Dismembered Virgins and Incarcerated Brides: Embodiment and Sanctity in the Katherine Group Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Waggoner, Marsha Frakes Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 23/09/2021 13:46:23 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195073 DISMEMBERED VIRGINS AND INCARCERATED BRIDES: EMBODIMENT AND SANCTITY IN THE KATHERINE GROUP by Marsha Frakes Waggoner _____________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE CULTURAL AND LITERARY STUDIES In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2 0 0 5 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Marsha Frakes Waggoner entitled “Dismembered Virgins and Incarcerated Brides: Embodiment and Sanctity in the Katherine Group” and recommend and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for th e Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______ ___________________________ __________________ ________ _______ ____ Date : 3-21-05 Linda Waugh, Director _______ ___________________________ __________________ ________ ___________ Date: 3-21-05 Julia Balen ___ _______________________________ __________________ ________ ___________ Date: 3-21-05 Alan Bernstein _______ ___________________________ __________________ ________ ___________ Date: 3-21-05 Albrecht Classen _______ ___________________________ __________ ________ ________ ___________ Date: 3-21-05 Beatriz Urrea Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I hav e read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date : 3-21-05 Dissertation Director: Linda Waugh 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgement of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: Marsha Frakes Waggoner 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A dissertation is always a collaborative effort; it cannot be completed in isolation. Several people helped bring this work to fruition, and I can truthfully say that without their support, I could not have finished. Thanks are due first of all to my committee: Adele Barker, Alan Bernstein, Albrecht Classen, Beatriz Urrea, Julia Balen, and finally my director, Linda Waugh. I am deeply indebted to all of them, each in a different way. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Teri McClaren and Elaine Wise, for setting me on this path over a decade ago, and pushing me along it. My friends have cheerfully listened to me wrestle with thorny problems of medieval textual analysis and have provided input that has been at times more useful than any scholarly treatise. I owe particular thanks to Wanda Strange, whose loving encouragement literally dragged me to the finish line. Finally, I want to recognize especially my boys, Brian and David Waggoner. The phenomenal accomplishments of my sons in the face of a series of personal tragedies have inspired me to keep pushing forward, long past the time when I wanted to abandon this project. We have grieved together, and we have celebrated together, and we have consistently supported each other. It’s a strange experience, being involved in graduate study at midlife, and I’m not sure I’d do it again. My sons know, better than anyone, how long I waited for this, and how high the personal cost has been. These two young men are my pride, my joy, and my hope for the future. 5 For Brian and David 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT . .8 INTRODUCTION . .11 I. THE EREMITIC TRADITION FROM EAST TO WEST: A BRIEF HISTORICAL OVERVIEW . 19 1. Sanctity, Solitude, and the Desert: The Anchorite’s Ancient Predecessors . .21 2. The Uneven Growth of Early English Christianity . .32 3. St. Patrick . 35 4. East Meets West on the Emerald Isle. .38 5. The Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons . .48 II. WOMEN RELIGIOUS IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND . 55 1. Anglo-Saxon Women and Christianity. 56 2. Women Solitaries . .64 3. English Women and the Norman Conquest. .68 III. MATERIAL ASPECTS OF THE ANCHORITIC LIFE. 75 1. Formal Enclosure: The Process. .77 2. Support and Patronage. 81 3. “Solitary” Life. .84 4. A Contradiction in Terms: Communities of Solitaries . .88 5. Life in the Anchorhold . .91 IV. MEN WRITING FOR WOMEN: ANCHORITIC SPIRITUALITY AND VERNACULAR DEVOTIONAL TEXTS .. .97 1. Devotional Prose for Anchoresses: Dates, Provenance, Authorship . .99 2. Sources, Content, and Feminist Analyses . .102 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS -- CONTINUED V. VIRGINITY AFFIRMED: HALI MEIÐHAD . .. .110 1. The Ideology of Virginity in the Middle Ages. 111 2. History of the Virgin Ideal . 