The Sexual Shame of the Chaste: ‘Abortion Miracles’ in Early Medieval Saints’ Lives

Women's monastic enclosures in early Ireland: a study of female spirituality and male monastic mentalities

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Breaking Old Habits: Recent Research on Women, Spirituality and the Arts in the Middle Ages

Forgetful of Their Sex. Female Sanctity and Society, ca 500-1100. By Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 587. $40.00.) This book represents nearly twenty-five years of research into the lives of female saints for the years 500 to 1100. In addition to the introduction which outlines her methodology and sources, Schulenburg describes the various aspects of saintly women in eight chapters before her concluding epilogue titled Celestial Gynaeceum. As might be expected, the saints from this time in the early Christian Church became saints because of local, popular support rather than through a formal process of papal canonization. In her identification of over 2,200 female and male saints in western Europe reviewed by the author to write this book, Schulenburg found that about one in seven were women or around fifteen percent of the total for the years of her study. But the book is more than just animbus count, although the statistical data are there for those who are interested. If Schulenburg's account about holy women sounds familiar it's because portions of Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5 appeared in previously published collections of essays. The author was drawn to the field of hagiography with its disadvantages and limitation as source material because her focus on women's history for the early medieval period is one where documentation on women is notably scarce. Schulenburg acknowledges the problems of authenticity but claims that social historians can find in these holy vitae incidental facts that are impossible to find from any other source. Moreover, the sheer volume on the holy dead provides rough data that can be useful to make comparisons between saints both male and female over the time period of the book's focus. Schulenburg argues that she was more successful by studying the vitae collectively rather than in isolation, but she needed to apply textual criticism when reading each life as well as comparing information from other sources like calendars and liturgies when available. Early Church Fathers are cited by the author to establish the standards required of women to be saintified. Practices on fasting,vigils, and enclosure were expected and numerous examples were provided testifying that holy women followed those standards. In particular, women needed to guard their virginity both physically and spiritually. If nuns remained spiritually chaste, the fathers were willing to accept the loss of virginity due to rape, but some female religious preferred to remain physically pure by resorting to self-disfigurement such as cutting off their noses and lips as defense against would-be rapists. …

The Rhetorical Arts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Ireland, by Brian James Stone

Reviewed by: Becoming Human. A Story of Transformation through Conflict and Healing Angelyn Dries OSF Becoming Human. A Story of Transformation through Conflict and Healing. By Godelieve Prové. (Delft, Netherlands: Eburon Publishers. Distributed by The University of Chicago Press. 2004. Pp. 254. $28.00 paperback.) Becoming Human is not so much a history of European and American religious life between the 1950's and 1990's, as it is an engaging reflection from a major religious superior identifying the changes and meaning of religious life just before and after the Second Vatican Council. Flemish-speaking Godelieve Prové (she does not indicate where she was born) entered the Medical Mission Sisters in 1956, became a medical doctor, a missionary in Malawi (Nyasaland), co-ordinated the Society's work in East Asia, and was elected the major superior of her congregation in 1973. Part One presents what the author terms the "history" of the Medical Mission Sisters and her own life within the group, unfolding the changing configurations in religious life and the personal joys and traumas which were part of those years. Part Two imparts the same material [End Page 776] from a personal and corporate psycho-spiritual perspective. The Medical Mission Sisters were founded in 1925 by Anna Dengel (1892–1980), and Prové provides pertinent information and insight upon the foundress's last years in Rome, when, as major superior, Prové lived with Dengel. The conflict and change Dengel experienced when she was no longer the major superior mirror the book's theme in the subtitle, "transformation through conflict and healing." The book contains firsthand experience of key developments in religious life, at least in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States. We see the use of social science as an analytic tool for ministry (Louvain's Francis Houtart, who also influenced the Sister Formation Movement in the United States), alterations in authority/obedience dynamics as a more democratic form of religious life