Female Sanctity
in the Later Middle Ages:
A Bibliography
Compiled by Thomas Head
Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
Contents:
1) General studies of women and late medieval Chrsitianity;
2) Hagiographic composition; 3)
Beguines; 4) Women
in the mendicant orders; 5) Clare of Assisi;
6) Other female
mendicant saints; 7) Female
religious movements in Italy; 8) Sources
in translation.
General studies of women and late medieval Christianity.
Two works which have charted the study of women and sanctity are the
pioneering research of Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the
Middle Ages, trans. Steven Rowan (German original, 1935; Notre Dame,
IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1995) and the more recent work of Caroline
Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food
to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
Also see her essays published in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays
on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (Boston, 1990).
For bibliographic guidance beyond what is provided below, see Susan
Stuard (ed.), Women in Medieval History and Historiography (Philadelphia,
1987), pp. 132-84; Joyce Salisbury, Medieval Sexuality. A Research Guide
(Garland Medieval Bibliographies, 5; New York, 1990); Anne Echols and Marty
Williams, Women in Medieval Times: An Annoted Bibliography (New
York, 1992); Anne Echols and Marty Williams (eds.), An Annotated Index
of Medieval Women (Markus Weiner, New York). Edith Ennen, The Medieval
Woman, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford, 1990) provides an adequate summaries
of the place of women in medieval society. For an excellent summary of
women as writers in the twelfth and thirteenth century, see Peter Dronke,
Women Writers of the Middle Ages. A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua
(+203) to Marguerite Porete (+1310) (Cambridge, 1984).
Hagiographic composition.
On the relation between female religious (among them saints) and their
confessors and the ways that relationship helped to form the hagiographic
and historical record, see Brian McGuire, "Holy Women and Monks in
the Thirteenth Century: Friendship or Exploitation?" Vox Benedictina,
6 (1989), pp. 343-73; Gabor Klaniczay, "Legends as Life-Strategies
for Aspirant Saints in the Later Middle Ages," in The Uses of Supernatural
Power: The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early-Modern
Europe, trans. Susan Singerman (Princeton, 1990), pp. 95-111; John
Coakley, "Gender and the Authority of Friars: the Significance of
Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans," Church
History, 60 (1991), pp. 445-60; John Coakley, "Friars as Confidants
of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican Hagiography," in Images of
Sainthood in Medieval Europe, eds. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea
Szell (Ithaca, NY, 1991), pp. 222-46; Ute Stargardt, "Male Clerical
Authority in the Spiritual (Auto)biographies of Medieval Holy Women,"
in Women as Protagonists and Poets in the German Middle Ages: An Anthology
of Feminist Approaches to Middle High German Literature, ed. Albrecht
Classen (Göppingen, 1991), p. 209-38; Elizabeth Petroff, "Male
Confessors and Female Penitents: Possibilities for Dialogue," in Body
and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford, 1994), pp.
139-60; John Coakley, "Friars, Sanctity, and Gender: Mendicant Encounters
with Saints, 1250-1325," in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men
in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare Lees (Medieval Cultures, 7; Minneapolis,
1994), pp. 91-110; Catherine Mooney, "The Authorial Role of Brother
A. in the Composition of Angela of Foligno's Revelations," Creative
Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, eds. E. Ann Matter and John
Coakley (Philadelphia, 1994), pp. 34-63.
On related topics of hagiographic composition, Elizabeth Petroff, has
examined the influence of models drawn from the Vitae Patrum in
"'She Seemed to Have Come From the Desert': Italian Women Saints and
the Vitae Patrum Cycle," in Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval
Women and Mysticism (Oxford, 1994), pp. 110-36, while Dyan Elliott,
Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993) treats the ways in which ideas of marriage
and chastity formed both sanctity and lay religious practice in the later
middle ages.
Beguines.
