Audio Transcript
{0:00} This is
Potentially Catastrophic, a books and
reading podcast. In
each episode of this podcast project, I’m gonna chat a little
about a book that
I’m currently reading, or have just finished reading, and about a
book that I read
two years ago.
Here’s the catch, while I know what book I’m reading now, I
won’t know what
the past book is until I find out as I’m recording. And then,
I’ll try to
relate the two. In 2016, I only read books written by women,
{0:30} mostly, and
kept track of those books by filling out little cards, that I then
sealed
up and put in a
lovely box for some, at the time unknown, future
project.
Apparently, this is the future project. I didn’t read all year
long,
and I didn’t do
cards for every book that I read. I know this because I found blank
cards
in some of my
books, and the cards are dated January through August. So, I only
tracked
eight months of
books. Because this is a short term project and I’m aiming at
releas-
{1:00} ing an episode
a day until I’ve worked through the stack, I will probably be
currently reading the
same book on more
than one episode. I read fast, but I am not
interested in
hurting myself. I hope you enjoy the adventure! And
here we go! So, uh,
for this first episode, I’m actually doing something a little
different.
because of course I
am, uh, because something happened today, this morning, last night
that was
just, aw, it was
just, [indistinct], when books collide right, with
I
picked up this book at the library that is called Woman
Under Monasticism
and
it is by a woman called Lina Eck -
Eckenstein.
It
was published in nine- in, I’m sorry, I’m going to say that
again,
because this is important. It was published in Eighteen Ninety-
Six.
The copy that the St. Louis Public Library has, um
{2:00} is
all pages laminated, so it is the original text
at
something ridiculous like 498 pages,
um,
and all of them are laminated on account of this book is over a
hundred years old. It was published
by
Cambridge University Press. Um. And.
I
picked it up because, so the subtitle is Chapters on Saint Lore and
Convent
Life Between AD 500 and AD 1500. Uh,
{2:30} I
am not a woman of faith
necessarily,
but I am fascinated by the lives of women of faith, um,
and
so I am sort of curious about the writing about them
and
it’s, it’s kind of hard to find not dispassionate non-fiction,
but
like, thoughtful unsentimental non-fiction about,
um,
the lives of religious women, eh, I had found a book
{3:00} called,
uh, oh what it is called? It’s about the Beguines by [Linda] Swan
and
it’s, it’s just a fascinating look at religious laywomen and the
the
cloistered but not convent or nunnery environments in which they
lived
beginning
in the thirteenth century and, um, she said the last woman who
identified as
a
Beguine died in 2013, so this is a really fascinating
and
compelling group of of people that don’t really get a whole lot
{3:30} of
serious attention. So, I’m I’m reading this book, and I’m maybe
you
know, forty-four pages in because it is dense, because
Northern
European non-fiction is dense, and I
find,
in here, a story that is told
about,
uh, she’s talking about the development
of
women saints, and she talks a little bit about
{4:00} oh,
let me find it because I’d found that section, I should probably
mark this stuff
beforehand,
but I didn’t, so oh well, okay, so one of the things that she talks
about
is
how people became saints. And it, it was
for
a very long time, just, real willy-nilly, um
on
page 12 “at the outset, it lay with
the
local dignitary to recognize or reject the names which the folk held
in venera-
{4:30} tion.
Religious settlements and church centres regulated days and seasons
according to
the
calendar of the chief festivals of the year as accepted by the church
at Rome; but the local
dignitary
was at liberty to add further names to the list at his discretion.
For centuries there
was
no need of canonisation to elevate an individual to the rank of
saint; the inscribing of his name on a
local
calendar was sufficient. Local calendars went on indefinitely
swelling
the
list of saintly names till the Papal See felt called upon to
interfere.
{5:00} Since
the year 1153, the right to declare a person a saint
has
lain altogether with the authorities at Rome.” Which is
fascinating.
