¹ Thomas of Cantimpré, “Vita Lutgardis Aquiriensis” (ed. G. Henschen; Acta Sanctorum [AASS], 16 June, III [Antwerp, 1791] 234–62, at 3.19). English translation by Newman, Barbara and King, Margot H. in Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints’ Lives (Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 19; Turnhout: Brepols, 2009) 207–96Google Scholar. (Hereafter I will use the abbreviation VLA for this Life and cite quotations in the body of the text by book and chapter.) Translations are by Newman and King unless otherwise indicated. The VLA was the last of Thomas's hagiographies. His hagiographical corpus consists of the Life of John of Cantimpré (“Une œuvre inédite de Thomas de Cantimpré. La ‘Vita Ioannis Cantimpratensis’” [ed. Robert Godding], Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 76 [1981] 241–316); the Life of Marie d'Oignies (“Vita Mariae Oigniacensis, Supplementum” [ed. A. Raysse; AASS, 23 June, V [Paris, 1867] 572–81]; English translation by Feiss, Hugh, OSB, in Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation [ed. Mulder-Bakker, Anneke; Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 7; Turnhout: Brepols, 2006])Google Scholar; the Life of Christina the Astonishing (“Vita Christinae Mirabilis” [ed. J. Pinius; AASS, 24 July, V [Paris, 1868] 650–60]); and the Life of Margaret of Ypres (“Vita Margarete de Ypres,” in “Les Frères Prêcheurs et le mouvement dévot en Flandres au XIIIe siècle” [ed. G. Meersseman], Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 18 [1948] 69–130, at 106–30). Other than the Supplement to the Life of Marie d'Oignies, all the vitae have been translated into English by Newman and King in Thomas of Cantimpré. There is an Old French version of the VLA. Martinus Cawley suggests it was composed by Sybille de Gages, Lutgard's fellow nun (The Lives of Ida of Nivelles, Lutgard and Alice the Leper [Lafayette, OR: Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey, 1987] on the unnumbered page “Important note on the Latin text”). A transcription of the Old French version is available in Hendrix, Guido, “Primitive Versions of the Vita Lutgardis ,” Cîteaux 29 (1978) 153–206 Google Scholar. Thomas's oeuvre additionally includes an encyclopedia, De natura rerum, and an exempla collection, Bonum universale de apibus. There are fascinating continuities and transformations theologically and generically across Thomas's works. This paper does not, however, undertake comparison with his other texts, aiming instead to be a close rhetorical and theological study of a single vita that unpacks complexities and ambiguities within this text.

² That a Dominican would write the vita of a Cistercian nun with whom he had a close relationship is evidence of profound connections between orders in the Southern Low Countries at this time. Simone Roisin's work first demonstrated the linkages between beguines and Cistercians in Liège ( Roisin, Simone, L'hagiographie cistercienne dans le diocèse de Liège au XIIIe siècle [Leuven: Bibliothèque de l'Université, 1947] 5 Google Scholar, 274; eadem, “La méthode hagiographique de Thomas de Cantimpré,” in Miscellanea Historica in Honorem Alberti de Meyer. Universitatis Catholicae in Oppido Lovaniensi Iam Annos XXV Professoris [2 vols.; Leuven: Bibliothèque de l'Université, 1946] 1:546–57). More recent research has shown the “equally close relationship between the beguines and the Dominicans in the same area” ( Bolton, Brenda, “ Vitae Matrum: A Further Aspect of the Frauenfrage,” in Medieval Women [ed. Baker, Derek; Oxford: Blackwell, 1978] 253–73, at 260)Google Scholar, a relationship attested to by the VLA; note also Lutgard's close relationship with the Dominican Bernard. Differences in vocation and gender did not restrain communication or mutual influence in this context.

³ Barratt, Alexandra, “Language and the Body in Thomas of Cantimpré’s Life of Lutgard of Aywières ,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 30 (1995) 339–47Google Scholar, at 346.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Ibid., 340.

⁶ Including 1.12, 1.15, 1.16, 2.23, 2.32, 2.40, 2.43, and 3.9.

⁷ For a detailed reading of the image of the bride of Christ in the VLA (with extensive reference to his corpus as a whole and 13^th-cent. hagiography more generally) see Elliott, Dyan’s The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell (Middle Ages Series; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) ch. 6 (174–232)Google Scholar. Elliott examines Bernard's works in relation to this tradition rather than to William's. Her study considers the development of the topos of the sponsa Christi in light of Thomas's evolving understanding of the relationship between male sponsors and mulieres sanctae.

