“That Naked She Might Follow the Naked Christ”

'Imitatio Christi' in the Lives of Medieval Female Monastics

*Image of Catherine of Siena praying with a crown of thorns on her head.

One of the most fascinating aspects of medieval Christianity to study is the spirituality of religious women. The Middle Ages held some of the most vibrant expressions of Christian faith in history—it was anything but the “dark ages” in this regard. Women contributed in major ways to the theology and spirituality of this time in Christian history, with two hallmark medieval women installed as Doctors of the Church—Catherine of Siena and Hildegard of Bingen. They stand among Augustine, Aquinas, and Athanasius as Doctors of the Church for their exemplary holiness, doctrinal insights, and theological writings. Though these women were theologians, preachers, mystics, and monastics, the Middle Ages was a challenging time to be a woman. Spiritually, being female meant mediated access to God by male clergy. Physically, being female often meant vulnerability, pain, and exploitation if outside the walls of a convent. The anomaly of the medieval religious woman is that she found ways to turn her pain into an avenue for greater union with Christ. 

Dr. Caroline Walker Bynum, a leading scholar on medieval women and their spirituality, identifies ways in which women used the pain and exploitation they experienced as females as a way to approach Christ—the suffering man. She writes in her groundbreaking work, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, 

“Women forged, through charity, miracle, and fasting, an alternative role—an essentially lay and charismatic role—authorized not by ordination but by inspiration, not by identification with Christ the high priest but by imitation of Christ the suffering man. Women’s charismatic, prophetic role was an alternative to, and therefore a critique of and a substitute for, the characteristic male form of religious authority: the authority of office.”

Bynum highlights the ways in which women used their female existence, often characterized by limitation and bodily agony, to draw near to Christ, the suffering Savior. Other than natural suffering, women’s elective pain was sourced from extreme ascetic practices such as fasting from all food and drink but the Eucharist, self-flagellating, and living in crippling monastic poverty. Medieval women chose to increase their already painful existence so as to become one with the suffering man on the cross. The medieval woman was a suffering body who reveled in her similarity to Christ. 

Jacques de Vitry writes of Marie d’Oignies, a 12th century Beguine,

 “One day she made plans to flee so that, unknown and despised among strangers, she might beg from door to door, that naked she might follow the naked Christ.” 

This is an example of what St. Clare of Assisi called, “the privilege of poverty.” St. Clare would know—she founded a monastic order that was later called the “Poor Clares” because of her emphasis on service and poverty. Poverty was chosen as a way of drawing near to the One who had no place to lay his head—a privilege in itself.  In Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Bynum notes continuously that medieval women’s goal was imitation of Christ in his life on earth. To prove her point, she examines St. Catherine of Siena, a 14th century Italian mystic and Doctor of the Church, who emphasized suffering as a form of service. Catherine’s Christology shines through this claim because for her,

“suffering was serving because Christ had become flesh—a flesh that, by bleeding and dying, saved the world.” 

Though in these practices, the health of monastic women declined and their flesh suffered, they could say of their physical state, “This is my body and this is my blood, broken for you.” In their natural and chosen suffering, medieval women viewed their actions as breaking their body and spilling their blood for Christ’s sake who did the same for them. This theology reflects the medieval change in Eucharistic devotion. Bynum notes that the central Christian meal changed from the “Bread of Heaven” of the early church to the physical” Body Broken” of the medieval church. Physicality, suffering, and “seeing” characterized this medieval change. Thus, the Eucharistic meal and its bodily essence became a primary element of female spirituality.

It follows that Christ’s suffering self—though male—also became a central image in medieval women’s spirituality. Literature in Antiquity through the Middle Ages crudely and often misogynistically likened the female sex to “flesh” and temporal/transient things. In contrast, men were likened to “higher things” like the spirit and mind. Nevertheless, it is very interesting that some medieval imaginations of Christ’s physical body were female. Especially in art, Christ was seen nursing the church from his breasts and physically giving birth to the church on the cross. The motif of “Jesus as Mother” with nursing breasts that nourish his flock was common among both women and men. However, maternal imagery for Christ, feminized ecclesial language, and the motif of the Abbot as Mother were surprisingly mainly coined by men. Unfortunately, despite a “feminine Christ,” this did not translate to universal respect for women in the Middle Ages. 

It is also important to note that medieval women resisted the stereotypical gnostic and ascetic motives behind deliberate suffering. They did not pursue the erasure of their body. Bynum notes that,

“They (religious women) strove not to eradicate body but to merge their own humiliating and painful flesh with that flesh whose agony, espoused by choice, was salvation. Luxuriating in Christ’s physicality, they found there the lifting up—the redemption—of their own.”

Christ in his suffering somehow redeemed their femaleness because to be female was to suffer and Christ had suffered greatly. To echo Bynum again, women’s spirituality was often a critique of the male form of religious authority because of the centrality of the body. Though they respected their priests, they saw men in robes who rarely knew physical suffering, limitation, or silencing. While priests stood in persona Christi, women strove for imitatio Christi. The medieval woman was an icon of the suffering Christ.

Though this post barely scratches the surface of medieval women’s spirituality, what surprised you the most about women in the Middle Ages? What do you want to learn more about?

Stay tuned for more! This is home to my research interests so I’ll write more on this topic as this Substack moves forward.

Here are some extremely influential books on this subject:

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast : The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Jesus as Mother : Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.

Petroff, Elizabeth. Body and Soul : Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.