Tag: hagiography

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Confinement in Byzantine Narrative, Part II: A Woman Between Walls – St. Matrona of Perge and the Power of Chosen Enclosure

In Part I of this discussion, we saw how imprisonment in Byzantine martyr narratives could become a spiritual threshold. Confinement was not merely punishment; it could mark transformation.

But what happens when confinement is not imposed – when it is actively sought?

The Greek Life of St. Matrona of Perge, written in the mid-sixth century or later, offers a striking answer. Unlike martyrs forced into prison, Matrona repeatedly chooses enclosure. Yet she must move constantly in order to find it.

Her story unfolds across cities – Constantinople, Emesa, Jerusalem, Beirut – and is marked by flight, disguise, and pursuit. Beneath this movement, however, lies a single, persistent aim: isolation for the sake of God.

Movement Toward Enclosure

Matrona begins as a married woman who longs for a more ascetic life. In Constantinople, she takes the dramatic step of disguising herself as a eunuch and entering the male monastery of Bassianos. There she lives for three years in disciplined seclusion. The monastery becomes her first chosen confinement – a space of radical self-redefinition.

When her identity is discovered, she is compelled to leave. What follows is not freedom, but further searching. Her husband pursues her from city to city. Each escape becomes a new attempt at enclosure.

The most revealing episode occurs in Beirut.

A Deserted Temple at the Edge of the City

After a series of perilous journeys, Matrona settles in a deserted pagan temple on the edge of the city. It is an abandoned structure – neither fully urban nor truly wilderness. This marginal setting becomes the stage for her most intense confrontation with space.

Here, the narrative slows down. The rapid sequence of travels pauses, and attention shifts to the place itself.

One night, while chanting psalms, Matrona hears voices responding to her, though no one is present:

Now, it happened once, as she performed the nightly psalmody, that demons sang most fervently in response, for she heard the voices of many men singing. Taking fright and fortifying herself with the sign of the cross, she completed the psalmody, considering within herself and saying: “this place is deserted and the house unhallowed; there is no populated place in this area, nor have any passers-by approached; whence, then, come these voices?”

(trans. Featherstone and Mango 1996: 35)

The temple is empty – yet inhabited. In late antique imagination, abandoned pagan sites were not neutral ground. They were associated with demons, remnants of displaced gods. By choosing this place, Matrona does not withdraw into safety. She enters contested territory.

Soon a demon appears in the form of a woman and urges her to leave: this is no place for you; return to the city, where there is comfort, hospitality, and provision.

The temptation is subtle. The demon does not threaten; it invites. The argument is pragmatic: ascetic isolation is unnecessary, even dangerous. The city offers order and security. Why remain in desolation?

Matrona refuses.

Yet the text carefully preserves tension. The temple, including its environs, is described in two sharply contrasting ways. On the one hand, it is hostile, demonic, barren. On the other, it miraculously sustains her, “supplying her with daily nourishment, as if by tribute” (cf. trans. Featherstone and Mango 1996: 36). The very space that appears lifeless becomes productive.

Confinement in Matrona’s Life is thus presented as both threat and gift. The place resists her presence, yet it also yields to it. The demon attempts to drive her away; the environment sustains her perseverance.

The temple is not merely a backdrop. It becomes an active participant in her ascetic formation.

By remaining in the temple, she affirms that isolation is necessary for spiritual concentration. Confinement becomes a deliberate narrowing of focus. The deserted temple is thus transformed into a workshop of holiness.

What makes Matrona especially compelling is that she is not a desert solitary; she remains largely within urban settings. Even her most radical isolation occurs at the margins of a city. Her holiness is shaped not by geographical remoteness, but by deliberate withdrawal within inhabited worlds.

Movement, paradoxically, enables enclosure. Each journey strips away a former identity – wife, mother, and disguised monk. Each new space intensifies her spiritual focus.

Return, Foundation, and Spatial Memory

After years in Beirut, Matrona eventually returns to Constantinople. The narrative comes full circle. The city she once fled becomes the site of her lasting foundation: she establishes her own monastic community and dies as its revered abbess.

The woman who once concealed herself within male walls now builds her own.

A later reworking of her Life from the tenth century adds a striking spatial detail. It specifies the precise location of her convent in Constantinople: the place “had the sea on the right side, and on the other, it neighbored the monastery of Bassianos” (cf. trans. Bennasser 1984: 148).

