Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 03-29-08
Clemence of Barking
(later 1100s)
========================================================================
"SO IT IS NECESSARY TO CORRECT IT AND TO MAKE THE TIMES
CONFORM TO THE PEOPLE."
========================================================================
Clemence was, she tells us, a nun at Barking Abbey. Barking, near London, was a Benedictine foundation, one of only a few women's monasteries of abbatical rank in Norman England (there had been more in the earlier Anglo-Saxon period). During the 1100s Barking was known for its powerful abbesses and for its learned nuns, and as a place of temporary respite for other aristocratic women.
Vie de sainte Catherine is believed to have been written between 1153 and 1175: the oldest extant manuscript is from around 1200, and the style is quite similar to Vie d'Edouard le Confesseur, also written by a nun at Barking and which can be dated to between 1163 and 1189. We don't know whether that work was also by Clemence.
Clemence's life of Catherine of Alexandria was a translation into Anglo-Norman octosyllabic couplets of a Latin work from the early 1000s. The translation is not a literal one; as for her contemporary, Marie de France, for Clemence translation is a new creation: she adds material to emphasize points not developed in the Latin source, usually to make a character more realistic; she omits passages that would not speak to her contemporaries.
Catherine of Alexandria was a popular figure throughout Europe from the 1000s, perhaps especially among aristocratic women. She was, like them, well-born. She was beautiful (there seem to have been few homely saints, apparently because external beauty was seen as a sign of internal virtue). Above all, Catherine of Alexandria was intelligent and eloquent, always able to hold her own and to win in verbal combat with men. That eloquence comes through clearly in Clemence's book.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from a translation in print.
Information about secondary sources.
========================================================================
1. The Anglo-Norman original of Clemence's Vie de sainte Catherine, edited by William MacBain, although given here without the valuable English-language introduction given in the print version. (For information on that, see below, under "Secondary sources"; for excerpts from a translation, see under "In print.")
2. Essays, etc.:
(a) A 1993 essay by MacBain, "Textual Editing and the St. Catherine Cycle." The whole essay is of interest in showing the difficulties of working with medieval manuscripts, but for MacBain's comments on Vie de sainte Catherine, use your browser's search function to go to "Clemence."
(b) Donna Alfano Bussell's abstract of a 2002 conference presentation is more detailed than most abstracts: "Rebuilding the Lost City: Porphiry's Grief and a Better Heaven in Clemence of Barking's Life of St Catherine." (Porphiry is a nobleman who visits Catherine in her cell and who is converted by her.)
(c) A more recent abstract by Bussell, this for a 2007 conference presentation, "Questions of Influence: Clemence of Barking's Life of St. Catherine and Representations of Law, Lordship, and Civic Unrest in Two Old French Catherine Legends."
(d) Although Clemence is not mentioned, "Prologues and Epilogues in 12th-Century French Works," a 2004 essay by Debora B. Schwartz, is useful for historical background on the medieval attitude toward translation (note the link in the first paragraph to a page on translatio studii, where Schwartz briefly describes the Anglo-Norman court).
3. A review by Karen Winstead of Jocelyn Wogan-Browne's 2001 study, Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture c.1150-1300: Virginity and Its Authorizations (for information on the book's treatment of Clemence, see "Secondary sources").
4. Two manuscript pages (with illuminations) from a 1200s collection of saints' lives: Vie de sainte Catherine, by Clemence, and Vie d'Edouard le Confesseur, by "une Deu ancele de Berkinges."
5. On the legend of Catherine of Alexandria:
(a) Links to an "Overview," which includes an essay by Virginia C. Raguin, and to medieval images (note the three from France, c.1190).
(b) A 2003 essay by Sherry L. Reames, introducing a Middle English "Stanzaic Life of Katherine."
6. A history of Barking Abbey; the first paragraphs describes the foundation before and during Clemence's life. At another site, a profile of the abbey, with links to relevant bibliographic informantion.
