Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  49. As Barbara Newman has pointed out, it was characteristic of holy women of the high Middle Ages to take on voluntarily the postmortem sufferings of others, as “apostles to the dead”; see her article “On the Threshold of the Dead: Purgatory, Hell, and Religious Women,” in her From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 103–36, esp. 119ff. See also Jo Ann McNamara, “The Need to Give: Suffering and Female Sanctity in the Middle Ages,” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 199–211, on the replacement of penitential gift-giving by physical suffering among thirteenth-century women and Caroline Walker Bynum’s discussion of the stress laid on the physicality of suffering, in Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 245–59.

  50. VE II: 16, 276.

  51. See DM, dist. VI, cap. 34, 386–87.

  52. VE II: 16, 276: “[ . . . t]empore moderniori in sancto Thoma episcopo Cantuariensi occisus est propter libertatem ecclesie conservandam. Eadem causa mortis exstitit in presule nostro Engelberto.”

  53. Ibid., 276–77: “Occibuit ille pro libertate ecclesie Cantuariensis, iste vero pro defensione ecclesie Essendiensis. Liberavit ille ecclesiam Anglicanam sanguine suo de gravi iugo regis Henrici; liberavit iste eque morte sua ecclesiam sue defensioni commissam de intollerabili exactione comitis Friderici.” i

  54. This is the first time the title “saint” is applied to Engelbert in the Vita.

  55. VE II: 277:

  Et licet beatus Thomas ante passionem multa sustinuerit incommoda, dampna et exilia, que non sustinuit Engelbertus, in ipsa tamen passione plus doloris, angoris et confusionis certum est eum Thoma tollerasse. Ille enim, sicut legimus, in capite uno ictu cesus a sacrilegis relictus est in templo; iste vulneribus multis et a lictoribus plurimus toto corpore confossus, nudus relictus est in sterquilinio. Sanctus Thomas occisus est ab eis qui eum aperte oderant; sanctus vero Engelbertus [quod maiorem inferre solet dolorem et augere invidiam] a cognatis et amicis, de quibus nichil mali presumebat et quos ipse sublimaverat (emphasis added).

  56. See the passage in brackets in the preceding note.

  57. Perhaps some earlier bishops, such as Otto of Bamberg, would have been envious of Engelbert’s good fortune in having his sins cleared in this way. Compare Otto’s response to an assault by pagan Slavs during a missionary expedition (as described by Morrison, History as a Visual Art, 146): “ ‘With joyful spirit and cheerful countenance,’ he had gone into the mêlée hoping to receive the crown of martyrdom. He had been struck down into the mire. When he pulled himself up, he raised his hands to heaven, giving thanks that, though he had not been slaughtered, he had at least been worthy to receive one blow in God’s name.”

  58. The formulation is Caroline Walker Bynum’s. On the complicated issues involved in the feeling or lack of feeling of pain during violent death, and its implications for the understanding of resurrection, see her discussion of early Christian martyrs in The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 21–58.

  59. VE I: 2, 238, on Engelbert’s fall into sin as a young man: “Hec idcirco commemoro, ut cognoscat lector, de quali viro martirem sibi elegerit Dominus, de ‘vase ire’ faciens ‘vas glorie.’ ” The citation is from Romans 9:22–23.

  60. See the Breviloquium, Part IV, Chapter 9, in The Works of Bonaventure II, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963), esp. 172. See also the essay by Manuele Gragnolati in this volume. I am grateful to Gragnolati for many illuminating discussions about these issues.

  61. According to Caesarius, 40 is the number of penance, while 7 signifies the gifts of the Holy Spirit; see VE II: 8, 265.

  62. VE II: 8, 265: “In omnibus siquidem membris, in quibus peccaverat, punitus est. Punitus est in capite multipliciter, sicut apparet in eius pillio, scilicet in vertice, in fronte et occipite, in tymporibus, labiis et dentibus, et tam graviter, ut rivuli sanguinis inundantes et decurrentes fossas oculorum, aurium, narium orisque influerunt et replerent. Punitus est etiam in gutture et collo, in humeris et dorso, in pectore et corde, in ventre et coxis, in cruribus et pedibus . . .”

  63. Ibid., 265–66: “ut cognoscas, lector, quali baptismo Christus in martire suo diluere dignatus sit, quidquid culpe contraxerat superbiendo, videndo, audiendo, olfaciendo, gustando, cogitando, luxuriando, operando, tangendo, gradiendo sive aliis quibuscumque levitatibus, omissionibus et negligentiis circa disciplinam. . . . Certe, certe non sine causa ad gloriam martirii pervenit.”