Grundmann's own work was in large part focused on the beguines of the
low countries. Ernest McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval
Culture (New Brunswick, NJ, 1954) remains the basic introduction in
English, although Carol Neel, "The Origins of the Beguines,"
Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, eds. Judith Bennett, Elizabeth
Clark, Jean O'Barr, B. Anne Vilen, and Sarah Westphal-Wihl (Signs,
14.2; Winter, 1989; published separately, Chicago, 1989), pp. 321-41 provides
the context for the early beguines well and concisely. For a local study
of their place in the social and economic fabric, consult the somewhat
dated study by Dayton Phillips, The Beguines in Medieval Strasbourg:
a Study of the Social Aspect of Beguine Life (Ann Arbor, MI, 1941).
Simone Roisin, L'hagiographie cistercienne dans le diocèse de
Liège au XIIIe siècle (Louvain: Bibliothèque de
l'Université, 1947) is the fullest consideration of the hagiographic
sources. More specifically on Thomas of Cantompré, see her "La
méthode hagiographique de Thoams de Cantimpré," in Miscellanea
historica in honorem Alberti de Meyer, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1946). See
also the following: Benjamin de Trouyer, "Beguines et Tertiares en
Belgique et aux Pays-Bax aux XII-XIVe siècles," in I Frati
penitenti (see above), pp. 133-38; Brenda Bolton, "Mulieres
Sanctae," Studies in Church History, 10 (1973): 77-85 and
"Vitae Matrum: A Further Aspect of the Frauenfrage,"
Derek Baker (ed.), Medieval Women (Studies in Church History, Subsidia,
1; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978) and "Some Thirteenth-century Women
in the Low Countries, A Special Case?" Nederlands Archief voor
Kerkgeschiedenis, 61 (1981), pp. 7-29; Charles McCurry, "Religious
Careers and Religious Devotion in Thirteenth-Century Metz," Viator,
9 1978), pp. 325-33; Alberto Forni, "Maestri predicatori, santi moderni
e nuova aristocrazia del denaro tra Parigi e Oignies nella prima metà
del sec. XIII," in Culto dei santi, istituzioni e classi sociali
in età preindustriale, eds. Sofia Boesch Gajano and Luigi Sebastiani
(Collana di studi storici, 1; L'Aquila: Japadre Editore, 1984), pp. 459-70;
some of the works of Caroline Bynum (see above); Elizabeth Petroff, "A
New Feminine Spirituality: The Beguines and Their Writings in Medieval
Europe," in Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism
(Oxford, 1994), pp. 51-65. The beguine movement was also active in regions
other than the low countries, particularly southern France, see Pierre
Peanò, "Les Béguines u Languedoc ou la crise du R.O.F.
dans la france méridionale," in I Frati Penitenti (see
above), pp. 139-58. Beguines were particularly drawn to the cult of Christ
and the Passion, see Walter Simons and Joanna Ziegler, "Phenomenal
religion in the Thirteenth Century and its Image: Elisabeth of Spalbeck
and the Passion Cult," Women in the Church (Studies in Church
History, 27; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 117-126. Judith Oliver
has studied a beguine devotional book which illustrates the life of Catherine
of Alexandria in "Medieval alphabet soup," Gesta, 14 (1985),
pp. 129-140.
Women in the mendicant
orders.
The association of female orders with the mendicant movements was a
difficult and multi-faceted one, both encouraged and opposed by the male
mendicants. It is Grundmann who set the problem. A full considertaion of
one form of source material is found in Micheline de Fontette, Les religieuses
à l'âge classique du droit canon: Recherches sur les structures
juridiques des branches féminines des ordres (Paris, 1967).
The problems posed by women for the new religious movements in the eyes
of the papacy have been illuminated by Edith Pástor, "I Papi
de duecento e trecento fronte alla vita religiosa femminile," in Il
movimento religioso femminile in Umbria nei secoli XIII-XIV, ed. Roberto
Rusconi (Florence, 1984), pp. 31-83. Roberto Rusconi has considered the
expansion of female involvement in the Franciscan movement in "La
chiesa e il Francescanesimo femminile," and "L'espansione del
francescanesimo femminile nel secolo XIII," in Movimento religioso
femminile e Francescanesimo nel secolo XIII (Assisi, 1980). The other
studies collected in this volume consider more specific aspects. For a
general history of the Clarissas, see Ancilla Rottger and Petra Gross,
Klarissen: Geschichte und Gegenwart einer Ordensgemeinschaft (Werl,
1994). John Freed examines one important practical aspect of this problem
in "Urban Development and the 'Cura monilium' in Thirteenth-Century
Germany," Viator 3 (1972): 311-27. Women, however, also remained
important in traditional monastic convents. See Michel Parisse, Les
nonnes au Moyen Age (Le Puy, 1983); Penelope Johnson, Equal in Monastic
Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago, 1991). For
a sense of convent life, see Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material
Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (Routledge, 1994).