⁸ Interest in medieval women, literacy, and book culture is apparent from a number of recent publications. See The Voice of Silence: Women's Literacy in a Men's Church (ed. Thérèse de Hemptinne and María Eugenia Góngora; Medieval Church Studies 9; Turnhout: Brepols, 2004); Watt, Diane, Medieval Women's Writing: Works by and for Women in England, 1100–1500 (Cambridge: Polity, 2007)Google Scholar; Women and Experience in Later Medieval Writing: Reading the Book of Life (ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Liz H. McAvoy; The New Middle Ages; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); and Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue (ed. Virginia Blanton, Veronica O'Mara, and Patricia Stoop; Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 26; Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). The locus classicus for the discussion about terminology is Grundmann, Herbert, “Litteratus-illitteratus: Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Alterum zum Mittelalter,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 40 (1958) 1–65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ The repeated use of the adjective laica as well as idiota and rustica to describe Lutgard contrasts her with the litterata nuns surrounding her, and with the magis litterata Sybille de Gages. However, it is unlikely that, as prioress, Lutgard would have been illiterate in the most profound sense of the word, as she would presumably have had correspondence to keep up and would continually have been participating in the complexities of the full monastic liturgy (see Anke Passenier, “Women on the Loose,” in Female Stereotypes in Religious Traditions [ed. Ria Kloppenborg and Wouter J. Hanegraaff; Leiden: Brill, 1995] 61–88, at 80 n. 62; Julie Kerr, “An Essay on Cistercian Liturgy,” 5–12, http://cistercians.shef.ac.uk/cistercian_life/spirituality/Liturgy/Cistercian_liturgy.pdf).

¹⁰ Grundmann, “Litteratus-illitteratus,” 7–8.

¹¹ Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979) 180 Google Scholar. D. H. Green has likewise argued that Grundmann's genealogy of litteratus/illitteratus and clericus/laicus cannot explain the shifting terminology of the later Middle Ages, when a literate knight might be called clericus; nor, more importantly, can it provide an account of vernacular literacy as its status changed in the 13^th and 14^th cents. See Green, D. H., “Orality and Reading: The State of Research in Medieval Studies,” Speculum 65 (1990) 267–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 275–76.

¹² Simons, Walter, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565 (Middle Ages Series; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) 31 Google Scholar.

¹³ Nuns in the Southern Low Countries were beneficiaries of the education available to children, male and female, in the 12^th and 13^th cents. The accessibility of education in reading, writing, and arithmetic was encouraged by the rise of the merchant class and cities provided subsidies for impoverished elementary-school-aged children in many urban centers. There was no apparent difference between levels of education according to gender in the elementary years. When a gendered difference did appear, it was at the higher levels. Most girls did not become fluent in Latin, although there were some schools dedicated to the higher education of women, and further teaching in Latin would have occurred when a woman entered a convent (Simons, Cities of Ladies, 7).

¹⁴ McDonnell, Ernest, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture, with Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1954) 420 Google Scholar. Quoted in Passenier, “Women on the Loose,” 80.

¹⁵ Passenier, “Women on the Loose,” 80.

¹⁶ Thomas Aquinas argues that learning from letters, as any acquired knowledge, is empirical, thus troubling the distinction between experience and the book made by clerics and hagiographers. See Summa theologiae 3a.9.2.

¹⁷ Women and Experience (ed. Mulder-Bakker and McAvoy), 1.

¹⁸ Hugh of Floreffe, the Life of Yvette of Huy (“Vita Beatae Juettae sive Juttae, viduae reclusae, Hui in Belgio” [ed. G. Henshcen; AASS, 13 January, II (Paris, 1867) 145–69]). English translation by Jo Ann McNamara, The Life of Yvette of Huy by Hugh of Floreffe (Toronto: Peregrina, 2000) 44; quoted in Women and Experience (ed. Mulder-Bakker and McAvoy), 2. Not all holy women of the 13^th cent. were described as illitterata. Juliana of Cornillon's (b. 1153) anonymous hagiographer says that she was able to read the Bible in Latin and French as well as works by Augustine and Bernard, and that she could infer the spiritual meaning of various passages. See Katrien Heene, “De litterali et morali earum instruccione: Women's Literacy in Thirteenth-Century Latin Agogic Texts,” in Voice of Silence (ed. de Hemptinne and Góngora) 145–56, at 155.

