The ideological complexities of the cleric as intermediary between institutional authority and the world at large are particularly acute when it comes to the representation of female religious experience. The reformist Church placed increasing emphasis on clerics’ celibacy as a sign of their social and spiritual superiority, and this, in tandem with inherited discourses of misogyny, unleashed a host of unresolved anxieties over the pollution caused by Woman. As Dyan Elliott puts it:

And yet, the symbolic feminine also possessed positive meanings and associations, such as humility, compassion, and the nurturing qualities of motherhood, which could be appropriated to represent the aspirations of Church and clerical writer alike. One example is the femininized subject position adopted by Bernard of Clairvaux in his commentary on the Song of Songs. David Damrosch shows how Bernard exploited the feminine as a powerful metaphor for both himself and the male monastic community as a whole (1991). Although Patricia Ranft (1998) has argued for a strong tradition of spiritual equality between the sexes, the evidence provided by male writers such as Bernard needs to be carefully evaluated. Damrosch, for example, pointedly observes: ‘As infused as Bernard wishes both his commentary and his monastery to be with these feminine qualities, he is very far from wanting to have any actual women around’ (1991: 186).

A similar ambivalence can be found in the Dominican friars who from the thirteenth century on acted as confidants and confessors of such charismatic laywomen as Margaret of Ypres (d. 1237), Christine de Stommeln (1242–1312), and Catherine of Siena (1347–80). These relationships are often structured by a tension between male institutional and female spiritual authority.