Chapter Four: Mothers and Families
In his work The Body and Society, Peter Brown poses this interpretive option for scholars of ancient texts: “Rather, they [the Apocryphal Acts]
reflect the manner in which Christian males of that period partook in the deeply ingrained tendency of all men in the ancient world, to use women ‘to think with.’ ”
Brown’s approach resembles Douglas’s notion that considerations for the human body reflect larger concerns within the body politic. Drawing also on the conclusions of the structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Brown argues that male authors present women as a means to verbalize concerns for Christian identity in a seductive pagan society. His project, like current feminist scholarship, approaches women as literary constructions employed by male authors to didactic ends.
Cameron, for example, relates late antiquity’s obsession with the virginal body to the political purity and security of the Christian empire.
Feminine imagery reveals not only social expectations of women but also political and theological designs promoted by a male elite.
Such a methodology affords a better understanding of how hagiographers and theologians of Christianity and Islam used the image of Mary and Fatima. Medieval writers certainly intended their models to provide guides for women to imitate; yet they also employed Mary and Fatima to think about matters of politics and theology. By using Mary and Fatima as symbols to think with, medieval authors articulated ideals of orthodoxy or rightness. Male writers developed the notions of right doctrine, right communities, and right gender.
Early Christian and Shi`ite theologians formulated their doctrinal orthodoxy by explaining Mary’s and Fatima’s role as holy mother to their holy families. Each group’s rightness refers to the nascent religious identity evolving among their own ranks; it does not imply universal recognition of a true or pristine Christianity or Islam. In the specific case of Shi`ism, for example, Shi`ite Muslims were neither demographically dominant in the Muslim world nor (except for a brief time during the mid-tenth century) politically successful in the medieval period. Doctrinal orthodoxy applies to the specific theology and ideology shaped by religious thinkers about their own rightness, their own identity. By highlighting Mary’s and Fatima’s relationship with their sublime progeny, these authors fashioned feminine authorities on matters of theology and morality. Mary, as the mother of God, gave expression to the nature of Christ; and Fatima, as the Imams’ mother, verified the status of the ahl al-bayt. Right doctrine became flesh in both Mary and Fatima.
As doctrinal orthodoxy developed and became a matter of identity, both the Christian and Shi`ite communities needed to clarify their boundaries and sharpen their polemics against the other or the heretic. Although cogent theological statements in the early medieval period certainly exist, many dogmatic statements and concerns are embedded in texts about women. As medieval authors distinguished their own nascent communities from unorthodox ones, they used identification with holy women as a marker.
Hagiographers reified Mary’s and Fatima’s heavenly attributes in terms of miraculous maternity and domestic deftness. As the female was increasingly identified as the core of the family unit, she also emerged as a politically galvanizing symbol for the group she represented. With the establishment of a matriarchal figure at its center, what might otherwise be just another political faction was transformed into a spiritual family - the social group that creates the deepest affective bond among its members. Although both groups sought to create a spiritual community, Christian and Shi`ite hagiographers exalted two very different styles of motherhood. The Christian theologians’ Mother Mary extolled a more sublime maternal model wherein the bride wed a heavenly Bridegroom and often (but not always) adopted a life of chastity. This path was a path of perfection. Shi`ite authors offered Fatima as a more practical model for Muslim wives and mothers to emulate; Islam lauded temporal marriage and motherhood over the more symbolic, spiritual pattern followed by monastics.
The Merovingians employed the Christian maternal image to provide themselves with a political pedigree in the sixth and seventh centuries. The new Frankish dynasty converted to Christianity and vigorously employed Christian symbols as a means of authorization among the Gallo-Roman elite they supplanted. Frankish texts sanctioned female monasticism and Merovingian rule by adapting abbesses and queens to a Marian heavenly prototype, thereby identifying Merovingian holy women as maternal and nurturing intercessors. They remade their queens into royal mothers and their abbesses into new Marys. Those outside of Frankish royal bonds - the Goths, the laity, or the Arians - lacked membership in the elite and presumably blessed and favored group.
Classical and medieval Shi`ite texts likewise converted Fatima into the mystical nexus of the holy family, equating orthodoxy with familial membership. The early Shi`ite community envisioned itself as members (and defenders) of the ahl al-bayt, a type of extended family with Fatima at its center. While the community might be persecuted in this world, these righteous kin would certainly receive their reward in paradise. As sublime matriarch, Fatima identified her supporters and adopted kin and then cast all pretenders into the hellfire. Shi`ite hadith accentuated Fatima’s maternal role with gendered images of miraculous parturition, suckling, and food replication.
It is impossible to deny that theologians also intended Mary and Fatima as orthodox gender models for all pious women to imitate. As matriarchs (and idealized virgins, mothers, and brides), Mary and Fatima draw their authority from the private domestic sphere, a space ideally regulated by public male figures. Priests, Imams, and Shi`ite clerics arrogate to themselves public authority by symbolically negotiating between the domestic sphere and public space. Pious women, emulating Mary and Fatima, thus should yield (at least in theory) to the altar servants and religious scholars sanctioned by God.
Sublime Brides, Pious Mothers, and Holy Families Even though early Christian theologians praised virginal asceticism, they also elevated marriage and motherhood as pious vocations. Even Jerome admitted that brides and mothers would inherit their heavenly reward, although it would be significantly less than virgins and chaste widows.
Theologians again found their didactic icon in Mary; the Blessed Virgin, elevated for her docile submission to God’s will, also reigned as Christ’s Bride and Mother.
As such she provided not so much a practical model for secular brides and wives but a spiritual ideal for Christ’s monastic spouses. Though Mary’s identification with the Bride of Christ only reached its zenith during the high and late Middle Ages, especially with the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux,
late antique and early medieval exegetes laid the theological foundation.
Christian Scriptures are replete with bridal images. Old Testament prophets often described the covenant between Yahweh and Israel as a marriage pact. Isaiah proclaims: “For as a young man marries a young woman so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (62.5). Ezekiel and Jeremiah warn Israel not to forget her bridal responsibilities or commit adultery with other nations’ gods (Jer. 2.32). Likewise, New Testament disciples identify Christ as the Bridegroom (Matt. 9.15; Mark 2.18-20; Luke 5.33-35) and Paul defines the church as Christ’s bride (Eph. 5.25-33; 2 Cor. 11.2).
Early church fathers emphasized these nuptial images and furthered the Pauline metaphor by correlating the church/ecclesia with the Virgin Mary. They explained that the Song of Songs’ bridal figure (already associated with the ecclesia) signified Mary herself. In a rather ironic twist, patristic authors thus identified the Virgin with the pure, unstained Bride from the canon’s most sexual text. The Song of Songs opens with the plea, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” and continues with visions of perfumes, wine, beauty, and desire. Amid images similar to the Islamic paradisiacal description, the lover (Bride) and beloved (Bridegroom) express their mutual affections. The lover describes him: “His head is the finest gold; his locks are wavy, black as a raven. His eyes are like doves beside springs of water, bathed in milk, fitly set” (Song of Songs 5.11-12). He is like “a bag of myrrh that lies between my breasts . a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En-gedi” (1.13-14). The beloved extols his bride’s beauty: “Your lips are like crimson thread, and your mother is lovely. . Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies. . You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you” (4.3-7).
The Song of Songs boldly approaches sensuality and sexuality and develops intense emotion between two equal participants. The bride and bridegroom’s mutual desire, however, remains unsatisfied. As the bride searches the streets for her beloved and as the bridegroom disappears from the lover’s door, they only contemplate each other’s charms. Unlike the Islamic paradisiacal promotion of sexual bliss, love’s power remains in its desire: “love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fi re, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it” (8.6). Christian exegetes argued that the Song of Songs promotes an eschatological vision of the church’s own anticipation for the return of its beloved Bridegroom. Even in this context of sensuality and desire, the church (and Mary) retains its virginal purity only in expectation of its heavenly consummation.
