CHAPTER 2 Biblical Models: Women and Men in the Apostolic Life

The “Special Favour of His Humility”: Dignifying Women in the Gospels

Medieval exegetes did not need to look far for examples of Jesus’s attention to women or for the dignity that had been conferred on women through their association with him: the gospels provide ample evidence of Jesus’s relations with women. According to Luke’s gospel, women accompanied Jesus on his preaching journeys and supported him financially. Luke mentions Mary Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Chuza (Herod’s steward), and Susanna, as well as “many others” (Luke 8:2–3). The gospels of Matthew and Mark observed that several women “followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him” and were subsequently present at the crucifixion (Matt. 27:55–56; cf. Mark 15:41, Luke 23:55). All of the gospels report that women stood by Jesus as he died, providing evidence—as medieval exegetes saw it—of women’s spiritual fortitude and constancy. Women were the first to see the risen Christ, displacing the disciples who had fled the cross in fear, as numerous commentators pointed out. In the book of Acts, Jesus’s women followers appear with the apostles after the ascension, praying together in an upper room (Acts 1:14).

In addition to the women who followed Jesus, provided for his needs, and witnessed his death and resurrection, there were others for whom he performed miracles, or to whom he showed special care and understanding. One of Jesus’s most significant miracles was performed in response to the petitions of women: his close friends, the sisters Mary and Martha of Bethany. Jesus’s affection for Mary and Martha prompted him to raise their brother Lazarus from the dead, a miracle understood by medieval exegetes to foreshadow his own salvific death and resurrection (John 11:17–44). The gospels describe Mary as having been particularly close to Jesus: it was she who listened eagerly to his teaching (Luke 10:39) and anointed his feet with precious perfume, drying them with her hair (John 12:3; cf. Mark 14:3, where the woman is unnamed). The gospels of John and Mark report that the disciples criticized Mary for her extravagance, but Jesus defended her, declaring that, “She hath wrought a good work upon me” (Mark 14:6).

Jesus’s defense of Mary is paralleled in the gospels by his advocacy of other women who were marginal or outcast. John’s gospel tells, in particular, of Jesus’s mercy to an unnamed woman who had been caught in adultery.³ While the Pharisees were prepared to have the woman stoned to death, Jesus refused to condemn her, inviting anyone who was without sin to “cast a stone at her” (John 8:7). Jesus’s encounter with a further “sinful” woman during a dinner at the home of Simon the Pharisee is reminiscent of the story of Mary of Bethany’s anointing of his feet (Luke 7:36–50). Like Mary, this woman bathed Jesus’s feet with an alabaster jar of perfume. Sensing the displeasure of his host Simon, Jesus defended the woman’s actions, telling her, “Thy faith hath made thee safe. Go in peace.” Luke does not name this woman, yet from the sixth century on, she was conflated with the biblical figures Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene, producing a composite woman—known to medieval audiences as “Mary Magdalene”—whose chaste love for Jesus was celebrated as having eclipsed the tepid affections of the male disciples.⁴

Medieval exegetes and theologians commented regularly on the spiritual significance of Jesus’s attention to women. Their comments were frequently designed to shame contemporary men, showcasing the spiritual potential of purportedly weak women and urging men to emulate (or, better, surpass) them.⁵ However, a further strain of exegesis explored the gospels for evidence of women’s spiritual dignity, clues that Jesus had especially honored women, redeeming them through his birth (by which female genitalia had been “hallowed,” according to Peter Abelard) and in his life: his miracles, his friendships, and his mercy to female sinners.⁶ The argument that Jesus had particularly exalted women appeared often in the context of the “case” for women identified by Alcuin Blamires. In Blamires’s view, the medieval profeminine discourse was exemplified in Abelard’s letter On the Origin of Nuns, a work that drew heavily on the gospels and the book of Acts to establish the central place held by women within the early church.⁷ As Abelard noted in that letter, women (and only women) had ministered to Jesus financially. It was a woman who was permitted to wash Jesus’s feet—a service that he had provided for his disciples, but that only a woman had the honor of providing for him.⁸ Even more strikingly, Jesus allowed himself to be anointed by a woman, an act that Abelard claimed was like “consecrating him king and priest with bodily sacraments.”⁹ Following Jesus’s death, women went to the tomb to prepare his body with spices—ready to “anoint” him once again, as Jesus had implied in his defense of Mary of Bethany (John 12:7; cf. Mark 14:8).¹⁰ Finally, not to overlook the obvious fact of Jesus’s birth from a woman, Abelard argued that it had been his deliberate decision to receive flesh from a woman; although he “could have taken his body from a man,” Abelard enthused that, “he transferred this special favour of his humility to honour the weaker sex.”¹¹

Abelard’s arguments for women’s spiritual dignity in his letter On the Origin of Nuns were extensive, and remarkable in that regard. However, they were neither unique nor fully unprecedented: other late antique and medieval men had made similar gospel-based arguments for women’s spiritual dignity. Several men highlighted Jesus’s decision to enter the world through a woman, for instance. Goscelin of St. Bertin, writing a full generation before Abelard, had noted the significance of Jesus’s birth from a woman in the Liber confortatorius that he composed for Eve of Wilton: “the Lord Jesus, the morning star … chose to rise in the world through a woman.”¹² Hugh of Fleury (d. c. 1130), too, had argued for the salvific implications of Jesus’s decision to be born of a woman in his Historia ecclesiastica, which he dedicated to Adela of Blois in 1109. As he wrote, by being “born of a woman” Jesus showed “the great benevolence of his graciousness and the immeasurable example of his humility.”¹³ Writing at the end of the twelfth century (later than Abelard, but with evidently no knowledge of his writings), Guibert of Gembloux likewise commented that, through his birth, Christ honored and strengthened the female sex.¹⁴ Similar ideas had appeared among patristic writers: during the fourth century, Jerome reported a woman’s comment to the male saint Hilarion that “it was my sex that bore the savior” (a comment that Abelard repeated).¹⁵

Blamires identifies the gender polemic of Abelard’s letter On the Origin of Nuns as “daring,” particularly in his claim that a woman had consecrated Christ.¹⁶ Yet Abelard was, if anything, more daring in the case that he made for the legitimacy and spiritual significance of nuns’ priests. While drawing on biblical examples of Jesus’s attention to women in order to demonstrate the dignity of female religious life, Abelard also claimed a spiritual role for the men who ministered to religious women, invoking Jesus as their ultimate and perfect model. In his letter of consolation to a friend, Abelard hinted at this use of the gospel, commenting on the injustice of accusations against him stemming from his spiritual involvement with nuns. Citing Jesus’s care for women as a model for the legitimate engagement of contemporary men with religious women, Abelard asked: “What would my enemies in their malice have said to Christ himself and his followers, the prophets and apostles and other holy fathers, had they lived in their times when these men, pure in body, were seen to enjoy such friendly feminine company?”¹⁷

Even in this, however, Abelard was hardly unique. Other men also invoked Jesus’s friendships with women to justify the spiritually necessary service of ordained men among women. Augustine (d. 430), writing in the fourth century, had commented on Jesus’s care for women, noting that the apostles had taken women with them wherever they preached, and that they had done so “by the example of our Lord Himself.”¹⁸ In the twelfth century, Sigeboto (a Hirsau monk and author of the Vita Paulinae) noted that married women and widows had been among Jesus’s entourage.¹⁹ Guibert of Gembloux likewise turned to Jesus’s example as he defended his role as priest at Rupertsberg, commenting that “The Lord himself did not reject the companionship of women,” but defended female sinners and did not scorn “to have them following him in his company.”²⁰ As Guibert argued, the steadfast presence of women at the cross and the tomb was evidence of Jesus’s close ties to women and of their spiritual worthiness: “To whom did the victor rising from the dead first deign to show himself and the triumph of death defeated and the glory of his resurrection, if not to women?” he asked.²¹ For Guibert (as for other men), biblical accounts of women’s constancy and spiritual fortitude, and of Jesus’s example of care and attention for them, were relevant as models for nuns’ priests. Conflating contemporary and biblical women, Guibert asked if men should “refuse either society or services” to women, noting that they had been “preferred to the apostles in many things.”²²

