The Woman Known as Genovefa - Essay Example

?Biographical Sketch: Genovefa, Virgin of Paris. The woman known as Genovefa, Virgin of Paris is one of the first in a long list of renowned female saints of the Christian church. She was born in Nanterre, which is a suburb just to the west of Paris, in the year 429 AD. This was a period of turmoil in European history, almost twenty years after the sack of Rome by the Visigoth warrior Alaric which heralded the fall of the mighty Roman empire. This spot had been the location of a fine Roman city called Lutetia, and there had been much mingling between the Gauls, the Romans and other tribes in the two centuries before Genovefa was born. In 212 the city was named Paris, after a local Gaulish tribe and by the early fifth century it had become a prime target for barbarian raiders who roamed over the former Roman colonies looking for spoils of war. Genovefa’s life story, the Vita Genoveva is recorded in the form of a hagiography, which preserves key features of her life, but the genre typically means that some of the details may not be entirely accurate, since such accounts are usually furnished with a heavy layer of Christian doctrine and an emphasis on the miraculous and exceptional qualities of the subject, for the edification of readers in later centuries. It seems certain, however, that Genovefa was familiar with both Roman and Gaulish cultures, and that she was born into a relatively wealthy family: “The enduring legend that she was a peasant has now been set aside, and she has been located among the Gallic upper classes.” (McNamara and Halborg, 2009, p. 19) The Vita Genovefa reports that her father was called Severus, and her mother was called Gerontia (quoted in McNamara and Halborg, 2009, p. 19), and in a pattern that many saints lives follow, she is discovered while still a child by two venerable and holy men. Bishops Germanus and Lupus were passing through the area while journeying to tackle the Pelagian heresy in Britain and they plucked Genovefa out of a crowd for special attention: “ … and, through the Holy Spirit, Saint Germanus sensed from a distance the most holy Genovefa in the midst of the rushing crowd of both sexes, men, women and children. He asked immediately that she be brought to him…” (Vita Genovefa, quoted in McNamara and Halborg, 2009, p. 20). This miraculous beginning signals the fact that Genovefa is no ordinary child, and it turns out that she is destined to keep herself chaste and be consecrated as a nun. Germanus ascertains that the young Genovefa is willing to promise herself to God, and gives the child a copper coin to wear about her next instead of fine jewels, as a reminder that she is to keep away from earthly temptations and devote herself entirely to God’s service. Miracles are reported to have occurred within the family home, for example, Genovefa’s mother is said to have been struck blind when she prevented Genovefa from attending church, and then Genovefa apparently healed her mother with holy water and the sign of the cross. At an age younger than was customary, Genovefa is duly consecrated as a nun. The story of her life recalls biblical tales such as the calling of Samuel in the old Testament, or of Saint Paul in the New Testament, and there many details are interpreted with the help of verses from the Bible. Even the order in which she appears for consecration is interpreted as an illustration of the Biblical principle of the last becoming first, and the first becoming last, since she sets out as the youngest and last to be accepted, but is brought forward and made to take her vows first, because of her special status as one chosen by God for great things. A significant part of Genovefa’s life is marked by severe physical distress. She becomes ill with paralysis. This gives her the opportunity to experience visions of the afterlife, and tests her faith in God. Physical weakness must surely have been a consequence also of Genoveva’s extreme asceticism, since “From her fifteenth to her fiftieth year, she never broke her fast from Sunday to Thursday and from Thursday to Sunday” (Vita, quoted in McNamara and Halborg, p. 24). It is reported that she wept frequently, and it is not surprising therefore, that at the age of fifty she was urged by the bishops to take better nourishment such as fish and milk. Such narratives are typical of saints’ lives, showing how the Christian faith has begun to influence the way that women’s characters are perceived. In the Roman world, women were expected to be deferential to their husbands, and to demonstrate virtues such as loyalty, chastity, and thrift, keeping an orderly household and educating their children in Roman ways. They did not take part in the public life of the city, but watched over their circumscribed domestic hearth, carrying out religious ceremonies involving their own particular gods. With the advent of Christianity the worship became more public, but the Christian community practised also a fairly rigid segregation of male and female worshippers. This new idealized Christian womanhood continues many of those quiet Roman virtues and there is also an addition of a much harsher asceticism, borrowed from the traditions of the North African monastic communities. The decision to live life that was consecrated to God brought Genovefa into contact with other women, but it seems that she preferred to spend most of her time alone in an individual cell. Details about her day to day life are sparse, and much of the archaeology is buried beneath the streets of modern day Paris, and so it is difficult to be exactly sure what her normal living arrangements were. Genovefa shows some ambivalence about the traditions both of Roman society and of Christian monastic traditions; “Civilization had rarely been a woman’s job until Genovefa took it on, but then Genovefa only occasionally observed the norms of gendered custom and space. In Paris, she lived with other vowed women in a kind of household fairly new to Gaul…” (Bitel, 2009, p. 69). This was not the cloistered nunnery of the middle ages, but a much more cosmopolitan kind of setting, where virgins, matrons and even men were free to come