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The horror of orthodoxy: Christina Mirabilis, thirteenth-century ‘zombie’ saint

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Abstract

In 1232, Thomas of Cantimpré wrote his Life of Christina Mirabilis (c. 1150–1224), an account of the miraculous life and three deaths of an unenclosed holy woman from the Low Countries. The text opens with an explicit vindication of Christina’s return(s) as divinely mandated. Yet, the narrative shows that her community struggles to deal with the revenant in their midst. Through her example, they must confront the terrifying mechanics of purgatory, resurrection, and the co-incidence of body and soul. A similar unease is found in modern scholarship, in which Christina is typically referred to dismissively in terms more commonly applied to cinematic monsters. I work with such dismissive language – specifically the term ‘zombie’ – to move beyond this heuristic roadblock. The terms of filmic zombie-ism provide new insight into the merging of orthodoxy and terror in Christina’s vita.

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Notes

  1. I refer to Thomas of Cantimpré’s ([1727] 1969) Latin work as VCM, and the English translation (2008a) as VCMEng throughout. References relate to chapter, paragraph and page number, respectively.

  2. For details of English MSS containing the Latin vita, see Brown (2008, 13–14) and Kurtz (1988, 195, n. 3). On the vita’s popularity generally, see McGinn (1998, 162).

  3. For a discussion of the similarly heterogeneous reception of the fifteenth-century Middle English translation of Christina’s vita, see Brown (2008, 18–20).

  4. For a summary of earlier critical reception of the vita, see King (1987, 145–148). Historians and theologians (including the Bollandists) typically refute the authenticity of Christina’s tale, though accepting in the main her historical existence.

  5. I also discuss Christina’s resuscitations in terms of the modern holographic ‘resurrection’ of deceased celebrities in Spencer-Hall (2012).

  6. These are: Marie of Oignies (d. 1213), Ida of Louvain (d. c. 1261), Peter Amengol (d. 1304), Agnes of Montepulciano (d. 1317), Margaret of Castello (d. 1320), Catherine of Siena (d. 1380). Another notable, slightly later, example is Julian of Norwich (d. c. 1416).

  7. See, for example, the Last Judgment image in the fourtheenth-century St. Omer Psalter: London, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 14, fol. 120.

  8. The franchise comprises: Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), Diary of the Dead (2007), Survival of the Dead (2009).

  9. See also: Acts 17:18, 17:31–32; Rom 8:11; 1 Cor 6:14; 2 Cor 4:14; 5:4–5; Phil 3:21; 1 Thes 4:12–16; 2 Tm 2:11; Heb 6:2.

  10. See, for example, Gervase of Tilbury’s (d. 1228) ‘Ghost of Beaucaire’ tale (2002, 3.103.768–769), and the widely circulated ‘Gast of Gy’ and ‘Vision of Tundale’ poems. For the Middle English translations of the latter two, see Foster (2004).

  11. Christina’s self-directed mortifications also conform to models found more generally in female hagiographies: a preoccupation with the utility of illness, suffering and harsh ascetic practices as worship forms (see Bynum, 1991).

  12. On the monstrosity of Christ generally, see Mills (2003).

  13. Sweetman affirms that Christina becomes a bodily preacher postmortem (Sweetman, 1992). Thus, she is ecclesiastically ‘deviant’ in some sense, as preaching is prohibited to women. Nevertheless, she remains trapped in the Church’s ideological plane: the message of her ongoing corporeal sermon is fully orthodox.

  14. These chapters follow logically from the preceding narrative, though they are stylistically less accomplished (VCMEng, 155 n. 64). It is unclear how they were received by contemporary audiences, but the text certainly circulated without these elements long after their introduction in 1249. For example, the additions are missing from two extant manuscripts that were produced in fifteenth-century England: Oxford, St. John’s College, MS 182 (Latin text); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114 (Middle English translation) (Thomas of Cantimpré, 2008b, 84 n. 296).

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks Jane Gilbert and Katherine Ibbett for their guidance with early iterations of this article and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding. Her current research, and the production of this article, is generously supported by the Modern Humanities Research Association.

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    Alicia Spencer-Hall

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Spencer-Hall, A. The horror of orthodoxy: Christina Mirabilis, thirteenth-century ‘zombie’ saint. Postmedieval 8, 352–375 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2016.19

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