In the fourth beatitude of his Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6: 21), Jesus assured his followers: ‘Blessed are those who weep’ (beati qui nunc fletis). From this statement, tears became an integral part of Christian spirituality and were associated with redemption, salvation and beatitude. As Christianity became entrenched in Western Europe, the meaning of tears as a medium of exchange between earthly and divine evolved and expanded.Footnote 1 By the thirteenth century, hagiographies were awash with tears. The lachrymosity of saints streams across the pages of their vitae and flows through the testimonies of deponents at their canonization proceedings.Footnote 2 However, tears present a special challenge for interpretation and were often the subject of doubt.
Despite the widespread acceptance of tears as an expression of holiness, divinely bestowed tears might be subject to criticism and doubt as to whether they could be read as an authentic sign of devotion and the presence of God. Using a selection of thirteenth-century female saints’ lives, in which scepticism about tears is often prominent, it will be seen that doubt over the legitimacy of tears was nonetheless a corollary to achieving certainty. Doubting the veracity of tears is a topos in the narrative of saintly struggle: something a saint must endure as a test of faith and sanctity. In the later fourteenth century, however, a subtle shift may be detected in the way in which tears were described in some hagiographic texts. The external manifestation of tears becomes less prominent in certain female hagiographic texts and was sometimes supplemented by internal lacrimation. This, it will be suggested, was a reaction to doubts surrounding the reliability of the body as a witness, coupled with growing scepticism about visions and revelations. This essay will therefore assess the doubt surrounding lachrymose expressions of devotion and account for changing attitudes by drawing on both saints’ lives and theological sources. It will show how this doubt was a reflection of wider changes in the acceptance of emotional and physical expressions of sanctity during the course of the fourteenth century and, by doing so, contribute to the history of tears, doubt and devotional piety in the high Middle Ages.
The State of Scholarship
In recent years, there has been a dramatic change in the landscape of scholarly output on both tears and the subject of doubt, yet few scholars have considered the nexus between the two, even though tears present a special challenge for interpretation and have always been subject to doubt.Footnote 3 In the Prolegomenon to the edited volume Crying in the Middle Ages, Lyn A. Blanchfield explores the connection between sincerity and tears as a way of demonstrating some of the problems inherent in studying weeping in the medieval period.Footnote 4 She suggests that weeping represents a ‘challenging intersection between emotion and behaviour’, and points out that in many medieval sources ‘tears – which result from a complex physiological process that involves the body, mind, and the emotions – are often described as objects that can be manipulated'.Footnote 5 In this reading, weeping was a performative act that was open to manipulation and could be deceptive.Footnote 6 Blanchfield also notes that the relationship between weeping and deception was widely acknowledged in the ancient, medieval and early modern world.Footnote 7 Similarly, in his study of provoked religious weeping in early modern Spain, W. A. Christian Jr showed both how weeping was a behaviour that could be learnt for the purposes of a ritual and that tears were part of an ‘economy of sentiment that could influence God'.Footnote 8 Collective weeping worked to achieve a particular goal such as the end of a plague, drought or famine.Footnote 9 Nevertheless, Christian was careful to point out that weeping still had to be provoked and was neither spontaneous nor entirely ‘put on’. Emotion was consciously manipulated for religious purposes yet the consequences were effective and real.Footnote 10 Both scholars have demonstrated that weeping could be manipulated; it thus follows that tears could be the subject of doubt. It is apparent that this doubt came, not from a lack of faith, but from a desire to uphold the order of the Church and to protect it from false prophets.Footnote 11 Doubt surrounding tears stemmed from a concern as to whether they could be read as a true sign of piety or divine inspiration or whether they had been consciously or unconsciously manipulated. This essay will look to hagiographies to provide an insight into the doubt that was expressed surrounding the tears of holy women. First, however, it will consider the foundation of such doubt: the problem of interpreting tears.
