International Medieval Society, Paris
Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2008 Abstracts

The remarkable rise of female mysticism that began during the mid-thirteenth century ranks among the major spiritual developments to engulf medieval Europe. While numerous cases originated throughout Germany and the Low Countries, Mediterranean France early on too produced a notable woman mystic. Saint Douceline de Digne (1214-1274) was a béguine who established the Dames de Roubaud with a béguinage in Hyères and Marseille. The sister of the renown Franciscan theologian, Friar Hugues de Digne, Douceline's piety mirrored the emotional tenor of St. Francis'.

A graphic manifestation of her private devotion emphasizing blood appears in Douceline's biography, Li Vida de la benaurada Sancta Doucelina (ca. 1315). The presumed author, Felipa de Porcelet, in 10:15 has her leader's Minorite confessor describe a miraculous apparition she experienced inside the Franciscan church at Marseille involving the Eucharist. There Douceline saw an open tabernacle whereupon the host within transformed itself into a wounded and heavily bleeding Christ still suffering after His Crucifixion.

The mournful figure of the Savior she witnessed corresponds precisely to a new motif in Passion pictures called the "Man of Sorrows". Iconographic analysis of what appeared to her demonstrates how Douceline's strongly pictorial vision affected the emergence of this subject predating its occurrence beyond the Alps. Her absorption of Franciscan spirituality stressing meditation on the Passion was conflated with eucharistic veneration to create a prototype for a poignant depiction of Christ. His sacrifice is then literally accentuated by profuse blood imagery. This combination of devotional practices underscores the dramatic influence a feminine Provençal mystic like Saint Douceline de Digne exerted within her native culture through an evocative vision focusing on the
sanguinity of the tormented humanity of Christ.