finalproject

Final Paper

There is no final exam for this class. Instead, each student will choose a topic related to the spirituality of medieval women for a final mini-research paper. This final essay must be 5-8 pages in length and should meet the following criteria:

    1. focus on one or more primary sources.
    2. demonstrate understanding of the historical context.
    3. engage at least two secondary authors (articles or book chapters) on the chosen theme.
    4. have a clear thesis or argument.
    5. be well written, well-organized, and properly documented! (Please proofread your papers carefully and check for typos!)

Here is an excellent website to help you with footnotes and bibliography as well as points of grammar and syntax: http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/index.html
Click on "Citing References," and then follow instructions for the Chicago/Turabian system. This is a very helpful website to bookmark for all future college papers!

This paper will be due in my office by noon Friday, 4/28, though it may be submitted earlier. (Late papers drop 5 points per day.) You must choose a topic and hand in the bibliography of primary & seondary sources you plan to use for your project by 5:00 pm Thursday, April 13. Start thinking about the topic you would like to work on as soon as possible, and feel free to consult me for help with topics and/or bibliography.

Possible Topics, Questions, & Relevant Bibliography

Listed below are some of the topics you may pursue for this final project along. I have also raised the kinds of questions your paper should address followed with some relevant bibliography. Not included here is a book that just came out and has chapters relevant to many of the women we are reading and studying for the rest of the semester: John Coakley. Women, Men, and Spiritual Power. Female Saints and their Male Collaborators. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

1. Elisabeth of Schönau and the problem of discerning of woman's voice. How do we know we are hearing Elizabeth's own voice in the accounts of her
revelations? What issues and problems does this question raise? Suggested bibliography:

Elisabeth of Schönau. Elisabeth of Schönau: The Complete Works. Edited and translated by Anne L. Clark. New York: Paulist Press, 2000.

Clark, Anne. "Holy Woman or Unworthy Vessel? The Representations of Elisabeth of Schönau." In Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their
Interpreters, edited by Catherine M. Mooney, 35-51. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.

Clark, Anne. Elisabeth of Schönau: A Twelfth-Century Visionary. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Esp. chaps. 1, 2, and 4.

Clark, Anne. "Repression or Collaboration? The Case of Elisabeth and Ekbert of Schönau," in Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion,
Persecution and Rebellion, 1000-1500, edited by Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl, 151-67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

2. Hildegard of Bingen's visionary authority. On what basis does Hildegard stake out her authority to speak, as a woman? How does her notion of her authority function in her life as well as her writings? Suggested bibliography:

Hildegard of Bingen. The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen. Translated by Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman. New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994. Read her two letters to Guibert of Gembloux (I think they're in vol. 2).

Hildegard of Bingen. Scivias. Translated by Columba Hart and Jane Bishop. New York: Paulist, 1990. Read the "Declaration" and a sampling of the
visions.

Flanagan, Sabina. Hildegard of Bingen: A Visionary Life. London: Routledge, 1989. Esp. chaps. 1-3, 8-10.

Newman, Barbara. "Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation," Church History 54 (1985): 163-75.

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3. Mary of Oignies and Beguine Spirituality. Who were the beguines? How does the vita of Mary of Oignies reflect beguine spirituality and issues arising
from it? Suggested bibliography:

James of Vitry. The Life of Marie d'Oignies by Jacques de Vitry. Translated by Margot H. King. Saskatoon: Peregrina, 1986.

Devlin, Dennis. "Feminine Lay Piety in the High Middle Ages: The Beguines." In Medieval Women, edited by J. Nichols and L. Shank, 183-96.
Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984.

Simons, Walter. Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries 1200-1565. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2001. Esp. chaps 1 and 3.

4. Angela of Foligno and knowledge of God. What does Angela of Foligno teach about knowledge of God? Is there something distinctively female about her idea of knowledge of God?

Angela of Foligno. Angela of Foligno: Complete Works. Edited and translated by Paul Lachance. New York: Paulist Press, 1993. Read through the
whole of the Memorial and also Lachance's introduction.

Milhaven, John Giles. Hadewijch and Her Sisters: Other Ways of Loving and Knowing. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994. Chaps. 1-8.

Petroff, Elizabeth. Body and Soul, chap. 11.

Coakley, John. "Hagiography and Theology in the Memorial of Angela of Foligno." In Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power. Chap. 6.

5. Angela of Foligno and the female penitent movement in Italy. We don't know much about Angela herself but we do know about penitent women in
Italy. Put Angela's life in the context of that movement, and more broadly the "religious movement" of the times as Herbet Grundmann has mapped it out. Suggested bibliography:

        Sensi, Mario. "Anchoresses and Penitents in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Umbria;" and Anna Benvenuti Papi, "Mendicant Friars and Female
        Pinzochere in Tuscany: From Social Marginality to Models of Sanctity," In Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, edited by Daniel
        Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi and translated by Margery J. Schneider, 56-83, 84-103. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Grundmann, Herbert, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, tr. Steven Rowan, Notre Dame, 1995. Esp. chaps. 1,2 and 4.

Lehmijoki-Gardner, Maiju. Worldly Saints: Social Interaction of Dominican Penitent Women in Italy, 1200-1500 (Helsinki, 1999), esp. chaps. 1-3.

6. Catherine of Siena in her own eyes and those of others. How does Catherine's view of herself differ from Raymond of Capua's view of her, and how
would you use these two rather different perceptions, taken together, to help yourself understand her significance in her immediate world? Suggested bibliography:

Raymond of Capua, Life of Catherine of Siena, tr. George Lamb (NY: P.J. Kenedy, 1960), esp. Book I.

Scott, Karen. "Mystical Death, Bodily Death: Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua on the Mystic's Encounter with God." In Mooney, Gendered
Voices, 136-167.

Scott, Karen. "'Io Catarina': Ecclesiastical Politics and Oral Culture in the Letters of Catherine of Siena." In Dear Sister: Medieval Women and the
Epistolary Genre, ed. Karen Cherewatuk and Ulrike Wiethaus, 87-121. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.

Scott, Karen. "Saint Catherine of Siena, 'Apostola'," Church History 61 (1992): 34-46.

Coakley, John. "Managing Holiness: Rayment of Capua and Catherine of Siena." In Women, Men, & Spiritual Power. Female Saints and their Male
Collaborators. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

7. Mistrust of holy women at the end of the Middle Ages: the witch craze on the horizon. In the fifteenth century, a profound distrust of holy women's visions set in among clerics. How and why did this happen? Suggested bibliography:

John Gerson, On distinguishing true from false religion. In Early Works, tr. B.P. McGuire (NY: Paulist, 1998), 334-64.

Birgitta of

Sweden

, Life and Selected Revelations, tr. A.R. Kezel (NY: Paulist, 1990). Just read a few visions to get a sense of what they're like.

Caciola, Nancy. Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Esp. chaps 1, 3,
and 6.

Elliott, Dyan. Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Esp. chap. 7.

8. Authority and the Spirit. In long-term theological context, the charismatic women in the late Middle Ages can be seen as one attempt in a long series of such attempts in Christian tradition to come to terms with the relationship between instutional and charismatic powers. As you reflect on particular women whom we have read about, apply the understandings of the sociologist Max Weber. In what ways are they, and are they not, useful? Suggested bibliography:

2 primary sources

Bynum, Caroline Walker. "The Mysticism and Asceticism of Medieval Women: Some Comments on the Typologies of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch."
In Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, 53-78, NY: Zone Books, 1991.

Eisenstadt, S.N., ed. Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building. University of Chicago Press, 1968. Esp. I.1-4, II.5.