Clare of Assisi.
The critical edition of Clare's own writings is: Claire d'Assise, Ecrits,
ed. Marie-France Becker, Jean-François Godet, and Thaddée
Matura (Sources Chrétiennes, 325; Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985).
Now also see Giovanni Boccali, "Testamento e benedizione di S. Chiara.
Nuovo codice latino," Archivum franciscanum historicum, 82
(1989): 273-305. Concordances may be found in Concordantiae verbales
opusculorum s. Francisci et s. Clarae Assisiensium, ed. Giovanni Boccali
(Assisi: Edizioni Porziuncola, 1976) and Opuscula sancti Francisci,
Scripta sanctae Clarae: concordance, index, listes de fréquence,
tables comparatives, ed. Jean-François Godet (Corpus des sources
franciscaines, 5; Louvain: Université catholique de Louvain, 1976).
The major hagiographic records of Clare are Zeffirino Lazzeri (ed.), "Il
processo di Santa Chiara d'Assisi," Archivum Franciscanum Historicum,
13 (1920): 403-507 and (Thomas of Celano?,) Legenda sanctae Clarae virginis
tratta dal ms. 338 della Bibl. communali di Assisi, ed. Francesco Pennacchi
(Assisi: Metastasio, 1910). Other contemporary records may be found (with
Spanish translation) in Escritos de Santa Clara y Documentos Contemporaneos,
ed. Ignacio Omaechevarria, second edition (Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos,
314; Madrid: Editorial Catolica, 1982) and (with French translation) in
Sainte Claire d'Assise: Biographie, écrits, procès et
bulle de canonisation, textes de chroniquers, textes législatifs,
tables, ed. Damien Vorreux (Paris: Editions franciscaines, 1983). For
English translations see: Clare of Assisi: Early Documents, trans.
Regis Armstrong, revised edition (St. Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan
Institute Publications, 1993); Francis and Clare: The Complete Works,
trans. Regis Armstrong and Ignatius Brady (New York: Paulist Press, 1982):
Legend and Writings of Saint Clare of Assisi, eds. Engelbert Grau
and Ludwig Hardick, trans. Ignatius Brady (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan
Institute, 1953). The most accessible short study in English is: Rosalind
Brooke and Christopher Brooke, "St. Clare," in Medieval Women,
ed. Derek Baker (Studies in Church History, Subsidia, 1; Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1978), pp. 275-287. The most comprehensive overview may be found
in the essays contained in: Chiara d'Assisi (Atti dei Convegni della
Società di studi francescani, n. s. 3; Spoleto: Centro italiano
di Studi sull'alto Medioevo, 1993). Other important studies include: Marco
Bartoli, Clare of Assisi, trans. Sister Frances Teresa (Italian
original, 1989; Quincy IL: Franciscan Press, 1993); Chiara, francescanesimo
al femminile, ed. Davide Covi and Dino Dozzi (Collana "Studi e
richerhe," 1; Rome: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1992) [original version published
as a number of Laurentianum, 31 {1990}]; René-Charles Dhont,
Claire parmi ses soeurs (Pax et Veritas, 10; Paris: Editions Paulines,
1971), English translation as Clare among her Sisters (St. Bonaventure,
New York: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1987); G. Fortini, "The
Noble Family of St. Clare of Assisi," Franciscan Studies, 42
(1986), pp. 48-67; Ezio Franceschini, Nel segno di Francesco, ed.
