When this failed, he threatened to take her to a brothel so that she could be raped by a crowd until she was dead, but the Holy Spirit affixed her to the spot so that she could not be moved, despite the efforts of teams of oxen and the spells of magicians. Lucy’s beleaguered fiancé then accused her of being a Christian and handed her over to Paschasius, who in turn tried to make her offer sacrifices to pagan idols. According to Jacobus’s account, Lucy was of noble birth, but after the miraculous healing of her mother at a shrine dedicated to Saint Agatha, Lucy convinced her mother that the money that had been set aside for her dowry, as well as all their other possessions, should be given away to the poor. The version of Lucy’s legend that had the greatest reach was Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea ( Golden Legend), his thirteenth-century compilation of saints’ lives and other liturgical material that would become one of the most widely-reproduced texts of the later Middle Ages. The slicing of Saint Lucy’s throat in order to render her unable to speak was only one of the tortures associated with the martyr, whose legend was included in the fifth-century Martyrologium Hieronymianum ( Martyrology of Jerome), and whose cult spread widely when her name was included in the daily canon of the mass by Pope Gregory the Great. I am also interested in exploring how the perception of women in these medieval sources could vary depending on the audience, and the ways that medieval (and modern) audiences might embrace the speech of outspoken women as authoritative and even inspirational. And yet the prevalence of the trope of the silenced woman in the Middle Ages suggests that the words of women could and did in fact wield real power, both in these sources, and in lived experience. I will also touch on how some of these attitudes remain visible in the modern world, employing as a particular example the motif of the Silent Woman, an image of a beheaded woman used on pub signs, and most memorably, as the name of a restaurant my family frequented when I was young. In the following I analyze some of the medieval texts and images that depict the silencing of women, often through violent means, because of speech that is portrayed as insipid at best, and unruly at worst. This ambivalence about women’s speech was evident in the Middle Ages not only in hagiography, but also in literature, in fabliaux, in conduct manuals, and in real life, where talkative women were often mocked, suspected, feared, and prosecuted. The medieval audience for these legends was probably meant to admire their powers of rhetoric and reason, but in the end, these eloquent women were punished and then killed, with their persistent speech an important motivation for those who tortured and executed them. Catherine was so persuasive and logical in her arguments against paganism and in favor of Christianity that she converted the fifty philosophers who had been assembled in order to sway her from her position. Intelligent, articulate speech was a crucial feature of the legends of many of the virgin martyrs Lucy, Agnes, Agatha, and Catherine, among others, all used their powers of speech against their tormentors. Miraculously, Lucy continued to be able to speak, even after her throat was cut. However, the scene actually represents the moment that Lucy is stabbed in the throat in order to keep her quiet, after she had continuously goaded the Roman consul Paschasius during the other tortures that he had ordered for her. In the bottom right panel, it appears that Lucy is being decapitated, the ultimate fate of most martyrs. 1300, graphically depicts four of the tortures suffered by the virgin martyr Saint Lucy (Figure 1). 035703-CJT).Ī Catalonian panel painting, originally from the parish church of Santa Llúcia de Mur (Guàrdia de Noguera, Pallars Jussà) and dated ca. From the parish church of Santa Llúcia de Mur (Guàrdia de Noguera Pallar Jussà Barcelona, Museu d’Art de Catalunya, inv. Panels with Scenes of the Martyrdom of Saint Lucy.
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