1. There is some dispute about when Elizabeth died. Valerie M. Lagorio says 1316;
see "The Medieval Continental Women Mystics: An Introduction," in An Introduction to the
Medieval Mystics of Europe, ed. Paul Szarmach (Albany, 1984), p. 175. Caroline Walker
Bynum indicates "d. after 1274"; see Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley, 1987), p. 119.
According to Joanna Ziegler, that date is "d. ca. 1300"; see "Reality as Imitation," in Maps of
Flesh and Light, ed. Ulrike Wiethaus (Syracuse, 1993), p. 121). Horstmann's list of the
contents of Douce 114 says 1266, as does the Explicit to the life; see C. Horstmann, ed.,
"Prosalegenden: Die legenden des MS. Douce 114," Anglia 8 (1885), 102-96.
2. Douce 114 is the unique Middle English translation of Elizabeth's Latin life, and
also includes, in order of compilation after Elizabeth's life, ME versions of the vitae of Christina
Mirabilis, Marie d'Oignies, a letter in support of the canonization of Catherine of Siena, and, not
included in Anglia 8, Henry Suso's Orologium Sapiencie.
3. Bynum, Holy Feast, and Fragmentation and Redemption (New
York, 1991). Bynum's references to Elizabeth, in the main body of Holy Feast, occur in
Chapter 4, in a discussion of a literalized imitatio Christi, which included stigmata, fasting,
and unusual exudings or lack of them (p. 119-22); in Chapter 6, in a discussion of pain,
spirituality, and "insanity" (p. 209); and in Chapter 8, in a discussion of how St. Francis's and
Mary of Oignies' stigmata affected the processes of imitatio (p. 256). In
Fragmentation, the only reference to Elisabeth is in a footnote on spirituality and "insanity"
(p. 373, n. 36).
4. Lagorio, "The Medieval Continental Women Mystics," pp. 161-93. Lagorio
page 101
situates Elizabeth in the group of Medieval Low Countries
religious women who received the stigmata. Lagorio remarks that the translation into Middle
English of Elizabeth's life, with those of Mary of Oignie and Christina Mirabilis, provides
"evidence of their reputation for sanctity" (175). Lagorio's information led me to a reading of
Douce 114, which she cites.
5. This is the date used in W. Simons and J.E. Ziegler, "Phenomenal Religion in the
Thirteenth Century and Its Image: Elisabeth of Spalbeek and the Passion Cult," Studies in
Church History 27 (1990), 118.
6. "Vita Elizabeth sanctimonialis in Erkenrode, Ordinis Cisterciensis, Leodiensis
dioecesis," in Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum Bibliothecae regiae Bruxellensis,
Subsidia hagiographica 1, vol 1, pt. 1 (Brussels, 1886), 346-47 and 362-78. The published life of
Elizabeth is based on the fifteenth century Codex signatus no 2864-71; vitae of Angela of
Foligno and Brother Roger precede Elizabeth's. The manuscript bears inscriptions of ownership:
"Liber monasterii Rube‘vallis in Zonia prope Bruxellam" (p. 346). Five Latin manuscripts of
Elizabeth's vita are listed by Patricia Deery Kurtz in "Mary of Oignies, Christine the
Marvelous, and Medieval Heresy," Mystics Quarterly 14 (1988), 186-96. These are
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 138 (fourteenth century); Cambridge, Jesus College MS
24 (fourteenth century); Durham, Durham Cathedral Library MS B.IV.39 (fifteenth century,
fragment); Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 240 (fourteenth century, with excerpts of the life
of Mary of Oignies, and the life of Christine the Marvelous); Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley
694 (thirteenth or fourteenth century, fragment).
7.Holy Feast, p. 389, n. 59; this note also refers to Ida of Louvain, whom a
priest, "says the hagiographer, feared was insane . . . Ida of L‚au showed similar eucharistic
madness. Her hagiographer calls her behavior insanity." At p. 390, n. 73, this previous footnote
is referenced "For insanity, see above, n. 59."
