Gender-bending for pleasure and profit (of the spiritual kind)

[tree_and_leaf]

I've been reading the most fascinating book - in fact, it was so fascinating that I felt compelled to go and buy it, even though there's a perfectly good library copy out in my name at the moment. But I know it's something I'm going to keep wanting to come back to. It's God and the Goddesses, by Barbara Newman, and deals with the proliferation of mostly allegorical figures that are called 'goddesses' in religious mediaeval writings, and also about the divinized Mary and the feminized Christ.

It's all very fascinating stuff, either from a literary or from a theological/ history of ideas point of view, but the aspect that particularly got my attention was the parts which dealt with 'God as goddess'. (I suspect this will be of interest to some of the people on the flist at least, remembering recent discussions on castalys's journal.


The most obvious aspect of this is the Christian reading of the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament. Interestingly, Newman argues that it was the existence of the Jewish concept of Wisdom as the daughter of God, which allowed a more ready acceptance of Christ as the child of God, even if the child in this case happened to be a boy... not an idea which had occurred to me, but one which does make a good deal of sense, especially in the light of the beginning of John's gospel and certain passages in Paul (and deutero-Paul). She also has some good analysis of Seuse in particular, who presents himself as the Bridegroom of Wisdom - i.e. Christ in a femine guise - one of the manuscripts has the most incredible picture of Seuse kneeling in front of Wisdom with his head in her lap.† I would say 'the subtext is rapidly becoming text', but in fact Seuse's eroticism is quite upfront, and seems to be aimed at offering a model of bridal mysticism - that is, conceiving of the search for closeness to or oneness with God in erotic metaphor - that didn't require men to 'cross-dress' as women (or succumb to Teh Gay).•

She's also good on Julian of Norwich and God-as-mother, especially the usually omitted passage which talks about defecation as evidence of God's care for us. Newman comments: “What is so extraordinary is not just the lack of bodily shame – although that itself is rare enough – but Julian’s assertion that God personally ‘hath no disdeyne to serue vs at the simplest office that to oure body longyth in kynde.” There is nothing remotely comparable to this in all theology, for the good reason that few other theologians before our generation have ever changed a diaper.”

The really mindblowing thing, though, was a discussion of the question 'is God masculine'? Generally, of course, Christian writers say 'yes'. However, there are a couple of not insignificant exceptions. Thierry of Chartres (teacher of Bernard Silvestris) remarks that “the Divine Persons could just as well have been designated by the names of Mother, Daughter and Gift (f. Donatio), since the attributes they represent (power, wisdom and goodness) are feminine nouns.” More significantly, Alcuin of Canterbury, a much more mainstream figure, considered an argument along these lines, rejecting it solely because of Aristotelean teaching about the greater perfection of the masculine. (Bloody Aristotle!)

I leave you with a few interesting quotes:

Christine Pizan, paraphrazing Boethius: just as those who have justice are just, and those who have wisdom are wise, so those who possess divinity are gods, and one who has felicity is a god. Thus all the blessed are gods: although by nature there is only one God, by participation there are many.

And Newman herself, for no other reason than I found it illuminating and useful in tying up the doctrine of the Church as Christ's body with the allegorical figure of lady Ecclesia, something I've been having dissertation-related problems with: If Lady Wisdom is a feminine double for the logos (Christ’s divine nature), the personified Church is a feminine double for his mystical body (the extension of his human nature). To participate in God through this ubiquitous personification is to approach him in the most ordinary and accessible ways, through the mediation of the Church’s doctrine and sacraments.

† None the less, this is the closest thing to a depiction of oral sex I ever expect to see in a Christian work, not least one which isn't on the Index.
• It's important to point out that Seuse was not off the wall or considered dodgy in anyway; the work referred to, the Horologium Sapiaentia was a 'best seller' of its day and is second only to the Imitation of Christ (largely a knock-off of Seuse anyway) in the number of surviving manuscripts. Seuse was as mainstream as you get.

Comments

[oxoniana.livejournal.com]

Oooh that DOES sound interesting- I shall have to have a read. am looking at some religious stuff meself at the moment. PSalters and missals ahoy!

[tree_and_leaf]

It's highly recommended (and even out in paperback at an more or less affordable price, but the Bod and probably the Hist fac will have it).

Have fun with the Missals! I always find them difficult, though, because there is just such a crazy amount of regional variation. Makes it more interesting, though?

Have you seen the Bod's "My first Psalter' - the one with the text in different colours on alternate lines, to aid the young reader?

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Have you read Piers Ploughman? The Four Daughters of God have a major section devoted to them....

[tree_and_leaf]

Only in bits (I really need to do so properly). Newman talks a bit about them, too.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

This is really cool, and I may have to look for this book as well.

It is of course much much much later, but have you read Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum? It's a really interesting text for feminine presentations of Christ.

[tree_and_leaf]

I haven't, but it sounds interesting - I'll have alook for it.

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

One place to look for images of God as servant of bodily functions might be in the writings of the Hospitallers or other healing orders ... they worked for "our lords the sick" so would have been accustomed to the realities of the body.

I wonder if there has ever been a theological movement that said Christ was a woman?

[zanesfriend.livejournal.com]

Well, one could count the Shakers in America, who sometimes spoke of their foundress, Mother Anne Lee, almost as a Second Incarnation in a female body. (Later Shaker writings tend to distance themselves from this, saying [more or less] that every Christian has a part of the Christ-spirit within him/her, but that some have more than others, and Mother Anne had more than {almost} anyone else.)

[tree_and_leaf]

There was also a heretical 13th C sect called the Guigelemites who claimed that the HOly Spirit would be incarnated as a woman called Wilhelmina/ Guigelmina (what the significance of the name was supposed to be, I have no idea). Needless to say, the Inquisition was unimpressed, though the fact that they'd elected a woman Pope certainly didn't help their case...

[zanesfriend.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of them, but they sound most interesting.

[tree_and_leaf]

Unfortunately not much is known about them, and that little from the other side. And they are very obscure - I only came across them the other day, while looking at something else entirely.

[zanesfriend.livejournal.com]

It would be interesting to write an 'alternate history' story in which they became a viable independent sect.

Can you point me to any sources?

[tree_and_leaf]

It's mostly in Italian, but I found the initial reference in Newman, "God and the Goddesses". Her footnotes refer to another article of hers "WomanSpirit, Woman Pope" in Newman, "From Virile Woman to WomanChrist", U Penn Press 1995, a number of Italian articles which I can give you if they're any good to you (one of them appears to be a report on the Inquisition proceedings). the first person to wirte about them at all was HC Lea, in 'A history of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages' (NY: 1888, 3:95), and I think they may get a mention in Ronald Knox's "Enthusiasms'.

[lucullean.livejournal.com]

that's lovely! you ought to post more of this sort of thing.