Visions of Kinship in Medieval Europe by Hummer Hans;

Author:Hummer, Hans; [Hummer, Hans]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA - OSO
Published: 2018-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

FAMILIA CHRISTI

By contrast with male saints, whose pious natal families determined their later holiness and then receded from view as they entered public life, the sanctified natal and conjugal families more comprehensively structured the lives and careers of two female saints, Geretrude and Sadalberga. The author of the Life of Geretrude did not bother with the stereotypical introduction of birthplace and parentage, because the tale was inseparable from the activities of her birth family. The prologue announced that it would take too long to rehearse “the genealogy of [her] earthly origin,” for “who living in Europe does not know the loftiness, names, and places of her progeny?” More important was that Geretrude had become “a mother of the familia of Christ … who lived regularly according to God and discipline under the axis of Heaven.”134 Be that as it may, we are not long kept in suspense about Geretrude’s natal family, because we are introduced in short order to the mother who raised her, Itta “of blessed memory,” and her father Pippin. The two at this point are the genetrix and the genitor, the procreative parents of the “holy maiden of God,” who from the start had chosen “the service of Christ.”135 In this instance, the author contrasted not so much the mundane with the eternal, but rather drew attention to the intersection of the divine with the world, to the cosmic drama that implicated Geretrude and her natal family.

The occasion for Itta and Pippin’s appearance was an opening act of teen rebellion when Dagobert sought to arrange a marriage for Geretrude. The author did not invoke Pippin’s exalted title as mayor of the palace, but few readers or listeners would have been confused about the status of a figure who, according to the story, had invited the king to dinner. The meal soured when the son of an Austrasian duke arrived to ask that Geretrude be “promised in matrimony [to him] according to the custom of the world for the purposes of worldly ambition and mutual alliance (amicitia).” Dagobert persuaded the “father of the girl,” now a pater—the head of a family—to summon Geretrude along with her mater. Geretrude became enraged when she learned of the plans and rejected the arrangement, declaring to the astonishment of the assembled king and nobles that she “wanted to have as a spouse neither that man nor any other earthly man, except the lord Christ.” In the sixth century, an episode like that surely would have ended in the rejection and abandonment of the natal family for a nunnery, but here her parents were depicted as supportive of her wishes: “the holy maiden turned back to her genetrix, and from that day her parents knew by what sort of King she was loved.”136

Geretrude eventually entered a monastery, although her flight from the world meant not a rejection of parents and siblings, but her natal family’s commitment to monastic foundation. After Pippin died, Itta became the materfamilias. Bishop Amandus, a notable figure in the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.