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Agnes of Harcourt, Felipa of Porcelet, and Marguerite of Oingt: Women Writing about Women at the End of the Thirteenth Century1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Sean L. Field
Sean L. Field
Affiliation:
Sean L. Field is an assistant professor of History at the University of Vermont.
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Extract

Three vernacular religious biographies were written by women about other women around the year 1300: Agnes of Harcourt's Francien Vie d'Isabelle de France (ca. 1283), Felipa of Porcelet's Provençal Vida de la benaurada sancta Doucelina (begun ca. 1297), and Marguerite of Oingt's Franco-Provençal Via seiti Biatrix virgina de Ornaciu (between 1303 and 1310). Although a limited number of similar texts had been composed in Latin dating back to the early Middle Ages, and a few twelfth-century women such as Clemence of Barking had refashioned existing Latin lives of early female martyr-saints into Anglo-Norman verse, the works of Agnes, Felipa, and Marguerite are the first extant vernacular biographies to have been written by European women about other contemporary women. Just as strikingly, after the three examples studied here, few if any analogous works appeared until the later fifteenth century, with most writing by women about other religious women in the intervening period instead being found in “Sister Books” and convent chronicles.

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Articles
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Church History , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 298 - 329
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2007

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References

2. For Agnes of Harcourt's work, see Sean Field, L., The Writings of Agnes of Harcourt: The Life of Isabelle of France and the Letter on Louis IX and Longchamp (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003)Google Scholar (hereafter The Writings of AH); and Allirot, Anne-Hélène, “Isabelle de France, soeur de saint Louis: la vierge savante. Étude de la Vie d'Isabelle de France écrite par Agnès d'Harcourt,” Médiévales 48 (2005): 55–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Felipa, see Albanés, J.–H., La vie de sainte Douceline, fondatrice des béguines de Marseille (Marseille: Camoin, 1879)Google Scholar; Gout, R., La vie de sainte Douceline: Texte provençal du XlVe siècle (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1927)Google Scholar (hereafter La vie de SD); Wolfkiel, Kathryn Betts, “The Life of the Blessed Saint Doucelina (d. 1274): An Edition and Translation with Commentary,” 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1993)Google Scholar; and most recently Garay, Kathleen and Jeay, Madeleine, The Life of St. Douceline, a Beguine of Provence (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001)Google Scholar (hereafter The Life of SD). For Marguerite of Oingt, see Duraffour, Antonin, Gardette, Pierre, and Durdilly, Paulette, Les oeuvres de Marguerite d'Oingt (Paris: Société d'Édition Les Belles Lettres, 1965)Google Scholar (hereafter Les oeuvres de MO); and Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, trans., The Writings of Margaret of Oingt: Medieval Prioress and Mystic (Newburyport, Mass.: Focus, 1990)Google Scholar (hereafter The Writings of MO).

3. These include Baudonivia's sixth-century life of the Frankish Queen Radegund and the seventh-century life that a nun of Chelles wrote of the Merovingian Queen Balthild, translated in Jo Ann McNamara and Halbort, John E. with Whatley, E. Gordon, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1992), 86–105, and 264–78Google Scholar; the late-tenth-century “vita antiquior” of the Ottonian Queen Mathilda, most likely written by a nun at one of her foundations (Nordhausen or Quedlinburg), translated in Gilsdorf, Sean, Queenship and Sanctity: The Lives of Mathilda and the Epitaph of Adelheid (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 71–87Google Scholar; and the noblewoman and nun Bertha's eleventh-century life of Adelheid, the first abbess of her community of Vilich and the daughter of its noble founding family, translated in Dick, Madelyn Bergen, Mater Spiritualis: The Life of Adelheid of Vilich (Toronto: Peregrina, 1994)Google Scholar. These texts have obvious links to those studied in this article (each was composed by a monastic woman about the founder or first leader of her community, and the “worldly” aspects of an elite, female sanctity based on power, patronage, and charity are routinely emphasized), but it is not my intention to draw them out here.

