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Medieval Saints and Their Miraculous Songs: Ritual Singing, Funerary Piety, and the Construction of Female Sanctity in Thirteenth-Century Liège

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Luo Wang
Luo Wang*
Affiliation:
Postdoctoral Fellow in History at Peking University, Beijing, China
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the conspicuous role of singing in the hagiographical construction of saintly women in the thirteenth-century Diocese of Liège. The constellation of Lives about Liégeois women occupies a prominent place in the “origin story” of the new spirituality in the later Middle Ages. However, one aspect of these women's perceived religiosity—their musical and vocal talent—though omnipresent in the sources, has received only sparse attention from scholarship. This article focuses on two of the most important Lives in this group, those of Mary of Oignies and Christina of Sint-Truiden, and demonstrates that hagiographers, mobilizing liturgical vocabulary and ritual ideas identifiable to a local audience, consistently represented women's singing as magnificent ritual performance. By doing so, the hagiographers highlighted these women's privileged access to the divine and distinct potency as intercessors for the living and the dead. This article also intends to show the highly sophisticated ways in which Latin liturgy and its vernacular appropriation, popular ideas and scholastic theories about music were negotiated, developed, and together contributed to a distinctive religious rhetoric in the articulation of female sanctity in thirteenth-century Europe.

Keywords

medieval hagiographyholy womensingingfunerary piety
Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 509 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History

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Footnotes

Special thanks are due to Ruth Mazo Karras, Walter Simons, the three anonymous readers and the editors at Church History for their comments and suggestions.

References

1 de Vitry, Jacques, Vita Marie de Oegnies, ed. Huygens, R.B.C., Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis 252 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 151Google Scholar: “Incepit enim alta voce et clara cantare, nec cessavit spacio trium dierum et noctium deum laudare, gratias agere, dulcissimam cantilenam de deo, de sanctis angelis, de beata Virgine, de sanctis aliis, de amicis suis, de divinis scripturis rithmice et dulci modulatione contexere, nec deliberabat ut sententias inveniret nec morabatur ut inventas rithmice disponeret, sed velut ante se scriberentur dabat ei dominus in illa hora quid loqueretur: continuo clamore iubilans nec in cogitando laborabat nec in disponendo cantum interrumpebat. Unus autem de seraphim, ut videbatur ei, alas suas supra pectus eius expandebat, quo ministrante et dulciter assistente inspirabatur ei carmen absque omni difficultate.” The English translation is mainly based on Margot King's but with some changes, most notably translating alta as “loud” rather than “high.” See: King, Margot, trans., “The Life of Mary of Oignies by James of Vitry,” in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, ed. Mulder-Bakker, Anneke (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 119Google Scholar. For some general studies on this Vita, see: Vauchez, André, “Prosélytisme et action antihérétique en milieu féminin au XIIIe siècle: la Vie de Marie d'Oignies (†1213) par Jacques de Vitry,” in Problèmes d'Histoire du Christianisme 17 (1987), 95–110Google Scholar; Michel Lauwers, “Expérience béguinale et récit hagiographique: À propos de la ‘Vita Mariae Oigniacencis’ de Jacques de Vitry (vers 1215),” Journal des savants (1989): 61–103; and Anneke Mulder-Bakker, “General Introduction,” in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, 3–30.

2 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 153: “et hec omnia rithmice et lingua Romana protulit.”

3 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 152: “quedam etiam de divinis scripturis novo et mirabili modo exponens, de evangelio, de psalmis, de novo et veteri testamento que nunquam audierat multa subtiliter edisserens.” The English translation is based on King's with minor changes: King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 120.

4 E.g., Gregory of Nyssa, , “The Life of Macrina,” trans. Silvas, Anna, in Macrina the Younger: Philosopher of God (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 109–148Google Scholar; Krueger, Derek, “Writing and the Liturgy of Memory in Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 8/4 (Winter 2000): 483–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harvey, Susan Ashbrook, “The Stylite's Liturgy: Ritual and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6/3 (Fall 1998): 523–539CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The Hildegardine scholarship is immense, see an overview in Leigh-Choate, Tova, Flynn, William, and Fassler, Margot, “Hearing the Heavenly Symphony: An Overview of Hildegard's Musical Oeuvre with Case Studies,” in A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Kienzle, Beverly Mayne, Stoudt, Debra, and Ferzoco, George (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 163–192Google Scholar.