and go in the quarters where Genovefa and her followers lived. This was something between a monastery and a loose collection of individual ascetics. Dolan notes that “the majority of women who pursued an ascetic lifestyle in late antiquity were upper-class women who used their familial funds and reputations to establish households of independent virgins.” (Dolan, 2009, p. 17) Roman woman believed in teaching girls to become respectable future wives, and in Christian circles this was extended also to a role of service to the church. Genovefa actively sought to co-ordinate the prayers of women in the city, especially when it was under threat from barbarians, but she did not play the role of abbess of an enclosed order, supervising the lives of those under her influence. She appears to have been a much more proactive player in the political and commercial life of the city, getting involved in building and restoration works, looking after the sick, and speaking out when she detected bad faith among the people. Genovefa frequently crossed over into the territory that was normally reserved for men: “Her virtues of chastity and humility, her company with virgins both human and symbolic, and her constant weeping identified her as a woman, but she was never a saint for women or their problems exclusively.” (Bitel, 2009, pp. 69-70) Reading between the lines of the Vita Genovefa it seems that she had many followers but that she also made many enemies. When Germanius returns a second time on the same route towards his pastoral duties in Britain, he asks after her and hears some unflattering comments about her. He locates her in her private cell and points out that she has turned the ground to mud with her tears, implying that she is much too good for this ungrateful people who do not recognize her spiritual stature. One of the feats for which Genovefa is most fondly remembered is that of prayer. When the feared Attila the Hun is rumoured to be approaching the city, Genovefa gathers the older women of the city around her and organizes a period of intense prayer and fasting. Not content with directing the affairs of the women, she turns also to the men and instructs them to leave their treasures in Paris, prophesying that the cities they are thinking of using as safe places are going to be raided by the Huns, while Paris will be kept safe by the faith of its people in Christ. Once again the people rise up against her, and threaten to kill her, because they do not believe the assurances that she is giving them. By this stage Germanus is dead, and cannot step in to repair her reputation, but another patriarch turns up and holds the people back from carrying out their threats. Thus Genovefa stands in an uneasy position, at one and the same time trying to save the people from physical harm, and lecturing them on their weakness and sin. Perhaps it is the particularly acute military situation of the time, or the very evident passing of the Roman age of authority that makes Genovefa such an intriguing mixture of Old Roman and New Gaulish qualities. She does not fit easily into any of the standard categories, but stands out in a line of courageous figures that lead up later to Joan of Arc, who likewise was not afraid to face up to the warrior barons of her time. This point is communicated very clearly in a further heroic episode in Genovefa’s life, when she intervenes Genovefa’s efforts to build and conserve the religious buildings of Paris show her active in a world that was then, as now, predominately ruled by men. Her care for the old buildings around her is in fact a care for the Roman architectural foundations of the city of Paris, which is why Bitel describes her as “the last of the Roman saints of Gaul” (Bitel, 2009, p. 71) It was due to the hard work, and no doubt also political and financial maneuvering of Genovefa that the famous basilica of St. Denis in Paris was founded. The literary saint’s life couches this activity again in miraculous terms, but it is more than likely that the real Genoveva was an astute lobbyist and businesswoman, using all her skills to marshall the combined resources of church and state to improve the conditions for the faithful in her home city. Individuals come to Genoveva for protection, whether it be a young woman seeking safety from the attentions of an eager lover, or the city itself under siege from warring factions. She also healed the sick and drove out demons, and in a tale reminiscent of the gospels, she is said also to have raised a child from the dead, though the method of weeping over his body is somewhat different from the biblical version. (McNamara and Halborg, 2009, p. 30). Towards the end of her life Genovefa is said to have saved Paris yet again, by accompanying desperate sailors on a journey along the Seine in search of grain to feed the starving population. Her miracles and prayers ensure the success of the voyage, and she interceded with the king Clovis on behalf of prisoners, securing their freedom when he had been quite content to have them imprisoned and worse. In short, then, the whole of Genovefa’s life was spent looking out for the ungrateful citizens of Paris, and demonstrating to them how to live a life of absolute commitment to God through prayer and fasting. She became the patron saint of Paris, and is revered still in the Roman Catholic Church. Despite her quite remarkable obstinacy and extreme approach to her faith, Genovefa remains one of the earliest and most fascinating characters of the era that we now know as the Dark Ages. . References Bitel, Lisa M. Landscape with two saints: how Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare built Christianity in barbarian Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Dolan, Autumn N. “ ‘We have chosen a few things from among many:’ The Adaptations and Suitability of Nuns’ Rules in Merovingian Gaul.” MA dissertation, University of Missouri-Columia, 2009. Available at: https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/6468/research.pdf?sequence=3 McNamara, Jo Ann and Halborg, John E. Sainted Women of the Dark Ages. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996, pp. 17-37. Read More