Abstract
On June 1, 1310, Marguerite Porete and the spiritual treatise she authored known as The Mirror of Simple Souls were burned in the Place de Grève in Paris. The event was noted in many fourteenth-century chronicles, although the authors often differed in their characterization of Marguerite. The English Master John Baconthorpe—writing a decade later—noted that “a certain beguine [beguuina], who had published a little book against the clergy, was burned near Paris, with a certain Jewish convert who — as they say — apostatized.”1 The continuers of the chronicles of William of Nangis and Gerard of Frachet referred to her as a “pseudo-woman [pseudo-mulier],” while the monks of St.-Denis in the Grandes chroniques de France styled her “a learned beguine [beguine clergesse].” Sometime later, John of Outremeuse (d. 1400) understood her to be “a beguine very sufficient in learning [en clergrie mult suffissant].”2 By contrast, when the chronicles take note of the Jewish convert, they relate the same story: “On the same day, in the same place, a certain Jew expired in the fire. Having a while ago converted, he then reverted. He was of such great perversity that, in contempt of the Blessed Mary, he was trying to spit on an image of her.”3
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Notes
I have followed the translations in Sean L. Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trials of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart (Notre Dame, 2012), 238.
See also Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Notre Dame, 1972);
and Robert E. Lerner, “New Light on The Mirror of Simple Souls,” Speculum 85 (2010): 91–116.
On Marguerite’s social and religious context, see the excellent study by John Van Engen, “Marguerite (Porete) of Hainaut and the Medieval Low Countries,” in Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des Simples Âmes : Perspectives historique, philosophiques et littéraires, ed. Sean L. Field, Robert Lerner, and Sylvain Piron (Études de philosophie médiévale, 102) (Paris, 2013), 25–68. Unfortunately this article came to my attention too late for me to incorporate its insights into this chapter.
See Dyan Elliott, “Women and Confession: From Empowerment to Pathology,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Ithaca, 2003), 31–51 and her more expansive argument in idem., Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 2004).
See also, Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 2003);
and Michael D. Bailey, Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 2003).
In the context of northern France, see also Renata Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims (c. 1347–1396): A Medieval Woman between Demons and Saints,” Speculum 85 (2010): 321–356.
See Bernard Delmaire, “Les beguines dans le Nord de la France au premier siècle de leur histoire (vers 1230 — vers 1350),” in Les religieuse en France au XIIIe siècle, ed. Michel Parisse (Nancy, 1989), 121–162;
and Penelope Galloway, “‘Discreet and Devout Maidens’: Women’s Involvement in Beguine Communities in Northern France, 1200–1500,” in Medieval Women in Their Communities, ed. Diane Watt (Toronto and Buffalo, 1997), 92–115.
On the complexity and multiple layers of such acts of resistance and subjectification, particularly involving poor women, see Sherry B. Ortner, “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (1995): 173–193, at 184–186.
See also, Ortner, Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture (Boston, 1996), esp. chapter 5, “The Problem of “Women” as an Analytic Category,” (116–138); and idem., Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power and the Acting Subject (Durham, 2006), esp. chapters 5–6.
On the role of women and the mimesis of Christ, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1992), esp. essays 4–6.
On the frequency of these councils and the records of their proceedings, see Richard Kay, “Mansi and Rouen: A Critique of the Conciliar Collections,” The Catholic Historical Review 52 (1966): 155–185.
Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova, 23: Rouen 1231: col. 214–215, no. 4, col. 218, no. 35 and 37; Rouen 1235 (concerning corrupt women and miserable women in need of penance), col. 389–92, no. 111 and 109; (on the exclusion of lepers by priests), col. 399–400, no. 144–146. For Sens 1239: col. 509–510, nos. 2–5; Paris 1248: col. 765–768, nos. 6–12; Provins 1251: col. 793–794. A council held in Tours in 1236 noted (canon 13) that it was the bishop’s duty to (re)educate heretics and converted Jews and to provide for their needs so that they do not return to their former beliefs (and communities) under the pretext of poverty. See P. Guérin, Les Counciles généraux et particulers, vol 2 (681–1326) (Paris, 1869), 458.
Generally, see the comments in Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory, 118–128. On this specific historical context, see Anne E. Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca, 2011), chapter 3.
Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, 81; Josephus-Mia Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, 8 vols. (Louvain, 1933–41), 2: (1231) 5.
Philip was the chancellor of Notre-Dame in Paris from 1217–1236 and part of the circle of university masters writing on heresy and reform. For his use of the term mulierculae, see Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, 80. On Philip’s role in heresy accusations in the north, see David A. Traill, “Philip the Chancellor and the Heresy Inquisition in Northern France, 1235–1236,” Viator 37 (2006): 241–254.
For a discussion of the Vulgate passage [2 Timothy 3:4–6] see Robert E. Lerner, “Vagabonds and Little Women: The Medieval Netherlandish Dramatic Fragment ‘De Truwanten’,” Modern Philology 65 (1968): 301–306, at 304.
On the medieval commentaries on Paul’s letters, see Theresa Tinkle, Gender and Power in Medieval Exegesis (New York, 2010), esp. chapter 2. There is a vast literature on the dating of the Pastoral Letters of Paul, also referred to as the Pseudo-Pauline Epistles.
See James W. Aageson, Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church (Peabody, MA, 2008);
and Peter Walker, “Revisiting the Pastoral Epistles — Part I,” European Journal of Theology 21 (2012): 4–16 and “Part II,” 21 (2012): 120–132.
Gilbert of Tournai, “Collectio de scandalis ecclesiae,” 62. See also Elliott, Proving Woman, 188–189; and on Elisabeth, see Jesse Njus, “The Politics of Mysticism: Elisabeth of Spalbeek in Context,” Church History 77 (2008): 285–317.
