Women, men, and spiritual power : female saints and their male collaborators / John W. Coakley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Coakley, John W. (John Wayland)

Series:

Gender, theory, and religion

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women mystics.

Authority--Religious aspects--Catholic Church.

Authority.

Power (Christian theology).

Church history--Middle Ages, 600-1500.

Church history.

Monasticism and religious orders.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (367 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Women, Men, and Spiritual Power, John Coakley explores male-authored narratives of the lives of Catherine of Siena, Hildegard of Bingen, Angela of Foligno, and six other female prophets or mystics of the late Middle Ages. His readings reveal the complex personal and literary relationships between these women and the clerics who wrote about them. Coakley's work also undermines simplistic characterizations of male control over women, offering an important contribution to medieval religious history.Coakley shows that these male-female relationships were marked by a fundamental tension between power and fascination: the priests and monks were supposed to hold authority over the women entrusted to their care, but they often switched roles, as the men became captivated with the women's spiritual gifts. In narratives of such women, the male authors reflect directly on the relationship between the women's powers and their own. Coakley argues that they viewed these relationships as gendered partnerships that brought together female mystical power and male ecclesiastical authority without placing one above the other. Women, Men, and Spiritual Power chronicles a wide-ranging experiment in the balance of formal and informal powers, in which it was assumed to be thoroughly imaginable for both sorts of authority, in their distinctly gendered terms, to coexist and build on each other. The men's writings reflect an extended moment in western Christianity when clerics had enough confidence in their authority to actually question its limits. After about 1400, however, clerics underwent a crisis of confidence, and such a questioning of institutional power was no longer considered safe. Instead of seeing women as partners, their revelatory powers began to be viewed as evidence of witchcraft.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: "You Draw Us After You"

Chapter 1. The Powers of Holy Women

Chapter 2. Revelation and Authority in Ekbert and Elisabeth of Schönau

Chapter 3. A Shared Endeavor?

Chapter 4. James of Vitry and the Other World of Mary of Oignies

Chapter 5. Self and Saint

Chapter 6. Hagiography and Theology in the Memorial of Angela of Foligno

Chapter 7. The Limits of Religious Authority

Chapter 8. Hagiography in Process

Chapter 9. Managing Holiness

Chapter 10. Revelation and Authority Revisited

Chapter 11. Authority and Female Sanctity

Notes

Abbreviations

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780231508612

0231508611

OCLC:

64394427