Many scholars, of history, anthropology and sociology, have suggested that the body is a potentially problematic source of meaning, both for individuals and for wider society.Footnote 12 One of the most opaque bodily and emotional expressions is a tear. The sociologist Jack Katz recognized that what crying ‘says’ may be inherently mysterious and thus it presents a special challenge for interpretation.Footnote 13 Medieval authors struggled to describe tears, as do modern writers. Philippa Maddern's research highlights some of the major difficulties when analysing medieval descriptions of tears. In her examination of late medieval English sources, she notes that diverse meanings are attributed to lachrymose behaviour and suggests that ‘medieval authors were unconvinced of any stable or uncontroversial relationship between tears and what they signified'.Footnote 14 Contemporaries were faced with problems of sincerity and classification. Examining the swell of tears in thirteenth-century hagiographic texts is no straightforward task, and such problems are often apparent in, and arise from, the Vitae. Footnote 15 Tears were the carriers of spiritual emotions but also had meaning in themselves. They could indicate excruciating pain or ecstatic joy; they were imitable and contagious, yet also rarefied, finite and sought after. Tears could carry a simple message of holiness, yet were also incomprehensible and recondite. They were part of the pathway to redemption and beatitude, and were received as a gift from God in the form of the divine grace, known as gratia lacrymarum. This multivalence could lead to doubt as to whether holy women's tears could or should be read as an authentic sign of devotion and the presence of God.
The Female Body in Christian Thought
Whilst much early Christian thought perceived the body and all bodily activity with profound suspicion, by around 1200 learned Christian discourse had re-evaluated the human body, becoming more open to its use in the expression of piety.Footnote 16 Regulation, restraint and modesty remained important hallmarks of saintly behaviour but there was place for somatic piety in which the body was used in the physical pursuit of God through excessive fasting, flagellation and genuflexion. This physical drive towards God was in turn rewarded with bodily imprints and rapturous excesses, which attested to contact with the divine. Beguine and mendicant spirituality was thus intensely physical and the female body was an important vehicle for conveying messages about sanctity as well as religious concepts and feelings.Footnote 17 Moreover, the female body was a privileged site of reception for divine graces.Footnote 18 Tears were intimately connected with the rise in physical piety, and conveyed meaning to those who witnessed or read about them. Nonetheless, even though the female body might be used to express religious sentiment, this did not mean that it was necessarily accepted or trusted.Footnote 19
The Nature of Holy Lacrimation
Many thirteenth-century hagiographies recount that those who shed tears were often unable to control either the tears or their efficacy. Divinely given tears were often violent in nature, seizing the whole body and rendering the recipient rapt in a moment of union with God. The anonymous hagiographer of the Cistercian nun Beatrice of Nazareth (d. 1268) describes how she struggled to stem the flow of her tears when she thought of her heavenly bridegroom: ‘The witnesses of this event were tears dripping in abundance from her eyes, full of sweetness and devotion. And if she had wanted, no insistence would have been strong enough to hold back [the assault of tears] before the Bridegroom's face, whenever he returned to [her] mind.’Footnote 20 A lack of control when participating in devotional activities was a central theme in texts pertaining to women. Some churchmen, friars and onlookers saw tears as troublesome, as they challenged traditional modes of expressing devotion. Rather than meekly receiving the host, many holy women subverted the liturgy, erupting with flowing tears, groans and sighs. These tears were an instrument of separation from the ordinary confines of female devotion and the silence of the cloister.Footnote 21 Elizabeth Petroff argues that for a woman to become a saint she had to transgress in order to become visible.Footnote 22 However, this transgression had to be carefully undertaken; it had to be seen to be divinely sanctioned if the woman were not to be in danger