Ambrose was perhaps the first church father to correlate Mary with the Song of Songs’ perfect, spotless bride. He compared the first display of desire, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” (1.2) with the Annunciation event. The “kiss” of the Holy Spirit encompassed Mary and she conceived the God-Man.
Song of Songs 1.2-3 continues, “your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out.” This, Ambrose said, further signifies the anointed Mary and the virgin birth: “she conceived as a virgin and as a virgin brought forth good odour, that is to say the Son of God.”
A fifth-century student of Augustine expanded the exegetical correlation between Mary and Christ’s bride by identifying her with the woman mentioned in Revelation 12.1: “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”
This apocalyptic figure had only been recognized as the church that would descend as the new Jerusalem, or “the holy city . prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21.1). The fifth-century conflation of Mary and the eschatological woman of Revelation - previously labeled the church - underscored her identification with the heavenly ecclesia. Ambrose and Augustine transformed Mary into a symbol of the church most thoroughly. In his exegesis on Luke, Ambrose examined Christ’s final words to Mary and John: “ ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to his disciple, ‘Here is your mother’ ” (John 19.26-27). He suggested that Christ’s pronouncement correlated Mary with the church: Mary now acted as the universal matron of all disciples, represented by John, and as Christ’s Bride.
Both theologians also emphasized Mary’s maternal fecundity without jeopardizing her perpetual virginity.
As a metaphor for the church, Mary provided for the intersection of fecundity and virginity. Just as Mary delivered Christ, pure and sinless, so too would the church produce pure Christians. Augustine provides the most detailed image of the Mary-church parallel:
Let your heart accomplish in the law of Christ what Mary’s womb wrought in the flesh of Christ. How are you not included in the child-bearing of the Virgin since you are members of Christ? Mary brought forth your Head; the church, you His members. For the church, too, is both mother and virgin: mother by the bowels of charity, virgin by the integrity of faith and piety. She brings forth diverse peoples, but they are members of Him whose body and spouse she is, and even in this respect she bears the likeness of the Virgin because in the midst of many she is the mother of unity.
The church and Mary share the same pious duties. Both remain pure in body and soul yet fertile in charity and conversion.
The church fathers’ expansion of Marian imagery in an emerging Christology and ecclesiology also offered a feminine image of submission and obedience. By surveying Mary’s actions as mother, the Fathers articulated a feminine ideal of radical compliance. When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced her impending pregnancy, she replied: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1.38). Mary’s acceptance became the exemplary model for all the “Lord’s handmaidens,” both virginal and married.
Arabo-Muslim culture has also promoted marriage and motherhood as sacred vocations; and, as in Christianity, the status of bride and mother can be viewed as both empowering and confining. According to Muslim theology, for example, the male and female complement each other as two aspects of a single being. Qur’an 4.1 states, “O humanity! Fear your Guardian Lord, Who created you from a single person, created, out of it, his mate, and from them twain scattered (like seeds) countless men and women.” Before created time males and females composed a single being and will be reunited in the marriage contract: husbands and wives essentially complete each other. Marriage represents an expression of tawhid (divine unity) - returning to the oneness of creation from diversity and division.
While marriage between men and women might symbolize cosmogonic unity and completion, social mores nonetheless make strict distinctions between men and women and masculine and feminine space. Tradition relegates women to home and hearth, identifying the feminine with the private and secluded. In like manner tradition proclaims this female space forbidden (haram) to men outside the proscribed kinship boundaries. Strict clothing customs also enforce the social demarcations between the sexes. Men must cover the area between navel and lower thigh; women are removed from the masculine gaze by means of veiling or complete seclusion.
The gendering of space and dress firmly establishes expectations of the sexes: males, in the end, should look and act like men, and women should look and act like women.
This operates in a larger, divine hierarchy revealed by Allah wherein the woman resides under masculine authority and maintenance. Male householders able to negotiate between private and public space are commended as “the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength than the other), and because they support them from their means” (Qur’an 4.34).
The house (bayt) serves as feminized space and the locus of domestic sacrality. Herein Allah bestows grace and blessing via progeny, especially male progeny. Marriage socializes the theology of completion and in certain respects objectifies women as childbearers. Women purvey divine favor by producing offspring while residing under the male householders’ custodianship. Mothers receive recompense in the afterlife; the Prophet, for example, proclaimed that “paradise is under the heels of the mother.”
Women who die in childbirth receive the same heavenly rewards as those warriors who die in jihad. Women resume their earthly domestic status in paradise as they remain faithful to their husbands and nurturers to their children.
Fatima, as archetypal mother, displays many of these attributes: she remains closely aligned with the domestic sphere, she bears coveted male children to the Imam `Ali, and she ultimately submits to `Ali’s custodianship.
The Prophet emphasizes Fatima’s submissive qualities in one description of her eschatological duties. According to Shi`ite tradition, Muhammad will lead and intercede on behalf of faithful Muslim males before Allah’s throne on judgment day. He commissions Fatima to lead the faithful women who not only perform the ritual requirements of Islam (prayer, fasting, alms, and hajj) but also “obey their husbands.”
Fatima’s submission to `Ali provides a sublime example for women to imitate. One transmitter noted that Fatima’s appellation al-haniya, the compassionate, indicates her sympathy for her children and obedience to her husband.
Unlike Mary, Fatima provides a practical model for women to imitate, available for all wives and mothers instead of a monastic audience married only to a spiritual bridegroom.
The circumstances surrounding Fatima’s marriage to `Ali are sometimes difficult to distinguish. Both Sunni and Shi`ite hadith describe the marriage contract and wedding ceremony between Fatima and `Ali, although they vary as to when the union actually took place. Most accounts claim the marriage occurred in 623 after the Battle of Badr (the early Muslims’ first significant victory against the still unconverted Meccans).
There is even less agreement as to Fatima’s age at the time of betrothal: various authors place her between nine and twenty-one years old.
All sources, however, confirm that the wedding was most distinguished by the poverty of the Prophet’s family.
According to hadith, `Ali provided a meager dowry of either his coat of mail (dir`, worth 4 dirhams, 300 dirhams, or 400 dirhams), or a sheepskin and a garment.
On `Ali and Fatima’s wedding night, Muhammad visited and blessed their marriage by sprinkling water across their upper bodies.
That night, and many others as well, the young couple slept atop an untanned sheepskin with a covering too small to reach from head to toe.
Shi`ite hadith embellish descriptions of terrestrial poverty with cosmological significance. Before `Ali proposed, for example, other suitors approached Muhammad offering extravagant dowries for Fatima.
Muhammad shunned their display and tossed pebbles at one of the suitors that miraculously became precious pearls.
The act reveals the Prophet’s true wealth and favor with Allah, not measurable against material fortune. Gabriel then descends and announces that Allah has already ordained Fatima’s marriage to `Ali.
The earthly poverty of Muhammad’s family is then refunded by celestial participation. According to one tradition, the paradisiacal wedding occurred in heaven forty days before the Medinan ceremony with Gabriel acting as the public speaker (khatib), Allah as guardian (wali), and angels as witnesses. The dowry (mahr) in heaven reflected the holy family’s true wealth: Fatima possessed one-half of the earth along with paradise and hell.
After the ceremony Allah caused the tuba tree in paradise to shed pearls, precious stones, and luxurious robes, which the houris gathered and continue to hold for Fatima until the day of resurrection.
Such a ceremony indicates not only the family’s divine favor but also Fatima’s eschatological significance: she presides over paradise and hell and consigns her family’s supporters to one and their enemies to the other.
The terrestrial ceremony was no less significant. Shi`ite traditions relate the appearance of heavenly maidens and houris transporting perfumes, exotic fruits (not tasted by mortal man since the time of Adam), and various spices. Gabriel and/or Michael attended, calling down from heaven the takbir, or “God is Great, allahu akbar.”
