About the Book
This collection builds on the foundational work of Penelope D. Johnson, John Boswell's most influential student outside queer studies, on integration and segregation in medieval Christianity. It documents the multiple strategies by which medieval people constructed identities and, in the process, wove the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion among various individuals and groups. The collection adopts an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing historical, art historical, and literary perpsectives to explore the definition of personal and communal spaces within medieval texts, the complex negotiation of the relationship between devotee and saint in both the early and the later Middle Ages, the forming of partnerships (symbolic, economic, devotional, etc.) between men and women across medieval Europe's considerable gender divide, and the ostracism of individuals and groups through various means including imprisonment, violence, and their identification with pollution.
Contributors include: Diane Peters Auslander, Constance Hoffman Berman, Elizabeth A.R. Brown, Alexandra Cuffel, Anne M. Schuchman, Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Katherine Allen Smith, Kathryn A. Smith, Christina Roukis-Stern, Susan Valentine, Susan Wade, and Scott Wells.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Preface: Gender, Power, and Patronage – The Impact of Penelope D. Johnson on Medieval Studies, Katherine Allen Smith & Scott Wells
List of Contributors
Introduction: Penelope D. Johnson, the Boswell Thesis, and Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe, Katherine Allen Smith & Scott Wells
PART I. SHAPING IDENTITY THROUGH SACRED SPACES AND TEXTS
1. Living with a Saint: Monastic Identity, Community, and the Ideal of Asceticism in the Life of an Irish Saint, Diane Peters Auslander
2. A Tale of Two Dioceses: Prologues as Letters in the Vitae Authored by Jacques de Vitry and Thomas de Cantimpré, Christina Roukis-Stern
3. “Within the Walls of Paradise”: Space and Community in the Vita of Umiliana de’ Cerchi (1219-1246), Anne M. Schuchman
4. Architectural Mimesis and Historical Memory at the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, Katherine Allen Smith
5. Holy Women and the Needle Arts: Piety, Devotion, and Stitching the Sacred, ca. 500-1150, Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg
PART II. PARTNERSHIPS AND DEVOTIONS ACROSS THE GENDER DIVIDE
6. The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity in East Francia: The Case of Gandersheim, ca. 850-950, Scott Wells
7. Noble Women’s Power as Reflected in the Foundations of Cistercian Houses for Nuns in Thirteenth-Century Northern France: Port-Royal, les Clairets, Moncey, Lieu and Eau-lez-Chartres, Constance Hoffman Berman
8. “Inseparable Companions”: Mary Magdalene, Abelard, and Heloise, Susan Valentine
9. Book, Body, and the Construction of the Self in the Taymouth Hours, Kathryn A. Smith
PART III. BLOOD, EMBODIMENT, AND DEFINING SEPARATION
10. Abbot Erluin’s Blindness: The Monastic Implications of Violent Loss of Sight, Susan Wade
11. Blanche of Artois and Burgundy, Château-Gaillard, and the Baron de Joursanvault, Elizabeth A. R. Brown
12. The Matter of Others: Menstrual Blood and Uncontrolled Semen in Thirteenth-Century Kabbalists’ Polemic against Christians, “Bad” Jews, and Muslims, Alexandra Cuffel
General Index
Index of Manuscripts
About the Author :
Katherine Allen Smith, Ph.D. in History (NYU, 2004), is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Puget Sound. She has published articles on medieval monastic communities and their saints, relics, and images. Her current project is a study of representations of war in monastic texts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Scott Wells, Ph.D. in History (NYU, 2003), is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. He is currently completing a book entitled From Chronicling Monks to Prophesying Nuns: The Search for History's Design in Medieval Germany, ca. 970-1180.
