Abstract
When scholars try to evaluate the merits of particular works in intellectual history it is helpful to remember the goal of such history. That goal may be expressed in various ways and with innumerable different emphases, but ultimately the goal is simply to discover those elements in the past that contribute to the making of that society’s intellectual culture. The easiest path to follow in so doing is to identify and assess those writings that deal explicitly with intellectual themes. This explains the dominance of philosophy in intellectual histories. Philosophy confronts rational and speculative thought head-on; there is no mistaking its relationship to intellectual history. We have repeatedly seen that women rarely approached intellectual matters in the same manner that men did and that they did not often explicitly or self-consciously engage in speculative thought. For too long this lack of direct philosophical engagement has contributed to scholarly neglect of women’s intellectual contributions. This need not be, and thus we ask here, along with Dorothy Koenigsberger, why the historical contributions of any group should “be confined only to an assessment of the self-conscious goals or activities of that group.”1 It may be that the way women’s ideas are presented accounts for the greatest difference between women’s intellectual contributions and men’s. Medieval women intellectuals present their thoughts overwhelmingly through description and narration. They rely more on the authority of their personal experiences and their imagination than on the authority of past masters. This too has contributed to scholarly neglect of women’s thought, for given Western historians’ long tradition of favoring reason over imagination,2 it is not surprising to see women’s experiential, imaginative approaches to issues not fully appreciated.
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Notes
Dorothy Koenigsberger, Renaissance Man and Creative Thinking (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979), 271.
Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955), 331.
Marcia L. Colish, Medieval Foundations of Western Intellectual Tradition 400—1400 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 237.
See E. Grant, Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
A. C. Crombie, Robert Grossteste and the Origins of Experimental Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953).
Chiara Frugoni, “Female Mystics, Visions, and Iconography”, in Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, eds. Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, tr. Margery J. Schneider (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)
See discussion of it in Craig Harbison, “Visions and meditations in early Flemish painting”, Simiolus 15 (1985), 94–95.
Sixten Ringbom, “Devotional Images and Imaginative Devotions”, Gazette des beaux-arts, ser. 6:73 (1969), 161.
Patricia Ranft, Women and Spiritual Equality in Christian Tradition (New York: St. Martins Press, 1998), 207–208.
Craig Harbison, The Minor of the Artist: Northern Renaissance Art in Its Historical Context (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995)
Anthony Butkovich, Revelations: Saint Birgitta of Sweden (Los Angeles: Ecumenical Foundation of America, 1972), 46.
Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 273
William F. Lynch, Images of Faith: An Exploration of the Ironic Imagination (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), 5
Henrici de Gandavo Opera omnia, ed. R. Macken (Louvain and Leiden, 1979), quolibet 1, q.35 (p. 199), cited in Jacques Verger, Men of Learning in Europe at the End of the Middle Ages, tr. Lisa Neal and Steven Rendall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 125.
See Harbison, “Visions and Meditations”, 99. This was particularly true among women. Joanna E. Ziegler, “Reality as Imitation: The Role of Religious Imagery among the Béguines of the Low Countries”, in Maps of Flesh and Light, ed. Ulrike Wiethaus (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 112
Instructions, epilogue, in Angela, 317. See also Mary Meany, “Angela of Foligno: A Eucharistic Model of Lay Sanctity”, in Lay Sanctity, Medieval and Modern, ed. Ann W. Astell (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 61–75.
See L. Leclève, Sainte Angele de Foligno (Paris: Libraire Pion, 1936), 42–44.
Catherine M. Mooney, “The Authorial Role of Brother A. in the Composition of Angela of Foligno s Revelations” in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, eds. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 34–63.
Milagros Ortega Costa, “Spanish Women in the Reformation”, in Women in Reformation and Counter Reformation, ed. Sherrin Marshall (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), 92.
Teresas poem “Aspirations” contains parallel sentiments and literary composition; see Lachance, Angela, 357-358, n.218.Marfa argues for the overall importance of women’s spiritual writings and specifically names Angela as an example of whom she is referring. See Marfa de San José, Book of Recreations, in Electra Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in their Own Works, tr. Amanda Powell (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico, 1989), 101
Patricia Ranft, A Woman’s Way: The Forgotten History of Women Spiritual Directors (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 140.
Bonaventure, The Mind’s Road to God, tr. George Boas (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), 3
Vita of Umiltà of Faenza, 6, in Medieval Saints: A Reader, ed. Mary-Ann Stouck (Peterborough, CAN: Broadview Press, 1999), 456.
See Michael Richter, Sprache und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1979), 78
Bella Millett, “Woman in No Man’s Land: English recluses and the development of vernacular literature in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries”, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500, ed. Carol Meale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 86–103.
Herbert Grundmann, “Litteratus-illiteratus: Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter”, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 40 (1958), 1–65.
Aelred of Rievaulx, “A Rule for Life of a Recluse”, in The Works of Aelred of Rievaulx, Vol. 1: Treatise and The Pastoral Prayer (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1971), 1
Much of the discussion of women teachers is based on the fine article by Nicole Bériou, “The Right of Women to Give Religious Instruction in the Thirteenth Century”, in Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity, eds. Beverly M. Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 134–145.
Cited in Jean Richard, Saint Louis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 9.
Jacques Verger, Men of Learning in Europe at the End of the Middle Ages, tr. Lisa Neal and Steven Randall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 127.
Given the status of the primary sources, confusion reigns supreme in the secondary sources. During the sixteenth century the family of Landsberg tried to claim Herrad as their own. Even though this is greatly disputed today, most twentieth-century sources still use the appellation. See Michael Curschmann, “The German Glosses”, in Herrad of Hohenbourg: Hortus deliciarum, Vol. 1: Commentary, ed. Rosalie Green et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979), 73.
Joann McNamara, Sisters in Arms (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 293
Gérard Cames, Allégories et Symboles dans LHortus Deliciarum (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971), 1.
Lina Eckenstein, Women under Monasticism (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1896), 254.
The transition text linking the description of philosophy with idolatry, which included Herrad s summary of other philosophers’ opinions of the nature of God and the text on the order of the Muses linking them to philosophy and poetry have both been lost. See Joan Gibson, “Herrad of Hohenbourg” in History of Women Philosophers, 4 vols., ed. Mary Ellen Waithe (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 2:91.
Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982)
Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 117–121
Guiges de Chastel, Meditations of Guigo, tr. John Jolin (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1951), 225.
Cited in H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind, 4th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 1
See Joel Kaye, “The Impact of Money on the Development of Fourteenth-Century Scientific Thought”, Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988), 251–270
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© 2008 Patricia Ranft
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Ranft, P. (2008). Scholastics, Mystics, and Secondary Intellectuals. In: Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 600–1500. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230108257_5
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