1 - Speaking Across the Stars: Parallel Affective Communities in Islamic and Christian Hagiography

Summary

In a hushed eighth-century night, one woman's cry may have pierced the silence:

My God! The stars have been extinguished, all eyes have slept, the rulers have closed their doors, and each lover is alone with their beloved. This is when I am all Yours.

This is a prayer that has been attributed to a number of contemplative women of eighth-century Basra. In its version above, found in one eleventh-century hagiography, it is spoken by the Proto-Sufi Ḥabiba al-ʿAdawiyya. The stars’ movement begins her prayerful encounter with the Beloved. Astral imagery is also associated with later contemplative women at a geographical distance to Ḥabiba al-ʿAdawiyya. In his thirteenth-century Vita of Marie d’Oignies, Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) indicates Marie's celestial brightness: she is as a sun among the stars (‘tamquam sol inter stellas’), and her virtues are said to be as innumerable as the stars of the sky. Stars are said to protect Marie, restraining heavy rain from falling on her (28: 643D). Most strikingly of all, the Beloved Christ himself sometimes appears to Marie as the ram of the zodiac, Aries, with a shining star on his forehead (‘quasi aries, stellam lucidam habens in fronte’, 88: 659F). Even chapter headings, says Jacques, will allow the reader to follow the path of the text, ‘as though illuminated by flashing stars’ (‘tamquam stellis interlucentibus, illustretur’ (11: 638F)). In these Islamicate and Christian-European lands, contemplative women seem to converse among the stars.

For modern scholars, these cross-textual stars might signify the need to speak – and to listen – internationally. One significant area of comparative study resides in the synergies between the ‘affective’ or ‘emotional’ communities formed by hagiographies of contemplative women in Islamic and Christian traditions. This is powerfully evident in a range of texts, including: Abū ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān al-Sulamī's (d. 1021) Dhikr an-Niswa al-Mutaʿabbitdat As-Ṣufiyyat (Remembrances of Women Sufi Devotees); Jacques de Vitry's (d. 1240) Vita Mariæ Oigniacensis (Life of Marie d’Oignies); and Thomas de Cantimpré's (d. 1272) Vita Lutgardis (Life of Lutgarde). There is a clear rationale for studying these traditions comparatively. In both religious traditions, intimate and rapturous encounter of the Divine is shaped by loving, prayerful exchange with the Beloved – an exchange strengthened by reclusive asceticism. In addressing resonances across the traditions, it is clear that there is not always a rigid polarisation between genetic influence on the one hand, and ‘mere’ parallel on the other.