4. For Anglo-Norman texts, see William, MacBain, ed., The Life of St. Catherine by Clemence of Barking (Oxford: Blackwell, 1964)Google Scholar; Ö. Södergåard, , ed., La vie seinte Audrée: poème anglo-normand du XIIIe siècle (Uppsala: Lundequistska, 1955)Google Scholar. June Hall McCash has recently made the case for Marie de France as the author of the latter work in “La vie seinte Audree: A Fourth Text by Marie de France?,” Speculum 77:3 (2002): 744–77Google Scholar. For analysis, see Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture c. 1150–1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. A wider survey including contemporary Latin lives by women about other women would have to include a little-known vita of Margherita Colonna, which was written around 1288–92 by a nun of S. Silvestro in Capite identified only as “Stefania,” and a life of Gertrud of Helfta written by a fellow nun of Helfta shortly after 1302. See Oliger, Livario, B. Margherita Colonna: Le due vite scritte dal fratello Giovanni Colonna senatore di Roma el da Stefania monaca di S. Silvestro in Capite (Rome: Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenei Seminarii Romani, 1935)Google Scholar; and Alexandra, Barratt, ed., Gertrude the Great of Helfta: The Herald of God's Loving-Kindness: Books One and Two (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1991), 37–95Google Scholar. It is possible that earlier vernacular lives of women written by women have been lost. For instance, the life of Julianne of Mont-Cornillon (d. 1258) survives only in a male-authored Latin version, but it claims to have been based on a now lost vernacular text, possibly by Eva of St. Martin (d. 1266). See Newman, Barbara, trans., The Life of Juliana of Mont-Cornillon (Toronto: Peregrina, 1988), 12.Google Scholar

6. At least in a French context, the next example would seem to be the life of Colette of Corbie written by Perrine de Baume around 1474, edited in d'Alençon, Ubald, Les vies de Sainte Colette Boylet de Corbie (Paris: Archives Franciscaines, 1911)Google Scholar. In Italian, one could look to Illuminata Bembo's depiction of Caterina Vigri in her Specchio d'Illuminazione, written ca. 1465, new edition in Silvia, Mostaccio, ed., Specchio di illuminaztioni (Florence: SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001)Google Scholar. For recent scholarship on these texts, see Roest, Bert, “A Textual Community in the Making: Colettine Authorship in the Fifteenth Century,” in Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200–1550, ed. Mulder-Bakker, Anneke B. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 163–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Roest, , “Ignorantia est mater omnium malorum: The Validation of Knowledge and the Office of Preaching in Late Medieval Female Franciscan Communities,” in Saints, Scholars, and Politicians: Gender as a Tool in Medieval Studies. Festschift in Honour of Anneke Mulder-Bakker on the Occasion of her Sixty-Fifth Birthday, Mathilde van Dijk and Renée Nip (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 65–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On male and female-authored lives of Colette of Corbie, see also Richards, Joan Marie, “Franciscan Women: The Colettine Reform of the Order of Saint Clare in the Fifteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1989)Google Scholar, chap. 6.

7. The Sister Books, which combined local history, biography, and recitals of mystical experience, were popular in German, particularly Dominican, convents of the early and mid-fourteenth century. See Lewis, Gertrud Jaron, By Women, For Women, About Women: The Sister-Books of Fourteenth-Century Germany (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1996)Google Scholar; and Rebecca Garber, L. R., Feminine Figurae: Representations of Gender in Religious Texts by Medieval German Women Writers, 1100–1375 (New York: Routledge, 2003), 61–104Google Scholar. On convent chronicles, see Winston-Allen, Anne, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Woodford, Charlotte, Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lowe, K. J. P., Chronicles, Nuns' and Culture, Convent in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).Google Scholar It is again apparent that these later texts share characteristics with the three works that I study in this article. On the lack of references to harsh asceticism in the Sister Books (occasional claims to the contrary notwithstanding), see Lewis, , By Women, 254Google Scholar; on convent chronicles focusing on institutional issues such as reform “rather than celebrating the convent's visionary or radically ascetic spiritual giants,” see Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles, 210.

8. Barbara Newman pointed out the potential interest of a study focusing on these three texts in a review of Garay and Jeay, , The Life of St. Douceline, in Catholic Historical Review 88:3 (2002): 582–84.Google Scholar

9. For example, Nicole Leapley, “Royal Hagiography's New Voice: Agnes of Harcourt's Vie de nostre saincte et benoite dame et mere madame Yzabeau de France,” presented at the 2005 International Congress on Medieval Studies. I thank the author for sending me a copy of this paper.