of being branded a heretic. As Simons has observed, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain whether divine intervention or demonic possession had produced their behaviour.Footnote 23 The Franciscan tertiary Angela of Foligno (d. 1309) screamed because of the fire of love that she experienced. Although people accused her of being demonically possessed, she described through her Memoriale how she could not have stopped herself even had someone stood over her with an axe and threatened to kill her.Footnote 24 The Viennese beguine Agnes Blannbekin (d. 1315) found that she could barely speak because of her tears (vix prae lachrymis loqui potuit) and because of the desire that burned in her chest; she pleaded with the Lord that he would not let it be known what he was doing to her (sed rogavit dominum, ne permitteret eam sic divulgari, quod dominus fecit).Footnote 25 It is no coincidence that these instances occur in female Vitae. The attempt to limit or restrain certain forms of devotion is characteristic of the opposition faced by thirteenth-century religious women. The founder of the Damianites, Clare of Assisi (d. 1253), was known for her excessive fasting, and was restrained from carrying out the extremes of her ascetic wishes by her brother St Francis (d. 1226) and by the bishop of Assisi, who made her consume a minimum amount of bread.Footnote 26 The confessor of the Italian Franciscan tertiary Margaret of Cortona (d. 1297) was only allowed to visit her once a week because some of the friars at the provincial chapter considered that her consolations were delusions and that she was feigning her devotions in order to gain a reputation for holiness.Footnote 27 Restricting certain elements of female devotional practice may have acted as a shield against potential disbelievers. However, restraining tears was much more difficult. In one episode in the Vita of Ida of Louvain (d. 1261), a Beguine and then a Cistercian nun from Liège, her sisters mock her for weeping.Footnote 28 In the Vita of Margaret of Cortona, her hagiographer Giunta Bevegnati records that she tried to remain silent because others attributed her weeping to vainglory.Footnote 29 By contrast, religious men were not criticized for their tears, although these are documented as being equally irrepressible. For example, the first deponent in the canonization enquiry of the founder of a congregation of Augustinian hermits, Giovanni Bono (d. 1249), a fellow hermit named Salveto, recalled how the holy man was unable to hold back his tears (nulla ratione poterat ipse lacrimas continere).Footnote 30 Where women could be ridiculed, degraded and doubted for their devotional practices, holy men who wept were more likely to be trusted and held up as models of perfection.
Tears, however, could not be modified or muted to suit the wishes of others. When the heart was pricked by compunction it was difficult to withhold the flow of tears. Moreover, gratia lacrymarum, by its very nature, was God-given and no man could stand in its way. Nonetheless, this did not stop churchmen from being irked and trying to subdue and control tears. One episode, from the life of the so-called ‘first beguine’, Marie d'Oignies (d. 1213), written c.1215 by her confessor Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240), is worth examining in detail, as it demonstrates the doubts that women often faced.Footnote 31 On a certain day, before Good Friday, Jacques records how Marie had begun to sacrifice (mactare) herself to the Lord with a great shower of tears, sighs and sobbing. One of the priests of the church rebuked her and urged her to pray in silence and hold back her tears. Modest and in dove-like simplicity, Marie tried to obey him but was conscious of how impossible this would be. The holy woman therefore left the church and hid herself in a place that was removed from everyone. Here, with tearful intercession, she obtained reassurance from the Lord that he would reveal to this priest that it was not within a man's power to hold back such an impetus of tears.Footnote 32