Men like these shared Abelard’s sense that nuns’ priests had biblical authorization for their care for women. Where Abelard was unusual was in the distinctive language he used to describe relations between Christ and holy women. In his letter of consolation to a friend, Abelard commented that women had not only followed Christ and the apostles, but had also “stuck fast” (adhesisse) to them as their “inseparable companions.”²³ Some years later, in his letter On the Origin of Nuns, Abelard extended this motif, attributing to Christ the initiative in forging relationships with women (and not the other way around). As Abelard explained, Christ joined the women to himself as his “inseparable companions”; in so doing he had treated them “equally with the apostles” (pariter cum apostolis).²⁴ As remarkable as this claim was, it was nevertheless eclipsed by Abelard’s application of this vocabulary to his own relationship with Heloise. In his second letter, in which he exhorted Heloise to turn herself wholly to religion and to renounce nostalgia for their past, Abelard addressed his former wife as his “inseparable companion,” seeming to suggest that the spiritual intimacy he shared with Heloise might parallel Jesus’s friendships with women.²⁵

“Behold Your Mother”: The Commendation to John

Abelard’s use of the language of “inseparable companionship” to describe both Jesus’s relations to women and his own spiritualized relationship to Heloise was unquestionably daring, and probably too daring for most medieval nuns’ priests. These men were already subject to suspicions and allegations of misbehavior without proposing to model themselves on Jesus in their relationships with women. As nuns were increasingly characterized as brides of Christ, it would, in any case, have been awkward for priests to claim him as a primary exemplar—implying, as that would, their own status as potential bridegrooms. Abelard appears to have been alone in his use of this particular motif; I find no other examples of ordained men who described religious women as their “inseparable companions,” nor, in fact, of similar language in reference to Jesus’s relations with women. Jesus had dignified women, traveled with them, healed them, accepted their hospitality and support, and been “anointed” by a woman on several occasions. That much is clear in the biblical account, and it certainly inspired medieval men to see spiritual involvement with women as legitimate. But Jesus’s potential as a direct model for men’s priestly care of religious women—women increasingly identified as his “brides”—was deeply fraught.

In seeking biblical models for their own spiritual care of women, medieval monks and priests turned more often to the example of John the Evangelist, whose care for the Virgin Mary they understood to have been Jesus’s final command from the cross.²⁶ According to John’s gospel (John 19.26–27), Jesus’s last thoughts were for his mother, whose comfort and care he was concerned to ensure after his death. As he saw Mary standing at the foot of the cross with the disciple “whom he loved” (and who is thought to have been John), Jesus entrusted Mary to John’s care, presenting John as her adoptive son and Mary as John’s adoptive mother.²⁷ “Behold your son,” Jesus said to Mary, indicating John as her adoptive child; “Behold your mother,” he said to John. Traditional depictions of the crucifixion often highlight this moment, presenting John and Mary as the sole figures flanking the cross, and glossing the entire scene with Jesus’s words: “Ecce filius tuus” and “Ecce mater tua”—reinforcing for medieval audiences the creation of a new family unit, one based on the gendered provision of care. At the cross, John became Mary’s “son” and caretaker, while Mary became his “mother.”²⁸

According to John’s gospel, John took Mary to live with him in his own home after the crucifixion (accepit eam discipulus in sua) (John 19:27). The biblical text offers nothing further; it does not specify the nature of the living arrangements in John’s home, nor does it emphasize the innocence of John’s relationship to Mary, which Christians simply assumed had been pure and blameless. Indeed, John’s purity was axiomatic to late antique and medieval audiences, who celebrated him not only as Jesus’s favorite disciple, but also as the only certain virgin among Jesus’s followers.²⁹ As Jerome had taught, underscoring the physical purity that Jesus, John, and Mary held in common: “the Virgin Mother was entrusted by the Virgin Lord to the Virgin disciple.”³⁰ For medieval nuns’ priests, John offered proof that relations between the sexes could be fully chaste. Abelard, for one, invoked John in this way: to shame critics who persisted in seeing scandal where there was none, accusing him of sexual motivation in his care for nuns despite his physical incapacity. Defending himself through allusion to John’s pure and holy example, Abelard pointed out the ridiculousness of accusations against him (as a eunuch, although not a virgin): “anyone who saw the Lord’s mother entrusted to the care of a young man … would entertain far more probable suspicions.”³¹

Like Abelard, medieval men sometimes cited John’s relationship to Mary defensively—to shield themselves from accusations of wrongdoing. However, they more often invoked John’s guardianship of Mary in a positive and constructive sense: to claim their own care for women as a devotional act motivated by obedience to Christ’s dying command. According to certain interpretations of John 19:27, Jesus’s commendation of Mary to John at the cross implied an obligation for all religious men to care for religious women, as John had cared for Mary. To be sure, this was a controversial interpretation.³² Already during the fourth century, Epiphanius of Salamis had warned that the biblical text “must not be twisted to the harm of any who suppose that, by a clumsy conjecture, they can find an excuse here to invent their so-called ‘adoptive wives’ and ‘beloved friends.’ ”³³ Subsequent exegetes often emphasized allegorical interpretations of the commendation scene that intentionally precluded syneisaktism. For Ambrose, Mary was simply a figure of the church and Jesus’s commendation of her a symbolic act, whereby the apostle was entrusted figuratively with the care of all Christ’s followers.³⁴ In his view, the commendation also offered a model of filial piety.³⁵ Other exegetes cited the commendation as proof of Mary’s perpetual virginity: since Jesus had commended her to John, some concluded that she could not have had other children to care for her.³⁶ Jerome, treading a middle ground, allowed that the commendation offered a model for men’s spiritual care, but only of holy women. Interpreting John as a symbol of the apostles and Mary as a symbol of the female saints, Jerome advanced a reading of the scene that emphasized the care that the apostles had provided for holy women.³⁷

Despite these cautious readings, some men and women throughout the medieval period nevertheless interpreted the commendation scene as a sign of Christ’s dying concern not just for Mary, but for all women. In their view, John’s care for Mary served as an example of the sort of care that men ought to provide for religious women.³⁸ So, for instance, the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface (d. 754) commended the abbess Leoba to his successor Lull, as he prepared to preach in Frisia, where he would ultimately be martyred.³⁹ The scene, described in the Life of Leoba, is clearly reminiscent of Jesus’s commendation of Mary to John: Boniface, facing death, gave Leoba into Lull’s care, for him to look after in Boniface’s absence. Goscelin of St. Bertin similarly implied a connection to John 19:26–27 in his eleventh-century Life of Edith of Wilton (d. c. 984), describing the reformer and archbishop Dunstan as the “friend of the bridegroom” (amicus sponsi) who brought Edith to Jesus and was joined to her as John was to Mary.⁴⁰ Bishop Azecho of Worms was explicit in claiming the commendation as a model for men’s relations with women, writing a letter to an unnamed nun in which he cited John’s care for Mary as evidence that relationships between the sexes were not only permissible, but could even be wholly pleasing to God.⁴¹

Churchmen at the heart of the ecclesiastical reform movement during the late eleventh century also invoked the commendation as a model for male-female spiritual relations. Pope Gregory VII (d. 1085) maintained a warm spiritual friendship with the countess Matilda of Tuscany, a woman who supported him in all his endeavors, even traveling with him throughout Italy “like another Martha”—an allusion to Jesus’s friendship with Mary and Martha.⁴² The friendship between the two attracted unsavory gossip and insinuations, likely prompting Gregory to deliver Matilda into the care of Anselm of Lucca, one of his staunch allies in the difficult years after his meeting with Henry IV at Canossa.⁴³ According to Anselm’s biographer, he did this “just as Christ on the cross entrusted his virgin mother to his virgin disciple: saying, ‘Mother, behold your son,’ and to the disciple: ‘Behold your mother.’ ”⁴⁴ The Vita Mathildis likewise emphasized Jesus’ commendation as the model for Gregory’s decision to entrust her into Anselm’s care, observing that, “Like Jesus, who, dying on the cross, gave his mother to his disciple, so Gregory, the bishop of Rome, entrusted the lady countess to Anselm.”⁴⁵ The complications of Gregory’s position and the attacks of his critics may have given urgency to the association of Gregory and Anselm with Christ and John in their dealings with Matilda, stressing the chastity and holiness of their relations.