10. For the most relevant aspects of Bynum's work, see Bynum, Caroline Walker, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982)Google Scholar, especially part 5, “Women Mystics in the Thirteenth Century: The Case of the Nuns of Helfta”; Bynum, , Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Bynum, , “Bodily Miracles in the High Middle Ages,” in Belief in History: Innovative Approaches to European and American Religion, ed. Thomas, Kselman (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 68–106Google Scholar; Bynum, , Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone, 1992)Google Scholar, particularly chap. 6, “The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages”; and (to a lesser extent) Bynum, , The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, particularly chap. 8, “Fragmentation and Ecstasy: The Thirteenth-Century Context,” and 330, n. 45. For Bynum's own assessment of the way her studies have been received, see Metamorphosis and Identity (New York: Zone, 2001), 78, and 222Google Scholar, n. 7, and for her most personal reflections, “Writing Body History: Some Autobiographical and Historiographical Reflections,” Disabilities Studies Quarterly 12:1 (1992): 14–16Google Scholar; and “My Life and Works,” in Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. Jane Chance (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 995–1006.Google Scholar

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12. An early example of this trend was Wiethaus, Ulrike, “Sexuality, Gender, and the Body in Late Medieval Women's Spirituality,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7 (spring 1991): 35–52.Google Scholar

13. Hollywood, Amy, “Suffering Transformed: Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhart, and the Problem of Women's Spirituality,” in Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics, ed. Bernard, McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1994), 87–91Google Scholar; Hollywood, , The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 26–56Google Scholar, and passim; and Hollywood, , Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar, especially 94–99, and 241–66. Differences between Hollywood and Bynum are highlighted in Clark, Elizabeth A., “Women, Gender, and the Study of Christian History,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 70:3 (2001): 395–426, at 408–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Van Engen, John, “The Future of Medieval Church History,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 71:3 (2002): 492–522, at 499–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Mooney, Catherine M., ed., Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent work on Catherine of Siena has been particularly fruitful in exposing the differences between the saint's self understanding and her representation by her biographer. See Karen Scott “Mystical Death, Bodily Death: Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua on the Mystic's Encounter with God,” in Mooney, ed. Gendered Voices, 136–67Google Scholar; Webb, Heather, “Catherine of Sienna's Heart,” Speculum 80:3 (2005): 802–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Luongo, F. Thomas, The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

15. Coakley, John, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotations at 212–13. For Coakley's earlier work, see Coakley, , “A Marriage and Its Observer: Christine of Stommeln, the Heavenly Bridegroom, and Friar Peter of Dacia,” in Mooney, ed., Gendered Voices, 99–117Google Scholar; Coakley, , “Friars, Sanctity and Gender: Mendicant Encounters with Saints, 1250–1325,” in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Lees, Clare A. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 91–110Google Scholar; Coakley, , “Gender and the Authority of Friars: The Significance of Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 60 (12 1991): 445–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coakley, , “Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican Hagiography,” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate, Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea, Szell (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 222–46Google Scholar. Other studies that explicitly consider the impact of male authors on access to women's lives (in addition to those found in Gendered Voices) include Ute Stargardt, “Male Clerical Authority in the Spiritual (Auto)biographies of Medieval Women, Holy,” 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: Kümmerle, 1991), 209–38Google Scholar; Dillon, Janette, “Holy Women and Their Confessors or Confessors and Their Holy Women? Margery Kempe and Continental Tradition,” in Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. Rosalynn, Voaden (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), 115–40Google Scholar; Schuchman, Anne, “Literary Collaboration in the Life of Umiliana dei Cerchi,” Magistra 7 (07 2001): 5–22Google Scholar; Elliot, Dyan, “Dominae or Dominatae? Female Mysticism and the Trauma of Textuality,” in Women, Marriage, and Family in Medieval Christendom, ed. Rousseau, Constance M. and Rosenthal, Joel T. (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute, 1998), 47–77Google Scholar; Mooney, Catherine M., “The Authorial Role of Brother A. in the Composition of Angela of Foligno's Revelations,” in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, ed. Matter, E. Ann and John, Coakley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 34–63Google Scholar; Lauwers, Michel, “Expérience béguinale et récit hagiographique: A propos de la ‘Vita Mariae Oigniacensis’ de Jacques de Vitry (vers 1215),” Journal des savants (1989): 61–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For slightly later developments that build on medieval themes, see Bilinkoff, Jodi, Related Lives: Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

16. Recent work by Dyan Elliot and Nancy Caciola, among others, has illuminated the way this dynamic tended to put ever increasing pressure of women's religious behavior as a visible marker of the line between orthodoxy and heresy. See Elliott, Dyan, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and Caciola, Nancy, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

17. This is not to argue that women's voices are impossible to locate in their own texts, only to note that scholarly trends have increasingly focused on the collaborative production of texts by holy women and men. See, for example, Poor, Sara S., Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who shows that while Mechthild's own authorial choices and voice can certainly be discerned and analyzed, her work survives only as it passed through the hands of male scribes, translators, compilers, and abbreviators, and these mediations often shaped the context and form in which readers encountered the Flowing Light of the Godhead.

