Loading Map....

Date/Time
Date(s) - 4 Dec 2013
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

Location
Columbia University Faculty House, Room 2

Category(ies) No Categories


The next meeting of the University Seminar on Medieval Studies will take place on Wednesday, December 4, from 5:30-7:00pm in Room 2 of Faculty House (Columbia University).

 Fiona Griffiths, of New York University, will speak on “Remembering the Dead: Women, Mourning and the Power of Prayer”

At some point in the early 1130s, Peter Abelard—now a monk—wrote to Heloise—now a nun—requesting the prayers of the Paraclete nuns and asking specifically that he be buried at the women’s monastery when he died. As he explained, there is no place “more fitting for Christian burial among the faithful than one amongst women dedicated to Christ.” Like Abelard himself, the faith he expressed in the power of women’s prayers has often been seen as exceptional, and therefore unrepresentative of medieval thought. Historians have typically argued that women’s memorial practices fell into decline during the central middle ages, as the work of maintaining memory of the dead, and of praying for the dead, was centralized in the hands of ordained monks. The prayers of nuns were less attractive to lay donors, so the thinking goes, as care for the souls of the dead increasingly focused on the mass—which women could not celebrate.

This paper explores an alternate possibility, offering evidence for the positive valuation of women’s prayers and for women’s continued associations with death and mourning in eleventh and twelfth-century thought. As I argue, religious women could be viewed as valuable intercessors, whose gendered prayers were thought to be uniquely heard and answered by a God who was increasingly figured as the spouse of professed women.

The talk will be followed by dinner at Faculty House. All those who wish to dine with the speaker after the talk must make reservations by contacting the rapporteur of the seminar, Jeffrey Wayno, by email ([email protected]) no later than one week before the talk.  Dinner is a fixed buffet menu, which costs $25 per person.  Payment can be made by checks made out to “Columbia University.”