This detail is remarkable. In the end, Matrona is situated between the two elements that shaped her identity: the monastery of Bassianos – her first place of confinement in male disguise – and the sea, the medium of her repeated journeys from one city to another. Movement and enclosure, which structured her life, are now fixed in geography.

St. Matrona of Perge, Menologion of Basil II (c. 1000), Vatican Library, Vat. gr. 1613, p. 169. The miniature from the Menologion depicts her simply as a nun. The dramatic episode of male disguise has faded from view. What remains is her identity as founder and spiritual mother. The visual tradition, like the later literary tradition, stabilizes her legacy.

Matrona’s story suggests that holiness in Byzantine narrative is not achieved through static withdrawal alone. It is forged through negotiation with space – through choosing where to remain, where to depart, and where to resist departure.

In Part I, prison was a threshold imposed by others. In Matrona’s Life, enclosure becomes intentional. She enters it again and again, not because she is forced, but because she recognizes its power.

Confinement, in her life, is not a boundary. It is a method.

And perhaps that is why her story endured: it proposes that spiritual transformation does not always require distant deserts. Sometimes it begins at the edge of the city – in a place others have abandoned – when someone decides to remain.

For Matrona, holiness is not found by fleeing walls, but by deciding which walls to inhabit – and why.

Christodoulos Papavarnavas
Visiting Assistant Research Professor
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

Papavarnavas, Christodoulos. “Confinement in Byzantine Narrative, Part I: Martyrs and the Threshold of Holiness“. Medieval Studies Research Blog. Medieval Institute: University of Notre Dame (October 15, 2025).

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Confinement in Byzantine Narrative, Part I: Martyrs and the Threshold of Holiness

One of the questions that has long fascinated me is how human beings experience the spaces around them, and how those experiences are shaped, narrated, and transformed in literature. In the Byzantine world – stretching from 330, when Constantinople became the new capital of the Roman Empire, to 1453, when it fell to the Ottomans – literature was a window into these experiences, capturing how people imagined and interpreted space.

Among the many spaces that captured Byzantine imagination, few are as revealing as the prison. The narratives of Christian martyrs – stories inspired by the early Christian persecutions (first to fourth centuries) yet mostly composed during the Byzantine era – portray imprisonment not merely as suffering, but as a spiritual turning point. These texts recount the trials of devout men and women who were interrogated, tortured, imprisoned, and executed for refusing to renounce their faith. I first became deeply interested in this topic while examining how confinement was depicted in Byzantine hagiography, a line of inquiry that culminated in my monograph Gefängnis als Schwellenraum in der byzantinischen Hagiographie (Prison as a Liminal Space in Byzantine Hagiography, De Gruyter, 2021) . In this first part of a two-part blog, I return to that subject to explore the prison as a threshold space – one that mediates between human endurance and divine transformation.

Why start with martyrs? Among all genres of Byzantine literature, martyrs’ Passions – accounts of Christian martyrdom – offer the richest and most detailed depictions of imprisonment. These accounts were not only compelling to read but also deeply instructive, showing how imprisonment shaped a martyr’s journey toward holiness. In light of our own recent global experiences of confinement, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, these medieval depictions of (in)voluntary isolation speak to us in new ways.

Prison as a Threshold

In martyr narratives, the prison is more than a location – it is a liminal space, a threshold between the human and the divine. After enduring brutal tortures, the martyr is thrown into a cell, often bloodied and near death. Conditions are harsh: hunger, thirst, vermin, filth, and extreme overcrowding challenge the body and spirit. Yet, the prison also becomes a space of transformation.

Inside these walls, martyrs pray fervently, and divine intervention is depicted in vivid ways. Christ or angels may appear to heal or strengthen them. Dreams and visions bring the imprisoned closer to God and the promise of Paradise. Simultaneously, martyrs often convert visitors and heal fellow prisoners, demonstrating that the prison is also a space of active spiritual engagement. It is here that martyrs begin to transcend their human limitations and move toward sanctity.

The Martyrdom of Eudoxios, Romylos, Zenon, and Makarios, from an illustrated Menologion (eleventh century, London, British Library, Codex Add. 11870, fol. 67r).  This miniature shows the transition from torture to imprisonment and highlights the prison as a space of spiritual transformation.

Sometimes, the narratives even hint at the possibility of escape, yet martyrs choose to remain. They understand imprisonment as a necessary step on the path to holiness, a phase through which they must pass to achieve ultimate communion with God.

