Rebecca Clouse

    Elizabeth of Spalbeek (d. 1316)1 has not attracted much critical attention among Anglo-American scholars. Her religious observances are neither as repulsive to modern sensibilities as Angela of Foligno's, nor as fantastic as those of Christina Mirabilis, Elizabeth's textual neighbor in the Middle English manuscript Oxford Bodley Douce 114.2 Caroline Walker Bynum3 and Valerie Lagorio4 have both referred to Elizabeth in passing, but for both scholars, Elizabeth is one of a group (albeit very different groups), noteworthy in so far as she provides additional exemplary evidence of medieval women who participated in identifiable trends of mystical practice. Bynum also gives some small attention to Philip of Clairvaux as Elizabeth of Spalbeek's Latin biographer. For the most part, Bynum quotes or paraphrases Philip's text (probably written in 1267),5 referring, as I will, to the only published version, "Vita Elizabeth sanctimonialis in Erkenrode, Ordinis Cisterciensis, Leodiensis dioecesis," from the Bollandists (1886).6 In her footnotes, however, Bynum implies something about Philip's attitude toward his subject: "Philip of Clairvaux calls Elizabeth of Spalbeek's ecstasies imbecillitas."7 The context of this comment and of its twin in an earlier footnote8 makes it clear that, on the basis of this word imbecillitas, Bynum thinks Philip considered Elizabeth "insane." That other biographers shared this opinion about their subjects provides the basis for Bynum's remark that "in the frenzy of trance or ecstasy, pious women sometimes mutilated themselves with knives, as Mary of Oignies did, or, like Beatrice of Nazareth and Elizabeth of Spalbeek, drove themselves to what they and their companions saw as 'insanity'."9

    This essay began as a study of the Middle English Bodley Douce 114, which Lagorio cites, and which implies nothing about insanity. Consequently, when I turned to "Vita Elizabeth," I focused my inspection on imbecillus and imbecillitas, translated routinely in the Middle English as physically weak or physical frailty and feebleness. Further inspection of the context and usage of

    Interrogating Bynum's use of a single source constitutes one thread of argument in this essay. The second thread concerns inconsistencies between the Middle English version of Elizabeth of Spalbeek's life and "Vita Elizabeth . . . ." Detailed comparison of this published Latin and the Middle English version will have to wait for another occasion. The third, and most prominent, thread of argument focuses on representations of ecstatic experience in the first vita of Douce 114, and on the role of references to and metaphors of the vertical in those representations. The vertical refers to a direction, a vector of movement, ranging from a simple change of physical position (standing as opposed to lying down) to going up from the earth, which in this context, is, in its extreme form, the Ascension.

    The following comments are addressed to the first in a small sorority of texts, whose membership comprises Elizabeth, Christina Mirabilis, Marie of Oignies, and Catherine of Siena. I call it a sorority of texts because my interest lies in linguistic representation rather than in biographical referents, and more specifically, in textual reproductions of ecstatic experience rather than in speculations about the biophysiological or psycho-pathological conditions that can induce such experiences (Bynum's references to "insanity" notwithstanding). These remarks are preliminary to a project whose commonsensical premise is that how one reads Elizabeth's vita influences how one reads the lives of her textual sisters in Douce 114, and, analogously, that how one interprets the representations of Elizabeth's ecstatic experience her rauishynges influences how one interprets the representations of ecstatic experience in the other texts.

    The following observations about Elizabeth's vita form the backbone of the present argument. (1) Elizabeth of Spalbeek was noteworthy enough to elicit a vita because of her extraordinarily literal corporeal reproduction and exegesis of the liturgies of the canonical hours and moments in the life of Christ and the church; the Middle English translation of Philip of Clairvaux's text reproduces that reproduction.10 The relationship between text(s) and Elizabeth-in-her-body creates a convergence that exceeds narrative report. (2) Elizabeth's reproductions are framed by and situated in ecstatic experiences; her rauishynges are both motivational and expressive, and precipitate vertical movement rysing. The relationship between rauishynge and rysing is both crucial to and problematic in the relation between the text and Elizabeth's body. (3) The text represents and reproduces Elizabeth's ravished body; it also represents the writer himself in the acts of perception, recall, and composition. Further, the text shows symptoms not of rauishynge, but of the hope for or expectation of

