Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Notes

Introduction

1. al-Majlisi, v. 43.3, p. 24.

2. Important sources on the Franks are Patrick Geary, Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Janet L. Nelson, The Frankish World, 750-900 (Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 1996); and, of course, J. M. Wallace-Hadrill’s leading works, including Barbarian West, A.D. 400-1000 (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), and The Long-Haired Kings (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1962).

3. Ralph W. Mathisen provides an important look at Arian Germanic churches and hierarchy in “Barbarian Bishops and the Churches ‘in barbaricis gentibus’ during Late Antiquity,” Speculum 72.3 (1997): 664-97.

4. GM 8, 10.

5. Throughout the eighth and ninth centuries, these identities were still evolving. Sectarian divisions centered particularly on supporters of `Ali and his descendants versus the supporters of the caliphs. For clarity, I shall distinguish the groups as Shi`ite and Sunni Muslims which, of course, conveys a doctrinal distinction that took centuries to fully solidify.

6. For `Arwa, see Farhad Daftary’s “Sayyida Hurra: The Isma`ili Sulayh. id Queen of Yemen,” in Women in the Medieval Islamic World, ed. Gavin R. G. Hambly (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 117-30; and Fatima Mernissi’s The Forgotten Queens of Islam, trans. M. J. Lakeland (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993); also see Kishwar Rizvi’s “Gendered Patronage: Women and Benevolence during the Early Safavid Empire,” in Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies, ed. D. Fairchild Ruggles (New York: State University of New York Press, 2000), 123-53.

7. Rivzi, “Gendered Patronage,” 126.

8. Averil Cameron provides an important discussion of paradoxical imagery in Christian discourse in Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of a Christian Discourse (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). She examines the Virgin Mary in chap. 5, 155-88.

9. Theologians formally recognized Mary as God’s “container” only after extended debates. Mary received the appellation Theotokos, or God-bearer, at the highly controversial Council of Ephesus in 431 CE.

10. For secondary sources on early female virgins (including their imitation of Mary), see Virginia Burrus, “Word and Flesh: The Bodies and Sexuality of Ascetic Women in Christian Antiquity,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10 (1994): 27-51; Averil Cameron, “Virginity as Metaphor: Women and the Rhetoric of Early Christianity,” in History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History, ed. Averil Cameron (London: Duckworth, 1988), 181-205; Gillian Clark, Women in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Mary Foskett, A Virgin Conceived: Mary and Classical Representations of Virginity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).

11. See the arguments of Lynda L. Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).

12. According to some classical authors, Muhammad paralleled shayatin and wives, including Eve’s temptation of Adam. M. J. Kister quotes al-Munawi, al-Suyuti, and al-Daylami in “Legends in tafsir and hadith Literature: The Creation of Adam and Related Stories,” in Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’an, ed. Andrew Rippin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 93.

13. See Annemarie Schimmel’s introduction to feminine imagery in Sufi literature, My Soul Is a Woman: The Feminine in Islam, trans. Susan H. Ray (New York: Continuum, 1997), 20.

14. There are a number of secondary sources devoted to Shi`ite cosmology and the Imams in particular. Two basic works are Mahmoud Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering in Islam: A Study of the Devotional Aspects of `Ashura in Twelver Shi`ism (The Hague: Mouton, 1978); and Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shi`ism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam, trans. David Streight (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994).

15. See Giselle de Nie’s “Consciousness Fecund through God: From Male Fighter to Spiritual Bride-Mother in Late Antique Female Sanctity,” in Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages, ed. Anneke B. Mulder- Bakker (New York: Garland, 1995).

16. Vernon K. Robbins explains the rhetorical nature of certain images in historical, social, cultural, and political works. He defines these as “patterns of intertexture,” or the ways in which texts stand in relation to other texts and interpretations. See The Tapestry of Early Christian Discourse: Rhetoric, Society, and Ideology (New York: Routledge, 1996).

17. al-Majlisi, v. 43.2, p. 18.

18. For important methodological discussions of material culture, gender, and theology, see Robin Margaret Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (New York: Routledge, 2000); Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Female Monastic Houses (London: Routledge, 1994); Moira Donald and Linda Hurcombe, eds., Gender and Material Culture in Historical Perspective (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

19. See recent discussions of poststructuralist theory and the implications for early Christian studies in Coon’s Sacred Fictions, introd.; Mary Ann Tolbert, “Social, Sociological, and Anthropological Methods,” in Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Introduction, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (New York: Crossroad, 1993); Gillian Cloke, This Female Man of God: Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Ages, 350-450 (London: Routledge, 1995); Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); and, of course, Judith Butler’s groundbreaking work on gender performance, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).

20. For a review of feminist hermeneutics in the 1970s, see Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), chap. 1, “Toward a Feminist Critical Hermeneutics.”

21. See, for example, Rosemary Radford Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin, eds., Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979). Schüssler Fiorenza articulates a “hermeneutics of suspicion” that questions male authors’ misogynistic imagery and a “hermeneutics of remembrance” to reconstruct the “reality” of the early church; see In Memory of Her.

22. Many authors have reviewed the historical circumstances of women in Islam to argue for contemporary political change and to revive a pristine Qur’anic gender ideal free from patriarchal interference. See Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Lila Abu-Lughod, Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Miriam Cooke, Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature (New York: Routledge, 2001); and Asma Barlas, “Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002).

23. Most authors either contest Fatima’s historical authenticity (see the articles in EI1 and EI2) or consider her an exemplary model in contemporary political debates. See, for example, `Ali Shari`ati, Shari`ati on Shari`ati and the Muslim Woman (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1996); Fatima Mernissi, Women’s Rebellion and Islamic Memory (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Zed Books, 1996). As a notable exception, Denise Spellberg considers in passing Fatima’s role in historical rhetoric in her Politics, Gender and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of `A’isha bint Abu Bakr (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

24. See the important works by Mary Clanton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and Apocryphal Gospels of Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

25. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, I.29. See Alan Thacker’s article regarding Rome’s influence on English piety, “In Search of Saints: The English Church and the Cult of Roman Apostles and Martyrs in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries,” in Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough, ed. Julia Smith (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), 247-77.

26. See Peter O’Dwyer, Mary: A History of Devotion in Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1988). O’Dwyer examines the “Old Irish Life of S. Brigid” as well as “Adamnan’s Law Code” in discussing Marian imagery in the early seventh century.

Chapter One. Holy Women in Context

1. Denise Spellberg uses this approach in her Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past. She carefully distinguishes the difference between `A’isha’s “life” and “legacy” within the Sunni community.

2. Another controversial element (besides the Christological debate) was Mary’s own lack of sin. Popular piety throughout late antiquity and the early Middle Ages equated the Virgin Mary with the Song of Song’s woman “without spot” (4.7). It follows that should Mary provide the flesh for the God-Man, it must indeed be “sinless.” Yet theologians debated the point (i.e., how could redemption occur before the Crucifixion?), and the Immaculate Conception only became dogma in 1854. Another question remains, however: if Mary was indeed “without stain,” did she inherit the physical marks of Eve’s sin, i.e., menstruation? The Protevangelium of James had promoted the notion that Mary could “pollute” the temple; and, according to medieval conceptions of anatomy and physiology, menstrual blood transformed into milk, thus allowing Mary to lactate (a popular image in the late Middle Ages). Theology retained the incongruity that Mary remained free from sin, yet bore some of the burdens of the flesh (just as Christ did). See Charles T. Wood’s “The Doctors’ Dilemma: Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval Thought,” Speculum 56.4

(1981): 710-27.

3. For Cyril’s refutations, see Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, PG, v. 77.

4. See Gillian Clark’s discussion in Early Church as Patrons: Christianity and Roman Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), esp. chap. 6.

5. There is a significant debate about ethnic designations in the early Middle Ages. As Lawrence Nees points out, many historians argue that ethnic distinctions between the “barbarians” and the Gallo-Romans only supports the Roman propaganda that distinguished their “pure” culture from the barbaric ones. See his introduction in Speculum 72.4 (1997): 959-69. Yet other historians contend that ethnic distinctions are useful; see James Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Socio-historical Approach to Religious Transformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Walter Pohl and Helmut Reimetz, eds, Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300-800 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998). Gerd Althoff considers ethnic distinctions important as well; he suggests that Roman senatorial families largely inherited church authority (in the cities) while Frankish aristocratic families assumed more local control in rural areas; see Family, Friends and Followers: Political and Social Bonds in Early Medieval Europe, trans. Christopher Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

6. See E. Weig, “Volkstum und Volksbewusstsein in Frankenreich des 7. Jahrhunderts,” Caratteri del Secolo VII in Occidente (Spoleto: Settimane di Studio del Centro italiano di studi sull) Alto Medioevo 5 (1958): 587-648; and Raymond Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 180-81.

7. Political overtones remained because the Visigoths and some other tribes were still Arian, which set them apart theologically from the Franks. Yet it is important to note that these differences were expressed as theological instead of only political.

8. Historians have argued that the level of “literacy” in the Merovingian period has been underestimated. See, for example, Yitzhak Hen, Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, A.D. 481-751 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 21-42; M. van Uytfanghe, “L’Hagiographie et son publique à l’époque mérovingienne,” Studia Patristica 16 (1985): 54-62; and Katrien Henne, “Merovingian and Carolingian Hagiography: Continuity and Change in Public and Aims?” Analecta Bollandiana 107 (1989): 415-28.

9. Many works have examined the status and proliferation of saint cults from late antiquity to Merovingian and Carolingian Gaul. See, for example, the excellent introduction to Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head, eds., Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995); Alan Thacker and Richard Sharpe, eds., Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); and Raymond Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

10. See Van Dam’s discussion, drawing on the works of the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz, in Leadership and Community, 188.

11. See Janet T. Nelson’s discussion of Carolingian rhetoric, which recasts the Franks as the “new Israel,” in “Kingship and Empire in the Carolingian World,” in Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation, ed. Rosamond Mc-Kitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 52-87. See also R. G. Heath’s “Western Schism of the Franks and the Filioque,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 23 (April 1972): 97-113.

12. Van Dam discusses Gregory of Tours’s assimilation of Frankish history to an Old Testament model in Leadership and Community, 196-97.

13. See the insightful discussion of Merovingian hagiography in J. M. Wallace - Hadrill’s The Frankish Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), 37-54. Carolingian historians later completed this identification and pronounced the Franks as the new Chosen People claiming their Promised Land.

14. See Louise P. M. Batstone’s “Doctrinal and Theological Themes in the Prayers of the Bobbio Missal,” in The Bobbio Missal: Liturgy and Religious Culture in Merovingian Gaul, ed. Yitzhak Hen and Rob Meens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 168-86.

15. Ibid., 179; quoting Bobbio 70, 128.

16. See Yitzhak Hen’s “The Liturgy of the Bobbio Missal,” in The Bobbio Missal, 140-53. The Feast of the Assumption was celebrated on 18 January in Gaul (see Hen’s note, p. 144).

17. See the discussion of ritual and meaning in Clifford Geertz’s “Ethos, World View and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 126-41.

18. Gregory of Tours provides one important example of Saint Gallus, a bishop from an aristocratic family (and also Gregory’s paternal uncle), who left the “terrestrial possessions which [he] despised” and turned to “celestial matters”; see VP 5.1. Althoff also notes that ecclesiastical appointments were largely awarded to family members, thus establishing kin groups with specific loyalties throughout Gaul; see Family, Friends and Followers, 23-25.

19. Bishops did in fact found their own saint cults. Gregory’s great-grandfather, Gregorius, discovered a martyr-saint at Dijon after a miraculous dream; see GM 50. Van Dam also discusses this miracle in Leadership and Community, 208-9.

20. Gregory of Tours’s appointment, for example, was influenced by Queen Brunhild’s approval and favor.

21. Balthild’s hagiographer discusses her kindness to monasteries and bishops alike in Vita Sanctae Balthildis 9-10. Janet T. Nelson also notes Brunhild’s and Balthild’s support of saint cults, “Queens as Jezebels,” 40, 69-70. She points out that Balthild was possibly responsible for gaining Saint Martin’s cloak for the royal collection and Saint Denis’s arm for the palace oratory. See also LHF, cap.

44, p. 316.

22. Gregory describes Mary’s assumption into heaven in GM 4. It is important to note, too, that this description immediately follows Gregory’s explication of Christ’s own resurrection and ascension (GM 3). This identification of Mary’s experience with Christ’s sets her apart from the other saints, in a sense, as she was escorted to paradise to sit beside her Son.

23. GM 8.

24. GM 18.

25. GM 10; MGH SRM 1.2.45: Tunc extractam a pectore crucem elevo contra ignem; mox in aspectu sanctarum reliquiarum ita cunctus ignis obstipuit, acsi non fuisset accensus.

26. Gregory, for example, describes the construction of Mary’s church in Jerusalem by Constantine (as discussed above) and then immediately explains that Clermont itself claims many Marian relics. He also states that he has seen for himself their miraculous power; see GM 8.

27. Gregory advertised the tombs and relics of many saints along with Mary’s, especially those of Saints Martin and Julian. Gregory even boasts that Gaul is the spiritual equal of Rome because of Saint Martin’s tomb; see Sermo in laudem S. Martini 4, also discussed in Van Dam, Leadership and Community, 244.

28. The Kharijites (literally, “those who go out”) were radically opposed to any arbitration because they fiercely accepted the notion of divine justice. For the Kharijites, the forces of Mu`awiya, as the kinsmen of `Uthman, had committed grave sins and deserved divine punishment. `Ali should not have compromised in any way. The Kharijites later crafted a theory that the community’s leadership should be based on righteousness instead of kin relationship or inheritance.

29. According to Shi`ite tradition, Mu`awiya bribed Hasan to abdicate any claims to the caliphate by promising peace and protection for the shi`at `Ali. Later Mu`awiya bribed one of Hasan’s wives to poison him so as to ensure his own son’s succession. See Arzina R. Lalani’s discussion, Early Shi `i Thought: The Teachings of Ima m Muh. ammad al-Ba qir (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 28-29.

30. See Moshe Sharon, Black Banners from the East: The Establishment of the `Abbasid State - Incubation of a Revolt (Leiden: Magnes Press, 1983).

31. See Wilfred Madelung, “The Hashimiyyat of al-Kumayt and Hashimi Shi`ism,” Studia Islamica 70 (1989): 5-26; Patricia Crone, “On the Meaning of the `Abbasid Call to al-Rid. a,” in Islamic World from Classical to Modern Times, ed. C. E. Bosworth, Charles Issaw, Roger Savory, and A. L. Udovitch (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1989), 95-111.

32. See Louis Massignon’s discussion of the Mubahala event in “La Mubahala de Médine et l’hyperdulie de Fatima,” in Opera Minora, v. 1 (Beirut: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1963). Also see “Mubahala,” in EI 2, 264.

33. The rationale and practice of mutual cursing is set out in Sura 3.61, or the “Mubahala verse”: “If any one disputes in this matter with you, now after knowledge has come to you, say: ‘Come! Let us gather together, our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves; then let us earnestly pray. And invoke the curse of Allah on those who lie!”

34. See Denise Louise Soufi ’s review of these traditions included in Ibn H. anbal’s Fad. a’il, 2.632, and al-T.abari’s Jami` al-baya n, 22.7, in “The Image of Fatima in Classical Muslim Thought” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1997).

35. The proclamation of Muhammad ibn al-H. anafiyya as Mahdi has tremendous impact on the formation of Imami theology. Under Mukhtar the concepts of divine guide (or Mahdi) and occultation and return are first articulated. These theories are later, of course, applied to the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi. See Moojan Momen’s discussion in An Introduction to Shi`i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi`ism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

36. Al-T.abari, Ta’rikh al-Rasu l wa-l-mulu k, III, 213; as quoted in Sharon, Black Banners, 91.

37. Anti-Shi`ite sentiment is also apparent in the controversy over the `ashira verse, Qur’an 26.214: “And admonish your nearest kinsmen . .” Traditions from the musannaf collections related this revelation to the last days and explained that Muhammad was intimating his inability to intercede for his family; the ahl al-bayt, in effect, held no special status and was responsible for their own deeds. See Uri Rubin’s discussion in The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims, a Textual Analysis, Studies in Late Antiquity and Islam 5 (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995).

38. Baladhuri, Ansa b al-ashra f, III (ed. Duri) (Beirut, 1398/1978); as quoted in Moshe Sharon, “Ahl al-Bayt: People of the House,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986): 177.

39. As Sharon points out, many of the earliest Sunni scholars acknowledged the ahl al-bayt as the Prophet’s immediate family and recognized them as special and beloved members of Muhammad’s household. Yet as Shi`ite piety evolved and became more defined, later scholars rejected the exclusivity of such a definition. See Sharon, “Ahl al-Bayt,” 172 ff.

40. The `Abbasid line met these arguments with their own accusations. For example, the `Abbasids refused to recognize Abu T. alib’s supremacy because he never accepted Islam. See, for example, Sharon’s argument in Black Banners, 97.

41. See Sharon’s argument in “Ahl al-Bayt,” 178.

42. See esp. Amir-Moezzi’s The Divine Guide in Early Shi`ism.

43. Amir-Moezzi includes the tenth-century works of Ibn Babawayh, Shaykh Ibn Abi Zaynab al-Nu`mani, al-Kulayni, and al-Shaykh al-Saffar al- Qummi among his early sources.

44. See an overview of these dynasties in Momen, An Introduction to Shi`i Islam. For separate works see, among other important works, Joel Kraemer, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986); Paul Walker, Exploring and Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and Its Sources (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002); Farhad Daftary, Medieval Isma`ili History and Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Renato Traini, Sources biographiques des Zaidites (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977).

Chapter Two. Holy Women in Holy Texts

1. The comparativist Jonathon Z. Smith emphasizes the importance of looking for the “new” among categories of comparison instead of merely listing sameness and difference. See, for example, his argument in Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), esp. 46-53.

2. Robert D. Baird discusses different types of categories available to scholars using a functional definition of religion; see his Category Formation and the History of Religions (The Hague: Mouton, 1971).

3. For some of the essential studies of hagiography and the various ways it should be approached, see Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints, trans. Donald Attwater (New York: Fordham University Press, 1962); René Aigrain, L’Hagiographie: Ses sources, ses méthodes, son histoire (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1953); Baudoin de Gaiffier, Recueil d’hagiographie, Subsidia Hagiographica 61 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1977), and Recherches d’hagiographie Latine, Subsidia Hagiographica 52 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1971); Pierre Delehaye, Les légendes hagiographiques (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1955); and C. G. Loomis, White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legends (Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1948). More recent works include Rudolph Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Stephen Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Thomas Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Peter Brown, Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); and Richard Kieckhefer and George D. Bond, eds., Sainthood: Its Manifestations in World Religions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). Also, a more recent article by Felice Lifshitz explains how dangerous the term “hagiography” has become and suggests that we understand it as modern creation, void of meaning in the Middle Ages because it reflects only a political agenda; see “Beyond Positivism and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative,” Viator 25 (1994): 94-113.

