Mary Magdalene As Counter-Heroine: Late Middle English Hagiography and Social Order
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Mary Magdalene as Counter-Heroine: Late Middle English Hagiography and Social Order Rachel Elizabeth Jones (BA. MA.) Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in English Literature School of English, Communication and Philosophy Cardiff University March 2013 Summary This thesis, which examines episodes from Middle English Magdalene hagiography, argues that Magdalene is represented there as a counter-heroine. It concentrates on the vita in Mirk’s Festial (ca. 1380s); the 1438 Gilte Legende; and Bokenham’s Legendys of Hooly Wummen (completed by 1447). The study contends that Magdalene challenges a variety of hegemonic and patriarchal structures, though her unruliness is typically suppressed by the hagiographers. Chapter one provides context and outlines key terms which run throughout the thesis: subversion, containment and consolidation. The first part foregrounds the thesis’s argument and methodology; the second part introduces the Mary Magdalene cultural narrative; the third situates the thesis in terms of work in related fields. The second chapter interrogates the earliest chronological unit in Magdalene’s medieval biography: the account of her sin and repentance. It argues that Magdalene’s penance represents a moment of containment in the legend. The chapter suggests that the texts, when read as a group, depict Magdalene as choosing to surrender her social, sexual and economic freedoms. At a moment marked by anxieties about changing social roles, the hagiographies endorse a conservative model of social order. Chapter three examines the episodes depicting the Resurrection and Magdalene’s preaching activities in Marseilles. This chapter argues that although Peter’s spiritual authority is emphasized in the post-Resurrection narrative, the subversive potential found in earlier representations of Magdalene’s first witness is never fully erased. It argues, further, that representations of Magdalene preaching allow for readings which align the texts with more heterodox discourses about, for instance, women priests. Chapter four focuses on the scenes describing Magdalene’s years in the wilderness and nightly visitations to a wealthy prince and princess. Whereas chapters two and three argue that the protagonist challenges hegemonic structures in the fields of sexual politics and theology, this chapter argues that the avaricious prince scene presents Magdalene in her little- known role as a figure of social criticism. The conclusion reiterates the central argument: that medieval hagiography represents Magdalene as an unruly female figure, but that her counter-heroism is frequently contained by structures of her narrative. Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr Rob Gossedge and Professor Helen Phillips, as well as my family and everyone else who has helped and supported me during the course of the PhD. I would also like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for receipt of a two-year studentship and Cardiff University for a one-year scholarship. Contents Chapter One: ‘This is the story of Magdalene – / It isn’t the tale the Apostles tell’: The Thesis in Context 1 Part One: The Research Project 2 1. The Statement of Argument 2 2. Methodology and Key Terms 6 Part Two: The Mary Magdalene Cultural Narrative: Texts and Traditions 12 1. Mary Magdalene(s) in the Bible and Non-Canonical Narratives 12 2. ‘Mary Magdalene’ in the New Testament 18 3. New Testament Women Conflated with Mary Magdalene 22 4. The Marys of Gnostic and Apocryphal Tradition 27 5. The Construction of a Medieval Mary Magdalene Biography 33 6. The Legenda Aurea’s Magdalene Legend 38 7. The Texts of the Thesis 43 Part Three: The Critical Field 47 1. Never Mind the Bollandists: The Rise of Saints’ Studies 49 2. The Rise of Interest in Mary Magdalene 58 3. Recent Approaches to Medieval Magdalene Hagiography 65 Chapter Two: ‘[T]hese women that be vicious/ Are alwais high mynded and ambicious’: Disciplining the Unruly Female Figure in the Narrative Accounts of Sin and Repentance 69 Part One: Conceptualizing Deviance in the Narrative Accounts of Sin 75 1. The Woman who Sinned with her Body 75 2. The Unruly Woman 81 3. Ambition and the Threat to Authority 88 Part Two: Discipline and Punish 93 1. Representations of the Penitent 93 2. The Gender Politics of Penance 97 3. The Correction of Ambition and the Purposes of Punishment 103 Part Three: Ideology, Interpellation, and the Loss of Individual Freedoms 108 1. The Consolidation of Power 108 2. Women and the Narrative of the Repentant Sinner 109 3. The Conversion Narrative, Ambition, and Nonconformity 115 Chapter Three: ‘It’s all about power, about the power the new church is to be based on’: Interrogating the Tensions over Spiritual Leadership in the Accounts of the Pre-Ascension Life and Apostolic Narrative 121 Part One: The Pre-Ascension Narrative and the Issue of Pre-eminence 126 1. The Resurrection Scene 126 2. The Significance of the First Witness 131 3. The Religious Authority of Mary Magdalene 136 Part Two: The Post-Ascension Narrative as Interrogative Narrative 142 1. From Resurrection to…Retraction? 