Notes

1. Jody Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama (Ithaca, 1992), p. 30, says that "Christian rhetoricians deplored the dependence of ethical content on a dramatic delivery that had no intrinsic moral identity."  And in an article on the Pardoner as a figure for rhetoric's dangerously permeable boundaries, Rita Copeland notes that elocutio, the "most visible aspect" of rhetoric, could easily be seen as "merely deceptive surface" but is nonetheless necessary:  "style . . . is a function inherent to rhetoric":  Copeland, "The Pardoner's Body and the Disciplining of Rhetoric," in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester, 1994), pp. 139-59, at 146.

2. Although this paper will look particularly at these two saints, there are other women saints of the early Church whose legends depict them as preachers.  Jacobus of Voragine's Golden Legend is fairly sparing of the actual term praedicare (though see the legends of St Felicity [The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1993), 1:364] and St Euphemia [2:180]), but a number of the virgin martyrs are shown publicly disputing with and instructing their opponents in a manner very similar to that of St Katherine.  See, for example, St Lucy (1:28-29), St Margaret of Antioch (1:368-70), and St Christina (1:385-87), all of whose legends emphasize the saint's speech.  In addition, St Martha, according to medieval belief the sister of Mary Magdalene, shared her preaching mission (2:23-26).

3. R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago, 1991), esp. ch. 2, "Early Christianity and the Estheticization of Gender" (pp. 37-63).  See also Marsha Colish, "Cosmetic Theology: The Transformation of a Stoic Theme," Assays 1 (1981), 3-14.

4. See Tertullian, La Toilette des femmes (De cultu feminarum) 1.2.1, introd., ed., and trans. Marie Turcan, Sources chrétiennes 173 (Paris, 1971), pp. 46-48:  "illi scilicet angeli qui ad filias hominum de caelo ruerunt . . . et cum materias quasdam bene occultas et artes plerasque non bene reuelatas saeculo multo magis imperito prodidissent, si quidem et metallorum opera nudauerant . . . et omnem curiositatem usque ad stellarum interpretationem designauerant, proprie et quasi peculiariter feminis instrumentum istud muliebris gloriae contulerunt. "

5. Tertullian, La Toilette 2.13.3, ed. Turcan, p. 164:  "Tanta enim debet esse plenitudo eius [i.e., pudicitiae] ut emanet ab animo in habitum et eructet a conscientia in superficiem."  Translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

6. Timothy Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford, 1985), p. 210, goes so far as to say that in Tertullian's writings "[p]hilosophy and theology . . . are subordinate to oratory—which accounts for [his writings'] effectiveness."

7. Augustine, Confessions 4.2, trans. William Watts, Loeb Classical Library 26-27 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 148-50.  Further references to this work are given by book and section number in the text.

8. Augustine, De doctrina Christiana; De vera religione, ed. Joseph Martin, CCSL 32 (Turnholt, 1962); see, for example, 4.12-14.28-30 (pp. 135-37).  Further references are by book, section, and paragraph number in the text.

9. James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from St Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1974), pp. 284-85.

10. To use Rita Copeland's formulation, we might say that having developed a substantial and coherent body of its own, Christian preaching was less threatened by the permeable boundaries that rhetoric implied.

11. Alan of Lille, The Art of Preaching, trans. Gillian R. Evans (Kalamazoo, 1981), pp. 18-19.  "Praedicatio enim in se, non debet habere verba scurrilia, vel puerilia, vel rhythmorum melodias et consonantias metrorum, que potius fiunt ad aures demulcendas, quam ad animum instruendum, quae praedicatio theatralis est et mimica et omnifarie contemnenda . . . praedicatio enim non debet splendere phaleris verborum, purpuramentis colorum":  Summa de arte praedicatoria (PL 210:111-98, at col. 112).

12. Humbert of Romans, Treatise on Preaching, ed. Walter M. Conlon, trans. the Dominican students, Province of St Joseph (London, 1955), p. 43.

13. "Cavenda sunt in sermone nimis ornata eloquia vel eloquentia":  Pseudo-Bonaventure, Ars concionandi, in Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae Opera Omnia, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 10 vols. in 11 (Rome, 1882-1902), 9:8-21, at col. 15.

