Among the biographers of Cistercian women in the Flanders of the thirteenth century, Goswin de Bossut, cantor of Villers (fl. 1231-1238), stands out as the earliest and the most versatile. He seems to have begun with his Life of Ida of Nivelles shortly after she died (1231), and to have followed up with a Life of the wagoneering laybrother Arnulf, who had died earlier (1228). His third major Life is of a fellow choir monk still very much alive, Abundus of Huy (1233 or later; never completed). Comparison of the three works among themselves can be revealing, especially with the aid of a computer. The present note popularises an appendix to my forthcoming translation of Goswin,1 in which I study his use of the phrase mulieres religiosæ. This term politely names the women's movement afoot in those days. A less polite term, beguine, had been used by Cæsarius of Heisterbach ten years earlier, but Goswin avoided it even where appropriate. He reflects an early stage of the evolution, and a study of the noun mulier and the adjective religiosa on his pen enriches for us the whole vocabulary of consecrated womanhood.
The sense of reverence among Latin hagiographers inclines them to minimise naked use of a saint's personal name. They clothe it instead with honorific adjectives like sanctus, beatus, venerabilis, or frequently simply omit it and rely of Latin's rich supply of pronouns and grammatical endings to keep clear who is who. Most often, however, they substituted for it a laudatory phrase with a biblical or traditional ring, the most typical of which is vir Dei (the “man of God”). Instead of saying “John did this,” or even “the blessed John did this,” they will say “the man of God did this.” There is quite a range of such titles, both male and female, and certain peculiarities of the Latin language give some of the women's range a ring quite different from the men's. The female title, mulier religiosa, is a case in point. In the phrase vir Dei, a rhetorical accent falls on the first word, vir, stressing overtones of “virility” and of “virtue.” So too mulier religiosa has its ennobling overtones of “womanliness.” Overtones of “virtue” are also present, but come from the second word, the adjective religiosa. And since religiosa has further overtones of “godliness,” there is a link also with the Dei of vir Dei. The two phrases are thus close in theological content, but in stylistic usage they differ. Goswin readily uses vir Dei as a substitute for the saint's name and says “The man of God did this,” but he never uses mulier religiosa as an equivalent substitute. Rather, he uses this phrase as an epithet to epitomise the character of a new person entering into his drama. He especially uses it in the plural as almost a technical term to introduce a community of women and let us know their religious aspirations. There are things akin to this in our own day. Many French monks, for instance, have abandoned the title O.S.B. (“de l'Ordre de S. Benoît”) in favour of the more personalist: m.b. (“moine bénédictin”). In this country too we often hear the old term “sisters of St. Benedict” replaced by the more personalist: “Benedictine women.” Among contemplative women, efforts are being made to popularise inclusive substitutes for the phrase “monks and nuns.” The common-gender term, “contemplatives” would usurp a term shared by other traditions, and the proper adjectives “Benedictine,” “Cistercian,” etc. would be too particular. New words have been coined, ranging from the witty “nunks” to the sober “monastics,” but these are slow in catching on.
The success of vir Dei and of mulier religiosa probably owed much to their twin stress on “manliness/womanliness” and on “dedication to God.” It is not easy for us in modern English to catch both stresses with a single word or phrase applicable to both sexes. But note how such modern terms as “Benedictine women” and “monastics” soft-pedal the marital status, with no allusion to virginity, widowhood, sibling status or parenthood; the accent is rather on the heritage. Goswin's mulieres religiosæ does the same, but not without affirming the womanhood. An experience of the early Church is worth noting here. Monastics were often attached to particular churches, much in the way slaves were attached to secular estates. For these monastics, God was equivalently the “slaveowner” and they were naturally known as “servants/handmaids of God” (servi/ancillæ Dei). Taken in a biblical context, these realistic labels became quite flattering titles on the pens of hagiographers, almost equivalent to vir Dei and to the later mulier religiosa. I have mentioned the peculiarities of the Latin language. An important one here is how the always-masculine noun vir closely resembles the usually-feminine noun virgo, and how both have quite different marital overtones. When modified by a woman's name in the possessive case, vir takes on the meaning of “husband,” as when Joseph is called virum Mariæ (Mt 1.16). Similarly, when virgo is modified by a man's name in the possessive case, it means either his “betrothed” or his “unwed daughter” (I Cor 7.36-38). Goswin can safely call his Abundus “the man of God” and also “the servant of Mary,” but if he starts calling him “the man of Mary,” St. Joseph is not going to be pleased! It is possible for Goswin to call his Ida virgo Dei, and in one