In this episode the priest encourages Marie to pray in silence, viewed as a more fitting state, rather than with tears and sighs. He appears to doubt the validity of her tears, and to believe them to be under her control. Indeed, the witnesses to the tears portrayed in the hagiographies are generally themselves religious: men and women who knew, or who lived near, the saint in question. Although the nature of mendicancy made saints more visible during the thirteenth century, witnesses to female lacrimation would have been fewer than for their male counterparts. Any doubts conveyed through the pen of the hagiographer thus probably reflect the concerns of priests or religious rather than of lay people, and members of the Church's hierarchy often became deeply suspicious of forms of devotion that did not fit custom.Footnote 33 The incident described by Jacques again illustrates that tears were not always associated with divine grace; some doubted them, seeing them as a loss of self-control and seeking to restrict and even prevent them. Moreover, divinely given tears challenged the priest's authority as they could not be controlled or formalized. Marie removed herself to an isolated location and petitioned God with tears to show the priest that her action could not be repressed and was a legitimate expression of his presence. Throughout her holy life, Marie was ridiculed (irridebat) and characterized as downcast (abiectus),Footnote 34 hinting at the way in which religious women might be derided for their revelations and accused of being fantasists or insane. However, as Jacques asserts: ‘Those who look down on any spiritual persons (spirituales) as insane or idiots and consider the prophecies or the revelations of saints as phantasms or illusions of dreamers, destroy much of the spirit in themselves and scorn the prophets.’Footnote 35
Nonetheless, women were not only mocked and degraded for their devotional practices but often found themselves criticized and rebuked for excessive weeping.Footnote 36 In order to redress the priest's admonition, Jacques alludes to a passage from Judith that sanctions the place of tears in otherwise silent prayer: ‘praying with tears and moving her lips silently’.Footnote 37 Yet Marie's situation is only resolved when the priest himself is overcome by tears and realizes how his doubt has been misplaced:
Therefore, on the same day when that priest celebrated mass, ‘the Lord opened and none shall shut’ (Isa. 22: 22), ‘he sent forth waters and they overturned the earth’ (Job 12: 15): for the soul [of the priest] was submerged with such an inundation of tears that he almost suffocated, and however much he tried to hold back their vigour, the more not just he but also the book and the linen cloths of the altar were wetted by a greater shower of tears. What could he do, he who [had been] thoughtless, he who had rebuked the handmaid of Christ? He learned through experience [and] with shame what he had previously not wanted to learn through humility and compassion. After much sobbing and with much faltering and disorderly stammering, finally, he barely escaped from the wreckage. Someone who saw this and who knew the priest bears witness to this. A long time after mass had ended, the handmaid of Christ, returning in a wondrous manner as if she had been present, met the priest [and] entering hastily she said, ‘Now you have learned through experience that it is not in a man's [power] to hold back the force of the spirit [when] the south wind is blowing.’Footnote 38
This episode is important for several reasons. Primarily, it underlines that tears can be given by God and that the grace is arbitrary. Divine graces are more powerful than any priest and tears cannot be subdued to suit the requirements of others or of the recipient. Although no ‘doubt words’ are used in this episode, doubt of or at least scepticism about Marie's tears is implied by the priest's behaviour: he is quick to dismiss the sincerity and validity of her tears through his thoughtless (improvidus) response.Footnote 39 The soul of the priest is then submerged in tears and it is only through this experience that he gains the necessary knowledge that he had not previously wanted (cognoscere non voluit). The soul of the priest is overcome by tears granted to him by God, in a process akin to baptismal cleansing. Through this experience of tears he is given knowledge as a way of making him believe. The message is also critical in terms of legitimization and agency. When Marie is reproached for her tears she is characterized by Jacques as a meek woman who endeavours to obey the wishes of the priest: ‘In truth, she was always modest and, in dove-like simplicity, she tried to obey in all things’.Footnote 40 However, when the priest is himself overwhelmed by divine tears, Marie becomes a powerful character who is able to teach him that tears should not be doubted. The relationship is inverted.