emerged, intercontinental influences in spirituality and religious practice, the growth of the Medical Mission Sisters from an international to an intercultural group, and the modification of the Sisters' mission from physical healing (though that is still present) to a healing presence. Today 650 Sisters from twenty-three countries belong to the Medical Mission Sisters. A glossary of terms provides definitions for readers who are unfamiliar with the terminology related to religious life. The book contains no index and given the genre, has only thirty-one footnotes, most from the Sisters' Rule and Constitutions. The transparently written book enhances the reading of Jo Ann McNamara's Sisters in Arms and Marjorie Noterman Beane's From Framework to Freedom: A History of the Sister Formation Conference. Angelyn Dries OSF Saint Louis University Copyright © 2005 The Catholic University of America Press

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Book Review 119 Journal of Chinese Religions 36 (2008) The Woman Who Discovered Printing T. H. BARRETT. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008. xiv, 176 pages. ISBN 978-0-300-12728-7. US$25.00 hardcover. The extent to which China could once boast the world’s foremost culture of books has in recent years become increasingly apparent, as scholars have built on the pioneering work of Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien (Written on Bamboo and Silk),1 vastly expanding our knowledge of the history of printing and the book trade, especially for late imperial and early modern China.2 The Woman Who Discovered Printing is an ambitious foray into the first two centuries of printing in China, the seventh and eighth centuries, in search of the elusive first spark that made the subsequent history of printing possible. At the heart of this book is a story, rich in personal psychology and happenstance, pieced together from scattered passages in a variety of sources, that leads us ultimately to the woman in the book’s title: Empress Wu (Wu Zetian 武 則天). The story runs as follows: in the seventh century, Empress Wu, familiar with stamps on paper used for administrative purposes in the Tang court, and troubled by the appalling acts of violence she had employed to secure power, determined to make up for her past actions by distributing hundreds of thousands of small stupas, each containing a spell printed on paper. Though she died before completing the project, the eminent monk and eventual patriarch of Huayan 華嚴 Buddhism, Fazang 法藏—himself wracked by guilt at having betrayed his former patron Empress Wu when she fell from favor—carried out this project after her death, in this way demonstrating the value of wood-block printing and inspiring the development of printing in the centuries that followed. The evidence for each of the elements of this account is scant: Did the Empress in fact feel remorse at the murders she ordered in her ascent to power? One recently uncovered text suggests the possibility, but it is formulaic rather than specific—a general “confession” for any bad karma she might have picked up along the way rather than a genuine expression of guilt for particular acts. Did Fazang really betray her, and, more importantly, did he in fact carry out her vow to print hundreds of thousands of spells on her behalf? No printed spells or miniature stupas from the project have been found and identified as such. Nor is there a clear link between these supposed events and the later history of printing. In short, it is far from 1 Written on Bamboo and Silk: The Beginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions, Second Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). 2 For instance, Lucille Chia, Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th -17th Centuries) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Christopher A. Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai: Print Capitalism 1876-1937 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004); Cynthia J. Brokaw and Kai-wing Chow, eds., Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Joseph P. McDermott, A Social History of the Chinese Book. Books and Literati Culture in Late Imperial China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006); and Cynthia J. Brokaw, The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). 120 Journal of Chinese Religions certain that Empress Wu was in fact the woman who invented printing. Barrett is well aware that his narrative is stitched together with speculation, and argues, reasonably, that just this sort of informed speculation is necessary if our understanding of the murky early days of printing is to advance, at the same time lamenting, in the final pages of the book, the dearth of researchers in the field of the early history of Chinese printing who might prove or disprove his hypothesis. Barrett is equally aware that in the end no one person can be credited with “discovering” printing. After all, the idea of seals goes back to very early times in Chinese history. And in fact, much of the book is taken up with examining the evidence for forms of printing in the century before...