========================================================================
[This book includes a prose translation of the verse Vie de sainte Catherine, by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and Glyn S. Burgess; the introduction is thorough, and the notes indicate where Clemence has made changes from her source:]
Virgin lives and holy deaths: two exemplary biographies for
Anglo-Norman women / translated with introductions and notes
by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and Glyn S. Burgess (The everyman library).
London: J.M. Dent; Rutland, Vt.: C.E. Tuttle, 1996. (lxiii, 106
p.)
LC#: PQ1302.E5 V56 1996; ISBN: 0460875809
Includes bibliographical references (p. xlix-lxiii) and indexes.
Translations of two Anglo-Norman poems: La Vie de saint Laurent
and Clemence de Barking's Vie de sainte Catherine.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"People then were not so hard to please or so critical as
they are in our day."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Clemence begins by justifying her new translation:]
All those who know and understand what is good have a duty to demonstrate it wisely, so that by the fruit of its goodness others may be encouraged to do good deeds and to want to do good, as far as they are able. For he who alone is good by his very nature gave us both precept and example. He wished not to conceal his goodness from us, but to reveal it publicly....
Because he is merciful it is right that he should assist me with this work, in which I intend to tell of someone who truly loved him and to translate her life, transposing it from Latin into the vernacular, so that it will be more pleasing to those who hear it.
It was translated before and well set out according to the standards of the time. But people then were not so hard to please or so critical as they are in our day, and will be even more so after we are gone. Because times and men's qualities have changed, the poem is held in low esteem, for it is somewhat defective in places. So it is necessary to correct it and to make the times conform to the people. I am not correcting out of arrogance, for I seek no acclaim. He alone should be praised from whom I derive my small amount of knowledge. [p.3]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"There was no dialectician on earth who could defeat her
in argument."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[The story starts with a pagan emperor who ruled Alexandria in the 300s and made a law that all, including Christians, must sacrifice to his gods, on pain of death:]
In the city... there lived a young girl of high rank and great beauty. The maiden was eighteen years old, and her name was Catherine. Her father was a king during his lifetime and he had no other son or daughter. He had her taught letters and how to argue a case and defend her position.
There was no dialectician on earth who could defeat her in argument. She was very wise in the ways of this world, but her heart was set on higher things. In God she placed her whole mind, her worth, and her fair youth, and she showed disdain for all mortal lovers, devoting herself to an immortal lover whose love is chaste and pure and everlasting in its delight. In this delight there is no pain, for its joy is never delusory. [p.5]
------------------------------------------------------------------
"He finds himself confronted by a powerful woman."
------------------------------------------------------------------
[Catherine decided to "take the king to task and prove to him by logic" that his law was wrong. She went to the temple where the sacrifices were being made and engaged the emperor in a debate about the superiority of their respective gods. Needless to say, neither convinced the other, but it was the emperor who was irritated by his failure. He sent out a proclamation asking for help:]
"Let it be known by everyone far and near --- especially rhetoricians, who are expert in fine and effective speech --- that the emperor has a great need for everyone to come to him and maintain his honour and his law, for he finds himself confronted by a powerful woman advocating that he should abandon his law.
"If they can confound her so that she can make no further reply and has to surrender publicly, when she prides herself so much on her skills in debate, he will make them his personal advisors and they will be honoured above all others." [p.8]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"...but tell me what the birds which fly over me will do?"
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[After Catherine defeated (and converted) the rhetoricians who debated her, the emperor offered to have a golden statue made in her image if she would sacrifice to his gods; her response was sarcasm:]
"Oh, how fortunate I am, since I am to be turned into gold! I'll have a statue in my name, and people will humbly venerate me....
"Oh, what honour they will do me when they speak such praise of me as 'This is Catherine who abandoned her God and her faith.' King, I do not care for such honour, for praise like that is really blame.
"Emperor, as long as you live, you will be able to force your men to do this honour to me, either from fear or love of you, but tell me what the birds which fly over me will do? Will they spare me on your account, so as not to alight on me? In no time at all they will have plucked out my eyes and sullied my shining face. Even your dogs will abuse me. Such, king, is your praise." [p.23]
-----------------------------------------------------
"I shall tell you what the country is like...."
