Embodying Hope - Naama Cohen-Hanegbi

Bonaventure, The Life and Miracles of Saint Francis of Assisi, Paris, BNF, MS NAF 28640, fol. 133v.

Paris, BNF, MS Allemand 133, fol. 216v.

Thomas Celano’s collection of St. Francis of Assisi’s miracles (written in the 1250’s), and the later Legenda maior by Bonaventura include a miracle account of a noble woman from Carvio named Iuliana. Iuliana, we learn, suffered many years of infelicity because all her newborns died soon after birth. When she was again pregnant and extremely anxious for the life of her fetus, she dreamed a woman offered her a boy sent by St. Francis. The dream reassured Iuliana and filled her with joy. She doubled her votive to the saint and gave birth to a healthy son.[1]

The storyline of the miracle is simple: a grieving mother yearning for a son and being rewarded for her devotion. It recalls well-known biblical stories of barren and childless women. Yet the author of this narrative devoted particular attention to Iuliana’s feelings, attributing a significant role to her sorrow and anxiety. She is said to have been mourning (trahebat lugubres) to have cried incessantly (plorabat continue), to harbor sorrow rather than happiness through her pregnancies (plus moerori quam gaudio indulgebat) due to the fear of a sad aftermath (timens ne falsa de ortu Laetitia sequenti frustaretur moestitia de occasu). The dream account emphasizes emotions as well: the woman in the dream was most joyful (laetissime), but Iuliana was at first reluctant, despaired, asking why she should want a child that would immediately die (quare puerum istum volo, quem statim ut caeteros mori scio?). We are further told that Iuliana had this dream encounter three times, and with each she became increasingly happy (Exhilaratur uterque gaudio magno).

The detailed description of Iuliana’s feelings is an inseparable element in the drama of this miracle. St. Francis provided Iuliana with a son, but he also transformed her state of mind. The miracle draws on an embedded correlation between Iuliana’s ability to foster positive emotions and the eventual healthy outcome of her pregnancy. Learned and popular ideas circulating in the thirteenth century contributed to the contemporary consensus that women’s reproductive organs (particularly the womb) and the perinatal time were highly sensitive to heightened emotional states. Every medical textbook advised pregnant women to guard against sudden fear, anger, or grief. Such feelings would alter the body’s complexion and, consequently, harm the womb and its fruit.  Midwives and other women who tended births cared for parturients’ mental state to ensure a safe birth. In a way, the woman in the vision took on the role of a midwife, soothing Iuliana, and helping her to deliver her newborn son.

Iuliana’s alteration does not happen overnight. Three times she received her vision before she stopped resisting the woman’s words of prophecy. Yet as she became convinced that the message was true, and her hopes grew, her physical ability to carry the birth through and give the fetus life grew as well. It was her doubled votive to the saint that rewarded her with a son, but it was her decision to believe, to act upon hope rather than mourning and despair, that led her to the road of bodily recovery.

We can read this miracle as a popularized meditation on the power of hope and belief in healing. Iuliana needed the assistance of St. Francis; without him, she might have been condemned to giving birth once more to a dead son. But without hope and faith in the possibility of change, she would not have offered the votive to the saint. In this sense, the votive became a material embodiment of Iuliana’s hope. It is a sign of her expectation to be cured. Much like the act of paying for a doctor’s services.

The votive offering highlights the delicate balance that is struck throughout the miracle between internal and external forces. Reinforced by the (supposedly) external promise of the saint and his mediator, Iuliana could strengthen her belief and hopefulness, and then act to facilitate her healing.

This external-internal force would operate on the audience of the miracle as well. It is a comforting narrative. We might imagine how women who underwent miscarriage or a still birth could find solace in it, perhaps also hope and renewed expectations, as well. Indeed, between the 13^th and 15^th centuries this story circulated widely in Latin, in compilations of St. Francis’s miracles. It was also translated to numerous vernaculars, including French, Italian and German. Miracles were used as edifying in sermons, and it is possible that the story would have been used by preachers in their sermons. Its grouping, within the work, alongside other childbirth miracles accomplished by St. Francis, would make it particularly easy to find and use in relevant contexts. Perhaps, for its audience, the narrative itself is a remedy of sort.

Footnotes:

[1] Analecta franciscana sive chronica aliaque varia documenta ad historiam fratrum minorum spectantia edita a patribus collegii S. Bonaventurae adiuvantibus aliis eruditis viris. Volume 10: 3 (Roma: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1951), pp. 305-306.