115 3. Hali Meiðhad and the Virgin Estate . .121 4. Anti-Marriage Rhetoric . .125 5. Jesus Christ: The Perfect Spouse . .130 6. The Body of the Bride . 133 7. Virginity and Gender . .135 VI. VIRGINITY ENCLOSED: ANCRENE WISSE. .142 1. Imitatio Christi: Enclosure as Crucifixion. 145 2. Body and Soul: The Paradoxical Virgin Body. .149 3. Gender-Bending: The Androgynous God and the Virile Bride . .154 4. Lesbian or “Lesbian-Like”? . .166 5. The Significance of Lesbian Eroticism in the Middle Ages . 169 6. “The Oneness of a Single Heart” . 173 7. Spiritual Marriage and Gender . 180 VII. VIRGINITY PERFORMED: THE VIRGIN MARTYRS . 182 1. Problematizing Hagiography . .. 184 2. The Plot . .187 3. St. Katherine . .191 4. St. Margaret . 195 5. St. Juliana .. 198 6. Imitatio Christi . .200 7. Young, Beautiful, and Chaste: The Perfect Sacrifice. .204 VIII. CONCLUSION. 209 WORKS CITED. .. 216 8 ABSTRACT One of the most peculiar developments of the wave of women’s spirituality that swept across Europe during the thirteenth century was the popularity of the anchoritic lifestyle in England, a lifestyle that had a particular appeal for women. The anchorhold seems to epitomize the medieval (male) desire to enclose and control a woman’s body to the maximum degree possible; it is an amazingly accurate metaphor for the tightly circumscribed lives of medieval religious women. Why, then, did so many women eagerly seek out and embrace such a confining lifestyle? Did women internalize the endless medieval rhetoric about bodily control and woman’s lustful nature, to the point where they sought lifelong incarceration to avoid temptation and possible loss of control? Or is it possible that they had a higher motivation – that they sought a more intense experience of union with the divine, and believed that only in strict isolation could such a union be achieved? The popularity of anchoritic spirituality led to the creation of a specialized literary genre in Middle 9 English: vernacular devotional prose for women. These mostly male-authored texts included guidebooks for enclosed life, meditations and prayers, lives of saints, and treatises on virginity. They describe and encourage a religious life for women that is both relational and mimetic: the bride of Christ is also encouraged to emulate Christ through her life of solitary penance and suffering. These two roles are analyzed through an examination of the texts of the Katherine Group, alongside the two themes that dominated medieval religious discourse as it applied to women: virginity and enclosure. Approaching the task from a broad interdisciplinary perspective, I employ a variety of theoretical tools, including cultural/historical, theological, linguistic, and feminist theories. My study analyzes medieval constructions of gender and virginity, and examines the anchoress as both a spiritual person and an embodied creature. In challenging traditional scholarship on and accepted views of medieval English women, I pose new questions about embodied spirituality from a medieval perspective, and offer a different perspective on a period 10 of English history in which women recluses set the standard for holiness and sanctity. 11 INTRODUCTION Perhaps He has chosen her body to inscribe His will, even if she is less able to read the inscription, poorer in language, “crazier” in her speech, burdened with matter(s) that history has laid on her, shackled in/by speculative plans that paralyze her desire. Her soul is at fault, vis-à-vis the body, because . it seems not to have understood . .that the delicacy and sensitivity of the “body” have great importance, that the division at the “heart” of man is the fault, the crack, in which love is lost in controversies that merely scratch the surface of the problem. Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman Saintly women have stolen my soul and hidden it under big mounds of stardust. From those heights, I would like to cry into their hearts. Emile Cioran, Tears and Saints The thirteenth-century guide for anchoresses, Ancrene Wisse, first captured my attention during my undergraduate years. Fascinated by the text and the lifestyle it described, I promised myself that someday I would have time to examine it in detail and learn more about these 12 women and their lives of solitary asceticism. The present work has grown from that fascination.