Elizabeth of Spalbeek's Body: Performatio Christi

The vita of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, a thirteenth century mystic and beguine from the Liege diocese in the Low Countries, was written by Philip of Clairvaux, who was then abbot at the Cistercian house. The Middle English vita exists in only one manuscript: Bodleian Library, Douce 114, a fifteenth-century manuscript in Middle English. The manuscript also contains the vitae of two other Low Country beguines, Christina Mirabilis and Marie d'Oignies. Of all the women whose vitae are represented in this manuscript, Elizabeth's was the most popular in England. In addition, of the ten known surviving manuscripts that contain her life, half of these were found in the British Isles.Elizabeth's vita was written by Philip in 1267, as a report on the veracity of her miracles and her stigmata. This was an important mission for Philip, and a necessary investigation since Elizabeth is the first known documented case of the stigmata after St. Francis. This was an entirely new phenomenon, very suspect in the eyes of the Church, and this woman was claiming to have the gift that had been given to Francis. Philip was visiting the nearby Cistercian monastery at Herkenrode when he heard of Elizabeth, then twenty years old, and he went to Liege to verify these reports.Elizabeth's main devotion took the form of reenacting Christ's Passion on a daily basis. As Philip describes it, Elizabeth lived in a cell attached to a chapel in the center of Spalbeek, and acted out the various characters and parts of the Passion for an audience of her family and local priests. In addition, it appears that she received the stigmata on Fridays. Little is known of Elizabeth outside of the vita. It is suspected that she finished her life at the Cistercian convent in Herkenrode, but there is no conclusive proof of this. Other than her vita, there are some court records that show she testified in a court case in Liege, and there is a series of wall paintings, dating from over a century after her life, in Spalbeek's chapel of Our Lady, representing her local support as a saint.Elizabeth's vita is unusually structured according to the hours of the liturgical office, a division of the day used by the Church: matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline. Indeed, Philip has structured the vita as if he were following Elizabeth closely through a single day, even though the book itself is the product of his observation over several weeks. Moreover, Elizabeth's liturgical arrangement of her day has a specific connection to the Passion of Jesus, a connection of which Elizabeth would have been fully aware through the contemporary Books of Hours. Each hour represents a moment in Christ's passion, matins associated with the agony in the garden, for example, or terce with the flagellation.For each section, Philip describes in scrupulous detail what he sees Elizabeth doing. She acts out Christ's Passion, from beginning to end, and takes on the personae of Christ and his tormentors. These multiple roles are what Philip finds unique, but they also lead to a self-inflicted violence as Elizabeth performs the bitter treatment of Jesus before and during the Crucifixion.Elizabeth's PainPhilip writes his vita of Elizabeth of Spalbeek as if it is an official hagiographical document, carefully naming witnesses (including himself) and often insisting that his claims are true and his sources are reliable. He views himself as an observer of Elizabeth and sees his job almost as a journalist reporting the facts. The facts, however, are violent. Elizabeth's enactment of the Passion is imitatio Christi in the extreme. Elizabeth plays all the roles in the Passion -- the tormentors and the tormented -- and, as a result, the extreme physical violence that follows is self-inflicted:Sehe makith a bigynnynge of oure Lordys Passyone, how [he] was taken and with a feerful cruelte drawen. Than it is to se, how sche takith her owne clothes byfore her breste with her right hande and drawith hirselfe to the righte syde, and thanne with her lefte hande to the lefte syde. …