Proving Woman (31 page)

Yet despite Mayfreda’s alleged role in the above scenario, and Andreas’s vigorous assertions that Mayfreda had told him many
times that she had heard Guglielma herself claim to be the Holy Spirit, this is not at all clear from independent testimonies.
¹⁶²
It was widely recounted that Mayfreda received directly from Guglielma herself a mandate to reveal her divine persona—a command
that is duly carried out at that celebrated common meal among the faithful. Even so it is apparent from the testimony of at
least two of these witnesses that Mayfreda received this command in the course of a vision.
¹⁶³
Indeed, some of the clearest evidence that Guglielma harbored no illusions of divinity comes from Mayfreda herself. Thus in
the course of her third interrogation:

When Sister Mayfreda was asked if she ever heard from holy Guglielma that she was the Holy Spirit, she answered that she had
not heard it from Guglielma herself, but sometimes when the holy Guglielma was asked by some person to remove a tribulation,
or sorrow, or something of the kind, the same Guglielma responded: “Go away! I am not God.”
¹⁶⁴

Other testimonies corroborate Guglielma’s vehement “not God” stance. Even though the sectarian Alegrantia was present at the
postprandial meeting alluded to above, her own experience contradicts Mayfreda’s claims on Guglielma’s behalf. In fact, Alegrantia
reputedly questioned Guglielma herself about Andreas’s panegyrics. After hearing the gist of what he had said, Guglielma immediately
denounced such talk, addingthat she was nothing but a vile woman, a vile worm, even
¹⁶⁵
On anotheroccasion she apparently said to Andreas directly, “ ‘You are crazy forwhat you say and believe about me, which
just isn’t true. I was born of aman and a woman!’ ” Yet again, an exasperated Guglielma was said tohave asserted vigorously
that she was flesh and bones, had even givenbirth to a son, and her misguided devotees would go straight to hell unlessthey
did penance for their beliefs.
¹⁶⁶

And yet, as Stephen Wessley points out, Guglielma neither denouncednor even cut off relations with Andreas, who was clearly
more intimatewith her than the rest. Moreover, Andreas’s ultimate implication of Guglielma,almost certainly a by-product of
torture, could be read in a numberof ways. He may have been attempting to save his own skin, believinghe would be dealt with
less harshly if he were not believed to be the originatorof the error. Or it may be that Andreas’s eventual indictment of
Guglielmawas true: perhaps be was determined to protect Guglielma’s reputationfor as long as he was able, recognizing that
if she were found heretical,her body would be destroyed and, with it, the sectarians’ eschatologicaland soteriological dreams.
¹⁶⁷
It is impossible to know. But whatever thetruth may be concerning Guglielma’s orthodoxy, the monks were takinga definite
risk in promoting her cult. In addition to Guglielma’s own possiblehistory with the inquisitors, her followers had experienced
more thanone brush with the inquisition. Andreas and Mayfreda were betrayed tothe inquisitors inadvertently by a couple of
fellow Guglielmites around1284, although it is difficult to ascertain how much the inquisitorslearned.We do know,however,
that an inquisitor returned and questionedsome of the members of the sect as late as 1296.
¹⁶⁸

Whether or not the inquisitors were themselves genuinely perplexed over the nature of Guglielma’s beliefs, it was all too
apparent that any continued veneration of Guglielma was anathema. This meant that her body would not be allowed to rest peacefully.
According to Bernard Gui, a parallel problem had arisen contemporaneously with the illicit cult that developed around the
Franciscan theologian Peter John Olivi (d. 1298), whose body eventually had to be exhumed and hidden.
¹⁶⁹
Practical considerations such as these may have tilted the scales of justice in favor of Guglielma’s condemnation from the
outset. And she was, of course, condemned. What, retrospectively, seems an inevitable conclusion to this pathetic episode
receives inflected, but poignant, mention during the interrogation of Marchixius Sichi, a person identified as living in the
monastery of Chiaravalle—probably as a
conversus
, although perhaps an actual monk. Marchixius was one of the several witnesses who recounted how Guglielma forcefully refuted
attributions of divinity, an anecdote that immediately provoked the inquisitors to pose a leading question: “Asked if he spoke
ill of those who caused the body of the said Guglielma to be burned, or if he believed they acted badly, he answered no, nor
did he concern himself about her, but said he was glad that it would not harm her, if she was in paradise.”
¹⁷⁰

