Eve's Sin, Mary's Perfection, and the Mystics In Between
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Date
2019-03-19
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Abstract
This thesis considers three women situated in the Middle Ages who all produced written accounts of their visionary experiences of the Divine. St. Birgitta of Sweden’s Liber Celestis, Margery Kempe’s The Book of Margery Kempe, and Julian of Norwich’s Shewings display an intentional construction that was necessitated by the intensity of clerical suspicion towards women. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Europe experienced increasing clerical control and corruption, which was often expressed in the beliefs about male superiority and female inferiority. According to the Church, women were stained by Eve’s sin, yet held to the standard of the Virgin Mary’s perfection. Additionally, because women were restricted to enclosed religious lifestyles and could only speak about the Divine publicly on the basis of prophecy, these women had to wrestle with how to present their obedience to God.
I argue that St. Birgitta, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe dealt with the challenge of self-construction according to their differing definitions of perfection. Their experiences did not align with the Church’s definition of female perfection; therefore, they each had to redefine perfection and mold their work to prove their proficiency as vessels for God to speak through. Their differing definitions are derived from their personal experiences, theologies, and divine revelations. This triad of perfection is formulated according to a body, mind, and soul framework, with Margery Kempe’s focus on bodily perfection, St. Birgitta’s fixation on mental purity and wisdom, and Julian’s idea of perfection in the unity of the soul. Accordingly, in their texts and lives, Margery is overtly present and Julian is almost completely absent, while St. Birgitta’s presence finds a middle ground between the two other women. Ultimately, these three women demonstrate bold attempts to operate under clerical authority in order to encourage reform within the Church.
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St. Birgitta, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Medieval Christianity, Religion