    These points of argument apply specifically to the Middle English text, which is at a double remove from the events reported. Therefore, to argue these points of convergence and conflation across the linguistic boundary between Latin and Middle English requires on the one hand a partial suppression of the original, and on the other, attention to the strenuous attempts the translated (even dissociated) text makes to reproduce the virgin of Herkenrode. However, my argument about the Middle English version can also be made about Phillip's Latin original, but along a different axis, which is, curiously, the very imbecillitas that Bynum cites. In Elizabeth's Latin life, forms of imbecillus and imbecillitas link together Elizabeth's physical frailty and her weakness before raptures, Phillip's pen, which he describes as too feeble to report adequately, and the personal corporeal fatigue that causes Phillip to silence his pen at the Explicit to the life. While the Middle English translation lends itself to analysis of references to a vertical ecstatics, the Latin original opens the way for a similar argument through the problematic imbecillitas supporting Bynum's implication.11

    Working with a translation complicates what would otherwise be relatively simple. How to refer to the unknown translator? or the compiler? Most likely, this person used a Latin original similar to Oxford Bodley 240, which contains part of the compilation represented in Douce 114. However, in Douce 114, the order of Bodley 240 is reversed. Is this reversal a decision of the translator's? or was there yet a second intermediate compiler? Was the translator's original complete or fragmentary? The translator, or compiler, of Douce 114 has made some astonishing editorial decisions, the first of which elicited the following comments by Alexandra Barratt in her anthology of women's Middle English writing: "But the male translator of a collection of women saints' lives, found in Bodley MS Douce 114, expresses particularly well the complexity, in practice, of translation. In his initial 'Apology of the Compiler' he admits to concentrating on the overall sense of his text rather than the meaning of every word, while simultaneously he explains that he left out anything he judged unnecessary or unhelpfully obscure: (she quotes the Apology). On these grounds, he tells us, he chose not to translate the 'proheme' or prologue at all!"12 Barratt's remarks point out an early problem in the translation. Actually, judging from the Bollandists' Latin text, over 125 lines are missing from Elizabeth's Middle English life.

    Among the Middle English omissions from the Latin vita is a lengthy discussion of men's and women's roles in transmitting the Gospel. This section of the Latin vita elicits the following comments from W. Simons and J.E. Ziegler: "Philip represents Elisabeth as a female mirror-image of St. Francis. But then he moves on to advocate the role of women in spreading the Gospel. While men do this through preaching and writing which he considers, traditionally, as male prerogatives there is, he says, a form of communication suitable to women, and this is through visual means, through showing in

1. The Body and the Text

    The writer is most succinct about the theological, christological and liturgical foundations of Elizabeth's dramatic spiritual reproductions in the closing summary statement of the vita:

Wherfore this virgyne, whos lyfe is alle mirakil, ge moor-ouer alle hir-selve is but myrakil, as hit schewiþ by the abouen writynge, figures and expounes not allonly Cryste, but Cryste crucifyed, in hir body, and also þe figuratif body of Cryste, þat is holy chirche. Loo, in þe distinxione of oures she representys þe custome of holy chirche, ordeynid by god, as Dauyd seith: 'Seuen tymes on the daye, lorde, I seyde louvynge to þe'. In woundes and peynes she affermiþ þe feith of þe passyone, in ioye and myrþe after peyne gladnes of þe resurrexyone, in rauishynge þe ascencyone, in rodynes of hir reuelacyouns & spritual lyfe she figurith þe sendyne of þe holy goost, and of þe sacramente of þe auter and of confessyon, & þen of desyres of alle mennes saluacyone, & of sorowe of vnkyndenes & dampnacyone of mankynde. (p. 118, lines 26-38)

There are a number of extraordinary claims in these three sentences. First, while Elizabeth is described as enacting through bodily expression faith in the Passion, a Passion-focused imitatio Christi is only one element in a series of such bodily figurations. What receives greater emphasis is Elizabeth's representation of the custom of holy church in the structured time of her day. This claim merits not only a whole sentence, but also the psalmic quotation that lies at the basis of the hours, described in the Rule of St. Benedict.14 Second, what Elizabeth affirms and figures in the third sentence are moments extending from the Incarnation to the eschaton, that is, moments not only connected to Jesus' life, but to the spiritual dispensation of the Pentecost, to the ecclesiastical establishment of sacraments, to apocalypse and judgement. The writer does not emphasize the Passion in distinction to these other moments. This is not surprising, given that

    Of more interest are the references here to the significatory processes of poetics (figures, figurith, and representys), rhetorics (expounes), and performative utterance (affermiþ) supported by narrative, all of which are implicated in the convergences between Elizabeth in her body and the body of the text. These multiple significatory processes participate in familiar medieval interpretative practices and demonstrate that the writer's hermeneutical method, reading Elizabeth, is analogous to the methods used to read the polyvalent biblical text. And, like the biblical text, even under this writer's febil penne Elizabeth's body has a rhetorics and poetics that elicits hermeneutic engagement.

