Workshop 15

15.
Divine Disruptions: Early Modern
Female Mystics and Prophets

Organizers:

Susan G. Cosby, English, Viterbo University
Carrie Klaus, French, DePauw University
Bo Karen Lee, Theology, Loyola College

Description:

We will begin the workshop with a five-minute freewrite, asking each participant to choose a question from below, focusing her or his ideas to contribute to the discussion.

We will then offer a two-to three-minute presentation of each of the women mystics, visionaries, and prophets we will discuss in the session: Elizabeth Barton, Lady Eleanor Davies, Marie Dentiere, Anna Maria van Schurman, and Jeanne Guyon.

We envision a workshop that is open-ended in format, and we will encourage participants to raise issues that interest them. We hope to discuss some of the following questions:

With what topics or issues are these women concerned? Are there important shared themes between two or more texts? Significant differences?
Does gender seem to play a role in what these women have to say or how they say it? If so, in what ways?
For whom are they writing, an explicit reader or an implied one?
Can we tell by reading their texts how they expect or hope to be received by their communities?
Based on the texts before us, how do these women establish their own authority? How can we describe their authorial personnae?
What new insights do these marginal women bring that can't be brought from the 'center'?

Preliminary List of Readings:

Davies, Lady Eleanor. "Bethlehem Signifying the House of Bread or War." Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies. Ed. Esther S. Cope. New York & Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. Excerpt (2 pages)
Lady Eleanor Davies defends herself against the charges that resulted in her imprisonment in Bethlehem hospital, describing in detail her actions and her motivation for declaring herself Bishop as well as her alleged desecration of an altar.
Dentiere, Marie. "A Most Beneficial Letter, Prepared and Written Down by a Christian Woman of Tournai, and Sent to the Queen of Navarre, Sister of the King of France, Against the Turks, the Jews, the Infidels, the False Christians, and Anabaptist and the Lutherans." (2 pages) Trans. Thomas Head. Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Ed. Katharina M. Wilson. Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1987.
In this "open letter" addressed to Marguerite de Navarre, abbess-turned-reformer Marie Dentiere defends women's right to comment on scripture, and she sets herself in a tradition of female visionaries and sages from the Old and New Testaments.
Guyon, Jeanne. Portions from her Autobiography. (about 2 pages)
Guyon describes her spiritual journey [as both unique and authoritative] and places herself in theological and historical context, vis-a-vis the Catholic authorities of her time.
Jansen, Sharon L. "Elizabeth Barton and Political Prophecy." Excerpt from Dangerous Talk and Strange Behavior: Women and Popular Resistance to the Reforms of Henry VIII. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. (2 pages)
Using details from letters and court documents at the time, Jansen recounts the elaborate measures taken by the government against Elizabeth Barton and her prophecies regarding the king.
Jussie, Jeanne de. Petite Chronique. Ed. Helmut Feld. Mainz: von Zabern, 1996. C. Klaus translation. (2 pages)
Jeanne de Jussie, a nun in the convent of St. Clare in Geneva, describes Marie Dentiere's "diabolical" preaching in her convent and her attempts to persuade the nuns to renounce their vows and convert.
Van Schurman, Anna Maria. Portions from her Whether Christian Women Ought to be Educated and Eukleria (about 2 pages)
In Whether Christian Women Ought to be Educated, one of her earliest works, Anna Maria vigorously defends the education of Christian women--albeit generously employing the topos of 'feminine humility'. In the latter and most mature work [the Eukleria functions as her spiritual autobiography, as well as theological defense of the Labadist movement] the 'humility' topos disappears, and we find Anna Maria arguing in a more straightforward and authoritative manner. While discounting the usefulness of her past 'excessive education', a full display of her erudition is still unabashedly present.