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Abstract:
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Religious women in thirteenth and fourteenth-century Western Europe developed forms
of pious practice that were unique in their extreme devotions to the blood \and body of
Christ and unique in their use of their own physical bodies to practice these devotions.
Thirteenth-century sources including works authored by Mechthild of Magdeburg,
Gertrude the Great, and Angela of Foligno, as well as the late medieval biographies
written by Thomas de Cantimpr& and Jacques de Vitry demonstrate a form of female
piety that included physical starvation, cutting, flagellation, and the prayerful welcoming
of debilitating illnesses. Considered incapable of the intellectual devotions of male
mystics, women sought to grow closer to God through the physical imitation of Christ's
human suffering in the Crucifixion. Theologians criticized female practices as being
lesser forms of devotion, but also recognized female practices as orthodox and sometimes
used the lives and examples of holy women to support and promote the interests of the
Church. Some recent writers have concluded that these'unique female devotions
constituted an attempt to subvert the religious power held by men, however a contextual
analysis of female piety indicates that women's practices developed not as an attempt to
gain power, but as a result of the restrictions inherent within misogynistic medieval
culture. |