-----------------------------------------------------
[Finally the emperor had Catherine beaten and put in a dungeon to be starved. The emperor's pagan wife heard of her, pitied her, and went to visit her. During their conversation, Catherine described heaven in terms fitting both to her dark dungeon and to her royal listener. None of this detail is in the Latin original:]
"I shall tell you what the country is like which God promises to his friends. It is a bright city which has no need of any other light. In it no one is far from what he needs; no one there lacks for anything. There is never any adversity or tribulation. No hardship or sorrow is to be found there, nor any pride, envy or folly....
"In this great royal city there dwells at all times the immortal king, who had no beginning and will have no end, a king who is beautiful, merciful, glorious, and the delight of chaste lovers. His power is felt by everything, earth, sea and all that belongs to them.
"There too is the beautiful queen, who is both mother and maiden. Within her chaste body she bore her good maker who created her. He is her son and her father, and she is his daughter and his mother....
"The great company of angels is there with their singing,
the sweet festive song, which is unvaryingly magnificent. There
also are the young men and the noble knights who, as holy martyrs,
conquered death and suffered it for the love of God. The apostles
and the good doctors of the church are there, as well as the
good confessors. There too is the choir of young women, virgins
and chaste maidens who despised mortal lovers, choosing instead
the chaste love of God. All praise in unison the name of the
all-powerful king. [pp.29-30]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I can do everything I do not want, and that which I want
most I cannot do."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Catherine underwent more torture, including being racked on the wheel that would later become part of her iconography. Then, the emperor's queen publicly chose Christianity, and many people imitated her. Because of this, the emperor had to decide whether he must follow his own law and have his own wife, whom he loved, executed. Clemence gives the debate the emperor has with himself; none of this was in the Latin source, where he was presented as merely a villain. The emperor begins by speaking of his wife:]
"Alas, what good is my love to me now when I receive nothing from it but pain. I shall live out my life in great sadness once I have lost you, my fair friend. For you alone were my delight and I yours, I believe.
"But now I know and understand very well that presumption often damages us. Because I loved you so much, I assumed the same of you, but now you have proved to me that this was nothing but presumption.
"Now I am wretched, completely misled, slain, betrayed and confounded. I shall never again have any comfort and now I desire nothing but death. I shall never be able to recover from losing what I most desired, and when I have lost the greater part, can I be sustained by the lesser?
"My power will be of little use to me when I lose what I want. For if I cannot have what I want, what do I care for what I do not want? What joy can I have from power which contradicts desire? Wretch that I am, I can do everything I do not want, and that which I want most I cannot do. I amass power counter to my desire, but I lament this powerless desire. For if I had power to effect my desire, my trouble would be ended.
"Now I do not know what to aim for, when I cannot realize my desire, or to what concerns my heart should turn when all honour flees from me. I shall be much despised and the least feared of all my people, when my wife shames me in this way and abandons me on account of such folly, I who am king and emperor of this realm, charged with punishing the Christians and forcing them to abandon their foolishness! Now they have so duped my people as to cause them to hold all my gods in contempt.
"What counsel can I take over the loss of my wife? If our mutual love so constrains me that I take no vengeance on this folly, what will these other noble ladies do? Upon my word, they will take their precedent from her and deceive their husbands into believing these heresies.
"One must choose the lesser of two evils. It is more fitting that I exercise justice than that my whole realm should be destroyed because of her folly. I prefer to act against my heart's desires rather than that everyone should come to harm because of me." [pp.35-36]
-------------------------------------------------------
"No part of her will remained unexpressed."
-------------------------------------------------------
[After the queen and her Christian followers were executed, Catherine rejected one last chance to recant and so was beheaded. Clemence ends her poem:]
We are perfectly capable of having God, if we truly desire....
No one loves [God] as he ought to be loved or in accordance with what he deserves. The love he has shown to us will never be repaid, but this lady loved him well and with her love rewarded him as far as she had the power to do so; no part of her will remained unexpressed.
Now let us pray that by her goodness she will obtain for us the will to love God and to serve him and come to a happy end. Amen.