6 E.g., Jones, Claire Taylor, Ruling the Spirit: Women, Liturgy, and Dominican Reform in Late Medieval Germany (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)Google Scholar; Norton, Michael and Carr, Amelia, “Liturgical Manuscripts, Liturgical Practice, and the Women of Klosterneuburg,” Traditio 66 (2011): 67–169CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Andersen, Elizabeth, Lähnemann, Henrike, and Simon, Anne, eds., A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 Le Goff, Jacques, La Naissance du Purgatoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1981)Google Scholar; McGuire, Brian Patrick, “Purgatory, the Communion of Saints, and Medieval Change,” Viator 20 (1989): 61–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Newman, Barbara, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 108–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For example: Alexiou, Margaret, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Foley, Helen, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 21–55Google Scholar; Ziolkowski, Jan, “Women's Lament and the Neuming of the Classics,” in Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Paleography and Performance, ed. Haines, John and Rosenfeld, Randall (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 128–50Google Scholar; and Suter, Ann, ed., Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

10 For example, Rubin, Miri, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1991), 316–17Google Scholar. “Mysticism” is a delicate concept that has a complex history. The most commonly accepted core element of mysticism is the yearning or the experience of a “mystical union” between the human soul and the Godhead. The Liégeois women's religious performances as represented in the hagiographical texts do not always revolve around this theme. But they could be categorized as “mystical” if the term is more broadly defined as devotional piety. See: Hollywood, Amy, “Mysticism and Transcendence,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 4: Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100-c.1500, ed. Rubin, Miri and Simons, Walter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 297–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McGinn, Bernard, “Mystical Consciousness: A Modest Proposal,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 8/1 (2008): 44–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 McGinn, Bernard, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350) (New York: Crossroad, 1998)Google Scholar. On Eucharistic piety and women's fasting, see: Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar; on “bridal mysticism,” see, for example: Elliott, Dyan, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: Metaphor and Embodiment in the Lives of Pious Women, 200–1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 174–232CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Barbara Newman, “La mystique courtoise: Thirteenth-Century Beguines and the Art of Love,” in Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, 137–167.

12 Mary of Oignies has been considered an early example of the so-called “beguines,” i.e., lay women who mainly concentrated in urban areas in the southern Low Countries and voluntarily strove to live chaste and pious lives without joining an established religious order. See the classic work: Herbert Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter: Untersuchungen über die geschichtlichen Zusammenhänge zwischen der Ketzerei, den Bettelorden und der religiösen Frauenbewegung im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert und über die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Mystik. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1935; 1961). The English translation is Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women's Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism, trans. Steven Rowan (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1995). For a more recent survey of the holy women in the Low Countries, see: Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). See also: Walter Simons, “Holy Women of the Low Countries: A Survey,” in Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition, c. 1100-c. 1500, ed. Alastair Minnis and Rosalynn Voaden (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 625–662; and John van Engen, “The Religious Women of Liège at the Turn of the Thirteenth Century,” in Medieval Liège at the Crossroads of Europe: Monastic Society and Culture, 1000–1300, ed. Steven Vanderputten, Tjamke Snijders, and Jay Diehl (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 339–370.

13 Jean-Louis Kupper, Liège et l'Église Impériale, XIe-XIIe Siècles (Paris: Société d'Edition Les Belles Lettres, 1981); Alain Marchandisse, La fonction épiscopale à Liège aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Etude de politologie historique (Genève: Droz, 1998). A recent collection of papers on the religious culture in the diocese in the central Middle Ages is Steven Vanderputten, Tjamke Snijders, and Jay Diehl, eds., Medieval Liège at the Crossroads of Europe.

