Colette of Corbie

Learning and Holiness

Elisabeth Lopez, Joanna Waller

• Publisher: Franciscan Institute Publications
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781576592199
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Storia del cristianesimo

For the first time, Elizabeth Lopez's 1994 masterwork on Colette of Corbie is available in a superb English translation. This important work fills a gap in the history of Franciscan women during the late Medieval period and specifically of the Poor Clares, whose diversity, spiritual creativity and influence have been emphasized by recent European scholarship.

PART ONE

SAINT COLETTE ACCORDING TO THE FIRST BIOGRAPHIES AND THE FIRST WITNESSES

CHAPTER 1

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

This study will begin with an examination of the two Vitae of Saint Colette because they are the most authoritative documents available. Of these, one was written by a Colettine Franciscan, Pierre de Vaux, around 1447, and the other by a Colettine Poor Clare, Sister Perrine, around 1477. Both authors were contemporaries of Colette and witnesses of her life.

The hagiographical genre of literature, highly developed at this period of the Middle Ages, followed very different rules from those of history. A hagiography is not written to tell a life story in chronological order of its events described in their objective order of importance. It rather seeks to describe the sanctity of persons, the intangible yet undeniable “aura” that shines through their actions and gestures and is revealed as much in the details of daily life as in the major points of their existence. Sanctity is a phenomenon that is both divine and human and is therefore difficult, even impossible, to describe in words. To use a comment by Michel de Certeau, sanctity is “an intuition of the absolute in a singular mode.”¹ It is ineffable by its very nature.

The writer of hagiography is not interested in persons and events as a whole. Rather, the hagiographer arranges material according to a particular purpose: to describe the work of God in the life of a subject.

Criteria for sanctity have changed over the centuries, as have the ways in which the Church describes them. The influence of culture on writers of hagiography and on the audiences addressed cannot be ignored in the attempt to cause the saint to shine out as a model. In this respect, hagiography is a valuable measure of changing attitudes.

In his account of holiness in the West,² André Vauchez describes the gradual change in hagiography, especially in investiga tions for the purposes of the canonization process. It had developed from a catalogue of miracles (or at least of extraordinary demonstrations of the power of the saint) to a commendation of the saint’s virtues.

By the time Pierre de Vaux wrote his Life of Colette, this change was complete: holiness had become a “purely spiritual concept, unconnected to temporal realities and the values of the surrounding society.” This ever sharper distinction between the profane and the holy is also part of the history of attitudes.³

In addition to its method, then, hagiography has its own criterion: moral truth. Hence, facts may be arranged or even invented to make the spiritual reality clearer. The formulae, the images and the scenes are means to express one particular virtue: holiness. Historians in later centuries accuse hagiographers of lying. But they are simply using the tools available to express sanctity, the only virtue in which they are interested.

Hagiographical language therefore has to be decoded, stripped of its literary coating as far as possible to extract the kernel of a saint’s real life. In doing this, we will, however, also release a great deal of information about the authors’ thoughts, particularly about their representation of sanctity and their concepts of the human being and of life. A Vita does not give us the face of the saint as a series of flash photographs, nor even witness statements about the person’s life; it is more of an illustrative analysis.

Identifying an author’s contribution and literary construct of the facts, comparing these with other sources (written by the saint or from other documents), and considering the various descriptions given of the same saint, provide us with analytical guidelines. We can use these to make our own contribution to the study of the representation of holiness, a factor in the development of attitudes and religious feelings.

THE AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS

The Authors

Pierre de Vaux is normally known as Pierre de Rains. We know little about him. It is not even certain that he came from Rheims. The only certain fact is that he was a follower of Saint Colette; but we cannot be sure when he made her acquaintance.

He was a spiritual son of the saint, her confessor and confidant. He was with her until she died. As an active and competent disciple, he was entrusted with making a journey to Rome on business relating to the reform,⁴ of which he was a staunch proponent, as witnessed by his letter to the people of Amiens supporting a foundation in the city. As a Colettine devoted to the reformer, a convinced admirer of her holiness, he revered her as a son does his mother.

Pierre de Vaux is representative of more than just himself. He speaks for a whole group of followers, enthused by the memory of Colette. Pierre de Vaux was the “pillar and support” of all Colette’s daughters, responsible for sustaining their fervor and unity. He is the spiritual heir to Saint Colette’s reform at a time when her originality and particular character could easily have been absorbed by the main trend of the Observance.

The life of Saint Colette by Pierre de Vaux is more than just the witness of a follower. It demonstrates her sanctity, which urgently needed official recognition so that it could glorify the reform movement as a whole. Strangely, Pierre de Vaux says nothing of this need in his Vita. In the fifteenth century, sanctity was demonstrated through virtues, not actions.

Pierre de Vaux wrote immediately after the death of Colette at the request of the “Reverend Father Minister” (no doubt the general minister), clearly for the informative process. One could only hope that canonization would follow fairly quickly, as it had done for Saint Clare (1255) or for Saint Bernardino of Siena (1450). The Vita was therefore an official work produced for the Order with the intention of determining the elements of Colette’s sanctity and arranged by a literate cleric who knew the criteria of the period.

