Amenorrhea and Medieval Holy Woman: A Biological and Religious Interpretation of Menstruation in the Middle Ages

In the thirteenth-century Latin edition of Jacobus Voragine’s Legenda aurea, and in William Caxton’s fifteenth-century edition of Voragine’s narrative, exists the detailed and bloody story of Saint Margaret’s martyrdom. In the opening paragraph, Voragine proclaims that the purification and perfection of Margaret’s soul was evidenced by the sudden cessation of her flux, or menstrual cycle. This passage reflects several truths regarding medieval perceptions of female biology, the first proclaimed that women are inferior and imperfect versions of the male form and second, that through rigorous devotion to the Christian faith, which included bodily torment, a woman could purify her soul through extreme corporeal torment. In the Legenda aurea, Voragine proclaims that the sudden end of Margaret’s menstrual cycle served as proof that her physical suffering purified and perfected her flawed female sex. In this sense, amenorrhea, or the sudden end of menstruation, signaled progress and perfection, an opinion that seemed to defy medieval medical knowledge. In the compendiums of medical treatises that focus on women’s medicine in the Middle Ages, retention or the sudden cessation of menstruation is considered a disease with possible serious consequences. Amenorrhea, its causes, and treatments, are discussed at length in Trota of Salerno’s twelfth century, Trotula, a collection of treatises on women’s medicine, as well as Pseudo-Albertus Magnus’ thirteenth-century treatise, De Secretis Mulierum, and in the Middle English version of the Trotula held in the British Library, MS Sloane 2463. Medical opinion in the Middle Ages asserted that amenorrhea always indicated poor health. However, a closer and unified reading of these texts exposes two major questions: how was the disease of amenorrhea viewed as a perfected physical state within the context of women’s religious practice? And what was the function of menstruation for medieval holy women?