Armagh and the Royal Centres in Early Medieval Ireland: Monuments, Cosmology and the Past. By N. B. Aitchison. Cadbury Castle, Somerset: The Early Medieval Archaeology By Leslie Alcock, with S. J. Stevenson and C. R. Musson. The Medieval Landscape of Wessex. Edited by Michael Aston and Carenza Lewis. Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian. By Bernhard Bischoff and Michael Lapidge. The English nobility under Edward the Confessor. By Peter A. Clarke. The Old English Lives of St Margaret. By Mary Clayton and Hugh Magennis. The Martyrs of Cordoba: Community and Family Conflict in an Age of Mass Conversion. By Jessica A. Coope. Scotland in Dark Age Europe. Edited by Barbara E. Crawford. The politics of dreaming in the Carolingian Empire. By Paul Edward Dutton. The Early Medieval Bible. Edited by Richard Gameson. The Viking‐Age Gold and Silver of Scotland AD 850–1100. By James Graham‐Campbell. Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800–1300. By D. H. Green. Sidonius Apollinarus and the Fall of Rome, AD 407–485. By Jill Harries. Karl Martell in seiner Zeit. Beihefte der Francia, Band 37. Edited by J. Jarnut, U. Nonn and M. Richter. Manor, Vill and Hundred: The Development of Rural Institutions in Early Medieval Hampshire. By Eric Klingelhofer. Wisdom, Authority and Grammar in the Seventh century. Decoding Virgi‐lius Maro Grammaticus. By Vivien Law. Medieval Boat and Ship Timbers from Dublin. Medieval Dublin Excavations 1962–81. Series B, Volume 3. By Sean MGrail. Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation. Edited by Rosamond MKitterick. Consorting with Saints: Prayer for the Dead in Early Medieval France. By Megan MLaughlin. Early Irish Contract Law. By Neil MLeod. Theodoric in Italy. By John Moorhead. Ausgewählte Probleme europäischer Landnahmen des Früh‐und Hochmit‐telalters. Methodische Grundlagendiskussion im Grenzbereich zwischen Archäologie und Geschichte. The Book of Kells: Proceedings of a Conference at Trinity College, Dublin, 6–9 September 1992. Edited by Felicity O'Mahony. The Poetic Art of Aldhelm. By Andy Orchard. Politik und Heiligenverehrung im Hochmittelalter. Edited by Jürgen Peter‐sohn Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianisation of Marriage during the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods. By P. L. Reynolds. The Formation of the Medieval West: Studies in the Oral Culture of the Barbarians. By Michael Richter. Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict. Medieval Iberian Peninsula Texts and Studies 10. By Norman Roth. The Reign of Cnut, King of England, Denmark and Norway. Edited by Alexander R. Rumble. The Earliest Irish and English Bookarts: Visual and Poetic forms before A. D. 1000. By Robert D. Stevick. Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul. By Raymond Van Dam.

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Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper was presented, in an earlier form, on a panel dedicated to animate images chaired by Dr. Jacqueline Jung at the 40th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May, 2005. I thank Dr. Jung, the other panelists, and audience members for their useful input. Dr. Vibeke Olsen generously gave of her time in reading and commenting on a draft of the paper. Also deserving of thanks is Courtney Hill, Undergraduate Research Fellow at Utah State University, who provided assistance in the early stages of research. I received generous institutional support for this project from the Art Department, the Women and Gender Research Institute, and the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Utah State University. Notes 1 – Notably, Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 2 – This point is raised (in relation to post-Iconoclastic art theory in Byzantium) by Charles Barber, ‘From Image into Art: Art after Byzantine Iconoclasm,’ Gesta, 34/1 (1995), 5–10. 3 – The Gregorian dictum that ‘pictures are the books of the illiterate’ became one of the most widely propagated and intentionally misconstrued apologetics for the image in the medieval west, as Celia Chazelle demonstrated in her article, ‘Pictures, Books, and the Illiterate: Pope Gregory I's Letters to Serenus of Marseilles,’ Word & Image, 6 (1990), 138–53. Lawrence Duggan (‘Was Art Really the “Book of the Illiterate”?’ Word & Image, 5 (1989), 227–51) also explored the disingenuousness with which medieval authors employed this trope. Conrad Rudolph noted that Bernard's view of the role of art in the instruction of illiterates was absolutely orthodox in this respect, and that he viewed this as the purview of the secular clergy (Things of Greater Importance: Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 50–4, 194–5). Jeffrey Hamburger observed that ‘Women have historically been regarded as one of the primary, even formative audiences for devotional art, so it comes as a surprise that devotional imagery has never been adequately analyzed in terms of gender,’ a shortfall his own work has done much to address (‘Introduction: Texts Versus Images: Female Spirituality from an Art Historian's Perspective,’ in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 15). 