The Tears of Bishop Gundulf: Gender, Religion, and Emotion in the Late Eleventh Century

Abstract

Gundulf, the monastic bishop of Rochester in Kent from 1077 to 1108, preached sermons that often reduced his congregation to tears.* According to the anonymous author of the twelfth-century Vita or ‘Life’ of the bishop:

At times he himself was unable to speak for tears, nor could the people do other than weep and lament as they listened to him. As his words failed, tears completed the sermon. This happened especially on the Feast of St Mary Magdalene (22 July) when he was preaching to the people on her penitence and her tears. For in speaking of her penitence he roused his flock to penitence, and telling of her tears, he moved himself and them to tears.¹

Gundulf’s devotion to the cult of Mary Magdalene forms one of several important themes in the Vita. Another is the biographer’s use of this and other female images to convey aspects of his subject’s character. For example, when characterising Gundulf’s relationship with his fellow monk of Bec, Anselm of Aosta, the theologian and later archbishop of Canterbury, the author of the Vita assigned Gundulf a significant feminine persona:

So close was [Anselm’s] friendship with Gundulf that he was spoken of as another Gundulf, and Gundulf as a second Anselm, and he loved to be so called, for they had but one heart and mind in God.²