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Women religious virtuosae from the middle ages: a case pattern and analytic model of types
Sociology of Religion, Spring, 2002 by Barbara R. Walters
The types can be combined to construct a typology, one that reveals Weber's design as especially suited for the distinction between non-ascetic Lutheranism and ascetic Calvinism (cf. Schluchter 1989:128). For the former, peace with God could be found in a mystical union combined with a passivity and emotional interiority that enabled acceptance of the world. For the latter, such peace "is linked to activity, systematic self-control, and the vision of the orders of the world as a task: to transform them ..." (Schluchter 1989:128). Weber's inner-worldly ascetic is a rationalist who systematizes his own conduct and rejects everything irrational, aesthetic, or dependent upon his emotional involvement -- he is the recognized "man of a vocation" (Weber 1978:544-548).
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Weber's texts also employ the typology to distinguish the asceticism of medieval monastics from that of Calvinism. He viewed both groups as "rational" in the sense of exercising systematic self-control but classified the orientation of the former as "other- worldly," the latter "this worldly." Weber's interest in the Cluniacs in particular was based on selected features that suggested them as a close cousin to the Calvinists: "The monk lived in a methodical fashion, he scheduled his time, practiced continuous self-control, rejected all spontaneous enjoyments and personal obligations that did not serve the purposes of his vocation" (Weber 1978:1172-73).
Weber's understanding of mysticism fails to consider the transformation of consciousness in Western Europe initiated by the revival of intellectual mystical theology in the twelfth century and its development in the thirteenth. Troeltsch (1956:730-746) takes up the topic but offers little to facilitate connections between its soteriological rituals of denial and asceticism and fault lines in the ecclesiastic edifice that signal nascent Protestantism (cf. Kaelber 1998:40; Molendijk 1996:66-76). Moreover, both Troeltsch and Weber are silent on the role of women, especially women from rising strata, as carriers of the mystical theology and rituals of the Cistercian Saint Bernard. Likewise, no mention is made of their later association with the Dominican Meister Eckhart, pronounced heretical in 1327 (Colledge, Marler, and Grant 1999). The latter was present in Paris during the time of the trial and condemnation of Margaret Porette. And they do not provide for the direct, bodily and excessive mysticism characteri stic of some late medieval women (cf. McGinn 1998).
Schluchter (1989:127-146), while conceding that Weber's "mysticism" is a residual category, provides a magnificent instrument for adapting the Weberian edifice: he gracefully sculpts from Weber all of the available conceptual tools. He clarifies, for example, the distinction between states of salvation, e.g., mysticism or election, versus their means, e.g., contemplation, asceticism and ecstasy. The clarification opens possibilities for analysis of observable variation in mystical states that result "rationally" from specific routinized soteriological rituals, or more haphazardly as ephemeral moments of "infusion." The Weberian-Schluchter conceptual framework therefore adds structure to this preliminary identification and analysis of the distinctive features of "ideal types" for virtuosae within and outside recognized religious orders in the thirteenth century. However, it requires refinement and reformulation grounded in empirical analysis of exemplars or ideal types.
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