4 – Miracle collections abounded between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, and were often tied to a specific shrine, though in the case of Mary, a more geographically decentralized literature of miracles emerged over the last decades of the twelfth century, as discussed by Benedicta Ward in Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215, revised edition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 132–3, in passim; in the course of the thirteenth century, these collections became more generalized with a view to use as exempla in sermons. A cogent discussion of this shift and of its causes is found in Marcus Bull, The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour: Analysis and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), 8–10. 5 – On the relationship between the Mendicant orders and the development of the exemplum collections intended for the use of preachers, see David D'Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris Before 1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 90–131. 6 – Caesarius of Heisterbach, Caesarii Heisterbacensis monachi ordinis Cisterciensis Dialogus miraculorum [Textum ad quatuor codicum manuscriptorum editionisque principis fidem accurate recognovit Josephus Strange] 2 volumes (Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966; reprint of Cologne, Bonn, Brussels: S.M. Heberle, 1851); English edition, The Dialogue on Miracles by Caesarius of Heisterbach, trans. H. von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland, with an introduction by G. G. Coulton (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1929); Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, 2 volumes, ed. V. Frederic Koenig (Geneva: Droz, 1955–1966); no English translation exists; Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Señora, 3rd edition, ed. Vicente Beltrán (Barcelona: Planeta, 1990); English edition, Miracles of Our Lady, ed. and trans. Richard Terry Mount and Annette Grant Cash (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1997); Jacobi a Voragine, Legenda aurea 2nd edition, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Firenze: Tavarnuzze, 1988); English version The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, ed. and trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Alfonso X, o Sábio, Cantigas de Santa Maria, 4 volumes, ed. Walter Mettmann (Madrid: Coimbra, 1959–1972); English edition, Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, ed. and trans. Kathleen Kulp-Hill, with an introduction by Connie Scarborough (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000). 7 – The study of the miracle literature constitutes a discipline of its own, with an extensive critical apparatus. Albert Poncelet, ‘Index miraculorum B.V. Mariae quae saec. VI–XV latine conscripta sunt,’ Analecta Bollandiana, 21 (1902), 242–360, lists incipits of miracles of the Virgin found in many of the major Latin collections from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries. Tubach's Index Exemplorum catalogs known narrative types used in medieval collections of exempla (didactic stories) for preachers and is used as an indexing tool to cross-reference miracles found in multiple collections. A recent project sponsored by the British Academy and hosted by Oxford University focuses on the Cantigas de Santa Maria, but, according to its organizers, ‘will eventually contain all Latin and vernacular miracle collections associated with the CSM miracle stories, as well as cycles of miracles associated with particular shrines’ (The Oxford Cantigas de Santa Maria Database, URL http://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/index.php?p=collections_list, accessed 10 July 2008). Numerous critical studies on the Marian miracle tradition exist, ranging from monographs on single authors, such as Gautier de Coinci, to textual studies of individual miracles, to thematic investigations of parts of or the entire corpus: for a bibliography, see Anne McCormick, ‘Imaging sex: The body and gender in Virgin Mary miracle tales of thirteenth century Spain and France,’ doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (1996), 208–31. 8 – The literature on the rise of Marian devotion is vast, but a critical source is Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, vol. I (London: Sheed and Ward, 1985), 210–64. Also see Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale, 1988), 125–6, in passim. For development of Marian imagery in the visual and literary arts, see Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). More recently, Margot Fassler has provided a long view of the emergence of Marian devotion as part of the liturgy, and as a stimulus for visual responses: ‘Mary's Nativity, Fulbert of Chartres, and the Stirps Jesse: Liturgical Innovation Around 1000 and its Afterlife,’ Speculum 75 (2000), 389–434. Rachel Fulton's contribution, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), provides important reassessment of the development of Marian devotion in terms of Mary's salvific and empathetic rather than exemplary and maternal role. 9 – Fulton, 204–43. 10 – Carolyn Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982), 137. 11 – On the dating and authorship of this antiphon, see Jose Maria Canal, Salve Regina Misericordiae. Historia y leyendas en torno a esta antifona (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1963). 12 – Both examples occur in numerous compilations of miracles and exempla. See Frederic Tubach, Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1969), index numbers 536 (appears in 18 distinct texts), 3572 (22 texts), respectively. 