According to Shi`ite exegetes, this terrestrial ceremony simultaneously reflects the family’s wealth in paradise and contributes the community’s sunna (custom). In contemporary marriage celebrations, for example, the exclamation “Allah is Great” is recited, and the dowry might be modeled after `Ali’s gift.
Fatima’s wedding provides the archetypal ceremony for Shi`ite brides to imitate as well as heavenly rewards for which to strive.
Shi`ite traditions acknowledge that Fatima’s engagement and wedding were not completely without friction. Medieval transmitters such as al-Tusi, al-Kulayni, and al-Qummi report Fatima’s reluctance and even hostility toward `Ali’s proposal.
Fatima cries when Muhammad introduces her future husband and complains that he is unattractive and too poor. Muhammad then lists `Ali’s virtues and explains that Allah commands the union. Fatima, like the obedient Mary, piously accepts `Ali and expresses her happiness. Such rhetoric not only advances `Ali as Allah’s chosen and righteous agent but also models Fatima’s feminine compliance as she accepts both her father’s will and `Ali’s spousal authority. Legal scholars, both medieval and modern, use her wedding as proof that a woman’s permission is necessary in marriage.
Fatima’s largely traditional marriage does not completely distract from her unique status. She maintains her divine knowledge and prophetic insight, even to `Ali’s surprise. According to one tradition, Fatima received a book from paradise after her father died that outlined all world events from the beginning to the end of created time.
In another tradition, dated before Muhammad’s death, `Ali met Fatima and she said: “approach, [so that] I [may] tell you of what was, and what is, and of what is not until the day of resurrection when the [last] hour is manifest.”
`Ali was so surprised by his wife’s prophetic abilities that he immediately went to the Prophet and asked how she acquired them. Muhammad, without hesitation, reminded the Imam that Allah created Fatima from the same nur as themselves. This shared divine essence enabled Fatima to share many of the charismatic talents of the Imamate.
Shi`ite traditions elevate Fatima as the Mistress of Sorrows.
Fatima weeps, wails, and mourns the deaths of both her father and her son. In 632 Muhammad first tells Fatima of his impending death and then consoles her by promising that she shall soon follow (i.e., she will not be without him for long).
According to Shi`ite tradition, he then warned his daughter of the pathetic sufferings she would experience after his death. Abu Bakr and `Umar refused to recognize `Ali as Muhammad’s successor and, in an ultimate act of disgrace, denied Fatima the oasis of Fadak, land she claimed according to birthright.
After public humiliation, beatings, and a miscarriage, Fatima died as the Prophet foretold only six months after his death.
Fatima suffered most poignantly over her son Husayn’s martyrdom at Karbala. According to tradition, Fatima witnessed the Karbala tragedy from paradise. Ja`far al-Sadiq, the sixth Imam, described her reactions:
[F]or truly Fatima continues to weep for [Husayn], sobbing so loudly that hell would utter such a loud cry, which, had its keepers [the angels] not been ready for it . its smoke and fi re would have escaped and burned all that is on the face of the earth. Thus they contain hell as long as Fatima continues to weep . for hell would not calm down until her loud weeping had quieted.
Fatima wails so loudly that neither paradise nor hell are able to ignore Husayn’s catastrophic death.
As the weeping mother, Fatima reflects the gendered expectation of women in Arabo-Muslim death rituals.
Women traditionally wail and lament in public displays after the deaths of close family members. Many Muslims condemn this practice because it focuses on earthly instead of heavenly familial bonds, seems to challenge the will of Allah, and reveals a lack of faith. These critics point to several hadith that disparage loud and extravagant exhibitions and instead promote female saints who refused to wail after their children’s deaths.
As wailing is recognized as a female occupation, this contentious discourse casts women in the role of pious inferiority because they fail to accept tragic events as God’s plan.
At the same time women’s participation in funerary rites complements the usually male-identified methods of mourning, which include prayer and verbal compliance to Allah’s will. Women’s wailing affords a visual (and auditory) display of kinship ties, familial loyalty, and human emotion. In this sense, Fatima as the Mistress of Sorrows reveals a powerful and approachable archetypal mother who grants access to the ahl al-bayt: she recognizes those who share in Husayn’s sufferings and welcomes them into the “family of sorrows.”
This gendered discourse simultaneously contains feminine authority by relating it to the domestic and emotional spheres. Fatima’s position as virgin and mother thus complement each other: as virgin, Fatima signifies the perfectibility of paradise; as mother, she binds the terrestrial family of the Prophet to its paradisiacal counterpart. Joining the house of sorrows (bayt al-ahzan) on earth ensures a position in the house of sorrows in paradise through association with its most suffering Mother.
Right Doctrine
Medieval Christian and Shi`ite authors carefully crafted Mary and Fatima as holy matriarchs, continually mindful of their respective households, the church and bayt. Yet exact membership in those households needed explanation. What beliefs identified the true members from pretenders? Who really belonged in the sublime families? By exploring the relationship between matriarch and kin, theologians articulated their spiritual precepts more fully. In Christianity, for example, Ambrose and Augustine explained their Christology by depicting Mary’s miraculous conception and parturition; they also developed an ecclesiology by correlating Mary’s body with the church body (virgin and mother, pure and fecund).
Merovingian theologians were no different; they also devoted considerable effort to both defining Christian orthodoxy and locating potential heretical threats by invoking Marian rhetoric.
Gregory of Tours, for example, defends the doctrinally pure Catholic clergy against fraudulent Arians by describing their various miracles. In Glory of the Martyrs, he described the Arian-Huns’ siege of Bazas and the local bishop’s triumph through prayer. According to Gregory, the bishop prayed for relief from the enemy onslaught and God sent “men dressed in white” and a “great ball of fi re” to frighten the enemy king Gauseric. After the Huns deserted the battlefield, the bishop celebrated mass and noticed three drops, similar to crystal, hanging from the altar. He gathered them together and the three fused to form one exquisite gem.
By an obvious deduction it was evident that this had taken place in opposition to the evil heresy of Arianism, which was hateful to God and which was spreading at that time. It was furthermore acknowledged that the holy Trinity was bound in a single equality of power and could not be pulled apart by chattering [arguments].
By miraculous intervention, God revealed the real motivation behind the bishop’s success; it was a victory of orthodoxy over Arian heresy.
Hagiographers also emphasized orthodox theology against the Arians by repeated appellations of Mary and her role as the God-Man’s mother. These statements, ubiquitous and formulaic, introduced Christ in incontrovertibly orthodox terms. Gregory once presented Christ as one who, in the end, “deigned to be enclosed in the womb of Mary, ever virgin and ever pure, and the omnipresent and immortal Creator suffered Himself to be clothed in mortal flesh.”
Sometimes Mary played a more active role in the defense against heresy. Gregory recounts one Marian miracle that occurred “in the East” wherein a young Jewish boy attending mass with his friends received the holy Eucharist.
When he returned home, the young boy revealed his actions to his father, “an enemy of Christ and Lord and his laws.”
The Jewish father immediately tossed the boy into a blazing furnace despite the frenzied pleas of the mother. Neighboring Christians finally realized what was happening and interceded; they found the boy lounging unhurt on the flames “as if on very soft feathers.”
While God had protected the young boy just as he had protected the three Hebrews of the Old Testament, he condemned the father to the anguishing flames.
The boy professed afterward that “the woman sitting on the throne in that church where I received the bread” protected him inside the furnace.
Gregory concluded that the blessed Mary guarded the young communicant who then, “having acknowledged the Catholic faith, . believed in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Mary’s intervention expressed the Trinitarian orthodoxy, the potency of church sacraments, and salvific hope for “heretical” Jews.
