by Hanne Blank
But entering holy orders, even with the blessing of one's family, did not grant medieval virgins a reprieve from the threat of sexual violence. The medieval crime known as raptus is usually translated as "rape" today, but its literal meaning was something closer to "the theft of a woman." Raptus typically included kidnapping, the literal physical removal of a woman from her convent, as in the case of Gerberga, a ninth-century aristocratic nun from northern Spain who was kidnapped by her brother's enemies, charged with witchcraft, and murdered. More commonly, the raptus of a nun was followed by forced marriage, since that was the most common legal remedy for rape at the time. For aristocratic men who had little to bring to the marriage market—younger sons, for example, who could not expect to inherit in the same measure as their elder brothers—this could make the prospect of simply snatching a wellborn bride out of the local convent quite appealing. The "sporting" aspect of abducting a nun from her cloister also contributed to convent raptus. At various places, at various times, wellborn rakes apparently considered it a fine challenge to see if they could make off with a young virgin from a convent.
Between the voluntary and involuntary comings and goings of nuns, the well-known phenomenon of the disaffected nun placed in a convent by her parents, and the many ways in which the all-female world of the convent seemed a strange and exotic alternate universe, it is little wonder that many an outside observer felt entitled to assume that whatever went on behind the mysterious doors of convents had to be sexy stuff indeed, leavened as it was presumed to be with the yearnings of repressed virgins. Urban legends about nuns and convents are so common as to be stereotypical, but few appear to have had any basis in fact.
In truth, nuns were the objects of constant suspicion. If they went out from the cloister to do the economically necessary work of visiting and administering lands and properties, seeing to the provisioning of the convent and the sale of its various products, and interacting with merchants and guildsmen, they were tainted by worldliness and suspected of unlawful dalliances with the men with whom they had contact. Unfortunately for the nuns, economic survival depended on such "suspicious" activities. Attempts to force the various religious orders to which individual convents belonged to provide for their material support were only sporadically successful. Monastic orders, with the notable exception of the Franciscans, openly resented the responsibility and the financial outlay of the cura mulierum, the care of women: the Carthusians referred to their five convents as "the five wounds of our order." The installation of monks who would act as the nuns' business agents only proved that these monks had few scruples about skimming a convent's profits.
Of course, having even these men in contact with convent virgins was also considered suspicious. According to the medical wisdom of the day, women were inherently lustful and liable to give in to their base natures at any time. Even if they succeeded in staying completely chaste, they were still women and thus an attractive nuisance for men. As resentment of nuns increased, veiled virgins were frequently depicted as being so enticing that their presence might compel even a pure man to commit rape. Popular literature, song, and legend provided convent-abduction and disgraced-nun stories galore, producing what passed for "proof " of these supposedly incontrovertible facts.
There is certainly sufficient mention of convent raptus in the medieval legal literature, including Gratian's Decretum, that we know it was a real and relatively significant problem. But the degree to which vowed virgins might have willingly engaged in illicit activities is significantly harder to gauge. Despite the sardonic use of the term "brothel" to mean convent and "nunnery" to mean brothel—as in the notoriously double-edged line Shakespeare has Hamlet spit at poor Ophelia—the odds are quite against it having been an apt comparison. Neither father confessors nor abbesses typically kept detailed records of nunly transgressions, and overall we have relatively few logs of such things even in civil criminal records. In the few cases where historians have been able to compare female and male monastery records in regard to sexual transgressions, however, it does not appear that women were any worse than men.
Women's sexual misconduct, however, has always been seen as being worse than men's. The whole ideology of virginity that underpins the female monastic system means that even the slightest breach is unforgivable, whereas male unchastity is merely "incontinence" and usually easily swept under the rug or explained away as an instance of "boys will be boys."
Stories of genuinely dissolute convents (like the Venetian abbey of Sant' Angelo di Contorto, where nuns not only received lovers in their cells but were also, with their paramours, sometimes taken out on picnics by the abbess) were, as in a game of "telephone," widely repeated as well as distorted and inflated. This happened regardless of whether or not the tale was actually true. It seems probable that a great many of the stories told about naughty nuns, wayward abbesses, and vicious virgins were nothing more than fiction. But like today's urban legends about rock stars or big corporations, they were also frequently accepted as figuratively true.
As eminent scholar JoAnn MacNamara points out in her works on convent history, however, it does not make practical sense for it to have been possible for frequent transgression, and particularly sexual transgression, to have been commonplace among female monastics. The reason for this is simple: the continued existence of female monastics depended upon the public's impression of the reliability of their sanctity and intercessory prayers, and the reliability of women's sanctity and prayers depended directly upon their virginity. Virginity, again, functioned as a bridge between heaven and earth.
Unlike sacraments given by priests, who receive an official imprimatur (ordination) that renders their sacraments uniformly effective, nuns' prayers are not guaranteed by the Church. What gives weight to a nun's spiritual efforts is her personal holiness and the sanctity of her community. A patron who supported convents would have been unlikely to support nuns whose spiritual interventions on the patron's behalf seemed likely to fail. Pilgrims would scarcely bring offerings to a shrine whose nuns' reputations had been tarnished. Women who valued their own ability to participate in monastic life were not likely to be tolerant of having other women put their vocations at risk. Indeed, judging from what hard evidence we do have on the subject, such as convent rules that prohibited nuns from spending time alone together, required them to sleep in barracks like communal dormitories, and forbade affectionate touch and hugging, most built careful fences around the law to avoid even the hint of sin.