By the twelfth century, Christ’s commendation of Mary to John was well established as a common justification for men’s spiritual care of women. The Life of Christina of Markyate, who was aided in her religious journey by some twenty men, chief among them the abbot Geoffrey of Saint Albans (Geoffrey de Gorron), reports that she had a vision in which she saw herself and Geoffrey flanking Jesus at the altar, just as Mary and John had at the foot of the cross.⁴⁶ If the Life was composed for the male community at Saint Albans, as Rachel Koopmans suggests, then the inclusion of this scene may have been designed to remind the men, who were sometimes critical of Geoffrey’s intimacy with Christina, of the divine injunction that religious men care for women.⁴⁷ Similarly, Guibert of Gembloux, whose service as priest to the nuns of Rupertsberg drew the ire of his monastic confrères, defended his spiritual relations with women through reference to John. “With Christ himself commanding from the cross,” Guibert wrote, “John … undertook to protect the mother of the Lord, and he clung to her until the end of life, and served her in chaste obedience.”⁴⁸

In the same way, the early thirteenth-century Book of St. Gilbert invoked John’s care for Mary in describing Gilbert of Sempringham’s care for the women of his community: “Do you not know what happened to St. John the Evangelist? Just as he received our Lord’s mother in his home, so this man [Gilbert] took into his charge those women who followed her example.”⁴⁹ Also writing in the early thirteenth century, Thomas of Cantimpré described how Abbot John had taken his widowed mother into his house, intentionally adopting language that was reminiscent of John 19.27: suscepit in sua.⁵⁰ At Prémy, the connection to John the Evangelist as a custodian for religious women was strengthened by the fact that the nuns claimed John as their official patron. As Thomas commented, “it was surely fitting and right for the blessed evangelist John to defend the chaste community of virgins,” since he had “protected Christ’s virgin mother.”⁵¹

Women too recognized the importance of the commendation scene and cited it when reminding men of their spiritual obligations to help and support them. In the sixth century, when Radegund (d. 587) wrote to the Merovingian bishops to appeal for episcopal protection for her foundation at Poitiers, she pointedly reminded them of John’s obedient care for Mary. Making her request to the bishops, “in the name of Him who from the Cross did commend His own Mother, the Blessed Virgin, to Saint John,” Radegund urged the churchmen to respond favorably, offering John as a model: “Just as the Apostle John fulfilled our Lord’s request, so may you fulfil all that which, humble and unworthy though I be, I commend to you.”⁵² Heloise, too, proposed the commendation to John as a model for Abelard, arguing that men should support religious women financially, as Paul had suggested in his letter to Timothy (1 Tim. 5:16).⁵³ A woman was equally the source of the identification of Gilbert of Sempringham with John the Evangelist that appeared in the Book of St. Gilbert: the image stemmed from a vision received by Agnes, the Cistercian prioress of Nun Appleton.⁵⁴ During the late twelfth century, Herrad of Hohenbourg emphasized the centrality of the commendation to the proper interpretation of the crucifixion, glossing her depiction of the crucifixion (fol. 150r of the Hortus deliciarum) twice with Jesus’s words: “Mother, behold your son,” and to John: “Behold your mother”—a scene that is evoked elsewhere in the manuscript where John and Mary are shown together and John is identified as the guardian of virgins (custos virginum) (fol. 176v).⁵⁵

As these examples indicate, providing spiritual care for religious women was understood by many—both women and men—as an act of direct obedience to Christ that was modeled on John’s obedience to his dying command.⁵⁶ This interpretation is most clear in the evidence from Fontevraud, the Loire Valley monastery founded in 1101 by Robert of Arbrissel and typically characterized by historians as “exceptional” (together with Robert himself). As we have seen, Fontevraud included both men and women within a single, spiritual community. However, at Fontevraud ultimate authority lay not in the hands of a male abbot (as at most contemporary double houses), but in those of an abbess: the men were explicitly subjected to female authority.⁵⁷ Indeed, Robert’s intention was for the women to be dominant, as he declared at the end of his life: “everything I have built anywhere, with God’s help, I have placed under [the] dominion and rule” of women. According to his biographer Andrew (likely his chaplain, and therefore a priest of Fontevraud), the Fontevraud men embraced their service and subordination to the women, viewing it in spiritual terms. When Robert asked the men, from his deathbed, “whether you wish to persist in your purpose, that is, obey the command of Christ’s handmaids for the salvation of your souls,” they responded almost in unison: “God forbid, dearest father, that we ever abandon the sisters since, as you yourself attest, we can in no way do better anywhere else.”⁵⁸

The confidence of the Fontevraud men that serving women would advance their own salvation is significant, indicating that men did see spiritual benefits in their care for women, as I argued in Chapter 1. Even more significant is the fact that this confidence was founded on the men’s identification with John the Evangelist, whose model of service to Mary was incorporated into the very structure of monastic governance at Fontevraud. As the order grew from a single house to a confederation with some two or three thousand members,⁵⁹ we are told that Robert modeled each new house on the special relationship between John and Mary. As Robert’s biographer wrote: “because St. John the Evangelist, at Christ’s command, unfailingly served … [the] Virgin Mother as a devoted minister …, wise Robert decreed that the brothers’ oratories should be dedicated in John’s honor.… This must have been done with divine inspiration so that the brothers would rejoice to have as patron of their church the one they regarded as an example of service owed to the brides of Christ.”⁶⁰ At Fontevraud, and communities associated with it, nuns lived in houses dedicated to “Holy Mary, ever virgin,” while men’s houses were dedicated to John. The point of the association is clear: the tender concern shown by John for Mary at the crucifixion was to be a model for the care and attentive service of the men to the women at Fontevraud.⁶¹

The decision to dedicate the men’s and women’s communities at Fontevraud to John and Mary respectively (with a third house for women devoted to Mary Magdalene) demonstrates the force of the commendation scene as a model for twelfth-century relations between the sexes: some men within the religious life were inspired to serve women precisely because John, in obedience to Christ, had served Mary. Abelard, too, invoked John’s model of care for Mary in his Rule for the Paraclete, noting that “the Lord himself at his death chose for his mother a second son who should take care of her in material things.”⁶² Like Robert’s biographer, who commented that it was “at Christ’s command” that John “unfailingly served … [the] Virgin Mother,” Abelard emphasized Christ’s role in arranging care for Mary, “at his death.”

Given the suspicions to which nuns’ priests were subject, it was important for them to locate models of holy men whose relationships with women had been pure and blameless and who were themselves beyond reproach. John the Evangelist provided the most compelling human example. His care for Mary was chaste, it was biblical, and it was divinely ordained: men who followed John’s example could claim that they did so in obedience to Jesus’s direct command. But emulating John could also be understood as a form of devotion. John was regularly depicted in medieval texts and images as Jesus’s closest and most cherished disciple; this closeness was often understood as the reason for Jesus’s decision to entrust Mary specifically to John, rather than any other disciple.⁶³ In his Sermon 26, Abelard commented that at the cross John became not only the adopted son of Mary, but also the spiritual brother of Christ (an idea that Anselm had expressed, too).⁶⁴ For medieval men to imagine themselves as emulating John in their care for women was, therefore, to imagine themselves approximating John’s closeness to Christ as well—a compelling image of male spiritual intimacy with Christ.

A final connection strengthens the suggestion that men’s care for women could be perceived as a form of devotion to Christ. According to the biblical account, the relationship of John to Mary was orchestrated by Jesus: he was the son (of Mary) and the friend (of John) who brought the pair together. In the same way, the relationship of priests to nuns was one in which Christ—although physically absent—was consistently rhetorically present as the bridegroom to whom nuns were espoused. The characterization of nuns as brides of Christ was founded on the assumed centrality to female religious life of only one male figure: Christ, the bridegroom. Priests serving women did not imagine themselves as the bridegroom.⁶⁵ Rather, they pictured themselves as the “friend of the bridegroom”, the paranymphus, who assisted at the marriage and brought the bride to her groom.⁶⁶ By adopting this identity, men who engaged in spiritual service to women were able to conceive of their care for Christ’s “brides” as an important manifestation of their friendship with Christ himself.