special context he does so, but far more often he relates her to the man in Jesus, as virgo Christi or virgo Domini. This is a simple equivalent of sponsa Christi and the other Christ-centered titles he lavishes upon her. This is why the name of Christ is much more frequent in the Life of Ida than in the male Lives. In my translation, however, this is not apparent, since my early readers urged a policy of abandoning the fulsome Latin phrases in favour of a modern “first-name basis.” But spousal spirituality pervades the thought of Ida, and especially her eucharistic practice, making it very different from that of the men. In similar fashion, Goswin can easily call his male saint “the servant of the Lord,” but he dare not call Ida that, since the phrase “the handmaid of the Lord” is sacred to Mary. Similarly, he can call his male saints vir beatus, but if he calls Ida beata Virgo, we wonder if he doesn't mean rather the Virgin Mother of God. Centuries before Goswin, St. Gregory the Great had a phrase almost perfectly synonymous with mulier religiosa, namely sanctimonialis fœmina. Sanctimonia is a very rare word for “holiness” in the Latin Bible, and its adjective does not occur there. Indeed, fœmina itself is rare in both Testaments, almost confined to contexts explicitly distinguishing male from female. Goswin too uses fœmina only to denote the sex. But for St. Gregory the phrase, sanctimonialis fœmina, taken as a whole, bespeaks the same social dignity as mulier religiosa. Gregory's phrase was widely used, but in the course of time it shrank, first to the substantivised adjective sanctimonialis (meaning the same as “a nun”), and later to the truncated form: monialis. Goswin used sanctimonialis in a few formal contexts, but normally just monialis, which he quite possibly mistook to be a feminine form of monachus (“monk”). Many French monastics today thus think of the French term moniale as a simple twin to moine, both being regarded as derivatives from the Greek monos. Goswin, we shall see, also uses soror (“sister”). In one poetic context he even uses nonna, the feminine equivalent of St. Benedict's term of reverential address to senior monks, which lies at the origin of our English term, “nun.” Goswin, and Gregory before him, thus honoured the “womanliness” implied in our phrase, but what of the second element in it? What meaning does religiosa, or its noun, religio, have for Goswin? As mentioned already, it is one of those qualities by which he takes a person's measure. A person's religio, like Solomon's wisdom, can be found to be even “greater” than rumour would have had it; it can enjoy “celebrity” (celebris), can “bloom and bubble” (floret et fervet). One's religio can be “holy” (sancta) and “proven” (probata) it can be “loftier” (celsior) perhaps than that of others. Then, just as we today speak of the individual's “prayer life,” so Goswin spoke of their “religious life” and their “dedication” to it.
One of Goswin's favourite themes is the assessment of an individual's “standing,” or “status,” or “state.” But he also gauges the “state of their religio.” Goswin sets a number of other nouns alongside religio, more or less as synonyms, and these help us grasp what he means by it. With religio goes “goodness,” expressed especially in “good works.” It is almost the same thing as “the fear of God,” and it has much in common with “austerity, fidelity, honourable behaviour.”
Externally too, there is the “livery of religio” (sub habitu religionis), and also its “marching standard” (the processional cross: vexillum religionis). It has its own “beaten path” (trames), and woe to the traveller who wanders from it (erraticus viator)! But it is most important that, with these outward trappings of religio, we should also have the inward reality in high measure (quantæ religionis esset). If, like Ida, one is “on a superlative level of holy religio, far above the others,” all the more should one, like her, esteem those others even higher.
Where measure is prominent, low measures too are to be noted, and some “set the heart less than might be upon religio.” Goswin's religiosi are contrasted with both the irreligiosi and the “secular” or “worldly” folk, though in some seculars Goswin has met a well “proven” measure of religio (personæ sæculares probatæ religionis).
What is measurable can grow. In striving for growth in religio one can be aided by the example and support of one's friends. Friendship is a key value in Goswin's circle, and he uses a rich vocabulary to depict it among the mulieres religiosæ of whom he writes. What catches his attention is the grouping of such friends. There are firstly the informal bonds of “familiar friendship,” (familiaritas= “sameness of household circle”); then the more formal contubernia (“tent-mate teams”) and the conventicula (“mini-comings-together”), which are distinct from the fully formed congregationes (“flockings together”) and conventus (“gatherings”) constituted by traditional monasteries. The two last terms are close to our modern term, “a religious community.” Goswin's pen is versatile and he readily dubs even Ida's Cistercian monastery of La Ramée a conventuale contubernium! The religious companions found in these more or less canonical groupings are called contubernales (“tent-mates”) or sodales (as in our modern “sodality”) or even consodales.