14 Simone Roisin, L'hagiographie cistercienne dans le diocèse de Liège au XIIIe siècle (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l'Université, 1947); Sara Ritchey, “Saints’ Lives as Efficacious Texts: Cistercian Monks, Religious Women, and Curative Reading, c. 1250-1330,” Speculum 92/4 (October 2017): 1101–1143; Robert Sweetman, “Dominican Preaching in the Southern Low Countries 1240–1260: Materiae Praedicabiles in the Liber de natura rerum and Bonum universale de apibus of Thomas of Cantimpré,” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1988); and John Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 68–110.

15 Liège and its surroundings contributed some of the legendary first crusaders, including Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine and the first King of Jerusalem. See: Alan Murray, “The Army of Godfrey of Bouillon, 1096–1099: Structure and Dynamics of a Contingent on the First Crusade,” Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 70 (1992): 301–329. See also: Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London: Continuum, 1986), 37 and 44.

16 E.g., John Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970); David d'Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985); Franco Morenzoni, Des écoles aux paroisses: Thomas de Chobham et la promotion de la prédication au début du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1995); Nicole Bériou, L'avènement des maîtres de la Parole: La prédication à Paris au XIIIe siècle (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1998); Marcia Colish, “The Early Scholastics and the Reform of Doctrine and Practice,” in Reforming the Church before Modernity: Patterns, Problems and Approaches ed. Christopher Bellitto and Louis Hamilton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 61–68.

17 Relevant studies see: Carolyn Muessig, “Prophecy and Song: Teaching and Preaching by Medieval Women,” in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela Walker (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 146–158; Ulrike Wiethaus, “The Death Song of Marie d'Oignies: Mystical Sound and Hagiographical Politics in Medieval Lorraine,” in The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Southern Low Countries, ed. Ellen Kittell and Mary Suydam (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 153–179; Bruce Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 191–258; and Walter Simons, “Beguines, Liturgy, and Music in the Middle Ages: An Exploration,” in Beghinae in cantu instructae: Musical Patrimony from Flemish Beguinages (Middle Ages-Late-18th Century), ed. Pieter Mannaerts (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 15–26.

18 E.g., Patrick Geary, “Saints, Scholars, and Society: The Elusive Goal,” in Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 9–29; Nancy Caciola, “Through a Glass, Darkly: Recent Work on Sanctity and Society: A Review Article,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 38/2 (April 1996): 301–309; and Felice Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative,” Viator 25 (1994): 95–113.

19 The Cistercian monasteries where some early copies of these Vitae were produced and preserved had a strong relationship with the beguine communities and the Cistercian women's houses in the region. See: Suzan Folkerts, “The Manuscript Transmission of the Vita Mariae Oigniacensis in the Later Middle Ages,” in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, 221–241; and Ritchey, “Saints’ Lives as Efficacious Texts.”

20 Muessig, “Prophecy and Song.”

21 Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire, esp. 191–258.

22 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. Josephus Strange (Cologne: Heberle, 1851), Distinctio XI. Capitula II, III, V, VI, VII, pp. 268–272, 273–276. For recent studies on Caesarius and the Cistercian context, see, for example: Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Faith: Cistercian Men, Women, and their Stories, 1100–1250 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002); and Victoria Smirnova, Marie de Beaulieu, and Jacques Berlioz, eds., The Art of Cistercian Persuasion in the Middle Ages and Beyond: Caesarius of Heisterbach's Dialogue on Miracles and Its Reception (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

23 See n1.

24 David Keck, Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 37.

25 Keck, Angels and Angelology, 58–59.

26 Ulrike Hascher-Burger, “Religious Song and Devotional Culture in Northern Germany,” in A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany, 261.

27 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 151.

28 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 154.

29 John Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance and Drama, 1050–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 241.

30 Rubin, Corpus Christi, 180.

31 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 152; King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 120.

32 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 152; King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 120.

33 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 152–153; King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 120.

34 Anneke Bulder-Bakker, “General Introduction,” in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, 8.

35 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 155.

36 Anneke Bulder-Bakker, “Introduction,” in Anneke Bulder-Bakker, ed., Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 1–19.

37 C.A. Robson, Maurice of Sully and the Medieval Vernacular Homily: with the Text of Maurice's French Homilies from a Sens Cathedral Chapter MS. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952).