Men caring spiritually for women regularly described their service in terms that invoked John’s care for Mary, or in the language of “friendship” to Christ the bridegroom, or both. Sympathetic contemporary observers adopted these motifs, too. As we saw above, Goscelin of St. Bertin presented Dunstan as the “friend of the bridegroom,” who brought Edith to Jesus. In his Vita Wulsini, Goscelin described Wulfsige as bringing the virgin Juthwara to the Lord, “like the friend of the bridegroom and the bridesman of the bride” (ut amicus sponsi et paranimphus sponse).⁶⁷ At Fontevraud, John the Evangelist was invoked as an “example of service owed to the brides of Christ,” implying that men in the community were to serve as caretakers of nuns as Christ’s “brides”. Similarly, William de Montibus, writing to the nuns at Sempringham after 1202, described Gilbert of Sempringham as “a prudent and provident attendant of the bridegroom” (paranimphus sponsi).⁶⁸ The language that men adopted in describing their care for religious women reflects their clear understanding that spiritual involvement with women was significant first and foremost within the context of their own relationship (as men) to Christ. As Robert of Arbrissel reminded the men at Fontevraud, they were to serve the women “out of love of their bridegroom Jesus”; for this, they would be “rewarded … in the blessed realm of Paradise.”⁶⁹ By caring for religious women, men felt that they could transcend mere obedience to Christ, establishing themselves as his friends. Viewed in this way, care for women could actually be conceived of as integral to male spirituality, and not—as modern scholars and medieval critics routinely assume—tangential, or even inimical, to it.

John and Mary at Schwarzrheindorf: Arnold von Wied and Female Monasticism

Evidence for John’s importance as a model for medieval men in their service to women is most clear in the narrative texts examined above—in the chronicles, vitae, and letters, for instance, which explicitly claim him as an exemplar for individual men like Robert, Abelard, Goscelin, Guibert, and Gilbert. That John inspired other men—the mostly unnamed nuns’ priests who ministered faithfully to women, yet left little mark on the written record—is implied in monastic records, chiefly dedications. At Fontevraud, as we have seen, the male and female houses were dedicated to John and Mary; Robert’s biographer explained that the dedication was intentionally modeled on the commendation of Mary to John, implying that it was intended to inspire at Fontevraud the sort of care for nuns that John had provided for Mary. In other monastic houses that included both women and men, and that had been founded on apostolic ideals, altars or chapels were also dedicated to John and Mary together, suggesting a similar inspiration and intention. Gaucher of Aureil’s community, with its “walls of both sexes,” included a men’s house dedicated to John and a women’s house dedicated to Mary.⁷⁰ At Zwiefalten, a Hirsau reform monastery founded in 1089, a chapel was dedicated jointly to Mary and John, her “most holy protector.”⁷¹ Although no extant narrative text explains the rationale for this dedication, it seems likely that John’s service to Mary inspired men at Zwiefalten, just as it had at Fontevraud.

Premonstratensian communities, too, were often dedicated to John and Mary, or to John alone, reflecting his medieval reputation as a protector not only of the Virgin Mary, but of virgins generally. The high altar at Cappenberg, founded near Cologne as a double monastery in 1122, was dedicated to John and Mary; John was featured on the community’s seal.⁷² The female communities of Gommersheim, Rumbeck, and Keppel were likewise dedicated to Mary and John.⁷³ Communities at Mariengaarde, Parc-le-Duc, and Gramzow counted John and Mary as their patrons.⁷⁴ Other women seem to have identified strongly with John—solidifying the perception of John as a guardian of virgins (as he appears in the female-authored Hortus deliciarum).⁷⁵ Paulina (d. 1107), founder of Paulinzella, built a chapel dedicated to John the Evangelist, probably at the Peterskloster in Merseburg.⁷⁶ Her community at Paulinzella (known as Mariazell before her death) was dedicated to John and Mary when it received papal confirmation.⁷⁷ The timing of these dedications (late eleventh and twelfth centuries), and their association with reform communities that included women alongside men, confirm John’s importance as a model for monks and priests who welcomed engagement with women in the religious life.

Attention to John’s medieval cult may help us to expand our understanding of the many churchmen and monks who provided spiritual support for religious women, but whose involvement with women is never clearly addressed in the sources. The twelfth-century church at Schwarzrheindorf, just across the Rhine river from Bonn, offers a useful example.⁷⁸ Built in the mid-twelfth century as a private family chapel by Arnold von Wied (d. 1156), the Schwarzrheindorf church has a complicated and, in many ways, obscure history. It seems likely that the church incorporated a female religious community from the time of its foundation, although the sources are silent on this point. Certainly by 1172, some twenty years after the church’s dedication in 1151, an organized women’s monastery was in place; it remained until the early nineteenth century.⁷⁹ Despite the longevity of its women’s community, Schwarzrheindorf is rarely remembered as a female monastery, but is instead celebrated for its elaborate design: its unusual double story construction and its wall paintings, which are hailed as some of the most extraordinary extant Romanesque frescoes in Germany.⁸⁰

Like Schwarzrheindorf, which is known for its art and architecture but not for its female monastic community, Arnold von Wied is rarely remembered in terms of his support for women’s religious life. By the time that the church was dedicated,⁸¹ Arnold had served for more than a decade as chancellor to the emperor Conrad III, and had recently been chosen Archbishop of Cologne.⁸² He is typically famed for his achievements in traditional spheres of activity: his renewal of the Cologne church, reported by Otto of Freising, and his service to Frederick Barbarossa, whom he crowned emperor at Aachen in 1152.⁸³ Arnold’s role in the founding of a female monastery at Schwarzrheindorf has attracted comparatively little attention. To be fair, the sources are unclear on the nature and extent of his involvement. A series of charters from the 1170s report only that, some point before his unexpected death in 1156, Arnold handed the Schwarzrheindorf church over to his sister Hadwig, an influential woman who served as abbess of both St. Hippolyt in Gerresheim and the imperial foundation at Essen.⁸⁴ According to Archbishop Philip I of Cologne, Arnold trusted Hadwig (a “strong woman”) more than anyone else after God; for her part, she “did not disappoint” her brother in his expectations.⁸⁵

The dearth of early sources makes it impossible to determine whether the female community was already in place when Arnold handed the church to his sister, or if she established it later herself (perhaps even in accordance with his plans).⁸⁶ What is clear is that contemporaries perceived Arnold and Hadwig as having acted together in the foundation of the community. A monumental fresco in the apse of the upper church commemorates their partnership, showing Arnold and Hadwig at the feet of the enthroned Christ as co-founders and co-supplicants, suggesting that Arnold was remembered within the women’s community not only as the community’s founder, but more familiarly as a brother in spiritual partnership with his sister (Figure 3).⁸⁷ A second fresco hints that Arnold may have imagined himself relating to religious women in another, even more powerful way: as a spiritual son inspired by what he understood as Christ’s dying command. A depiction of the crucifixion (Figure 4) in the northern conch of the lower church suggests an interpretation of the passion narrative that highlighted John’s adoptive care for Mary. Although much of the image is conventional, John and Mary appear disproportionately large compared to other figures and are shown together and not, as is more common, flanking the cross.⁸⁸ The commendation, which thus emerges as the focal point of the Passion scene, is depicted as a moment of extreme tenderness. Mary, turning away from the cross, buries her head in John’s shoulder, while John embraces her, inclining his head toward her own.⁸⁹

While depictions of the crucifixion routinely include John and Mary, the Schwarzrheindorf fresco is unusual in featuring them so prominently, suggesting that the commendation scene may have held particular meaning for Arnold—as it so clearly did for other men. Further evidence from the church strengthens this suggestion: an inscription recording the 1151 consecration reports that the altar in the upper church was dedicated to the Virgin and John.⁹⁰ Although we still cannot be certain that Arnold intended to promote female religious life through his foundation at Schwarzrheindorf, the crucifixion image, together with the dedication to John and Mary, is strongly suggestive. As we have seen, attention to the commendation often appears in contexts marked by men’s concern for the spiritual lives of women. Arnold himself was evidently drawn by the spiritual potential of religious women: he wrote to Hildegard of Bingen, addressing her as “a blazing lantern in the house of the Lord,” requesting a copy of her visionary work Scivias, and indicating that he had planned to visit her at Rupertsberg.⁹¹ He may also have known of Hildegard’s younger protégée, Elisabeth of Schönau, whose visions concerning the Cologne relics of St. Ursula and the 11,000 virgin martyrs were disseminated in 1156, just shortly after his death in that same year.⁹² Arnold certainly knew Elisabeth’s maternal great-uncle, Bishop Ekbert of Münster (1127–1132), and possibly also her brother, Ekbert (d. 1184), who left a promising ecclesiastical career at Saint Cassius in Bonn (across the Rhine from Schwarzrheindorf) in 1155 to support her at Schönau.⁹³

