MARRYING JESUS: BRIDES AND THE BRIDEGROOM IN MEDIEVAL WOMEN’S RELIGIOUS LITERATURE Rabia Gregory A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Religious Studies (Medieval and Early Modern Christianity). Chapel Hill 2007 Approved By: E. Jane Burns Peter Iver Kaufman Lance Lazar Albert Rabil Jr. Dan Thornton © 2007 Rabia Gregory ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Rabia Gregory Marrying Jesus: Brides and the Bridegroom in Medieval Women’s Religious Literature Under the direction of Peter Iver Kaufman Phrases such as “bride of Christ” and passages which describe Christ as a “Bridegroom,” a “Spouse,” and a “Lover” appear in a wide range of Christian texts composed in both Latin and vernacular languages. The phrase has become almost a generic descriptor for religious women— especially mystics—yet the function of the relationship between Christ and his beloved is never a constant. I explore the language and imagery that surrounds Christ’s many brides by examining a selection of medieval works that portray Christ as a desirable spouse for Christian women. Relationships between Christ and pious women did not consist exclusively of a spiritual re-enactment of courtship and marriage in vision or ritual. Mystics enacted marriage to Jesus in visions, while nuns’ vows and profession ceremonies are described as a marriage to Christ, a chaste union to be consummated in heaven, traditionally modeled upon secular marriage ceremonies. However, the title “Bride of Christ” was not uniformly applied by and to medieval women, and some nuns and mystics never gained a bridal association. Most importantly, married and lay women could become brides of Christ, even if they were not mystics. As the number of Christ’s brides increased in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, women who claimed this special relationship were less likely to be automatically recognized as holy. Consequently, the phrase “bride of Christ” became politically charged, and by the fifteenth century, it was used in innovative but cautious ways, especially in writing by and for women’s religious communities. My investigation of Christ and his brides between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries highlights the brides’ gradual disassociation from sanctity. Though twelfth- and thirteenth-century iii women religious became brides of Christ for their chastity and mystical experiences, I argue that the number and nature of brides of Christ in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contributed to growing doubts about women’s religious writing and creativity, resulting in the introduction of a new model for female sanctity that de-emphasized mystical experience and the bridal relationship in favor of virtuous actions. iv In memory of Mariana Issa Geha 1910-2005 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank my wonderful dissertation committee for their patience, flexibility, wisdom, and understanding. To say thank you is insufficient—though I am the author of this dissertation, I never would have made it through the research and writing without their help, support, and advice. Lance Lazar and Dan Thornton read through my messiest early drafts and were always available to help me puzzle vexing Dutch and German translations. To Lance especially, thank you for your willingness to continue working with me, and for keeping me from running wild, always reminding me of the social context when I wanted to follow a controversial reading. Thank you also for your insightful advice, your time, your patience, and your wisdom. You have been there for me since the beginning, and I will always be grateful for your patient advice. I must also thank Peter Kaufman for his patience with my ugly prose, his wisdom, creativity, and his sense of humor, Al Rabil for his skill with the red pen, support, advice, quick and helpful comments, and Jane Burns for her tough questions and reminders about reality, history, fiction, and medieval authors, as well as for introducing me to Luce Irigaray's la mysterique at a particularly fortuitous moment. My good friend Erwin Bernard Robben was almost always online, awake, and ready to help me with medieval German and Dutch. I truly appreciate his help with difficult passages and his willingness to try to make sense of the medieval world. I never would have puzzled through Katharina Tucher's visions without help from Erwin, even though he only remembers her (mistakenly) as a drunken German nun. Jen Welsh, my comrade and friend at Duke, read and commented on several chapter drafts, was always willing to help me with German, and answered more of my questions than I can remember. Armin Lange, good friend and mentor, helped me with biblical scholarship on the Song of Songs and introduced me to both prophecy in the Hebrew Bible and to relevant scholarship on the metaphor of vi marriage in the books of the prophets. I must also thank him for all of the cups of coffee, conversations, advice, and, of course, for confirming and helping me with German translations. The Graduate School's Smith Grant helped with purchasing images and microfilm. Tommy Nixon at Davis Reference was doggedly persistent helping me track down so many archival references to Christus und die minnende Seele, and I am very grateful to him for his assistance. I would also like to thank all of the fabulous people at Interlibrary Loan who managed to rapidly acquire even the rarest of texts. No dissertation can be written without the help and support of friends and family. I want to thank my mother, Cathy Geha, for leaving me to write in silence, even when she wanted to chat, and for letting me send her chapter drafts to proof-read while I slept. She now knows more about medieval women's religious experiences than any laywoman should! I must also thank my wonderful husband Devon for reminding me to eat, feeding me dinner after long evenings in the library, doing my half of the housework and being generally supportive and wonderful as I transformed into a hermit this spring. I would never have finished on time without his constant and loving support. Myra Quick kept me sane, encouraged me constantly, and calmed me down the morning of my defense. Hope Toscher, friend and supporter, always motivated me as I was making my morning cup of tea before heading off to write. Cathy Ashworth cheered me up whenever I remembered to emerge for lunch. The Religious Studies department is truly fortunate to have three such wonderful women! Finally, a thank you to Miss Shirley and Miss Esther, who have sold me far too many cups of coffee over the years. Two days before I was scheduled to defend my PhD exams, my paternal grandmother, Mariana Issa Geha, died. She was not quite 95. Though I barely spoke Arabic, and she barely spoke English, she has been one of the most influential women in my life. Married as a teenager, raised during war and famine, mother of six and grandmother of eighteen, she was a brilliant and difficult woman who commanded and dominated our family. To me, her life's accomplishments exemplify female authority and agency in the face of poverty, constant childbirth, lack of formal education, war, and living in a vii patriarchal society. Unlike so many other women in her village, tayta Mariana owned land, could read and write, lead the women's church group, and helped put her sons through college. I only wish she had lived a little longer. She was, to me, even more remarkable than the women about whom I have chosen to research and write. Although I believe she would have preferred I bear her many great-grandchildren, I know how much education meant to her, and that she would have been very proud to have another doctor in the family. With tears and love, I dedicate this dissertation in memory of Mariana Issa Geha. viii PREFACE Almost ten years ago as an impressionable freshman, I was startled to read about physical love and marriage between Jesus and Margery Kempe, and refused to believe that in the medieval church, women's (and men's) religious experiences were sometimes signified through a metaphorical marriage to Jesus. Sometime in the fall of 1997, almost by happenstance, I found myself in Sara Beckwith's classroom, struggling through the Middle English The Book of Margery Kempe and falling in love with Margery's eccentricities. I clearly remember my amazement, amusement, and confusion. On the day we were discussing Margery's mystical marriage, I recall raising my hand to ask whether this was "normal," as I was too young, foolish, and arrogant to believe my professor's assurances that, to medieval Christians, extreme religious experiences were sometimes expressed through sexual or marriage metaphors. Over the past ten years, I have been humbled, and I have learned a great deal, but I have also continued to doubt that simple explanation for Margery's marriage to the Godhead in Rome. The next semester, in a class with my good friend and mentor, Mel Peters, I read the Song of Songs for the first time in my life. Years later, in graduate school, I began seriously studying medieval mysticism, and my old questions returned rapidly. What was going on when medieval authors wrote about marrying Jesus? Was it really just a simple metaphor for mystical experience? What else might it mean? Didn't medieval Christians think it odd that so many people had claimed to marry a dead man? At the same time, I was reading prescriptive literature for virgins, and found this same imagery—exhortations to guard chastity, so that young women could experience Christ's embraces as brides.