4. E. Catherine Dunn has suggested that recitation of hagiographies actually resembled theatrical performances; see The Gallican Saint’s Life and the Late Roman Dramatic Tradition (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1989).

5. Saint Helena, Constantine’s mother, popularized the Holy Land for Western audiences and, according to tradition, first located bits of the True Cross. Eusebius includes the narrative of Helena’s discovery and other pious attributes in his Vita Constantini, PG 20.905-1230. Also, see the important secondary works Robert L. Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian Literature and Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); Jan Willem Drijvers, Helena Augusta: The Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of Her Finding of the True Cross (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992); and P. W. L. Walker, Holy City, Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

6. See Caroline Williams’s arguments concerning the political use of shrine pilgrimage in “The Cult of `Alid Saints in the Fatimid Monument of Cairo, Part 1: The Mosque of al-Aqmar,” Muqarnas 1 (1985): 37-52.

7. VP, incipit, MGH SRM 1.2.212: “cum sit diversitas meritorum virtutumque, una tamen omnes vita corporis alit in mundo.” See also James’s translation, 28.

8. See, for example, M. van Uytfanghe, “Modèles bibliques dans l’hagiographie,” in Le Moyen Âge et la Bible, ed. Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon (Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1984).

9. One particularly important genre to arise out of Egypt and Syria was the collection of “sayings” from desert fathers (and mothers). See the Apophthegmata Patrum, PG 65.71-440; also see the translation by Benedicta Ward, The Desert Christian: Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Alphabetical Collection (New York: Macmillan, 1975).

10. R. A. Markus, for example, provides an important discussion of ascetic deeds as new manifestations of, or perhaps new alternatives to, physical martyrdom. He also interprets desert theology in relation to its neo-Platonic heritage. See his The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

11. See Vita Antonii, PG 26.835-976; also see the English translation by Robert C. Gregg, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1980).

12. Athanasius details Anthony’s miraculous talents after his transformation in the cave, all in imitatio Christi. See, for example, Vita Antonii 14, 38.

13. For an overview of missionary efforts in the West, see Richard Sullivan, “The Papacy and Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages,” in Christian Missionary Activity in the Early Middle Ages, Variorum Collected Studies (Aldershot: Variorum, Ashgate 1994), III, 46-104.

14. Saint Jerome is famous for his female entourage that supported him and his missionary exploits. See, for example, his Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, CSEL 55(2).306-51, for his idealized female patrona, Paula.

15. Sulpicius Severus, Vita S. Martini, SC 133; also see the English translation by F. R. Hoare, “The Life of Saint Martin of Tours,” in Soldiers of Christ.

16. Coon provides an important view of the “pastoral bishop” in light of Hebrew, Christian, and Roman virtues; see Sacred Fictions, 23-36.

17. Henne, “Merovingian and Carolingian Hagiography,” 415-28.

18. See, for example, VP 19.4. Herein Gregory describes the various cures that accompanied oil that Monegund had blessed before her death. One such miracle involved a group of nuns applying the oil to a deacon’s swollen foot, which was immediately cured. Gregory also lamented the frequent visits of pious petitioners who filed away parts of the saints’ tombs. According to his account, Bishop Cassianus of Autun’s tomb actually suffered structural damage after so much filing. See GC 73.

19. Katrien Henne, “Audire, legere, vulgo: An Attempt to Define Public Use and Comprehensibility of Carolingian Hagiography,” in Latin and the Romance Language in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Roger Wright (New York: Routledge, 1991); and Julia Smith, “The Problem of Female Sanctity in Carolingian Europe, c. 780-920,” Past and Present 146 (1995): 3-37.

20. For discussion of Hume and Gibbon, see Brown, Cult of the Saints, 13-22; and Patrick Geary, “Saints, Scholars, and Society,” in Living with the Dead (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 9-10. 21. See John Kitchens’s discussion of Delehaye and Peter Brown in Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 3-22.

22. Peter Brown has greatly revolutionized the way hagiography is studied; see his Cult of the Saints and The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). Caroline Walker Bynum has also, of course, contributed greatly to the study of gender designations in hagiography; see Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); and Carolyn Walker Bynum, Stevan Harrel, and Paula Richman, eds., Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986).

23. Among the earliest extant Shi`ite pilgrimage-literature to include all parts of the Islamic world was compiled by `Ali b. Abi Bakr al-Harawi (d. 1215), Kitab al-isharat ila ma`rifa t al-ziya rat.

24. See Josef W. Meri’s discussion in “The Etiquette of Devotion in the Islamic Cult of Saints,” in The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. James Howard-Johnston and Paul Antony Hayward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 263-86.

25. There exists a distinct understanding of “sainthood” among many Muslim audiences, however. Many Sunni, Shi`ite, and especially Sufi Muslims recognize local saint figures, usually associated with gifts of healing. For reviews of sanctity in Islam, see Grace Martin Smith, ed., Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993); and Jan Knappert, Islamic Legends: Histories of the Heroes, Saints, and Prophets of Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985). Also see the discussions of Sufi sanctity in the translated primary source of al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, The Concept of Sainthood in early Islamic Mysticism: Two Works by al-H. akim al-Tirmidhi, trans. Bernd Radtke and John O’Kane (Concord, Mass.: Paul & Co., 1996); and Margaret Smith’s description in Rabi`a the Mystic and Her Fellow Saints in Islam (Cambridge: University Press, 1928). The closest word in Arabic to the Latin sanctus is wali, which translates as “friend” (Qur’an 10.62). In early sources, wali designated a social and legal relationship; friend denoted a legal patron, benefactor, or simple companion. Later it assumed the meaning “friend of God” and thus became associated with sanctity. See EI 1, 1109-11; and Vincent J. Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufi sm (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998).

26. See M. J. Kister’s discussion of the controversies surrounding Jewish Haggadah and Christian saint stories’ inclusion in early Muslim hadith transmission: Studies in Jahiliyya and Early Islam (London: Variorum Reprints, 1980), chap. 15.

27. By the ninth century, miracle stories about the Prophet began to circulate in biographical and battlefield (maghazi) accounts. Ibn Ishiq’s Sira (Biography) of the Prophet survives only in Ibn Hisham’s (d. 834) recension, for example. See also Chase Robinson, “Prophecy and Holy Men in Early Islam,” in Howard-Johnston and Hayward, eds., The Cult of the Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 241-62.

28. The Qur’an outlines virtues of the believers very much akin to Moses’ Ten Commandments in 17.23-39. It also provides direction for ritual and laws for the community; for example, see the directives established for divorce, 2.228-33. And, finally, the Qur’an describes the events of the final judgment, which will include a book of deeds with the promise of hellfire and paradise; see, for example, 18.47-49.

29. The Qur’an commends the virtues of many of the same prophets as Jewish and Christian traditions, such as Adam, Noah, Moses, Joseph, and Jesus. See, for example, the Qur’anic description of Abraham as an upright Muslim because he bowed in submission (Islam) to Allah, 3.67.

30. For a good introduction to hadith literature, see R. Marston Speight, “The Function of Hadith as Commentary on the Qur’an, as Seen in the Six Authoritative Collections,” in Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’an, ed. Andrew Rippin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 63-81.

31. Some of the most important works are al-Kulayni, al-Furu ` min al-kafi (4 vols., Tehran, 1334/1956), and al-Rawda min al-kafi (text and Persian trans. H. Rasuli Mahallati, Tehran, 1389/1969); Ibn Babawayh, Kitab man la yahduruhual-faqih (ed. al-Musawi al-Kharsan, 5th ed., 1390/1970); Tusi, Tahdhib al-ahkam (ed. al-Kharsan, Najaf, 1375-76/1955-56), and Kitab al-istibsar (ed. Al-Kharsan, Najaf, 1375-76/1955-56).

32. Maher Jarrar provides an important survey of Imami authority in medieval communities in “Sirat ahl al-Kisa’: Early Shi`i Sources on the Biography of the Prophet,” in The Biography of Muhammad: The Issue of the Sources, ed. Harald Motzki (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), 98-129.

33. Ibn Babawayh, `Ilal al-shara’i` wa l-ahkam (Najaf, 1385/1966), chap. 9, as quoted in Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide, 45.

34. This is, of course, one genre of Shi`ite hadith. Other collections differ very little from Sunni hadith, particularly those dealing with Islamic law (fiqh). These, for the most part, outline the same responsibilities of every Muslim, including prayer, fasting, and tithing. See Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide, 22-28.

35. Amir-Moezzi includes an important survey of early Shi`ite texts; see The Divine Guide, 19-22.

36. See Muhammad Mustafa Azami, Studies in Early Hadith Literature, with a Critical Edition of Some Early Texts (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1968), and his On Schacht’s Origins of Muhammad Jurisprudence (Riyadh: King Saud University, 1985). Also see Nabia Abbott, Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri, v. 2, Oriental Institute Publications, no. 276 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); and her Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period. Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 289-98.

37. See Ignaz Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, trans. Andras Hamori and Ruth Hamori (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); and Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964).

38. G. H. A. Joynboll, Studies on the Origins and Uses of Islamic Hadith (Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1996). Also see an important review of hadith historiography by Barbara Stowasser, “The Mothers of the Believers in the Hadith,” Muslim World 82 (1992): 1-36.

39. Uri Rubin takes up a similar methodology in his important work, The Eye of the Beholder.

40. See Roger Savory’s important work, Iran under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

41. Mahmoud Ayoub correlates many of al-Majlisi’s hadith with earlier collections in Redemptive Suffering.

42. John Walbridge expressed this opinion, which is shared by many Islamicists, in conversation. Jarrar discusses many of the problems and benefits of using al-Majlisi as a source in “Sirat ahl al-kisa’ ”, 99-100.

43. Al-Majlisi himself seems confounded by some of the mystical imagery. In one beautiful hadith, Allah is described as mixing light and spirit to form `Ali and Muhammad; and then - from `Ali, Muhammad, Hasan, and Husayn - Allah formed the heavens and the Sun and Moon. Fatima is described as a radiant lamp that Allah hung as an “earring” (qurt.) from his throne. Al-Majlisi’s only exegesis is that al-qurt. designates an earring that hangs from the lobe of an ear (!); see v. 43.2, 18.

44. Rizvi puts forth a similar argument regarding Safavid authorities in general in “Gendered Patronage,” 123-53.

45. For a basic introduction to early Christian theology and these particular theologians, see Eric Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Rowan Greer, Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and Common Life in the Early Church (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986).

46. The debate over Mary’s Immaculate Conception is a long and circuitous one. Uniquely among most Marian traditions, this theology arose and won the most adherents in the West. Augustine and Ambrose championed Mary’s existence free from sin (or mistakes), but the notion of original sin was itself still evolving. Many medieval theologians, such as Saint Bernard of Clairvoux, later warned against its acceptance. Augustine’s most famous support of the theology came from his De Natura et Gratia, 36, 42; CSEL, 238-40. For secondary discussions, see Luigi Gambero, Mary and the Fathers of the Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought, trans. Thomas Buffer (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999); Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); and Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage Books, 1983). The theology was only approved in 1854.

47. Pope Gregory illustrates the importance of hagiography as a genre when he writes his De Vita et Miraculis Venerabilis Benedicti. See Joan Peterson’s discussion in The Dialogues of Gregory the Great in Their Late Antique Cultural Background (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984).

48. See Giselle de Nie’s discussion of Gregory in Views from a Many-Windowed Tower: Studies of Imagination in the Works of Gregory of Tours (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987). Also, Van Dam has provided several translations of Gregory’s hagiographies as well as important discussions of his world in Saints and Their Miracles.

49. Fortunatus, De Vita Sanctae Radegundis Liber I, MGH SRM 2.364-77; Baudonivia, De Vita Sanctae Radegundis Liber II, MGH SRM 2.377-95.

50. See Rosamond McKitterick, “Frauen und Schriftlichkeit im Frühmittelalter,” in Weibliche Lebensgestaltung im Frühen Mittelalter, ed. H. W. Goetz (Cologne: Böhlau, 1991), 65-118; and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “Saints’ Lives and the Female Reader,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 27 (1991): 314-32.

51. See, for example, Ahmad `Abd al-Raziq, “Trois fondations féminines dans l’Égypte mamlouke,” Revue des Études Islamiques 41 (1973): 96; and Carl Petry, “A Paradox of Patronage,” Muslim World 73 (1983): 199-200. Two important works that recover women’s economic and cultural contributions to society are Julia Bray’s “Men, Women and Slaves in `Abbasid Society” and Nadia Maria El Cheikh’s “Gender and Politics in the Harem of al-Muqtadir,” both in Brubaker and Smith, eds., Gender in the Early Medieval World.

52. See Jonathan Berkey’s important work, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), esp. 161-81.

53. See Muhammad Hisham Kabbani and Laleh Bakhtiar, Encyclopedia of Muhammad’s Women Companions and the Traditions They Related (Chicago: ABC International Group; distributed by Kazi Publications, 1998).

Chapter Three. Virgins and Wombs

1. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966).

2. Ibid., 114-28.

3. See David Brakke, “The Problematization of Nocturnal Emissions in Early Christian Syria, Egypt, and Gaul,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3.4 (1995): 419-60; Burrus, “Word and Flesh”; and Brown, The Body and Society.

4. There are, however, hadith that describe Hasan’s and Husayn’s birth from Fatima’s left thigh, suggesting Fatima’s corporal integrity. Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab, `Uyu n al-mu`jizat, 61-62, discussed in Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past, 160.

5. Al-Majlisi, v. 11, p. 173. See Uri Rubin, “Pre-existence and Light:

Aspects of the Concept of Nur Muhammad,” Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975): 62-117.

6. The light was threatened not only by impurities associated with the body but also by illicit sex in general, including forbidden relations or sex outside of Islamic marriage. Adam’s son Seth posed a particular problem here because tradition taught that Adam’s sons married their sisters, a relation forbidden by Islamic law. Thus other traditions postulated that Seth married a woman from paradise (the houris of paradise, or haura’) whom Allah sent to preserve the prophetic light. See Rubin, “Pre-existence and Light,” 73-74.

7. Rubin, “Pre-existence and Light,” 92.

8. Ibid., 93.

9. Al-Majlisi, v. 11, p. 173.

10. See Ruth Padel, “Women: Model for Possession by Greek Daemons,” in Images of Women in Antiquity, ed. Averil Cameron and Amelie Kuhrt (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1983), 3-17.

11. See the fine discussion of menstrual contamination in Thomas Buckley and Alma Gottlieb, eds., Blood Magic: the Anthropology of Menstruation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

12. I am using daemon as it is used in Greek literature, i.e., devoid of any Christian association with evil. Instead, as in the Greek context, daemon could refer to any divine spirit, whether it resulted in benign possession or chaos.

13. See, for example, Janice Boddy’s “Womb as Oasis: The Symbolic Context of Pharaonic Circumcision in Rural Northern Sudan,” American Ethnologist 9 (1982): 682-98. Sondra Hale presents a nice description of male /female space in Islamic homes in “Women’s Culture/Men’s Culture: Gender, Separation, and Space in Africa and North America,” American Behavioral Scientist 31 (1987): 115-34. See also Gholamhossein Memarian and Frank Edward Brown, “Climate, Culture, and Religion: Aspects of the Traditional Courtyard House in Iran,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 20.3 (2003): 181-98.

14. Perhaps the most famous example of women being possessed by a divine presence in the Greek world is the oracle at Delphi. See Herodotus’s Histories for a complete description of the Delphic practices. Also, Euripides describes the bacchanalia practices (and possession by Dionysus) in his Bacchae. Sophocles describes how such possession could also be a curse. According to his Agamemnon, Cassandra’s gift of prophecy becomes a curse after she refuses Apollo’s advances.

15. In the Bacchae, for example, Euripides explains that women possessed by Dionysus represent a potential threat to the social order: they cast aside their proscribed gender roles and behave chaotically, engaging in sexual frenzy and nursing wild animals at their breasts. Padel briefl y explains the archetype of the possessed woman and her chaotic presence in male-ordered societies in “Women: Model for Possession by Greek Daemons,” 6.

16. See Gary Anderson’s discussion of Jewish exegesis on sexuality, procreation, and the Garden of Eden in “Celibacy or Consummation in the Garden? Reflections on Early Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the Garden of Eden,” Harvard Theological Review 82.2 (1989): 121-48.

17. Scholars such as Rosemary Radford Ruether, Elizabeth Clark, Virginia Burrus, and Averil Cameron have devoted considerable attention to women in the early church. Dyan Elliott surveys celibacy in patristic traditions in Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 16-50. And, of course, see especially Elaine Pagels’s discussion of virginal asceticism in Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 3-31, 78-97.

18. Acts of Paul and Thecla, in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. and trans. E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965).

19. Clement, Stromata 3.58, in Alexandrian Christianity, trans. John Ernest, Leonard Oulton, and Henry Chadwick, Library of Christian Classics 2 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954). See Rom. 13.13-14.

20. See Pagels’s argument in Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, 26-31. Pagels discusses, in particular, Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 3,22,4; and Clement’s Stromata 3,94,103.

21. See David Brakke’s discussion of Athanasius’s ascetic program in Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 142-200; and Coon’s description of Antony’s vita in Sacred Fictions, 72-77.

22. See Gregg’s translation, Athanasius, Life of Antony, esp. 37-39.

23. See Coon’s discussion of harlot-saints in Sacred Fictions, 71-94; and Benedicta Ward’s Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources, Cistercian Studies 106 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1987).

24. See Coon, Sacred Fictions, 76. Coon concludes, “tombs and cells of holy women, on the other hand, function as the fi xed places of their piety and are symbolic of saintly women’s inviolable chastity.” The desert tombs, then, symbolize the impenetrable female form identified with the Virgin Mary. Mary of Egypt’s vita, for example, proclaims the Virgin Mary as the impetus for the harlot’s conversion and radical renunciation of the world and flesh. See Vita S.Mariae Aegyptiacae, Meretricis, 16 (PL 73.671-90).

25. Odes of Solomon, ed. and trans. James Charlesworth (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977), Ode 19, 82.

26. Also, in the apocalyptic text The Ascension of Isaiah, Mary’s painless parturition occurred without the Virgin’s knowledge. She simply glanced down and saw Jesus: “Mary . beheld with her eyes and saw a small child, and she was amazed.” See The Ascension of Isaiah, 11, in New Testament Apocrypha, 374-88.

27. Protevangelium of James, 8.1.

28. See Mary Douglas’s discussion of the tabernacle as body in Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), esp. chap. 4.

29. Protevangelium of James, 10.1.

30. Ibid., 11.1.

31. Ibid., 20.1-2.

32. Ambrose, De virginibus, Liber II, 3.19: Ergo Sancta Maria disciplinam vitae informet, Thecla doceat immolari. PL 16.211.

