Sexual violence and the female reader: Symbolic “Rape” in the Saints’ lives of the Katherine Group

Notes

• d'Ardenne , S.R.T.O. and Dobson , E. J. , eds. 1981 . Seinte Katerine, , EETS, Supp. ser. 7 London : Oxford University Press . The Katherine Group includes three Lives of virgin martyrs: Seinte Katerine (SK), Seinte Iulien (SJ), and Seinte Margarete (SM). References to Seinte Katerine are from
   Google Scholar
• d'Ardenne , S.R.T.O. 1936 . Pe Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte Iuliene, , EETS 248 London : Oxford University Press . [Reference by page number to the “edited text"]. References to Seinte Iuliene are from
   Google Scholar
• Millettand , B. and Wogan‐Browne , J. , eds. 1990 . Medieval English Prose for Women: Selections from the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse , Oxford : Clarendon Press . rpt. 1962), [Reference by page number to the “emended text"]. References to Seinte Margarete are from
   Google Scholar
• Tolkien , J. R. R. 1962 . The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle: Ancrene Wisse, Ms Corpus Christi College Cambridge 420, , EETS 249 London : Oxford University Press . [Reference by page, and where necessary, line number]. References to other texts of the Katherine Group are from the following: Hali Meiohad (HM) and Sawles Warde (SW) from Millett and Wogan‐Browne, and Ancrene Wisse from
   Google Scholar
• Savage , Anne and Watson , Nicholas , eds. 1991 . Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works , New York : Paulist Press . [Reference by page number]. All translations are from, hereafter abbreviated S/W.
   Google Scholar
• Wogan‐Browne , J. 1991 . “Saints’ Lives and the Female Reader,” . Forum for Modern Language Studies , 27.4 : 314 – 332 . This crucial question is only now beginning to attract attention. See for example
   Google Scholar
• Johnson , Lesley and Evans , Ruth , eds. “The Virgin's Tale,” . In The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect, , London : Routledge . forthcoming in, used by permission
   Google Scholar
• Heffernan , Thomas J. 1988 . Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages, , 277 Oxford : Oxford University Press .
   Google Scholar
• Heffernan . Sacred Biography, 282
   Google Scholar
• Robertson , Elizabeth . 1990 . Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience, , 114 Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press .
   Google Scholar
• 1973 . New Oxford Annotated Bible, , New York and London : Oxford University Press . In the Bible, the feet are often found as a euphemism for sexual organs or for lechery. For example, in Ruth 3.4, Naomi counsels Ruth to uncover the feet of Boaz and lie with him in order to win him as a husband (cp. Ruth 3.14); in 2 Samuel 11.8, David tells Uriah to go and wash his feet, i.e., to have intercourse with Bathsheba (cp. 2 Samuel 11.11); in Exodus 4.25 Zipporah touches Moses’ feet with the foreshin of their firstborn son in a symbolic consummation through which Moses becomes a “bridegroom of blood” to her. This latter passage seems to reflect a tradition in which circumcision was a fertility or pubic rite (See the note to this passage in the
   Google Scholar
• 1966 . "Ganelon and the Cooks,” . Symposium , 20 : 144 – 149 . The belly is also associated with the sexual organs in Ancrene Wisse. For example, Ancrene Wisse asserts that pe wombe pot pe walleo of metes. 7‐of drunches. is se neh nehbur to p fulítohe lím. p ha dealeo perwio pe brune of hire heate. ("the belly, a pot that boils with food and drink, is so near a neighbour to that ill‐disciplined part that it shares with it the burning of its heat,” AW vi. 188 f. 100a. 1–3 [S/W 183]). The association of lechery and gluttony or eating is a medieval commonplace upon which the author of Ancrene Wisse does not hesitate to draw (AW ii.53–55 [S/W 85–86], iv.148 [S/W 153]); cp. AW iv. 100–101 [S/W 119]). Gluttony thus becomes a symbol of sexual appetite and desire. The medieval kitchen is a symbol of both gluttony and lechery (cp. AW iv. 111 [S/W 127]); as Locke points out, the cook is associated with the devil, and the kitchen with hell
   Google Scholar
• 1987 . Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, , 189 – 194 . 219ff 269ff Los Angeles : UCLA Press .
   Google Scholar
• Heffernan . Sacred Biography, 285
   Google Scholar
• 1992 . Virgin, Bride and Lover: A Study of the Relationship Between Sexuality and Spirituality in Anchoritic Literature, , Memorial University of Newfoundland . I have discussed this in detail in, PhD. Dissertation, Chapter Five
   Google Scholar
• Bynum . Holy Feast and Holy Fast 270 – 272 . and plates 23–30. See especially plate 28, a mid‐fifteenth century miniature from the Turin‐Milan Book of Hours depicting the “Double Intercession,” with God in the centre enthroned as ruler and judge. On His left is Christ exposing his wounded side, and on His right Mary lifts her bared breast
   Google Scholar
• Heffernan . Sacred Biography, 286
   Google Scholar
• Heffernan . Sacred Biography, 267 – 272 .
   Google Scholar