The miracle story also might have been Gregory’s attempt to warn Jews against interfering with conversion. In the sixth century a renewed wave of anti-Semitism swept through Gaul: the Council of Agde (506) reiterated earlier restrictions against Jews and Christians intermarrying and eating together;
and Bishop Avitus of Clermont introduced forced expulsions and conversions in 576. Gregory, who had written several texts supporting the efforts to convert Jews, might have intended his miracle story as a warning against Jews in Clermont who sought revenge against the conversion efforts.
The Marian miracle promised swift and divine retribution for those who tried.
Merovingians also emphasized Mary’s role as mother and nurturer as they transformed themselves into Christianity’s new champions. Frankish women, in particular, became powerful Christian envoys resembling Christ’s Bride and Mother. Whereas late antique authors had demanded that women deny their sexuality, embrace virginity, and forsake their families (and pledge their patrimonies to the church), early medieval hagiographers positioned most holy women at the center of the family unit, both mundane and spiritual. This reflects the Frankish political milieu in which royal power resided in familial connections.
To recognize that hagiographers relegated their female subjects to the domestic sphere does not negate the influence and command that Frankish women wielded.
Uniquely, holy women shared this domestic space with their royal kings and kin. A woman’s power at court, for example, often depended on her loyal household servants, the strength of her regency over a minor child, and her family connections, not to mention her wealth. According to Frankish law codes, women could own land, and royal women often received land as part of their morgengaben, or bride-price. Personal land and control of royal treasuries translated into substantial power.
Hagiographies thus reveal a strong domestic core of royal might, with the holy woman, the sublime matriarch, carefully poised at its center. Although each royal household differed and each holy woman’s family and domestic experience was somewhat different, most biographers developed this matriarchal image by emphasizing their conversion efforts.
Merovingian authors hailed holy queens as great missionaries and peacemakers by recognizing and glorifying their efforts in the conversion of Frankish kings and subsequently their families. During the fifth and sixth centuries, residents of Gaul, faced with the Roman Empire’s transformation, had merged with the invading Franks to form a unique cultural experiment. By necessity, Gallo-Romans and Frankish “barbarians” united in one community ultimately defined by Christianity.
Queens usually transmitted this new faith, converting first their pagan kings and then their new communities.
Gregory of Tours describes the conversion of Merovingian King Clovis (d. 511) by transforming him into the “new Constantine” destined to convert his empire to Christianity.
Gregory merges Clovis’s spectacular victory over the Alamanni in 496 with Constantine’s legendary triumph at Milvian Bridge in 312; both received divine visions from God that led to conversion. After that conversion Clovis aligned himself with Saint Martin of Tours, the most popular of the Gallo-Roman patrons. He frequently visited Saint Martin’s relics, sent gifts to the saint’s shrine, and patronized the construction of various new pilgrimage sites.
Gregory also explains Queen Clothild’s persistent missionary fervor that prepared Clovis for his visionary experience. Clothild, of Gallo-Roman and Burgundian ancestry, appears as the archetypical nagging wife throughout Gregory’s history and her hagiographies.
When she married Clovis she constantly urged him to convert to orthodox Christianity for obvious spiritual and even political reasons.
Her ninth-century hagiographer commended her as the church’s protectress and missionary responsible for diverting Clovis from idolatry and Arianism.
Queen Clothild funded several basilicas and churches throughout Gaul and also sponsored the Parisian cult of Saint Genovefa, a fifth-century Gallo-Roman virgin who miraculously protected Paris against the Huns.
By associating the two holy women, hagiographers correlated Clothild’s own struggles against Germanic Arianism with the young saint Genovefa’s contentions with Hunnish barbarians.
Not only did Clothild serve as a fearless Genovefa against the Arian onslaught, she also offered her maternal care to her extended family in the newly conquered Frankland. In constructing this feminine ideal, hagiographers adopted a Marian vocabulary of virgin, mother, and bride and fashioned their queen as a numinous matriarch. Queen Clothild becomes a new Mary as the mother of the church. Her hagiographer describes the king’s baptismal scene: “For as was fitting in the pagan king’s approach to baptism, Saint Remigius took the lead as they entered playing the role of Jesus Christ and the holy Queen Clothild followed as the embodiment of God’s church.”
Just as Mary signified the redemptive body of the church, so too Queen Clothild offered redemption to the Frankish empire through the king and conversion efforts. Her hagiographer says, “Her sweetness softened the hearts of a pagan and ferocious people . and she converted them through blessed Remigius with her holy exhortations and unremitting prayers.”
Queen Clothild reflects Mary’s own salvific acts as mother of the church: each is hailed as queen and submissive handmaid.
Doctrinal regulation for both spiritual and political ends took a different path in Shi`ite Islam. Instead of proliferating lives of specific holy women, Shi`ite hagiographers emphasized the sublime status of Fatima and the holy family. Recognition of and acceptance into the ahl al-bayt served as an identity marker in early medieval Shi`ism much like baptism in Christianity. Through associating with the house of sorrows and participating in its suffering, initiates joined a sacred family that offered salvation and intercession in paradise. After the tragedy at Karbala, the Shi`ite community was not just a political movement fighting to avenge Husayn’s murder but an extended family mourning the Prophet’s grandson and grieving with their kin.
Medieval hadith designated `Ali and Fatima’s children as Muhammad’s own and extolled their family as the cosmological link between the Prophet and his community. To love Muhammad’s family was to love Muhammad. In one hadith, the Prophet explained to `Ali:
Oh `Ali, Fatima is part of me and she is the light of my eye and fruit of my heart. What saddens her, saddens me, and what makes her happy, makes me happy. . Be good to her after me, and as for al-Hasan and al-Husayn, they are my sons and my two offshoots, and they are the masters of the youths of the people of paradise. They are as precious to you as your hearing and your sight.
The Prophet explains the intimate bond between himself and his daughter: he feels what she feels; she abides, literally, as part of his body. More than just a daughter, she provides the surrogate womb for his heirs. The shi`at `Ali is more than just the party of `Ali; it is the party of the family.
Early Shi`ite cosmology even promoted a celestial link between the souls of the larger Shi`ite community and the ancestry of their Imams. According to one tradition, Allah constructed bodies for the Imams’ divine light out of clay. He then separated some of that clay, which was then imbued with the Imams’ essence, and created the souls of the shi`at `Ali. After Allah assembled the souls, he removed clay from beneath his throne and formed the community’s bodies. The entire Shi`a family, of all time and all places, share the Imams’ essence through this celestial generation. When one part of the family suffers or experiences joy, the others share in that experience.
They are joined by spirit rather than blood.
Allah, as well as Muhammad, recognizes this familial bond in the Shi`ite community. According to one report, Allah “is angry for [Fatima’s] anger, and is pleased with [her] contentment.”
Fatima is an access point to the Divine; she, in effect, links the earthly community with the sublime. Whoever offends Fatima, or threatens her favored status in the ahl al-bayt, also faces Allah’s punishment. Muhammad extended the condemnation of his enemies to include those of his beloved daughter: “whoever injure[s] her in my lifetime [or] injure[s] her after my death [will receive the same penalty].”
Fatima the matriarch, the intimate of the Prophet and Allah, offers entrance into the holy family itself. She functions as the loving mother, welcoming her “adopted” children into the extended kinship group. Medieval exegesis associates her name’s root meaning with this maternal imagery: ف-ط-م (f-t-m) designates the process of weaning. The scholars explain, “[She] is named Fatima on earth because she weans her shi`a (party) from the hell-fi re.”
Fatima’s adopted children receive eternal reward through their devoted mother.
Imami hagiographers emphasize Fatima’s role as matriarch and locate her within the home (bayt) by assigning her various domestic miracles, particularly those of food preparation. These miracles have an important precedent in Qur’an 19.22-26: Allah miraculously provides Mary, in the pains of childbirth, dates and water. In like manner Allah, through Fatima, provides his community with divine sustenance. According to Shaykh al-Mufid, (b. 948/950), God honored the charitable deeds of Fatima and the entire ahl al-bayt by sending down Qur’an 76.8-10: “And they feed, for the love of Allah, the indigent, the orphan, and the captive; (saying) ‘We feed you for the sake of Allah alone: No reward do we desire from you nor thanks.’ ”
In one example Fatima forgets to prepare her family’s meal because she is busy with obligatory prayer (salat). When the Prophet and `Ali enter, they see a boiling pot of meat settled beside her prayer chamber.