8. Slight variations of the quoted sentence occur in Holy Feast, p. 369, n.
44, and Fragmentation, p. 373, n. 36 (under the index entry insania amoris).
9.Holy Feast, p. 209. Bynum repeats this generalization in a discussion of
the sensuality of medieval women's imitatio: "Some women were driven to what their
contemporaries called insanity and others mutilated themselves while in ecstasy" (p. 249).
10. According to Horstmann's introduction in Anglia, the Middle English
translator of the life of Elizabeth of Spalbeek is unknown.
11. There are, to be sure, "vertical" aspects in the figuration of altered states of
consciousness, even of psycho-pathological states of dissociation. These I explore in my
dissertation, "Getting High: On the Literary Uses of the Vertical."
12. Alexandra Barratt, Women's Writing in Middle English (London, 1992),
p. 13-14.
13. Simons and Ziegler, "Phenomenal Religion," p. 124.
page
102
14.The Rule of St. Benedict, trans. Anthony C. Meisel and M. L. del
Mastro (New York, 1975), p. 66.
15. The Latin life contains at least 15 biblical citations; the ME version has three.
The Latin life also makes direct reference to authoritative figures in the tradition (Ambrose and
Francis, among others), which are omitted from the ME.
16. This line continues "and many passyouns of the virgyn turmentyd" (113/10-11).
Elizabeth schewith in Douce 114 not only Jhesu, but also Mary, the enmye, and
John the Evangelist. That she shows multiple personages is part of her bodily rhetorical excess;
that she does so also qualifies a description of her performances as imitatio Christi.
189.
17. For the sake of brevity, only phrases of the Latin text and the ME version are
given here: "quoniam superius exposita" (368/23) is translated as "many þinges þat
are expounyd byfore" (111/8); "sunt aliquantuium planius exponenda" (369/33) as "hit schalbe
expounyd more pleynly" (112/22); "superius expositis totam illam horam" (370/38-39) as "as it is
expounyd byfore" (113/38). With reference to Elizabeth; the above mentioned "as if sche
expounyd" translates "ac si illud evangelicum nobis exponeret" (370/23), and the closing
"Wherfore this virgyne . . . figures & expounes not allonly Cryste" (118/26-28) translates
"Nostra igitur virgo . . . effigiat et exponit" (378/27).
18. The Latin construction is as follows: "in stigmatibus et poenis fidem astruit
passionis; in julio et jocunditate post poenam, resurrectionis; in raptibus, ascensionis; in rubore et
revelationibus et spirituali vita, Spiritus sancti missionis. De sacramento autem altaris et
confessionis et tunc de desiderio salutis omnium et dolore ingratitudinis et absortionis absolutionis
humani generis, satis supradicta declarant" (378/30-34).
19. "After þat sche has walked soo a good while in hir chaumbir. . ., she
leyþ hir-selfe downe to the grounde. . ., and so she restith a good space, alle starke, in a
rauischynge. And þenne sche . . . knokkith hir owne breste with so harde strokes . . .,
þat alle þat se haue mykel meruayle and deme hit aboue mannes myghte, how o
persone maye booþ smyte and soffre so many, soo swifte and heuy strokes, þogh hee
hadde prosperite of nature, age, helle & complexion. Whiche of þese I schalle calle
moor merueilos, I woot note, in suche a febil and freel creature [circa tam imbecillem et
fragilem creaturam]: . . . . Neþeles I trowe þat hit is to be committid alle to god
. . . namely sithen the same virgyne, as hit is seyde byfore, whanne sche commith to hir-selfe or is
lafte to hir-selfe, wantys bodily strengthes" (111/23-39).
20. Biblical quotations are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV),
eds. Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy (New York, 1991).
21. Horstmann suggests weiknesse as an amendation of werknesse
(118/42); obviously I have reasons to support this.
22. Carolyn Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys (Oxford, 1987), p. 22.
23. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (Oxford, 1993), p. 247.