The strongest evidence that Arnold was motivated by concern for female religious life comes from his own family. Arnold had at least three brothers, and four sisters—three of whom were, or became, abbesses.⁹⁴ In addition to Hadwig (who was abbess of Essen and Gerresheim), Hizecha was abbess of Vilich, while Sophia ultimately became abbess of Schwarzrheindorf. A fourth sister, Siburgis, served as deaconess at the new community. As we shall see in Chapter 4, it was not unusual for men to partner with their devout sisters in order to found female monastic houses, or to support their sisters’ spiritual lives in other ways (sometimes by serving as their priests). It is entirely possible that Arnold wished to promote the spiritual lives of his sisters, and so worked with Hadwig to found a religious community for Sophia and Siburgis.⁹⁵ The possibility that Arnold intended Schwarzrheindorf to be a house for women is particularly intriguing, given that he founded it as a burial chapel. When Arnold died in 1156, he was buried there himself.⁹⁶ This is no incidental detail: as I argue in Chapter 5, men who chose burial among religious women believed that the prayers and intercessions of women were more powerful than those of men, and more likely, ultimately, to secure their salvation.⁹⁷ The decision to convert the Wied family chapel into a female monastery meant that Arnold’s soul (when he died) would be commemorated primarily by religious women—a situation that contemporary men sought, and that may have motivated Arnold, too.

Widows and “Sister Women”: The Apostles and Women

The questions and uncertainties surrounding the women’s community at Schwarzrheindorf are by no means unusual: many women’s houses are poorly documented, and men’s spiritual involvement with women, as I noted in Chapter 1, is reported only vaguely—if at all. Still, if Arnold had indeed sought to support women through his foundation at Schwarzrheindorf, his actions would have been fully in accordance with the spiritual climate of the time. Women’s religious life was thriving in Cologne in the mid-twelfth century. New houses for religious women were founded in and around the city, many of them in association with reform movements that included both sexes—chiefly the Premonstratensians and the reform congregation associated with Siegburg (with which Schwarzrheindorf was associated).⁹⁸ The example of John the Evangelist inspired some men in these communities, as we have seen. However, John was not the only New Testament figure to whom they could turn as a model for the care of women. According to Acts, in the period after the resurrection, as the church began to organize itself, care for women (mostly widows) emerged as an urgent matter. In response, the disciples authorized the community to choose seven deacons, who were tasked with the women’s material care (Acts 6:1–5). Among them was Stephen, “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit,” who—having taken on the care of widows—quickly emerged as an evangelist who performed “great wonders and signs” and spoke with the “wisdom of the Spirit.” Stephen’s public ministry provoked swift opposition, and he was stoned to death.

As a proto-martyr, Stephen was a figure of enormous spiritual significance for late antique Christians. After his body was discovered near Jerusalem in 415, Stephen’s cult developed rapidly, especially in the East, where it was promoted by the empresses Pulcheria and Eudocia.⁹⁹ In the West, Augustine reported the miracles wrought by Stephen’s relics in his City of God.¹⁰⁰ Stephen’s developing cult focused on his public ministry and death; even so, his care for women was well known and was even seen by some as providing a rationale for his evangelism. In a sermon for Stephen’s feast day, Abelard observed that Stephen had begun to minister through the Spirit, to preach, and to perform wonders only after he had been commissioned by the laying on of hands to care for widows. For Abelard, the connection was plain: Stephen had received merit because he served women, since God rewards those who “humiliate” themselves in service to the “weaker sex.”¹⁰¹

The election of deacons to serve women’s needs within the early church suggested, as the commendation scene had also, that providing care for women in the spiritual life was a valid service for religious men.¹⁰² A further example of apostolic involvement with women was still more compelling for nuns’ priests—even as it was more consistently controversial. Like the women who had followed Jesus, and supported him financially, there were women among the apostles, as Paul noted in his letter to the Corinthians. Claiming that it was an apostolic “right” to “lead around a sister woman (adelphēn gynaika),” Paul observed that the “rest of the apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas” were accompanied by “sister women” (I Cor. 9:5).¹⁰³

Paul’s reference to the sister women of the apostles raised significant interpretive problems for late antique exegetes. The possibility that these women had been wives—the now standard Protestant interpretation—was foreclosed by the Latin fathers in the fourth century.¹⁰⁴ Jerome argued vigorously against the idea in his Adversus Jovinianum, acknowledging that the Greek term Paul had used—gynaika—could mean either woman or wife, but affirming that “we must understand, not wives, but those women who ministered of their substance.”¹⁰⁵ Augustine, too, noted that some had been “deceived” by the obscurity of the Greek word, concluding that Paul had meant to refer to the apostolic right of being supported materially by women—a privilege he had denied himself in deference to the moral sensibilities of the Gentiles. As Augustine argued, the “sister women” should be understood in conjunction with the women who followed Jesus: both provided financial support for male preaching and teaching.¹⁰⁶ The presence of women among the apostles had been authorized by Jesus’s blameless example, Augustine wrote, declaring that: “if anyone believes that the Apostles did not bring women of holy life with them wherever they preached the Gospel … let him hear the Gospel and realize that the Apostle did this by the example of our Lord Himself.”¹⁰⁷

The patristic interpretation of Paul’s “adelphēn gynaika” as “sister women” (and not “sister wives”) came to dominate medieval Latin exegesis. However, the assumption that the women had been present only in a financial capacity, to support the apostles materially, did not always hold sway. Eastern exegetes had emphasized Paul’s identification of the women as “sister” as well as “woman,” arguing that the term “sister” suggested their status as co-workers. In the early third century, Clement of Alexandria (d. c. 215) argued that the sister women were ministers of the gospel, who introduced the gospel to other women, working alongside the male apostles. As Clement wrote, “They [the Apostles], in conformity with their ministry, concentrated without distraction on preaching, and took their women as sisters, not as wives, to be their fellow-ministers for house-wives, through whom the teaching about the Lord penetrated into the women’s quarters without scandal.”¹⁰⁸ John Chrysostom (d. 407) modified Clement’s argument, maintaining that the women merely followed the apostles, although he allowed that they sought instruction from them as well.¹⁰⁹

Medieval Latin theologians also puzzled over the role of the women among the apostles, generally concluding that there were spiritual, as well as financial, reasons for their presence. The ninth-century theologian Walafrid Strabo (d. 849) explained the presence of “sister women” in his commentary on I Corinthians, noting that: “The Lord in his company had women lest they should seem to be disconnected from salvation.”¹¹⁰ Haimo of Auxerre (d. c. 855) reinforced Jerome’s interpretation of the “sister women,” noting the ambiguity of the Greek phrase, but affirming the interpretation of the women as faithful helpers and patrons, rather than wives.¹¹¹ Like Jerome and Augustine, Haimo associated Paul’s “sister women” with the women who had supported Jesus on his travels, cautioning that Paul had refused the support of women in order to avoid causing scandal among the Gentiles. Hervé de Bourg-Dieu (d. 1149/50), the twelfth-century Benedictine exegete, emphasized material reasons for the presence of the sister women, although (like Chrysostom) he assumed that the women were motivated by the desire to learn (desiderio doctrinae coelestis).¹¹²

