Marie of Oignies, of Nivelles, or of Villers: The Multiple Textual Identities of a 13th-Century Holy Woman

Nancy Bradley Warren (2005: 133) maintains that ‘female spirituality and the revelations of holy women were valuable, and extremely valuable, sources of symbolic capital’ in the pre-modern era. In this article, I dissect the ways in which various authors harnessed the ‘symbolic capital’ of the 13th-century holy woman Marie of Oignies (d. 1213). Jacques of Vitry composed Marie’s vita in c. 1215. Most of what we know about the holy woman’s life is contained in this text, which offers us the first extant account of a new form of female spirituality which blossomed in the era, the beguine lifestyl... Mehr ...