 Qtd. in Ibid., 191. 10 McCarthy, 9. 11 Ibid., 10. 12 Byrne, 157.

85 ignoring these social issues.13 In this conception of “man” first and God second, the intimate relationship with God that is fundamental to nuptial-mystical spirituality might seem narrow, pietistic, or even individualistic, potentially leading religious men and women to care only for their spiritual relationship with God and not for their suffering neighbor.

I would argue, rather, that nuptial mysticism in its traditional sense can enhance one’s love for others, since an intimate love relationship with God inevitably spills over into love for one’s neighbor. This understanding of nuptial mysticism was strong in

Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs. As he talks about the Bride and

Groom of the Song as symbolizing the love of the soul for God, and vice versa, he frequently writes about the fruitfulness of the Bride as a result of this mutual love. One of the most moving examples of the fruitfulness of the relationship between the Bride as the soul and the Bridegroom as Christ is in his ninth sermon on the Song of Songs:

While the bride is conversing about the Bridegroom, he, as I have said, suddenly appears, yields to her desire by giving her a kiss, and so brings to fulfillment those words of the psalm: "You have granted him his heart's desire, not denied him what his lips entreated." The filling up of her breasts is a proof of this. For so great is the potency of that holy kiss, that no sooner has the bride received it than she conceives and her breasts grow rounded with the fruitfulness of conception; bearing witness, as it were, with this milky abundance. Men with an urge to frequent prayer will have experience of what I say. Often enough when we approach the altar to pray our hearts are dry and lukewarm. But if we persevere, there comes an unexpected infusion of grace, our breast expands as it were, and our interior is filled with an overflowing love; and if somebody should press upon it then, this milk of sweet fecundity would gush forth in streaming richness.14

In this paragraph, the love relationship between the bride and the bridegroom, between the soul and Christ, is not a selfish relationship that is shared between the two of

13 Ibid. 14 Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon #9.7.

86 them; rather, it is a relationship that bears fruit to others. The kiss of the Bridegroom leads to the swelling of the Bride’s breasts with milk, which I understand as symbolizing the swelling of the heart with love for Christ. However, this love does not stay contained in the soul; rather, it cannot help but gush forth as milk from a full breast, to be love poured out and shared with others. If we apply this sense of fruitfulness to the apostolic religious life of men and women, I believe that the relationship of divine intimacy as traditionally expressed in nuptial mysticism can lead to apostolic fruitfulness. This living of an intentionally intimate, exclusive relationship with God cannot help but be poured out into love for others in an actively apostolic way.

To end this conclusion, I would like to point to Matthew 25 as an illustration of how the eschatological nature of nuptial mysticism relates to care and love for one’s neighbor, especially the poor. Matthew 25 is well-known for Christ’s foretelling of the separation of the sheep and the goats at the end of time based upon those who did or did not care for “the least of these.”15 However, it is arguably less well-known that Matthew

25 begins with the parable of the ten virgins who wait for the Bridegroom’s return.16

Early Christian virgins pointed to this parable as an indication that virginity is both a characteristic of one’s spousal relationship with Christ and a sign of watchfulness for

Christ’s return and the coming of the Kingdom.17 The key aspect of this parable in relation to the final parable of judgment is not just the necessity of waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom, but more specifically being ready for his return by “following the

15 Mt. 25:40 16 The New Revised Standard Version translates the Greek word parthenois as “young women” rather than “virgins.” However, the Church has traditionally interpreted parthenois in this parable as meaning virgins. See the commentary on Matthew 25 by Ulrich Luz, “Matthew 21-28,” (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2005). Project Muse: 244. 17 Ibid., 236.

87 command of Christ in…constant, complete, and undivided obedience.”18 And as Jesus states in verse forty, this command is to care for the “least of these.”

For religious, a nuptial spirituality and understanding of celibate chastity may enhance this eschatological watchfulness. And it is this watchfulness, lived in the context of an intimate relationship with God, that compels us to live Jesus’ command to care for

“the least of these.” Nuptial mysticism reminds vowed religious of the true reason for their virginity—it is a sign of hope in the world to come, a hope that demands living this life the way Jesus lived his.

18 Ibid., 244.

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