    Most commonly in the Life, the writer uses forms of representiþ, schewith, and figures to refer to Elizabeth's signifying practices. In making references to his own text, the writer most commonly uses forms of discryue and expounyd to indicate what he or the text has done or will do. Description is a narrative practice, exposition is rhetorical and expansive, and as the text moves forward, the writer's usage draws description under the influence of exposition. That is, what begins as description is brought under the sway of the text's persuasive strategies. This is important because the variance in usage changes the nature of the claims the text makes for itself. The narrative of Elizabeth's acts becomes increasingly rhetorically loaded, and the relatively neutral references to description are capped after the summary statement quoted above with an attribution of performative utterance to the text itself: "þat atte is written aboue, declariþ openly Inowg þat þou, man, arte vnexcusabil" (118/38-39). As Elizabeth affermiþ, so the text declariþ. Performative speech is a point of convergence between the text and Elizabeth's corporeal reproductions.

    Another point of convergence between body and text derives from the use of expounyd. Although the writer often draws general parallels between Elizabeth's bodily practices and the gospel stories, only twice does the translator cite specific gospel texts in relation to her bodily practice.15 The writer interprets Elizabeth's enactment of flogging and being drawn about with violent shoves as "representynge oure lorde Jhesu wordes þat hee seyde to hym (!): 'gee come to take me as a þefe with swerdys and battys'" (108/38-40). The second such citation comes after an extended description of what Elizabeth does for sext, none, and evensong, which is marked by increasingly complex significatory processes. In the first moment, the writer emphasizes the importance of what is to follow: "atte this may be vndurstandyn more fully, hit schalbe expouned more pleynly" (112/22-23). In the second moment, he describes the remarkable posture in which Elizabeth "representith þe schappe of the cros" (113/7-8). This posture remains the referent as the verbal "sche representith" is stabilized

    The tentative quality of "as if sche expounyd" suggests some anxiety from the writer about such a specific significatory and exegetical act. I have referred above to W. Simons and J.E. Ziegler who comment on Philip's description of male and female roles in evangelizing, and that the Middle English translator omits this section might lead one to speculate that women "expounding" was less of an issue in late medieval England than in the thirteenth century Low Countries. However, the translator is faithful to the usage in the Latin original, in this case.17 Perhaps these intertextual and casual uses of forms of expono dilute the force of Elizabeth's own exposition. On the other hand, they may act as license for her to engage in what has been generally reserved for clerics. That clerics have this prerogative is evidenced in the Middle English by the unique instance when the translator takes a liberty with expoune. The Abbot of St. Trond (114/40) is referred to as "treue expowner of e virgyns woordys" (115/4-5) where the Latin reads "certus interpres" (373/39). This, too, may act as a corrective to any attenuation of the sense of expono. And if, "as if sche expounyd" is anxious, such anxiety has disappeared by the closing statement, suggesting a shift in the writer's affective orientation to the processes of exposition. From casual to tentative to the unequivocal "Wherfore this virgyne . . . figures & expounes" (118/26-28) ["effigiat et exponit" (378/27)]: so moves the logic of persuasion. Even as the matter under exposition shifts from text to virgin to scripture, the persuasive force of the text picks up momentum, and the writer's "this virgyne . . . figures and expounes . . . in hir body" suggests that he has been swayed by the rhetorical strategies of his own exposition of Elizabeth's exposition.