33. Ambrose, De virginibus, Liber II, 2.9-10: Prodire domo nescia, nisi cum ad Ecclesiam conveniret, et hoc ipsum cum parentibus, aut propinquis. Domestico operosa secreto, forensi stipata comitatu; nullo meliore tamen sui custode quam se ipsa: quae incessu affatuque venerabilis, non tam vestigium pedis tolleret, quam gradum virtutis attollerert . ingressus angeli inventa domi in penetralibus, sine comite, ne quis intentionem abrumperet, ne quis obstreperet; neque enim comites feminas desiderabat, quae bonas cogitationes comites habebat. PL 16.209-10; Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, III.19, p. 375. Compare with the Greek works of Athanasius, First Letter to Virgins, 13: “For [Mary] desired good works, doing what is proper, . she did not desire to be seen by people. Nor did she have an eagerness to leave her house . ; rather, she remained in her house being calm, imitating the fl y in honey. She virtuously spent the excess of her manual labour on the poor. . And she did not permit anyone near her body unless it was covered, and she controlled her anger. . She was not a braggart, but completely humble. . She forgot her good works and her merciful deeds: she did them secretly.” Translated in Brakke, Athanasius, 278.

34. See, for example, Ambrose, De institutione virginis, Liber I, 60-61, PL 16.321; and Jerome, Epistle 22, 25, PL 22.411.

35. Ambrose, De virginibus, Liber II, 2.18: quotidie pro redemptione corporis Christus immolatur. PL 16.211; Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, III.19, p. 376.

36. Ambrose, De virginibus, Liber II, 2.18: Beatae virgines, quae tam immortali spiratis gratia, ut horti floribus, ut templa religione, ut altaria sacerdote! PL 16.211; Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, III.19, p. 376.

37. Ambrose, De institutione virginis, 52-53: Et infra dicit propheta vidisse se in monto alto nimis aedificationem civitatis cujus portae plurimae significantur; una tamen clausa describitur, de qua sic ait: Et convertime secundum viam portae sanctorum exterioris, quae respicit ad Orientem, et haec erat clausa. Et ait ad me Dominus: Porta haec clausa erit, et non aperietur, et nemo transibit per eam, quoniam Dominus Deus Israel transibit per eam. . Quae est haec porta, nisi Maria; ideo clausa, quia virgo? Porta igitur Maria, per quam Christus intravit in hunc mundum . quae clausa erat, et non aperiebatur. Transivit per eam Christus, sed non aperuit. PL 16.234.

38. Jerome, Dialogus adversus Pelagianos, PL 23.517-626.

39. Jerome, Adversus Helvidium: Definitiv sermo Dei, quid sit primogenitum, Omne, inquit, quod aperit vulvam. PL 23.202. In this treatise Jerome refuted Helvidius’s claim that married life was just as sacred as celibate life. After all, Helvidius argued, Mary had more children after Jesus because the Gospels referred to him as the “first born.” Jerome retorted that “first born” refers to “everything that opens the womb.” Thus Jesus might have been the first born, but Mary assuredly remained a virgin afterward.

40. Cameron, “Virginity as Metaphor,” alludes to the symbolic and practical applications of virginal imagery in late antiquity. She describes how male authors employed virginity as a metaphor for salvation, the paradox of Christianity, and power. She suggests: “Feminist theologians would do well to consider again the question why the cult of the Virgin became prominent just at the time when the strong Christian women whose memory they have successfully rehabilitated were at their most active” (198). For descriptions of late antique women’s vita activa, see Cloke, This Female Man of God; and Jo Ann McNamara, “Muffled Voices: The Lives of Consecrated Women in the Fourth Century,” in Medieval Religious Women, vol. 1: Distant Echoes, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1984).

41. See Jerome, Epistle 22, PL 22.394-425.

42. This “elite” asceticism promoted by Jerome (Epistle 22) and other Western theologians appears almost ludicrous compared to the regimens practiced in the eastern deserts. Jerome directed ascetic women to refrain from eating sweets or “dainty dishes,” drinking wine (the “first weapon used by demons against the young”), and wearing too much silk. Jerome’s own regimen was one of ascetic snobbery or, as translated by Peter Brown, “holy arrogance” (Epistle 22, 1.16); see Brown, The Body and Society, 366-86.

43. Jerome, Epistle 108.15: Liberalitas sola excedebat modum. Et usuras tribuens, versuram quoque saepius faciebat, ut nulli stipem rogantium denegaret . testem invocans Deum, se pro illius nomine cuncta facere; hoc et habere voti, ut mendicans ipsa moreretur: ut unum nummum filiae non dimitteret, et in funere suo aliena sindone involveretur. PL 22.890-91; English translation in Ross S. Kraemer, ed., Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics: A Sourcebook on Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 127-68.

44. See Coon’s eloquent description of Paula’s relinquishment of traditional virtues for Christian charisma, Sacred Fictions, 103-9.

45. See especially de Nie’s argument in “Consciousness Fecund through God,” 151. De Nie traces the metaphor of spiritual fecundity from late antique authors such as Origen through early medieval figures such as Fortunatus’s biography of Radegund. Also, Gregory of Tours describes the apostle Paul’s deeds in terms of fecundity; Paul gave birth to believers and nourished them with spiritual milk. See GM 28: Paulus vero apostolus post revolutum anni circulum ipsa die, qua Petrus apostolus passus, apud urbem Romam gladio percussus occubit. Ex cuius sacro corpore lac defl uxit et aqua. Nec mirum, si lac eius manavit ex corpore, qui gentes incredulas et parturivit et peperit ac lacte spiritali nutritas ad cibum solidum Scripturarum Sanctarum opaca reserando perduxit.

46. Origen, In Numeros Homilia, 20.2, PG 17.728. Discussed in de Nie, “Consciousness Fecund through God,” 102.

47. Augustine discusses the fecundity of the mind/soul in Sermo 15.8, ed.

Germanus Morin, Sancti Augustini Sermones post Maurinos Reperti (Rome: Tipografi a Polyglotta Vaticana, 1930): Ergo in mente pariant membra Christi, sicut Maria in ventre virgo peperit Christum; et sic eritis matres Christi.

48. Mary’s obedient act, of course, earned her the appellation God’s submissive “handmaid.” Hagiographers constructed the lives of virgins and Merovingian queens in imitation of this virtue, labeling them the “ancillae Dei,” or the little servants of God. See Vita Radegundis, I.4; Vita Rusticulae, 10.

49. Jerome, Epistle 22.24. Augustine, too, teaches that virgins may imitate Mary’s conception (an exact type of spiritual fecundity) through their faith: “ipsae cum Maria matres Christi sunt, si Patris eius faciunt voluntatem.” See Augustine’s De sancta virginitate 5, PL 40.399.

50. Avitus, Poematum 6.65-66, MGH AA 6:2.277: Scriberis in thalamos ac magni foedera regis/Et cupit electam speciem sibi iungere Christus.

51. Avitus, Poematum 6.201-4, MGH AA 6:2.281: Tu Mariam sequeris, dono cui contigit alto/ virginis et matris gemina gaudere corona/ Conciperet cum carne deum caelique creator/ Intraret clausum reserans mysteria ventrem./ . sed nec tibi gloria tanti/ Defuerit facti, si Christum credula corde/ Concipiens operum parias pia germina caelo. See also the translation and erudite commentary by George W. Shea, The Poems of Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 172 (Tempe: Arizona State University, 1997), esp. 138-40.

52. Avitus, Poematum 6.280-81, MGH AA 6:2.283: animum potius quam vincere sexum. See also Shea’s translation, 140.

53. Avitus, Poematum 6.413-14.

54. See de Nie’s discussion of Eugenia in “Consciousness Fecund through God,” 126.

55. See Vita S. Eugenia, PL 73.602-24; Avitus discusses Eugenia in Poem 6. See also Shea’s insightful discussion of Avitus’s choice and combination of hagiographies in bk. 6, 57-70.

56. Ceasarius of Arles, Regula Virginum, SC 345. An English translation is also available in Maria Caritas McCarthy, The Rule for Nuns of Caesarius of Arles (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1960). Also see William E.Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), for a survey of Caesarius’s cultural context.

57. Vita Radegundis, II.24.

58. Vita Radegundis, I.17-19, 22-26. Coon discusses the ascetic displays unique to Fortunatus’s rendition as compared to Baudonivia’s vita in Sacred Fictions, 126-35.

59. Fortunatus, Carminum 11.6, 9-14, MGH AA 4/1.260: ac si uno partu mater Radegundis utrosques/ visceribus castis progenuisset, eram/ et tamquam pariter nos ubera cara beatae/ parissent uno lacte fluente duos. See also Judith George’s translation in Venantius Fortunatus: Personal and Political Poems, Translated Texts for Historians, 23 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), 103-4. Fortunatus wrote this text, in part, to defend his relationship with Agnes against rumor and innuendo. Herein he identifies their love as that of spiritual siblings rather than physical lust.

60. It is important to note here that Merovingian hagiography and theology do not praise the virtues of virginity as enthusiastically as late antique texts. In many ways these texts provide the history of the Franks, i.e., their families, their networks often achieved through marital ties, and their Christianization.

61. Fortunatus, Carminum 6.5.237-44, MGH AA 4/1.142-43; see also George’s translation, Venantia Fortunatus, 46-47. The passage reads: iungitur ergo toro regali culmine virgo/ et magno meruit plebis amore coli/ hos quoque muneribus permulcens, vocibus illos/ et lict ignotos sic facit esse suos/ utque fidelis ei sit gens armata, per arma/ iurat iure suo, se quoque lege ligat./ Regnabat placido conponens tramite vitam, pauperibus tribuens advena mater erat. As George points out, Fortunatus wrote his poem on Galswinth in commemoration of her very controversial death. Chilperic had presented a rather large morgengabe (morning gift) to his new bride, which his brother and sister-in-law, Brunhild (also Galswinth’s sister), then disputed. Also, as rumor had it, Galswinth’s death was orchestrated by Chilperic and his favored wife, Fredegund. See Gregory of Tours’s account in LH, 4.28.

62. Fortunatus, Carminum 6.5.275-80. Gregory of Tours also records this miracle in LH, 4.28.

63. Fortunatus later confirms Galswinth’s presence in heaven where she “applauds the Lord’s glorious mother, Mary,” and “serves under God.” Fortunatus, Carminum 6.5.363-64.

64. Qur’an 4.57; see also 3.15, 198; 15.45-48; 36.55-58; 76.5-22; and 78.31-35 for other descriptions of paradise.

65. Al-Qadhi, Daqa-iq al-akhba r al-kabir fi ahikr al-janna wa l-na r; Al-Suyu t.i, Kitab al-durar al-h. isan fil- ba`th wa ha`a imi l-jinan. Discussed in Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, trans. Alan Sheridan (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).

66. See Bouhdiba’s discussion of the houris in Sexuality in Islam, 73-76. Al-Suyut.i describes in careful detail how the male sexual appetite increases: “each climax is extended and extended and lasts for twenty-four years”; noted in Bouhdiba, 75.

67. The Qur’an dictates that men may have as many as four wives as long as they are all treated equally and justly; see 4.3.

68. Bouhdiba even uses the term “infinite orgasm,” 72-87. 69. For a general discussion of homoerotic imagery in Arabic poetry, see J. W. Wright Jr. and Everett K. Rowson, Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); also, for a specific discussion of homoerotic imagery in paradisiacal texts, see Aziz al-Azmeh, “Rhetoric for the Senses: A Consideration of Muslim Paradise Narratives,” Journal of Arabic Literature 26 (1995): 215-31.

70. See Shahla Haeri, Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi`i Iran (Syracuse:

Syracuse University Press, 1989).

71. See Caroline Walker Bynum’s discussion in The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), esp. chaps. 1, 2.

72. Ibid., 100.

73. See Qur’an 2.187: “approach your wives; they are your garments and you are their garments.” Also, 4.1 suggests that men and women are created from the same soul; marriage thus returns the masculine and feminine elements to perfect unity. See Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).

74. It is important to note, however, that purification is both spiritual and physical. Without the right “intent of the heart,” the physical acts of ablution remain incomplete.

75. See Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, 74-76.

76. Fatima’s fashioning as al-Batu l and Maryam al-kubra appears in early Shi`ite hadith collections such as al-Kulayni, Al-Us. ul min al-kafi; and Ibn `Abd al-Wahhab, `Uyu n al-mu`jizat; see Spellberg’s discussion in Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past, 156-61; and the important work of Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “Chosen of All Women: Mary and Fatima in Qur’anic Exegesis,” Islamochristiana 7 (1981): 19-28.

77. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.1, p. 4: qala al-nabi lamma `araja bi ila al-sama’ akhadha bi-yadi jibra’il fa-adkhalani al-janna fa-nawalani min rut.abiha fa-akaltuhu fatah. awala dhalika nut.fa fi s.ulbi fa-lamma habat.tu ila al-ard. wa aqa`atu khadija fah. amalat bi-fat.ima.

78. Ibid., v. 43.1, p. 5: fa-ana ashammu minha ra’ih. at al-janna.

79. See al-Majlisi, v. 43, pp. 5, 15, 21, for his sources and variants of the traditions.

80. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.2, p. 15: allatı lam tara humra qattu ay lam tahid.

81. See al-Majlisi, v. 43, pp. 15-16, for variants of the traditions.

82. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.1, p. 3: dakhalat `alayha arba` niswa sumr t.awal kaannahunna min nisa’ bani hashim fa-faza`at minhunna lamma ra’athunna fa-qalat ih. dahunna: la tah. zani ya khadija fa-inna rusul rubbiki ilayki wa nah. nu akhawatuki ana sara wa hadhihi asiya bint mazahim . wa hadhihi maryam bint `imran wa hadhihi kulthum ukht musa bin `imran an ba`athana allah ilayki . fa-jalasat wah. ida `an yaminiha wa uh. ra `an yasariha wa l-thalitha bayn yadayha wa al-rab`ia min khalfi h. a fa-wada`at fat.ima t.ahira mut.ahhara.

83. As quoted in Rubin, “Pre-existence and Light,” 73.

84. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.1, p. 2: yakhbaruni annaha untha wa annaha al-nasla l-tahira l-maymuna wa anna allah tabaraka wa ta`ala sa-yaj`alu nasli minha . wa yaj`aluhum khulafa’ahufi ardihi.

85. See al-Kulayni, Kitab al-usul min al-kafi, ed. Sayyid Jawad Mustafawi (Tehran: al-Maktabah al-‘Ilmiyya al-Islamiyya, Haydurt Press, n.d.), 277-78. See also Ayoub’s discussion of the Light Verse, Redemptive Suffering, 57-58.

86. Shi`ite tradition reveals how the ancient patriarchs both prefigure and ultimately participate in the holy family. Ayoub includes a discussion of the ancient prophets and explains how each joined in the House of Sorrows. Adam, for example, descended directly to Karbala when he was expelled from Paradise. There he felt saddened and then tripped, and blood gushed from his foot. He asked what sin he had committed, but God explained that he stood on the future location of his son Husayn’s martyrdom. In a similar narrative Abraham is riding his horse one day and suddenly falls off. He, too, asks God what sin he has committed; God replies that he has just crossed the plain of Karbala. Thus both prophets not only recognize the ahl al-bayt’s authority but also participate in its suffering. See Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering, 27-36.

87. Muhibb al-Din al-T. abari, Dhakha’ir al-`uqbah (Beirut, 1973, 20); and Murtad. a al-H. usayni Firu zabadi, Fad. a’il al-khamsa (Beirut, 1393/1973), II, 56-59,

75-87; as quoted in Sharon, “Ahl al-Bayt,” 169-84.

88. Saint Hildephonsus of Toledo (607-67), Sermones, PL 96.239-83.

89. See `Abdallah al-Bah. rani, Maqtal al-`awalim (Tabriz: Dar al-T. iba`a, n.d.), 29; al-Majlisi, vol. 43, 241-42; both cited in Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering, 31-32.

90. See al-Majlisi, v. 43, p. 243; also, as cited in Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering, 32. Ja`far al-Tus. tari, Khas a’is al-H. usayn wa-Mazaya al-Maz. lum (n.p., n.d.,

lithograph of manuscript, copied 1305/1887), 66.

Chapter Four. Mothers and Families

1. Brown, The Body and Society, 153; my emphasis.

2. An approach similar to that employed in chapter 3.

3. Cameron, “Virginity as Metaphor.”

4. Al-Majlisi, vol. 43.2, p. 19; v. 43.3, pp. 28-29; v. 43.3, p. 29.

5. See Jerome, Against Jovinianus, bk. 1.

6. Historians have recently noticed the iconic parallels between Mary and Jesus as bride/groom and Roman depictions of reigning empress/emperor. See Thomas Matthews, The Clash of the Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

7. See Bernard’s Cantica Canticarum, In Laud. V. Mar., and In Assumptione Beatae Mariae Virginis in PL 182-83; also see Sancti Bernardi Opera Omnia, 8 vols., ed. Jean Leclercq, Charles H. Talbot, and Henri-Marie Rochais (Rome, 1957-78). As Caroline Walker Bynum points out in Jesus as Mother (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), Bernard and other mystics also identified the bride as the individual soul or the community of monks as a whole.

8. Ambrose, Exp. in Ps. 118 1.16, PL 15.1206-7; discussed in H. Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, vol. 1, From the Beginnings to the Eve of the Reformation (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 85-89.

9. Ambrose, De virginibus, 65: et virgo concepit, virgo peperit bonum odorem, Dei Filium. PL 16.282; discussed in Graef, Mary, 85-89.

10. The student is usually identified as Quodvultdeus, PL 40.661; discussed in Graef, Mary, 131-32. Graef also points out that the Greek Oecumenius provided the most complete Marian interpretation of Revelation 12. He states that the vision “describes the Theotokos,” quoted in Graef, 132.

11. See Ambrose, Exposito in Evangelium Secundum Lucam, 7.5, PL 15.1700.

12. See Augustine, Sermones ad Populum, Classis II. de Tempore, 181.1, PL 38.995; Ambrose, Expositio Evangelium secundum Lucam, 2.2, PL 15.1553.

13. Augustine, Sermones ad Populum, Classis II. de Tempore, 192.2: Ut quod egit uterus Mariae in carne Christi, agat cor vestrum in lege Christi. Quomodo autem non ad partum Virginis pertinetis, quando Christi membra estis? Caput vestrum peperit Maria, vos Ecclesia. Nam ipsa quoque et mater et virgo est: mater visceribus charitatis, virgo integritate fidei et pietatis. Populos parit, sed unius membra sunt, cuius ipsa est corpus et conjux, etiam in hoc similitudinem gerens illius virginis, quia et in multis mater est unitatis. PL 38.1012; FC, v. 17, 192.2, 33.