Virgin Superstars
Cultivating the Christian cult of holy virginity meant cultivating holy Virgin role models. The virgin martyr saints of the Catholic tradition filled that niche in many ways during the medieval period, both as top-down propaganda promoted by the Church and as beloved grassroots icons. As privileged friends of God who had been granted a special place in heaven, their physical remains were believed to partake of their holiness. They were (and still are) also believed to have the ability to transmit requests directly from the devout to the Divine. In terms of the history of virginity, though, the most important aspect of the cult of the saints wasn't what remained after they died or how those remains were venerated, it is their hagiographies, or life stories.
Like Jesus, although at a bit of a theological remove, saints are both human and holy. They look like us, they have mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers like us, they have aspirations to greatness like we do. Very much like we do, they face temptation, cope with obstacles, and get into trouble. We empathize with these people, and we look up to them. As we do with rock stars and movie divas, comic book heroes, or legendary martial artists, we look to saints as role models.
The retelling of saints' stories began in the early years of Christianity, when often-persecuted believers drew courage from the success stories of their belief community. That "success" was defined in somewhat unusual terms—death in the service of the religion—was part and parcel of the Christian message. A true Christian, looking forward t
o eternal life, would hardly fear losing his or her earthly one.
The classic stories of Saint Agatha and her spiritual descendant Saint Lucy are good cases in point. Both Sicilian saints, a generation or so apart in age, they are described as having been beautiful girls who became Christian when young and dedicated themselves body and soul to God.
Both reject male authority and are sent to brothels as a punishment. Lucy is brought to the attention of the authorities when she rejects the man who wants to marry her. Agatha, on the other hand, has no man to whom she is betrothed. Instead, the governor learns of her Christianity and decides to try to turn her away from her spiritual perversion before it can cause problems. In both stories, these women are sent to brothels in an attempt to break their wills, making it abundantly clear that their primary crime is not the spiritual disobedience of professing Christianity but instead the very secular disobedience of refusing to consent to marriage and sex. The message is clear: if these women will not voluntarily submit to sexual relations like normal women, then they are to be forced.
Neither woman, however, can be forced into sex, even in a brothel. In the thirteenth-century versions of their legends found in the English source known as the Katherine Group, both women are loudly unwilling to change their ways. After Agatha is sent to the brothel of Aphrodisia, the whores urge her to submit by describing a life of pleasure, but she responds by saying, "Shut up, bitches! You won't get anywhere with me. I've given my heart to the highest prince of all!" Lucy, for her part, responds to the judge who sentences her to the brothel by paraphrasing St. Augustine: "No woman can be deprived of her virginity, no matter what is done to her body, unless her heart consents. If you defile my body against my will, my virginity is all the purer and my reward all the greater." When the judge's henchmen try to take Lucy to the brothel, they discover that she has become miraculously immovable, and cannot be dragged off even with a team of oxen.
The consequences of persisting in holy virginity and not submitting to sexual intercourse are torture and death. The tortures are often specifically sexual. Agatha's iconic torture is having her breasts torn off with pincers, which is why paintings of Agatha often depict her proffering her mutilated breasts on a tray. Lucy, on the other hand, is stripped naked and has boiling pitch poured over her body in front of the assembled onlookers. Despite the torture, neither woman recants or repents. Instead, they display an extraordinary indifference to pain, which they credit to God.
Virgin martyrs continually and vocally reaffirm their commitment to Christ. No torment is sufficiently severe, and no torturer sufficiently sadistic, to stop them from preaching. Lucy is one of many virgin martyrs (another is the legendary Saint Reparata) whose throat is slit by her torturers simply because she refuses to shut up. Lucy is unstoppable. Eyeballs plucked out and throat slit, she goes right on preaching while she holds her bloody eyeballs in her hand.
When virgin martyrs do finally die, they die on their own terms. Agatha and Lucy both choose the moment of their deaths. Agatha prays to God to let her die and promptly does so. Lucy's legend variously has her welcoming the thrust of a dagger into her neck, or, in other versions, calling for her supporters and being given last rites, whereupon she permits herself to expire in time with the final "amen." Even the anomalous Welsh saint Winifred, the only virgin martyr to survive her own beheading (a miraculous resurrection that leaves her with a white scar around her neck for the rest of her life), chooses her own demise, telling the nobleman who is also her would-be seducer that she would rather he cut off her head than take her virginity.
The basic traits of virgin martyrs are remarkably consistent. They are known for their beauty and attractiveness, and, as in the case of Saint Wilgefortis (also known as Uncumber), whose prayer to be delivered from an unwanted marriage was answered with the miraculous appearance of a beard and mustache, for their pious vowed virginity. Their refusal to submit to sex and to sexual gender norms forms the basis for the persecution. Finally, the fervor of their belief induces God to grant them miraculous immunity to public humiliation, sexual violation, and physical torment. Throughout, they speak. Holy virginity gives them powers of speech that normal women do not have, letting them alone among women baptize, preach, exorcise demons, and banish Satan.