13 – Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, vol. I, 525–6. This is Poncelet no. 755. The Latin is found in the Dialogus miraculorum, vol. I, distinctio VII, capitulum XLIV, 62–3. 14 – This visual argument is spelled out most explicitly in the south tympanum of the west façade at Chartres, where the body of Christ in the Nativity scene in the lowest register, in the Presentation in the Temple in the middle register, and on the lap of the Virgin in the upper register underscores the Incarnation and the role of Mary's body as a vessel or seat for the Incarnate Word. See Adolf Katzenellenbogen, The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1959), 8–12. 15 – Ilene Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculptures of the Madonna in Romanesque France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 31–60. 16 – Forsyth, 144, 185 (fig. 143). 17 – Forsyth, 131. 18 – For example, when Lancelot, in Le Chevalier de la Charrette (ca. 1170), finds an ivory comb with some hairs from the head of Guinevere, they are described as light and filled with light ‘si clers et si luisanz’ v. 1415). Chrétien de Troyes, Romans, ed. Charles Mela (Paris: Libraire Générale Française, 1994), 540. When Le Comte de la Marche (ca. 1250) praises the beauty of his beloved in a lyric that begins ‘You are like rubies and other precious stones,’ he speaks of the freshness and high color of her complexion. ‘Je me merveille/de la color tant fresche et tant vermeille’ (v. 13–14, Tout autresi comme li rubiz), Anthologie de la poésie lyrique française des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 244. 19 – Respectively: Metropolitan Museum 16.32.194 and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe 1893.199. The Hamburg Madonna is illustrated in Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. Peter Barnett (Detroit: Detroit Institute for the Arts, 1997), cat. 1, 116–7. 20 – Conrad Rudolph, The ‘Things of Greater Importance,’ 50–4, 63–9, 110–24. 21 – See note 3, above. 22 – Bernard of Clairvaux, Homilies in Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. Marie-Bernard Saöd (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1993), Homily II.2, 16. The translation is based on the authoritative Latin edition by Jean Leclerq and H. Rochais: Sancti Bernardi Opera, IV (Rome: Editiones cistercienses, 1966), 13–58. 23 – For the relationship between chansons courtoise and chansons mariales, see Pierre Bec, La Lyrique Française au Moyen Age: contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médioevaux, I: etudes (Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale de l'Université de Poitiers, 6) (Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1977) 143. 24 – ‘Rose fresche et clere … nete et pure et sainne,’ Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. V. Frederic Koenig, vol. 1 (Geneva: Droz, 1966), I Chanson V.III.73, 78, 35, my translation. 25 – Most recently, Daniel E. O'Sullivan, ‘Marian devotion in medieval French literature: In and beyond the world of lyric,’ dissertation, Boston College, 2000. 26 – G.R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1933), 18. 27 – The anthropologist J.L. Austin first theorized speech as active (rather than simply reflective or descriptive), and following this model, Liza Bakewell has developed a theory of images as acts (rather than simply representations) which seems a fertile characterization in light of the apparent agency of images in the context of medieval Christianity. See, Liza Bakewell, ‘Image acts,’ American Anthropologist, 100.1 (March, 1998), 22. 28 – This is Poncelet number 168, Tubach number 5152. Alfonso X of Castile and Leon, Cantigas de Santa Maria, ed. Jesús Montoya (Madrid: Cátedra, 1988), no. 38. Translation: Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, The Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, trans. Kathleen Kulp-Hill (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000), 51. 29 – The Cantigas date to the second half of the thirteenth century, but contain many episodes that are attested in earlier literature. 30 – Alfonso X of Castile and Leon, Songs of Holy Mary, 51–2. 31 – For anti-Semitism and the representation of Jews in the CSM, see Dwayne Carpenter, ‘Social Perception and Literary Portrayal: Jews and Muslims in Medieval Spanish Literature,’ in Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, ed. V. B. Mann, et al. (New York: Brazillier/The Jewish Museum, 1992), 61–87. The same author identifies Jewish disparagement of the Virgin as one of the major themes in the CSM narratives that deal with Jewish characters: see, ‘The portrayal of the Jew in Alfonso the learned's Cantigas de Santa Maria,’ in In Iberia and beyond: Hispanic Jews between cultures, ed. Bernard D. Cooperman (Newark/London: Associated University Presses, 1998), 15–42, esp. 16. Further bibliography on the anti-Semitic arguments of the CSM is discussed by Eva Frojmovic, ‘Messianic Politics in Re-Christianized Spain: Images of the Sanctuary in Hebrew Bible Manuscripts,’ in Imagining the Self, Imagining the Other: Visual Representation and Jewish-Christian Dynamics in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, ed. E. Frojmovic (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 120–1, note 66. 