14. Harry Caplan notes that anxiety about rhetoric was by this time primarily "distrust for embellished style, because rhetoric was an art of adornment," and that the attitude toward rhetoric had become much more balanced, as ready to admit its usefulness as to rebuke its drawbacks:  "Classical Rhetoric and the Mediaeval Theory of Preaching," in Historical Studies of Rhetoric and Rhetoricians, ed. Raymond F. Howes (Ithaca, 1961), pp. 71-89, at 79.

15. "Nullatenus est credendum quod verbum Dei praedicationis officio fidelibus ministrandum alligetur consuetudini alieni humanitus introductae seu regulis humano ingenio adinventis quae in hoc opero inseruntur, quasi contra eas praedicatori agere non liceat":  Thomas Waleys, De modo componendi sermones, in Artes Praedicandi: Contribution à l'histoire de la rhétorique au moyen âge, ed. Th.-M. Charland (Paris, 1936), pp. 328-403, at 329.

16. Ranulph Higden, The Ars componendi sermones of Ranulph Higden, O.S.B., ed. and introd. Margaret Jennings (Leiden, 1991), p. 32.  This section, "De auditorum alleccione," is, like other sections of Ranulph's text, taken almost verbatim from Robert of Basevorn (like Thomas Waleys and Ranulph Higden, a fourteenth-century preaching theorist), who says, "Debet enim praedicator, quantum secundum Deum potest, allicere animos auditorum ut reddat eos benevolos ad audiendum et retinendum":  Robert of Basevorn, Forma praedicandi, in Charland, Artes Praedicandi, pp. 233-323, at 260.  This section treats the use of exempla and other means of enlivening a sermon, encouraging the preacher to find something subtile et curiosum to get the audience's attention.

17. This argument, as old as Ecclesiasticus (9.11), was used by numerous opponents of women's preaching, including Thomas Aquinas.  See Alcuin Blamires and C. W. Marx, "Woman Not to Preach: A Disputation in British Library MS Harley 31," Journal of Medieval Latin 3 (1993), 34-63, at 41.

18. Blamires and Marx, "Woman Not to Preach," p. 52:  "Mulier . . . vivacitatem sermonis non habet ad mortificandum, sed magis provocandum peccata, et ideo super illud, Docere mulierem non permitto,' dicit Glos[sa ordinaria].  Si enim loquitur magis incitat ad luxuriam, et irritatur,' et ideo dicitur Ecclesiastici 9, Colloquium illius quasi ignis ardescit,' Glos[sa ordinaria] In cordibus auditorum.'" The verb irritare has many meanings:  to incite, excite, provoke, stimulate, and so forth.  In this instance, the context strongly suggests that the specific effect of a woman's preaching will be to arouse the men who hear her.

19. "Irritat qui talis [a preacher for glory or gain] agnoscitur, non praedicat, quia quo dicta sua venustiore ornare conatur eloquio, tanto acriore astantium pectora ad contemptum (proh dolor!) etiam eorum quae bene ab eo dicuntur, et maxime sui ipsius vexat fastidio":  Guibert de Nogent, Liber quo ordine sermo fieri debeat (PL 156:22-32, at col. 30).

20. Blamires and Marx, "Woman Not to Preach," p. 58:  "Licet pulcritudo, forma, et omnis gestus mulieris alliceant hominem ad libidinem, maxime tamen dulcedo vocis et complacencia verborum."

21. Blamires and Marx, "Woman Not to Preach," p. 63.

22. Cf. Augustine, De doctrina 4.5.8:  "Sicut autem saepe sumenda sunt et amara salubria, ita semper uitanda est perniciosa dulcedo.  Sed salubri suauitate uel suaui salubritate quid melius? Quanto enim magis illic appetitur suauitas, tanto facilius salubritas prodest."  The genre of hagiography itself, like rhetoric, aims "to offer something that is moral and edifying but at the same time pleasant and entertaining" (Copeland, "Pardoner's Body," p. 150); the lives of the women preachers offer a lesson on balancing these two aims, both in their form and in their content.

23. "[I]mperator . . . uisu in uirginem defixo, uultus ipsius claritatem et uerborum constantiam tacitus considerabat."  Quotations from the Vulgate text are taken from Seinte Katerine, Re-edited from MS Bodley 34 and the other Manuscripts, ed. S. R. T. O. D'Ardenne and E. J. Dobson (Oxford, 1981).  The above passage is at p. 151; further references to this edition will be by page number in the text.

24. In a very similar scene in the legend of St Margaret of Antioch, the citizens lament, "Oh, what beauty you have lost by not believing in the gods!"  Margaret replies, "This torture of the flesh is the salvation of the soul!"  See Jacobus of Voragine, Golden Legend, 1:369.