14. See also Augustine’s “Sermones ad Populum, Classis II. de Tempore, 191.3(4): Nec propterea vos steriles deputetis, quia virgines permanetis. Nam et ipsa pia integritas carnis, ad fecunditatem pertinet mentis. . Sic in mentibus vestris et fecunditas exuberet, et virginitas perseveret. PL 38.1011.

15. Mary’s obedience also accentuated her status as Eve’s righteous counterpart. Whereas Eve’s disobedience introduced corruption and death, Mary allowed for Christ’s birth and hope of redemption. Irenaeus developed this Eve- Mary parallel in his Against the Heresies, 3, 22, 24.

16. Bouhdiba, Sexuality in Islam, 7-8; see also Murata’s discussion of masculine and feminine completion in The Tao of Islam; and Umar R. Ehrenfels’s “Weibliche elemente in der symbolik des Islam,” in Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenshaft (Meunster in Westfalen, 1950).

17. These, of course, are generalized expectations. Degrees of covering and modesty ultimately depend on independent cultural systems, local custom, and interpretation. For important works on veiling, including social and cultural analyses, see Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland (Reading, Mass.: Addison - Wesley, 1991); Arlene Elowe Mac leod, Accommodating Protest: Working Women, the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Nilufer Gole, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); and Claudia Knieps, Geschichte der Verschleierung der Frau im Islam (Wurzburg: Ergon, 1993).

18. These expectations reflect traditional gender roles as described in hagiographic texts. Important historical works reveal that some social norms allowed for various types of gender performance, however. See Everett K. Rowson, “Gender Irregularity as Entertainment: Institutionalized Transvestism at the Caliphal Court in Medieval Baghdad,” in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, ed. Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); and his “The Effeminates of Early Medina,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 111 (1991): 671-93.

19. Bouhdiba discusses these traditions in Sexuality in Islam, 217-18.

20. Al-Majlisi, vol. 43.3, p. 24 (I have pluralized the hadith in my quotation).

21. Al-Majlisi, vol. 43.2, p. 17.

22. Al-Baladhuri, Ansab al-ashra f 1.401; al-Dulabi, al-Dhurriyya al-t.ahira 91; al-Kulayni, al-Kafi: al-usul wa l-furu` wa l-rawd. a, 8.340. Variant sources place the marriage contract earlier with the ceremony/consummation after the Battle of Badr, see Soufi , “The Image of Fatima,” 33; EI2, “Fatima,” 842-43.

23. See Lammens’s discussion in EI1, 85-88. His sometimes overly critical approach views the variant hadith regarding Fatima’s age as proof of her insignificance and unattractiveness; that is, Muhammad had problems marrying off his daughter. He claims that Shi`ite hadith refute this image by listing Fatima’s several proposals from other (very prominent) men.

24. See Soufi , “The Image of Fatima,” 35-36. She quotes hadith from al- Baladhuri, Ibn H. anbal, Ibn Qutayba, and al-Du labi.

25. Al-Du labi 94, 95; Ibn H. anbal, Kita b fad. a’il al-s ah. a ba, 2.569, 632, 762; see discussion and variant sources in Soufi , “The Image of Fatima,” 36; and EI2, “Fatima,” 842-43.

26. See EI2, “Fatima,” 842-43.

27. See explanations of early Islamic marriage in Gertrude H. Stern, Marriage in Early Islam (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1939).

28. Rustam al-T. abari (c. tenth century), Dala’il al-imama, 12; Ibn Shahrashub (c. twelfth century), Mana qib Al Abi T. alib; discussed in EI2, “Fatima,” 846.

29. See al-Majlisi, vol. 43, pp. 92-145, for variant traditions. According to some transmitters, `Ali and Fatima were wed during Muhammad’s night journey; and other sources measure Fatima’s mahr at one-fifth or one-fourth of the earth. Also see Soufi ’s discussion of the heavenly marriage in “The Image of Fatima,” 38-45. Soufi points out that reports of the heavenly marriage also appear in some post-fourth/tenth-century Sunni works.

30. The t. u ba tree is described by various exegetes commenting on t. u ba, mentioned in Qur’an 13.29: “For those who believe and work righteousness, is (every) blessedness (t.u ba), and a beautiful place of (final) return.” See Soufi , “The Image of Fatima,” 40; and EI2, “Fatima,” 846-47.

31. See the full description of Fatima’s role on the day of resurrection and judgment below.

32. See EI2, “Fatima,” 846-47.

33. See EI2, “Fatima,” 846-47; Soufi , “The Image of Fatima,” notes other practices modeled after `Ali and Fatima’s ceremony. She mentions Muhammad’s supplication before the couple as he sprinkled their chests with water. This, she notes, is repeated at some modern ceremonies; see esp. 36-37.

34. Al-Tusi, Ama li ‘l-shaykh al-Tusi, 1.38; al-Kulayni, al-Ka fi, 5.378; and al- Qummi, Tafsir al-qummi, 2.336-338; discussed in Soufi , “The Image of Fatima,” 44-45.

35. See Haeri, Law of Desire, 38-40. Opponents argue that Muhammad married `A’isha when she was only nine years old, and thus only parental approval was necessary.

36. See, for example, al-Mufid, 2.5, 414; or, EI2, “Fatima,” 846-47.

37. Al-Majlisi, vol. 43, p. 8: nadat udan li-uh. addithuka bi-ma kana wa bi-mahuwa ka’in wa bi-ma lam yakun ila yawm al-qiyama h. ina taqu mu al-sa`a.

38. The ahl al-bayt are collectively known as the bayt al-ah. zan, or house of sorrows, because of the abandonment, persecution, and poverty they experienced. See Ayoub’s discussion in Redemptive Suffering, 23-52. Also see Louis Massignon’s Opera Minora, ed. Y. Moubarac (Beirut: Dar al-Ma`arif, 1963), I.573 ff., on the importance of Fatima in the bayt al-ah. zan.

39. Al-Majlisi, vol. 43, p. 25; al-Mufid, chap. 4, 133.

40. The inheritance of Fadak is an important theological point for Shi`ites. Fatima’s claim to inherit land from her father would set precedent for inheritable position. Abu Bakr, however, claimed that the Prophet had said, “We the prophets neither inherit nor give inheritance.” This intimated that the family of the Prophet held no privileged status above the faithful companions. See Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering, 49-50; Momen, Introduction to Shi`i Islam, 20-21; and EI2, “Fadak,” 725-27.

41. Ja`far b. Muh. ammad b. Qawlawayh al-Qummi, Kamil al-ziya rat, ed. Mirza `Abdallah al-H. usayn al-Amini al-Tabrizi (Najaf: Mutadawiyyah, 1356/1937), 82; as quoted in Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering, 144-45.

42. For discussions of gender and death rituals, see El-Sayed El-Aswad, “Death Rituals in Rural Egyptian Society: A Symbolic Study,” Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 16 (1987): 205-41; and the more recent article by Lila Abu-Lughod, “Islam and the Gendered Discourses of Death,” IJMES 25 (1993): 187-205.

43. See Nadia Abu-Zahra, “The Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Islamic Rituals,” Arab Historical Review for Ottoman Studies 3-4 (1991): 7-38. For examples of female saints who refuse to wail, see Abu-Lughod, “Islam and the Gendered Discourses of Death,” 194-95.

44. See David Pinault’s discussion of contemporary Muharram rituals that cast Fatima as the welcoming mother, rewarding those Shi`ites who mourn the death of Husayn, in The Shi`ites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

45. The preceding chapters discuss these theological treatises in greater detail, including the great debate over Mary’s title Theotokos. I argue there that the third- and fourth-century eruption of Marian piety and texts relates more to theology than popular piety. In Mary, Graef provides one of the most concise yet well documented surveys of Marian theology in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.

46. GM 12, MGH SRM 1.2.46: patuitque evidenti ratione, contra iniquam et Deo odibilem Arrianam heresim, quae eo tempore pullulabat, haec acta. Agnitumque est, sanctam Trinitatem in una omnipotentiae aequalitate connexam, nullis garrulationibus posse disiungi. Also see Van Dam’s translation, 32.

47. In another test of faith, a Catholic deacon thrust his hand into boiling water to no effect while the Arian hand suffered severe burns (GM 80).

48. VP XIX, MGH SRM 1.2.286: ad extremum semper virginis intactaeque Mariae dignatur utero suscipi, et praepotens inmortalisque Creator mortalis carnis patitur amictu vestiri. See also Van Dam’s translation, 124.

49. GM 9. Peter Schäfer provides a fascinating survey of the furnace story in late antique and early Christian texts. He also looks at Jewish apocryphal tales that countered Mary’s miraculous deeds along with Jesus’ divine nature. See Peter Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 197-216.

50. GM 9; MGH SRM 1.2.44: ille Christo domino ac suis legibus inimicus.

51. GM 9; MGH SRM 1.2.44: quasi super plumas mollissimas.

52. Cf. Dan. 3.8-30.

53. GM 9; MGH SRM 1.2.44: mulier, quae in basilicam illam, ubi panem de mensa accepi, in cathedra resedens.

54. GM 9; MGH SRM 1.2.44: agnitam ergo infans fidem catholicam, credidit in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti.

55. See Isabel Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 100-101.

56. Moreira, Dreams, 100-103; also, for a history of early medieval anti- Semitism, see Solomon Katz, The Jews in the Visigothic and Frankish Kingdoms of Spain and Gaul (Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1937); and Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa, eds., Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1996).

57. See Paul Fouracre and Richard A. Gerberding’s concise description of the Merovingian political milieu and family lineages in Late Merovingian France.

58. Janet T. Nelson discusses the importance of the royal household and domestic power and warns against relying on the traditional correlation between the public, political sphere with masculine space and the private, familial sphere with feminine space. See her “Queens as Jezebels,” 31-77. She states: “A king might win or confirm his power on the battlefield, but he exercised it in the hall, and this we have seen to be the prime area of the queen’s ac tivity. Here in the royal familia the distribution of food, clothing, charity, the nurturing of the iuvenes, the maintenance of friendly relations between the princeps, the respectful reception of bishops and foreign visitors: all fell to the queen’s responsi bility. . All this explains why in the case of a queen, domestic power could mean political power,” 74-75. See also W. Schlesinger, Beiträge zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte des Mittelalters (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963).

59. See, among others, Ian Wood’s discussion in The Merovingian Kingdoms, esp. chap. 8.

60. The Christianity that flourished in Merovingian Gaul revealed a unique blending of Gallo-Roman, Frankish, and Eastern piety. Ascetic traditions from Syria and Egypt entered Gaul through, in particular, John Cassian’s (d. 435) reports of Eastern eremitism. (Major monastic centers influenced by Eastern ideals included the monasteries at Lérins, Arles, Tours, and Poitiers.) In his Conferences, Cassian magnified the self-abnegation and worldly rejection of holy men and women while tempering harsh asceticism with a via media. For example, he appointed the anchorite’s life as an “ideal,” but he favored the coenobitic (communal) life wherein monasticism could flourish. See John Cassian, Conlationes, CSEL 13, esp. bk. XIX. See also the discussion of Cassion’s influence on Western spirituality in Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, 181 ff. This ascetic model coupled with notions of Roman aristocracy and social order, along with a new Frankish ruling elite, resulted in a distinctive model of sanctity in Gaul.

61. McNamara discusses the proselytization efforts of women in Gaul in “Living Sermons: Consecrated Women and the Conversion of Gaul,” in Nichols and Shank, eds., Medieval Religious Women, vol. 2, Peaceweavers, 19-37. Also, Schulenburg discusses the role of women in conversion throughout western Europe, including Gaul, Lombardy, Visigothic Spain, and Anglo-Saxon England, in Forgetful of Their Sex, esp. chap. 4, “Marriage and Domestic Proselytization,” 177-209.

62. Gregory of Tours, LH II.30-31.

63. On the importance of Martin of Tours in the Christianization of Gaul, see Van Dam, Leadership and Community, 119-40. Also, Wallace-Hadrill provides an important description of Clovis’s conversion in The Frankish Church, 17-36.

64. See Clothild’s vita, MGH SRM 2.341-48; also, McNamara, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 38-50.

65. The Franks, unique among the Germanic invaders, converted to “orthodox” Christianity.

66. Vita Genovefae, AS, Jan. 3, 137-53; or see the later edition in MGH SRM 3.204-38; see also trans. in McNamara, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 17-37.

67. Vita Chrothildis 7, MGH SRM 2.344; or McNamara, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 44-45: veniente rege pagano ad baptismum, precederet sanctus Remigius vice Christi Iesu, et subsequeretur sancta regina Chrothildis vice ecclesie Deum interpellantis.

68. Vita Chrothildis 11, MGH SRM 2.346; or McNamara, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 47: corda gentis pagane et ferocissime . blanditiis emollivit et sanctis exortationibus et orationibus sedulis per beatum Remigium ad Deum convertit.

69. Vita Chrothildis 14, MGH SRM 2.347; or McNamara, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 49: His et aliis sanctis operibus referta sancta Chrothildis olim regina, tunc pauperum et servorum Dei famula, despiciens mundum et corde diligens Deum, consenuit in senectute bona, a Christo receptura premia sine fine mansura.

70. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.3, pp. 24-25: fa t.ima bid`a minni wa hiya nur `ayni wa thamara fu’adi yasu’uni ma sa’aha wa yasurruni ma sarraha . fa-ah. sin ilayha ba`di wa amma al-h. asan wa al-h. usayn fa-huma ibnaya wa rih. anatayya wa huma sayyida shabab ahl al-janna fa la-yakrama alayka ka-sam`uka wa bas.aruka.

71. See Rubin, “Pre-existence and Light,” 99.

72. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.3, pp. 20-21: la-yaghdabu li-ghadabiki wa yarda lirada ’iki.

73. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.3, pp. 25-26.

74. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.2, p. 18: summiyat fat.ima fi l-ard. li-annaha fat.imat shi`ataha min al-nar.

75. Al-Mufid, chap. 4; 126.

76. Al-Majlisi, vol. 43.3, p. 29.

77. These food replication miracles offer a striking comparison with the Mary and Martha dichotomy that evolves in the Christian tradition (Luke 10.38-42). In Christian exegesis Mary chooses to sit by Jesus’ feet for instruction (the contemplative life) while Martha labors in the kitchen (the active life). In Shi`ite exegesis, however, Fatima performs the obligatory prayers and rituals while Allah provides for all the mundane chores.

78. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.3, p. 29.

79. See Jane Smith and Yvonne Haddad, “Eve: Islamic Image of Woman,” in Women and Islam, ed. Azizah al-Hibri (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982), 136. Note the comparison of Adam and Eve’s culpability: in Qur’an 2.35, 7.19, both are allotted paradise and warned against the tree; 2.36, 7.20, Iblis’s (Satan’s) temptation of both; 2.121, both become aware of their nakedness; and 2.36, 20.123, 7.24, Allah expels them from the Garden.

80. See al-Kisa’i , The Tales of the Prophets, trans. W. M. Thackston Jr. (Boston: Twayne, 1978), 31.

81. See Smith and Haddad, Women and Islam, 135-37.

82. See Barbara Freyer Stowasser’s discussion of Hawwa’ in Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 25-38.

83. See Stowasser’s discussion of al-T. abari, Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretation, 30.

84. According to one hadith, Muhammad himself acknowledges the potential danger of women as he compares the powers of one’s personal shaytan and one’s wives: “My Satan was an unbeliever but God helped me against him and He converted to Islam; my wives were a help for me. Adam’s Satan was an infidel and Adam’s wife was an aid in his sin.” Quoted from al-Munawi, al-Suyut.i, and al-Daylami in Kister, “Legends in tafsir and hadith Literature,” 93. In al-Kisa’i’s Tales of the Prophets, 51, Satan even receives “woman” as his special, vulnerable prey.

85. See Ayoub, Redemptive Suffering, 62.

86. Al-Majlisi, v. 11, p. 164.

87. Al-Majlisi, v. 11, p. 165: wa tasallat.a `ala hawwa’ li-naz. ariha ila fat.ima bi `ayn al-h. asad h. atta akalat min al-shajara ka-ma akala adam fa-akhrajahuma allah, `azza wa jalla, `an jannatihi, wa ahbat.ahuma `an jawarihi ila l-ard. .

88. Umm al-Kitab, quoted by Louis Massignon, “L’hyperdulie de Fatima, ses Origines Historiques et Dogmatiques,” in La Mubahala de Medine et l’hyperdulie de Fatima (Paris: Librairie Orientale et Americaine, 1955), 28.

89. Al-Kisa’i, Tales of the Prophets, 41-42.

90. See 1 Kings 21-22.

91. On Brunhild’s animosity toward Columbanus, see the Vita Columbani, Liber I, MGH SRM 4.65-112. Also see Fredegar’s Chronicle for his descriptions of Brunhild’s murderous plots, esp. cap. 32. The translation is available in J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar, with Its Continuations (London: Nelson 1960). Nelson also provides an important analysis of Brunhild’s political ventures in “Queens as Jezebels.”

92. Fouracre and Gerberding provide a good introduction to and translation of Balthild’s vita; see Late Merovingian France, 97-132.

93. See Vita Wilfridi, MGH SRM 6.193-263. See also Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels,” 65-66.

94. Vita S. Balthildis, 3.

95. Vita S. Balthildis, 4, MGH SRM 2.486: ut matrem, sacerdotibus ut filiam, iuvenibus sive adolescentibus ut piam nutricem.

96. Vita S. Balthildis, 4, MGH SRM 2.486: ministrans ipsa sacerdotibus et pauperibus, pascebat egenos et induebat vestibus nudos . dirigebat quoque per ipsum ad coenobia virorum ac sacrarum virginum auri vel argenti non modica munera.

97. Many Shi`ite hagiographers construct an antithesis to Fatima’s virtue as well, both in Hawwa’ (or Eve) and `A’isha, Muhammad’s beloved wife.

98. See the Protevangelium of James and the Odes of Solomon, for example. These texts are discussed in greater detail in chap. 3.

99. See Daniel Boyarin’s eloquent discussion of this fleshly hierarchy in “On the History of the Early Phallus,” in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, Medieval Cultures 32, ed. Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003), 7-8.

100. See de Nie’s article, “Consciousness Fecund through God,” 116-32,

for an important analysis of Perpetua, Felicitas, and Eugenia.

101. There are many works available on transvestitism and transgendering in the early church. One article describes the Greco-Roman philosophical milieu in which this model evolved. See Elizabeth Castelli’s “ ‘I will make Mary male’: Pieties of the Body and Gender Transformation of Christian Women in Late Antiquity,” in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (New York: Routledge, 1991), 29-49.

102. Gregory of Tours, GM 9; MGH SRM 1.2.45: Nec enim potest fieri, ut deficiat triticum in eius monasterium, quae frugem vitae ex utero pereunti intulit mundo.

103. See, for example, Isabelle Réal’s discussion in Vies de saints, vie de famille: Représentation et système de la parenté dans le Royaume mérovingien (481-751) d’après les sources hagiographiques (Brussels: Brepols, 2001).