32 – Ovid, Metamorphoses, books 1–5, ed. William Anderson (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), book 3, lines 155–253, 91–4. On Ovid's currency among educated readers in the later Middle Ages, see Jeremy Dimmick, ‘Ovid in the Middle Ages: Authority and Poetry,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, ed. Philip Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 264–87. 33 – The Virgin's breasts — and indeed breasts more generally — were a subject of much devotional rumination. See, for example, Margaret R. Miles, ‘The Virgin's One Bare Breast: Female Nudity and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture,’ in The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Susan Rubin Suleiman (Cambridge, MA, and London: 1985 and 1986), 193–208; Carolyn Walker Bynum ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother,’ in Jesus as Mother: Studies in Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: 1982), 110–69). 34 – Belting, 432. 35 – Summa Theologia I 5, 4 ad. 1 36 – Even Roger Bacon's Perspectiva concludes with a rationale for the optical theory's utility to contemplation of the divine, as Dallas Denery II discusses in Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology and Religious Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6. Suzannah Biernoff writes, ‘Sight, as it was defined by Bacon and his contemporaries, offered a means of communion that exceeds Belting's model of “communication’ or ‘dialogue.” The visual relationship — more than any other sensory interaction — allowed for bodily participation in the divine.’ (Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 134.) 37 – Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, trans. Hugh Bredin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 71. 38 – The Virgin's gaze as a transgressive example of active female viewing is addressed by Sarah Stanbury, ‘The Virgin's Gaze: Spectacle and Transgression in Middle English Lyrics of the Passion,’ PMLA, 106, no. 5 (1991), 1083–93. 39 – Poncelet number 804; English version, Dialogue on the Miracles, 500–1; Latin, Dialogus Miraculorum, book VII, capitulum 33, 41–2. 40 – Caesarius, Dialogue on Miracles, 501; for the Latin, Dialogus Miraculorum, 42. 41 – The notion of the gaze as a violent instrument has been most fully theorized and explored in the context of feminist film studies, building on discussions of violence and rhetoric by Levinas, Lacan, and Derrida. The classic essay is Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,’ Screen 16.3 (1975), 6–18, reprinted in Feminism and Film Theory, ed. Constance Penley (New York: Routledge, 1988), 57–68. Mulvey, however, never uses this specific phrase. For a concise summary of arguments pertaining to idea of ‘the violence of the gaze,’ see C. Nadia Serematkis, ‘Intersection: Benjamin, Bloch, Braudel, beyond,’ in The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity, ed. C. Nadia Serematkis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 57. 42 – Sarah Stanbury, ‘The Virgin's Gaze,’ 1091. 43 – Caesarius, Dialogus miraculorum, book VII, capitulum XLV, 64–5. A similar tale is found in the Cantigas, no. 76, and was also included in Jacobus of Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, vol. 2, trans. W.G. Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 155. 44 – The miracle of the knight spared humiliation has several variations, cataloged by Poncelet at nos. 727, 1087, 1443; the miracle of the Virgin of Chincolla is found only in the CSM, where it is miracle no.185 (Oxford CSM Database, http://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/index.php?p=poemdata_view&rec=185, accessed 15 July 2008). 45 – The Theophilus miracle is Poncelet no. 74/75. ‘Douce Dame … de doucheur fontaine et ruissiaus,’ Adam de la Halle, ‘Gloröeuse Vierge Marie’ line 19–20. Anthologie de la poésie lyrique française des XIIe et XIIIe siècle, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 292. 46 – Michael Cothren, ‘The Iconography of Theophilus Windows in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century,’ Speculum, 59.2 (1994), 310–1, Appendices A and B. 47 – The restriction of subjectivity by the language of the courtly love is widely discussed in literary criticism. For an excellent and critical overview of the scholarship and bibliography, see E. Jane Burns, ‘Courtly Love: Who Needs it? Recent Feminist Work in the Medieval French Tradition,’ Signs, 27 (2001), 23–57. Naomi Wolf's characterization of later-medieval love poetry as silencing women ‘by taking them beautifully apart,’ also relates to the scopic delights of both the courtly lyric and the visual representation of the Virgin (The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women (London: Vintage, 1991), 59). 48 – New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 729 fol. 232v. The miniature is widely reproduced, most recently in color on the cover of Roger Wieck, Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York: George Braziller, 1999). A full-page reproduction is also available in L'art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils, 1285–1328: Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 17 mars-29 juin 1998 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998), cat. no. 202, 299. 49 – Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms. 6329, fol. 1v. The miniature is reproduced in L'art au temps des rois maudits, cat. no. 205, 304.