38 Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, 36–39.

39 Jacques de Vitry, The Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry: A Critical Edition, ed. John Frederick Hinnebusch (Fribourg: The University Press Fribourg, 1972), 95: “Primo siquidem a uicinis sacerdotibus uocatus et inuitatus, cum timore et uerecundia simplicibus laicis simpliciter et uulgariter ea que audierat predicare cepit.”

40 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 120; King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 100.

41 John Haines, Medieval Song in Romance Languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 197–296.

42 Morgan Powell, “Translating Scripture for Ma Dame de Champagne: The Old French ‘Paraphrase’ of Psalm 44 (Eructavit),” in The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Duncan Robertson, and Nancy Warren (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 83–103; and Guy Lobrichon, “Un nouveau genre pour un public novice: la paraphrase biblique dans l'espace roman du XIIe siècle,” in The Church and Vernacular Literature in Medieval France, ed. Dorothea Kullmann (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009), 87–108.

43 Roger De Ganck, trans., The Life of Beatrice of Nazareth, 1200–1268 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1991), 25, 59–61; Wybren Scheepsma, “Beatrice of Nazareth: The First Woman Author of Mystical Texts,” trans. Myra Scholz, in Seeing and Knowing, 49–66. Another thirteenth-century woman from the Low Countries who has left poetic and visionary works in her native Dutch is Hadewijch, see: Hadewijch: The Complete Works, trans. Columba Hart (New York: Paulist, 1980). A good discussion of the use of the vernacular for devotional writings in the thirteenth century, particularly by women, is: Sara Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 17–56.

44 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 153: “Dixit etiam, cum de sancto Stephano prothomartyre caneret, quem rosarium paradisi appellabat, quod dum oraret in morte dominus sanctum Paulum dedit ei in munere, cumque beatus Paulus martyrio coronatus spiritum in morte emitteret, sanctus Stephanus presens fuit et beati Pauli spiritum domino obtulit, dicens domino: ‘Hoc magnum et singulare munus michi dedisti, et ego cum fructu multiplici illud reddo tibi.’” Punctuation for the abbreviation of “Saint” has been added for consistency. King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 121. The epithet “rosarium paradisi” has presented some difficulty to the translator. King explains in her footnote that she prefers “the crown of heaven” rather than “the rose of heaven” as the word rosarium refers to a kind of “head-covering, often adorned with flowers” in the thirteenth-century Low Countries. See: King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” p. 121, n. 142. In Thomas of Cantimpré's biography of John of Cantimpré, when a nobleman wore a crown (crone) “which he had most curiously and exquisitely fashioned for himself out of herbs and flowers” at the Christmas festival, John delivered a speech on the floral crown exhorting the knight to turn to the “everlasting delight of Christ's verdant paradise of bliss” (perhennem felicitatis uirentis paradisi amenitatem) and to “be crowned with the diadem of his perpetual and immortal glory” (eius perpetue et immortalis glorie diademate coronari). See: Robert Godding, ed., “Une oeuvre inédite de Thomas de Cantimpré, la ‘Vita Ioannis Cantipratensis,’” Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 76 (1981): 292; and Barbara Newman, trans., “The Life of John of Cantimpré,” in Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives, ed. Barbara Newman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 95.

45 Stevens, Words and Music, 239–249; Haines, Medieval Song in Romance, 103–115; John Haines, “Le chant vulgaire dans l'Église à la fête de saint Étienne,” in The Church and Vernacular Literature, 159–75.

46 John Haines has edited and translated the surviving five versions of Saint Stephen Epistle with Old French trope in Medieval Song in Romance Languages, 245–296.

47 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 151; Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power, 83.

48 Triumphus sancti Remacli de Malmundariensi Coenobio, ed. D. W. Wattenbach, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores 11 (Hannover: Hahn's, 1854), 456. A discussion of this episode can be found in Alison Elliott, “The Triumphus Sancti Remacli: Latin Evidence for Oral Composition,” Romance Philology 32/3 (February 1979): 292–298.