Fatima turns and is amazed by Allah’s providence.
In another miracle account, the Prophet, weak from hunger, staggers into Fatima’s home. He asks his daughter for a meal, but she has little food in the house. She prepares what she can and offers her father and family meat and bread. Allah then miraculously multiplies the provisions so that the bowls never empty and the food tastes “as nothing ever tasted before.” Fatima, aware of Allah’s bounty, takes the food and distributes it to her neighbors.
As matriarch, she supplies her family’s nourishment and dispenses divine blessings while she also tends to the surrounding community, symbolically assimilating them to her maternal care.
Shi`ite hagiography pitted Fatima against a specific enemy to the faith, Eve or Hawwa’, who ultimately failed to recognize the family’s sublime authority. According to early Christian theologians, sin entered the world through Eve’s disobedience to God’s paradisiacal law, and Mary’s obedience later reversed the shameful taint. For Shi`ites, Eve/Hawwa’ committed the severest heresy of all: she failed to confess the superior status of the holy family and envied Fatima’s position in it.
The Qur’an is mostly silent regarding Eve/Hawwa’, naming her only “Adam’s wife.”
Allah placed Adam and his wife in the Garden, both yielded to temptation, and Allah finally banished them after their disobedience. Adam alone received specific blame for their sin (Qur’an 20.120-22), and he alone repented (2.37). Islam absorbed traditions of Hawwa’ through Isra’iliyat, which consisted of Jewish haggadah and early Christian apocrypha. These traditions, especially in the tales of the prophets (qisas al-anbiya), contributed a plethora of extrascriptural, hagiographic narratives to the Qur’anic story. The medieval author al-Kisa’i described Hawwa’s appearance before her disobedience or betrayal of Allah:
Eve [Hawwa’] was as tall and as beautiful as Adam and had seven hundred tresses studded with gems of chrysolite and incensed with musk. She was in the prime of her life. She had large, dark eyes; she was tender and white; her palms were tinted, and her long, shapely, brilliantly colored tresses, which formed a crown, emitted a rustling sound. She was of the same form as Adam, except that her skin was softer and purer in color than his was, and her voice was more beautiful. Her eyes were darker, her nose more curved, and her teeth whiter than his were.
Medieval Qur’anic exegesis and hadith, drawing on these hagiographic traditions, expanded the Qur’anic account of Hawwa’ and revealed her role in Satan’s ploy against Adam. Qur’anic commentators filled in the narrative gaps by conforming Hawwa’ to her Christian prototype. For example, Allah molded Hawwa’ from Adam’s crooked rib as a helpmate and comfort.
She received the name Hawwa’ - as the mother of all the living (hayy) and as one who was formed from a living being, Adam.
Although liberated from causing the Christians’ original sin (absent in Islamic theology), theologians still maintained that Hawwa’, a beautiful temptress, led Adam into rebellion against Allah. Because of this error, Allah cursed her with menstruation, pain in childbirth, and weak mental abilities.
Women, like their mother Hawwa’, became a potential curse to their husbands instead of a comfort: they represented an intellectual and spiritual liability.
Shi`ite tradition expanded Hawwa’s (and sometimes even Adam’s) sin of disobedience and betrayal of Allah to include the betrayal of the ahl al-bayt as well. To define Hawwa’ as a failed woman and enemy of the family, hagiographers juxtaposed her to the feminine archetype of Fatima. Shi`ite traditions reported that Allah favored the Imams above all creation and placed them on his throne. He regarded the divine light, embodied in the holy family and Imams, as his most beloved and chosen regents on earth. By extension, he rewarded their supporters and punished their enemies. Any enemy or pretender who falsely claimed the Imam’s station, or even consorted with tyrants, committed shirk - the unpardonable sin of “associating,” or maligning Allah’s Oneness (tawhid).
This transgression ultimately led to Adam and Hawwa’s expulsion from paradise.
After their creation, Allah continually warned the couple not to look upon the ahl al-bayt with the “eye of envy.” Yet, overcome by temptation, Adam and Hawwa’ desired the holy rank Allah never allotted them. They became pretenders (sing., mudda`in) to the light of Allah; both, equally liable, gazed upon the holy family’s exalted status. For Hawwa’ this narrative twist permitted temporary exoneration from the role of temptress. Since eating from the forbidden tree no longer constituted the pivotal moment of sin, Hawwa’s temptation of Adam appeared only secondary. In most accounts, Adam and Hawwa’ ate from the forbidden fruit as a result of their envy; Adam usually ate first.
Hawwa’s emancipation from the role of temptress did not continue unopposed. Shi`ite tradition maintained her inherent impurity and inferiority through constant contrasts to the idealized female: Hawwa’ ultimately opposed the Mistress of the Women of the World, Fatima. Muhammad’s daughter, like Mary with Eve in Christian tradition, served to amend Hawwa’s mistakes and provide the idealized feminine figure. Hawwa’ even appeared painfully aware of Fatima’s superiority:
And [Satan] overcame Hawwa’ to look at Fatima with the eye of envy until she ate from the tree as Adam had eaten. And Allah, mighty and exalted, expelled them from His Paradise, and sent them away from [their position] near Him to the earth.
Hawwa’ coveted not only the rank of the ahl al-bayt but also the specific position of Muhammad’s daughter. This established a textual dichotomy of feminine imagery exposing Hawwa’s weaknesses compared with Fatima’s strengths, Hawwa’s heresy with Fatima’s orthodoxy.
Fatima’s role as pristine matriarch verified her perfection and authority within the holy family; Hawwa’s life, in contrast, seemed a failure. Fatima experienced no menstruation, had shorter gestation periods, and gave birth without blood or impurities whereas Adam demanded that Hawwa’ ritually cleanse before intercourse to ensure her purity. According to one report, Fatima as sublime matriarch even appeared to Adam and Hawwa’ while still in paradise, mystically adorned with her children and family: Muhammad her crown, `Ali her necklace, and Hasan and Husayn her earrings.
Eve received only the earthly adornment of jewels and precious metals, which fell away after she disobeyed Allah.
Fatima later wept at the death of her beloved father and son Husayn; Hawwa’ only mourned the loss of paradise and her own foolishness.
Fatima’s birth narrative, wherein Muhammad travels to paradise and ingests the fruit filled with her essence, resonates with this imagery. Medieval theologians, by depicting Muhammad eating the fruit of his daughter, associated Fatima with the tree of knowledge once denied to Hawwa’ and Adam. This knowledge, in Shi`ite exegesis, referred to the Imam’s authority and the exalted status of the ahl al-bayt. Fatima resided in paradise - part of the tree, part of Allah’s knowledge, part of the holy family. Hawwa’ remained alienated from all such grace: she was forbidden the tree and only a pretender to the rank of heaven’s Mistress. Only extended family members who recognized Fatima’s exalted position accessed the nur Muhammadi and gained hope of salvation: Hawwa’ simply never belonged to that elect group.
An important parallel developed in Merovingian hagiography that also pitted a holy woman against her antithesis. Frankish queens were patterned after Jezebel, the famous villain of 1 Kings, the heretical and treasonous wife of Ahab, king of Israel. Jezebel killed God’s prophets and priests, incited her husband to idolatry, and finally threatened the security of God’s kingdom.
She proved to be the opposite of the matriarchal queen who converted her community and then interceded for them both on earth and in heaven.
Queens such as Brunhild (b. ca. 545-50), wife of Sigibert (r. 561-75), in like manner interfered with the conversion efforts of Columbanus, an Irish missionary preaching reform throughout Gaul and, according to some accounts, arranged the murders of several bishops.
