Much like the writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, the “Golden Legend” depicts the pure lives led by various Saints, with an emphasis on their suffering and martyrdom. Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe focused on the importance of suffering, they wished to suffer alongside Jesus and Mary, they explicitly describe the misery, the pain, the blood and gore, the anguish, but they reveled in such suffering. The pain itself was the glory, there was a sort of masochistic pleasure they took in the idea of agony.
However, in the Golden Legend, there is a completely different view of this suffering. Whereas Julian of Norwich embraced the pain, accepted the rending of her flesh, the martyrs and Saints of the Golden Legend avoid the suffering, it is not the suffering itself that renders them beatific, but their acceptance, their willingness to suffer. In all the stories, the Saints are either completely healed of their wounds, ignore their pain, or completely protected from their tortures: “Agatha knelt in thanksgiving, and found that all her hurts were healed and her breast restored to her bosom”, “This fearless martyr…would not be conquered by the torments visited upon her by the heat of the flames, because her spirit was on fire with the far more ardent rays of the truth”, “Agnes [was] thrown into a roaring fire, but the flames divided and burned up the hostile crowd on either side, leaving the maiden unscathed” (pg 156, 269, 103).
This is a completely different take of the martyr, obviously more fictionalized. While the last readings made us empathize with Jesus Christ’s suffering and thus be swayed by his deeds as a human being, the Golden Legend enamors us with the supernatural power of God and the Holy Spirit. We see the workings of angels, “When she entered the house of shame, she found an angel waiting for her. His radiance filled the place with light and formed a shining mantle about her” (103). The Saints themselves are given supernatural powers all their own, as if they were deities unto themselves, “Crowds of pagans fled from the mountain to the Saint’s tomb, snatched up the pall that covered it, and hung it up in the path of the fire; and …the stream of lava halted and did not advance a foot farther” (157). These are Christian fairy tales, fables meant to demonstrate the reward that comes to pious Christians and the punishment that is meted out to unbelievers. Do you agree with this, or do you believe there was another purpose for these stories? I’m not very creative so my answer is very straightforward.
Strangely enough, unlike the bible, in which Jesus is quite forgiving of all, including his tormentors, the Saints in this work are presented as quite spiteful towards their tormentors and judges: “Shameless dog! Ravenous lion! You have power over the flesh but Christ keeps the soul to himself” (369). Why do you think that is?
Hi Donny,
ReplyDeleteWhat I find very interesting about the passage you quoted is Margaret’s use of animal imagery to described her tormentors. Immediately after this address to the prefect – “Shameless dog! Ravenous lion!” – Margaret is granted a vision of “the enemy who was fighting her… a hideous dragon appeared, but when the beast came at her to devour her, she made the sign of the cross and it vanished. Or, as we read elsewhere, the dragon opened its maw over her head, put out its tongue under her feet, and swallowed her in one gulp” (369). The animals of Margaret’s visions and insults appear to function as a corporal parallel to the more spiritual essences of Christ and the martyr herself. Similarly, in the narrative of Mary Magdalene, the devil himself is associated with the “viper” – his avatar, of course, in Genesis 3 – and is further connected with physical excess: “You take your rest, you enemy of the cross of Christ, your gluttony sated with a bellyful of all sorts of food while you let the saints of God perish from hunger and thirst” (377).
Sinners, i.e. individuals of the flesh, and (bestial) demons are thus associated with both animalistic imagery and visions of extreme corporality. In terms of setting such imagery in the context of previous readings, this situation might be contrasted with the more benevolent attitude towards (certain) beasts that we observed in the werewolf stories. It also might bear additional witness to the spirit-body dichotomy noted in Bynum’s essay.
I think we may be seeing, in part, the stratification of the experience of faith along social lines. Julian and Margery, although their ideas were ultimately published for the edification of a larger audience, lived mystical lives in which experiences of God were directed specifically at them. Neither of the two women lived a normal social life - one was abnormally sedentary, the other abnormally mobile.
ReplyDeleteBut hagiographies are kind of pulp fiction for the normal faithful to consume. Although people most certainly did fast, practice forms of bodily penance, and agree that the body could and should be chastised for the sake of the spirit, I think most medieval people had fairly common experiences of the body, experiences which we wouldn't have too much trouble understanding. They liked food, they liked drink, and they liked sex; seeing real violence done to the body was frightening but also alien. People did certainly meditate on the wounds of Christ and the Passion of Christ, but not everyone was like Julian or Margery, desirous of feeling the wounds themselves. Saints occupy a liminal space between everyday people and the divine, so to explicitly show the saints in a position of serious physical pain would have been a bit too threatening to the common believer, who was ostensibly expected to imitate these values and even these lifestyles. Especially in a time and place where martyrdom is rare, it's much easier to say that the essence of the martyr's experience is willing acceptance of pain, rather than pain itself.