Despite differences in interpretation, one thing was clear to medieval churchmen: the apostles had female associates. Given that late antique exegetes had foreclosed the possibility that the “sister women” were (or ever had been) wives, medieval men simply accepted that the apostles had maintained close relations with women to whom they were neither married nor otherwise related—in short, that the apostles had shared in spiritual friendships with women. Not all men concluded that biblical evidence for Paul’s “sister women” therefore justified close interactions between medieval religious men and women—but some did.¹¹³ They found the apostolic model useful in two regards: first, and most obvious, it allowed nuns’ priests to identify themselves with the apostles; and second, it provided a powerful negative association for their critics, whom they likened to the enemies of the early church. During the twelfth century, Christina of Markyate’s biographer scorned what he referred to as a “depraved and perverse generation … which despised the disciples of Christ because they took women about with them,” in a bid to demonstrate the wickedness of attacks on Christina and Abbot Geoffrey.¹¹⁴ Similarly, Guibert of Gembloux invoked the apostles’ relations with women in the context of a lengthy recitation of holy men who had involved themselves with women. Commenting that the disciples had accepted the companionship of women, in keeping with the example of Christ, Guibert remarked that Peter’s wife had accompanied him on preaching trips—an anecdote taken from the pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones, which Guibert explained with reference to the “sister women” of I Corinthians.¹¹⁵ Most striking is the claim advanced by Sigeboto that Paulina herself belonged among the women who had followed the apostles: in his view, Paulina was a true daughter of Paul.¹¹⁶

Women’s Spiritual Constancy: Remembering the Cross and the Tomb

Women’s place in the gospels and in the apostolic church, as supporters and companions of Jesus and the disciples, was widely recognized by medieval churchmen, who accepted that men’s care for them had been divinely authorized: John the Evangelist, Stephen, and the apostles with their “sister wives” were examples to which nuns’ priests could turn in order to justify and explain their own spiritual service among women. However, with the exception of the Virgin, the women who received diaconal care or who accompanied the apostles were peripheral or anonymous figures. By contrast, the New Testament women who appeared in the narrative of the crucifixion and resurrection were central to Christianity. They featured prominently in medieval exegesis, and in art, music, and the liturgy, showcasing the spiritual potential of women, as well as their deep intimacy with Christ—an intimacy that was deeper, according to many exegetes, than even that of the apostles. For Gregory the Great (d. 604), the constancy of the women at the cross served to explain Job’s comment that his flesh had been consumed while his skin clung to his bones (Job 19:20): women had clung to Christ like skin to bone when the apostles (likened to the “flesh”) had fled, an analogy that subsequently became the standard interpretation of Job, disrupting the more typical association of women with the flesh, as Blamires has shown.¹¹⁷

Gregory’s unusual characterization of the apostles as “carnal” or “fleshly” in their desertion of Jesus at the crucifixion was founded on the idea that holy women had shown themselves superior to the male disciples in love and faithfulness at the cross. Textual support for such a view was plentiful. All four of the gospels report women’s presence at the crucifixion and their steadfast vigil near the cross until Jesus died.¹¹⁸ The male disciples, by contrast, were conspicuous in their absence. With the exception of John’s reference to “the disciple whom [Jesus] loved,” no gospel account places any disciple at the cross. Peter (the “Rock”) had even denied Jesus three times after he was arrested (Matt. 26:69–75)—a fact that Abelard emphasized in his letter On the Origin of Nuns, noting that “the women were not parted from him either in mind or in body even in death.”¹¹⁹ The constancy of the women—and the absence of the men—continued beyond the cross. The gospels report that women followed Jesus’s body to the tomb and returned on Easter morning with spices and perfumes to prepare it for burial. Finding the tomb empty, the women became the first to learn of the resurrection, which they subsequently announced to the apostles, at the command—according to some accounts—of the angels, and even of Christ himself. Of these women, Mary Magdalene emerged in the lead role. All four gospels name her as having been at the tomb on Easter morning; John goes further, identifying her as the sole woman at the tomb (John 20:1). As John reported, the risen Christ appeared only to Mary Magdalene, charging her with announcing the good news to the male apostles (John 20:17; cf. Mark 16:9–11).

The centrality of women to accounts of the first Easter fueled early criticism of the new religion. During the second century, the Greek philosopher Celsus mocked the faith for its reliance on female witnesses, noting derisively that only a “hysterical female” had reported the resurrection—the event on which claims to Jesus’s divinity rested.¹²⁰ Yet despite criticisms like these, Christians across the centuries celebrated the presence of women at the empty tomb on Easter morning, imagining the resurrection as a drama in which the human figures were exclusively female. Women’s prominence during the first Easter was underscored, for instance, in the early eleventh-century Bernward Gospels, which present women as the only witnesses to the crucifixion, effacing the other figures at the cross and seemingly eliding the crucifixion and resurrection: while the cross is foregrounded, the background displays the empty tomb and abandoned grave clothes, traditionally invoked as evidence that Christ had indeed risen (Figure 5).¹²¹ The resurrection was featured as an exclusive encounter between the women and the angel at the empty tomb in other manuscripts, too: the eleventh-century Glazier Evangelistary, likely from Salzburg (Figure 6),¹²² the roughly contemporary Benedictional of Bishop Engilmar of Parenzo (Figure 7),¹²³ and the twelfth-century St. Albans Psalter (Figure 8).¹²⁴

The perception of the resurrection as a drama featuring female players was reinforced in the liturgy. From the beginning of the tenth century, the biblical account of women’s presence at the tomb had been extended and elaborated in the Easter trope Quem quaeritis, which—although inspired by the biblical text (particularly Luke)—marked a new and spiritually significant development. The trope appeared first in the early tenth century, and was widely known throughout Europe by about 1000.¹²⁵ In its simplest form, Quem quaeritis presented the angels at the tomb in dialogue with the women, who had come with spices to honor the body of the crucified Christ. “Whom do you seek in the tomb, Christians?” the angels asked, while the women responded, “Jesus, the crucified Nazarene.” The trope concluded with the angels announcing the resurrection (“He is not here, he has risen as he foretold”) and charging the women to spread the good news: “Go, announce that he has risen from the tomb.”¹²⁶

Within a century of its appearance, Quem quaeritis was incorporated into an Easter play, the Visitatio sepulchri, which dramatized the women’s arrival at the tomb and their encounter with the angels.¹²⁷ The earliest Visitatio sepulchri appears in the Winchester Regularis Concordia, a late tenth-century guide for Benedictine monasteries in England. According to the text, four monks were to perform the events of Easter morning during the course of Easter Matins, before the Te Deum.¹²⁸ One brother, wearing an alb, was to position himself as the angel before the “sepulcher,” while the other three, wearing copes and carrying thuribles, were to represent the women who came to the tomb on Easter morning. After singing the Quem quaeritis, and once the “angel” had announced the resurrection, all four were to take up and display the empty linens of the tomb, “as though showing that the Lord was risen.”¹²⁹

As effective as manuscript images were in underscoring the constancy of women at the cross and tomb, the Visitatio sepulchri was even more powerful. In men’s monasteries, performance of the Visitatio sepulchri required that monks act the parts of the women at the tomb; these men could not have failed to notice the absence of the male disciples from the biblical account. The discrepancy between the men’s absence from the tomb and the women’s presence would have been even more striking in women’s communities, where nuns could assume the roles of the faithful women, performing women’s biblical constancy for audiences that included, in many cases, not only other nuns, but also their priests and male personnel. At the monastery of Sainte-Croix at Poitiers, for instance, one of the community’s clerics played the angel, while a nun acted the role of Mary Magdalene.¹³⁰ Even in cases where the entire community (nuns and their clerics) participated in the performance of the Visitatio sepulchri, women held a position of spiritual prominence. At Barking, according to an early fifteenth-century ordinal, the nuns and clerics processed together from the chapel of Mary Magdalene to the high altar, yet at the altar only nuns (“dressed in dazzling surplices”) were selected to play the three Marys at the tomb.¹³¹ Even more surprising is the depiction of these nuns as performing a priestly role through the drama. In the ordinal, as Yardley and Mann have shown, the Marys are described as sacerdotes.¹³²

The events of Easter weekend provided a tangible opportunity for medieval monks and churchmen to acknowledge the spiritual priority of the biblical women. As Abelard had noted, praising the holy women in contrast to the absent and fearful male disciples, “The rams, or rather the shepherds, of the Lord’s flock ran off, but the ewes remained unafraid.”¹³³ In a letter to the nun “Idonea” written from exile in 1170, Thomas Becket (d. 1170) offered a similar account of the apostles’ “faithlessness” as a foil to the spiritual strength of the women at the cross and tomb:

When the apostles wavered, fled, and what is worse fell into faithlessness, women followed the Lord as he went forth to his passion, and which is a clear sign of greater faith, they followed him even when dead, and deserved to be encouraged by the vision and speech of angels, and to receive the first fruits of the Lord’s resurrection and, when the apostles hid themselves, almost overwhelmed by despair, they announced the glory of the Redeemer and the grace of the Gospel.¹³⁴