104. For detailed discussion of property rites and toll exemptions, see Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450-751 (New York: Longman, 1994), esp. chaps. 11, 12; also see Jo Ann McNamara and Suzanne Wemple, “The Power of Women through the Family in Medieval Europe, 500-1100,” in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983), 83-101; also see Janet L. Nelson’s “The Wary Widow” and Paul Fouracre’s “Eternal Light and Earthly Needs: Practical Aspects of the Development of Frankish Immunities,” in Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). In The Frankish Church, Wallace-Hadrill discusses various motivations for Merovingian investment in monastic houses. He includes the donors’ desire for perpetual intercession provided by the “professional” monks and nuns; the localization of martyrs’ and bishops’ relics supervised by monastic houses; and the gaining of salvation through charitable gifts to monastic poverty (60-62).

105. In Saints’ Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender, Kitchens argues that there are more continuities between male and female hagiography in the early Merovingian period than differences. He contends that charity, for example, is a constant virtue from the biblical period through the early Medieval era; and he does not see charity as a particularly female attribute. I disagree, however, as argued above.

106. See, for example, Athanasius, Life of Antony, 12. Coon also discusses the hagiographer Gerontius’s subtle chastisement of Melania the Younger for fl aunting her wealth around the Egyptian desert. According to the vita, Melania attempts to give some of the anchorites gold coins which they reject with disdain (see Sacred Fictions, 116-17).

107. See (among others) Matt. 5.3, 6.19; Mark 10.23-6; Matt. 21.12; Mark 11.15.

108. See Dominic Janes’s discussion of late antique poverty and wealth in God and Gold in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). She explains the ambiguities between textual exaltations of poverty and visual displays of wealth and grandeur in early churches and images. Ambrose and Augustine, for example, were careful to explain that the desire for wealth, not wealth itself, led to corruption and sin; see 154-55.

109. Vita Melaniae, 21 (SC 90), as quoted in Janes, God and Gold, 137.

110. Fortunatus, Vita Radegundis 13, MGH SRM 2.369: Mox indumentum nobile, quo celeberrima die solebat, pompa comitante, regina procedere, exuta ponit in altare et blattis, gemmis, ornamentis mensam divinae gloriae tot donis onerat per honorem. Cingulum auri ponderatum fractum dat opus in pauperum.

111. Fortunatus, Vita Radegundis 17, MGH SRM 2.370.

112. See Luke 10.40. In medieval exegesis Martha symbolizes the active life of charity, as opposed to the contemplative life of her sister Mary. Fortunatus calls Radegund the “new Martha” in Vita Radegundis 7.

113. The history of Ave Maria is, of course, complicated. The basic form of the prayer was established from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries. The prayer borrowed from the biblical texts of Luke 1. 28 and 1.42, which recounted Gabriel’s and Elizabeth’s greetings to Mary. Most of the prayer, however, is present in the Western church’s liturgy by the seventh century. Baudonivia’s rendition of Mammezo’s prayer resonates strongly with the structure of the Ave Maria: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are thou among women; blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” See Anne Winston-Allen’s history of the rosary in Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).

114. Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis 11, MGH SRM 2.385; or McNamara, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 94: Domina Radegundis, credo, te virtute Dei esse plenam, cuius voluntatem magis fecisti, quam hominum; domina bona, pietate plena, miserere mei, subveni infelice, ora pro me, ut mihi reddatur oculus, quia pro gravi crutiatu et dolore affl igitur anima mea.

115. Baudonivia, Vita Radegundis 23. Gregory of Tours made this comment at Radegund’s funeral; as he gazed upon Radegund he smelled lilies and roses that reminded him of the Holy Mother.

116. Vita Rusticulae 22, MGH SRM 4.348: omnes dominam, omnes piam matrem vocarent.

117. Ibn Sa`d, Tabaqat al-kubra (Bierut: Dar Sadir, 1957-58), 3.170; 8.64,66. Discussed in Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past, 32-37.

118. Ibn Sa`d, Tabaqat al-kubra, 8.65,67; al-Tirmidhi, S. ah. ih. al-Tirmidhi, 5.364-66; as discussed in Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past, 33-34.

119. Spellberg cites traditions that explain that the Prophet’s wives did not eat meat; therefore they were slender (!). See Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past, 67-68.

120. Spellberg also cites, among others, Ibn Hisha m’s exegetical works that correlate the hadith al-ifk with the Qur’anic revelations; see Kita b sirat rasu l allah, vol. 1, pt. 2: 736; Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past, 73-74.

121. The implications of this repudiation are far reaching in terms of Shi`ite historiography. As Etan Kohlberg points out, “It involves a rejection of the natural assumption that the earliest followers of true faith are also the best and the most virtuous of its practitioners; in Sunni Islam this principle is enshrined in the hadith, ‘The most excellent people are my generation, then those following them, then those [who follow those] following them.’ ” Kohlberg goes on to explain that Shi`ite authors devoted their attention more to rija l works concerning the Imams’ followers than the biographers of the Companions. See “Some Imami Shi`i Views on the S.AH.A BA,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 5 (1984): 149-50.

122. As Kohlberg points out, the tradition can be dated to traditionist `Ali b. Mujahid al-Razi (d. 182/ 798) in his Manaqib amir al-mu’minin wa mathalib almuna fi qin. See Kohlberg’s recension of the text in “Some Imami Shi`i Views on the S.AH.A BA,” 152-56.

123. This hadith resonates with the miracle story of Numbers 22 wherein Balaam’s donkey recognizes God’s angel and diverts from its path.

124. See S. ah. ih Bukhari, v. 7, 64.274.

125. See al-Majlisi, v. 43.3, pp. 28-29.

126. Caesarius, Rule for Nuns, 63, p. 191.

127. One of the most noted queens who escapes an unwanted marriage is Radegund; see Vita Radegundis 12. Also, Caesarius of Arles describes how virgins “unite to holy Mary” in the Mystical Body (i.e., the church) as the brides of Christ; see Sermo VI, p. 36. Also, McCarthy discusses this passage, along with the similarities with Augustine’s De sancta virginitate, xix-xx, 252-54; xiv, 290-291; see McCarthy, The Rule for Nuns, 59.

128. See Donald Hochstetler, A Conflict of Traditions: Women in Religion in the Early Middle Ages, 500-840 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1992). Hochstetler discusses the economic freedom of many abbesses and the question of community property on 16-24.

129. McNamara mentions this possibility in The Ordeal of Community, 12-13. Also, the rules of both Donatus and Caesarius remain clear about “testing” the young initiates for purity of purpose; Donatus, Rule 6; Caesarius, Rule for Nuns, 4.

130. See particularly Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg’s discussion of family authority and royal patronage in Forgetful of Their Sex.

131. Donastus of Besançon, for example, notes in his Rule that no nun should act out of loyalty to another because of consanguinity. See McNamara and Halborg’s translation in The Ordeal of Community, 74, p. 71. Also see Mc- Namara’s introduction, 12-13, which briefl y summarizes some of the motivations for entering a convent in the early medieval period. Hochstetler provides a fine discussion of the “ideal” and actual inequalities in religious communities in A Conflict of Traditions, 119-26. Finally, note that Caesarius very clearly states that no nun, not even the abbess, should be permitted to have a personal maid.

132. Caesarius, Rule for Nuns, 25.

133. Ibid., 40.

134. See Caesarius, Rule for Nuns, 2, 59; also note Caesarius’s comments in Vereor as discussed by McCarthy, The Rule for Nuns, 54: “She who desires to preserve religion in an immaculate heart and a pure body, ought never, or certainly only for great and unavoidable necessity, go out in public; familiar friendship with men, as much as possible should be rare.” See Vereor 136-37.

135. See Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex, 139-55.

136. MGH Concilia 1.12-13, p. 218. See Hochstetler’s discussion of such church councils, 65-80.

137. MGH Concilia 1.17-18, 63; as quoted in Hochstetler, A Conflict of Traditions, 79-80.

138. There has been some debate over whether before the Council of Orléans deaconesses were allowed to participate in consecrating the Eucharist. If so, the delineation of a “proper” consecrated life further alienated women from roles of leadership. See, for example, Suzanne Wemple, Women in Frankish Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 140); Hochstetler, A Conflict of Traditions, 76 ff.

139. See Hochstetler, A Conflict of Traditions, 16-19; Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg has done the most expansive studies on the topic of the decline of women’s monasticism in the late Merovingian and Carolingian periods. See “Strict Active Enclosure and Its Effects on the Female Monastic Experience, ca. 500-1100,” in Nichols and Thomas, eds., Distant Echoes, 51-86; and “Women’s Monastic Communities, 500-1100: Patterns of Expansion and Decline,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14.2 (1989): 261-92.

140. As already noted, there is no monastic tradition in Islam as there is in Christianity, so it is impossible to identify traditions of abbesses as mothers and familial rhetoric in ascetic communities to illustrate the power of domestic rhetoric. It is possible, however, to recognize some of the saint cults that arise in Shi`ite circles throughout the Middle Ages focusing on the sons and daughters (i.e., the extended families) of the Imams. In one of these cultic traditions in Egypt, for example, Sayyida Nafisah bint al-Hasan is adored. In popular traditions, she is approached as “mother”; she is, in effect, imitating Fatima. See Devin J. Stewart, “Popular Shi`ism in Medieval Egypt: Vestiges of Islamic Sectarian Polemics in Egyptian Arabic,” Studia Islamica 84.2 (1996): 35-66; Yusuf Ragib, “Al-Sayyida Nafisa, sa légende, son culte et son cimetière,” Studia Islamica 44 (1976): 61-86; and, for a comparative view with the Sufi s, Valerie J. Hoffman-Ladd, “Devotion to the Prophet and His Family in Egyptian Sufi sm,” IJMES 24 (1992): 615-37.

141. For discussions of Islamic scholars and their leadership in medieval communities, see Roy Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); and Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo.

142. For an important discussion of the scholars’ leadership of the Shi`ite community, see Momen’s An Introduction to Shi`i Islam, esp. 184-207.

Chapter Five. Sacred Art and Architecture

1. See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson- Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), for a theoretical discussion of spatial practice.

2. See Jas Elsner, Imperial Rome an Christian Triumph: The Art of the Roman Empire, AD 100-450 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Elsner brilliantly discusses visual culture as a display of power and authority as he traces the changes from Roman to Christian material culture.

3. The cornerstone of Judeo-Christian monotheism, of course, resides in the Ten Commandments, Exod. 20.1-17. The Qur’an 17.39 relates a similar set of ethical imperatives, including the command to “take not, with Allah, another object of worship.”

4. Matthews’s work, The Clash of Gods, provides an important review of material culture and its function in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. According to Matthews, for example, material culture was more than just a visual experience; it included sight, sound, and smells that overwhelmed the worshiper.

5. Many scholars (e.g., Elsner) have explained that the Jewish prohibitions against material displays in sacred space were indeed ideals. The synagogue at Dura Europas is a good example.

6. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.2, page 11.

7. See, for example, al-Kulayni’s discussion of Fatima as nur in Kitab alus. u l min al-kafi.

8. See Rizvi, “Gendered Patronage,” 123-53.

9. The profound debate over material representation and figural images emerged in Christianity during the fifth and sixth centuries well before the iconoclast controversy in the Byzantine East. Popular opinion among the priests, bishops, and popes finally agreed that the church should employ images as didactic tools. See, for example, Pope Gregory the Great’s Letter to Bishop Serenus of Marseille. Caecilia Davis-Weyer provides an excellent review of arguments for and against the use of images in worship (both public and private); see Early Medieval Art, 300-1150: Sources and Documents (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1971). Gregory of Tours, for example, believed that pictures and ornaments made admirable instruments for educating the “rustics” (rustici) of Gaul. Gregory boasts of the images used in Saint Martin’s martyrium in HF 10.31; 7.22. Also see Cynthia Hahn, “Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in Early-Medieval Saints’ Shrines,” Speculum 72.4 (1997): 1095; Brown, Society and the Holy, 222-50. And in anti-Jewish polemic, Christian theologians further argued that God sanctioned the use of some images; indeed, he commanded Moses to mount cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant and Ezekiel to fill the Temple with figural effigies. See Charles Barber, “The Truth in Painting: Iconoclasm and Identity in Early-Medieval Art,” Speculum 72.4 (1997): 1026-27. Barber discusses primarily Leontios of Neapolis, Against the Jews. For other texts, see Joan Branham, “Sacred Space under Erasure in Ancient Synagogues and Early Churches,” Art Bulletin 74 (1992): 375-94.

10. In The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), Oleg Grabar stresses that while this might be the rule of Islamic artistic display, there are certainly exceptions. He points out that different geographic locales were more permissive than others in allowing figural displays throughout history; and art and architecture intended for personal piety instead of public use often acceded to animals and sometimes people; see 72-73, 89. Also, Muhammad Issa argues as a Muslim that prohibitions against pictorial display served an historical purpose only. He contends that Muhammad’s injunctions served the earliest community to strengthen their nascent faith, but that need no longer exists. See his Painting in Islam: Between Prohibition and Aversion (Istanbul: Waqf for Research on Islamic History, Art, and Culture, 1996). See also Dominique Clevenot, Splendors of Islam: Architecture, Decoration and Design (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), esp. 126-33.

11. Robert Hillenbrand provides an important review of innovative styles of Umayyad and `Abbasid art forms; see Islamic Art and Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999).

12. I rely here on Grabar’s foundational work, The Formation of Islamic Art. Also see Terry Allen, “Aniconism and Figural Representation in Islamic Art,” in Five Essays on Islamic Art (Manchester, Mich.: Solipsist Press, 1988).

13. See Leslie Brubaker’s important study, “Icons before Iconoclasm?” in Morfologie sociali culturali in Europa fra tarda antichità e alto Medioevo (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1998).

14. These hadith are both collected and quoted in Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art, 82.

15. See Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art, 81-83. This criticism is based on the Qur’anic verse 59.24. Also see Brown’s “Dark Age Crisis” in Society and the Holy, 251-301.

16. See the important works on goddess imagery, including Ludy Goodison and Christine Morris, eds., Ancient Goddess: The Myths and the Evidence (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998); Merope Pavlides, “The Cult of Mary Compared with Ancient Mother Goddesses,” in Gender, Culture, and the Arts: Women, the Arts and Society, ed. Ronald Dotterer and Susan Bowers (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1993). Also, the works of Michael Carroll, psychohistorian, allude to ancient goddess worship as a prototype for Marian adoration; see, for example, The Cult of the Virgin Mary: Psychological Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

17. See Christo Kovachevski’s discussion of the ancient prototypes of Marian images in The Madonna in Western Painting (London: Cromwell Editions, 1991), 16-17; and Elsner, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph, 220-28.

18. The Nestorians and other “heretical” groups rejected the images of Mary breast-feeding as well as any popular cult devoted to her milk. The Nestorians found it nothing less than disgusting to suggest that God actually fed at a woman’s breast.

19. John Crook discusses the Virgin’s milk in The Architectural Setting of the Cult of the Saints in the Early Christian West, c. 300-1200 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 7. It is ironic that this cult only gained some momentum in the twelfth century and then finally just before the Reformation. Erasmus condemned this popular adoration most virulently in many of his works, including Ten Colloquies, English translation by Craig Thompson (New York: Macmillan, 1986).

20. Indeed, the T-shape model only triumphed among other variants during the eighth century. Richard Krautheimer, in “Carolingian Revival of Early Christian Architecture,” in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 203-6, argues that Saint Denis was the first construction to follow the basic T-model since the fifth century. See also Krautheimer’s article in the same volume, “The Beginning of Early Christian Architecture,” 1-20.

21. Eric Fletcher presents the basic argument among art historians regarding the categories “Late Roman” and “Merovingian or Early Medieval” in “The Influence of Merovingian Gaul on Northumbria in the Seventh Century,” Medieval Archaeology 24 (1980): 69-86. This important point, however, is beyond the scope of my argument; I am looking primarily at the evolution of Marian imagery, not the distinctive schools of art. Fletcher also, quite rightly, points out the problems associated with retrieving data on Merovingian architecture and art forms because of later Romanesque and Gothic additions.

22. Liber Pontificalis, 46; trans. Raymond Davis in The Book of Pontiffs: The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 710 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989).

23. See Margaret R. Miles, “Santa Maria Maggiore’s Fifth-Century Mosaics: Triumphal Christianity and the Jews,” Harvard Theological Review 86.2 (1993): 155-75. Miles emphasizes the mosaics’ anti-Semitic message.

24. See André Grabar and Carl Nordenfalk, “Early Medieval Painting, from the Fourth to the Eleventh Century,” in The Great Centuries of Painting (New York: Skira, 1957). Also see Henry N. Claman’s description of Santa Maria Maggiore in Jewish Images in the Christian Church: Art as the Mirror of the Jewish-Christian Conflict, 200-1250 C.E. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2000), esp. 86-92; and John Lowden, Early Christian and Byzantine Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1997), 50-55.

25. See Suzanne Spain, “ ‘The Promised Blessing’: The Iconography of the Mosaics of S. Maria Maggiore,” Art Bulletin 61 (1979): 518-40.

26. See, for example, William Loerke’s discussion in “ ‘Real Presence’ in Early Christian Art,” in Monasticism and the Arts, ed. Timothy Verdon (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984), 29-51. Loerke explains that pictorial cycles were intended not just to reference written texts but also to cause the observer to “emotionally inhabit them” (40-41).

27. Gen. 14.17-24.

28. Spain, “The Promised Blessing,” 534-35.

29. De S. Eustadiola, Abbatissa Bituricensi in Gallia, AS, June 8, 132.

30. Vita Chrothildis reginae francorum, 11-12.

31. Vita Radegundis, 2.7.

32. Vita Rusticulae, 25.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 28.

35. Vita S. Glodesindae, 18.

36. Fifth Council of Carthage, CC, 149.204. Crook discusses this and other relevant councils in The Architectural Setting of the Cult of the Saints, 13. Crook points out that although many areas agreed with this tradition, Merovingian Francia was slow to place such emphasis on the incorporation of relics. For one reason, other churches encouraged the deposition of entire bodies in the altar; Merovingian Gaul, on the whole, had fewer “intact” saints and relied more on contact relics; see 13-16.

37. Crook discusses Mary’s tomb at Gethsemane in The Architectural Setting of the Cult of the Saints, 257. Also see B. Bagatti, M. Piccirillo, and A. Prodomo, New Discoveries at the Tomb of Virgin Mary in Gethsemane, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio Minor, 17 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1975).

38. Hahn describes a similar structure at Saint Thecla’s tomb in Seleucia.

According to her, access to Thecla’s grotto was allowed through two holes in the ground. “Now the faithful could create relic-like mementos by lowering objects on string into the grotto or perhaps also peer or speak prayers into her residence chamber.” See “Seeing and Believing” (1087).