18. Hollywood's own brief attention to this question notes only that the few examples of female-authored hagiography before the fourteenth century are often marked by “genre assumptions” similar to those found in male-authored works: The Soul as Virgin Wife, 37–38Google Scholar. See also Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of Saint Douceline, 155–59Google Scholar, on Felipa of Porcelet's authorial voice. I benefited from Madeleine Jeay's presentation, “The Making of a Holy Mother: The Vita of Douceline of Digne by Felipe Porcelet,” at the 2003 International Congress on Medieval Studies. In general on female authors' images of other women, see Ferrante, Joan M., To the Glory of Her Sex: Women's Roles in the Composition of Medieval Texts (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, esp. 139–213; and on women's multifaceted roles in the production of historical memory, see Van Houts, Elizabeth, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Quotation from Bynum, , “The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages,” in Fragmentation and Redemption, 194.Google Scholar

20. For a recent analysis of the roles played by nuns and prioresses in the late medieval period, see Spear, Valerie G., Leadership in Medieval English Nunneries (Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2005).Google Scholar

21. See Woodford, Charlotte, Nuns as Historians in Early Modern Germany, 32–36Google Scholar, for an assessment of the purposes of historical writing in female religious communities. Of course, men could write about monastic founders with similar purposes in mind. See, for example, Brown, Peter, “Arbiters of the Holy,” in Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of Christianization of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 57–78Google Scholar, particularly 63–64.

22. Building on the observations of Glente, Karen, “Mystikerinnenviten aus männlicher und weiblicher Sicht: Ein Vergleich zwischen Thomas von Cantimpré und Katherina von Unterlinden,” in Religiöse Frauenbewegung und mystische Frömmigkeit im Mittlealter, ed. Peter, Dinzelbacher and Bauer, Dieter R. (Cologne: Böhleu, 1988), 251–64Google Scholar. See also Heene, Katrien, “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 and others (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 109–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Field, Sean, “New Evidence for the Life of Isabelle of France,” Revue Mabillon, n.s., 13 (2002): 109–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where Sanctae virginitatis propositum (July 22, 1253) and Benedicta filia tu (June 12, 1256) are edited. Decens ac debitum (May 26, 1254) is found in Wadding, L., Annales minorum, 3rd ed. (Florence: Ad Claras Aquas, 1931), 3:399–400.Google Scholar

24. In addition to the bibliography given below on Isabelle of France, on Longchamp, see Duchesne, Gaston, Histoire de l'abbaye royale de Longchamp (1255 à 1789), 2nd ed. (Paris: Daragon, 1906)Google Scholar; Młynarczyk, Gertrud, Ein Franziskanerinnenkloster im 15. Jahrhundert: Edition und Analyse von Besitzinventaren aus der Abtei Longchamp (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1987)Google Scholar; and Field, Sean L., “The Abbesses of Longchamp up to the Black Death,” Archivum fmnciscanum historicum 96 (2003): 237–44.Google Scholar

25. On the title Sorores minores, see Alberzoni, Maria Pia, “Sorores minores and Ecclesiastical Authority to the Pontificate of Urban IV”, in Clare of Assisi and the Poor Sisters in the Thirteenth Century (Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 2004), 113–54Google Scholar; Alberzoni, , La nascita di un'istituzione: L'ordine di s. Damiano net XIII secolo (Milan: Edizioni CUSL, 1996), 34–40Google Scholar; Pellegrini, Luigi, “Female Religious Experience and Society in Thirteenth-Century Italy,” in Farmer and Rosenwein, ed., Monks and Nuns, Saints and Outcasts, 97–122, at 119–22Google Scholar; van Asseldonk, Optatus, “‘Sorores minores,’ una nuova impostazione del problem,” Collectanea franciscana 62 (1992): 595–634Google Scholar; Asseldonk, , “Sorores minores e Chiara d'Assisi a San Damiano, una scelta tra clausura e lebbrosi?,” Collectanea franciscana 63 (1993): 399–421Google Scholar; Gennaro, C., “Il Francescanesimo femminile nel XIII secolo,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 25 (1989): 281–84Google Scholar; and Oliger, L., “De origine regularum Ordinis S. Clarae,” Archivum franciscanum historicum 5 (1912): 181–209, 413–47, at 438Google Scholar, n. 1.

