540 Dyan Elliott Dyanelliott,Peterb

540 book reviews Dyan Elliott The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell. Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200–1500. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2011, 480 pp. isbn 9780812243581. us$59.95; £39. Dyan Elliott, Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Humanities in the Department of His- tory at Northwestern University, has written a lively and intriguing book. Her volume, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell, traces the changing meaning and con- text of the metaphor of Christian spirituality that names the dedicated virgin as “bride of Christ,” from its first use by the second century Latin theologian Tertullian to its appropriation by the Beguine mystics in the late Middle Ages. Elliott concludes by discussing the reversal of this metaphor and its rituals in the fifteenth-century witchcraft trials. The metaphor is rooted in a Christian mystical reading of the Old Testament love poem, the Song of Songs. Understanding the lover in the Song as Christ and those who love him as the Church, made all Christians “brides of Christ.” They are transformed into the faith community that, in St. Paul’s words, are no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, “for all of you are one in Christ” (Gal. 3,28). Christians were seen as transcending the worldly practice of marriage, anticipating the heavenly angelic life as “children of the resurrection” (Luke 30,36). Thus initially in Christianity there seemed to be no necessity to confine the metaphor to virginal women. As Dyan Elliot shows, it was the second-century Carthaginian church father, Tertullian who “invested the consecrated virgin with the persona of the bride of Christ” (p. 14). Tertullian was obsessed with the interpretation of Genesis 6,2 common in his day whereby the angels were seen as falling from heaven and seducing women, causing the creation of demonic beings. He also had a negative view of marriage as a makeshift remedy for Adam and Eve’s fall into sin and loss of immortality. Virginity was a testimony to the possibility of human redemption from sin, yet Tertullian feared that the idea that all redeemed humans, male and female, transcended gender, might give women the dangerous notion that salvation freed them from gender subordination. For Tertullian, naming consecrated female virgins as “brides in Christ” reaffirmed that women would continue to be female in the afterlife. Thus he insisted that virgins should continue to wear the veil as symbol of their subordination, even in the redeemed state. This view of the consecrated virgin was continued in the third and fourth century church fathers, such as Cyprian, Origen, Athanasius, and Ambrose, who also struggled to interpret the Song of Songs in terms of the bridal church’s relation to Christ as their groom. Legal restrictions on the freedoms of these © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/18712428-09404014 book reviews 541 women, as needed to protect Christ’s bride, were reaffirmed. The self-assertive virgin of the Canticles was calmed down in favor of a submissive bride sub- ordinate to her dominating groom, Christ. The figure of Mary in the Christian tradition was reshaped as the proper image of the “stay at home” virgin bride of Christ. The virgin must be ready to die, even to commit suicide, rather than to allow her virginity to be violated. The premium on female virginity as the highest symbol of holiness continued in the Frankish world of the sixth century, but it was challenged by the realities of war and conflict in that period. A key example of this is the figure of the barbarian queen, Radegund (520–587). Raised as a princess, Radegund was forced into a marriage by the polygamous king Clotar i. Later she fled from his palace and founded the female community of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. Although its founder and leader, Radegund was not a virgin and thus was pre- cluded from being named a “bride of Christ” or being its abbess by monastic rules. Leading authors of her biographies, such as the poet, Venatius Fortuna- tus, Bishop Gregory of Tours, and the nun Baudonivia, thus struggle with these contradictions about Radegund’s role. The twelfth century saw conflicts between the holiness of virginity and the new rules that mutual consent and not simply sexual union validated a marriage. The life story of the couple, Abelard and Heloise, are vivid illustra- tions of the discrepancies between sex and marriage and holiness and monastic life. A leading scholar and teacher, Abelard was hired to teach the bril- liant student, Heloise, only to seduce and impregnate her. Abelard then forces her into marriage, giving the resulting child to his sister to raise, and then puts her into monastic life. But Heloise values their love and sexual life and rejects marriage as an impediment to Abelard’s scholarly career. Abelard tries to argue Heloise into accepting the spiritual bridal relation to Christ over her relation to him, but she refuses, while reluctantly accepting monastic life as her fate. Their lively letters express their ongoing differences on these values. The sixth chapter focuses on the Beguine mystics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as Hadewijch of Antwerp, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Mary of Oignies, Beatrice of Nazareth, and Catherine of Siena, among others, and their appropriation of the celebration of courtly love into a love mysticism that gives new erotic power to the title “Bride of Christ.” But this emphasis on erotic power also fuels suspicion of women mystics that flows into the witchcraft persecutions in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In witch-hunting clerics, love mysticism becomes distorted into misogynist tales of sexual encounters with demonic beings, culminating in vision of wor- ship and union between women and the devil. Thus, in the concluding chapter, Church History and Religious Culture 94 (2014) 531–602.

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