Beyond Martyrs: Voluntary Confinement of Ascetics and Monks

While martyrs faced forced imprisonment, Byzantine literature also explores voluntary forms of confinement, particularly among ascetics and monastics. These individuals deliberately withdrew from society, seeking solitude in caves or cells to cultivate spiritual virtues. Here, too, the space of confinement is transformative.

The ascetic’s cell or cave is not a site of punishment, but of self-imposed discipline. The narratives show how sustained solitude shapes character, deepens devotion, and influences the progression of the story itself. By examining both involuntary and voluntary forms of confinement, we can see a continuum of experiences: whether imposed by external authorities or chosen freely, these spaces are intimately linked with personal and spiritual growth.

The Martyrdom of Lucian of Antioch, from the Menologion of Basil II (ca. 1000, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Codex Vat. gr. 1613, p. 115). The image is divided into two scenes: on the left, Lucian sits alone in his dark cell; on the right, his executioner casts his body into the sea. According to the text, Lucian dies of starvation in prison – his cell thus becomes both his place of death and of spiritual rebirth. The juxtaposition underscores the prison’s central role in shaping the martyr’s fate and ultimate sanctity.

Why These Stories Matter Today

You might wonder: why should readers care about Byzantine martyr narratives today? Part of the answer lies in their timeless human themes. Confinement – whether imposed or voluntary – forces reflection, endurance, and transformation. In our contemporary world, moments of isolation, such as quarantine or personal retreat, echo the ancient experiences depicted in these texts. By understanding how Byzantines imagined and narrated confinement, we gain insight not only into a distant past but also into our own relationship with space, suffering, and growth.

Moreover, these texts offer a rare glimpse into the Byzantine worldview. Hagiographies – texts dedicated to the lives of saints – served multiple purposes: honoring saints, promoting veneration, instructing readers in moral and ethical behavior, and even entertaining them with vivid depictions of daily life, including violence and crime. In this sense, Byzantine hagiographies were a medieval form of “television,” engaging their audience on many levels.

The richness of these texts, preserved across centuries, allows scholars and enthusiasts alike to explore a world where physical spaces and spiritual journeys are inseparably intertwined. The prison is not simply a place of punishment; it is a threshold, a transformative environment, shaping human experience and bringing one closer to the divine.

In studying how Byzantines imagined confinement, we discover not only their mindset, but something essential about ourselves: the ways in which the human spirit turns limitation into transcendence.

Christodoulos Papavarnavas
Visiting Assistant Research Professor
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

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Jacques de Vitry’s Defense of the Beguines

We want to like the prologue to Jacques de Vitry’s hagiography (c. 1216) of thirteenth-century holy woman Marie d’Oignies. It serves as a defense of the beguines: a grassroots movement of pious women inventing new ways of living a religious life alone or in community outside a formal monastic environment. But some of Jacques’ thoughts do not sit well with modern sensibilities:

It is sufficiently demonstrated that [the beguines] clung to the Lord during the destruction of the city of Liege. Those who could not flee to the churches threw themselves into the river and chose to die rather than to incur harm to their chastity. Some jumped into dung-filled sewers and preferred to be snuffed out in stink than to be despoiled of their virginity. Despite all this, the merciful Bridegroom so deigned to look after His brides that not a single one in such a great multitude was found who suffered either death to her body or harm to her chastity. [1]

Exactly what the modern reader wants to hear: it is better for a woman to kill herself than be raped. To the vita’s target audience, however, the beguines’ actions function as proof of their commitment to a religious life outside the formal claustration and celibacy vow of a convent. Their survival is evidence for God’s approval of their way of life.

The vita of Marie, moreover, is not the only time multi-continental bishop, preacher, and very prolific author Jacques talks about a literal leap of faith in service of religious order justification. In one of his Sermones Vulgares, Jacques seeks to exhort crusaders, and especially Templar knights, to spiritual greatness:

I have heard from a certain Templar that at the very beginning of the order, while they were still poor and very fervent in religion, that he himself was coming from the city of Tyre, bringing money and alms which they had received to the city of Acre. He came to a certain place, which has been called ‘Templar’s Leap,’ ever since. For the Saracens had placed an ambush for that noble knight, in a place where on one side there was a sheer cliff and on the other the deepest sea lay below, while the Saracens besieged him from in front and behind on the narrow path. As he had no where to turn, he urged his horse with the spurs, and leapt from the lofty cliff with the horse into the depths of the sea. But the horse – as it pleased the Lord – carried him unharmed to the shore. (trans. Helen Nicholson) [2]

Medaglia celebrativa di Jacques de Vitry del 1518

At first, the story appears to be a near-direct parallel to that of the Liege beguines. A Templar, facing violation of his life and mission (delivery of the money, a nice nod to the Templars’ fabled role as “the world’s first international bank”), chooses to jump from high ground into water, a plunge likely to end in his death. In this case, too, God intervenes, and the Templar’s life is preserved.