Notes on Contributors

Reviewed by: Music, Liturgy, and the Veneration of Saints of the Medieval Irish Church in a European Context ed. by Ann Buckley Constant J. Mews Buckley, Ann, ed., Music, Liturgy, and the Veneration of Saints of the Medieval Irish Church in a European Context (Ritus et Artes, 8), Turnhout, Brepols, 2017; hardback; pp. xxxiv, 359; 7 colour, 15 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €100.00; ISBN 9782503534701. The notion of Ireland as a land of saints has always generated its devotees. Such has been the vigour of enthusiasm for Ireland as having a multitude of saints and as pursuing its own Celtic identity, imagined as at odds with Romanizing orthodoxy, that a good deal of romantic extravagance has been invested in notions of a Celtic Church and a spirituality that is different from Rome's. This volume sets out to counter such notions, by emphasizing the European framework in which the Irish saints have been venerated. From the outset, it must be said that it provides an [End Page 150] authoritative synthesis on a subject that has been too little studied from a European perspective. Ireland suffered what some have called 'cultural genocide' in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, resulting in the near extinction within the country of manuscripts copied between the early and late medieval periods. As a consequence, our knowledge of its liturgical culture is fragmentary in the extreme, and often dependent on a few surviving manuscripts preserved outside of the country. Buckley has gathered together an impressive group of scholars who all seek to place veneration of Irish saints within a European context. A common theme is criticism of the notion of an autonomous Celtic liturgy as a romantic enthusiasm and, in its place, emphasis on the Gallican traditions from which it derives. The dominant focus in this volume is on the way liturgy articulates local identity, most often studied through the offices of individual saints, but within a larger ecclesial framework. There are a few general essays, notably the introduction by Buckley and an overview of early Irish chant by the late Michel Huglo, as well as a closing overview by Liam Tracey, 'Celtic Mists: The Search for a Celtic Rite'. Nils Holger Petersen offers a stimulating reflection on the role of liturgy preserving cultural memory by considering how Irish saints were remembered in a Norwegian context. Perhaps a surprising omission (apart from a brief mention by Buckley in her introduction) is discussion of the eighth-century Ratio de curs<ib>us, which documents and defends distinctions between the cursus scottorum and the cursus gallicorum, formulated just as the Roman liturgy was being imposed across many continental abbeys which proudly remembered their Irish founders. While there can be little doubt, as Huglo and others show, that the melodies preserved in Offices for Irish saints may derive from ancient Gallican chants, the question remains whether foundations claiming an Irish legacy considered themselves to preserve a distinct liturgical tradition. One theme that comes out from Buckley's excellent paper 'From Hymn to Historia', as well as from other contributions, is the magnitude of the transformation brought about within liturgical practice in the twelfth century. Only from this date do we find a full blown liturgical Office for a saint emerging on the continental pattern. There are a large number of specialist studies in this volume about saints whose Irish origins rest on legend rather than firm documentation: Bernhard Hanngartner on St Fintan of Rheinau, Pieter Mannaerts on St Dympna of Gheel, Patrick Brannon on St Canice at Kilkenny Cathedral, Ciaran O'Driscoll and Patricia Rumsey on St Brendan, and Senan Furlong on St Patrick. Each of these has much to offer, both from a musicological and liturgical perspective. The title of the volume may disguise the fact that it also contains some fascinating contributions relating to Scotland and Wales. Thus, Betty Knott writes about the Office for St Kentigern in Glasgow, while Greta-Mary Hair offers important political context to understand why St Andrew rather than St Columba became patron saint of Scotland—the simple reason is that St Andrew, brother of St Peter, was perceived by the Scottish kings as a more worthy apostolic authority...