39. Crook, The Architectural Setting of the Cult of the Saints, 63, discusses Gregory of Tours’s description of a petitioner speaking into the tombs. See GC 36. Crook also compares the shaft construction to Roman libation holes that allowed offerings to be passed down to Roman coffins (63 ff.).

40. GM 8.

41. See Hahn’s argument for the increasing clerical control of sacred space in “Seeing and Believing.” She also points out that the “glittering spectacles”

were intended to attract not only the petitioner’s attention but also the saint himself/herself. Einhard, for example, constructs a spectacular shrine to “lure” two prominent saints, but they decline and go elsewhere (1083).

42. See Crook, The Architectural Setting of the Cult of the Saints, 69-74.

43. See Translatio S. Germani Vetustissima, MGH SRM 7.423-24. Werner Jacobsen discusses this miraculous translation in “Saints’ Tombs in Frankish Church Architecture,” Speculum 74.4 (1997): 1132-33.

44. Vita Antiquior, De S. Glodesinde Virgine, AS, July 25, 206: in eodem monasterio in ecclesia seniori post altare, quod constructum est atque sacratum in laude et honore sanctae Dei Genitricis Mariae, ac beati Petri principis Apostolorum. See also Mc Namara, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 148.

45. Glodesind’s hagiographer claimed that she had been Bishop Arnulf’s wife, a very important Carolingian saintly figure; her spiritual prowess expressed from a high altar lent power to the blossoming Arnulfing line and the blossoming Carolingian claims to rule. McNamara argues that the anonymous author of the vita wrote his redaction in the ninth century, but he relied on a version that circulated much earlier. The later biographer emphasized Glodesind’s connection to Arnulf; this supposition explains the late advent of her popular cult. See McNamara, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 137. Also, this trend in corpse shifting reveals how far the ninth century stands from the earlier period: Emperor Theodosius, for example, issued a fifth-century decree regulating the movement, dismemberment, and profit of the relic trade. See Codex Theodosiani, 9.17, “De Supulchri Violati,” in Theodosian Libri XVI, 2 vols., ed. T. Momm sen and P. M. Meyer (Berlin, 1905). Crook, The Architectural Setting of the Cult of the Saints, discusses Theodosius and Gregory the Great, 69-74. He points out that Gregory had great reservations about dividing and moving holy relics and encouraged instead the use of contact relics. Gregory, for example, refused to send the Byzantine empress Constantina a relic of Saint Paul. Gregory informed the empress that contact relics were just as sublime, and he sent filings from Saint Paul’s chains of captivity. As Crook also points out, Gregory’s motivations may have been more political than theological.

46. Robert Irwin discusses some of the civic functions of local mosques in Islamic Art in Context: Art, Architecture and the Literary World (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 57-77.

47. The mosque’s spiritual function is often identified by a calligraphic inscription from Qur’an 5.55, usually on the outer door: “Your (real) friends are (no less than) Allah, His Messenger, and the Believers - those who establish regular prayers and pay zakat and they bow down humbly (in worship).”

48. See the important works on Arabic calligraphy, including Yousif Mahmud Ghulum, The Art of Arabic Calligraphy (Lafayette, Calif.: Y. M. Ghulam, 1982); George Atiyeh, ed., The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995); and Nabih F. Safwat, The Art of the Pen: Calligraphy of the 14th to 20th Centuries (London: Nour Foundation, 1996).

49. EI2, “mih. rab,” 7.

50. See Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art, chap. 5, 99-131.

51. EI2, “mih. rab,” 8.

52. Al-Majlisi, v. 43.2, p. 11.

53. For the structure of prayer niches complete with hanging lamps, see Nuha N. N. Khoury, “The Mihrab Image: Commemorative Themes in Medieval Islamic Architecture,” Muqarnas, no. 9 (1992): 11-28. Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani also provides an excellent explanation of the assimilation of Persian-Zoroastrian symbols in an Islamic cultural system. She explains how the imagery of the mih. rab’s light corresponded with Zoroastrian views of the divine fire. See “The Light of Heaven and Earth: From the Chahar-taq to the Mih. rab,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 4 (1990): 95-131. Also, Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan B. Bloom, eds., Images of Paradise in Islamic Art (Hanover, N.H.: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 1991), 36-40, discuss the mosque lamp as a symbol of Paradise, sometimes surrounded by images of heavenly gardens and flora.

54. Khoury, “The Mihrab Image,” 13-14.

55. Ibid. Khoury discusses the mih. rab of Punja `Ali at Mosul (1287-88); he describes the mih. rab’s adornment along with two references to Imam `Ali hand imprints and the hoof of his horse (contact relics).

56. See Priscilla Soucek’s insightful article, “The Temple after Solomon:

the Role of Maryam bint Imran and Her Mihrab,” Jewish Art 23-24 (1997-98): 34-41.

57. See the Tafsir Muqatil ibn Sulayman, as discussed in Soucek, “The Temple after Solomon,” 35.

58. Soucek, “The Temple after Solomon,” 36. Muslims visited Jesus’ cradle in commemoration of the Qur’anic miracle described in 19.30-33 wherein Jesus (as an infant in a cradle) defends his mother’s virtue.

59. Raya Shani, A Monumental Manifestation of the Shi`ite Faith in Late Twelfth- Century Iran: The Case of the Gunbad-i `Alawiyan, Hamadan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

60. Ibid., 141.

61. Shani, A Monumental Manifestation, includes a broader discussion of verses which appear on primarily Shi`ite architecture: Qur’an 5.55-56; 76.1-9; and 53.1-30.

62. Shani, A Monumental Manifestation, discusses this verse, 126-27.

63. Al-T. abarsi, Majma` al-bayan fi tafsir al-qur’an (Tehran, Beyrouth, 1274/1900); as discussed in Shani, A Monumental Manifestation, 126.

64. See, for example, al-Majlisi, vol. 11, pp. 164-65.

65. Al-Ash`ari, the great tenth-century theologian, articulated a theology widely considered orthodox by Sunni Muslims.

66. See the innovative work of Yasser Tabbaa, The Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001).

67. Rizvi, “Gendered Patronage,” 134.

68. Ibid., 134-40.

69. See Francis Romeril Maddison, Science, Tools, and Magic (London: Nour Foundation, 1997). Maddison discusses magical bowls inscribed with the names of the Twelve Imams found in India and China, 72-104.

70. For a full history of this symbol, see Dominique Champault and A. R.

Verbrugge, Le Main: Ses figurations au Maghreb et au Levant (Paris: Musée de l’Homme, 1965); and Richard Bachinger and Helga Exler, Die Hand: Schutz und Schmuch in Nordafrika: Katalog zur Ausstellung der Galerie Exler & Co., vom. 1-30, (Frankfurt am Main: Die Galerie, 1981).

71. Other works that contain discussions of the hand amulet specific to Islam include Sandor Fodor, Amulets from the Islamic World: Catalogue of the Exhibition Held in Budapest in 1988 (Budapest: Eotvos Lorand University, 1988); Peter W. Schienerl, Schmuck und Amulett in Antike und Islam (Aachen: Alano, 1988); and Rudolf Kriss and Hubert Kriss-Heinrich, Volksglaube im Bereich des Islam, Bd.

2: Amulette, Zauberformein, und Beschwoerungen (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1962). Doris Jean Austin and Martin Simmons, eds., Streetlights: Illuminating Tales of the Urban Black Experience (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), include the hand amulet in their work on Islam and the urban black experience in the United States. Irene Markoff discusses specific Sufi representations of the hand in “Music, Saints, and Ritual: Sama` and the Alevis of Turkey,” in Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam, ed. Grace Smith and Carl W. Ernst (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), 102.

72. Champault and Verbrugge, Le Main, 18-20.

Conclusion

1. See the overview of Marian imagery in Catholic Christianity in Maurice Hamington, Hail Mary? The Struggle for Ultimate Womanhood in Catholicism (New York: Routledge, 1995); and Charles E. Curran, Margaret A. Farley, and Richard A. McCormick, eds., Feminist Ethics and the Catholic Moral Tradition (New York: Paulist Press, 1996).

2. See the Catholic Church’s account of the Marian apparition in Fatima, Portugal, in William Thomas Walsh, Our Lady of Fatima (New York: Doubleday, 1954).

3. See Melissa R. Katz, Robert Orsi, and Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Divine Mirrors: The Virgin Mary in Visual Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Kristy Nabhan-Warren, The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (New York: New York University Press, 2005).

4. Such historical inquiries have been forwarded by Rosemary Radford Ruether, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Mary Daly, and Elizabeth Johnson.

5. See Charlene Spretnak, Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven and Her Re- Emergence in the Modern World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

6. See Colonel Sir Lewis Pelly, The Miracle Play of Hasan and Husain (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co., 1879), esp. scenes 1-4. In scene 4, p. 57, Muhammad refers to Fatima “the Mary of this people.”

7. See Vernon James Schubel, Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam: Shi `i Devotional Rituals in South Asia (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 35-43.

8. See David Pinault, The Shi`ites: Ritual and Popular Piety in a Muslim Community (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992); also Pinault, “Zaynab bint `Ali and the Place of Women in the Households of the First Imams in Shi`ite Devotional Literature,” in Women in the Medieval Islamic World, ed. Gavin R. G. Hambly (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).

9. See `Ali Shari`ati, Fatima Is Fatima (Tehran: Shari`ati Foundation, 1981); William R. Darrow’s discussion of Shari`ati in “Women’s Place and the Place of Women in the Iranian Revolution,” in Women, Religion, and Social Change, ed. Yvonne Haddad and Ellison Banks Findly (New York: State University of New York Press, 1985), 307-19; and Marcia Hermansen, “Fatimeh as a Role Model in the Works of Ali Shari`ati,” in Women and Revolution in Iran, ed. Guity Nashat (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983).

Chapter Two: Holy Women in Holy Texts

One of the most important goals of comparative religion is not simply to detail historical similarities and differences in religious systems but to discover new ways of understanding them.1 To that end scholars often assign categories or topical classifications to specific cultural elements, for example, ritual, myth, or mysticism.2 Hagiography and gender also serve as comparative categories, although they pose a set of unique problems.

Employing hagiography as a comparative tool is difficult first and foremost because of the debate over how to define this genre, as well as use it as source material. Hagiography in its broadest sense is symbolic literature that presents the holy (Greek, hagios) to both popular and elite audiences in a variety of forms.3 Medieval hagiographies were read aloud, memorized, proliferated by scholars, and displayed in pictorial or symbolic compositions for the illiterate population.4 In written, oral, and visual form, hagiographies praised the virtues and damned the vices of heroic persons set forth as didactic exempla; yet these texts reviewed the miraculous happenings involving more than just holy people. Hagiography celebrated sacred locales, architectural structures, and holy objects: early Christian hagiographers, for example, popularized Jerusalem as a holy site, the Holy Sepulcher as a holy structure, and bits of the true cross as holy relics.5 Jerusalem was not unique in this respect; almost every Christian town publicized its local saint’s site. Shi`ite communities likewise celebrated the Imams’ lives by recounting their miracles and visiting their shrines.6 Holiness in one form or another permeated the learning and the physical landscape of medieval life for both Christians and Shi`ite Muslims.

As literature intended to depict cultural ideals symbolically, hagiography is a complex genre in terms of both substance and agenda. On the surface hagiography appears biographical and descriptive; it speaks of life and death, joy and suffering. However, it was not intended primarily to preserve and communicate a historical kernel of truth or recount an objective chronicle of events. Gregory of Tours opted to name his hagiographic collection “Life [Vita] of the Fathers” rather than “Lives [Vitae] of the Fathers.” Gregory explained that “there is a diversity of merits and virtues among [the saints], but the one life of the body sustains them all in this world.”7 In Gregory’s compendium the saints’ differences and distinctions disappear as he reveals the underlying holiness that unites them all.

Hagiography is thus fundamentally didactic: it edifies through exemplary displays of piety and holiness; it promulgates sacred narratives and then explains the moral and theological imperatives embedded in them; and it models proper modes of ritual and other cultic practices. Hagiographic discourse aims to resurrect and then reconstruct for its audience examples of holiness or ideal modes of being intended for pious imitation. With this functionalist definition of hagiography in mind, scholars should expect that any hagiographic tradition would be radically determined by the canon of values, beliefs, and authoritative texts particular to the cultural context from which it emerges. This certainly holds true for early Christian and Islamic hagiographic texts, which reflect their (sometimes) radically different ideals of the holy.

Hagiography also includes idealizations of masculine and feminine piety that modern readers might find distressingly misogynistic. Literate men mostly constructed these gender paradigms as very few texts by women exist. These male-authored texts provide the only substantive view of women (and expectations of women) in early Christian and Shi`ite religious communities. By using gender as a point of comparison, it becomes clear that theologians and hagiographers in both traditions limit holy women’s miraculous actions and proscribe holy women’s miraculous bodies to the domestic sphere.

Medieval and Modern Audiences: Christianity Late antique and early medieval Christian hagiographers transformed their saintly characters and sacred landscapes in accordance with Greco-

Roman and biblical formulas.8 Some of the most influential early Christian hagiographies sprang from Syria and Egypt during the fourth and fifth centuries.9 These texts applauded the efforts of holy men and women who surrendered mundane existence for a higher, angelic life. The era of Christian martyrs had all but ended as Roman emperors legalized Christianity throughout the empire. As martyrs became increasingly unnecessary, ascetics supplied another model of Christian heroism: they mortified their bodies and sought to transcend the problems of the flesh as they struggled against their spiritual enemy, Satan, and his demonic forces.10

Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373) constructed one of the most important Christian hagiographies in his Life of Anthony, an Egyptian recluse who haunted nearby deserts and caves.11 Athanasius describes a vicarious martyr, guarding the periphery of human existence against evil while struggling against his interior lusts and desires. In the end Anthony provides his audience with a new Christ figure who prays in the desert, casts out demons, heals the sick, and raises the dead.12 Anthony’s hagiographer produces a hero-hermit much like the biblical Elijah, reconstructed in the fourth century, intended to model the miracles and grace of Christ. Indeed, one of the greatest signs of sanctity was imitatio Christi (the imitation of Christ) wherein holy men and women performed Christ’s miracles after symbolically sharing in his suffering by means of ascetic feats.

As Christianity expanded from the Syrian and Greek East to the Gallo-Roman/Latin West, hagiographers encountered a new audience.13 It proved difficult if not impossible to transform urban Gaul into a physical wasteland of caves and demon-inhabited deserts. Western hagiographers thus created a spiritual desert and challenged the Roman elite and Mediterranean nobility to convert to Christianity and to live as Christ through renunciation of wealth and status. Women proved particularly important in this newly imagined desert as the viable patrons of the church who gladly distributed their Roman patrimony among ecclesiastical authorities.14 Hagiographers in Gaul expressed innovative ideals of holiness for a new constituency of sinners.

The fourth-century author Sulpicius Severus created perhaps the most influential hagiography in early medieval Gaul. His Life of Martin of Tours transformed a Roman soldier known for his valor into an Old Testament prophet, traveling and preaching throughout Gaul, who only reluctantly accepted the bishop’s office of Tours.15 Martin’s life became the hallmark of Western hagiography: the loyal Roman citizen forsakes his mundane wealth to serve his heavenly king. Martin, in typical fashion, healed the sick, exorcised the demon possessed, and practiced profound charity and kindness. At the same time, he assumed the bishop’s mantle and dutifully acknowledged the church’s authority. The hagiographer modified his wandering holy man at first reminiscent of the eastern Anthony into a stable bishop ever mindful of his parish and his flock. A pious Christian but also a good Roman, Martin embodied the ideals of hierarchy and structure.16

Merovingian hagiographers inherited the model of Martin and effectively blended their new bishops with this very Roman ideal: Frankish clergy promoted order and hierarchy within both church and state. Merovingian hagiographers were aware also of the saint cults that proliferated throughout Gaul as they addressed popular audiences who increasingly committed themselves to local saints, both living and dead. Merovingian hagiography thus served a pastoral purpose, aimed directly at teaching and educating a general constituency about the developing protocols for the veneration of saints.

Linguists in particular first recognized the pastoral function of Merovingian texts by their distinctive Latin vocabulary: the language is both colloquial and active.17 Merovingian hagiographers focused on how to venerate local holy figures and what miraculous results might be expected. They provided models instructing pious petitioners to gather remnants from the cells of saints such as ash, candle wax, or oil; through these contact relics, miraculous healing followed and the saints’ fame spread.18 These instructive texts compare dramatically with the later Carolingian hagiographies intended for monastic use; Carolingian Latin indicates more interior action such as meditation and prayer.19 In contrast, Merovingian hagiography speaks to a nonmonastic audience, defining innovative notions of holiness associated with the spread of saint veneration.

There is considerable disagreement among modern scholars of medieval Christianity as to what to do with hagiography as a source. European intellectuals generally scoffed at Christian hagiographic sources during the Enlightenment period. Scholars of the ancient world such as David Hume and Edward Gibbon dismissed hagiography as an irrational literature confined to the lower classes that recounted fanciful miracle stories and fantastic displays of a misnamed polytheism.20 Beginning only in the 1930s, scholars and theologians began to mine hagiography for details about life, society, and intellectual history. Hippolyte Delehaye and the Bollandists, a group of Jesuit priests dedicated to recovering and categorizing hagiographies, led this movement, although much of their work still attempted to separate the factual from the spurious, the believable from the unbelievable.21

During the past two decades, hagiologers have generally disregarded the fact or fiction debate and gleaned information about cultural milieus and gender roles from holy texts.22 Most scholars now agree that hagiography was not just a literature intended for a lay, mostly illiterate population; instead, wealthy and poor audiences alike shared a hagiographic corpus that greatly defined their experiences. This literature provided the system of cultural symbols that united western Christendom.

Medieval and Modern Audiences: Islam

Early Shi`ite hagiography reveals an equally dynamic symbolic system at least during the late eighth and ninth century. Shi`ite notions of power and authority increasingly considered `Ali and Fatima’s descendants Imams responsible for their community’s spiritual guidance. Hagiographies explained the Imams’ miraculous births, their infallible lives, and their sublime wisdom. These models of holiness inspired ritual activities surrounding the Imams’ tombs and shrines. Shi`ite hagiographers, for example, encouraged devotees to visit holy places on pilgrimages (ziyara).23 Most Shi`ites turned their attention to the shrine of Husayn, `Ali and Fatima’s son who died a martyr’s death at Karbala. Husayn’s body was interred at Karbala, but tradition also placed his head at Karbala, Damascus, Najaf, and Cairo.24 All these locales remain important pilgrimage sites where Shi`ites venerate their third Imam.

