The instantaneous ability to communicate in a language one does not know is called xenoglossia. Christine F. Cooper-Rompato's volume provides the “first book-length study of medieval accounts of xenoglossia” from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries (2). The first two chapters significantly complement previous scholarship on this phenomenon in Early Christianity and modernity. These chapters are grounded in “medieval vitae, canonization records and miracle accounts, with a particular focus on the lives of women” (2). The final two chapters of the book attempt to identify xenoglossia in a few works of Middle English literature, the “autohagiography” of Margery Kempe and three of the Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.
The book's admirable first half is essential for further work on medieval accounts of xenoglossia. Expanding the list of medieval holy men and women reputed to be xenoglossic from the representative dozen studied by Stanley Burgess (“Medieval Examples of Charismatic Piety in the Roman Catholic Church,” in Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism, ed. Russell P. Spittler [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1976], 14–26), Cooper-Rompato identifies a dozen more male saints and nine more women (12). All but two are members of religious orders. Cooper-Rompato competently translates pertinent texts. Her excellent index will facilitate research on individuals. She prescinds from whether the events described actually occurred, examining instead “how the accounts craft the presentation” (11). One form of xenoglossia is acquisition of foreign languages for large-scale preaching, with Dominican and Franciscan preachers appearing to be like some of the apostles in acquiring a language for a lifetime of missionary work. For counseling and spiritual conversations, often a language is acquired for a few hours or days only. Insightfully, Cooper-Rompato reasons that non-traditional learners of language, such as nuns who pray the Hours from memory and then gain understanding of the Latin or of the deeper meaning of the texts, might be described as having an ordinary or “mundane” acquisition of language, perhaps presented as “miraculous” because of the perception by themselves, others in their community, or those who write about them that this use of language is a divine gift (for example, p. 77). Cooper-Rompato observes that when Bridget of Sweden and others are recounted as having a “miraculously accelerated” learning of Latin, this suggests divine inspiration and authority for their writings (101).
Her signal contribution is demonstrating that long-lasting xenoglossia is characteristically associated with preaching by clerics while short-term xenoglossia for the sake of spiritual counseling and conversation is usually attributed to nuns (though see St. Dominic, pp. 33–35). She suggests that women's experiences were “remarkably gendered,” reflecting their hagiographers' expectations of what was appropriate (21 and passim). One may also note, however, that the gifts attributed to the men and women are consonant with their professed vocations.
A flaw is the imposed gendering of St. Vincent Ferrer, O.P. The text recounts that he, like many in the diverse crowds he addressed in his travels—Hungarians, Greeks, Germans, Sardinians, and Bretons—knew only one language. Yet when he preached everyone including children and women (pueri and feminae) understood him in their own language. Although Cooper-Rompato deems Ferrer “feminized” because he is “vulnerable” and isolated linguistically like the women and children (27), he seems rather to share the human condition.
The historical background warrants further attention. At the fountainhead event of the gift of tongues, Pentecost, Mary has traditionally been held to be present with the disciples (as depicted on the cover of the book). Whereas the male disciples spoke in tongues, no tradition or account seems to ascribe the gift of tongues to Mary herself. Nonetheless, women did preach in antiquity. Their non-xenoglossic preaching occurred outside the context of a formal liturgy, as when St. Juliana of Nicomedia en route to her execution preached publicly to hundreds. Such female evangelical preaching led to the designation in the East of several women, especially those who evangelized an entire region, as ἰσαπόστολοι (“equal to the apostles”).
The second half of the book shifts radically in language and genres. The author asserts that Kempe and Chaucer “adapt the hagiographic model of xenoglossia” in order to present “writerly control and authority” (2). This is credible for Margery Kempe. While the opening of Kempe's Book is ambiguous in this regard, certainly Margery recounts that after thirteen days of prayer she and a German priest could understand each other, which she presents as wondrous. Kempe, though, the only woman Cooper-Rompato gives chapter-length analysis, is atypical of xenoglossic women. Predominantly nuns, they include a founder (Bridget of Sweden) and a reformer (Colette of Corbie) and an abbess (Hildegard of Bingen) of religious orders; several were venerated as saints and respected as intellectuals (for example, Catherine of Siena).
The final chapter asserts that Chaucer treats “female xenoglossic women” as a “metaphor for a translator's relationship to his authoritative sources” (143). However, that the fictitious Prioress asks Mary to guide her tale does not make the Prioress xenoglossic. Her sentimental tale concerns a murdered boy who can sing after being murdered: again, no xenoglossia. The Man of Law's Tale features Custance, who knows only a form of Latin when she is shipwrecked. That her rescuers understand her may be wondrous, but she is no “female translator” so it is groundless to assert that this tale makes Chaucer himself “somewhat feminized” (170). A magic ring allows Canacee in the Squire's Tale to converse with birds. Cooper-Rompato holds that when we hear a falcon lament over the defection of a bird who earlier “Fyl on his knees” (!) to woo her (F544), what we experience is “discomfort” at the difficulties of translation (186). This chapter's humorless and uncritical affirmation of female characters and its tenuous remarks about language are most unfortunate, for they tend to undercut the considerable intellectual strengths of the first half of this book.