We thus learn that the body was, indeed, burned, and the inquisitors, recognizing that Marchixius’s deposition indicated that
he could not possibly believe Guglielma to be a heretic, cunningly deployed the disposal of her remains as an instrument for
gauging heterodox leanings. But whatever private conclusions the inquisitors might have drawn about the sympathies of the
defendant, there was no denying the truth of his spirited answer. For Marchixius Sichi had given the only correct answer to
my tacit quodlibet that flows like an underground stream throughout Armannus’s and Guglielma’s contested cases alike. What
if a saint, who deserved to be canonized, were burned as a heretic instead? For Armannus and Guglielma, both dead and at peace,
ecclesiastical condemnation would make no difference whatsoever. Indeed, had they been alive for their sentence, and subsequently
burned, such a martyrdom would only have won them merit.

Thus in the event that Guglielma was unjustly condemned, Marchixius drewco mfort from the distinction between the church militant
and the church triumphant. On the face of it, one could hardly suppose that the same discrepancy was the source of solace
for the ecclesiastical authorities, however; it must rather have been one of considerable consternation. As Raymond of PeÑafort
had so forcefully proclaimed in the canonization of Elisabeth of Hungary, the correspondence between the judgments of the
church militant and the church triumphant was central to confounding heretics.
¹⁷¹
Indeed, the potential for conflict between earthly and heavenly tribunals is often construed as undercutting church discipline
by reminding the faithful that there was always a higher justice—the only one to which an Antigone, or, better still, a Joan
of Arc, was prepared to submit. Yet it would be wrong to assume that all differences between the church militant and the church
triumphant work to the disadvantage of the former. The theory of the two churches was cut from generous cloth and could be
fitted to many shapes. From a certain perspective, Marchixius’s answer was on a continuum with the monstrous piety of the
papal legate Arnaud, abbot of Citeaux, who encountered a real-life approximation of my hypothetical quodlibet during the Albigensian
Crusade. In answer to the conundrum of howto proceed against the besieged city of Béziers, harboring a conglomeration of heretical
and orthodox inhabitants, he allegedly advised, “ ‘Kill them all, for the Lord knoweth themthat are His (2 Tim. 2.19)!’ ”
¹⁷²
In fact, Marchixius’s potentially subversive answer could also be used to palliate, or even justify, any act of violence.

Hitherto I have been making the argument that the inquest into sanctity was charged with a negative valence, tending toward
incrimination. But the pattern we have been examining could also operate in reverse, such that an inquiry opened with the
expectation of exposing heresy or possible fraud could be transformed into a vindication of an individual’s sanctity. When
news spread of the miracle that God had worked on the heart of Clare of Montefalco, for example, the suspicions of Berengar
of SaintAffrique, the bishop’s
officialis
, were raised, and he went to investigate. According to her vita, Berengar’s action was prompted when the sisters were denounced
for fraud by a certain Peter of Salomon. (The hagiographer accordingly impugns Peter as a heretic associated with the Spiritual
Franciscans, who was attempting to obscure the miracle.)
¹⁷³
As it happened, however, this denunciation precipitated another miracle: Berengar pricked his finger on the iron-hard miniature
lance that had been found in Clare’s heart, and was immediately converted to the sisters’ cause. Thereafter he was an ardent
proponent for the efficacy of the marvel wrought in Clare, and eventual procurator for her case.
¹⁷⁴

The reversal occasioned in Clare’s situation occurred at an early stage, before the different mechanisms of a full-scale process
were set in motion. Suspicious or not, church authorities were still very far from reaching a verdict. The only instance of
a 360-degree revolution, whereby a condemned heretic becomes an officially canonized saint, occurs in the celebrated case
of Joan of Arc—condemned in 1431, but eventually canonized in 1920. Thus if Guglielma raises the specter of a convicted heretic’s
being worthy of canonization, Joan is its realization. But Joan’s situation is singular. Although ecclesiastical authorities
assisted in the rehabilitation that was conducted some twenty years after her death, one would not expect them to realize,
much less publish, the full extent of their misrecognition for a long time. That the complete transformation from heretic
to saint took half a millennium to effect is a clear indication of ecclesiastical reluctance. Yet once this revolution was
underway, Joan’s inquisitional records aided both rehabilitation and canonization alike. This pattern defies the professed
purpose of such records, which were intended to facilitate the persecution of repeat offenders and their families long after
their relatives’ actual death. Nevertheless, the fact that evidence from Joan’s trial for heresy could be so easily mobilized
in her case for sanctity is further testimony to the bridge created by the inquisitional process. The many uncanny qualities
that contributed to Joan’s downfall—the voices, the divine mission, the prophetic powers—could be reapplied to her elevation.
But the singularity of Joan’s case bears reiterating. Inquests were designed to incriminate. Thus the traffic on the bridge
tended to flowin one direction.