26. On Isabelle of France, see Sean Field, L., Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Allirot, , “Isabelle de France, soeur de saint Louis: la vierge savante”; William Chester Jordan, “Isabelle of France and Religious Devotion at the Court of Louis IX,” in Caprtian Women, ed. Kathleen, Nolan (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 209–23Google Scholar; Field, Sean, “Gilbert of Tournai's Letter to Isabelle of France: An Edition of the Complete Text,” Mediaeval Studies 65 (2003): 57–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Field, , “New Evidence for the Life of Isabelle of France”; Thomas Worcester, “Neither Married nor Cloistered: Blessed Isabelle in Catholic Reformation France,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30:2 (1999): 457–72Google Scholar; and Lynn, Beth, “Clare of Assisi and Isabelle of Longchamp: Further Light on the Early Development of the Franciscan Charism,” Magistra 3 (07 1997): 71–98Google Scholar. Among older biographies, see Garreau, Albert, Bienheureuse Isabelle de France, soeur de Saint Louis (Paris: Editions Franciscaines, 1955).Google Scholar

27. For an introduction to Agnes of Harcourt's career, see Field, , The Writings of AH, 3–8Google Scholar. Allirot, , “Isabelle de France, soeur de saint Louis: la vierge savante,” 56, dates Agnes's Vie to 1279–81Google Scholar. Though this is not the place to debate a discrepancy of a few years, I would note that I do not find Professor Allirot's reading of the evidence convincing.

28. Grundmann, Herbert, 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. Rowan, Steven (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 393Google Scholar, n. 44. The first German edition of this work appeared in 1935.

29. For summaries and analysis of Douceline's life, see Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 115–55Google Scholar; Albanés, , La vie de saint Douceline, xl–lxxiiiGoogle Scholar; Gout, , La vie de SD, 16–36Google Scholar; Wolfkiel, , “The Life of the Blessed Saint Doucelina,” 13–22Google Scholar; McGinn, Bernard, The Flowering of Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 137–39Google Scholar; Kleinberg, Aviad M., Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 121–25Google Scholar; Carozzi, C., “Une béguine joachimite: Douceline, soeur d'Hugues de Digne,” in Franciscains d'Oc: les spirituels ca. 1280–1324, Cahiers de Fanjeaux 10 (Toulouse: É. Privat, 1975), 169–201Google Scholar; Carozzi, , “Douceline et les autres,” in La religion populaire en Languedoc du XIIIe siècle à la moitié du XIVe siècle, Cahiers de Fanjeaux 11 (Toulouse: É. Privat, 1976), 251–70Google Scholar; Sisto, Alessandra, Figure del primo Francescanesimo in Provenza: Ugo e Douceline di Digne (Florence: Olscki, 1971).Google Scholar

30. See the remarks by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton on Douceline as a Joachite-inspired leader and preacher, in “When Women Preached: An Introduction to Female Homiletic, Sacramental, and Liturgical Roles in the Later Middle Ages,” in Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Linda Olson and Kerby-Fulton (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 31–55, at 42–45.Google Scholar

31. On Felipa, see Garay, and Jea, , The Life of SD, 15–22, 155–59Google Scholar; Albanés, La vie de sainte Douceline, xxv–xxxix; Gout, , La vie de SD, 10–16Google Scholar; Aurell, Martin, Une famille de la noblesse provençale au moyen âge: les Porcelet (Avignon: Archives du Sud, 1986), 165–69Google Scholar; Aurell, , Actes de la famille Porcelet d'Aries (972–1320) (Paris: C.T.H.S., 2001)Google Scholar; and Renan, Ernest, “Philippine de Porcellet, auteur présumé de la vie de sainte Douceline,” Histoire littéraire de la France 29 (1885): 526–46.Google Scholar

32. Aurell, , Une famille de la noblesse provençale au moyen âge, 116–19Google Scholar. Earlier scholars identified Felipa as the sister of this Guilhem, but Aurell's systematic editing of the documents relating to the Porcelet family provides a more accurate picture.

