Lisa Wolverton
Office Hours: M 10-11:30
HIST 408/508
COLLOQUIUM
This course explores the
intersection of gender and spirituality in Western Europe from, roughly, 1200
to 1450. We will focus in particular on women living in two distinct
geographic regions: Northern Europe and Italy. In the Rhineland,
Netherlands, and Northeastern France we will consider the goals of lay women
living in religious community (called beguines) and the place of these women in
the so-called mystical tradition of Christian spirituality. Turning to Italy, we will devote
particular attention to the ascetic practices and charitable activities of
women like Catherine of Siena and Angela of Foligno, their interactions with clerical
authorities, and their relationships to the men who were their confessors
and/or hagiographers.
Our discussions will
revolve around five key issues:
·
whether
medieval women developed a distinctively feminine spirituality;
·
the
relationship between radical asceticism and spiritual authority;
·
how
spiritual expression and practice acted as a means of self- or social
empowerment;
·
the
special, often contested, relationship between holy women and their male
confessors; and
·
the
rhetorical techniques male biographers used to shape the meaning of women’s
lives and reputations, for themselves and for posterity.
Assignments and Evaluation
This is a reading intensive collquium for senior history,
medieval studies, religious studies, and women’s studies majors. No prior knowledge of medieval Europe
is assumed (but it might be helpful).
A word of Latin derivation, “colloqium” means, essentially,
“talking together”. The success of
our class will rest on the active particpation of all its members. Since so much of the learning process
will depend upon our discussions during weekly meetings, attendance is
mandatory.
The
reading journal will help you to
begin analyzing the readings before class; this in turn will serve to
jump-start class discussion and help you build understanding and analytical
insight as the course progresses.
The reading journal can take whatever physical format you like, so long
as it is expandable, self-contained, and above all, legible. (Never underestimate the old-fashioned
technology of ink pens and simple bound notebooks; handwriting promotes
longer-term memory and more careful thought than word processing.)
You
should compose a journal entry for each of the texts we read, including
(retrospectively) the short excerpts from our first class meeting. Each entry should include, in one form
or another, all of the following:
- a restatement of the author’s argument,
in your own words, in one or two sentences;
- consideration of what it adds to the
stock of questions, problems, interpretations, and overall knowledge of women’s
spirituality relative to previous works we’ve read;
-
for secondary works, any lingering flaws or questions you have regarding the
article’s facts, interpretations, and methods;
-
for primary sources, interpretive insights about the author’s meaning, imagery,
originality, etc. (sometimes in answer to assigned “food for thought”
questions).
I will collect the journals during Week 4 and provide a
non-binding preliminary grade as well as general feedback for improvement. I may also spot-check them by calling
on you to offer their contents in the course of class discussions (when this
occurs, it will factor into your participation grade). I will collect them for final grading
at our last class meeting.
The grade distribution is as
follows:
20% participation
(including attendance)
50% reading
journal
30% essay
Graduate students will be
expected to complete extra readings in addition to the regular assignments for
undergraduates, to write reaction papers on those readings in addition to
keeping a journal, and to meet occasionally at a separate class time to discuss
them, and to write a more extensively researched and theoretically grounded
final analytical essay. The grade distribution is otherwise the same as for
undergraduates.
NOTE: All the reading for this class is
available on Reserve at Knight Library.
Kleinberg and Angela of Foligno can also be purchased at the UO
Bookstore.
In-class
reading: Hadewijch,
poems and visions of Love
Jacques
de Vitry on the beguines
Aviad
M. Kleinberg, Prophets in their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later
Middle Ages (Chicago, 1992).
GS: Compare with André Vauchez, Sainthood
in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean
Birrell (Cambridge, 1997).
April 16 Communal
Life and the Visionary Life:
Beguines of Northern Europe
Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans. Steven Rowan (Notre Dame, 1995), p. 139-52.
Walter
Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine
Communities in the Medieval Low Countries (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 61-90.
Bernard
McGinn, “The Changing Shape of Late Medieval Mysticism,” Church History 65
(1996): 197-219.
Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, ed., Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature (New York, 1986), pp. 200-6 (excerpt from Beatrice of Nazareth).
April 23 Varieties of Vernacular Expression
Choose Two:
a) Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, trans. Frank Tobin (New York, 1998), pp. 84-98.
b) Marguerite Porette, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. E. Colledge, J.C. Marler, and Judith Grant (Notre Dame, 1999), pp. 9-21.
c) The Letters of Catherine of Siena, trans. Suzanne Noffke (Tempe, 2000 & 2001), vol. I, pp. 57-8; vol. II, pp. 5-12.
d) Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Elizabeth Spearing (Penguin Classics, 1998), pp. 3-13.
GS: Sara Poor, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (Philadelphia, 2004).
April 30 Visionary
Experiences
Barbara Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’? The Clash Between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80 (2005): 1-43.
Sara
Lipton, “’The Sweet Lean of His Head’:
Writing about Looking at the Crucifix in the High Middle Ages,” Speculum 80 (2005):
1172-1208.
Jeffrey
Hamburger, “The Visual and the Visionary:
The Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotion,” in The Visual and the
Visionary: Art and Female
Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany
(New York, 1998), pp. 111-48.
Angela of Foligno, Memorial, ed. Cristina Mazzoni, trans. John Cirignano (Rochester, NY, 1999). On-line Questions
Essay: What is the dominant metaphor or image
in Angela’s theology, and what is its role in conveying her teaching? (4 pp.)
Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, 1984), pp. 21-49 (all); and Chapter 3, 4, or 5 (subgroups, with class presentations).
Caroline
Walker Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast
(Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1987), pp. 113-86 (all); and Chapter 6, 7, 8, or 9
(subgroups, with class presentations).
GS: All of Bynum
May 21 Women
Visionaries/Male Confessors; Women Saints/Male Hagiographers
Raymond
of Capua, Life of Catherine of Siena,
trans. Conleth Kearns (Wilmington,
Del.: Glazier, 1980), pp. 113-57.
John Coakley, “Gender
and the Authority of Friars: The
Significance of Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans,” Church
History 60 (1991): 445-60.
Catherine M. Mooney,
“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. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadephia,
1994), pp. 34-63.
Dyan Elliott, “Authorizing
a Life: The Collaboration of
Dorothea of Montau and John Marienwerder,” in Gendered Voices, ed. Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia, 1999), pp.
168-91.
GS: Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman (Princeton, 2004).
May 28 MEMORIAL
DAY HOLIDAY
June 4 Visionary
Politics
F.
Thomas Luongo, The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena (Ithaca, 2006), pp. 1-18, 90-122.
The Letters, trans. Noffke, vol. I, pp. 252-7, 285-9; vol. II, pp. 23-29, 198-202.
Exam Week
Revised
Essay (7 pp.) on Angela, informed by a comparative analysis of Angela’s
theology with another of the holy women read this quarter.