Proving Woman (22 page)

Cassian then proceeds to argue that spiritual safety resides only in the submission of deeds and thoughts in their entirety
to an elder through confession.
¹¹¹

The connection between inner probation and outer submission is even more tightly drawn in ascetical writers such as John Climacus
(d. ca. 649). Defending the authority of the spiritual director to the utmost, John argues that “having once entered the stadium
of holy living and obedience, we can no longer start criticizing the umpire, even if we should notice some faults in him.
After all, he is human and if we start making judgments, then our submissiveness earns no profit.”
¹¹²
This contention is sustained in the face of the most brutal behavior on the part of a given superior. Sometimes the superior
may undeservedly berate, falsely accuse, or visit any kind of unwarranted ill-treatment on his charge—all for the latter’s
spiritual edification. Thus one brother, whose fifteen-year novitiate was punctuated by gratuitous abuse at the hands of practically
everyone in the monastery, summarized his situation without rancor: “ ‘At the time I came into the monastery they told me
that those who renounce the world are tested for thirty years. And they are right . . . for gold is not purified unless it
has been tested.’ ”
¹¹³

The same passive acceptance is required from the disciple even if such brutality is simply a function of the superior’s own
depravity as opposed to his ascetical aspirations for his follower: the latter’s obedience should nevertheless remain unquestioning.
¹¹⁴
The abuses of a spiritual director are referred to as “spiritual cauterizations, or rather purifying flames”
¹¹⁵
—a probationary process that works regardless of the nature of the impetus that actually stokes the flames. Ultimately, the
will of God and the superior are represented as inseparable. Indeed, in the furthest reaches of this theme the respective
claims of the two are even inverted.

And what I am going to say to you now must not shock you. . . . It is better to sin against God than against our father. If
we make God angry, our director can reconcile Him to us. But if he is angry, then there is no one to speak up for us before
God. And in any case, the two situations are really the same. Or so it seems to me.
¹¹⁶

Such a perspective would acquire new salience in the thirteenth century with the increasing emphasis on the priesthood both
as mediators with and representatives of God.

In this pristine model, the debasement of the disciple is proportionate to this unprecedented elevation of the superior. The
probations that he visits are, moreover, indistinguishable from the scourges of God. Thus Isidore of Seville (d. 636) tersely
distills Gregory the Great’s views, “Temporal scourges advance the eternal joys of the just person; and therefore the just
person ought to rejoice in his penalties, and the impious to fear his prosperity.”
¹¹⁷
In fact, Elisabeth was fully equal to this challenge: Isentrud testifies that, after Elisabeth endured expulsion from the
castle and other indignities, she asked the Franciscans to say a
Te Deum
in thanksgiving for her tribulation.
¹¹⁸
In the later expansion of the handmaidens’ testimony, immediately after Gregory IX transferred the control of Elisabeth and
her finances to Conrad, the following accretion subtly associates her tribulations with Conrad’s tutelage: “Rejoicing in all
her remembered injuries and afflictions, she gave thanks to God that he frequently deigned to scourge [
flagellare
] her in this manner. For whomever the Lord castigates, he loves (Prov. 3.12; cf. Heb. 12.6).”
¹¹⁹
Conrad’s physical chastisements are thus elided with the celebrated scourges of God.

That this was, moreover, commensurate with Conrad’s own understanding of his role is suggested by what he chooses to include
and what he chooses to repress in his letter to Gregory IX. Although emphasizing Elisabeth’s invariable patience under tribulation,
he at no time mentions the various depredations she endured at the hands of Ludwig’s relatives and vassals, or the gratuitous
insults she received from the villagers immediately following her expulsion from the castle.
¹²⁰
Rather, Conrad dwells exclusively on the trials she sustained at his own hands. His reticence about Elisabeth’s other troubles
has been interpreted as signifying that Conrad was not interested in detailing secular hardships, devoting himself exclusively
to divine purgations.
¹²¹
But if this line of argument is correct, and I believe that it may be in a certain sense, the only divine purgations in question
were the ones that Conrad instituted himself. Elisabeth had, in other words, fallen into the hands of a living God.