Locating the mainstream notion of sanctity is more difficult in Islam than in early Christianity. Many Muslim theologians avoid the elevated designation of sainthood, stressing instead that every individual maintains direct access to Allah, thus disallowing the need for a saintly intercessor.25 Qur’an 39.44 declares, “To Allah belongs exclusively the right to grant intercession. To Him belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth: in the end, it is to Him that you shall be brought back.” Thus in Islam no centralized clergy propagates and authorizes a genre of literature akin to Christianity’s saints’ lives. Saintly canonization is almost completely within the province of hagiographers and reader response to their products (both oral and written).

Medieval Muslims nonetheless maintained a definite notion of holiness (wilaya) and disseminated those sacred ideals through their own, distinct forms of hagiography. These sacred collections included biographies of the Prophet, battlefield accounts, or, for Shi`ites, descriptions of the Imams and their miraculous powers. The earliest known biography of the Prophet, for example, resembled early Christian tales of desert saints.26 Bedouin tribes on the edges of the Arabian peninsula certainly were familiar with Christian veneration of desert holy men and their miracles: historical records indicate that they shared the same deserts and caves as Christian hermits, witnessed their fame, and heard about their miraculous powers. The Prophet’s biographer cast him as a functioning holy man to his community: Muhammad healed the sick, provided righteous judgments, and multiplied food.27 Many of the Prophet’s friends and family described in the biographical materials also served as pious models intended for emulation and edification.

While Muslim hagiography might vary in intent and audience - for example, some collections, qisas al-anbiya, or “Tales of the Prophets,” featured miracle stories of the same prophets shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims - most of it has the same format. Accounts of holiness are usually recorded as hadith, one of two genres of sacred texts in Islam, the other being the Qur’an.

Like Christianity, Islam is a religion of the book and reveres a sacred and revealed scripture. The Qur’an confers the direct revelation of Allah through his final messenger, Muhammad. The holy text describes humanity’s virtues and vices, directs the actions of the community (umma), and offers a glimpse of an impending apocalypse.28 It also presents a series of prophets and holy men and women for pious Muslims to imitate.29

The hadith collections advance their own notions of holiness. Hadith (used here as a collective noun; the proper plural is ahadith) are traditions that relate back to the Prophet Muhammad’s own lifetime, describing his actions and utterances as well as those of his friends, family, and other contemporaries.30 The hadith literature functions as hagiography when read as a means of resurrecting a pristine past and endowing Muslims with models of holiness and virtue. Read in this way, hadith literature allows scholars and others to eavesdrop on the earliest Muslim community: the Prophet’s lifestyle and the faithfulness of his friends and family (and the perfidy of his enemies), and directives and patterns outside the Qur’anic framework. Taken together the Qur’an and hadith (the “trodden path,” or sunna), provide models for emulation; scholarly exegesis (tafsir) then attempts to explain and contextualize the sunna so that pious Muslims may follow them.

Islamicists approach hadith literature as carefully as medievalists approach Christian hagiography, and this is not a recent methodological problem. Medieval Muslims themselves devoted an entire science to proving or disproving hadith authenticity. To do this they focused most strenuously on the chain of transmitters, or isnad. The hadith consists of two parts: the tradition itself (matn) and a detailed list of individuals who observed or transmitted the Prophet’s advice or actions (isnad). Scholars and linguists identified the transmitters, reconciled their death dates with times of transmission, and located the hadith in an elaborate spectrum of categories ranging from sound (sahih) to weak (da`if), from precious (`aziz) to forged (mawdu`).

Medieval hadith collections contributed more than personal models of piety and words of wisdom from the Prophet. The central role of hadith was to lay the foundation of Islamic law: Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) carefully reasoned what was obligatory (fard), recommended (mandub), neutral (mubah), reprehensible (makruh), and forbidden (haram). By the late ninth and early tenth century, Islamic scholars generally accepted as canonical the six rigorously scrutinized compendia composed by separate hadith critics: al-Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Da’ud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nisa’i, and Ibn Hanbal. Other scholars compiled their own hadith collections, but these six became the pillars of Sunni piety and law.

Shi`ite Muslims, on the other hand, esteem additional hadith collections as authoritative.31 The Shi`ites value above all the traditions that relate back to the Prophet’s family. For Twelver Shi`ites, this includes the twelve Imams, among them `Ali himself. Since the Shi`a regarded `Ali and the Imams as Muhammad’s rightful successors, they gathered accounts of the Imams’ deeds and sayings for both political and spiritual guidance.32

Shi`ites maintain that `Ali and Fatima’s descendants, beginning with their sons Hasan and Husayn, became the sources of true spiritual sustenance to the Islamic community. According to one tradition, Husayn (quoted by Ja`far al-Sadiq, the sixth Imam) proclaimed:

“God created His servants solely that they might know Him, for when they know Him they worship Him and thus free themselves from the worship of anything that is not Him.” Someone then asked: “What is knowledge of God?” “It is, for the people of each age, knowledge of the Imam to whom they owe obeisance.” 33

For Shi`ites recognition of and dependence on the Imams equaled knowledge of God himself. It was irrelevant if the ruling Umayyad or `Abbasid dynasty acknowledged the Imams as the community’s rightful leaders. Allah required the Shi`a itself to identify the Imam and maintain his sublime teachings through its collective memories and records.

Many Shi`ite hadith collections function, therefore, as a form of political and spiritual rhetoric explaining the cosmological link between the Prophet’s beloved family and the community.34 These hadith demonstrate the Shi`a’s sublime authority in heaven even if it is not always recognized on earth.35 They also offer adoptive membership into the ahl al-bayt for those who recognize the Imam’s authority. The hadith function as hagiography because they outline a mode of holiness (acceptance into the family), reveal moral and theological imperatives (allegiance to the family), and supply holy models to imitate (the prophets, Imams, and early community members). Like Merovingian hagiography, hadith reconstruct a sacred past in their own dynamically changing context to promote a new identity, namely, the identification of the Imams and an evolving Shi`ism as it distinguished itself from Sunni Islam.

As in Christian hagiography, there exist equally contentious debates about how to use hadith as hagiography. Many Muslims view the Prophet Muhammad with esteem and adoration and therefore strive to achieve a real view of him and his community. Hadith accepted as authentic are windows into that reality and afford a genuine depiction of the Prophet. Many Muslim scholars maintain the historicity of hadith transmission and argue that the earliest community assured hadith veracity. These scholars admit that hadith evolved from an oral to a written genre, but they also insist that skilled, literate scholars held the transmissions to high standards of authentication.36

The question of veracity has plagued non-Muslim and secular scholars as well. Since the early twentieth century some Islamicists have recognized that formally written hadith compilations only circulated in the late eighth century. They have argued that these hadith reveal more about eighth-century life than about Muhammad’s own community.37 This approach fundamentally questions the hadith’s reliability as a historical source for the earliest Islamic period; and, for Muslims, this critique challenges hadith as an authoritative source of sublime direction and models of piety. Other Islamicists have forged a middle ground: hadith reflect the Prophet’s own lifetime, but the standardized method of transmission and compilation must be dated much later. According to this argument, it remains impossible to demonstrate absolutely the hadith’s historicity.38

I avoid the question of hadith veracity altogether; instead of expecting the hadith to betray an objective historical reality, I see them as revealing important cultural symbols and notions of holiness relevant to their medieval audiences.39 If hadith were deemed important enough to copy, memorize, and scrutinize, then they must disclose valuable clues about the community that treasured them. Even the more obscure, “weak” hadith that “sound” compendia often fail to include are important; they help to recapture the evolutionary nature of Muslim identity by revealing the developing hagiographic tradition. As in Christianity, theology and religious identity evolved over the centuries as leaders, theologians, and scholars formulated and answered questions important for their nascent communities. Even those hadith that were later rejected or considered spurious by Shi`ite scholars reflect the stages of that evolutionary process.

Classical Shi`ite sources are especially difficult to date and ascribe to specific compilers. Although the hadith format provides lists of transmitters, the editors themselves sometimes evade designation. Some extant compendia do give the names of editor and author, such as the tenth-century Kitab al-Irshad (Book of Guidance into the Lives of the Twelve Imams) by Shaykh al-Mufid. Other hadith survive only in later compilations such as that of the seventeenth - century Safavid scholar Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi, Bihar al-anwar (Sea of Lights). Although this collection is rather late, it is indispensable to scholars of Shi`ite Islam.

With the help of scholars such as al-Majlisi, the seventeenth-century Safavids of Persia launched a prolific religious campaign against Sunni and Sufi piety.40 Al-Majlisi’s job as a member of the `ulama´ was to collect and distribute hadith that illustrated Shi`ite identity and the holy family’s election since before created time. He intended his collections to serve as a type of propaganda, popularizing a legalistic form of Twelver Shi`ism while disavowing Sunnism and some Sufi orders. He was the first scholar to translate a large number of hadith collections, theologies, and histories into Persian for greater availability to a general audience.

Al-Majlisi’s collection is important for another reason: it includes both the widely accepted, sound hadith and the potentially spurious (or weak) traditions. For example, al-Majlisi repeated many of the earliest Shi`ite sources from al-Kulayni and Ibn Babawayh, renowned tenth-century Shi`ite scholars,41 some of which are extant only through his encyclopedic collection. But he also chose hadith that were not included in ordinary compilations of Shi`ite texts. Because of this broad inclusiveness, some scholars doubt its historical veracity. (One colleague referred to the Bihar al-anwar as the “great trash heap of Shi`ite traditions.”)42 Because al-Majlisi cast such a wide net in collecting his hadith, he provides scholars with an opportunity to view Shi`ism as it developed and blossomed throughout the classical and medieval periods.

Al-Majlisi quite naturally focused on the Prophet’s family and particularly his daughter Fatima to prove Shi`ite Islam’s superiority over Sunnism and Sufi sm. The traditions range from those of the most mystical bent (which define the holy family in terms of pure light with absolute knowledge)43 to those of more practical application (which define the twelfth Imam as the source of all spiritual authority).

This grand collection of hadith also certainly added authority to al-Majlisi’s own position. According to Twelver doctrine, the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, did not die but went into a sublime hiding, or occultation. During this period of hiddenness, the Shi`ite community relies on the scholars to discern the Imam’s justice. Al-Majlisi was just such a scholar who implicitly designated himself as one of the twelfth Imam’s spokesmen until the final, apocalyptic return. Through his hadith compilations, al-Majlisi justified his own political station while constructing a hagiographic edifice praising the holy family’s spiritual status.44

Sources and Gender

As Merovingian Christians and Shi`ite Muslims sought to make sense of their world and to delineate their place in it, they devised and articulated dynamic notions of holiness. For the people of Gaul, the changes in their world involved the political transition from late Roman to Merovingian rule and the spiritual acculturation to a new, unifying Christendom. Shi`ite communities, in many cases bereft of political ascendancy because of a Sunni majority (except for a brief interim in the mid-tenth century), articulated their unique cosmology and loyalties to the Imam and the holy family. In both these cases, discussions of sanctity in hagiographic sources betray both theological and political agendas. On closer examination it becomes clear that gender expectations and the introduction of feminine ideals signaled radical changes in society as well. Both Christian and Muslim cultures supported and preserved the literary products of a male elite, which constructed paradigms of community and holiness via women, in particular Mary and Fatima.

Most extant Christian texts from late antiquity originate from the ecclesiastical sphere. Theologians such as Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome charted the twists and turns Christian theology would take in terms of asceticism, ideals of marriage, the Trinitarian debate, and the path of Christ’s church (ecclesia).45 Late antique authors both reflected and refuted beliefs about the Virgin Mary popularized by anonymous, apocryphal texts. They absorbed, for example, the precept of Mary’s perpetual virginity (both before, during, and after Christ’s birth), yet some cautioned against Mary’s Immaculate Conception, or birth free from sin.46 Marian theology, and Christian theology in general, was only slowly evolving.

The early Middle Ages yield a wider variety of sources, although most still come from the ecclesiastical sphere: church councils left records of decisions and debate; bishops wrote histories of their bishoprics (which were more like family trees); priests and popes wrote hagiographies;47 and holy men crafted monastic rules for female religious to follow. One of the most prolific authors of Merovingian Gaul was Gregory of Tours; he provided a veritable who’s who among Merovingian bishops in his Ten Books of History and numerous hagiographies of male and female saints.48 In early Christian hagiography, few texts written by women survive, and only one of those has a self-identified female author (Baudonivia, who wrote her saint’s life only to complement an earlier redaction by a man, Fortunatus).49 Scholars suspect other works might be written by women, especially nuns who had firsthand knowledge of their saint-abbesses.50 In most cases male clergy wrote about women.

A similar case arises in classical Islam. Women may have lent considerable time, faith, and even wealth to their respective traditions, but they remained largely silent in the sources. Muslim women’s social expectations depended largely on the geographic locale and ruling elite; yet in most cases women played a sizable role in the establishment of schools and the transmission of knowledge. Like female patrons of Christianity, wealthy wives and mothers commissioned schools and donated land for educational institutions, and with those same sources of wealth, many women acquired personal tutors and received competitive educations.51 Also as with Christianity, tradition largely circumscribed women’s practical role in the public classroom as teachers or students; modes of formal education, including Qur’anic studies, remained confined to males.52 Any formal training or introduction to Islamic jurisprudence and hadith studies also remained a mostly masculine domain.

Although Muslim scholars restricted women from formal educations, they did not release them from the burden of learning and studying the hadith and models of holiness. Theoretically, women bore the same responsibility as men to understand and follow Islamic teaching. Hadith scholars even recognized several women of the early community as worthy transmitters. Many of these women, such as `A’isha, the Prophet’s youngest wife, lived with Muhammad and had intimate dealings with him. These women like none other could transmit information about the Prophet’s actions, words, and directives because of their association in the domestic sphere.53 Women’s official roles largely ended in the domestic sphere, however; while many women acted as hadith transmitters, there are no extant compilations by female scholars and no information about them. Thus our medieval sources are once again written by men about women.

In these male-authored medieval texts about women, gender, and holiness, hagiographers and theologians transformed Mary and Fatima into champions for their pious agenda. Mary marked the boundaries between Christianity and heresy; Fatima led her family to paradise and consigned her enemies to hell. Both communities fashioned a view of piety, politics, and family by manipulating traditional gender roles while still assigning their heroines to the domestic sphere as miraculous mothers and virgins. Today’s readers might be tempted to dismiss much of the hagiographers’ works as too proscriptive if not blatantly misogynistic, but closer examination reveals a more complex agenda.

Chapter Two: Holy Women in Holy Texts

One of the most important goals of comparative religion is not simply to detail historical similarities and differences in religious systems but to discover new ways of understanding them.1 To that end scholars often assign categories or topical classifications to specific cultural elements, for example, ritual, myth, or mysticism.2 Hagiography and gender also serve as comparative categories, although they pose a set of unique problems.

Employing hagiography as a comparative tool is difficult first and foremost because of the debate over how to define this genre, as well as use it as source material. Hagiography in its broadest sense is symbolic literature that presents the holy (Greek, hagios) to both popular and elite audiences in a variety of forms.3 Medieval hagiographies were read aloud, memorized, proliferated by scholars, and displayed in pictorial or symbolic compositions for the illiterate population.4 In written, oral, and visual form, hagiographies praised the virtues and damned the vices of heroic persons set forth as didactic exempla; yet these texts reviewed the miraculous happenings involving more than just holy people. Hagiography celebrated sacred locales, architectural structures, and holy objects: early Christian hagiographers, for example, popularized Jerusalem as a holy site, the Holy Sepulcher as a holy structure, and bits of the true cross as holy relics.5 Jerusalem was not unique in this respect; almost every Christian town publicized its local saint’s site. Shi`ite communities likewise celebrated the Imams’ lives by recounting their miracles and visiting their shrines.6 Holiness in one form or another permeated the learning and the physical landscape of medieval life for both Christians and Shi`ite Muslims.

As literature intended to depict cultural ideals symbolically, hagiography is a complex genre in terms of both substance and agenda. On the surface hagiography appears biographical and descriptive; it speaks of life and death, joy and suffering. However, it was not intended primarily to preserve and communicate a historical kernel of truth or recount an objective chronicle of events. Gregory of Tours opted to name his hagiographic collection “Life [Vita] of the Fathers” rather than “Lives [Vitae] of the Fathers.” Gregory explained that “there is a diversity of merits and virtues among [the saints], but the one life of the body sustains them all in this world.”7 In Gregory’s compendium the saints’ differences and distinctions disappear as he reveals the underlying holiness that unites them all.

Hagiography is thus fundamentally didactic: it edifies through exemplary displays of piety and holiness; it promulgates sacred narratives and then explains the moral and theological imperatives embedded in them; and it models proper modes of ritual and other cultic practices. Hagiographic discourse aims to resurrect and then reconstruct for its audience examples of holiness or ideal modes of being intended for pious imitation. With this functionalist definition of hagiography in mind, scholars should expect that any hagiographic tradition would be radically determined by the canon of values, beliefs, and authoritative texts particular to the cultural context from which it emerges. This certainly holds true for early Christian and Islamic hagiographic texts, which reflect their (sometimes) radically different ideals of the holy.

Hagiography also includes idealizations of masculine and feminine piety that modern readers might find distressingly misogynistic. Literate men mostly constructed these gender paradigms as very few texts by women exist. These male-authored texts provide the only substantive view of women (and expectations of women) in early Christian and Shi`ite religious communities. By using gender as a point of comparison, it becomes clear that theologians and hagiographers in both traditions limit holy women’s miraculous actions and proscribe holy women’s miraculous bodies to the domestic sphere.

Medieval and Modern Audiences: Christianity Late antique and early medieval Christian hagiographers transformed their saintly characters and sacred landscapes in accordance with Greco-

Roman and biblical formulas.8 Some of the most influential early Christian hagiographies sprang from Syria and Egypt during the fourth and fifth centuries.9 These texts applauded the efforts of holy men and women who surrendered mundane existence for a higher, angelic life. The era of Christian martyrs had all but ended as Roman emperors legalized Christianity throughout the empire. As martyrs became increasingly unnecessary, ascetics supplied another model of Christian heroism: they mortified their bodies and sought to transcend the problems of the flesh as they struggled against their spiritual enemy, Satan, and his demonic forces.10

Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373) constructed one of the most important Christian hagiographies in his Life of Anthony, an Egyptian recluse who haunted nearby deserts and caves.11 Athanasius describes a vicarious martyr, guarding the periphery of human existence against evil while struggling against his interior lusts and desires. In the end Anthony provides his audience with a new Christ figure who prays in the desert, casts out demons, heals the sick, and raises the dead.12 Anthony’s hagiographer produces a hero-hermit much like the biblical Elijah, reconstructed in the fourth century, intended to model the miracles and grace of Christ. Indeed, one of the greatest signs of sanctity was imitatio Christi (the imitation of Christ) wherein holy men and women performed Christ’s miracles after symbolically sharing in his suffering by means of ascetic feats.