25. "ipsa corporis species simulacrum fuerit mentis, figura probitatis":  Ambrose, De uirginibus 2.2.7, in Opere morali II: Verginità e vedovanza, introd. and trans. Franco Gori, ed. Egnatius Cazzaniga and Franco Gori, 2 vols., Opera omnia di Sant'Ambrogio 14 (Milan, 1989), 1:170; quoted in Augustine, De doctrina 4.21.48, p. 155.  Among the virgin martyrs whose beauty is more than physical is St Agnes, of whom Jacobus of Voragine says that "[h]er face was beautiful, her faith more beautiful"; in another instance, having said that Lucy means light and that light is beautiful, he clarifies that "the blessed virgin Lucy possessed the beauty of virginity without trace of corruption":  Jacobus, Golden Legend, 1:102, 27.

26. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), p. 37.  This passage refers specifically to a characteristic of the Jewish communities around the time of Jesus's life, but the idea of transparency carried over into Christian thought.

27. Similarly, Jacobus of Voragine notes that one of Katherine's outstanding qualities was the "cleanness of chastity" (munditia castitatis) that she preserved in the midst of things that are usually inimical to chastity, namely "affluentia resolvens, opportunitas inducens, juventus lasciviens, libertas effrenans, pulchritudo alliciens":  Jacobus of Voragine, Legenda Aurea, ed. Th. Graesse (Dresden, 1846), p. 796.  By preserving her virginity, that is, Katherine has overcome her own dangerous characteristics.

28. "Rabanus," De vita beatae Mariae Magdalenae et sororis ejus sanctae Marthae, in Monuments inédits sur l'apostolat de sainte Marie-Madeleine en Provence, ed. Etienne de Faillon, 2 vols. (Paris, 1848), 2:453-558.  Further references are by Volume and column number.

29. Monuments inédits, ed. Faillon, 2:543:  "Erat autem in utriusque earum vultu veneranda venustas, honestas in moribus, in verbis promptissima gratia ad suadendum.  Vix, vel nunquam, inveniebatur aliquis, qui ab earum praedicatione incredulus recederet, vel sine fletu; qui non ab earum facie inflammaretur Domini Salvatoris amore, vel propriae miseriae consideratione lacrymaretur."

30. Monuments inédits, ed. Faillon, 2:541:  "melliflua mente, mellita verba . . . instillans."

31. Monuments inédits, ed. Faillon, 2:541.  Cf. Matt. 12.34:  "Progenies viperarum, quomodo potestis bona loqui, cum sitis mali? ex abundantia enim cordis os loquitur."

32. Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor (London, 1993), p. 153.

33. At the end of the section describing Mary's solo preaching (as opposed to her preaching with Martha), the author says that it is right that "sicut anastasis Christi apostola destinata est ad apostolos, et ascensionis ejus prophetissa, sic et credentium in toto orbe, fieret evangelista."  Her apostolate was, in his account, foretold by Jesus when he said, "ubicunque praedicatum fuerit hoc Evangelium, in toto mundo, et quae haec fecit, narrabitur in memoriam ejus" (Mark 14.9).  "Rabanus," De vita beatae Mariae Magdalenae, in Monuments inédits, ed. Faillon, 2:542.

34. "[V]ultu placido, facie serena, lingua discreta eos ab ydolorum cultura revocabat et Christum constantissime praedicabat":  Jacobus, Legenda aurea, 1:409.

35. Jacobus, Legenda aurea, 1:409:  "[A]dmirati sunt universi prae specie, prae facundia, prae dulcedine eloquentiae ejus."

36. "Nam ut christi nomen et divinitatis ejus potentiam simulque crucis ipsius ministerium predicari ab ea audivimus confusa sunt viscera, corda nostra tremuerunt et omnes corporis sensus stupendo aufugerunt":  Seinte Katerine, ed. D'Ardenne and Dobson, p. 171.

37. "[Q]uando praedicator fructuose praedicat et utiliter, sicut debet dum est in fervore spiritus sui, cor suum ita cordibus auditorum immediate conjungitur quod nec se linguam, nec auditores aures, habere percipit, sed videtur sibi quod quasi absque omni medio de corde suo in corda auditorum verbum suum influit et procedit":  Thomas Waleys, De modo compondendi sermones, p. 336.