Week XII (11/26)
Jesus as Mother and the Feminization of God
Readings: C. Bynum, "Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing," Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, 110-168; Julian of Norwich, "Showings," Petroff, Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, 299-314. For a larger excerpt from Julian's "Showings" and a link to her complete text on line, click here.
Additional Graduate Reading: Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Womanchrist
Whether we are looking at the "feminization of God" suggested by Julian of Norwich's portrayal of Jesus as Mother or the "feminization of Christianity" as discussed in Barbara Newman's From Virile Woman to Womanchrist, we are interested this week in the ways in which gendered attributes (of God or man/woman) are inverted or transformed in later medieval Christian spirituality.
While in late twentieth-century refigurings of gendered God-language, God the Father is the most frequent target for reform (the "God our Father/ God our Mother" phenomenon), in medieval spirituality Jesus was the focus of feminized language. Why were feminized depictions of Jesus so attractive to medieval Christian monastics? Is the gender-play evident in patristic and Cistercian depictions of Jesus as mother the same phenomenon as the identification of Jesus as mother in Julian of Norwich? What is accomplished in each case? What does Jesus's motherhood mean in different contexts? And further, how does the portrayal of God in female terms differ from the celebration of human female attributes or heroic behavior and religious practice by exceptional women?
Bynum is our guide through the patristic and monastic tradition. Margot King has recently updated her 1980 essay "The Desert Mothers: The Female Anchoretic Tradition" with a follow-up on the thirteenth century. Both parts are available on line through Peregrina Press's Matrologia web site, and they provide an interesting framework for understanding Julian as anchoress.