Siblings and the Sexes within the Medieval Religious Life 1 FIONA J. GRIFFITHS I N 1156, the German visionary Elisabeth of Scho ¨nau received a series of revelations concerning Saint Ursula, whose body, together with some of the eleven thousand virgins supposedly martyred alongside her, had allegedly been discovered in a cemetery just outside the city walls of Cologne. Elisabeth’s revelations, which were prompted by the arrival at Scho ¨nau of two bodies from Cologne (one male and one female), resulted in one of her most controversial and certainly most popular works, the Liber revelationum. Prompted to investigate the Cologne discovery by “certain men of good repute,” Elisabeth reports that she was visited first by Saint Verena and then by Saint Caesarius, cousins whose bodies had come to rest at Scho ¨nau. The two regaled her with stories of the martyrs’ journey from Britain to Cologne and confirmed for her the authenticity of their relics. Such confirmation was necessary: Elisabeth admits that she had initially been skeptical of the association with Ursula, since male as well as female bones had been discovered in the Cologne cemetery. “Like others who read the history of the British virgins,” she confesses, “I thought that that blessed society made their pilgrimage without the escort of any men.” 2 The bones of men, intermingled with those of women whose very sanctity depended on their virginity, caused Elisabeth no small discomfort. Pressing her saintly visitors on this point, Elisabeth nevertheless received assurance that although many men had indeed accompanied the women, they had done so licitly, primarily as members of the women’s families. Elisabeth’s willingness to accept that the companionship of male relatives had not compromised the purity of the virgin martyrs has important implications for the study of medieval monasticism and, above all, for our understanding of relations between the sexes within the religious life of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. During Elisabeth’s lifetime, the involvement 1 I am grateful to Stacy Klein, Jenny Knust, Conrad Leyser, Constant Mews, and Bruce Venarde for reading and commenting on this paper in various early forms. My thanks are due also to Paul Freedman and Joel Kaye for the opportunity to present my work at Yale University and Columbia University, and to seminar participants at both universities for their helpful comments. Fiona J. Griffiths is an assistant professor of history at New York University. 2 Liber revelationum Elisabeth de sacro exercitu virginum Coloniensium, 3; ed. F. W. E. Roth, Die Visionen der hl. Elisabeth und die Schriften der Aebte Ekbert und Emecho von Scho ¨nau (Bru ¨nn: Verlag der Studien aus dem Benedictiner- und Cistercienser-Orden, 1884), 124; trans. Anne L. Clark, Elisabeth of Scho ¨nau: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 215. 26 Church History 77:1 (March 2008), 26–53. # 2008, The American Society of Church History doi: 10.1017/S0009640708000048 Printed in the USA