MEMORY AND HAGIOGRAPHY: THE FORMATION OF THE MEMORY OF THREE THIRTEENTH-CENTURY FEMALE *

Dávid Falvay

All memory, whether “individual,” “collective,” or “historical” is memory for something, and this political (in a broad sense) purpose cannot be ignored.1 Th e cult of a is by defi nition a form of a process of memori- zation. In this kind of religious practice people remember someone whose life was exemplary and in whose lifetime happened (in vita), and/or aft er his or her death (post mortem). Hagiography also constitutes a written genre, and these texts were made in part to conserve the memory of a holy person. As Sofi a Boesch postulates in her manual on sainthood: Th e hagiographic production appears as a conscious construction of the historical memory of a reality, and the holders of this reality are excep- tional persons, extraordinary events, and sacred places.2 One can recall the memory of a saint by reading about the saint’s activi- ties, and there are further forms and channels in which the memory of a holy person can survive. Th ese include , locations specifi c to the saint’s life, and the church consecrated to the name of the saint. Important studies have been undertaken by medievalists that exam- ine the development of cult through case studies pertaining to medi- eval memory. One such example is Luigi Canetti’s monograph about Saint Dominic’s hagiography entitled “Th e Invention of Memory,” in

* I would like to thank Gábor Klaniczay and Zsolt K. Horváth for help and inspira- tion during my research, and Parker Snyder for proof-reading the present article. 1 Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millenium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 12. 2 “La produzione agiografi ca si presenta come consapevole costruzione della memo- ria storica di una realtà, i cui portatori sono personaggi eccezionali, eventi straordi- nari, luoghi sacri,” Sofi a Boesch Gajano, La santità (Roma–Bari: Laterza, 1999), 37. 348 dávid falvay which the author introduces his analysis with the following theoretical proposition: I am [. . .] aware of the fact, that the case of Saint Dominic and the Dominicans represents primarily a valid case study concerning the cru- cial problems of the testimonies, and the modalities of its transmission, and consequently primarily concerns the meanings and forms of the memory.3 In this current work I will investigate three basic case studies. All of them originated in the thirteenth century, which was the period when the process was formalized as a judicial investigation to memorialize a person as a saint. Th is was approximately the same period during which the inquisitorial procedure against heretics had become a centralized and formalized process.4 Th e fi rst among my cases is that of (or Elizabeth of Th uringia), who represents one of the most famous female saints of the thirteenth cen- tury in all of . Th e two other examples can be defi ned as special because neither of them represents a “typical” case of saint- hood, since Margaret of Hungary was not canonized until the twen- tieth century. Guglielma of Milan is the third, and although she was venerated, she was never canonized since she and her followers were condemned as heretics. Th ese three cases share common features in addition to the fact that all of them originated in the thirteenth century. First, in each of them a judicial level process is present—be it canonization or inquisition— which is essential for our investigation. It is important to note that although the objectives of canonization and inquisition seem opposed to one another, in the later the two juridical procedures showed structural similarities, and it is not accidental that both were

3 “Sono (. . .) consapevole del fatto che quello di san Domenico e dei frati Predica- tori abbia rappresentato, innanzitutto, un valido case study rispetto ai problemi cru- ciali della testimonianza e delle modalità della sua trasmissione, e dunque, in primo luogo, dei signifi cati e delle forme della memoria” (Luigi Canetti,L’invenzione della memoria: Il culto e l’immagine di Domenico nella storia dei primi frati Predicatori (Spoleto: CISLAM, 1996), p. XI). 4 For the canonization processes, see Michael Goodich, Vita perfecta: Th e Ideal of Sainthood in the Th irteenth Century, Monografi en zu Geschichte des Mittelalters 25 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1982); André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Gábor Klaniczay, ed. Procès de can- onisation au Moyen Âge. Aspects juridiques et religieux—Medieval Canonization Pro- cesses. Legal and Religious Aspects (Rome: École française de Rome, 2004).