142 2. The Conundrum of Religious Authority 147 3. Silences and the Seeds of Subversive Questioning 152 Part Three: Cui Bono? 160 1) The ‘Minding the Gaps’ Approach to (Investigating) Ideology 160 2) Medieval Women and the Question of Spiritual Authority 165 3) Religious Authority and Medieval Non-Clerics 170 Chapter Four: ‘O Prince, desyre to be honourable / Cherish thy folk and hate extorcioun’: Narrative Visions of Poverty and Privilege in the Accounts of the Eremitical Life and Avaricious Prince Scene 178 Part One: The Eremitical Life and Holy Poverty 182 1) The ‘Female Wild’ Revisited 182 2) (Voluntary) Poverty and Spiritual Enlightenment 186 3) Renunciation as Liminal Discourse? 192 Part Two: The Avaricious Prince Scene and Secular Poverty 197 1) Representations of the Angry Dream Visitant 197 2) The Avaricious Prince Scene and its Analogues 201 3) The Dream Appearances to the Wife Alone 209 Part Three: The Avaricious Prince Scene and Political ‘Realms of Possibility’ 215 1) Questions and Questioning 215 2) Return of the Repressed? 221 3) The Legend and the Lower Orders 227 Conclusion: The Magdalene of Medieval Hagiography: A Counter-Heroine to Think Back Through? 237 Appendix 1: The Insular Mary Magdalene Legends 247 Appendix 2: Narrative Excerpts 253 Bibliography 254 List of Abbreviations EETS: Early English Text Society OED: Oxford English Dictionary TEAMS: The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages Unless otherwise stated, biblical quotations are taken from The Holy Bible: A Translation from the Latin Vulgate in the Light of the Hebrew and Greek Originals. Chapter Headings The quotation in the title to chapter one is taken from: Leonora Speyer, ‘One Version’, in Jane Lahr, Searching for Mary Magdalene: a journey through art and literature (New York: Welcome Books, 2006), p. 146, ll. 19-20. The title to chapter two cites Lewis Wager, The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene: A Morality Play, ed. Frederic Ives Carpenter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1904 [repr. Kessinger Legacy Reprint]), ll. 369-70. The quotation in chapter three is taken from Marianne Fredrikkson, According to Mary Magdalene, trans. Joan Tate (Charlottesville: Hampton Roads Publishing, 1999), p. 167. The title to chapter four cites Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘Lak of Stedfastnesse’, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 654, ll. 22-23. 1 Chapter One: ‘This is the story of Magdalene – / It isn’t the tale the Apostles tell’: The Thesis in Context Mary Magdalen is, once more, very popular in our time. It is not difficult to see why. She captures the imagination. She offers women a model of feminine discipleship and ministry. […I]n the context of our reflection on the ordination of women, we will focus especially on Mary’s function as a heroic counter figure, as someone who in popular Catholic imagination showed what a woman’s role could be like, if it were not for prevailing masculine domination. Sr. Theresia Saers, ‘Saint Mary Magdalen’, www.womenpriests.org Mary Magdalene: sinner, bold woman, rebel, unruly female protagonist. Middle English hagiography presents Magdalene as a figure in conflict with masculine authority. She deviates from the restrictions often placed on her sex and confronts social conventions relating to appropriate female behaviour. Though structures of containment are employed throughout the texts discussed here, this thesis argues that Magdalene exists in opposition to a variety of hegemonic fields: patriarchal, theological, and socio-economic. Although the texts offset the more troubling elements of her conceptualization with images of her (at least partial) subordination to established hierarchical institutions and figures, the repetitions of these challenges present Magdalene as a threat to top-down social order. Womenpriests.org, an organization advocating women’s ordination in the Catholic Church, argues that the Magdalene of the Middle Ages can be read as a ‘counter-heroine’. This figure is described as ‘the first witness of the resurrection’; someone ‘who had taught the apostles the truth when they went astray’; a ‘woman who preached – when women were forbidden to preach’; and a female authority ‘who defied male opposition’. Making reference to a twelfth-century English Psalter depicting Mary Magdalene ‘addressing the assembled apostles, who respectfully listen to her, their heads bowed’, the webpage states that she ‘functioned as an expression of people’s deep conviction that a woman could share the full priestly ministry’.1 The hagiographical texts examined in this thesis also represent Magdalene 1 ‘Saint Mary Magdalen’ > http.www.womenpriests.org/magdala/index.asp [accessed 7 August 2013]. 2 as preaching to men and women, as well as being the first person to witness the Resurrection. She is also presented there as a ‘counter-heroine’. The brief comments on womenpriests.org about Magdalene’s identity as ‘a counter-heroine’ or, to use the term employed in the epigraph to this chapter, ‘heroic counter figure’ are elaborated in the thesis.