As spiritual superheroines, virgin martyrs have been phenomenally attractive role models. Particularly prior to the tenth and eleventh centuries they rivaled the Virgin Mary in popularity, their shrines, relics, and stories making up a vital realm not just of medieval theology but also of education and popular culture. Over time, however, as the culture changed and expectations of women's roles changed along with it, the ways virgin martyr stories were told changed, too. The disruptive, mouthy, dangerous, even deadly virgin rebels of the early Church are harnessed and brought to heel as quiet, self-effacing lambs. The rebellious thirteenth-century version of Agatha cited earlier, with its fiery invective, became, over the centuries, the story of a rather undeveloped personality discreetly described as having been taken to a brothel where she "refused to accept customers." Lucy no longer preaches throughout torture and has her throat slit as a result, but instead is described mildly as having "prophesied against her attackers" before dutifully baring her throat for the dagger.
These women, once so mad, bad, and dangerous to know, become women whose only salient characteristic is their refusal of sex. This is often true of modern-day saints as well. The twelve-year-old Maria Goretti, for example, was sainted after her would-be rapist stabbed her to death in 1902. But she is lauded for having suffered death rather than the loss of her chastity and for granting forgiveness to her attacker on her deathbed, not for having fought back against a vicious armed rapist. Canonized in 1950 with both her mother and her murderer in attendance, she is invoked as an example to young women that they should be prepared to preserve their virginity at any cost.
But even Maria Goretti's example, controversial for its implication that it is better for a woman to die than be sexually penetrated, appears to inspire its fair share of "grrl power." In October 2003 a group of young students at the all-female St. Maria Goretti High School in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, fought back against a twenty-five-year-old man who had been stalking several schoolgirls and had repeatedly flashed his bare genitals at them. The girls spotted the man one afternoon and, as a pack, dropped their book bags and chased him through the city streets, finally catching and beating him badly enough that he required hospital treatment. Although modern feminism undoubtedly contributed to these young women's willingness to fight back against a sexual predator, we cannot say the example of their school's patroness might not have had a role to play, too.
Desperately Seeking Mary
Although she is central to Christianity and was beyond question the most important female figure of the Middle Ages, we know virtually nothing about the woman who became immortalized as the Virgin Mary. Of the canonical Gospels that form the core of the New Testament, only Luke mentions her at any length. Mark, the earliest of the Gospels chronologically, mentions her a grand total of twice. John, the Gospel assigned the latest date of composition by historians, not only fails to mention her by name but doesn't mention most of the major Marian episodes that the other Gospels include. Out of the four articles of dogma that the Roman Catholic Church has articulated in regard to its most famous woman (and its second most important human figure after Jesus), only one, her having given birth to Jesus, can be substantiated by scripture. The other three, her virginity, her immaculate conception, and her assumption into heaven, were established by papal decree in the fourth century, 1854, and 1950, respectively. Even so, as of this writing, the Vatican remains undecided whether or not Mary's bodily virginity survived childbirth and beyond, as well as on the question of whether Mary actually experienced death or was translated bodily into heaven.
The historical Mary, whoever she may or may not have been in the literal, physical flesh, is still a work in progress. As for the literal version, we pres
ume she existed, was a Judaean, got pregnant, had a baby boy who grew up to have a career as a radical preacher, and witnessed the political murder of her son at the hands of an imperialist army of occupation. Everything else that is "known" about her stems from sources that are either sufficiently improbable or uncorroborated as to be open to debate at the very least. We do not even know what Mary looked like. Unlike the virginal beauties whose good looks are detailed in so many virgin martyr legends, neither the four authors of the Gospels nor even Paul, who makes the earliest chronological reference to Mary (Gal. 4:4, circa 57 C. E.), describe her. There is virtually no information about her from people who might have ever personally seen her or spoken with her.
We simply cannot pretend to discuss Mary in any factually biographical way. Readers wanting to know if she was "really" a virgin will have to keep waiting. But we can look at how other people have described her and examine the roles she has played in Christianity and in Western culture, and specifically, we can look at the issue of her virginity and its importance to Christianity.
In the earliest canon sources that mention Mary—the four canonical Gospels—it is unclear whether all the authors of the Gospels felt that Mary's virginity was of major importance. Only in Luke and in Matthew, which, like Mark, is believed to have been written over a century after the events in question, do we find unequivocal statements in regard to Mary's virginity. Of Luke and Matthew, Luke's statements about Mary are the more famous. Luke depicts Mary in conversation with the angel Gabriel, responding to Gabriel's announcement that she is to bear a child with the famous words, "But how can this be, seeing as I know not a man?" In Matthew, virginity is established at more of a remove through a statement that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost prior to the time that Mary and Joseph "came together." Otherwise, Mary's sexual status is not made explicit in the New Testament. Paul does not mention it. John, the last of the Gospel authors, writing at the end of the first century, begins his infancy narrative with the simple statement that the word was made flesh and proceeds from there.