This event is pregnant with meaning. It affords Jacques the opportunity to discuss the importance of tears as a manifestation of grace and piety whilst also working as a wider commentary on bad priests. However, his decision to include this episode suggests that Jacques was dealing with wider incipient doubt surrounding tears and that he was trying to neutralize any scepticism that his intended audience may have had towards this form of female devotion. By addressing and quashing incredulity in a Vita, the hagiographer can try to diffuse criticism and doubt. Jacques's authority and success in this matter is revealed in the way that this episode became a touchstone for legitimizing female tears, retold in Margery Kempe's Book (c.1430).Footnote 41
Despite the criticisms and doubt a saint must endure as a test of their faith and holiness, tears were a positive marker of sanctity in hagiographies. The hagiographers tell us that, try as they might, churchmen could not restrain the tears of others. Thirteenth-century female saints’ Vitae always redress criticism of tears. For example, in one episode, reminiscent of John 20: 15, in which the resurrected Christ asks Mary Magdalene why she is weeping, the Lord asks Margaret of Cortona: ‘Why are you weeping (Cur fles)?’Footnote 42 Margaret responds that she is battling against those who do not believe her. The Lord strengthens her with the knowledge that he too was doubted as the Son of God.Footnote 43 In another incident, Margaret goes out onto the balcony of her house in the middle of the night and begins to pray with loud tears. Her devotions wake those in her neighbourhood and, rather than being annoyed at the disruption, her hagiographer records how they were touched with compassion, edified and themselves moved to pity and tears.Footnote 44 It is evident from these and other accounts that doubting tears was corollary to achieving certainty and assisted in rebuffing further potential scepticism.
Fourteenth-Century Doubt and Distrust
Tears remained an important aspect of sanctity in the fourteenth century, but by the later part of the century some subtle shifts can be detected in the way in which they were being written about.Footnote 45 Whilst an external manifestation of tears persisted in most Vitae, some hagiographical texts point towards an internalization of weeping, perhaps reflecting a certain discomfort with and doubt about somatic lachrymosity. In one instance in the Revelations of Divine Love (c.1373) by the English anchoress and mystic Julian of Norwich (d. 1416), tears are mostly internal rather than being produced by the eyes:
This weping meneth not al in poring out of teares by our bodily eye, but also to more gostly vnderstanding; for the kindly desire of our soule is so gret and so onmesurable that if it were goven us to our solice in erth, and we saw not the fair blisfull chere of hymselfe, yet we shuld not stynten of moning ne of gostly weping, that is to sey, peynfull longing, till whan we sen verily the faire blisfull chere of our maker.Footnote 46
Similarly, in her Dialogue (Dialogo), the Dominican tertiary Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) suggests that once the soul has been enflamed with holy desire tears are no longer necessary for a personal transition from one state to another, and that the Holy Spirit is able to transform the desire of the individual into active work on behalf of those in need of salvation.
It now remains to tell you, to satisfy your wish, of those who would like the perfection of tears but do not seem to be able to have it; is there another way than by means of the tears of the eye? Yes, it is a weeping of flame, that is of real and holy desire, consumed by the affection of love. She would like to dissolve her life in weeping for the hatred of herself and the salvation of souls, and it seems that she cannot. I say that these souls have tears of flame, in that the Holy Spirit weeps before me for them and for their neighbours.Footnote 47
These nuanced descriptions of tears are a reflection of wider changes in the acceptance of emotional and physical expressions of sanctity in the early fourteenth century. Although thirteenth-century hagiographers dwelt on somatic lachrymose displays of piety, writers of theological treatises, including Aquinas, downplayed such physically rapturous responses.Footnote 48 As Dyan Elliott has suggested, this could be construed as a tacit assertion of how unreliable a witness the body was.Footnote 49 The enrapt female body was becoming a site of ambiguity, and its ability to be a conduit for holy messages doubted. In her study of the physiology of rapture and female spirituality, Elliott traced the ‘gradual criminalization’ of female bodily mysticism in the later Middle Ages.Footnote 50 In the late fourteenth century, the body's untrustworthy evidentiary status was probed by scholars. The German-born Parisian master of theology Henry of Langenstein (d. 1397) described how passions and melancholia could affect an individual's