But Conrad’s conception of divinity was remarkably skewed: it is surely significant that he showed little or no interest in
the various mystical revelations Elisabeth experienced, a disinvestment that is very uncharacteristic of the spiritual directors
to holy women we have seen and will see.
¹²²
Divine scourges, administered by Conrad alone, took precedence over any divine consolations of a mystical nature—consolations
that may well have interfered with Conrad’s authority.

The beauty of purgative probation lay in its infinite scope and flexibility. Even if Caesarius failed to make a case for Conrad’s
just treatment of Elisabeth, or if Conrad were depicted as firmly in league with diabolical forces, his actual probationary
function does not change. Like the pagan persecutors of the martyrs of old or the motley mechanisms of torment presented by
Thomas of Cantimpré, a wicked Conrad would get the job done, perhaps even more effectively than a beneficent one. However,
unlike the pagan persecutors or some of Thomas’s more ingenious torturers, Conrad represented disciplinary institutions, be
they inquisitorial or sacramental, that were constantly gaining ground in terms of official ratification. These factors, in
conjunction with the unchallenged prerogatives of the abusive spiritual director portrayed in the
Vitae
patrum
, could be used to justify any and all unbridled uses of power. By the fifteenth century, the evil agents responsible for
the probation of the just have themselves undergone a progressive purging of negative association. Hence John of Dambach,
writing in the increasingly popular genre of spiritual consolation, will interpret temptation and affliction as unequivocal
signs of God’s grace. He encourages gratitude for such travails since “a proving [
probatio
] of your faith is more precious than the gold that is proved through fire.”
¹²³

The relationship between Conrad and Elisabeth is both an exemplum for the times and a harbinger of things to come. Although
an extreme case, it nevertheless functions as a poignant illustration of the vulnerability and malleability of the female
penitent before a confessor who stands in the place of God. His bifurcated role in both the internal forum of conscience and
the external disciplinary forum, the methods common to each forum, and the traffic between the two: all of these factors illuminate
the potential hazards that could arise for women as Christendom’s love affair with female spirituality grew cold.

Moreover, the role of the historical Conrad in testing saints and heretics alike represents something of an object lesson
concerning not only the difficulties of assessing sanctity and heresy but also the ambiguous position in which the assessor
himself is placed. Probably from the perspective of Gregory IX and most certainly for Conrad’s devoted follower Gerhard, Conrad
was a holy man. To most of Germany, he was a monster. To Elisabeth, Conrad represented God, but God in his most fearsome and
judicial capacity. The extreme volatility of Conrad’s reputation is subtly captured by the chronicler Richer, who initially
refers to him in benign terms, describing how he “animated the path of salvation daily” for Elisabeth. But this is not the
last word. This view is almost immediately challenged in the same chronicle, where Conrad does not fare so well. A conversation
is alleged to have occurred between two demoniacs, each of whom had sought Elisabeth’s basilica for a cure. To this end, one
was attached to the tomb of Elisabeth, the other to the tomb of Conrad. They began to argue the various merits of the penitent
versus the confessor in effecting a cure. The one tied to Conrad’s tomb aggressively asserted the latter’s superiority insofar
as he was a man, while Elisabeth was only a woman. Moreover, Conrad was instrumental in Elisabeth’s conversion to a quasi-religious
life. The one attached to Elisabeth’s tomb, however, asserted that Conrad would never be able to cure anyone. Whereas Elisabeth
was with God, Conrad “did not thus serve God suitably.” A bet ensued, wherein each demoniac asserted that he would be the
first to be cured via the intervention of his chosen patron. But when the demoniac attached to Conrad’s tomb saw the unclean
spirit leave his companion, he began to weep bitterly, begging to be moved to Elisabeth’s tomb.
¹²⁴

¹
Charlotte Bronteï,
Villette
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 143.

²
On Beguine devotion to Elisabeth, see Walter Simons,
Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities
in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 88–89.

³
See Dietrich of Apolda,
Die Vita der heiligen Elisabeth des Dietrich von Apolda
1.7, ed. Monika Rener (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1993), p. 31. Theodoric of Thuringia,
Libri octo de S.
Elizabeth
1.7, in
Thesaurus monumentorum ecclesiasticorum et historicum
, ed. H. Canisius (Antwerp: Rudolph and Gerhard Wetstenios, 1725), 4:21. Also see the addition in the expanded version of
the handmaidens’ account (A. Huyskens, ed.,
Der sog. Libellus de dictis quatuor ancillarum s.
Elisabeth confectus
[Kempten and Munich: Jos. Koïsel’schen, 1911], p. 15).