And
what she does, what Eckenstien, Eckenstein? Eckenstein, given where
the
‘i’
is, okay, Eckenstein does is that she talks about the, the
saints
who may well have been, um, local goddess-
es
in Germany and, um, what became Switzerland and
{5:30} [Australia]
before the twelfth century, um, well, and well before Rome,
You
know, she’s talking about people who would have been venerated well
before
uh,
Rome even became Christian. And she, she’s very careful not
to
speculate, which is good, it makes this much easier to read. But
here’s
a
thing that I read. It had to do with
“...the holy slippers of St Radiane, which are
{6:00} preserved
to this day in the church of Wellenburg and which, as Stadler
informs us, had been resoled within
his
time.” [pg34-35] And, the, he’s quoted in 1858,
so,
whatever that says. [35] “Slippers and shoes are ancient symbols of
appropriation,
and,
as such, figure in folk-lore and at weddings in many countries to this
day.
The golden slipper was likewise a feature at the witches' festival in
which the youth fiddler
also
figured. Both the golden slipper and the youthful fiddler form
important
{6:30} features
in the leg- legend of the Saint ontkommer or Wilgefortis. The
images
and legend of this saint are so peculiar that they claim a detailed
account.” So
here’s
the story: there’s a young fiddler who goes to this church,
goes
to a church where there’s a crucified saint wearing gold shoes, and
there’s
theories
about why she’s covered in gold, and also wha-
why
she’s bearded, because this is a specific element of the
Ontkommer.
{7:00} is
that she is represented as crucified and that the lower part of her
face is covered
by
a beard and her body, in some instances, by long shaggy fur.
[36] "Her
legend explains the presence of the beard and fur by telling us that
it
grew
to protect the maiden from the persecutions of a lover or the
incestuous love of her father;
such
love is frequently mentioned in the legends of women pseudo-saints." So.
That
is very specific thing. We jump down a paragraph, this is from page
36.
{7:30} “In
many of her representations, Ontkommer, or Kümmerniss, is seen hanging
on
the cross with only one gold slipper on, but sometimes she wears two
slippers and
a
young man is sitting below the cross, playing the fiddle. Legend
accounts for the presence of this young man in the following manner.
He came and sat at the foot of the image and was playing on
his
fiddle, when the crucified saint suddenly awoke to life, drew off a
slipper and flung
it
at him. He took it away with him, but he was accused of having stolen
it and
{8:00} condemned
to death. His accusers, however, agreed to his request to come with
him into
the
presence of the holy image, to which he appealed. Again, the
crucified saint awoke
to
life and drew off her second slipper and flung it to the fiddler,
whose innocence
was
thereby vindicated and he was set free.” So she goes on to talk
about
you
know, where, where do we go for the clues, and, and
she
sort of, you know, digs, digs deeper and keeps going.
{8:30} Again,
as I said, she’s very careful not to speculate and it’s a
fascinating read that I will continue to read. However, the reason I
bring this up is that that is a very very
specific
image. The image of a crucified, gilded, bearded
woman
throwing or dropping one of her slippers on a
young
fiddler. If this sounds familiar, it’s probably because you read it
in
Volume
1 of Castle Waiting by Linda Medley. When Peaceful is telling
{9:00} to
Jain, the story of, hold on, I gotta find it
the
abbey at
It’s
Saint Wilgefort’s Abbey (which is where she
and
her friend, uh, Clytemnestra, who has a real
name,
who I think is Clarice, I think that’s right. Um.)
go
when they are escaping from the circus. Which is
{9:30} kind
of an incredible thing. And I like
that
connection. You know? I like that, that there’s this whole
old
story, and, and, even in the book, you know, they tell the story of
this
this
mute fiddler who comes to the abbey before it was an abbey,
um,
and he plays to this incredibly sad seeming
crucified
woman who is covered in gold and wearing two shoes and has a beard
{10:00} and
the music moves her so much that she drops a shoe on him, he is
accused,
he
performs the music again, the miracle happens again, and because of
that
the,
the woman who owned the property on which the abbey finds itself, um,
decided to turn
her
home and the grounds into, uh, essentially a convent
for,
particularly for bearded women. Um, and, and they all
uh,
you know, eventually come to her. And it’s this incredible
connection that I really
{10:30} enjoy.