Claudio Leonardi (Assisi: Edizioni Porziulcola, 1988); Javier Garrido,
La forma de vida de Santa Clara (Aranzazu: Editorial Aranzazu, 1979)
[Italian translation, Milan, 1989]; Servus Gieben (ed.), Icones sanctae
Clarae. La vita di santa Chiara attraverso i'immagine (Rome: Museo
Francescano, 1989); Servus Gieben (ed.), L'iconografia de Chiara d'Assisi
/ Clare of Assisi: Iconography (Italia Francescana, vol. 1;
Rome, 1993); Lothar Hardick, "Erläuterungen," in Leben
und Schriften der heiligen Klara von Assisi (Werl: Dietrich Coelde
Verlag, 1952; fifth edition, 1980), pp. 154-88 [published separately in
French translation as Spiritualité de sainte Claire, trans.
Damien Vorreux (Paris: Editions franciscaines, 1961)]; Die heilige Klara
von Assisi (Franziskanische Studien, vol. 35; Munster, 1953);
Movimento religioso femminile e francescanesimo nel secolo XIII (Assisi:
La Societa, 1980); Lazaro Iriarte [de Aspurz], Letra y Espiritu de la
Regla de Santa Clara (Valencia: Selecciones de Francescanismo,
1974) [Italian translation, Milan, 1976]; Ingrid Peterson, Clare of
Assisi: A Biographical Study (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993);
Nesta de Robeck, Saint Clare of Assisi (Milwaukee, 1951);
Heribert Roggen, Franciscaans-evangelische Levensstijl volgens de h.
Clara van Assisi (The Hague, 1966) [published in French translation
as L'Esprit de sainte Claire ( Présence de saint François,
19; Paris, 1969)]; Anton Rotzetter, Klara von Assisi. Die erste franziskanische
Frau, second edition (Freiburg im B.: Herder, 1993); Santa Chiara
d'Assisi, 1253-1953. Studi e Cronaca del VII Centenario (Assisi, 1954).
A general guide to the literature on Clare may be found in Bibliografia
di Santa Chiara di Assisi, 1930-1993, eds. Pietro Maranesi and Isidoro
de Villapadierro (Quaderni di Bibliografia Francescana, 1; Rome: Istituto
Storico dei Cappuccini, 1994).
Other female
mendicant saints of the thirteenth century.
See in particular the studies of Anna Benvenuti Papi collected in "In
castro poenitentiae": santita e societa femminile nell'Italia medievale
(Italia Sacra, 45; Rome: Herder, 1990). Bona of Pisa (+1208): Elizabeth
Petroff, "The Rhetoric of Transgression in the Lives of Italian
Women Saints," in Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism
(Oxford, 1994), pp. 161-81. Elisabeth of Thuringia (or of Hungary; +1231):
Jeanne Ancelet-Hustache, Gold Tried by Fire: St. Elizabeth of Hungary,
trans. Paul J. Oligny and Sister Venard O'Donnell (Chicago, 1963); Leo
Santifaller, "Zur Originalüberlieferung der Heiligsprechungurkunde
der Landgräfin Elisabeth von Thüringen vom Jahre 1235,"
in Klemens Wieser, ed., Acht Jahrhunderte Deutscher Orden in Einzeldarstellungen:
Festschrift für Marian Tumler (Bad Godesberg, 1967), 20-45; H.