Perrine is better known. She is the daughter of Alard de la Roche et de Baume, brother of Henry de Baume. Her father welcomed Colette to his château after the meeting at Nice in 1406. This château thus became the first haven and the cradle of the reform. Perrine was born in 1408 during or just after Colette’s visit. Entering a reformed Poor Clare convent at a very young age, she followed in the footsteps of her sister Mahaut, who joined Colette in 1408.

Perrine lived for nearly thirty years with Saint Colette in seven different convents.⁵ She is, therefore, a direct witness of Colette’s life, someone who also listened to Colette’s account of her memories. Perrine herself wrote, or rather dictated, her own memoirs to Father François des Maretz, the confessor of the Poor Clares at Hesdin, more than twenty years after Pierre de Vaux, probably in 1471. By then the Vita of Pierre de Vaux was already well known and existed in numerous copies.

Her account is obviously reliant on his. No doubt she was too shy to produce an original work. It was entirely natural in the context of the times that Perrine should take refuge behind the authority of the priest, P. de Vaux. It does not appear that she was a prominent figure. Except for a period as novice mistress, she does not seem to have taken significant responsibility in the communities where she lived. She confirms what P. de Vaux says and never explicitly contradicts him. Her silences, however, can also be eloquent.

The Vitae of P. de Vaux and Perrine are extremely valuable. Supplemented by the writings of the saint herself and by other contemporary documents, they help us understand a spiritual current that still persists within the great Franciscan family. As the earliest and most complete sources, their influence on the picture of the reformer’s holiness is most enduring.

The Structure of the Works

Pierre de Vaux calls his writing a “short extract” or “reconstruction” (§3), professing the “littleness” of his understanding and of his memory in rendering an account of the “greatness” of Saint Colette’s life. He describes the content of the twenty chapters forming the work. We have grouped these according to their chronology and the topics covered.

1)	–Childhood or the birth of a mission.
2),3),4)	–The virtue of humility, the virtue of obedience to which belongs observance of God’s commandments and of feasts days. The start of the religious life considered from the point of view of the virtues.
5),6),7)	–The great vision of the state of the country, the Church and the order that results in departure from the hermitage. The meeting at Nice and the beginning of the reform.
8), 9)	–Virtues of poverty and chastity.
10),11),12)	–Prayer; devotion to the Passion and the Eucharist.
13),14)	–Colette, austere towards herself and humane towards others; her sufferings.
15),16),17),18)	–Her gift of prophecy; persecutions, special graces, patience.
19)	–Her death.
20)	–Miracles accomplished in her lifetime.

Perrine’s text, a witness statement and less elaborate account, is basically in the form of a sequence of sections describing memories. In fact she follows the same plan as that of Pierre de Vaux, without bothering to reproduce chapters and titles. It is interesting to compare the two texts, not so much for their similarities as for their differences, the importance and value of which should be appreciated.

At first sight, the texts follow a chronological sequence, beginning with infancy and ending with death. A section is added on miracles, common in hagiography, and more specifically in the Vitae of Francis and Clare.⁶ However, Saint Bonaventure, in the Legenda minor, states the need for seven testimonies; and Celano,⁷ in the Vita of Saint Clare, states unambiguously that the life is more important than miracles, which simply condescend to popular need.⁸ He follows this with directives from the papacy.⁹ There is no trace, in Pierre de Vaux, of any such reservations or clarifications.

The relative importance given to the subject’s childhood is a common feature of Vitae in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.¹⁰ And from the point in the narrative at which Colette leaves her hermitage, biography in the modern sense is of little interest to either of her hagiographers. Pierre de Vaux’s table of contents shows this. It consists of a list of virtues. He focuses more on Colette’s canonization than on a study of her life and work.

It is only incidentally, then, that these authors provide biographical information. Since the sections on her infancy and youth are fairly brief and are the only parts that generally follow a chronological sequence, we will pay special attention to them. This will allow us to define more closely the function of the narrative in these two authors.

REVIEW OF TEXTS ON CHILDHOOD

Summary table

PIERRE DE VAUX	PERRINE
Chapter I: How she came to know God, and the graces he gave to her father and mother.	§1: According to Colette herself, her knowledge of God emerged at the age of four. She avoided children’s games, had an oratory at home, and loved solitude. Perrine observed this later.
§4: Knowledge of God. There are two references in the passage: St. Augustine (quotation) and Saint John the Baptist. Its fruit: solitude in an oratory at home. §5: Allusion to Colette’s love of the cloister, rooted in her early experience of solitude and withdrawal in the parental home. She avoided children’s games.	§2: By the testimony of Colette and brother Henri to Perrine, she hid under the bed to avoid invitations to go out with her friends. According to brother Henri, Pierre de Rains ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One – Saint Colette According to The First Biographies and The First Witnesses
• Part Two – Colette’s Writings and Contemporary Works
• Part Three – Colette and Her Times: What Became of The Reform?
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index of Names
• Index of Places