    The referential instability of expounyd is also characteristic of shewiþ, although while expounyd usually refers to text (3 out of 5 times), shewiþ usually refers to Elizabeth's reproductions of the Passion (8 out of 10 times). However, the question of agency, that is, who is doing the showing, is much more

    The schewiþ of the writer's summary statement performs a curious improvisation on doubling as well: "Wherfore this virgyne, whose lyfe is alle mirakil, . . . as hit schewiþ by the abouen writynge, figures and expounes not allonly Cryste" (118/26-28). Again, who is doing the showing is an issue: the text, the abouen writynge, is supposedly effective in itself, and the writer, dutifully observing a modesty topos, is removed from the circuit. This sentence presents yet further opportunities for the convergence of text and body. The complex syntax, in which three dependent clauses stand between the subject this virgyne and the verbs figure and expoune, allows the writer's reference to the text, the abouen writynge, which comes immediately before the verbs, to intrude on them and conflate virgyne and writynge. Even the visual similarity between virgyne and writynge participates in this, and the aboue writynge, a common way of refering to preceding text with a vertical spatial metaphor, slides in to the aboue virgyne, the Elizabeth of the preceding text, and the Elizabeth whom the text constructs as acquainted with the vertical.

2. The Problem of ravischynge and rysing

    The second sentence of the writer's summary statement sets up a parallel construction:

This pattern governs the third sentence as well:

In woundes and peynes she affermiþ þe feith of þe passyone,

in ioye and myrþe after peyne gladnes of þe resurrexyone,

in rauishynge þe ascencyone,

in rodynes of hir reuelacyouns she figurith þe sendyne of þe holy goost,

& spritual lyfe and of þe sacramente of þe auter and of confessyon, & þen

of desyres of alle

mennes saluacyone,

& of sorowe of vnkyndenes

& dampnacyone of

mankynde. (118/26-38)18

    In these parallel constructions, the governing verbs, as I have suggested earlier, point to a rhetorics and poetics of Elizabeth's body and behavior, reading from that body and its practices performative speech. In the earlier quotation, Elizabeth figures and expounes; here she representys, she affirmeþ and again she figurith. The third sentence of affirming and figuring is extremely complex, and its wandering syntax presents an assortment of approximations between human act and theological event or ecclesiastical practice. In all but one case, the initial prepositional phrases have two objects; in all but one case, the object of the verb is modified by one or even several more prepositional phrases. For example, wounds and pains affirm not the Passion, but faith in the Passion; joy and mirth after pain affirm not the Resurrection, but the gladness of the Resurrection. Syntactical complexity works strategically to maintain the fissure between human act, divine suffering and triumph, and divine dispensation of spirit, sacraments and judgment. The exception in this complex syntactical structure is the phrase in rauishynge þe ascencyone, under the somewhat distant governing verb she affermiþ. Ellision of this verb has already occurred once so that the discursive tie between act and affirmation is weakened. However, the unmediated character of this phrase, in rauishynge þe ascencyone, neither verbs nor prepositional qualifiers, suggests a unique hermeneutical fusion, an identity between Elizabeth's ravishing and Christ's Ascension that is unlike any other affirming or figuring that the writer claims of Elizabeth's other bodily practices.

    The language of rising is, of course, deeply embedded in Christian talk. And while the writer evokes it quite straightforwardly, he does not commit in the early sentences of the vita the conflation of his summary statement. He does prepare for it, however. For details of this preparation, I return to an early point of the vita, to the first descriptions of how Elizabeth observes the hours: "At mydnyghte, soþely, sche ryseþ, to knowleche wonderfully þe begynnynge of

    Once Elizabeth is up and walking, Phillip describes how her activities reherce not only the seizure in Gethsemane and the scourging before Pilate, but also the Mass. Elizabeth hits herself on the cheeks with both hands and the strokes are loud and clear; and so instead of psalms, Elizabeth this way "solempnyzes þe watches of the firste nocturne" (108/30-31). For lessons, she pulls her clothes about violently; she grimaces, makes a fist and hits herself again on the cheek, on the head, between her shoulders, and on her neck, and dashes her head to the ground. She drags herself about by the hair and attacks her own eyes. Finally, Elizabeth "wrappeþ hir-selfe downe to þe grounde ypon her backe . . . as forto reste hir fro grete charge of trauelle; so þat þen sche hath no power of bodily strengþis, but syghes after hevenly and goostly solas, and goþ in spirit unto god. And after þat communly longe space of rest and swoghe sche ryseþ up as wele & fully counforted" (109/22-27). After performing the Passion, then, Elizabeth rests. At first it appears that resting, which is also over-exposed, is a complement to rising, and that swoons are a complement to ravishings. But a ravishing soon takes over this swoon, apparently changing the bodily demonstrations of rest.