Zielinski, "Elisabeth von Thuringen und der Kinder: zur Geschichte
der Kindheit im Mittelalter," in Elisabeth: Die deutsche Orden
und Kirche, ed. U. ARnold and H. Liebing (Marburg, 1983), pp. 27-83;
André Vauchez, "Charité et pauvreté chez sainte
Elisabeth de Thuringe d'après les actes du procès de canonisation,"
in Michel Mollat, ed., Etudes sur l'histoire de la pauvreté
(Paris, 1974), 163-73; Sankt Elisabeth. Fürstin Dienerin Heilige
(Sigmaringen, 1981); Johanna von Herzogenberg, "Agnes von Böhmen,
Elixabeth von Thüringen, Hedwig von Schlesien. Versuch eines Triptychons,"
800 Jahre franz von Asisi (Krems, 1982), pp. 150-6. Hedwig of Silesia
(+1243): Joseph Gottschalk, St. Hedwig Herzogin von Schlesien (Cologne
and Graz, 1964). Umiliana dei Cerchi (+1246): Anna Benvenuti Papi, "Umiliana
dei Cerchi. Nascita di un culto nella Firenze del dugento," Studi
Francescani, 77 (1980), pp. 87-117. Douceline of Marseilles (+1274):
Claude Carozzi, "L'Estamen de sainte Douceline," Provence
Historique, 23 (1973), pp. 270-9 and "Douceline et les autres,"
Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 11 (1976), pp. 251-67. Margaret of Cortona
(+1297): F. Cardini, "Agiografia e politica; Margherita da Cortona
e le vicende di una città inquieta," Studi francescani,
76 (1979), pp. 127-36; Anna Benvenuti Papi, "'Margherita Filia Ierusalem.'
Una visione mistica della Terrasanta nella spiritualità feminile
Francescana," in Toscana e Terrasanta nel medioeveo, ed. F.
Cardini (Florence, 1982), pp. 117-32; Enrico Menestò, "La mistica
di Margherita da Cortona," Temi e problemi nella mistica femminile
trecentesca (Rimini, 1983), pp. 183-206. Clare of Montefalco (+1308):
Berengario di Donadio, Vita di Chiara da Montefalco, ed. R. Sala
(Spiritualita nei secoli, 42; 1991). Humilty of Faenza (or of Florence;
+1310): Pietro Zama, Santa Umiltà: La Vita e i "sermones"
(Faenza, 1974); Elizabeth Petroff, "The Rhetoric of Transgression
in the Lives of Italian Women Saints," and "Writing the
Body: Male and Female in the Writings of Marguerite d'Oingt, angela of
Foligno, and Umiltà of Faenza," in Body and Soul: Essays
on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford, 1994), pp. 161-81 and 204-24.
Female religious
movements in Italy.
The background and some specifics is well provided by Raoul Manselli,
"La donna nella vita della chiesa tra duecento e trecento," in
Il movimento religioso femminile in Umbria (see above), pp. 243-55.
Studies include: Anna Benvenuti Papi, "Frati mendicanti e pinzochere
in Toscana: dalla marginalità sociale a modello di santità,"
in Temi e problemi nella mistica femminile trecentesca (Rimini,
1983), pp. 109-35; Mario sensi, "Incarcerate e Recluse in Umbria nei
secoli XIII e XIV," in Il movimento religioso femminile in Umbria
(see above), pp. 85-121 and "Incarcerate e penitenti a Foligno nella
prima metà del trecento," in I Frati della penitenza
(see above), pp. 309-24; Brenda Bolton, "Daughters of Rome: all one
in Christ Jesus!" in Women in the Church, ed. W. J. Sheils
and Diana Wood (Studies in Church History, 27; Oxford, 1990), pp. 101-15.
Sources in translation.
Collections of sources in translation which contain hagiographic works
concerning women include (note this list goes well before and beyond the
thirteenth century): Medieval Women's Visionary Literature, ed.
Elizabeth Petroff (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Handmaids
of the Lord: The Lives of Holy Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle
Ages, ed. Joan Petersen (Cistercian Studies, 143; Kalamazoo, forthcoming);
Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, ed. Jo Ann McNamara and John Halborg,
with E. Gordon Whatley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992); Consolation
of the Blessed, ed. Elizabeth Petroff (New York: Alta Gaia Society,
1979); The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances
of the Thirteenth Century, ed. Brigitte Cazelles (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); A Legend of Holy Women. A Translation
of Osbern Bodenham's Legends of Holy Women, ed. Sheila Delany (Notre
Dame Texts in Medieval Culture, 1; Notre Dame, 1993). Translations of individual
works are appearing in the following series: Classics of Western Spirituality
(New York: Paulist Press); Library of Medieval Women Writers (Binghamton,
NY: MRTS); Matrologia Latina (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing).
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