  64. Frederick S. Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 181.

  65. Arnold Angenendt, Heilige und Reliquien: Die Geschichte ihres Kultes vom frühen Christentum bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd rev. ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1997), esp. 62–65; on 64–65 he includes the same passage from the Engelbert Vita that I discuss here. See also his “Sühne durch Blut,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 18 (1984): 437–67. The quasi-supernatural powers associated with blood in the early modern period are treated by Piero Camporesi, Juice of Life: The Symbolic and Magic Significance of Blood, trans. Robert R. Barr (New York: Continuum Books, 1995).

  66. VE II: 7, 263: “numquam aliquid horroris ex illius contactu, sicut de cadaveribus occisorum fieri assolet, passus est.” Fear of cadavers—especially murdered ones—is treated by Ronald C. Finucane, Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts (London: Junction Books, 1982); and Jean-Claude Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

  67. VE II: 7, 263: “Haut dubium quin ex presentia sanctorum angelorum gratia hec, qui circa corpus martiris celestes excubias celebrabant. Fuerat enim idem Henricus ante conversionem miles et tanto fortassis ad huiusmodi opus expeditior et audacior quanto assuetior.”

  68. VE II: 8, 264: “Henricus vero, cum ob cruris sui infirmitatem in uno pede nutaret, cogitans beatum virum a nocentibus innocenter occisum, occisi brachium nudum nuda manu tetigit, et plena fide eandem benedictionem ad crus nudum transmittens, gradum pedis vacillantis roboravit.

  69. VE II: 7, 263: “Quod Suelme perducentes, cum in ecclesia illud ponere decrevissent, non permisit sacerdos, contaminationem basilice pretendens, cum magis sanguine martiris dedicaretur. Propter quod et alia quedam, in quibus martiris gratiam demeruit, usque hodie graviter satis in suo corpore divinitus flagellatur.” Fear of contaminating powers inherent in dead bodies is of course very ancient and widespread; among the Céll Dé in eighth-century Ireland, for example, a priest who was present at the moment of a sick person’s death would not be allowed “to perform the sacrifice [of the Mass] until a bishop should consecrate him”: see Paxton, Christianizing Death, 85.

  70. VE II: 8, 264: “[Deinde cum vocibus lacrimosis corpus oratorio introferentes,] eadem nocte quibusdam fratribus quedam mirifice visiones de gloria martiris ostense sunt, in sompnis tamen.”

  71. Peter Brown, “The Decline of the Empire of God: Amnesty, Penance, and the Afterlife from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages,” this volume.

  72. Ibid.

  73. Ibid.

  74. This cleansing process began with Engelbert’s extraordinarily tearful confession to the bishop of Minden just prior to embarking on his final journey. It occurred immediately after he had brushed off rumors of Frederick’s plot. See VE II: 4, 254–55.

  75. On the complex issue of conversion to sanctity, which varied according to a person’s social status, gender, and birthplace, see Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); on women’s conversions as process or continuity rather than reversal, see Caroline Walker Bynum, “Women’s Stories, Women’s
Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner’s Theory of Liminality,” in her Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 27–52; and eadem, Holy Feast, 277–302.

  76. See the accounts of their lives in James of Voragine’s Golden Legend, trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger (New York: Longmans, Green, 1941), 597–609 (Francis) and 675–88 (Elizabeth); and André Vauchez, “Jacques de Voragine et les saints du XIIIe siècle dans la Légende dorée” in Legenda Aurea: sept siècles de diffusion (Actes du Colloque International sur la Legenda Aurea), ed. Brenda Dunn-Lardeau (Paris: 1986), 27–56. Caesarius himself wrote a Vita of Elizabeth based on her canonization proceedings, as well as a fascinating account of her 1236 translation; they have been published by Albert Huyskens in A Hilka, Die Wundergeschichten, 345–90.

  77. VE II: 6, 258:

  Sole properante ad occasum, hostia cum immolante properat ad aram, ut fieret Domino sacrificium vespertinum, quod dignius erat in lege. Passus est Christus sexta feria, hora sexta, scilicet in meridie, ut declararet se mediatorem Dei et hominum. Engelbertum vero pati voluit eadem feria, sed in fine diei, ut ostenderet eum per bonum finem, non per precedentem vitam coronatum. . . . Hostiam sine cauda offerre non licuit [in lege], neque Deo vita bona sine bono fine placebit.