Hagiographers transformed what might have passed for political savvy and shrewd palace machinations for a male into heretical deeds and spiritual depravity for the female.
Balthild (d. 680), Neustrian queen and wife of Clovis II (r. 639-57), also received the opprobrious epithet from an English hagiographer.
In the Life of Wilfrid, he reported the second Jezebel’s persecution of God’s church and holy men (nine bishops plus various priests and deacons).
Yet in Gaul Balthild received high praise for her piety, charity, and support of monasteries; she was, in fact, a saint.
Balthild’s hagiographer in Gaul, probably a nun at Chelles (a monastic house founded by the queen), invoked the familiar vocabulary of virgin, mother, and bride to describe her saintly subject. Balthild at first desires only a spiritual bridegroom, but she soon submits to “Divine Providence” and marries Clovis.
She then evolves into the sublime matriarch, acting as “a mother to the princes, as a daughter to the priests, and as a most pious nurse to children and adolescents.”
She dutifully adopted the community around her as she “ministered to priests and poor alike, feeding the needy and clothing the naked [and] . funneling large amounts of gold and silver through [the king] to convents of men and virgins.”
Taken together, the lives of Brunhild and Balthild reveal the perilous position of most Frankish queens. Hagiographers recounted their missionary efforts, their charitable deeds to both consanguineous and spiritual kin, and even their miraculous deeds, revealing sublime matriarchs reminiscent of Mary and all her glories. In the end, however, a woman’s legacy ultimately remained in the masculine hand or patriarchal expectations that shaped it. The matriarchs could not escape the political realities of court that demanded firm regencies, noble allies, and enough movable wealth to secure their power. Often such political vicissitudes raged against the queen at court and produced a new Jezebel instead of a Holy Mother.
In both Christian and Shi`ite theology, then, women might signify doctrinal distinction and political legitimacy only with the aid of a sympathetic hagiographer. While Mary and Fatima might reveal religious truths for their communities, as archetypes crafted largely by male authors they never move beyond their appropriate gender designations. The archetypes of Eve/Hawwa’ and Jezebel served as a reminder of what could happen should holy women fall out of favor with masculine authorities.
Right Communities
Theologians and hagiographers employed the feminine ideal as a rhetorical tool to sharpen communal boundaries as well as doctrinal distinctions. In early medieval Christian exegesis, community identified not just the elite membership in the orthodox church but also a new vocation among one of the many monastic houses quickly being established across Gaul. Frankish men and women dedicated themselves to their new spiritual communities, theoretically forfeiting their worldly status and possessions. Marian rhetoric helped to define those monastic families and boost Merovingian claims to authority.
Christian authors had always used Mary as a primary example for the chaste life; popular narratives even from the second century advanced Mary, mother of Jesus, as a perpetual virgin.
The Merovingian identification with Mary and the monastic life was certainly nothing new. Yet the models of Mary from both late antiquity and the early Middle Ages shifted emphasis in terms of the female body and maternal expectations.
The feminine ideals of late antiquity had promoted masculine prototypes as well as the virginal Mary. Three particularly popular lives had outlined feminine virtues worthy of emulation that effectively transformed women into men.
First, the martyr text of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas demonstrated maternal sacrifice for the Christian faith. Both women forsook their husbands, children, and families for their Christian beliefs; Perpetua even transformed into a man in a dream sequence. Both saints chose martyrdom over recantation. Second, Saint Thecla abandoned an arranged marriage (despite her family’s reaction) and opted for a heavenly bridegroom as she traveled the countryside dressed as a man. Third, Saint Eugenia not only cast aside her mundane family but also donned male clothing and entered a monastery.
These hagiographies had advertised Christian conversion narratives as well as gendered models of feminine piety. In all these models, the women traded their femaleness for the male ideal: they “became like men” in the service of God.
Mary’s body, too, advertised an ascetic theology of enclosure and impenetrability that effectively negated many feminine gender expectations. Early church fathers had equated Mary’s chaste womb with claustration, encouraging other virgins to remain separated from community and family (and all the temptations that implied).
Merovingian hagiography, on the other hand, replete with maternal imagery, elevated Mary’s body as a paradigm for the monastic community. Hagiographers encouraged abbesses to first become brides of Christ and then, along with abbots, to act as mothers and extend their maternal care to both their natural and spiritual families. Hagiographers equated the care given by monastic leaders with Mary’s own nourishment from the womb. One monastery, for example, feared they would starve after their wheat supply was depleted, but the abbot assured them, “[I]t cannot happen that there is insufficient wheat in a monastery dedicated to [Mary] who offered from her womb the fruit of life to a starving world.”
The monks, under the abbot’s direction, then prayed together into the night and awoke to find their granaries filled with wheat. The abbot’s obedience in prayer brought food to his family just as Mary fed humanity through her Son. Mary provides a maternal paradigm that defines the monastic life.
Similar to Mary, Merovingian women continued to nourish their new Christian communities after conversion. Hagiographers demonstrate that these new matriarchs assume spiritual responsibility for their extended families that guaranteed the Franks more than just spiritual rewards. For the Gallo-Romans and Franks just joining the ranks of Christian leadership, holiness offered an avenue of social mobility and preservation of familial fortune.
Secular and religious authority fused, and the Frankish ruling class invested vast wealth in the church.
Holy women performed an important role in this conversion drama as they translated landed estates into monastic communities, immune to patrimonial division, episcopal and royal control, and some tolls and taxes.
A saintly career thus offered a variety of opportunities for women as they funded and ultimately supervised family lands. These royal saints often worked closely with episcopal authorities who, often enough, were their brothers and uncles. Female sanctity eventually reflected the idealized queen, the spiritual mother, who possessed and distributed wealth not only among her family and church but also the community at large.
Such a model of sanctity based implicitly on possession of means and wealth challenges the desert ascetic theology of late antiquity.
The much earlier life of Saint Antony, for example, reported Satan’s various attacks on the Egyptian hermits with visions of gold.
Personal renunciation of wealth drew on biblical precedents wherein Christ warned that riches barred the path to heaven and later purged the Temple of moneylenders.
Holy men and women who sacrificed everything to the church demonstrated the perfect path of self-denial, the path arguably unattainable (and undesired) by all Christians yet much needed by the church economy.
The holy woman Melania the Younger, for ex ample, gave a local church “revenues as well as offerings of gold and silver treasures, and valuable curtains, so that this church, which formerly had been so poor, now stirred up envy on the part of other bishops of the province.”
Frankish holy women, unlike their late antique counterparts, did not necessarily renounce their family ties and forsake their earthly treasures. Hagiographers did require saintly separation from secular lusts by depicting holy women’s disregard for fine clothes and jewels. Each time Saint Radegund entered a new church she piled her royal attire, complete with purple garb, gold jewelry, and precious gems, on the altar for “the relief of the poor” (without disapproving glares from the clerical elite).
Frankish women thus provided a means of consolidating landed property through their monastic complexes and estates; and, perhaps more significantly, they channeled royal wealth to the surrounding community. Merovingian holy women present paragons of maternal comfort and provision to their mundane poverty-stricken communities and their spiritual kindred.
Hagiographers also explain that Frankish saints dared to cast aside their royal privileges and become submissive “holy handmaids” (such as Mary) by performing common domestic deeds. Radegund’s homey miracles permeate her vita as she ventures outside her royal confines to tend to the sick and poor. She advances beyond the wealthy patron who simply funds charities and transmutes into a royal servant. She bathes the bodies of the poor, “scrubbing away whatever she found there,” combs their hair, and washes their feet. During their meal, which she also prepares, Radegund cleans “the mouth and hands of the invalids herself.”
With this inversion topos, Radegund like Christ becomes the pious servant of the poor and a “new Martha” who busies herself with her household.