I who have translated her life am called Clemence by name. I am a nun of Barking, for love of which I took this work in hand.
For the love of God, I pray and beseech all who will hear this book and who listen to it with a receptive heart to pray to God on my behalf, that he may place my soul in paradise and guard my body while it is alive, he who reigns and lives and will reign, and is and was and will always be. [p.43]
========================================================================
[Maud Burnett McInerney's study contains a chapter "Catherine and Margaret: Vernacular Virgins and the Golden Legend," which compares Clemence's Vie de sainte Catherine with a life of Margaret of Antioch written in the mid-1100s and with Jaccobus de Voragine's collection of saints' lives written in the mid-1200s. While Margaret had been treated as a traditionally passive sufferer, and the words of the few virgin martyrs of the Golden Legend were presented as miraculous, Clemence made Catherine both articulate and assertive. Passages from all the works are given in McInerney's translations. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
McInerney, Maud Burnett. Eloquent virgins from Thecla to Joan
of Arc / Maud Burnett McInerney (The New Middle Ages). New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. (250 p.: ill.)
LC#: PN682.V56 M38 2003; ISBN: 0312223501
Includes bibliographical references (p. [213]-246) and index
-----------------------
[Wogan-Browne's 2001 study includes a section "Sibyls and Soteriology: The Voices of Clemence of Barking," which shows Clemence presenting to the vernacular reader new theories of Christian salvation otherwise available only in Latin. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn. Saints' lives and women's literary
culture c.1150-1300: virginity and its authorizations. Oxford
[England]; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. (xvi, 314
p.)
LC#: PR275. W6 W64 2001; ISBN: 0198112793
Includes bibliographical references (p. [266]-305) and index
-----------------------
[Duncan Robertson's article discusses those parts of Clemence's Vie de sainte Catherine that are hers and not her source's, providing quite a few examples that are not indicated in the introduction to the Wogan-Browne and Burgess translation above. Robertson's article's focus is on what Clemence reveals about her own role as a writer:]
Robertson, Duncan. Writing in the textual community: Clemence
of Barking's Life of St. Catherine. French Forum, 21 (1996):
5-28.
LC#: PQ1 .F67; ISSN: 0098-9355
-----------------------
[Robertson's earlier study includes a substantial discussion (pp.53-73) of Clemence's translation, which includes material not in his 1996 article and provides his own translations (and the original) of a number of passages. Robertson shows Clemence portraying Catherine as an epic hero rather than a tradionally passive female martyr. Also look at Robertson's chapter, "Conclusions," which situates Clemence among her contemporary writers:]
Robertson, Duncan. The medieval saints' lives: spiritual renewal
and old French literature (Edward C. Armstrong monographs on
medieval literature; 8). Lexington, Ky. French forum, 1995. (290
p.)
LC#: PQ155.R4 R634 1995 ; ISBN: 0917058909
Includes bibliographical references
-----------------------
[William MacBain has edited the original Anglo-Norman Vie
de sainte Catherine (which you can see online); his English-language
introduction (not online) gives valuable information on the Catherine
legend and on Clemence's text:]
The life of St. Catherine, by Clemence of Barking. Edited
by William Macbain (Anglo-Norman texts, 18). Oxford, Published
for the Anglo-Norman Text Society by B. Backwell, 1964 ( xxvi,
98 p. front. facsim)
LC#: PQ1301 .A6 no.18
Bibliographical footnotes
-----------------------
[This collection includes a later essay by MacBain, "Anglo-Norman Women Hagiographers," which discusses four works written by women in the later 1100s to see what effect (if any) their gender had upon their writing. Much of the essay deals with Clemence's Vie de sainte Catherine; here MacBain treats some points not made in the introduction to his 1964 edition:]
Anglo-Norman anniversary essays / edited by Ian Short (Anglo-Norman
Text Society occasional publications series; no. 2). London:
Anglo-Norman Text Society, Birkbeck College, 1993. (xii, 420
p.)
LC#: PC2942 .A53 1993; ISBN: 0905474252
"List of manuscripts": p. 419-420. Includes bibliographical
references and index
========================================================================
Updated 03-29-08