Example Disability Reading Lens

• • Title: Life of Mary of Oegines (Oignies)

  • Author: James of Vitry

  • Time period: ca. 15^th century

  • Location of composition: France/England

  • Bibliography:

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. University of California Press, 1987.

Gertsman, Elina, ed. Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History. Routledge, 2012.

Horstmann, Carl. “Prosalegenden: die Legenden des MS Douce 114.” Anglia 8 (1885): 134-84.

Millard, Chris. A History of Self-Harm in Britain: A Genealogy of Cutting and Overdosing. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

In her Life, St. Mary of Oegines is described as self-harming, especially through fasts to the point of destroying her body, cutting, and suffering of excessive weeping and mood shifts. These actions all seem to indicate mental disability and illness – indeed, a layering of mental illnesses – experiences described certainly in graphic, violent terms but also balanced against their benefits.

Mary herself perceived her conditions as a positive and a spiritual benefit. She declares in her own words, “When I am sick, then am I strong and mighty” (149, l. 34). Her relationship with God is defined according to her illness: “our Lorde had proved his chosen child with this infirmity” (149, l. 35). We also read:

And when she prayed specially for anybody, as with a wonderful experience our Lord showed to her and answered her spirit. Truly, she perceived meanwhile by elation of her spirit or depression whether she were heard or not. (141, ll. 44-5; 142, ll. 1-2)

For Mary, it is through “elation of her spirit or depression” that she determines the success of her communication with God. The deliberate use of “depression” in St. Mary is perhaps a more definitive and specific indication of a shift in mental state. Interestingly enough, the Middle English Dictionary only references the Life of Mary of Oegines in the use of this word in this fashion as a “lowering of spirits, dejection.”

St. Mary is unique in the variety of mental illness indicators that she exhibits. For instance, Mary uses food to define her relationship with God: “For whether she eat or fasted, she did all to the worship of God” (140, 1l. 35-36). While she truly believes that fasting will bring her closer to God, this could be considered anorexia and/or a sign of depression. While it was common in the Middle Ages for Christians to fast before receiving communion (Bynum 113), Mary takes this further as she decides to fast after seeing an old enemy who says to her: “Look, thou glutton, thou fill thee over much” (140, 1l. 28-29). She proceeds to fast because “she had disease often time in eating” (140, 1. 29). She only eats bread and drinks water. Sometimes the bread is so dry and hard that it cuts her throat while she eats. Other times her fasting includes only consuming communion:

And certainly, our Lord rewarded her bodily delights in soul, that she had forsaken for the love of Christ, as it is written: “Man lives not on bread alone.” Meanwhile through comfort of this meat she fasted, neither eating nor drinking for eight days, sometimes eleven. (141, 1l. 3-7)

Moreover, Mary is filled with the spirit of Christ. When receiving communion and while at Mass, Mary has a sweet sensation in her mouth. However, if the host is unconsecrated, Mary vomits and cleanses her mouth. It is possible that this is another sign of her eating disorder, not wanting to consume anything and purging when doing so.

One indicator of mental illness is Mary’s excessive weeping:

But whereas she enforced her to restrain her weeping, there increased marvelously more and more tears. For when she took heed how great he was that suffered for us so much despite, her sorrow was often renewed, and her soul with new tears was refreshed by a sweet compunction. (137, ll. 39-43)

While uncontrollable weeping can be considered a sign of depression and there has been much discussion about this possibility with other medieval holy women (see Gertsman), it is here allied with words such as “marvelous,” “refreshed” (similar to the “rest” from the cutting incident that will be discussed below), and “sweet compunction.” Mary’s tears are actually contrasted with disease; she says that they “disease not the head, but feed the mind” (138, ll. 33-34]. She considers her weeping as a gift from God and asks of God that the priest who tries to stop her weeping be shown that it is not in her control.

Another potential indicator of mental illness is Mary’s penchant for cutting. In a dramatic instance of this, Mary, after walking through a town which filled her mind with sin, cuts herself: “asking for a knife from her maid, when she was outside the town, would have cut the skin from her feet” (163, ll. 21-22). After this action, she is described as having, albeit with difficulty, “rest” (163, l. 27), indicating that the act of cutting and the subsequent act of beating her feet together is a relief. It is to a certain extent an individual mimicking of Christ’s wounds (see Millard), and, if so, then Mary’s cutting is presented as a holy act of cleansing.

The Life of St. Mary of Oegines is a useful example of how disability manifests in hagiography as it incorporates so many different indicators and it is clear in its discussion of the benefits of mental disability, particularly to saints.