33. Aurell, , Une famille de la noblesse provençale au moyen âge, 165.Google Scholar

34. For a summery of Felipa's active economic interests, see Aurell, Une famille de la noblesse provençale au moyen âge; for documentation, see Aurell, Actes de la famille Porcelet; and the pièces justificatives to Albanés, La vie de sainte Douceline.

35. Grundmann, , Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, 393Google Scholar, n. 44. It must be noted here that Felipa's authorship of the Life of Douceline is not absolutely certain. The evidence, however, undeniably points to a leader of Douceline's beguine communities, and to my mind the arguments for identifying Felipa as the author are convincing. The identification was first made by Albanés, , in La vie de sainte Douceline, xxv–xxxixGoogle Scholar. Wolfkiel, “The Life of the Blessed Saint Doucelina,” 5–13, expressed some skepticism without advancing arguments to the contrary. But Garay and Jeay agree that Felipa's identification as the author is “entirely convincing”: The Life of SD, 16. Martin Aurell also finds it “fort convaincante”: Une famille de la noblesse provençale au moyen âge, 165, n. 56.

36. Bellanger, Théodore, La bienheureuse Béatrix d'Ornacieu, vierge Chartreusine de Parménie au XIIIe siècle. Sa vie, sa mort et son culte (Grenoble: Baratier et Dardelet, 1874), 26–27Google Scholar; Bouvier, C., La bienheureuse Béatrix d'Ornacieux, religieuse de Parménie, 2nd ed. (Montsûrs: Editions Résiac, 1982), 9Google Scholar. These rather pious works are useful mainly on Beatrice's family.

37. Duraffour, , Gardette, , and Durdilly, , Les oeuvres de MO, 162Google Scholar, n. 110.

38. Ibid., 16, n. 1.

39. On Marguerite's life, see Ibid., 9–13; Blumenfeld-Kosinski, , The Writings of MO, 1–19Google Scholar; and Dictionnaire de spiritualité, vol. 10, cols. 340–43. See also McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, 289–92; Müller, Catherine M., Marguerite Porete et Marguerite d'Oingt, de I'autre cote du miroir (New York: Peter Lang, 1999)Google Scholar; Müller, , “How to Do Things with Mystical Language: Marguerite d'Oingt's Performative Writing,” in Performance and Transformation: New Approaches to Late Medieval Spirituality, ed. Suydam, Mary A. and Ziegler, Joanna E. (New York: St. Martin's, 1999), 27–45Google Scholar; and Petroff, Elizabeth Alvilda, “Writing the Body: Male and Female in the Writings of Marguerite d'Oingt, Angela of Foligno, and Umilta of Faenza,” in Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 204–24.Google Scholar

40. Though it can be noted that Agnes of Harcourt issued documents in Latin in her own name as abbess of Longchamp and Felipa of Porcelet's economic activities generated numerous Latin documents.

41. See, for example, Jordan, Erin L., Women, Power, and Religious Patronage in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCash, June Hall, ed., The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and within that volume, more specifically, Miriam Shadis, “Piety, Politics, and Power: The Patronage of Leonor of England and Her Daughters Berenguela of León and Blanche of Castile,” 202–27. On Marguerite of Provence and Saint-Marcel, see Théobald, (de Courtomer), “Les cordelières de Saint Marcel-lez-Paris,” Études franciscaines 20 (1908): 561–621Google Scholar; and Brunei, Ghislain, “Un italien en France au XHIe siècle: Galien de Pise, chanoine de Saint-Omer et fondateur du couvent des Cordelières de Lourcine à Paris, d'après son testament de 1287,” in Histoires d'archives: Recueil d'articles offert à Lucie Favier par ses collegues et amis (Paris: Sociéte des amis des archives de France, 1997), 249–76.Google Scholar

42. See Blumenfeld-Kosinski, , The Writings of MO, 5.Google Scholar

43. I say “well-known” in spite of Beatrice's obscurity in modern historiography. Marguerite's work makes it clear that stories about Beatrice were in common circulation in Carthusian circles in the early fourteenth century, at least in the south of France.

44. The classic account is Grundmann, , Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, 89–134.Google Scholar

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46. Simons, Walter, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 118–37Google Scholar. On a related theme, see Makowski, Elizabeth, “A Pernicious Sort of Woman”: Quasi-Religious Women and Canon Lawyers in the Later Middle Ages (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005).Google Scholar

47. Paragraphs follow my edition in The Writings of AH. The sections I identify here are simply an analytic construction.

