MORISSON, Susanne Signe Excrement in the Late Middle Ages. Sacred Filth and Chaucers Fecopoetics

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.While it may be difficult to imag-ine pleasure in ingesting pus, we can imagine the pleasure in conquer-ing bodily weakness.Saints ingesting bodily filth illustrate their sanctity.Rather than showing the triumphant nature of the filthy body itself, suchacts demonstrate the triumph of their weak bodies over a natural aversionto filth.To feel aversion to filth is, in other words, natural; to combatthat aversion illustrates one s supernatural and inner strength.13 Angela daFoligno, like the other women mystics, ingests bodily filth.Indeed, shesees herself as bodily filth.But her consumption of filth, in this case thescab and bloody wash water of a leper, differs from similar acts of otherwomen mystics.By identifying the leper with Christ himself, she trans-forms her consumption into a Eucharistic meal.14 Christ s embodimentallows Angela to seemingly transgress certain taboos in her devotionto him.The scab stands in for the Host and unites her with Christ.The sacred and prof ane, holy and f ilthy, likewise interpenetrate inmiracle collection stories with ample mention of bodily effluvia, such asblood, gore, spit, froth, pus, vomit, and feces.Sometimes the reliquaryis bef ouled as f luids gush f orth, allowing the healing of the suf f erer.These filthy fluids are normally not permitted in the sacred space ofa church; their historical or literary presence would have shocked amedieval recipient, as well as one today.15 Unclean or polluted patients76 EXCREMENT IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGESneed to gain ritual purity to be reintegrated into the social commu-nity.For example, in Osbern Bokenham s Book of Holy Women, SaintLucy s mother has dysentery; mother and daughter make a pilgrimage toSt.Agatha s shrine to heal her illness.As Sheila Delany has pointed out,Bokenham has expanded to more than thirty lines what was less than aline in the sources, reducing the body to a foul bag open at either end,site of disease, emitter of black or red evil-smelling fluids. 16 After listen-ing to the gospel story about the woman with flux who touched Christ srobe and was cured, Eutyce and her daughter pray.Lucy has a vision ofSt.Agatha informing her that her mother is healed due to Lucy s faithand goodness.The future pure and incorrupt martyr cures her corruptmother even before she herself is made into a relic.The mother s filthsignals Lucy s purity; she, in turn, heals the leaky sewage of her ailingparent.The profane bodily effluvia [become] the index of the sacred. 17The very filth marking degradation can be transformed into a sign ofsanctity.In the hagiography of Christina of Markyate, one of her greatesttrials is that she cannot excrete in her enclosed space.Christina hides in atiny closet in the pious Roger s cell:Through long fasting, her bowels became contracted and dried up.Butwhat was more unbearable than all this was that she could not go out untilthe evening to satisfy the demands of nature.Even when she was in direneed, she could not open the door for herself, and Roger usually did notcome till late.18Christine s trial with excrement (lack of opportunity to defecate) is madea glorious indication of her virtue and sanctity.The rule of the Syonsisters, those women devoted to St.Bridget whom Margery Kempeherself identifies with, mentions how cleaning up charges voided mattershould be undertaken with patience: .not squaymes to wasch them andwype them, or auoyde hem, not angry nor hasty or vnpacient, thof onehaue the vomet, another the fluxe, another the frensy. 19 Withholdingexcrement (as with Christina of Markyate) and cleaning excrement (asthe Syon sisters are expected to do or when Margery s husband becomeincontinent) amend the fecal matter into a sacred commodity.20As Catherine Bell explains, taboo is inseparable from ritual; indeed, taboo necessitates the ritual, 21 helping construct social order.22 ForGeorges Bataille, religious taboos are fundamentally based on one fact:we humans wish to negate our animal nature.23 The sacred is nature transfigured.In a basic sense, what is sacred is precisely what isprohibited [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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