medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
For what little this is worth, the cross-dressing episode in the probably monastic, perhaps late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century legendary Vita of the early medieval St. Vitalian of Capua (BHL 1254) envisions a situation in which V.'s wearing women's clothing while he celebrates Matins in his cathedral (an adaptation of a similar incident in legendary Vitae of St. Jerome) only becomes apparent to others as it grows light. Which in turn means that the Vita's audience is expected -- if it thinks about this -- to imagine a chancel insufficiently lit at the outset of the service to permit observation of the nature of the celebrant's clothing.
This seems more likely to reflect dimness on the part of the Vita's author than actual darkness in the chancel at Montevergine (or wherever the Vita was written) when Matins began. Still,...
Best,
John Dillon
On Tuesday, October 20, 2009, at 6:39 am, Brenda Cook wrote:
> An entertaining gloss on the whole business of moving around it the
> dark is, of course, Chaucer's The Reeve's Tale. That is the one where
> two students (from Cambridge, too, tut tut) spend the night with a
> dishonest miller and his family and get their revenge by [swiving]
> (please substitute your preferred polite word) the miller's daughter
> and wife respectively. The mainspring of the nocturnal errors is the
> fact that student Allan shifts the baby's cradle from the foot of one
> bed to the other thus totally confusing the navigational aids in the
> darkened room. There is also a reference to a gleam of moonlight
> coming in through the shutters at a crucial moment.
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