Luigi Pellegrini, “Female Religious Experience and Society in Thirteenth-Century Italy,” in Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts, ed. Sharon Farmer and Barbara Rosenwein (Ithaca, 2000), 119–120.
As cited in Ernest McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture: With Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene (New York, 1969), 507 and ff. For the Mainz Council of 1233,
see Franz J. Mone, “Kirchenverordnungen der Bistüner Mainz und Strassburg aus dem 13. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 3 (1852), 129 and following.
See Elizabeth Makowski, “A Pernicious Sort of Woman”: Quasi-Religious Women and Canon Lawyers in the Later Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 2005). See also the remarks in Field, Beguine, 193–207; and Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit, 53–84.
Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, “From Case Studies to Comparative Models: Würzburg Beguines and the Vienne Decrees,” in Labels and Libels: Naming Beguines in Northern Medieval Europe, ed. Letha Boehringer, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, and Hildo van Engen (Turnhout, 2014), 53–82, at 63–66.
Tanya Stabler Miller, “’Love is Beguine’: Labelling Lay Religiosity in Thirteenth-Century Paris,” in Labels and Libels, 135–150; for conflicting clerical attitudes on term “beguine,” see Tanya Stabler Miller, “What’s in a Name? Clerical Representations of Parisian Beguines (1200–1328),” Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007): 60–86. For the French context more broadly, see Sean L. Field, “On Being a Beguine,” 117–133.
For a similar methodological approach, see Peter Biller, “Words and the Medieval Notion of ‘Religion’,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985): 351–69; see also Miller, “What’s in a Name?”; and Lerner’s discussion of the label pseudo as applied to women accused of heresy in Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit, 70–71.
See Jo Ann McNamara, “De quibusdam mulieribus: Reading Women’s History from Hostile Sources,” in Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel T. Rosenthal (Athens and London, 1990), 237–258.
See John Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2008), esp. chapters 1–2.
The communities at Ste.-Avoye in the parish of St.-Merry, just off the rue du Temple and that of the Haudriettes, founded near the Place de Grève for poor widows, are good examples. See Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology and the Daily Lives of the Poor (Ithaca, 2002), 147–151; for networks of poor women, see 151–164;
and Sharon Farmer, “Down and Out and Female in Thirteenth-Century Paris,” American Historical Review 103 (1998): 345–372.
Mathieu Maximilien Quantin, Recueil de pièce pour faire suite au Cartulaire général de l’Yonne (Auxerre, 1873), 317, no. 642
See William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia, 1989)
and Susan Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Princeton, 2002).
For the persecution of women as heretics, see Elliott, Proving Woman; and R. I. Moore, The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe (London, 2012);
see also the comments by Miri Rubin, Speculum 65 (1990): 1025–1027 in her review of R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987).
See Rosa Alvarez Perez, “Next-Door Neighbors: Aspects of Judeo-Christian Cohabitation in Medieval France,” in Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and New York, 2009), 209–229.
R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950–1250, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2007), 184.
See Talal Asad, “Medieval Heresy: An Anthropological View,” Social History 11 (1986): 345–362, esp. 359–360. See also Yossef Schwartz in this volume, chapter 6.
William Chester Jordan, “Jewish Studies and the Medieval Historian,” Exemplaria 12 (2000): 7–20, at 16.
Jordan, “Jewish Studies and the Medieval Historian,” 18. More recently, see Monica H. Green, “Conversing with the Minority: Relations among Christian, Jewish and Muslim Women in the High Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008): 105–118, at 107.
See Elisheva Baumgarten, “’A Separate People?’ Some Directions for Comparative Research on Medieval Women,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008): 212–228.
See Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris, 136–146; Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia, 1999), 40–48; and Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 155–179.
Jordan, “Jewish Studies and the Medieval Historian,” 20; and Jordan, “Saving Medieval History: Or, The New Crusade,” in The Past and Future of Medieval Studies, ed. John Van Engen (Notre Dame, IN, 1994), 259–272, at 261–262.
Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton, 2004);
Elisheva Baumgarten, “Shared Stories and Religious Rhetoric: R. Judah the Pious, Peter the Chanter and a Drought,” Medieval Encounters 18 (2012): 36–54;
and Elisheva Baumgarten, “A Tale of a Christian Matron and Sabbath Candles: Religious Difference, Material Culture and Gender in Thirteenth-Century Germany,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 20 (2013): 83–99.
See William Chester Jordan, “Jews on Top: Women and the Availability of Consumption Loans in Northern France in the Mid-Thirteenth Century,” Journal of Jewish Studies 29 (1978): 39–56; and more recently, the articles in the Special Issue of the Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008), especially Victoria Hoyle, “The Bonds that Bind: Money Lending between Anglo-Jewish and Christian Women in the Plea Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, 1218–1280,” 119–129.
On this and on ways of reading, see the comments in Kathleen Biddick, “Genders, Bodies, Borders: Technologies of the Visible,” in Studying Medieval Women: Sex, Gender, Feminism, ed. Nancy F. Partner (Cambridge, MA, 1993): 87–116.
See Palémon Glorieux, Aux origins de la Sorbonne, 2 vols. (Paris, 1965–1966);
and Léon Cadier and Camille Couderc, “Cartulaire et censier de Saint-Merry de Paris,” Mémoires de la société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile-de-France 18 (1891): 101–271.
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Lester, A.E. (2015). Women behind the Law: Lay Religious Women in Thirteenth-Century France and the Problem of Textual Resistance. In: Baumgarten, E., Galinsky, J.D. (eds) Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137317582_13
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