In a more spiritual display of maternal attention, Radegund provides saintly intercession for one female pilgrim named Mammezo suffering from a vision problem. Mammezo’s prayer to Radegund resembles the Ave Maria in both form and content:
Lady Radegund! I believe that you who follow God’s will above man’s are full of God’s virtue! Good lady, full of piety, have mercy on me. Help an unhappy woman, pray that my eye will be restored for my spirit is grievously stricken by this tormenting pain.
Like the Ave Maria, Mammezo’s prayer begins with an appellation and praise (Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed are you among women) and ends with a petition for intercession (pray for us now and at the hour of our death). Radegund, as Mary with her Son, becomes the intermediary for her adopted kin. Gregory of Tours compared Radegund’s countenance at her death with the “Lord’s holy mother herself.”
Monastic complexes especially provided important venues for Merovingian holy women to display their maternal and spiritual authority. Not only did these women (as abbesses) distribute wealth to the poor and establish important pilgrimage sites, but they also served as the mother (mater) for their new daughters. As leaders and spiritual guides, they supplied food, clothing, and miraculous healing for their extended families. Rusticula, abbess of Arles (d. ca. 632), tended her household with such pious zeal that “all called her lady and pious mother.”
At her death, her body was placed in Saint Mary’s Basilica, at the right side of the altar, dedicated in her virginity.
Instead of providing a monastic paradigm, Fatima’s authorization of Shi`ite doctrine enabled the increasing identification of those within the family and those without, that is, those members of the Shi`a and then everyone else. As the dialectic between Shi`ite and Sunni theology evolved in the tenth century, theologians relied on Fatima to herald Shi`ite orthodoxy. Sectarian literature frequently promoted Fatima as the Muslim community’s most excellent woman in opposition to the Sunni affection for `A’isha, Muhammad’s beloved wife. The conflicts between Fatima and `A’isha reflected more than just familial jealousies and contentions; they exposed questions of political authority posed by each sect’s interpretation of who should act as Muhammad’s legitimate successor.
Sunni theologians challenged the Shi`ite exaltation of the holy family by honoring the Prophet’s beloved companions, Abu Bakr, `Umar, `Uthman, and `Ali (the four Rightly Guided Ones, or Rashidun). According to Sunni traditions, the Prophet appointed Abu Bakr as his legitimate successor with no preference for `Ali; Abu Bakr and the following three caliphs, as companions, were the most excellent choice.
As Sunni authors exalted Abu Bakr, they also advanced `A’isha bint Abi Bakr, Abu Bakr’s daughter and Muhammad’s young wife, as the feminine ideal. Reports linked Abu Bakr’s and `A’isha’s legitimacy through parallel honorific titles. Abu Bakr, for example, is known as the truthful man (al-siddiq); `A’isha becomes the truthful woman (al-siddiqa).
Another tradition relates that Muhammad designated `A’isha as his most beloved among the people and her father as the most beloved among men.
Shi`ite traditions, to the contrary, present `Ali as Muhammad’s rightful successor and Abu Bakr as a usurper. Shi`ite rhetoric also transforms `A’isha from the Prophet’s beloved wife into Fatima’s antithesis by detailing her jealousies, adulterous tendencies, and political deceits. Instead of representing the virtues of virgin, mother, and bride, `A’isha exemplifies corruption.
Shi`ite authors emphasize one episode that casts doubt on `A’isha’s loyalty to the Prophet (known in the texts as the tradition of the lie, or hadith al-ifk). According to this account, the Prophet and his young bride were traveling together after a raid on the Banu Mustaliq and stopped to rest during the night. During the repose, `A’isha realized she had lost the necklace she was wearing; so she exited her litter and began to look for it. When the caravan began to move again, no one realized `A’isha’s absence (apparently she was light).
One of the Prophet’s soldiers traveling behind the caravan found her and accompanied her back to the army. The Medinans heard about the adventure, placing the Prophet’s wife alone in the presence of a male, and began to make accusations against her. According to Sunni interpretation, the Prophet then received the first of nine Qur’anic verses (24:11) that defended `A’isha:
Those who brought forward the lie are a body among yourselves; think it not to be an evil to you; on the contrary it is good for you. To every man among them [will come the punishment] of the sin that he earned, and to him who took on himself the lead among them, will be a grievous chastisement.
Allah himself (via Muhammad) exonerated `A’isha from the lies and rumors circulating about her adulterous affair. For Shi`ite interpreters, the event provided a powerful opportunity to question the loyalty of `A’isha and, implicitly, some of the Prophet’s closest companions.
In retaliation against Shi`ite suspicions, Sunni authors maligned a genre of hadith allegedly promulgated by the Shi`ites against the Prophet’s companions (sahaba). From the Sunni perspective, the earliest Shi`ite community wrongfully denounced and even cursed the Prophets’ closest and most beloved associates, thus implying their blasphemy and disloyalty. This accusation is not entirely a rhetorical ploy. The early Shi`a did question the loyalty and honesty of the first Islamic generation - men such as Abu Bakr, `Umar, and `Uthman.
If after all Muhammad designated `Ali as his rightful successor, then these so-called companions had betrayed that designation and seized `Ali’s position. One tradition recounts the event of the mountain pass, al-`Aqaba, wherein the Prophet’s companions and his beloved wife plotted to destroy him.
According to the account of al-`Aqaba, Muhammad realized the end of his life was approaching and related to `A’isha that he planned to publicly appoint `Ali his successor. `A’isha then disclosed the news to `Umar’s daughter Hafsa and other conspirators who planned to prevent Muhammad’s acknowledgment of `Ali and the ahl al-bayt. They then planned to ambush the Prophet at the Harsha pass along the Mecca-Medinan road. The angel Gabriel interceded and commanded the Prophet to announce his decision earlier than planned at Ghadir Khumm. After the disclosure the companions decided to continue their plot, hoping to disrupt `Ali’s designation.
At the mountain pass Allah again intervened and saved the Prophet from his companions and treacherous wife. The plotters released a number of crawling insects in the hope that Muhammad’s she-camel would become crazed and throw him off. As the beast became frightened, Muhammad soothed her, and Allah caused her to speak and promise that she would never be diverted from her path as long as she bore the Messenger of God.
Lightning then flashed through the heavens and revealed the traitors, including Abu Bakr, `Umar, `Uthman, and Talha. The Prophet decided not to execute them to retain unity within the community (umma). `A’isha, the most revered woman in Sunni circles (second, perhaps, only to Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife) and the transmitter of so many hadith, joins the ranks of conspirators against the Prophet’s life.
Sunni and Shi`ite hadith transmitters also projected their struggle for legitimacy into the domestic sphere as they set `A’isha and Fatima in personal opposition. In Sunni hadith collections, such as al-Bukhari, Fatima appears as a weak and spoiled daughter of the umma’s prominent leader.
In one account Fatima went to her father complaining about the blisters on her hands from grinding a stone hand-mill. She had heard that the Prophet recently received additional slave girls and hoped that he would provide her with help. Because her father was not home when she visited, Fatima related the message to `A’isha, who later conveyed the request to the Prophet. That night the Prophet visited `Ali and Fatima and admonished them for their laziness. He commanded them to recite Allah’s name and praises instead of seeking servants.
Shi`ite hadith collectors provided a provocatively different description of Fatima’s character and relationship to her father. In a similar transmission, Fatima faithfully ground barley for her family while the wheel caused the skin on her hand to tear and bleed. She persevered. When `Ali and the Prophet later arrived, they found Fatima asleep at the wheel, nursing her son at her breast, while the mill miraculously moved by itself (or by the hand of an angel). The Prophet wondered at Allah’s care for his daughter and then reassured her (and the family) that the sufferings they endured in this life would disappear in the next.
This hadith identifies Fatima as the mother, nurturer, and provider while also promising her family (i.e., the Shi`a) eternal rest and reward.