  Notice Caesarius’s use of inversion in his very language to convey the notion that Engelbert’s “good end” is literally a turning around of his life, in the “vita bona. . . bono fine” construction. Caesarius employs this grammatical maneuver elsewhere in the Vita, for example, in his description of Frederick of Isenberg’s capture, torture, and execution; see below, pp. 76–78.

  78. See below, p. 74.

  79. VE II: 15, 274: “Quando oculi eius obducti sunt sanguine et involuti, anima nobis ablata est, et quo devenerit ignoro.’ ”

  80. Surprisingly, this is not the first pronouncement of a Cologne archbishop’s death to be given by a demon speaking through a nun. Thietmar of Merseburg’s Chronicle reports of a certain Abbess Gerberga to whom the same thing happened; when she broke her promise to the demon to remain silent on the matter, however, the demon beat her to death. See the account in Walter Schlesinger, Kirchengeschichte Sachsens im Mittelalter, 1. Band: Von den Anfängen kirchlicher Verkundigung bis zum Ende des Investiturstreites, Mitteldeutsche Forschungen 27/I (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1962), 227.

  81. VE II: 16, 275. “ ‘Heu! heu! [Anima] subtracta est michi et sociis meis, qui illic conveneramus. Sic se ante mortem preparaverat, sic se laverat . . . ut nostri iuris nichil esset in illo.”

  82. Ibid.: “‘Quando voluntabatur in suo sanguine et iam moriturus erat, occisoribus suis ex toto corde ignovit, dicens hoc verbum: ‘Pater, ignosce’ et cetera [Luke 23: 34]. Propter hoc verbum tam potens est cum Altissimo, ut non ei negetur, quid-quid petierit ab illo. Et hoc sciatis pro certo numquam aliquem episcopum sedisse Colonie in sede episcopali, qui ita possit cum Deo quomodo Engelbertus et tanti meriti sit apud Deum.’ ”

  83. VE II: 10, 268: “‘Noveris pro certo, quod omnes qui me occiderunt vel quorum consilio occisus sum, male peribunt et citius quam credi possit.’ ”

  84. See the many cases of ordinary murder victims appearing to the living to proclaim revenge on their killers in Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages.

  85. VE II: 10, 268: “ ‘Frater, non est necesse, ut me inter mortuos nomines, quia cum Deo sum et in choro martirum gaudio fruens indicibili.’ ”

  86. VE II: 1, 249: “quia qualis vel quanta sit nescimus.”

  87. See the seminal works by Bynum, Holy Feast and the essays in Fragmentation and Redemption; see also Elizabeth Alvida Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Elizabeth Robertson, “The Corporeality of Female Sanctity in the Life of Saint Margaret,” in Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Szell, Images of Sainthood, 268–87; Brigitte Cazelles, The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).

  88. See note 12 above.

  89. On changing patterns of sanctity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident, 329–478; idem, The Laity in the Middle Ages: Religious Beliefs and Devotional Practices, ed. Daniel E. Bornstein and trans. Margery J. Schneider (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); and Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, 141–65.

  90. On the theological background of imitatio Christi, see Giles Constable, “The Ideal of the Imitation of Christ” in Three Studies in Medieval Religion and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 145–93. On the practice of imitatio in the high Middle Ages, see Bynum, Holy Feast, esp. 255–59; and the general overview presented by Vauchez, “The Idea of God,” in The Laity, 3–26.

  91. See above, p. 73.

  92. VE II: 17, 278–81. According to the commentators, this chapter was written and inserted into the Vita shortly after its presentation to the new archbishop Henry of Molenark in November 1226; the events described took place after his investiture. The much less painful atonement of another of the accused conspirators, Bishop Dietrich of Münster, is discussed by Theodor Rensing, “Die Ermordung Engelberts des Heiligen und die Ehrenrettung für Dietrich von Isenberg,” Westfalen 33 (1955): 125–43.

  93. On the semiotics of the tortured body in the Middle Ages, see Wolfgang Schild, “Der gequälte und entehrte Leib: Spekulative Vorbemerkungen zu einer noch zu schreibenden Geschichte des Strafrechts,” in Gepeinigt, begehrt, vergessen: Symbolik und Sozialbezug des Körpers im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Klaus Schreiner and Norbert Schnitzler (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1992), 147–68.

  94. Walther von der Vogelweide, “Kaiser Friedrichs-Ton 5: Totenklage für Erzbischof Engelbrecht,” in Werke I (see note 15 above), pp. 212–13.

  95. According to this account, Frederick’s punishment began on November 11 and ended with his death the following morning.