Concluding that women had “deserved” to be the first to learn of the resurrection by virtue of their loyalty at the passion, Thomas implied that Jesus had deliberately chosen to honor them in his resurrection.¹³⁵ That women subsequently announced the resurrection to the apostles—who reportedly refused to believe them (Luke 24:11; Mark 16: 11)—suggested a further honor: apostolic status. Since the term “apostle” literally meant “one who is sent,” designating those who spread the message of Jesus’s teaching, several exegetes claimed that the women at the tomb had been apostles in announcing the resurrection. As the author of the Sermo in veneratione sanctae Mariae Magdalenae reasoned, “if the disciples were called ‘apostles’ because they were sent by the Lord to preach the gospel to everyone, no less was the blessed Mary Magdalene dispatched by him to the apostles, in order that any doubt or incredulity about his Resurrection might be removed from their hearts.”¹³⁶ In fact, a number of exegetes commented pointedly that the women had served as “apostles to the apostles,” underscoring once again the inferior faith of the male apostles. Already in the third century, Hippolytus of Rome had identified the women at the tomb as being like apostles, commenting that they had announced the resurrection, as apostles to the apostles (quae apostoli ad apostolos fiebant).¹³⁷ By the fourth century, Jerome extended the claim beyond similarity, arguing that the women at the tomb had served as “apostles to the apostles” (apostolas apostolorum).¹³⁸

By the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, comparisons between the disciples (who had abandoned Jesus) and the women (who had remained faithful) came to focus on the figure of Mary Magdalene, who was identified as a particular friend and beloved of Christ, a woman who had “attained such friendship and intimacy with the Lord that she could salve even his head with sweet ointments,” as Goscelin of St. Bertin wrote (contrasting her to John the Baptist, who “trembled and did not dare to touch Christ’s sacred head”).¹³⁹ Mary’s love for Christ was her distinguishing characteristic, as male exegetes consistently noted. “Loving much, the saint deserved to be loved much and she was the first to see the risen Lord,” an early eleventh-century psalter from Christ Church, Canterbury, explained.¹⁴⁰ Several writers noted Mary’s love for Christ and her individual priority at the tomb (by which she eclipsed the other women, at least according to John’s gospel) and began to identify her, specifically and exclusively, as the “apostle to the apostles” (apostola apostolorum).¹⁴¹ A twelfth-century Cistercian life commented that Mary “was glorified by his first appearance; raised up to the honor of an apostle; instituted as the evangelist of the resurrection of Christ; and designated the prophet of his ascension to the apostles.”¹⁴² The St. Albans Psalter took the unusual step of featuring Mary Magdalene alone announcing the news of the resurrection to the gathered apostles (Figure 9), visually reinforcing her priority among the women and her elevation over the male disciples, as well as her singular role in spreading the news of the resurrection.¹⁴³ The placement of this image, facing the women at the tomb in a single opening, provided a powerful message of women’s devotion and spiritual authority—a message that was especially powerful given the manuscript’s male patronage and production and its likely female ownership.¹⁴⁴

The depiction of Mary Magdalene in the St. Albans Psalter raises an important point: texts and images exalting Mary and emphasizing her apostolic status often appear in works written by men and either to or about contemporary women. Medieval religious men evidently saw Mary Magdalene as relevant to women in their own time. Hugh of Cluny, for instance, argued for Mary Magdalene’s apostolic role as apostle to the apostles (apostola apostolorum) in a letter to his successors at Cluny, urging their continued support for the nuns at Marcigny.¹⁴⁵ Abelard, too, invoked the Magdalene in his writings for and about women, commenting in his Easter Sermon that the Magdalene was unequivocally the apostle to the apostles, since Christ had enjoined her to announce the good news to them.¹⁴⁶ The author of the Liber de modo bene vivendi, ad sororem commented that, although she was not a nun, Mary Magdalene “saw the risen Christ and deserved to be an apostle to the apostles (apostolorum apostola).”¹⁴⁷ So, too, Peter of Blois (d. 1211/1212), writing to a group of unidentified nuns, commented that “she who had been a sinner in the city, with love and tears, not only deserved to be liberated from sin, but to be made an apostle and evangelist (apostola et evangelista), indeed (what is more), she was made apostle to the apostles (apostolorum apostola), hurrying to announce the resurrection of the Lord to the apostles.”¹⁴⁸

Devotion to Mary Magdalene intensified during the course of the twelfth century, as the number of foundations dedicated to her, her mounting presence in the liturgy, and the growing cult centered at Vézelay demonstrated.¹⁴⁹ Central to Mary’s cult was her role as a figure superior in love and devotion to the apostles. Drawing on the tradition of praising holy women at the expense of the disciples, medieval exegetes typically contrasted Mary’s devotion to the faithlessness of Jesus’s closest male followers, as Geoffrey of Vendôme did, commenting that “Peter denies that thing which the woman [Mary] preaches.”¹⁵⁰ The sermon In veneratione sanctae Mariae Magdalenae similarly noted that Mary had watched as Christ was arrested, beaten, mocked, and crucified, while the apostles—who had earlier professed their desire to die with him (John 11:16)—fled in fear. Mary remained with Christ, according to the sermon, since she loved him “more closely” and “more fervently.”¹⁵¹ Her reward, according to Peter the Venerable (d. 1156), was that “Christ joins her to himself.”¹⁵²

Mary’s loving devotion to Christ fascinated medieval audiences, prompting elaborations of her role in the Easter story that far exceeded the slender biblical evidence. Most exegetes agreed that Mary had been the first to see the risen Christ since she had persevered in seeking him.¹⁵³ To churchmen, Mary’s devotion was implicitly gendered, calling to mind the bride of the Song of Songs, who had sought her bridegroom in the garden just as Mary sought Jesus. It was a short leap to identify Mary directly with the bride, an idea that had its roots in the third century with Hippolytus’s suggestion that the bride prefigured the sisters Mary and Martha. Gregory the Great developed this association in the sixth century, and his ideas were picked up in the sermon In veneratione sanctae Mariae Magdalenae, which presented Mary Magdalene explicitly as a bride.¹⁵⁴ At the Paraclete during the twelfth century, Mary Magdalene took center stage as the bride searching for her lost Bridegroom in the Easter sequence Epithalamica.¹⁵⁵ Bridal imagery drawn from the Song of Songs infused the Paraclete liturgy for Easter. As Chrysogonus Waddell has observed, for Abelard, the Song of Songs was “preeminently a paschal canticle”: it formed the basis for the Easter hymns that Abelard composed for the Paraclete, was featured prominently in the Easter Sunday office, and was read in refectory during Easter week.¹⁵⁶

Reconfiguring the drama of the women at the tomb as a specifically bridal performance meant that interpretations of women’s biblical devotion to Christ became even more markedly gendered: Mary Magdalene in the garden was not simply a woman, but a bride, and implicitly the bride of Christ—a role that churchmen typically assigned to religious women, but that they rarely applied to other men before Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons on the Song with their allowance for a male bride.¹⁵⁷ Elevating Mary as the “apostola” and bride focused the events of Easter on a relationship of intimacy and fervent devotion from which men generally felt themselves to be excluded. A collection of prayers that Anselm of Canterbury sent to Matilda of Tuscany, in around 1104, included a prayer to Christ, in which Anselm specifically lamented his absence from the tomb:

Would that with that blessed band of women

I might have trembled at the vision of angels

and have heard the news of the Lord’s Resurrection,

news of my consolation,

so much looked for, so much desired.¹⁵⁸

Although Sarah McNamer cautions against a reading that conflates the “I” of Anselm’s prayers with Anselm himself, it is hard to imagine, as Barbara Newman has observed, that Anselm could pen such prayers without praying as he advised others to do.¹⁵⁹ Anselm may have wished he had been at the tomb, but he—like many men—imagined that women could more easily picture themselves there. Just as Abelard advised Heloise to “be always present at his tomb, weep and wail with the faithful women.… Prepare with them the perfumes for his burial,” Aelred of Rievaulx encouraged his sister to identify directly with the Magdalene, laying out a series of affective meditations on the life of Christ for her spiritual exercise.¹⁶⁰ With the sinful woman she was to wash Christ’s feet, with Mary of Bethany to anoint his head, and with Mary Magdalene to “keep company” at the tomb, “taking with you the perfumes she has prepared.”¹⁶¹

