Saintly Protection: The Postmortem ‘Mothers’ of Medieval Hagiography

Abstract

The ubiquity of the Virgin Mary in medieval religious culture would seem to suggest the constant presence or awareness of mothers in its literature. The near-total absence, then, of both the Virgin Mary and mortal mothers in many female saints’ lives is palpable. Instead, the genre offers several examples of women whose mothers are noticeably absent and who themselves die and are resurrected quite young, only to exhibit nurturing, maternal-like behavior themselves. The gendered treatment and involuntary nature of their postmortem status is common to otherwise dissimilar texts—in this study, the twelfth-century vita of the Welsh saint Wenefrid, the thirteenth-century vita of the Flemish saint Christina mirabilis, and the fourteenth-century Anglo-French vita of Mary Magdalene. After exiting the known world, all remain involuntarily tied to that world as protectors, filling maternal roles in their communities despite the lack of maternal models in their own lives. Their postmortem condition carries a gendered expectation of permanent nurturing and intercession: they experience resurrection as an obligation to devote themselves to others, and death as an invitation to continue that self-denial indefinitely as they intercede upon request. The expectation of continued protection is rooted in their female bodies: their former status as women, however problematic or inaccurate, not only grants them power they did not have in life, but also an obligation to remain in the role of protector.