⁴
Albert Huyskens, ed.,
Quellenstudien zur Geschichte der hl. Elisabeth Landgräfin von
Thüringen
(Marburg: N. G. Elwert’sche, 1908), p. 117.

⁵
Dietrich of Apolda,
Vita
4.6, pp. 70–71. Note that, according to Isentrud, Elisabeth testified to her great love at Ludwig’s funeral, adding that she
did not begrudge God for taking Ludwig away. But her resignation to God’s will was misunderstood and soon gave rise to the
malicious rumor that she did not care for husband (Huyskens,
Quellenstudien
, pp. 124, 125). Frequently the husband’s death is depicted as something of a relief in the lives of holy matrons. See Dyan
Elliott,
Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 235.

⁶
See Isentrud’s testimony, Huyskens,
Quellenstudien
, p. 116.

⁷
Ibid., pp. 115, 116. Ludwig condoned Elisabeth’s and her maids’ food abstention, claiming that he would do likewise if it
would not scandalize his family. Also see Theodoric of Thuringia,
Libri octo
2.6, 4:125. Note that when Ludwig refused to put Elisabeth aside, he replighted his troth by sending her a small image of
the crucifixion (Dietrich of Apolda,
Vita
1.7, pp. 31–32). Conrad of Marburg will later write to Gregory IX that Elisabeth complained to him, while Ludwig was still
alive, how she regretted not having preserved her virginity. Considering her devotion to Ludwig, this seems far-fetched—less
a literal truth than an indication of the extent to which intact virginity, even on an aspirational level, was still important
to the female profile of sanctity (Huyskens,
Quellenstudien
, p. 156). Caesarius of Heisterbach likewise alleges that Elisabeth married “against the desire of her heart,”
Vita sancte Elyzabeth langravie
, in “Des Cäsarius von Heisterbach Schriften über die hl. Elisabeth von Thüringen,” ed. Albert Huyskens,
Annalen des historischen
Vereins fu
ï
r den Niederrhein
86 (1908): 24. Roma (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1979), 1:367–80. Other key documents include Conrad of Marburg’s
letter to Gregory IX describing the saint’s life, which was sent to Rome as a preface to the account of her miracles (Huyskens,
Quellenstudien
, pp. 155–60), and an anonymous account of her death, written in Marburg immediately thereafter (ibid., pp. 148–49). Also
see the writings of Caesarius of Heisterbach, who produced a sermon at the time of her translation—the ceremonial transfer
of her remains (
Sermo de translacione beate Elysabeth
, in “Des Cäsarius von Heisterbach Schriften,” pp. 51–59), and a vita in 1237 (pp. 17–50). There is also an anonymous life,
written between 1236 and 1239 and edited by Diodorus Henniges: “Vita S. Elisabeth, Langraviae Thuringiae,”
AFH
2 (1909): 250–68. The later lives of Theodoric of Thuringia (1289) and Dietrich of Apolda (1297) are largely based on these
earlier sources. See n. 3, above.

⁸
The official text of the process for canonization has disappeared, but enough remains that the dossier can be roughly reconstructed.
Most of the pertinent documents have been edited by Huyskens in
Quellenstudien
. The central text, which proved crucial to subsequent lives of Elisabeth, derives from a papal inquiry of 1235 based on the
testimonies of the four female servants who had known and served Elisabeth since her marriage. (Guda had known Elisabeth from
infancy.) See Huyskens,
Quellenstudien
, pp. 112–40. The expanded version of the original testimony, “The Book of the Four Handmaidens,” was completed before 1241
(Huyskens,
Der sog. Libellus
. Also see the fragment of this latter work recently discovered and edited by G. G. Meersseman, “Le deposizioni delle compagne
di S. Elisabetta di Turingia in un frammento conservato nell’archivio di stato a Friburgo,” in
Palaeographica diplomatica et archivistica: studi in onore di Giulio Battelli
, ed. Scuola speciale archivisiti e bibliotecari dell’Universit[agrave]di