Abstract
This chapter focuses on the Portuguese reception of the Vitae patrum in order to analyze the long path women had to travel to acquire the dignity of a name, which happened mainly when they were repentant sinners. In their role as a potential or active source of temptation, women would generally be relegated to a secondary role; as such, it would make sense that they had no name. In contrast, when the narrative relates a woman’s faults and subsequent conversion and exemplarity, her anonymity is replaced by a name, which is a sign of recognition, as it could be memorized, quoted, or imitated.1 In a text composed by men, translated by men, and largely concerned with recounting the lives of men, the representation of women obviously echoes male perspectives. This makes the representation of women all the more striking when the text expresses wonder and respect toward those who are admitted to the utmost difficulties of desert life or, more rarely, when monks are subjected to female criticism.
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Notes
Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd ed., Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1–17.
Athanasius presents Saint Anthony following the apostles’ example. See Athanasius, Vita di Antonio, 6th ed., ed. G. J. M. Bartelink, trans. Pietro Citati and Salvatire Lilla (Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1998), 9–11.
See Norman Russell, trans., The Lives of the Desert Fathers: The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1980), 18; Duncan Robertson, The Medieval Saints’ Lives: Spiritual Renewal and Old French Literature (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1995), 76–78; “Monachisme,” in Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1934), 11.2.1774–947;
Jean Decarreaux, Les moines et la civilisation (Paris: Arthaud, 1962);
André Vauchez, “O Santo,” in O homem medieval, ed. Jacques Le Goff (Lisbon: Editorial Presença, 1990), 211–32.
See the critical review of Les apophtegmes des pères: collection systématique: chapitres I–IX, ed. Jean-Claude Guy, Sources Chrétiennes 387 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1993), 1:13–18.
See Benedicta Ward, “Traditions of Spiritual Guidance: Spiritual Direction in the Desert Fathers,” in Signs and Wonders: Saints, Miracles and Prayers from the 4th Century to the 14th (1992; repr., Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 61–70.
Paul Zumthor, Essai de Poétique Médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 65–75.
Cheryl Glenn, “Popular Literacy in the Middle Ages: The Book of Margery Kempe,” in Popular Literacy: Studies in Cultural Practices and Poetics, ed. John Trimbur, Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture (Pittsburgh: Universit y of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), 56–73, quoted by Brad Herzog. See chapter 9 in this volume.
Jean-Claude Guy, ed., Os Padres do deserto (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1991), 7–18.
The only information about Pascasius can be found in the preface of this translation addressed to the “Domino venerabili patri Martino, presbytero et abbati”; the translation was done by Pacasius at Martinus’s request. See José Geraldes Freire, A versão latina por Pascásio de Dume dos “Apophtegmata Patrum,” 2 vols. (Coimbra, Portugal: Instituto de Estudos Clássicos, 1971), 1:1–2:38.
Renan Frighetto, “O modelo de vir sanctus segundo o pensamento de Valério do Bierzo,” Helmantica 158, nos. 145–46 (1997): 59–79.
A. F. de Ataíde e Melo, Inventário dos códices Alcobacenses, vol. 5 (Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, 1932), 339–41 and 424–26; Freire, A versão latina por Pascásio de Dume, 2:80;
M. Díaz y Díaz, Valerio del Bierzo: Su persona: Su obra (Léon: Centro de Estudios e Investigación “San Isidoro,” Caja España de Inversiones, Archivo Histórico Diocesano, 2006), 139–40. From now on, these manuscripts will be cited as MS 367 and MS 454.
For a description of this codex, see Arthur L.-F. Askins, Harvey L. Sharrer, Aida F. Dias, Martha E. Schaffer, Bibliografia de textos antigos galegos e portugueses, University of California, Berkeley, and Universidade de Lisboa, PhiloBiblon (last modified 2008), http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Philobiblon/BITAGAP/;
A. L.-F. Askins, “The MS Flos Sanctorum of the Universidade de Brasília: An Early Reflex in Portuguese of the Hagiographic Compilation of Valerio del Bierzo,” in O amor das letras e das gentes: In Honor of Maria de Lourdes Belchior Pontes, ed. João Camilo dos Santos and Frederick G. Williams (Santa Barbara: University of California at Santa Barbara’s Center for Portuguese Studies, 1995), 39–50;
Américo Venâncio Lopes Machado Filho, Um “Flos Sanctorum” do século XIV: Edições, glossário e estudo lingüístico, vol. 1 (Salvador: Universidade Federal da Bahia, Instituto de Letras, 2003), xxxiii–xlvi.
Anselmo Borges, preface to Maria Julieta M. Dias and Paulo M. Pinto, A verdadeira História de Maria Madalena (Cruz Quebrada, Portugal: Casa das Letras–Editorial Notícias, 2006), 16.
Évagre Le Pontique, Traité pratique ou le moine, vol. 1, eds. Antoine Guillaumont and Claire Guillaumont (Paris: Cerf, 1971).
From Barbara Newman’s From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature, Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 3.
Catherine M. Mooney, G endered Voices: Medieval Saints and T heir Interpreters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 13.
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Gender in History (2001; repr., Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 1–5.
Katrien Heene, “Hagiography and Gender: A Tentative Case-Study on Thomas of Cantimpré,” in “Scribere sanctorum gesta”: Recueil d’études d’hagiographie médiévale offert à Guy Philippart, ed. Étienne Renard, Michel Trigalet, Xavier Hermand, and Paul Bertrand (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005), 111 [109–23].
Deut. 22:5; Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 80.
Clare A. Lees, “Chastity and Charity: Ælfric, Women, and the Female Saints,” in Tradition and Belief: Religious Writing in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Medieval Cultures 19 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 133–53.
Ana M. Machado, “A representação do pecado na hagiografia medieval: Heranças de uma espiritualidade eremítica” (PhD diss., Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, 2006), ch. 4.
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© 2012 Margaret Cotter-Lynch and Brad Herzog
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Machado, A.M. (2012). Memory, Identity, and Women’s Representation in the Portuguese Reception of Vitae Patrum: Winning a Name. In: Cotter-Lynch, M., Herzog, B. (eds) Reading Memory and Identity in the Texts of Medieval European Holy Women. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137064837_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137064837_7
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