49 Stevens, Words and Music in the Middle Ages, 235–267.

50 Johannes de Grocheio, Ars musice, edited and translated by Constant Mews, John Crossley, and Catherine Jeffreys (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2011), 66: “Cantum vero gestualem dicimus, in quo gesta heroum et antiquorum patrum opera recitantur. Sicuti vita et martyria sanctorum, et prelia et adversitates quas antiqui viri pro fide et veritate passi sunt. Sicuti vita beati stephani protomartyris. Et hystoria regis karoli.” For clerical opinions on the usefulness of secular songs for moral instruction, see: Christopher Page, The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life and Ideas in France 1100–1300 (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1989).

51 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 151. King translates alta as “high” and acuta as “piercing,” see: King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 119.

52 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 151.

53 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 152.

54 Both English and Latin quoted from Timothy McGee, The Sound of Medieval Song: Ornamentation and Vocal Style according to the Treatises (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 20 and 170.

55 Summa Musice: A Thirteenth-Century Manual for Singers, ed. Christopher Page (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 153.

56 Jerome of Moravia, Tractatus de musica, quoted from McGee, The Sound of Medieval Song, 174. The author was from Moravia but received his education from Paris.

57 Amalar of Metz, On the Liturgy, vol. 2, ed. Eric Knibbs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014), 134, 136.

58 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 151.

59 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 151.

60 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 152.

61 Pascal Collomb, “Vox clamantis in ecclesia: Contribution des sources liturgiques médiévales occidentales à une histoire du cri,” in Haro! Noël! Oyé! Pratiques du cri au Moyen Âge, ed. Didier Lett and Nicolas Offenstadt (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2003), 117–130. See also: Carleen Mandolfo, “Language of Lament in the Psalms,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms, ed. William Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 114–130.

62 Amalar of Metz, On the Liturgy, vol.1, 90: “In memoriam illius rei nos per ecclesias nostras solemus portare ramos et clamare ‘Osanna.’”

63 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 151.

64 Gertrud Lewis, “The Mystical Jubilus: An Example from Gertrud of Helfta (1256–1302),” Vox Benedictina 1/4 (1984): 245; Peter Dinzelbacher, “Jubilus,” in Wörterbuch der Mystik (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 1989), 282.

65 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 153; King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 120.

66 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 163.

67 Dyan Elliott, “The Beguines: A Sponsored Emergence,” in Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 47–84.

68 Jacques de Vitry, Lettres, ed. R.B.C. Huygens (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 72.

69 About the life and career of Jacques de Vitry, see: Philipp Funk, Jakob von Vitry: Leben und Werke (Leipzig: Teubner, 1909); Jean Donnadieu, Jacques de Vitry (1175/1180-1240) entre l'Orient et l'Occident: l’évêque aux trois visages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). About Jacques de Vitry's later veneration of Mary through generous donation to the community at Oignies, see: Sharon Farmer, “Low Country Ascetics and Oriental Luxury: Jacques de Vitry, Marie of Oignies and the Treasures of Oignies, in History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. Rachel Fulton and Bruce Holsinger (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 205–222.

70 For example, it has been emphasized that as a preacher in the Albigensian crusade Jacques de Vitry wrote the Vita to combat the perceived heretics in southern France. See: Vauchez, “Prosélytisme et action antihérétique”; Elliott, Proving Woman, 47–84.

71 Michel Lauwers, La mémoire des ancêtres, le souci des morts: morts, rites et société au Moyen Âge (Diocèse de Liège, XIe-XIIIe siècles) (Paris: Beauchesne, 1997), 409–473. Scholarship on prayer for the Dead in the early medieval history is extensive, see for example: Le Goff, La Naissance du Purgatoire; Megan McLaughlin, Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994); Dominique Iogna-Prat, “The Dead in the Celestial Bookkeeping of the Cluniac Monks around the Year 1000,” in Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. Lester Little and Barbara Rosenwein (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998), 340–362.

72 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 101–102; King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 85.

73 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 103; King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 87.

74 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Lutgardis, ed. Godfrey Henschen, in Acta Sanctorum, 16 July (Paris: 1867), 197.