Oddly, Goswin never names this friendly bonding between the women a “sisterhood,” not even citing the fraternitas of St. Benedict and the New Testament (Rom 12.10, etc.). Even the term soror he confines to blood sisters or nuns (moniales), extending it to others only as a polite form of address: bona soror, soror mea. Similarly, on the rare occasions that an abbess or a venerable senior comes on the scene, no one calls them “sister,” nor “Mother,” but always “Milady” (Domina).
The strong horizontal bond of these con-sodales, con-tubernales, con-venticula, con-gregationes reminds us of St. Paul and his vast range of terms formed with syn-. To quote just a few of the more powerful, St. Paul uses “co-stemmed” (sym-phytos), “co-voiced” (sym-phonos), “co-souled” (sym-psychos), “co-slave” (syn-doulos), “co-communer” syn-koinonos), “co-worker” (syn-ergos). He has also a range of “co-heirs, yoke-fellows” and so on, plus a couple of terms formed with homo-: “same-drived” (homo-thymadon in Rom. 15.6) and “same-witted” (homo-phron in the very Pauline I Pet. 3:8). It would be interesting to ask how much of the team spirit thus reflected in Goswin's groups of female con-tubernales came from the domestic experience of their childhoods, an experience perhaps of economic partnership practised among parents in the burgeoning towns of Brabant. But the ultimate source would be identical with St. Paul's: the promptings of Christian charity.
It is perhaps by accident that Goswin confines the term soror to blood sisters and to full-fledged nuns, but he certainly has a pet term for non-nuns: puella religiosa (“a girl religious”/“a religious girl”). We might jokingly translate this as mini-mulieres religiosæ! He has a male equivalent in puer religiosus, used only of his saints in their boyhood years and by which he certainly means “the-child-who-will-soon-be-the-man-of-God. But he treats puella religiosa almost as a technical term, just as when he speaks of a parent's filia religiosa or, on occasion, names a virgo religiosa, always meaning a daughter who lives at home as a declared “religious,” not available for marriage. Indeed, he at times even drops the noun and turns the feminine adjective into a fully technical substantive. But he never doubles up on his technical terms with such tautologies as monialis religiosa (“a nun religious”) or even soror religiosa (“a sister religious”). Nor, of course, does he use the male equivalent, monachus or frater religiosus.
I suggest Goswin's frequent use of the youthful term, puella, stems from current experience and reflects the early date of his writing: the women's movement was still young and abounded in an enormous intake of younger women. It is not surprising, therefore, that he never pairs off the virgines within a group with their widowed colleagues (viduæ), though he mentions several of these latter in the Lives. The only widow he names as such is the Anna of the Gospel. But, widows aside, he readily speaks of other categories: “recluses, matrons, ladies,” and readily honours their appropriate measures of religio. A fascinating trait in Goswin, very frustrating to a translator, is how in his concern to conceal the identity of his informants, he avoids revealing their sex, naming them instead with the feminine noun persona and keeping all the pronouns, adjectives, participles, etc. that follow, perplexingly feminine in gender. When, however, the identity of the person is given and the sex is male, Goswin will often use the common-gender term homo Dei rather than the always-masculine vir Dei; though mostly he uses homo in doctrinal contexts, to contrast the human with the divine. He never uses homo religiosus. There is, of course, a New Testament precedent for mulieres religiosæ in Acts 13:50, and though they are there honoured with a second adjective, honestæ, their part in the story is inglorious and I doubt that this passage had any impact on the use of the term by Goswin or his contemporaries. The same is probably true of viri religiosi in Acts 2:5. On the other hand, Luke's full description of Cornelius the centurion in Acts 10:2 as vir religiosus ac timens Deum was prominent in Goswin's thought. He reproduces it in full to introduce one character and uses slight adaptations of it to present three or four others. Note, however, that it is only for menfolk that Goswin feels the need to enhance the laudatory term vir religiosus with added honorific synonyms.
But when he calls a woman mulier religiosa, no such additives are called for; the term is technical and says everything on its own: mulier religiosa, the almost the exact feminine equivalent of vir Dei, bespeaking admiration of her both for her full womanliness and for her total gift of that womanhood to God.