The Contours of Female Piety in Later Medieval Hagiography

The thirteenth century represents a high point in the establishment of female orders, whose ministry was directed largely at an urban population prone to heresy and undergoing the disruptive transition from pastoral feudalism to nascent capitalism. During this period, more than a quarter of the contemporary saints were women; they identified with all of the new movements which animated the church. Some, continuing the already established tradition of princely veneration, were active in evangelization in the recently Christianized regions of Europe's periphery, like Spain and Poland, through the patronage of charitable institutions and religious houses. The canonization trials of Hedwig of Poland, Elizabeth of Thuringia and Margaret of Hungary all reflect a broadly based constituency including rural and urban, lay and clerical, male and female support Others appealed to a narrower social and geographical audience and ministered to the problems of the urban poor: Sperandea of Cingoli's miraculous cures were performed exclusively on married women of the city and of the adjacent countryside. But the largest number of female saints continued to be cloistered women whose chief accomplishment was the establishment or endowment of a new convent or the foundation of a new female order, usually in association with a male order; for while many such orders began independently, the church feared the consequences of independent female piety and sought to ensure orthodoxy by associating the female houses with a corresponding male order. Nevertheless, while contemporary hagiography continued to be patterned after the stereotypical saints of early Christianity, the character of female piety changed to reflect such dynamic changes within the church as the rise of mendicancy, the transition from rural to urban life, the cult of the Virgin, the rise of national states, the war against heresy, the new emphasis on the humanity of Christ and the political struggles of the papacy.