But on second glance, the Templar’s leap does not mirror the beguines’ actions so much as cast them into stark relief. In his crusade sermon, Jacques relates the knight’s mental process as he leapt off the cliff: he hoped and prayed that God would deliver him safely. The beguines, according to the bishop, hoped only that they would die.

Dyan Elliott has suggested that the story of the Liege beguines, propagated during the Albigensian Crusade against presumed Cathars in France, functions as anti-Cathar polemic. Orthodox martyrs do not die, so lay people who die in service to claimed religion are heretics, not martyrs. [3] Elliott skips over the underlying contention in her discussion of martyrdom, but it is worth drawing out in a discussion of beguines and sanctity. Jacques’ argument only works as anti-heretic polemic if the audience already stipulates the orthodoxy of the beguines. In other words, the vita prologue is a collective hagiography preaching (literally) to the choir, not an argument for an inquisitive audience. I’m more interested, though, in modern revulsion and the theological position Jacques implicitly stakes on a different topic: suicide.

Print of a Beguine in Des dodes dantz of Matthäus Brandis, Lübeck 1489.

Setting aside the views and experiences of women themselves, the rape of religious women was a theologically painful problem for medieval theologians—a problem bound up with suicide from the earliest centuries of Christian theology, thanks to the interplay with the classical tradition and the story of Lucretia. And Jacques and his hagiographical beguines were not necessarily on the right side. Augustine discusses the dilemma at some length in City of God I.16-19, arguing that the virtue of virginity is ultimately a matter of the will; the integrity of the body only reflects the sanctity of the will insofar as the person has control over it. [4] “We maintain that when a woman is violated while her soul admits no consent to the iniquity, but remains inviolably chaste, the sin is not hers, but his who violates her.” (I.19) He continues on to drive home his point that suicide is a mortal sin, period:

Therefore a woman who has been violated by the sin of another, and without any consent of her own, has no cause to put herself to death; much less has she cause to commit suicide in order to avoid such violation, for in that case she commits certain homicide to prevent a crime which is uncertain as yet, and not her own. (I.18)

The apparent universal survival of the Liege beguines, furthermore, is no magic arrow for Jacques to avoid the problem of actions with a desired outcome of suicide. Medieval doctrine–in point of fact, even Augustine in that same section of City of God–was clear that intention was a crucial factor in determining a sin.

This is where the comparison with the Crusade sermon becomes so revealing. The knight explicitly hopes to survive, even if he knows it is mathematically unlikely. Jacques could have given his hagiographical beguines this way out, but he did not. “Two of the enemy came to her in a boat and intended to commit vile fornication with her. But what can happen to the chaste among lions, to a lamb among wolves, to a dove among eagles? She preferred to sink again into the river than to be violated.” [5] The Liege beguines’ intention is death, or more flatly: their intention is to kill themselves. Despite this fairly flat contradiction of Church doctrine, Jacques intended this scene as an argument for the legitimacy of the beguines’ lifestyle.

The premium that Christianity places on martyrdom has long carried the uncomfortable flip side of where to draw the line between accepting one’s death and making one’s death happen. The rhetorical strategies of Jacques de Vitry in his vita of Marie d’Oignies and his Crusade sermons add an additional gendered dimension onto the dilemma. And in light of Jacques’ goal to promote the beguine movement, a comparison of the two texts suggests that when it came to arguing for orthodoxy, might heterodoxy be the best policy?

Cait Stevenson, PhD.
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

—

[1] Jacques de Vitry, The Life of Marie d’Oignies, trans. Margot L. King (Peregrina, 1987), 19.

[2] H.J. Nicholson, trans., “Jacques de Vitry: Sermons to a Military Order,” De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History, April 12, 2014.

[3] Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton University Press, 2004), 65.

[4] Augustine, City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (T&T Clark, 1913), digitized here.

[5] Life of Marie d’Oignies, 19.