receptivity and perceptions and that excessive austerities could lead to stupefaction and madness.Footnote 51 In addition, he explained how some individuals, because of their vainglory, would be sent delusory visions by God.Footnote 52 Doubt over the legitimacy of the body and its expressions was also suggested by the scholar and reformer Jean Gerson (d. 1429) who in 1415 produced an influential treatise entitled De probatione spiritum (On the Discernment of Spirits) in which he summarized his doubts as to the veracity of the revelations of the Swedish holy woman and founder of the Bridgettines, Bridget of Sweden (d. 1373).Footnote 53 He explained that the visions and revelations experienced by women were connected to brain damage, melancholia and epilepsy, not to the presence of the divine.Footnote 54 In an earlier treatise, De distinctione verarum revelationum a falsis (c.1401), Gerson had already warned that shedding excessive tears could damage and disturb the brain.Footnote 55 Furthermore, in a long letter-treatise known as De religionis perfectione et moderamine (On the Perfection and Moderation of the Religious Life) written in 1422 for William Minaud, a medical doctor who had recently entered La Grande Chartreuse, Gerson expressed his doubts concerning tears: ‘There is, I confess, in tears, something sweet and agreeable’. However, in such sweetness could be danger: ‘flee as much as you can from such tears’, advised Gerson, for ‘the snake hides in the grass’.Footnote 56 In this reading, tears had the power to deceive and should not be encouraged. Gerson reiterated his concerns about the authenticity of revelations and false prophets in several treatises, and in De examinatione doctrinarum (c.1423) he suggested that potential candidates should be examined by six degrees of examinatores – council, pope, prelate, doctor, educated person and a discerner of spirits – before any official pronouncements about their suitability were made.Footnote 57
However, the best insight into why tears may in some instances have become internalized can be gleaned from the writings of the Franciscan preacher Bernardino of Siena (d. 1444), who warned against ‘the deception of artificial transformation’ (deceptionum et artificiosae transformationis): ‘For there are many who violate themselves for tears or fervours, and through certain outer acts they elaborate supernatural sentiments’.Footnote 58 Once again, the problem of interpretation is crucial. Bernardino's concern here is with an external act (exteriores actus), but other scholars, including the theologian and mystic Dionysius the Carthusian (d. 1471), also followed Gerson's lead and explained how bodily and rapturous experiences should be proven by a qualified judge.Footnote 59 Nonetheless, no evidence remains to suggest that any such judges were called upon when it came to tears. The arbitrary nature of a divine grace of tears would make the summoning of a suitable judge at the moment of reception challenging, if not impossible. Theologians and churchmen may have reached an impasse with such a complex and transient expression.
Conclusions
In the thirteenth century, tears were a fully, externally manifested expression of piety that reflected internal transformation and spiritual progress. Any doubt was neutralized ‘at source’, and the episodes in hagiographies are used to establish the sanctity of a holy woman beyond doubt by rebuffing the accusations of potential detractors. Tears are thereby rendered ipso facto a proof of sanctity. A selection of late fourteenth-century female texts, however, provides evidence that a state of emotional transformation was possible without external tears. In some cases, tears seem to have been driven inside as a consequence of doubt. The emergence of doubt relating to lachrymose expressions of devotion stemmed from a growing distrust of the body, visions and revelations and the wider theological preoccupation with the discerning of spirits. The parameters of accepted behaviour and expressions were changing, and these changes were further articulated in treatises written over the course of the fifteenth century. By internalizing tears, doubt over the veracity of external bodily displays of piety is removed. Yet, the reader or listener of the devotional text could still identify elements of spiritual progression, such as contrition and spiritual cleansing, that were demarcated with internal tears.
This essay has suggested that the internalization of tears may be one facet of what Elliott has called the ‘gradual criminalization’ of female bodily mysticism in the later Middle Ages.Footnote 60 The female body was a place of potential divine dispensation, yet also held within it the power of deception: ascertaining the veracity of female tears was a challenging, if not impossible, task. Doubts as to whether a woman's body could be the trusted vessel for God's message could not be dispelled easily, but internalizing women's tears may have neutralized some of their observers’ scepticism.
