Lay Spirituality, Crusading, and Reform in the Sermons of Jacques De Vitry
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2018 Lay Spirituality, Crusading, and Reform in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry Lydia Marie Walker University of Tennessee Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Walker, Lydia Marie, "Lay Spirituality, Crusading, and Reform in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2018. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4933 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Lydia Marie Walker entitled "Lay Spirituality, Crusading, and Reform in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in History. Jay C. Rubenstein, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Robert J. Bast, Thomas E. Burman, Maura K. Lafferty Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Lay Spirituality, Crusading, and Reform in the Sermons of Jacques de Vitry A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Lydia Marie Walker May 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Lydia M. Walker All rights reserved ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express my thanks to my advisor, Prof. Jay Rubenstein for continual encouragement, productive criticism, and sound advice which guided this project to its completion. I would also like to thank my committee members Prof. Robert Bast, Prof. Maura Lafferty, and Prof. Thomas Burman for their cogent advice and ongoing support. I have to thank also the graduate students, faculty, and financial supporters of the Marco Institute at the University of Tennessee for creating a supportive community of medieval scholars. I would also like to thank the faculty and students of Department of History at Ghent University, who provided an intellectually engaging environment during my Fulbright year in Belgium. Thank you especially to Prof. Steven Vanderputten and Dr. Michiel Verweij for their support of my Fulbright application and helpful advice. I also have to thank my fellow Jacques de Vitry enthusiasts, Dr. Jan Vandeburie, Dr. Jessalyn Bird, and Dr. Brenda Bolton whose encouraged me to study this fascinating bishop. My work is indebted to their own incisive scholarship. My research was made possible through the generous financial support of the Fulbright Foundation, the University of Tennessee Humanities Center, the American Academy of Rome, the W.K. McClure Scholarship for the Study of World Affairs, The Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, the Marco Institute, and the Department of History at the University of Tennessee- Knoxville. I would also like to thank the helpful librarians and staff at UTK’s Hodges Library, the Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Ghent University Library, the Bibliothèque du Séminaire de Namur, the Université de Liège - Bibliothèque Générale de Philosophie et Lettres, the Openbare Bibliotheek Brugge, the Musee Provincial des Arts Anciens du Namurois, the Vatican Library, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, and the John Rylands Library. Lastly, I have to thank my friends and family, especially my sister, for her unwavering support throughout this process. iii Abstract Thirteenth-century papal reforms tied together crusading endeavors, clerical reform, the eradication of heresy, proper ecclesiastical governance, and the management of Christian-Jewish relations into a vision of a global Christendom. But it was men like Jacques de Vitry, a prominent preacher and Bishop of Acre, who strived to make these ideals a reality. He was involved in the key events and intellectual trends of the later twelfth and early thirteenth century. Trained at the University of Paris, Jacques worked among the female religious communities in the Southern Low Countries, preached against heresy and for crusade, and travelled to the Holy Land where he served as the bishop of Acre and participated in the Fifth Crusade. This dissertation examines his multifaceted work as a valuable lens into the various arenas he participated in. Based upon a programmatic examination of Jacques’ sermon collections in their manuscript context, this project reveals development in their form, and the expansion of their content to suit later readers’ needs. Second, it reconstructs in detail several aspects of Jacques’ thought, which in turn influenced the broader academic discussions in the Middle Ages. It argues that Jacques’ message, just as his life, depended on an affirmation of collaboration between the sexes, whether between clerics and holy women or husbands and wives. This work, therefore, evaluates the relationship between clerics and holy women and notions of clerical masculinity. Through situating these relationships within the context of reported violence against holy women at the Siege of Liège, this investigation examines the possible impact of violence and trauma on Jacques’ investment in these communities and his understanding of gender. This dependence on women to assist his message by embodying and transmitting it can be seen, as well, in his involvement in the Fifth Crusade. Therefore, it traces connections between gendered pastoral care and crusade propaganda in the twelfth and thirteenth century to reveal the interest of both men and women in policing and defining gendered boundaries within the context of war. This dissertation, therefore, uncovers the vital relationship between crusade initiatives and a specifically gendered pastoral care in the early thirteenth century. iv Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 1 Medieval Sermons in the High Middle Ages: Describing and Proscribing a Transitional Moment ......... 2 Editions of Jacques de Vitry’s Works ....................................................................................................... 5 Bridging the Historiographical Divide ...................................................................................................... 8 Chapter One: From Anxiety to Action and Back Again: Constructions of Gender in Thirteenth-Century Pastoral Works ............................................................................................................................................ 16 The Case of the Genoese Women ........................................................................................................... 16 Learning to be (Religious) Men at a Time of War .................................................................................. 22 Parisian Prostitutes and Proving Clerical Manhood................................................................................ 28 Real Men Preach ..................................................................................................................................... 40 The Mirror of Men: Mala Mulier ............................................................................................................ 44 Readers of Exempla ................................................................................................................................ 50 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................. 53 Chapter Two: Dialogue and Dependence: Clerics and Holy Women ......................................................... 56 The Siege of Liège and the Care of Women ........................................................................................... 56 Jacques and Lutgard ................................................................................................................................ 59 The Gender of Holiness .......................................................................................................................... 71 Jacques and Marie ................................................................................................................................... 80 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................. 99 Chapter Three: The Officium of Recruitment: Jacques de Vitry and Preaching the Albigensian Crusade .................................................................................................................................................................. 102 What Preachers Do, What Preachers Say: Historiographical Problems in the Study of Crusade Preaching .............................................................................................................................................. 104 Preaching the Albigensian Crusade ...................................................................................................... 107 “Forward