75 Thomas of Cantimpré, Bonum universale de apibus (Douai: Baltazaris Belleri, 1627), Liber I. Capitulum LIII, p. 502.

76 Lauwers, La mémoire des ancêtres, le souci des morts, 437. For Mary Magdalene's image through the early centuries see: Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), esp. 18–46.

77 Ike de Loos, “Saints in Brabant: A Survey of Local Proper Chants,” Revue belge de Musicologie 55 (2001): 9–39, esp. 25–28; the text is edited in Daniel Misonne, “Office liturgique neumé de la Bienheureuse Marie d'Oignies à l'abbaye de Villers au XIIIe siècle,” Revue bénédictine 111 (2001): 267–286; an English translation can be found in Hugh Feiss, trans., “The Liturgical Office of Mary of Oignies by Goswin of Bossut,” in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, 175–196.

78 Misonne, “Office liturgique neumé,” 278: “Hostiam hanc, benignissime Deus, ob gratiam beatae Mariae benignae tuae, quaesumus, sanctifica atque fortissima caritatis tuae virtute cunctis fidelibus vivis et defunctis in vegetationem transfer animarum.” The English translation is mine.

79 Misonne, “Office liturgique neumé,” 278–9: “Sacramenta bonitatis tuae Deus, intercedente beata Maria benigna tua, ab omni nos vetustate purificent, et cunctis fidelisbus vivis et defunctis perpetuae redemptionis tuae salutarem praestent effectum.”

80 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, ed. Ioanne Pinio, in Acta Sanctorum, 24 July (Paris: 1867), 650–660; Margot King and Barbara Newman, trans., “The Life of Christina the Astonishing,” in Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives, 127–160.

81 Thomas of Cantimpré, Supplementum, ed. Huygens, R.B.C., Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis 252 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 167–201Google Scholar; Thomas of Cantimpré, “The Supplement to James of Vitry's Life of Mary of Oignies,” trans. Hugh Feiss, in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation, 137–165.

82 Barbara Newman, “Introduction,” in Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives, 30.

83 Smith, Rachel, Excessive Saints: Gender, Narrative, and Theological Invention in Thomas of Cantimpré's Mystical Hagiographies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 48–82Google Scholar.

84 The former phrase by Simone Roisin is quoted from Newman, “Introduction,” in Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives, 30; the latter phrase refers to a period immediately after Christina's first return from death, see: Newman, “Introduction,” in Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives, 34.

85 Robert Sweetman, “Thomas of Cantimpré, Mulieres Religiosae, and Purgatorial Piety: Hagiographical Vitae and the Beguine ‘Voice’,” in A Distinct Voice: Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O.P., ed. Jacqueline Brown and William Stoneman (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 606–628; Newman, Barbara, “Hildegard of Bingen and the ‘Birth of Purgatory,’” Mystics Quarterly 19/3 (1993): 90–97Google Scholar; Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, 111; and Nancy Caciola, Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2016), 66–67.

86 Sweetman, “Thomas of Cantimpré, Mulieres Religiosae, and Purgatorial Piety.”

87 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, I.5–7, pp. 651–652.

88 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, III.27, p. 655; King and Newman, “The Life of Christina the Astonishing,” 142.

89 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, I.11, p. 652.

90 Wagner, Albrecht, ed., Visio Tnugdali: Lateinisch und Altdeutsch (Erlangen: Deichert, 1882), 23Google Scholar; Gardiner, Eileen, ed., Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante (New York: Italica, 1989), 165CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, p. 650; King and Newman, “The Life of Christina the Astonishing,” 128.

92 McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, 161.

93 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, II.16, p. 653.

94 Thomas of Cantimpré, Bonum universale de apibus, Liber I. Capitulum XI, pp. 42–43: “Hic coram nobis omnibus, quae astamus, tribus noctibus lucidissimi splendoris globus apparuit, & per maximum noctis spacium immobilis perdurauit.”

95 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, Distinctio I. Capitulum XXXII, p. 39. On the thirteenth-century Dominican ideas about the resurrected body, see: Zachary Matus, “Resurrected Bodies and Roger Bacon's Elixir,” Ambix 60:4 (2013): 323–340.