    It is in the context of this reverberative description that the first two references to Elizabeth's weakness (Bynum's imbecillitas) are located, and these references are involved in the above-mentioned syntactic delays. The writer's biographical note follows a description of Elizabeth's movement: she "goth oute swiftly of hir bedde, and walkith in here chaumbyr with a merueylous and a manerly goynge, as hit is trowed, with aungels ledynge" (108/6-8). This rather vague description is qualified and interpreted by its contrary in the ensuing biographical note. When she was five, Elizabeth "was holden with so mikel febilness [imbecillitate tenetur] of body and lymmes" (108/9) that she hadn't the strength to flee the house that burned around her. The writer next remarks on Elizabeth's self-mortification since that time as evidence of her virginity, admits that he speaks from hearsay, but emphasizes that the activities he is about to relate "come not of hir strengthe, but of a priue vertue of god" (108/20-21). Elizabeth's "merueylous and manerly goynge" is due to divine intervention, is strong, and cancels weakness. Febilness is replaced by priue vertue, imbecillitas by divina et occulta virtute (364/19-20). This pattern governs the second reference to weakness, which takes up the thread broken by the biographical note: "atte mydnyghte after hir raueschynge sche ryseth merueylously stronge to suffre labour and peyne, þat was byfore in body weyke & unmyghty [quantum ad statum corporis erat prorsus impotens et penitus imbecillis]. And whanne sche is vp . . . þan sche walkeþ . . ." (108/21-26). The pattern of ravishment, rising, strength, and reference to former weakness also occurs at the third reference to Elizabeth's weakness.19

    This is a Pauline pattern, both spiritually and rhetorically: weakness provides the conditions for demonstrations of divine power; ravishment, strength, former weakness is the order of explication. Paul's reference to his own unexplainable experience in 2 Corinthians establishes this: "I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses" (2 Cor. 12:2-5).20 Paul's references to ravishment and rising (being "caught up") precede discussion of weakness (in this case, infirmitas) and discussion of weakness elicits divine engagement: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9). Similarly, Elizabeth of Spalbeek's febilness receives divine compensation.

    There are, however, weaknesses in the text that do not receive such divine compensation. Elizabeth's partially realized eschaton stands over and against the writer's rhetorically weak not-yet. The writer describes himself and his text as weak and unmighty, and by intruding such self-descriptions into the narrative, he opens a window for an infusion of divine strength, for a personal rauischynge or a rauischynge of the text. Here we return to imbecillitas once more, whose fourth occurrence modifies the metonym for our writer, that febil penne

    The complexity and repetition of such phrases, usually dismissed as formulaic, beg for longer exposition than I can do here. The writer's final statement calls for a few more comments, however: "þat atte is writen abouve, declariþ openly inowg þat þou, man, art vnexcusabil . . . þere is git mykel to be writen of this mater; but nede of occupacyouns and we(i)kness of body makeþ me to putte vp my penne [sed necessitas occupationum et propria corporis imbecillitas necessario claudi stilum]" (118/38-43). I have already remarked on the conflation of the aboue writing with the above virgin, who stands like a spirit over these last words, and on the intersections between the virgin, pen, and writer effected by weakness. The writer puts up his pen; he puts up his pen due to weikness of body. He needs to rest. In a text so committed to the vertical, so careful to construct the violences and joys of a virgin's ravished body, we cannot take the writer's putting up or weakness lightly. Up, like the geographical pivot in Elizabeth's day, is a marker here, too, signalling a moment of expectation. The weakness of text and writer are laid bare, like a prayer, a petition for a rauishynge.

    The external signs of rauischynge are abundantly reproduced in Phillip's text, time and time again. For example: "After þat, when þe ende of turment comeþ, in as mykel as in her is sche restith . . . as she were alle overcomen and anentized . . . sche makith sobbyngs and sighes, as a body schulde dye. þen, for-sooþ, as sche schulde geeld þe gost, sche is rausched and restith alle her body. . . . And tille þat while she is comunly longe rauysched, and noon oþer þinge is seen in her but starkenes of mymbrys, . . . as hit were a deed body. Atte þe last our lorde, þat slees and qwykenes, . . . restorith hir ageyn to lyfe" (109/35-45). In these reproductions, the problem of rauischynge and rysing shortly becomes the problem of rauischynge and death, for the external signs of ravishing look far more like death than they look like the Ascension. Reference to the Lord who

3. Verticals and Powers

    I have developed a habit in my reading of circling all parts of speech that signify verticality or degrees of verticality. Evelyn Underhill's compendious Mysticism is of course peppered with such vertical parts of speech, and Madame Guyon, to whom Underhill refers with condescension a number of times, suffers from this textual practice. In a sea of verticals, Madame Guyon "bask(s) like a pious tabby cat in the beams of the Uncreated Light."23 That this domesticated horizontalism is less worthy, less valuable than the ecstatics of Catherine of Genoa or Julian of Norwich, is the point, and it is sent home by this feline image of static recumbancy.

