Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index



Click to view high resolution image

  • Title: The Martyrdom of Saint Agatha, from the Weissenau Passional
  • Creator:
  • Description: This miniature painting from a passional likely made in the imperial Abbey of Weissenau near Ravensburg, Germany, shows the gruesome torment of Saint Agatha. According to hagiographic tradition, Agatha was a young virgin from Catania whose beauty attracted the attention of a pagan Roman prefect during the Decian persecutions of circa 250 CE. When Agatha refused his amorous advances, the prefect forced her into service in a brothel. Upon discovering that Agatha had maintained her chastity, the prefect then subjected Agatha to physical torture. The violent climax of Agatha’s suffering took place when the prefect ordered the saint’s tormenters to cut off her breasts. This moment of sexualized violence forms the majority of medieval and early modern visual representations of Saint Agatha. In the Weissenau Passional, Agatha dangles by her elbows from a wooden beam stretching across two trees. The saint appears nude from the waist down with her hair in two long braids that drape over her shoulder. Her torturer has already begun severing her right breast with pincers as the Roman prefect, identified by his rich clothing, sits to the right and watches the scene. Streams of red blood spurt profusely from the saint’s body, emphasizing Agatha’s physical suffering. Perhaps the most compelling feature of the miniature is Agatha’s eye contact with her torturer in conjunction with the prefect’s own witnessing. The witnessing prefect may have served as an unconscious exemplar for male viewers who wished to gaze clandestinely at female nudity. Or, conversely, the exchange of the gaze among saint, torturer, and the authority who orders suffering may have once invited viewers both male and female into the violent spectacle and encouraged them to identify with the saint’s physical sacrifice by means of its visual similarity to the crucifixion (Easton, 1994).
  • Source: Wikimedia Commons
  • Rights: Public Domain
  • Subject (See Also): Agatha, Martyr and Saint Hagiography Martyrs Nude Violence Virginity
  • Geographic Area: Germany
  • Century: 12- 13
  • Date: c. 1170-1200
  • Related Work: Full page view: http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/cb/0127/39v/medium; View of the entire manuscript: http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/cb/0127
  • Current Location: Cologny, Switzerland, Bodmer Library, Cod. Bodmer 127, f. 39v
  • Original Location: Germany, S., possibly in Weissenau near Ravensburg
  • Artistic Type (Category): Digital Images; Manuscript Illuminations
  • Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Vellum (Parchment); Paint
  • Donor:
  • Height/Width/Length(cm): 44.8/30.5/
  • Inscription:
  • Related Resources: "Easton, Martha. ""Saint Agatha and the Sanctification of Sexual Violence."" Studies in Iconography 16 (1994), pp.83-118; Hahn, Cynthia. Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth Through the Thirteenth Century. University of California Press, 2001. pp. 92-94, 117-120; Michon, Solange. Le grand Passionnaire enlumine´ de Weissenau et son scriptorium autour de 1200. Slatkine, 1990. pp. 69-71 ; Michon, Solange. ""Un moine enlumineur du XIIe siècle : Frère Rufillus de Weissenau."" Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 44 (1987), pp. 1-8. "