Récits hagiographiques par textes et par images, genre et violences. Sainte Wilgefortis et la croix au féminin dans l’Europe espagnole de la première modernité

Mostaccio, Silvia
(2023) Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pieta — Vol. 36, n° 36, p. 297-329 (2023)

Files

StWilgefortisArchivioItStoriaPietà2023MOSTACCIO.pdf
  • Open Access
  • Adobe PDF
  • 789.85 KB
Download

Details

Authors
Abstract
(en) This article proposes a methodological focus on the role of hagiography for an inclusive and gendered religious socio-cultural enquiry. Through the case study of St. Wilgefortis in early modern Spanish Europe, the article highlights the agency of subaltern groups (the laity, and especially women), who, together with clerics, constructed devotions that were able to meet their existential needs. The written hagiographic sources are compared with visual narratives and spiritual literature. The first part of the article contextualises the case of Wilgefortis by comparing it with the hegemonic spiritual discourses defining the relationship between women and the cross. With Wilgefortis it is a beautiful, bearded woman who endures the martyrdom of the cross and who, from the focus point of that same cross, sees the miseries of the world and brings help to men and women. The success of this devotion is due to the multiple identifications that are made possible by her/his sexually ambiguous reality and by the symbolically strong link with the Christ cross. In the war-torn and violence-ridden Spanish domains of Flanders and Northern Italy, Wilgefortis provides a way of putting into words the gender-based violence, but also the possibility of resilience. Wilgefortis' femininity, both overdetermined and relativised by her beard, gives her the power to act for the salvation of herself and others.
Affiliations

Citations

  • APA
  • Chicago
  • FWB

Mostaccio, S. (2023). Récits hagiographiques par textes et par images, genre et violences. Sainte Wilgefortis et la croix au féminin dans l’Europe espagnole de la première modernité. Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pieta, 36(36), 297-329. https://doi.org/10.57601/A_2022 (Original work published 2023)