Medieval Shi`ite authors effectively transformed Fatima into an identity marker for their community. As the Shi`a defined itself, its origins, and its political agenda, it had to set itself apart from other sectarian groups. One of the most important ways to achieve this identity was to emphasize the ahl al-bayt and Fatima’s role therein.
Shi`ite hadith replaced any mundane understanding of the Prophet’s family with the sublime understanding of the preexistent Imams. Sunni traditions also pitted `A’isha’s piety against Fatima’s weakness, `A’isha’s loyalty against Fatima’s groanings. Shi`ite scholars presented their own picture of Fatima’s sublime character based on her miraculous origin and absolute purity. These scholars invoked `A’isha and Fatima to think about their orthodox theologies and to further define the boundaries of their communities.
Right Gender
Medieval male authors used Mary and Fatima to think about theological and political matters. Their textual bodies became commentaries and directives regarding doctrinal formulations, sectarian identities, and communal boundaries. At the same time there remains the agenda to regulate and reestablish traditional notions of gender, authority, and power. Male authors identify Mary’s and Fatima’s central (even miraculous) positions in the domestic sphere as virgins, mothers, and brides, but they also betray an attempt by patriarchal forces to arrogate to themselves the sovereignty of that sphere.
In early medieval Gaul, Mary and the maternal paradigm defined many of the evolving orthodoxies among the clergy and royalty alike. Mary’s miracles confirmed Catholic orthodoxy against Jewish and Arian opposition; this also offered implicit sanctification to the Franks since many of their enemies, including the Goths, remained Arian. New monastic houses trained their abbesses and noblewomen to act as holy mothers on the model of Mary. Mary provided the sublime archetype for the cloistered life: according to the Protevangelium of James, she had resided first within the Temple walls and then Joseph’s domus. Caesarius’s Rule for Nuns, which required strict claustration, promised his virgins they would “receive crowns of glory together with holy Mary” in paradise.
On the one hand, Marian rhetoric opened the way for change: consider the freedoms available to consecrated women entering the monastic life. Many women fled forced marriages by entering the convent and becoming mystically united with the Virgin Mary as new brides of Christ.
Wealthy noblewomen often served as abbesses and maintained control over the convent’s finances as well as, in many cases, their family’s property donated as the house’s foundation. That property remained protected as abbesses named sisters, daughters, and nieces as the community’s succeeding mothers.
The monastic life presented many wealthy noblewomen with the means to control their wealth, status, and authority; and perhaps even women of lower social status found a way to survive on their own.
Once again, the early Middle Ages uniquely allows public /private power to coincide; women’s access to heavenly privilege often depended on her earthly position within the family.
More often than not, abbesses and female saints harmonized with the institutions of motherhood and royal marriage.
On the other hand, some monastic regulae seem to curb the potential for female autonomy and spiritual independence by instructing holy women to eschew their mundane families and wealth to embrace their new spiritual kin as equals.
Caesarius maintains that nuns should not receive anything personal from family members, whether it be a letter or gifts, unless it is thoroughly reviewed by the abbess.
He also required that familial visits be supervised by a senior sister if not the abbess herself.
By promoting a spiritual equality among a spiritual kin, monastic rules sought to weaken that very privatized power that Merovingian women wielded through their earthly families. Perhaps because consanguinial relationships were so important and the women’s position within them so imperative to their spiritual power, these spiritual ideals remained just that, ideals. Aristocratic women continued to claim their place as leaders of estate-monasteries, disregarding the piety of lowborn sisters, even if that meant public scandal.
Monastic rules of the Merovingian period, including the rules of Ceasarius of Arles and Donatus of Besançon, managed to curtail the influence of female monastics more effectively by requiring strict claustration in women’s houses.
This certainly reflected a real, physical danger to women’s houses as targets of violence and rape; chronicles and histories alike repeat the threats of tribal rivalries and (later) Viking raids. These rules recognized the need to provide convents with additional protection, especially within city walls.
Yet the prominent bishops and clerical leaders who formulated the rules moved beyond practical concerns for women’s lives and promoted a notion of right (or acceptable) gender roles.
Merovingian monastic rules and church councils, by delineating so exactly the expectations for nuns, effectively denied alternative forms of the consecrated life such as widowhood and clerical offices. Although early church practices had esteemed the ranks of widows and deaconesses, Merovingian theologians argued that life outside the monastery was indeed too dangerous and less perfect. Church councils made it clear that only the clergy could grant the privilege of living a consecrated life outside the convent walls. Some councils even made provisions for failure: the Council of St.-Jean-de-Losne in 673-75 ordered that women who did gain priestly permission to live a religious life at home be incarcerated in a monastery should they disregard their chastity.
The Council of Orléans, 533, proclaimed that women were too weak to perform any type of semipriestly work amid the struggles of the secular world and decreed that “after this no women are to be granted the diaconal benediction because of the fragility of their condition.”
Expectations of and possibilities for religious women effectively dwindled under episcopal legislation.
The male clergy also arrogated to itself the traditional notions of domestic authority and household management. Even under the rule of strict claustration, priests (who were not necessarily monks) were required to consecrate the Eucharist.
No matter what the ideals of separation, purity, and enclosure, the community had to allow at least one male to enter its walls. The priest symbolically appropriated to himself the domestic space of the mother/abbess and her family; he both consecrated and fed the community as an altar servant. Mary’s nurturing role had been usurped by her male sons. Even in economic terms, bishops and priests increasingly ignored Caesarius’s inclination to allow the abbess financial autonomy and instead appointed kings’ officers and bishops as overseers and procurators for the female communities.
A similar rhetorical twist occurred in Shi`ite Islam as medieval theologians and scholars successfully seized Fatima’s authority as the ahl al-bayt’s sublime matriarch. At first Fatima’s influence within the family seemingly challenged traditional notions of gender designations. Muhammad miraculously “conceived” Fatima from paradise after ingesting a beautiful fruit; Allah favored her above Hawwa’, which resulted in the first sin of envy; Fatima remained perpetually pure, avoiding menstruation, rendering her symbolically male; she identifies who belongs within her beloved (and spiritual) family; and on judgment day she will intercede for her progeny and rescue them from the hellfire. Fatima, like Mary, defines the boundaries of her spiritual and mundane communities because of her domestic authority.
Also like Mary, Fatima’s male heirs assimilated to themselves the matriarch’s authority from the domestic sphere and emphasized Fatima as the obedient and submissive virgin, mother, and bride. The leaders of the Shi`ites had always been the Imams; Fatima and her sons provided the spiritual and sometimes political guidance for their community. Shi`ite theologians labeled them infallible (`isma) and responsible for spiritual guidance (walaya). After the twelfth Imam went into hiding, or occultation, the community faced a crisis of leadership. From that crisis the Shi`ite scholars, or the `ulama´, asserted their authority.
The scholars and theologians, rather than a centralized Christian clergy, decided on legal questions and theological matters through logical reasoning (ijtihad).
The `ulama´, the symbolic heirs to the ahl al-bayt, also promoted the theology of agreement (ijma`). When the community of scholars reaches consensus it must be correct because the Imam would never allow his community to deviate into error. The scholars are educated males, trained at religious colleges (madrasa), promising to lead the Shi`a for the Hidden Imam.
As with Mary, the authority of the domestic, the family, passes from their powerful matriarchs to the male heirs, those bishops, priests, and Shi`ite clerics who negotiate between the public and private spheres. Mary and Fatima provide the right gender model for women to emulate: active within the domestic sphere as virgin, mother, and bride, yet yielding to masculine, public authority as holy handmaids.
Despite male hagiographers’ placement of Mary and Fatima largely in the domestic sphere, their adoration became very public throughout material culture. While the authors’ texts successfully advertised Mary’s and Fatima’s holy prowess, material objects spoke a language of piety all their own. Christians and Shi`ite Muslims constructed edifices, ritual items, and simple articles of beauty that not only reinforced but also shaped identity.
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Author: Mary F. Thurlkill