As Christianity expanded from the Syrian and Greek East to the Gallo-Roman/Latin West, hagiographers encountered a new audience.13 It proved difficult if not impossible to transform urban Gaul into a physical wasteland of caves and demon-inhabited deserts. Western hagiographers thus created a spiritual desert and challenged the Roman elite and Mediterranean nobility to convert to Christianity and to live as Christ through renunciation of wealth and status. Women proved particularly important in this newly imagined desert as the viable patrons of the church who gladly distributed their Roman patrimony among ecclesiastical authorities.14 Hagiographers in Gaul expressed innovative ideals of holiness for a new constituency of sinners.

The fourth-century author Sulpicius Severus created perhaps the most influential hagiography in early medieval Gaul. His Life of Martin of Tours transformed a Roman soldier known for his valor into an Old Testament prophet, traveling and preaching throughout Gaul, who only reluctantly accepted the bishop’s office of Tours.15 Martin’s life became the hallmark of Western hagiography: the loyal Roman citizen forsakes his mundane wealth to serve his heavenly king. Martin, in typical fashion, healed the sick, exorcised the demon possessed, and practiced profound charity and kindness. At the same time, he assumed the bishop’s mantle and dutifully acknowledged the church’s authority. The hagiographer modified his wandering holy man at first reminiscent of the eastern Anthony into a stable bishop ever mindful of his parish and his flock. A pious Christian but also a good Roman, Martin embodied the ideals of hierarchy and structure.16

Merovingian hagiographers inherited the model of Martin and effectively blended their new bishops with this very Roman ideal: Frankish clergy promoted order and hierarchy within both church and state. Merovingian hagiographers were aware also of the saint cults that proliferated throughout Gaul as they addressed popular audiences who increasingly committed themselves to local saints, both living and dead. Merovingian hagiography thus served a pastoral purpose, aimed directly at teaching and educating a general constituency about the developing protocols for the veneration of saints.

Linguists in particular first recognized the pastoral function of Merovingian texts by their distinctive Latin vocabulary: the language is both colloquial and active.17 Merovingian hagiographers focused on how to venerate local holy figures and what miraculous results might be expected. They provided models instructing pious petitioners to gather remnants from the cells of saints such as ash, candle wax, or oil; through these contact relics, miraculous healing followed and the saints’ fame spread.18 These instructive texts compare dramatically with the later Carolingian hagiographies intended for monastic use; Carolingian Latin indicates more interior action such as meditation and prayer.19 In contrast, Merovingian hagiography speaks to a nonmonastic audience, defining innovative notions of holiness associated with the spread of saint veneration.

There is considerable disagreement among modern scholars of medieval Christianity as to what to do with hagiography as a source. European intellectuals generally scoffed at Christian hagiographic sources during the Enlightenment period. Scholars of the ancient world such as David Hume and Edward Gibbon dismissed hagiography as an irrational literature confined to the lower classes that recounted fanciful miracle stories and fantastic displays of a misnamed polytheism.20 Beginning only in the 1930s, scholars and theologians began to mine hagiography for details about life, society, and intellectual history. Hippolyte Delehaye and the Bollandists, a group of Jesuit priests dedicated to recovering and categorizing hagiographies, led this movement, although much of their work still attempted to separate the factual from the spurious, the believable from the unbelievable.21

During the past two decades, hagiologers have generally disregarded the fact or fiction debate and gleaned information about cultural milieus and gender roles from holy texts.22 Most scholars now agree that hagiography was not just a literature intended for a lay, mostly illiterate population; instead, wealthy and poor audiences alike shared a hagiographic corpus that greatly defined their experiences. This literature provided the system of cultural symbols that united western Christendom.

Medieval and Modern Audiences: Islam

Early Shi`ite hagiography reveals an equally dynamic symbolic system at least during the late eighth and ninth century. Shi`ite notions of power and authority increasingly considered `Ali and Fatima’s descendants Imams responsible for their community’s spiritual guidance. Hagiographies explained the Imams’ miraculous births, their infallible lives, and their sublime wisdom. These models of holiness inspired ritual activities surrounding the Imams’ tombs and shrines. Shi`ite hagiographers, for example, encouraged devotees to visit holy places on pilgrimages (ziyara).23 Most Shi`ites turned their attention to the shrine of Husayn, `Ali and Fatima’s son who died a martyr’s death at Karbala. Husayn’s body was interred at Karbala, but tradition also placed his head at Karbala, Damascus, Najaf, and Cairo.24 All these locales remain important pilgrimage sites where Shi`ites venerate their third Imam.

Locating the mainstream notion of sanctity is more difficult in Islam than in early Christianity. Many Muslim theologians avoid the elevated designation of sainthood, stressing instead that every individual maintains direct access to Allah, thus disallowing the need for a saintly intercessor.25 Qur’an 39.44 declares, “To Allah belongs exclusively the right to grant intercession. To Him belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth: in the end, it is to Him that you shall be brought back.” Thus in Islam no centralized clergy propagates and authorizes a genre of literature akin to Christianity’s saints’ lives. Saintly canonization is almost completely within the province of hagiographers and reader response to their products (both oral and written).

Medieval Muslims nonetheless maintained a definite notion of holiness (wilaya) and disseminated those sacred ideals through their own, distinct forms of hagiography. These sacred collections included biographies of the Prophet, battlefield accounts, or, for Shi`ites, descriptions of the Imams and their miraculous powers. The earliest known biography of the Prophet, for example, resembled early Christian tales of desert saints.26 Bedouin tribes on the edges of the Arabian peninsula certainly were familiar with Christian veneration of desert holy men and their miracles: historical records indicate that they shared the same deserts and caves as Christian hermits, witnessed their fame, and heard about their miraculous powers. The Prophet’s biographer cast him as a functioning holy man to his community: Muhammad healed the sick, provided righteous judgments, and multiplied food.27 Many of the Prophet’s friends and family described in the biographical materials also served as pious models intended for emulation and edification.

While Muslim hagiography might vary in intent and audience - for example, some collections, qisas al-anbiya, or “Tales of the Prophets,” featured miracle stories of the same prophets shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims - most of it has the same format. Accounts of holiness are usually recorded as hadith, one of two genres of sacred texts in Islam, the other being the Qur’an.

Like Christianity, Islam is a religion of the book and reveres a sacred and revealed scripture. The Qur’an confers the direct revelation of Allah through his final messenger, Muhammad. The holy text describes humanity’s virtues and vices, directs the actions of the community (umma), and offers a glimpse of an impending apocalypse.28 It also presents a series of prophets and holy men and women for pious Muslims to imitate.29

The hadith collections advance their own notions of holiness. Hadith (used here as a collective noun; the proper plural is ahadith) are traditions that relate back to the Prophet Muhammad’s own lifetime, describing his actions and utterances as well as those of his friends, family, and other contemporaries.30 The hadith literature functions as hagiography when read as a means of resurrecting a pristine past and endowing Muslims with models of holiness and virtue. Read in this way, hadith literature allows scholars and others to eavesdrop on the earliest Muslim community: the Prophet’s lifestyle and the faithfulness of his friends and family (and the perfidy of his enemies), and directives and patterns outside the Qur’anic framework. Taken together the Qur’an and hadith (the “trodden path,” or sunna), provide models for emulation; scholarly exegesis (tafsir) then attempts to explain and contextualize the sunna so that pious Muslims may follow them.

Islamicists approach hadith literature as carefully as medievalists approach Christian hagiography, and this is not a recent methodological problem. Medieval Muslims themselves devoted an entire science to proving or disproving hadith authenticity. To do this they focused most strenuously on the chain of transmitters, or isnad. The hadith consists of two parts: the tradition itself (matn) and a detailed list of individuals who observed or transmitted the Prophet’s advice or actions (isnad). Scholars and linguists identified the transmitters, reconciled their death dates with times of transmission, and located the hadith in an elaborate spectrum of categories ranging from sound (sahih) to weak (da`if), from precious (`aziz) to forged (mawdu`).

Medieval hadith collections contributed more than personal models of piety and words of wisdom from the Prophet. The central role of hadith was to lay the foundation of Islamic law: Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) carefully reasoned what was obligatory (fard), recommended (mandub), neutral (mubah), reprehensible (makruh), and forbidden (haram). By the late ninth and early tenth century, Islamic scholars generally accepted as canonical the six rigorously scrutinized compendia composed by separate hadith critics: al-Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Da’ud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nisa’i, and Ibn Hanbal. Other scholars compiled their own hadith collections, but these six became the pillars of Sunni piety and law.

Shi`ite Muslims, on the other hand, esteem additional hadith collections as authoritative.31 The Shi`ites value above all the traditions that relate back to the Prophet’s family. For Twelver Shi`ites, this includes the twelve Imams, among them `Ali himself. Since the Shi`a regarded `Ali and the Imams as Muhammad’s rightful successors, they gathered accounts of the Imams’ deeds and sayings for both political and spiritual guidance.32

Shi`ites maintain that `Ali and Fatima’s descendants, beginning with their sons Hasan and Husayn, became the sources of true spiritual sustenance to the Islamic community. According to one tradition, Husayn (quoted by Ja`far al-Sadiq, the sixth Imam) proclaimed:

“God created His servants solely that they might know Him, for when they know Him they worship Him and thus free themselves from the worship of anything that is not Him.” Someone then asked: “What is knowledge of God?” “It is, for the people of each age, knowledge of the Imam to whom they owe obeisance.” 33

For Shi`ites recognition of and dependence on the Imams equaled knowledge of God himself. It was irrelevant if the ruling Umayyad or `Abbasid dynasty acknowledged the Imams as the community’s rightful leaders. Allah required the Shi`a itself to identify the Imam and maintain his sublime teachings through its collective memories and records.

Many Shi`ite hadith collections function, therefore, as a form of political and spiritual rhetoric explaining the cosmological link between the Prophet’s beloved family and the community.34 These hadith demonstrate the Shi`a’s sublime authority in heaven even if it is not always recognized on earth.35 They also offer adoptive membership into the ahl al-bayt for those who recognize the Imam’s authority. The hadith function as hagiography because they outline a mode of holiness (acceptance into the family), reveal moral and theological imperatives (allegiance to the family), and supply holy models to imitate (the prophets, Imams, and early community members). Like Merovingian hagiography, hadith reconstruct a sacred past in their own dynamically changing context to promote a new identity, namely, the identification of the Imams and an evolving Shi`ism as it distinguished itself from Sunni Islam.

As in Christian hagiography, there exist equally contentious debates about how to use hadith as hagiography. Many Muslims view the Prophet Muhammad with esteem and adoration and therefore strive to achieve a real view of him and his community. Hadith accepted as authentic are windows into that reality and afford a genuine depiction of the Prophet. Many Muslim scholars maintain the historicity of hadith transmission and argue that the earliest community assured hadith veracity. These scholars admit that hadith evolved from an oral to a written genre, but they also insist that skilled, literate scholars held the transmissions to high standards of authentication.36

The question of veracity has plagued non-Muslim and secular scholars as well. Since the early twentieth century some Islamicists have recognized that formally written hadith compilations only circulated in the late eighth century. They have argued that these hadith reveal more about eighth-century life than about Muhammad’s own community.37 This approach fundamentally questions the hadith’s reliability as a historical source for the earliest Islamic period; and, for Muslims, this critique challenges hadith as an authoritative source of sublime direction and models of piety. Other Islamicists have forged a middle ground: hadith reflect the Prophet’s own lifetime, but the standardized method of transmission and compilation must be dated much later. According to this argument, it remains impossible to demonstrate absolutely the hadith’s historicity.38

I avoid the question of hadith veracity altogether; instead of expecting the hadith to betray an objective historical reality, I see them as revealing important cultural symbols and notions of holiness relevant to their medieval audiences.39 If hadith were deemed important enough to copy, memorize, and scrutinize, then they must disclose valuable clues about the community that treasured them. Even the more obscure, “weak” hadith that “sound” compendia often fail to include are important; they help to recapture the evolutionary nature of Muslim identity by revealing the developing hagiographic tradition. As in Christianity, theology and religious identity evolved over the centuries as leaders, theologians, and scholars formulated and answered questions important for their nascent communities. Even those hadith that were later rejected or considered spurious by Shi`ite scholars reflect the stages of that evolutionary process.

Classical Shi`ite sources are especially difficult to date and ascribe to specific compilers. Although the hadith format provides lists of transmitters, the editors themselves sometimes evade designation. Some extant compendia do give the names of editor and author, such as the tenth-century Kitab al-Irshad (Book of Guidance into the Lives of the Twelve Imams) by Shaykh al-Mufid. Other hadith survive only in later compilations such as that of the seventeenth - century Safavid scholar Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi, Bihar al-anwar (Sea of Lights). Although this collection is rather late, it is indispensable to scholars of Shi`ite Islam.

With the help of scholars such as al-Majlisi, the seventeenth-century Safavids of Persia launched a prolific religious campaign against Sunni and Sufi piety.40 Al-Majlisi’s job as a member of the `ulama´ was to collect and distribute hadith that illustrated Shi`ite identity and the holy family’s election since before created time. He intended his collections to serve as a type of propaganda, popularizing a legalistic form of Twelver Shi`ism while disavowing Sunnism and some Sufi orders. He was the first scholar to translate a large number of hadith collections, theologies, and histories into Persian for greater availability to a general audience.

Al-Majlisi’s collection is important for another reason: it includes both the widely accepted, sound hadith and the potentially spurious (or weak) traditions. For example, al-Majlisi repeated many of the earliest Shi`ite sources from al-Kulayni and Ibn Babawayh, renowned tenth-century Shi`ite scholars,41 some of which are extant only through his encyclopedic collection. But he also chose hadith that were not included in ordinary compilations of Shi`ite texts. Because of this broad inclusiveness, some scholars doubt its historical veracity. (One colleague referred to the Bihar al-anwar as the “great trash heap of Shi`ite traditions.”)42 Because al-Majlisi cast such a wide net in collecting his hadith, he provides scholars with an opportunity to view Shi`ism as it developed and blossomed throughout the classical and medieval periods.

Al-Majlisi quite naturally focused on the Prophet’s family and particularly his daughter Fatima to prove Shi`ite Islam’s superiority over Sunnism and Sufi sm. The traditions range from those of the most mystical bent (which define the holy family in terms of pure light with absolute knowledge)43 to those of more practical application (which define the twelfth Imam as the source of all spiritual authority).

This grand collection of hadith also certainly added authority to al-Majlisi’s own position. According to Twelver doctrine, the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, did not die but went into a sublime hiding, or occultation. During this period of hiddenness, the Shi`ite community relies on the scholars to discern the Imam’s justice. Al-Majlisi was just such a scholar who implicitly designated himself as one of the twelfth Imam’s spokesmen until the final, apocalyptic return. Through his hadith compilations, al-Majlisi justified his own political station while constructing a hagiographic edifice praising the holy family’s spiritual status.44

Sources and Gender

As Merovingian Christians and Shi`ite Muslims sought to make sense of their world and to delineate their place in it, they devised and articulated dynamic notions of holiness. For the people of Gaul, the changes in their world involved the political transition from late Roman to Merovingian rule and the spiritual acculturation to a new, unifying Christendom. Shi`ite communities, in many cases bereft of political ascendancy because of a Sunni majority (except for a brief interim in the mid-tenth century), articulated their unique cosmology and loyalties to the Imam and the holy family. In both these cases, discussions of sanctity in hagiographic sources betray both theological and political agendas. On closer examination it becomes clear that gender expectations and the introduction of feminine ideals signaled radical changes in society as well. Both Christian and Muslim cultures supported and preserved the literary products of a male elite, which constructed paradigms of community and holiness via women, in particular Mary and Fatima.

Most extant Christian texts from late antiquity originate from the ecclesiastical sphere. Theologians such as Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome charted the twists and turns Christian theology would take in terms of asceticism, ideals of marriage, the Trinitarian debate, and the path of Christ’s church (ecclesia).45 Late antique authors both reflected and refuted beliefs about the Virgin Mary popularized by anonymous, apocryphal texts. They absorbed, for example, the precept of Mary’s perpetual virginity (both before, during, and after Christ’s birth), yet some cautioned against Mary’s Immaculate Conception, or birth free from sin.46 Marian theology, and Christian theology in general, was only slowly evolving.

The early Middle Ages yield a wider variety of sources, although most still come from the ecclesiastical sphere: church councils left records of decisions and debate; bishops wrote histories of their bishoprics (which were more like family trees); priests and popes wrote hagiographies;47 and holy men crafted monastic rules for female religious to follow. One of the most prolific authors of Merovingian Gaul was Gregory of Tours; he provided a veritable who’s who among Merovingian bishops in his Ten Books of History and numerous hagiographies of male and female saints.48 In early Christian hagiography, few texts written by women survive, and only one of those has a self-identified female author (Baudonivia, who wrote her saint’s life only to complement an earlier redaction by a man, Fortunatus).49 Scholars suspect other works might be written by women, especially nuns who had firsthand knowledge of their saint-abbesses.50 In most cases male clergy wrote about women.

A similar case arises in classical Islam. Women may have lent considerable time, faith, and even wealth to their respective traditions, but they remained largely silent in the sources. Muslim women’s social expectations depended largely on the geographic locale and ruling elite; yet in most cases women played a sizable role in the establishment of schools and the transmission of knowledge. Like female patrons of Christianity, wealthy wives and mothers commissioned schools and donated land for educational institutions, and with those same sources of wealth, many women acquired personal tutors and received competitive educations.51 Also as with Christianity, tradition largely circumscribed women’s practical role in the public classroom as teachers or students; modes of formal education, including Qur’anic studies, remained confined to males.52 Any formal training or introduction to Islamic jurisprudence and hadith studies also remained a mostly masculine domain.

Although Muslim scholars restricted women from formal educations, they did not release them from the burden of learning and studying the hadith and models of holiness. Theoretically, women bore the same responsibility as men to understand and follow Islamic teaching. Hadith scholars even recognized several women of the early community as worthy transmitters. Many of these women, such as `A’isha, the Prophet’s youngest wife, lived with Muhammad and had intimate dealings with him. These women like none other could transmit information about the Prophet’s actions, words, and directives because of their association in the domestic sphere.53 Women’s official roles largely ended in the domestic sphere, however; while many women acted as hadith transmitters, there are no extant compilations by female scholars and no information about them. Thus our medieval sources are once again written by men about women.

In these male-authored medieval texts about women, gender, and holiness, hagiographers and theologians transformed Mary and Fatima into champions for their pious agenda. Mary marked the boundaries between Christianity and heresy; Fatima led her family to paradise and consigned her enemies to hell. Both communities fashioned a view of piety, politics, and family by manipulating traditional gender roles while still assigning their heroines to the domestic sphere as miraculous mothers and virgins. Today’s readers might be tempted to dismiss much of the hagiographers’ works as too proscriptive if not blatantly misogynistic, but closer examination reveals a more complex agenda.