One of the problems I have with this, and it’s a thing that I, I
certainly
didn’t notice the first time I read it, but the origin story for
this woman, the crucified
woman,
um, while the world of Castle Waiting is meant to be
fictional,
it is definitely connected culturally to our consensus
reality
through the fairy tales, obviously the, um, the saints, even though
most
people don’t know that saint, I mean, I certainly didn’t, I had
never
{11:00} heard
that story before, um, it comes to us from Germanic traditions that
people don’t
tend
to talk about in my world, not that that means a whole lot, but they
don’t. Um.
And
she has this woman who is the first
bearded
woman who becomes a saint, this woman who is represented in this,
this
crucified statue as coming from a land that looks pecu-
liarly
Persian, as in veils and long hair and
{11:30} dark
women and, although it’s black and white so, she hasn’t colored
their skin but
you
know, their hair is long and glossy and they sort have
you
know, beaded veils on their face, and, and it reads as, as sort of
Persian,
and it’s
it’s
not that the representation is peculiarly odious, it’s that the
legend
doesn’t need to be geographically removed.
{12:00} Um,
and also that the idea that
feminine
beauty is the same cross-culturally
is
really not consistent with what I have seen, um,
in
my readings over the last few years. So, that’s my only real
problem
with
it, like, I, I get that she’s trying to make this a global
experience and, or maybe not global
but
like, she’s trying to get people of color into the story and I
respect that in the sense of
{12:30} like,
respecting that you hafta maybe be careful that maybe not everybody
wants to read an all
white
cast of characters. Um. That said. You
don’t
need to do that, um, because the story
is
Germanically, it, it comes from Germany, it doesn’t come from
anywhere else
um,
and bearded women in Germany, I, I don’t
know,
there’s the suggestion also that they were covered entirely in fur,
so you know,
{13:00} these
are women that maybe started to look a bit like yaks, um, and,
in
order to protect themselves, I mean, it’s an old story, right,
like, women become ugly in order to
stop
being attractive to men who don’t think of them as anything but
sexual objects, um
and
the reason that that landed so hard with me this time particularly,
is that
I
quit shaving many years ago and, and one of the reasons that I keep
not shaving,
well,
one of the reasons is I have shit to do, and shaving just is a lot of
time
{13:30} it’s
a lot of resources that I’d rather not waste, um, and it doesn’t
change my
personality
if I have leg hair, or armpit hair, or not. Um, and it also works as
a
deterrent,
because I tell you what, a weak minded man sees
armpit
hair on a girl and he stops talking to you and it’s, like, freeing
in,
in an amazing way. Um, and because I live in a country where, you
know
I
still, at least, for now, have access to a job and money and
{14:00} healthcare,
and, you know, an apartment to rent, um, I am not, well also
I’m
white, and, and so I have more privileges extended to me, so I do
have the privilege of
functioning
freely in the world, um, without having to have
a
man to protect and, and uh, care for me.
And
having body hair that is visible means that, you know,
they
don’t show up, um, a-and I find
{14:30} that,
so it’s kind of like, oh, I guess that was part of the reason, you
know, um, was just to
create
another sort of visual barrier between me and idiots, um,
To
make sure that I stayed free. So I think that’s just kind of cool,
I
very doubt, highly doubt, uh, that that kind of connection will
happen
again,
um but, I thought for, you know, my pilot attempt
uh,
this would be really interesting. So thank you for listening. Again,
those books are
{15:00} Castle
Waiting, Volume 1 by Linda Medley, and Woman Under Monasticism
by
Lina Eckenstein. Um I highly recommend them both if you can find
them, if
not,
it’s stuff to look into, so. Thanks for listening. That’s all for
today.
Be
sure to tune in tomorrow to see what kinds of nonsense I get up to
then. Shop
local,
support your local library and keep your bookshelves brave. Thank you
so
much for listening. Bye now!
