Mariun

Upon the Mamluk takeover of Sis in 1375 CE, the former Queen Mariun of the Armenian state of Cilicia was taken into captivity and held first in Aleppo and then in Cairo. From there she traveled to Jerusalem, where she lived until her death. Her tomb at the Sts. James Monastery in Jerusalem is often mentioned in medieval and postmedieval texts, but the information in later historiography concerning Mariun and some of her contemporaries who survived the fall of the Armenian kingdom and lived through the fourteenth century has been subject to inaccuracies. This article considers some of these accretions and misrepresentations using textual and archaeological documentation, and reconstructs several key episodes in the life and afterlife of Mariun. The story of this remarkable noblewoman crosses the political realms of at least three Mediterranean communities—Armenian, Mamluk, and Latin—and reflects the scope of the ever-changing geopolitical complexities that continued to mark the eastern Mediterranean under Mamluk domination. Spending the finalstages of her life in exile and on pilgrimage, the former queen of Armenia appeared in the Holy City at a time when female spirituality was flourishing within self-organized monastic institutions.

Titian, Colonna, and the Gender of Pictorial Devotion

Titian made a painting of Mary Magdalene for Vittoria Colonna, perhaps identifiable with a painting in the Pitti Palace. Despite considerable scholarly attention over the last thirty years, scholars have not reached a consensus about most aspects of this exchange. Central to the debate has been the question of nudity: was it possible to have a devotional image that so knowingly exhibits female flesh? Can a painting gleefully subvert the rules of decorum and still discharge its function as a devotional image? Recent scholarship on the visual culture of female spirituality at this time helps illuminate how the picture operated within contemporary devotional culture, as does attention to Colonna’s own religious verse.

Sectarian Mysticism and Spiritual Power

This chapter explores the religious culture of Puritanism. Beginning with the amorphous, pluralistic character of early English dissenters, the chapter discusses the problem of establishing orthodoxy in Massachusetts, particularly the issues central to the Hutchinsonian crisis: sanctification as evidence of election, the conversion experience as evidence, and preparationism. From here the chapter considers the gendering of Puritan religiosity through the privileging of formal education and the rationalist preparation for grace and examines the construction of female spirituality as grounded in biology. The perceptions of woman as weak and woman as evil are developed in great detail. The chapter then places Puritan theologians’ understanding of women within a reconsideration of Puritans’ construction of sin, salvation, and election. It returns to conversion as a mystical experience available to all regardless of rank or gender, thus fostering a radical egalitarianism.

“CHRIST CONSUMES THE MARROW OUT OF OUR BONES” – CORPOREALITY IN THE MYSTICAL DOCTRINE OF JOHN OF RUUSBROEC (*1293 – †1381)

In this article we pretend to explore the theme of corporeality in the mystical doctrine of the medieval author John of Ruusbroec. After explaining the radically different understanding of a body in medieval thinking we present a theoretical framework based on Patricia Dailey’s analysis of the inner and the outer body. After this, we make a first analysis of Ruusbroec’s approach to the body in het mystical experience. In Ruusbroec’s work the integration of the inner and outer body is more evident than in the previous tradition, that is, especially in the female spirituality of the 13th century. Corporeality is a theme with limited occurrence in Ruusbroec’s mystical doctrine, and it is mainly linked to Eucharistic devotion, but not exclusively.

The Mark of a Saintly Woman

Chapter 3 analyses how stigmatization became predominantly linked to women and female spirituality. It considers the strong theological defence that evolved in the second half of the thirteenth century that asserted holy, virginal women were axiomatic stigmatics. It also inspects the religious lives of stigmatics that often consisted of routinized prayer, illness, and suffering. The nature of invisible stigmata is investigated; it is demonstrated that there is a connection between the development of invisible stigmatization and the increase in female stigmatics during the thirteenth century. As living icons of Christ, these women brought to mind the divine passion and inspired hope in human redemption. Illness and holiness blended into a powerful cocktail of salvation as represented in the stigmatic body. But it was not only their likeness to Christ, but also their likeness to Mary that was remarkable. As virgins, their flesh was sympathetic and open to wounding making them ideal bearers of stigmata.

Asian Gothic

The chapter offers a selective survey of twenty-first-century Asian Gothic. The main focus of the discussion is the most prominent contemporary trend involving reconfigurations of Asian folklore and the ghost story. More specifically, this chapter investigates literary and film narratives dealing with individual and collective trauma that revolve around the figure of the vengeful ghost, texts which reclaim animism as an inherent part of Asian modernity, and Asian Gothic’s interrogation of gender dynamics and empowered women. The first section of the essay discusses the emergence of the female vengeful ghost as the dominant figure of fear in Asian horror films. The second section examines the portrayal of ghosts in literature of the region and the way their haunting engages with historical trauma and socio-cultural anxieties of the time. The final part investigates narratives that highlight the connection of women to shamanism and magic and proposes to read female spirituality in terms of empowerment.

Crafting Sociability in Female Spiritual Practices: The Case of Boutchichiyyat

Research on sufism and female spirituality has centered on framing narratives of sufi women within individualized practices, constructing thereby sufi women as mere individual and assisting players in historical accounts of more famous male scholars. In recent years, academic interest has geared towards the investigation of sufi women’s collective and ritualistic performance within structured sufi circles. Henceforth, this paper explores ways in which the gathering of sufi women of Boutchichiyya, a Morocco-based sufi order, in a zawiya mediates not only ritual performances but also promotes the rehearsal of sociability and social relations. The point is made that within a horizon that is viewed as a nexus where the ritualistic performance is what matters in a zawiya, sufi women’s gathering is characterized by a sense of community, and interconnections between spiritual, social capital and socialization. In this pri-blic (private and public) space, namely the zawiya, sufi women of Boutchichiyya enjoy privacy and communal life. Knowing that the zawiya is a segregated space, since men and women disciples perform rituals separately, one might surmise that the spatial division sparks gender inequality. However, this spatial segregation is an ideal of emancipation, which subsumes a spatial segregation of rituals, and constructs a realm of privacy, intimacy, and fervent ambiance women aspire to. This paper builds on findings of a qualitative ethnographic research, in which the researcher assumed a participant-observer role to generate a more focused discussion on whether the gender division of space highlights women’s spirituality or undermines it. More precisely, this paper approaches the interactive relationship, which engages women’s sufi experience with prevalent spatial politics in Moroccan society. In such a space where women come to learn and imbibe spiritual knowledge, social relationships are important assets for women’s spiritual, social, and personal growth.