96 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, Distinctio IV. Capitulum XXXIX, p. 208: “Anima substantia spiritualis est, et in sui natura sphaerica, ad similitudinem globi lunaris.”

97 Meyer-Baer, Kathi, Music of the Spheres and the Dance of Death: Studies in Musical Iconology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Godwin, Joscelyn, ed., The Harmony of the Spheres: A Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 1993)Google Scholar; and Hicks, Andrew, Composing the World: Harmony in Medieval Platonic Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, III. 35, p. 656; King and Newman, “The Life of Christina the Astonishing,” 145–146.

99 See for example: Dyer, Joseph, “The Place of Musica in Medieval Classifications of Knowledge,” in The Journal of Musicology 24/1 (Winter 2007): 3–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ilnitchi, Gabriela, “Musica mundana, Aristotelian Natural Philosophy and Ptolemaic Astronomy,” Early Music History 21 (2002): 37–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, III. 35, p. 656.

101 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, IV. 39, p. 657.

102 Bynum, Caroline Walker, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), e.g., 131–132Google Scholar.

103 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus Miraculorum, Distinctio XII, Capitulum LVI, p. 359.

104 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, II. 15, p. 653.

105 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, I. 10, p. 652.

106 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, I. 5, p. 651.

107 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, I. 9, p. 652.

108 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, I. 9, p. 652.

109 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, II. 15, p. 653.

110 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, II. 16, p. 653.

111 Bede, Venerabilis Baedae Historiam Ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum, ed. Carolus Plummer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1896), 112. In Daniel 4, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar is portrayed with animal features in his seven years of insanity. It has been argued that the bird imagery in the story can be associated with the dead and the underworld afflictions in ancient Near Eastern traditions. See: Hays, Christopher, “Chirps from the Dust: The Afflictions of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:30 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” Journal of Biblical Literature 126/2 (2007): 305–325CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112 For the Latin text and the English translation, see: Michael Roberts, The Humblest Sparrow: The Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 145–146.

113 Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, esp. 294.

114 Thomas of Cantimpré, Bonum universale de apibus, Liber II. Capitulum XL, p. 406.

115 Hicks, Composing the World, 140–150.

116 Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum, ed. Boese, Helmut (Berlin: Gruyter, 1973), 91–92Google Scholar: “Corpus autem quod prius integrum tanquam organum contemperatum et dispositum, ut melos musicum in se concineret et tractum resonaret, nunc confractum et inutile e regione iacet.” Andrew Hicks has pointed out this passage is a corrupt version of a passage taken from the Cistercian Isaac of Stella's treatise Epistola de anima (c. 1160). See: Hicks, Composing the World, 142, no. 93.

117 Thomas of Cantimpré, Bonum universale de apibus, Liber II. Capitulum XLIII, pp. 418–419.

118 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Christinae Mirabilis Virginis, IV. 44, p. 657.

119 Thomas of Cantimpré, Vita S. Lutgardis, 194.

120 Jean-Pierre Delville, ed., Fête-dieu (1246-1996) 2. Vie de Sainte Julienne de Cornillon (Louvain-la-neuve: Institut d’Études Médiévales de l'Université Catholique de Louvain, 1999), 248. For the history of the origin of the Feast in Liège, see: Rubin, Corpus Christi, 164–212; Barbara Walters, Vincent Corrigan, and Ricketts, Peter, The Feast of Corpus Christi (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Mulder-Bakker, Anneke, Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe, trans. Scholz, Myra Heerspink (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 78–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also: Saucier, Catherine, “Sacrament and Sacrifice: Conflating Corpus Christi and Martyrdom in Medieval Liège,” Speculum 87.3 (July 2012): 682–723CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121 Vita B. Aleidis Scharembecanae, ed. Godfrey Henschen, in Acta Sanctorum, 11 June (Paris, 1867), 476.

122 Vita B. Aleidis Scharembecanae, 477.

123 Vita B. Aleidis Scharembecanae, 475.

124 Jacques de Vitry, Vita Marie de Oegnies, 163; King, “The Life of Mary of Oignies,” 127.