ORTHODOX HERETIC, HERETICAL MARTYR

At the present time, our faithful work marvels, while the

others suffer evil; but later, however, the satellites of this

Behemoth [i.e., Antichrist], even though they introduce

evil, will work marvels. We should weigh carefully the temptation to the human mind when the pious martyr subjects his body
to torture, while the torturer works miracles before his eyes. Whose virtue is not shaken by

that abyss of thought, when he who torments with scourges glitters with signs?

(Gregory the Great,
Moralia
)
¹⁷⁵

The children of the holy spirit were dispersed and

put in prison.

(From Andreas Samarita’s psalter)
¹⁷⁶

Papal canonization instituted a gap between official and popular sanctity that would widen in the course of the Middle Ages.
¹⁷⁷
It also ensured that papal authority was experienced in a new way. For officially canonized saints were distinguished not
only by the publicity or ubiquity of their cults but, equally important, by their impact on how these cults must be regarded.
As a result of the status of canonized saints, their cults became invested with a coercive charge.
¹⁷⁸
To challenge the various claims of a papally canonized saint could have the same ramifications as questioning religious dogma,
likewise provoking disciplinary action. This point can be made with respect to what is doubtless one of the most celebrated
miracles of the entire Middle Ages—the reception of the stigmata by Saint Francis. It is certainly significant that although
Francis died in 1226 and was canonized almost immediately in 1228—actually bypassing a papal inquest altogether since his
case for sanctity was so apparent179—his friend and admirer Gregory IX withheld papal recognition of the stigmata until 1237,
when he finally published the bull
Universis Christi fidelibus
.
¹⁸⁰
Even Bonaventure alludes to papal hesitation in the order’s official life of Francis.
¹⁸¹
And yet having once bestowed its imprimatur on the stigmata, the papacy was prepared to police its decision, which was not
an easy task. The stigmata continued to inspire considerable incredulity, even within the Franciscan order itself. Thus between
1237 and 1291, there were a total of nine papal bulls denouncing skeptics.
¹⁸²

Occasionally, a scholar would take up the cause. Thus the Franciscan Peter Thomas, writing sometime between 1310 and 1330,
undertakes to prove that the stigmata could not have been produced through natural means but must have been imposed supernaturally
through God.
¹⁸³
One of the greatest challenges to his contention was the truly impressive powers attributed to the imagination. This faculty
was widely believed to have the capacity to trick the senses into perceiving things that were not actually there. Moreover,
substantial somatic changes were often attributed to the powers of imagination, the classic case being the ability of a mother’s
fantasies to impose themselves on the fetus.
¹⁸⁴
But Peter argues against such imaginative scope, especially resisting the view that the imagination could affect solid or
bounded matter, as would have to be the case with any piercing of the body. By rejecting the possibility of imaginative somatism,
Peter was prepared to go up against medical authorities such as Avicenna.
¹⁸⁵

Peter’s several conclusions, and the order in which they appear, are especially revelatory of a certain kind of orthodox mind-set.
The conclusions move from traditional scholastic proof, to the nature of the symbolic investment, to the manner in which this
investment is protected. Thus the first proof recapitulates the limits of the imagination, further averring that, were the
imagination possessed of such penetrating powers, the stigmata would not have been withheld from the Virgin Mary, whose empathy
with Christ’s sufferings could hardly have been less than that of Francis. 186 The second conclusion is not really a conclusion
at all but rather a revealing series of meditations on what the reception of the stigmata represents. Thus Francis is like
a soldier, singled out and rewarded for his unique strength. He is comparable to a standard-bearer, appointed by a lord to
carry his symbol. Francis is like a legate, entrusted with a papal bull. A venerable duke needs certain signs worthy of reverence,
and Francis is himself such a duke. Even as goodness, perfection, and sanctity are declared through a sign, so the virtues
of Francis are declared through the stigmata. Finally, a lover must needs communicate with his beloved: thus the stigmata
represent Christ’s communication with his beloved Francis. It is worth noting that only in the last three points do the stigmata
begin to signify the spiritual prowess of Francis in his own right, an emphasis that is permitted to emerge once the stigmata
are used to establish his subordination first to the Lord and then to the pope.
¹⁸⁷