48. It should be noted that there is no definite break between the two sections; this is again only my own analytic framework.

49. Bynum, , Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 199–200Google Scholar, and passim; Weinstein, Donald and Bell, Rudolph M., Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 234–35.Google Scholar

50. Delaborde, H.-Francois, ed., Vie de saint Louis par Guillaume de Saint-Pathus (Paris: Packard, 1899)Google Scholar. On serving food to the poor, 79, 105; on abstinence at table and fasts, 119–22; on wearing a hair shirt and having himself whipped, 122–23; and on sending “disciplines” to his daughter Isabelle, 63.

51. For the importance of this form of religious expression among thirteenth-century women, see Bynum, , “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion in the Thirteenth Century,” in Fragmentation and Redemption, 119–50Google Scholar; Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast; and Hollywood, , The Soul as Virgin Wife, 50–52.Google Scholar

52. Field, , The Writings of AH, 68.Google Scholar

53. See Newman, Barbara, “On the Threshold of the Dead,” in From Virile Woman to Woman-Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 109–36Google Scholar; McNamara, Jo Ann, “The Need to Give,” in Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Szell, ed., Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, 212–21Google Scholar; Hollywood, , The Soul as Virgin Wife, 44–50Google Scholar; Elliott, , Proving Woman, 74–84.Google Scholar

54. Field, , Writings of AH, 64.Google Scholar

55. On Philip IV, see Field, , Writings of AH, 78–80.Google Scholar

56. Since Agnes of Anery was the first abbess of Longchamp, serving for a year or two after 1260, we can be confident that this episode took place around that time. On the dates of the early abbesses of Longchamp, see Field “The Abbesses of Longchamp up to the Black Death.”

57. Field, , The Writings of AH, 70.Google Scholar

58. For an assessment of the role of asceticism in this life, see Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 116–19.Google Scholar

59. Garay and Jeay's paragraph format follows the edition of Albanés. I refer to page numbers in the Gout edition, however, since it is more readily available. English translations cited in this article are from Garay and Jeay.

60. Gout, , La vie de SD, 48–49Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 27–28.Google Scholar

61. Gout, , La vie de SD, 45Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 26Google Scholar. Felipa does refer elsewhere to “severe acts of penitence” and the “harsh penitence that she had practiced.” See Gout, , La vie de SD, 210Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 88.Google Scholar

62. Gout, , La vie de SD, 52Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 29.Google Scholar

63. Glente, “Mystikerinnenviten aus mannlicher und weiblicher Sicht: Ein Vergleich zwischen Thomas von Cantimpré und Katherina von Unterlinden,” 261–62, compares male- and female-authored portrayals of women miraculously levitating.

64. Gout, , La vie de SD, 140–41Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 61.Google Scholar

65. Gout, , La vie de SD, 163–65Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 71.Google Scholar

66. Though female observers, too, could imagine Douceline in somatic ways, as when “a pious countess” dreamed that golden oil was flowing from Douceline's breast: Gout, , La vie de SD, 160Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 69Google Scholar. But again, this miraculous effusion is a product not of Douceline's own religious imagination but that of another person. We should remember that these texts have a composite element to them; Agnes, Felipa, and Marguerite worked in part with stories related by others, thereby embedding other voices in their texts. In this sense they were both scribes and authors. See the remarks in Sudan, Mary, “Beguine Textuality: Sacred Performances,” in Performance and Transformation, 169–210, at 176–80.Google Scholar

67. Gout, , La vie de SD, 61Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 32.Google Scholar

68. Gout, , La vie de SD, 169Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 73.Google Scholar

69. Gout, , La vie de SD, 175–77Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 75–76.Google Scholar

70. Gout, , La vie de SD, 238Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 99.Google Scholar

71. Gout, , La vie de SD, 238–40Google Scholar; Garay, and Jeay, , The Life of SD, 99–100.Google Scholar

72. Duraffour, , Gardette, , and Durdilly, , Les oeuvres de MO, 104Google Scholar; Blumenfeld-Kosinski, , The Writings of MO, 48Google Scholar. English translations cited in this article are from Blumenfeld-Kosinski.