¹⁹ Beatrice's hagiographer writes that her mother taught her to read the Psalter when she was only five. Beatrice is represented by the topos of the “diligent pupil.” However, she is said only to understand deeper theological mysteries when in ecstasy, and these insights do not remain present in her mind once she returns to a state of consciousness. See Heene, “De litterali,” 153–55.

²⁰ On the pervasiveness of this association, see Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) 217 Google Scholar.

²¹ For a study of the tradition of medieval commentary on the Song of Songs understood as a genre, see Matter, E. Anne, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Middle Ages Series; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The first chapter addresses Origen as the matrix within which the exegetical tradition arises and the following chapters consider the internal and external transformation of this commentary form in vernacular poetry. The book does not address its translation to a hagiographical context.

²² Origen, On First Principles: Being Koetschau's Text of the “De principiis” (trans. George William Butterworth; London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1936; repr., Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973) 1, preface 2. Page numbers taken from the reprinted edition. Hereafter this text is cited as Princ.

²³ Origen, The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies (trans. R. P. Lawson; ACW 26; New York: Newman, 1957). Hereafter this text is cited as Comm. Cant.

²⁴ See Origen, Comm. Cant. prologue, 3.

²⁵ For Cistercian adaptations of Origen's scheme, see Hart, Columba’s comment in William of Saint-Thierry, Exposition on the Song of Songs (trans. Hart, Mother Columba; Cistercian Fathers Series 6; Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1970)Google Scholar 11 n. 34.

²⁶ Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs I (trans. Walsh, Kilian, OSCO; The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux 2; Cistercian Fathers Series 4; Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1971)Google Scholar 20.5.9.

²⁷ Ibid., 1.6.11. Latin from Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, 1–35 (ed. Jean Leclercq and Guido Hendrix; vol. 1 of Sancti Bernardi Opera; Rome: Editiones Cisterciences, 1957).

²⁸ Bernard, On the Song of Songs I, 3.1.1.

²⁹ Although William uses versions of this typology in The Golden Letter and The Enigma of Faith, as the VLA could be understood to be yet another commentary on the Song of Songs, in which Thomas figures Lutgard as the soul becoming Christ's bride, the Exposition seems the most appropriate place to consider William's theological psychology.

³⁰ In addition to William's terminology in the preface, Thomas's description of Lutgard's exchange of hearts with Christ (VLA 1.12) is very close to Expositions 94, and his description of Lutgard as a dove meditating on Christ's wound as on the ark (VLA 1.3) echoes William's description in De contemplando Deo 3 of Christ's wound as the ostium archae (see below). See McGinn, Bernard, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism—1200–1350 (vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism; New York: Crossroad, 1998)Google Scholar 401 nn. 49, 51, and 52 on Thomas's debt to Bernard and William.

³¹ Simone Roisin argues that Thomas's use of these terms to organize the hagiography shows his adoption of a “mystical point of view.” The Life of Christina the Astonishing also uses a threefold division to describe the stages of Christina's life—how she was “nourished” (nutrita), “educated” (educata), and her “deeds” (gesta) (Thomas of Cantimpré, the Life of Christina the Astonishing 3); Roisin argues that this division is chronological while Lutgard's beginner-progressing-perfect schema is atemporal and thus accords with Thomas's “mystical” turn (“La méthode,” 554). It is not only a different temporality that is in play here, however. Christina's division is blatantly physical, emphasizing the somatic nature of what is to follow. Contesting the view that Thomas successfully arranges the VLA according to this schema, Barbara Newman argues that the text is constructed of loosely connected anecdotes. See Barbara Newman, introduction to Thomas of Cantimpré, 18.

³² William of Saint-Thierry, Exposé sur le Cantique des Cantiques (ed. Jean Déchanet, OSB; trans. Maurice Dumontier; SC 82; Paris: Cerf, 1998). English translation from William of St. Thierry, Exposition on the Song of Songs (trans. Hart, Mother Columba; vol. 2 of The Works of William of St. Thierry; Cistercian Fathers Series 6; Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1970) 13 Google Scholar. Hereafter this text is cited as Exp. Sg.

³³ William of Saint-Thierry, Lettre aux Frères du Mont-Dieu (Lettre d'or) (ed. and trans. Déchanet, Jean; SC 223; Paris: Cerf, 1975) 41 Google Scholar.

³⁴ Jean Déchanet, introduction to Exposition on the Song of Songs, vii–xlviii, at xiv.

