Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 3632
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Sweetman , Robert.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Thomas of CantimprŽ, "Mulieres Religiosae," and Purgatorial Piety: Hagiographical "Vitae" and the Beguine "Voice"
  • Source: A Distinct Voice: Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O.P.  Edited by Jacqueline Brown and William P. Stoneman.  University of Notre Dame Press, 1997.  Pages 606 - 628.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Essay
  • Subject (See Also): Beguines Christina Mirabilis van Sint-Truiden, Mystic Dead Fathers Hagiography Lutgard, Saint Marie d'Oignies, Mystic Mystics Purgatory Thomas of Cantimpré, Scientist- Bonum Universale de Apibus Thomas of Cantimpré, Scientist- Vitae Women in Religion
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: Low Countries
  • Century: 13
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table:
  • Abstract:
  • Related Resources: "Robert Sweetman, "Thomas of Cantimpre, Mulieres religiosae, and Purgatorial Piety: Hagiographical Vitaeand the Beguine 'Voice'," takes as his point of departure an article written by Michel Lauwer in 1989 and refines its stance: Lauwer had proposed an apparently deliberate mis- and under-representation of female spirituality by their contemporary male mediators (the men who recorded the lives of female saints in the Netherlands of the later Middle Ages). Sweetman, in a carefully paced argument, examines Thomas of Cantimpre's Vitaeof four women saints against Thomas's own earlier writings, against Thomas's known anxieties about the state of his father's soul, and against other contemporary hagiography; he concludes that Thomas's acceptance of Purgatory as a locus for one's beloved dead, who may even inopportunely cry for their survivors' prayers in benefit for themselves and for the living, can only have come to him from his immersion in the female spirituality of the nuns with whom he worked; thus, at least in the case of Thomas of Cantimpre, the male voice repeats that of his female subjects with a minimum of slippage." From the review written by Consuelo W. Dutschke of "Distinct Voice: Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O.P.," "Medieval Review" (TMR ID: 96.12.11). [Reproduced by permission of the "Medieval Review."].
  • Author's Affiliation: Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1997.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 0268008833