One of the odd things about early medieval Irish hagiography is its lack of cross-dressing nuns. It is true that this lacuna may not immediately strike the casual observer. However, in late antiquity and the early medieval period, Greek and Latin narratives of Mediterranean holy women—in North Africa, Rome, Constantinople, Syria—are, if not replete, at least studded with cross-dressing virgins and “manly” women. As has been noted in the scholarly literature, narratives portray various holy women who dressed as men to pursue cenobitic asceticism (as did Theodora of Alexandria, a desert “mother” of late antiquity), to travel freely in missionary enterprises (as did Thecla to follow the apostle Paul in the New Testament apocrypha), or to avoid marriage (as did saints Agnes and Eusebia).1 It is worth noting that early medieval Irish holy women performed these and other transgressive activities, but kept their skirts on.

Book Reviewed in this articles:Robert L. Wilken: The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1992; pp. xvi + 365C. Stephen Jaeger: The Envy of Angels: Cathedral School and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950‐1200. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994; pp. 515.Roberta Gilchrist: Contemplation and Action: The Other Monasticism. London, Leicester University Press, 1995; pp. xvi + 250.William J. Dohar: The Black Death and Pastoral Leadership: The Diocese of Hereford in the Fourteenth Century. Philadelphia, Philadelphia University Press, 1995; pp. xvi + 198.John Fennell: A History of the Russian Church to 1448. London and New York, Longman, 1995; pp. xii + 266.Mihchel de Certeau: The Mystic Fable, Volume 1 : The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Translated by Michael B. Smith, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995; pp. 384.José Casanova, Pblic Religions in the Modern World. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1995; pp. x 320Walter H. Capps: The New Religious Right: Piety, Patriotism, and Politics. Columbia, South Carolina, University of South Carolina Press, 1994; p. 223.Diana Wood: The Church and Childhood (Studies in Church History, Volume 31). Oxford, Published for the Ecclesiastical History Society by Basil Blackwell, 1994; pp. 530.Rose‐Mary Sargent: The Diffident Naturalist: Robert Boyle and the Philosophy of Experiment. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995; pp. 336.Thomas O'Connor: An Irish Theologian in Enlightenment France: Luke Joseph Hooke, 1714‐96. Dublin, Four Courts Press, 1995; pp. 218.

As FAR as we know to-day, there are extant no complete copies of ancient Coptic manuscripts of the Gospel of St. Luke. The Sahidic Coptic manuscript of St. Luke, which is now in the possession of Mr. Robert Garrett of Baltimore, is therefore of very great importance in the study of the Coptic Gospels. The Garrett manuscript, which is written in well-drawn uncials on parchment, probably was copied in the sixth century. In the Album de Paleographie Copte pour servir a l'introduction paleographique des Actes des Martyrs de I'Egypte by Henri iyvernat, Paris-Rome, 1888, plate 3 is a reproduction of pages 20 and 21 of a manuscript from the Borgian Collection, No. 246, Naples, which is assigned to the sixth or seventh century. A comparison between this plate and the Garrett manuscript shows rather close resemblances in the formation of the letters. While the Borgian codex is practically constant in having a single form of M and x, we have two types of these letters in the Garrett manuscript. On plate 4, Hyvernat, op. cit., we have a reproduction of a manuscript which too is dated about the sixth or seventh century. The e and the & of the Garrett manuscript resemble those of the plate. The two types of M also have their counterparts on plate 4. On the basis of these comparisons, the manuscript apparently belongs to the sixth or seventh century. Further aid in dating the manuscript is found in W. H. Worrell's Proverbs of Solomon in Sahidic Coptic according to the Chicago Manuscript (University of Chicago Press, 1931). Speaking of the date of his manuscript, Worrell says (xi): The hand of the Chicago manuscript would, in the absence of other evidence, be dated conservatively as of the sixth century; and this would seem to be demanded by the rounded epsilon, on the one hand, and the hair lines and smallness of the letters on the other. Professor Worrell reproduces four pages of the Chicago manuscript in facsimile. A comparison of these pages with the Garrett manuscript