³⁵ In the hortatory subjunctive of the first line, “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth!” William hears a cry of longing and entreaty that would not be present if the bride had simply issued the demand “kiss me.” In William's view, the poem is framed by this announcement of the bride's longing for the absent beloved, a longing William considers possible only because of the bride's previous connection with the bridegroom (Exp. Sg. 36).

³⁶ McGinn, Bernard, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century (vol. 2 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism; New York: Crossroad, 1996) 242 Google Scholar.

³⁷ van ’T Spijker, Ineke, Fictions of the Inner Life: Religious Literature and Formation of the Self in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Disputatio 4; Turnhout: Brepols, 2004) 209 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Brooke, Odo, Studies in Monastic Theology (Cistercian Studies Series 37; Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1980) 24 Google Scholar.

³⁹ See Hollywood, Amy, “Spiritual but Not Religious,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 38 (2010) 18–26 Google Scholar, at 23, on this paradox, particularly as it operates in John Cassian and Bernard of Clairvaux.

⁴⁰ On the way that the feminization of the illitteratus topos was used as a marker not only of gender and as a form of male protectionism against female encroachment, but also as a mark of class in Cistercian monasteries, see Martha Newman's study of 13^th-cent. Brabantine male conversi Lives, “Crucified by the Virtues: Monks, Lay Brothers, and Women in the Thirteenth-Century Cistercian Saints’ Lives,” in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages (ed. Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternak; Medieval Cultures 32; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) 182–209.

⁴¹ See Thomas of Cantimpré (trans. Newman and King), 226 n. 62. The epithet magis litterata occurs in 3.12. The episode in which this occurs follows the same pattern as those in book 2, where laica moniale is used, thus giving further evidence for Henschen's interpretation.

⁴² Augustine, On Christian Teaching (trans. Green, R. P. H.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997 Google Scholar) preface 5. Thomas, who was an Augustinian prior to his conversion to the Dominican order, quotes directly from Doctr. chr. 4.11 in the prologue to the VLA.

⁴³ Barbara Newman notes that this is the first mention of the “exchange of hearts” in the medieval religious tradition, a topos that will recur in Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude of Helfta in the next generation (Thomas of Cantimpré [trans. Newman and King], 227 n. 63). Newman has recently published an essay on the exchange of hearts, “Iam cor meum non sit suum: Exchanging Hearts from Heloise to Helfta,” in From Knowledge to Beatitude: St. Victor, Twelfth-Century Scholars, and Beyond; Essays in Honor of Grover A. Zinn, Jr. (ed. E. Ann Matter and Lesley Smith; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013) 281–99.

⁴⁴ Reypens, Leonce, “Sint Lutgarts mystieke opgang,” Ons geestelijk erf 20 (1946) 17–19 Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Leclercq, Jean, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (trans. Misrahi, Catharine; 3^rd ed.; New York: Fordham University Press, 1982) 16 Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ In On Contemplating God, William of Saint-Thierry compares the wound in Christ's side to the door of Noah's ark. While contemplating Christ in the “abasement of his incarnation,” he writes that he became “like Thomas, that man of desires,” wanting “to see [videre] and touch the whole of him and—what is more—to approach the most holy wound in his side, the portal of the ark [ostium arcae] that is there made, and that not only to put my finger or my whole hand into it, but wholly enter into Jesus’ very heart [intrem usque ad ipsum cor Iesu].” In the next clause William seamlessly elides Noah's ark and the ark of the covenant with the body of Christ that “holds within itself the manna of the Godhead” ( William of Saint-Thierry, On Contemplating God: Prayer, Meditations [trans. Lawson, Sr. Penelope, CSMV; vol. 1 of The Works of William of Saint Thierry; Cistercian Fathers Series 3; Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1971] 38)Google Scholar. The Latin is taken from De contemplando Deo (ed. Centre “Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium”; Library of Latin Texts, Series A; Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) §3; p. 154, line 48.

⁴⁷ Leclercq, Love of Learning, 73.

⁴⁸ Gillespie, Vincent, “Lukyng in Haly Bukes: Lectio in Some Late Medieval Spiritual Miscellanies,” Analecta Cartusiana 106 (1984) 1–27, at 11Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ See Leclercq, Jean, “Aspects spirituels de la symbolique du livre au XIIe siècle,” in L'Homme devant Dieu. Mélanges offerts au Père Henri de Lubac (3 vols.; Théologie 56–58; Paris: Aubier, 1963–1964) 2:64–75 Google Scholar, at 66.