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Winner of the Haskins Medal
From its bold and provocative title through its dazzling
array of diverse texts, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry,
and Belief in the Middle Ages, published by the University
of Pennsylvania Press in 2003, is a work that commands attention
and respect. The author, Barbara Newman, has been praised
for her erudition and range, the sensitivity of her readings,
and the eloquence of her writing, even by those who are
uncomfortable with her title. For the rest of us, the book
makes a strong and persuasive argument for the divine nature
of her chosen group of female figures.
In works of natural philosophy, mystical piety, visionary
literature, and secular poetry, Newman finds a similar "imaginative
theology," which, she argues, is able to conceive of figures
like Nature, Love, and Wisdom, as well as the Virgin Mary,
as feminine aspects of the divine, enhancing and extending
the monotheistic male of prosaic theology. Instead of simply
accepting the allegorical or rhetorical nature of the major
female figures we are usually content to think of as personifications,
Newman investigates and invites us to feel the emotional
force of their femaleness within a religious context. She
sees them as creations of the Christian imagination who
"transformed and deepened Christendom's concept of God."
Not all the figures are a permanent religious presence,
but they are all expressions of a religious need to identify
the feminine within the Godhead. They are not female because
of grammatical constraints, Newman argues, but because of
the natural condition of two sexes; nous is a masculine
noun, but Bernard Silvester made his creating Noys a female
figure. The same need that replaces pagan gods with saints,
male and female, produces the allegorical goddesses and
transforms Mary into a part of the Trinity, a fourth dimension
perhaps, as the goddesses are a fourth dimension of the
spiritual universe.
Wisdom is, of course, a divine figure in the Bible, present
at creation, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High
(Ecclesiasticus 24.3), frequently identified with Christ;
there are the four daughters of God in Psalm 84, perhaps
related to Christine de Pizan's three deesses de gloire
(Reason, Right, Justice), but medieval writers also created
goddesses without a biblical source: Bernard makes his creating
forces of the universe, Noys and Natura, divine women; the
Beatrice who moves Dante's love from secular to spiritual
is called "diva" (Paradiso 4.118); and Mechthild of Magdeburg
calls Mary a "gotinne" (her son is God and she a goddess).
Building on her important studies of visionary theology,
particularly of Hildegard of Bingen, Newman includes Hadewijch,
Henry Suso, Julian of Norwich, as well as Mechthild, and
she adds Latin and vernacular poets, Bernard Silvester,
Alanus de Insulis, Jean de Meun, Chaucer, Dante, and the
troubadours. The list is long and rich, though Newman apologizes
for the many writers she has had to omit or skim over. There
are other goddess figures whom she discusses in the first
chapter, suggesting that the evidence for her argument is
far from exhausted in the study. The same is no doubt true
of the stunning examples from art, manuscript illumination,
painting, mosaic, statuary.
We are pleased to honor this work, the culmination of
a rich scholarly output, with much we hope still to come,
with the Haskins Medal.
Respectfully submitted,
JOHN J. CONTRENI
PAUL FREEDMAN
JOAN M. FERRANTE, Chair
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