73. Duraffour, , Gardette, , and Durdilly, , Les oeuvres de MO, 106Google Scholar; Blumenfeld-Kosinski, , The Writings of MO, 49.Google Scholar

74. Duraffour, , Gardette, , and Durdilly, , Les oeuvres de MO, 112Google Scholar; Blumenfeld-Kosinski, , The Writings of MO, 51.Google Scholar

75. Duraffour, , Gardette, , and Durdilly, , Les oeuvres de MO, 130–35Google Scholar; Blumenfeld-Kosinski, , The Writings of MO, 60–61.Google Scholar

76. It has been suggested since at least the seventeenth century that Marguerite was Beatrice's teacher or director during her novitiate. I know of no firm evidence to support this idea. See Bellanger, , La bienheureuse Béatrix d'Ornacieu, 57.Google Scholar

77. Duraffour, , Gardette, , and Durdilly, , Les oeuvres de MO, 104Google Scholar; Blumenfeld-Kosinski, , The Writings of MO, 48Google Scholar

78. Text in “Vita Christinae mirabilis,” in Acta sanctorum, July, ed. J. Pinius (Paris: Palmé, 1868), 5:637–60Google Scholar. Translated by King, Margo H. as The Life of Christina Mirabilis (Toronto: Peregrina, 1986)Google Scholar. I am conscious that I have chosen an example that does not result from the confessor/penitent model explored by Coakley and others. But Thomas's text does present one of the most extreme and best-known constructions of somatic female piety, and thus makes a good point of comparison.

79. King, , The Life of Christina Mirabilis, 16.Google Scholar

80. Hollywood, Following, The Soul as Virgin Wife, 44–46Google Scholar. See also Sweetman, Robert, “Christine of Saint-Trond's Preaching Apostolate: Thomas of Cantimpré's Hagiographical Method Revisited,” Vox Benedictina 60 (1992): 67–97Google Scholar; 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 Stoneman, William P. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 606–28Google Scholar. For an attempt to reconstruct the person behind Thomas's depiction, see Newman, Barbara, “Possessed by the Spirit: Devout Women, Demoniacs, and the Apostolic Life in the Thirteenth Century,” Speculum 73:3 (1998): 733–70, at 763–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interestingly, Glente, “Mystikerinnenviten aus männlicher und weiblicher Sicht: Ein Vergleich zwischen Thomas von Cantimpré und Katherina von Unterlinden,” mentions Christina only in passing.

81. Like Douceline, Christina experiences ecstasies, offers prophecies, and also suffers great pain at the hands of tormenters, with the difference that the pain inflicted by others is in this case intended to restrain and disable her, not test her holiness.

82. As Bynum herself noted, hagiographical “allusions to fasting or Eucharistic devotion were often simply clichés, and clichés can obscure as well as reveal devotional practices”: Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 87.

83. For Bynum's analysis of the challenges of using hagiography as a historical source for real lives, see Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 76–93, and more recently her perceptive forward to Mooney, ed., Gendered Voices, ix-xi. A thoughtful examination of the relationship between medieval political context, modern genre assumptions, and hagiographical texts is Lifshitz, Felice, “Beyond Positivism and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative,” Viator 25 (1994): 95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84. Stressing a gendered authorial perspective brings us in some ways full circle to the enduring importance of the work of Caroline Bynum. As she argued in a now classic article critiquing Victor Turner's theory of liminality, “women's lives are not liminal to women”; rather “women are fully liminal only to men”: Bynum, “Women's Stories, Women's Symbols,” in Fragmentation and Redemption, 47, 49.

85. Coakley, “Friars, Sanctity and Gender,” 103. This difference between men's and women's biographies is also underscored in Kieckhefer, Richard, “Holiness and the Culture of Devotion: Remarks on Some Late Medieval Male Saints,” in Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Szell, ed., Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, 288–305Google Scholar, esp. 292–93.

86. See, for example, the essays in Theodore, Evergates, ed., Aristocratic Women in Medieval France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)Google Scholar; for a reconsideration of women, power, and agency in the Middle Ages, see the introduction to Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), 1–16.Google Scholar

87. Examples of recent work on this topic include Miriam Shadis and Constance Berman, Hoffman, “A Taste of the Feast: Reconsidering Eleanor of Aquitaine's Female Descendants,” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, ed. Bonnie, Wheeler and Parsons, John Carmi (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 177–211Google Scholar; and Mitchell, Linda E., Portraits of Medieval Women (New York: Palgrave, 2003)Google Scholar. In a context directly relevant to Isabelle of France and Douceline of Digne, see Mueller, Joan, The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assissi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006).Google Scholar