  96. VE II: 17, 281:

  Licet enim mala et turpi morte perierit in corpore Fridericus, speramus tamen eandem penam anime eius fuisse medicinam, eo quod bene contritus et diligenter atque frequenter tam privatim quam publice confessus se reum clamaverit et penam sibi illatam patienter sustinuerit, etiam ad confrigendum membra singula ultro offerens. Et cum in dorso eius fabricaret [Ps 128: 3] carnifex ille immisericors, ictus sedecim per securim ei infligendo, non emisit vocem, ita ut omnes mirarentur.

  97. VE II: 17, 280:

  At, Deo dispensante, eodem pene die anno revoluto, quo beatus martyr Engelbertus cum merore multorum civitati mortuus est illatus, Fridericus cum desiderio multorum per portam oppositam captivus est invectus. Qui die quarta, quando videlicet primum martiris septenarium celebriter agebatur, ipse nimis turpiter, revoluto anno, in rota tormentaliter levabatur.

  98. On the circle—and in particular a wheel—as a paradigm of medieval hermeneutics, see Morrison, History as a Visual Art, 69ff.

  99. The image of Engelbert blessing his enemies, which received much attention during his revival in the seventeenth century, does not appear in the primary account of the murder in the VE II: 7. In fact, prior to this statement it is only mentioned by the demon possessing the nun in Cologne (discussed above). While this justification is intriguing for what it reveals about the practice of imitatio Christi, it is noteworthy that Caesarius himself does not make use of it in his own explanation of Engelbert’s miracles. Aside from the demonic account, the only time he evokes that scene is here, in his description of Frederick’s last moments.

  100. VE II: 17, 281: “[Postea usque ad matutinas in corpore durans, fertur tamen orasse et circumstantibus, ut pro se orarent, supplicasse.] Fortassis ex merito martiris Engelberti, qui moriens pro inimicis oravit, gratia hec Friderico.”

  101. Further information on specific persons and places mentioned in this text can be found in the footnotes to the Hilka edition.

  102. VE II: 7, 261: “‘Cedite latronem, cedite, qui et nobiles exhered
at et nemini parcit.’ ” There is some discrepancy as to the translation of this crucial sentence. In the German edition, Karl Langosch has Frederick call explicitly for the murder rather than the seizure of Engelbert: “Tötet den Räuber, tötet ihn, der die Adligen enterbt und keinen schont!” (Langosch, Leben, 70).

  From Decay to Splendor: Body and Pain in Bonvesin da la Riva’s Book of the Three Scriptures

  I would like to thank Caroline Walker Bynum for her constant help and generous support.

  1. There are three twentieth-century editions of the Libro delle tre scritture: Bonvesin da la Riva, Il libro delle tre scritture e il volgare delle vanità, ed. V. De Bartholomaeis (Rome: Società Filologica Romana, 1901); Bonvesin da la Riva, Il libro delle tre scritture e i volgari delle false scuse e delle vanita, ed. L. Biadene (Pisa: E. Spoerri, 1902); and Le opere volgari di Bonvesin da la Riva, ed. G. Contini (Rome: Società Filologica Romana, 1941), in which the Libro delle tre scritture is found on pp. 101–76. Quotations from Bonvesin’s poems will be from Contini’s edition. For making sense of Bonvesin’s often obscure dialect, one work proves very useful: Fabio Marri, Glossario al milanese di Bonvesin (Bologna: Patron, 1977). An English translation is available: Bonvesin da la Riva, Volgari Scelti, trans. Patrick S. Diehl and Ruggero Stefanini with commentary and notes by Stefanini and a biographical profile by Diehl (New York: Lang, 1987), 133–202. I will primarily use Diehl’s and Stefanini’s translation, indicating slight modifications with italics. On the one hand, Bonvesin has always been considered a simple “precursor” of Dante, while on the other hand, there is no direct evidence that Dante knew his work. This is probably why such an interesting author has not been given the attention he deserves. A thorough knowledge of Bonvesin’s work proves extremely useful for a precise understanding of Dante’s intellectual background and spirituality. This is why, in the notes of this essay, I will give some hints on a few issues that the Book of the Three Scriptures helps one to understand and that are equally fundamental in Dante’s Commedia. Quotations will be from Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles S. Singleton (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970–75; rep. 1977). I have considered these issues in the dissertation entitled “Identity, Pain, and Resurrection: Body and Soul in Bonvesin da la Riva’s Book of the Three Scriptures and Dante’s Commedia,” which I have written at Columbia University.