The willingness of men such as these to emphasize Mary’s incomparable devotion to Christ had real implications for contemporary medieval women, and for men’s involvement with them. To some men, the spiritual fortitude and constancy of the women at the cross implied a similar spiritual potential among contemporary women. Like Thomas Becket, who sought Idonea’s help in preventing the coronation of the young prince Henry, men invoked the women at the tomb in works of exhortation and spiritual encouragement for female friends and correspondents. Writing almost a century before Thomas, Gregory VII praised the empress Agnes of Poitou for her spiritual fortitude, likening her to the women at the tomb: “For just as they came before all the disciples to the tomb of the Lord with amazing love and charity, so you, in devout love, have visited the church of Christ … before many or rather before almost all of the princes of the earth.”¹⁶² Peter Damian (d. 1072), also writing to Agnes, described her as having come to Rome with her sister-in-law Ermensinde like Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, “not to anoint with aromatic oil the body of Jesus, but to wash his feet with their tears.”¹⁶³ Hildebert of Lavardin (d. 1133), writing to thank Matilda of Scotland, Queen of England, for the gift of a candelabrum, compared her, too, to the holy women who came “to the cross with tears and to the tomb with spices.”¹⁶⁴

Praising Mary and the women at the tomb, these men exalted their female friends and correspondents, yet in so doing they also exalted themselves by association.¹⁶⁵ The events of Easter weekend allowed men (should they wish) to view women as having been central to the narrative of salvation and uniquely faithful to Christ. As Abelard noted in his letter On the Origin of Nuns, the holy women at the tomb had been “set over the apostles.”¹⁶⁶ The spiritual implications of women’s biblical constancy were enormous, overturning even the curse of Eve, as Hippolytus implied in the third century: “Christ himself came to them so that the women would be apostles of Christ and by their obedience rectify the sin of the ancient Eve.”¹⁶⁷ Contrasting Mary Magdalene with Eve, the Cistercian life of Mary noted that, “Just as Eve in Paradise had once given her husband a poisoned draught to drink, so now the Magdalene presented to the apostles the chalice of eternal life.”¹⁶⁸ The exaltation of biblical women emboldened medieval men to defend their spiritual attention to contemporary women. As Hugh of Fleury declared, defending his writing for Adela of Blois through reference to Mary, since “a woman sitting at the Lord’s feet” learned “better” and “more devoutly” than pious men, “the feminine sex does not lack understanding of profound matters.”¹⁶⁹ Some seven hundred years before Hugh, Jerome had also anticipated the attacks of critics who might question his praise for the Roman widow Marcella. In his defense, Jerome invoked the holy women “who followed our Lord and Savior and ministered to him of their substance,” the women at the cross, and Mary Magdalene as examples of women’s spiritual strength, claiming to “judge of people’s virtue not by their sex but by their character.”¹⁷⁰

For the most part, as I argued at the outset of this chapter, medieval men did not invoke Jesus as a model for their involvement with women, choosing instead the less controversial example of John the Evangelist. However, there was one gospel account of Jesus’s concern for women to which they did turn for inspiration: his defense of Mary of Bethany, whose anointing of his feet with perfume had met with accusations of wastefulness.¹⁷¹ Jesus’s defense furnished proof not only that he tolerated women followers, but that he would support and protect them. In a prayer to Mary Magdalene, Anselm of Canterbury remembered:

How he defended you

when the proud Pharisee was indignant,

how he excused you, when your sister complained¹⁷²

When Aelred urged his sister to identify with the woman who had anointed Christ, he reminded her that Christ had defended Mary, saying, “Let her be, she did well to treat me so.”¹⁷³ Abelard and Guibert, too, noted Jesus’s defense of the anointing woman.¹⁷⁴ In the St. Albans Psalter, Jesus’s defense is represented visually: Jesus is shown engaged in lively conversation with Simon the Pharisee, while a woman cradles his feet, drying them with her unbound hair (Figure 10).¹⁷⁵ Gesturing to her, and clearly addressing the Pharisee, Jesus defends her from the Pharisee’s criticism.

Interpretations of the passion that emphasized women’s spiritual leadership and that featured Mary Magdalene either as the bride or as the new Eve, who ministered “the chalice of eternal life,” furnished men with an intellectual rationale for their spiritual involvement with women: as Hugh of Fleury noted, women were not lacking in devotion or understanding. The fact that Jesus himself had defended his women followers publicly energized these men still further, strengthening their belief in women’s spiritual dignity. An episode in the life of Robert of Arbrissel highlights the practical implications of these ideas for women. According to his biographer, Robert came one day to preach at the church of Menelay l’Abbaye with his customary entourage of women. The group was met at the door by a group of local countrymen who declared that women were forbidden to enter the sanctuary, threatening that “if any one of them presumed to enter, she would die at once.” Refusing to be stopped, Robert led the women into the church, presenting them as “brides of Christ” and citing Jesus’s treatment of the sinful woman of Luke 7 as evidence that Jesus had accepted and even favored women. Observing that Jesus had not prevented women from touching his physical body (and had even allowed a woman to anoint him), Robert asked the doorkeepers: “Which is the greater thing, God’s material temple or the spiritual temple in which God lives?”¹⁷⁶ Robert’s actions at Menelay l’Abbaye mark an important moment at which men’s devotion to the Magdalene had a measurable impact on the lives of contemporary women, as Jacques Dalarun has observed.¹⁷⁷ Robert’s reference to Jesus’s treatment of the sinful woman as an example of how men ought to treat women meant that his own female companions were ultimately allowed access to the church.

Conclusion

The presence of women at the cross and tomb during the first Easter provided an important precedent for medieval women and men, confirming not only women’s centrality to salvation history, but also their potential for discipleship and even spiritual superiority. Although women’s biblical priority was sometimes used to shame contemporary men, their centrality to the Easter narrative—which was celebrated in hymns, sermons, and vitae, in the visual record, the liturgy, and the earliest church dramas—was more often deployed to promote women’s religious life, to establish their spiritual authority, and to justify their relations with ordained men. Women, too, understood the powerful message of female apostolicity that was embedded in the Easter narrative. According to Goscelin of St. Bertin, Edith of Wilton embroidered an alb on which she depicted herself as Mary Magdalene kissing the footprints of Jesus.¹⁷⁸ If Goscelin’s report is accurate, Edith’s choice of subject was particularly significant. By imagining herself as Mary Magdalene, a woman closer to Christ even than the apostles, Edith powerfully asserted the potential for women’s spiritual authority.¹⁷⁹ In recounting the story, Goscelin reinforced the implied message of women’s spiritual intimacy with Christ, exalting both the Wilton women and himself as their hagiographer, and perhaps also as their chaplain.

By the twelfth century, the gospel example was so well established as a justification for close contacts between the sexes that churchmen worried more about its potential for abuse than about its legitimacy (which they simply assumed). In a letter to Bernard of Clairvaux, the Premonstratensian provost Eberwin of Steinfeld observed that heretics claimed apostolic models to defend their relationships with women. As he wrote: “These apostles of Satan had among them continent women (so they say)—widows, virgins, their wives, some among the elect, some among the believing; in the guise of [real] apostles who had been given the power to surround themselves with women.”¹⁸⁰ Eberwin’s alarm at the misuse of the apostolic example is echoed in Hugh of Rouen’s report that heretics “say they lead a common life in their houses and have women with them just like the apostles.”¹⁸¹

Neither Eberwin nor Hugh denied the validity of the apostolic example, even as they worried about its misapplication. Like other medieval men and women, they recognized that the New Testament offered important models for the blameless and irreproachable spiritual involvement of men with women. Some monks and churchmen adopted these models in their own lives and in their service to nuns. Inspired by Christ’s healing miracles for women, his friendship with Mary and Martha of Bethany, his defense of the sinful woman, and his concern for his mother Mary, these men sought to honor Christ in their relations with women. As they did, they often fashioned themselves after the example of John the Evangelist, approaching religious women as brides of Christ and imagining themselves as Christ’s friend and paranymphus.