    We live in a culture where higher is better and high is best, and our contemporary verticalized scales of value, deeply rooted in the past, were elaborated with enthusiasm in the Middle Ages. But if high has more value, what are the terms? More value in the Book of Nature? in religious experience? in conceptual systems? in political environments? Is there any leakage from one system to another? If Elizabeth of Spalbeek participated in the vertical of rauischynges, were there other areas in which she made incursions into social or political scales of value? I have interrograted Bynum's use of a single source; how does such an interrogation inform a reading of Bynum's broad thesis

    Earlier I have referred to the doubled significations of Elizabeth's bodily figurations. Among those doubles are her representations of multiple personages: she figures not only Christ and Christ crucified in her body, but also the enemy tormenting; not only the figurative body of Christ, the church, but also Mary, and even John the Evangelist. In a sense, these are ahistorical figurations. To get at the question of empowerment, we have to enter history, and in Elizabeth's local history, we find that not only does she figure Christ, she figures priests. This last figuration, not identified directly by the writer but implied in several descriptions of Elizabeth's conversations, indicates that through her rauischynges, which are identified as a source of knowledge, Elizabeth had an effect on ecclesiastical practice.

    In the foregoing summary statement whose syntax I have examined, Elizabeth's figuring of the sacraments of the altar and confession suggests a priestly role; however, the deletion of the foundational sacrament of baptism destabalizes this figuration. Elizabeth's conversations are perhaps the basis of this figuring, for in those conversations she takes on some priestly responsibilities. For example, two young men come to visit her and ask her to pray for them. She responds that she will do so, if they will abide by her counseyle (116/17). The two young men promise to do so, and Elizabeth's counseyle follows: "Goo shryue gow of goure synnes & doþ penauns, & I schal praye (for) gow wiþ good wille; or elles I wolde not entermete me þere-of, for I schulde trauel in veyne" (116/18-20). One of these young men she sends off to join the Cistercians, of whom the text reports: "often and bysely hee wolde be schreuen and as many tymes as hee myghte, hee wolde be atte masse ful deuoute, and in sympilnesse of obedyens and innocens, as men myghte see, he passed his felawes" (116/38-41). The second young man came to see Elizabeth again in three days and was greeted with a scold, "git arte þou not schreuene. þou has don folily, for þou abidiþ to schryue thee. Why taryes þou? why feynes þou? þe deuyl is ful slye, & þou knowith not þe poynte of þy deth" (116/45-48). The next day the young man was shriven. In these two instances, Elizabeth, not having the power to confess the two young men, sends them off to those who do. What is remarkable in both cases is that Elizabeth's injunctions are based on personal revelations about the state of souls. She sends the first young men to the Cistercians because, as the writer explains, "she knewe hym in state of hem þat shalbe saued" (116/34); the second, as she knows through personal revelation, has not yet been to confession.

    This quasi-sacerdotal role is reinforced by two more events. The Abbot of St. Trond visits her after evensong on St. Barnaby's Day in 1266, when she asks him what feast is on the morrow. He, through the "negligens of his chapleyne" (117/23) responds that there is none. The writer remarks: "'gis certeynly,' quod sche, 'þere is maad a grete feste in paradys of a grete lorde.' þe abbot herde þat and loked a kalender; & seyde euensonge of þe feste" (117/24-26). The second event also depends on personal revelation, on information gained in a rauischynge.

    These four examples suggest that during rauischynges Elizabeth gained access to secret knowledge about members of her community, and that such secret knowledge, in addition to her bodily practices, gained her some authority. She used that authority in the case of the two young men and the Abbot to encourage confession and proper observance of the liturgical calendar. It is difficult to claim, however, that any of these acts constituted anything but momentary incursions into hierarchies of priestly power. Perhaps what Elizabeth did was use the vertical to tidy up the ecclesiastical horizontal. Still, a few such ancient moments of ecclesiastical rising form the barest outline of a not-yet realized priesthood of women; the subversion hasn't happened, it is still in the making.