I'm currently working on a project on childhood in medieval saints' lives. Initially, I was drawn to this project because of a fascination with society as conceptualized and defined through the family unit. That is, sometimes I think about society as being composed of the building blocks of the family unit. I don't think that this is the only or solely correct way to think about society, but it can be a useful theoretical perspective. This concept is somewhat redolent of the Durkheimian/Girardian view that society is built and sustained through the process of differentiation from others. In my particular formulation, families act as microcosms of this concept, separating themselves from the rest of society through their own continued processes of distinction and integration. Married people, then, have to take account of both family units, acting as a bridge between the differentiated and the integrated. I suppose that's why some people (not me, I promise) don't like their in-laws.
This has relevance to the saints' lives I study because of the constant tension between their family units and the dueling concept of the eternal familial society of the church. The married saints Elizabeth of Hungary, Dorothy of Montau, Margery Kempe (I tend to treat her like a saint), and Frances of Rome come to mind. Though I do not advocate completely importing modern concepts of the family to the medieval period, I would argue that the prevalence of familial terms to describe God, Jesus, and Mary serves as evidence that the members of the church are viewed as a family. Biblical formulations, such as 'children of light' (Eph. 5:8), and 'son of man' (particularly as direct address in Ezekiel) support this reading. The monastic vows belonging to a religious order, particularly those in the first and second orders, in effect serve as a declamation and denouncement of the structures of the family for the new monastic, church family, whose hierarchy mirrors familial structures. A familial conception explains the liminality of those in the tertiary orders, who fully belong to neither group are required to constantly negotiate between the two.
Indeed, one of the features of the third orders in the Middle Ages was the presence of married or widowed individuals. Though every married individual would have to undertake the arduous work of negotiating between competing familial boundaries and intersections, I would argue that this is especially problematic for married saints because of the increased pressure to belong to the church family. An especially striking example comes from Elizabeth of Hungary's life, as she was required to renounce her children as proof of her ardent devotion to the church. Such an act is similar to other totalizing initiation rituals such as baptism, thought of as taking on a new being and dying to the old life of sin. Acts such as these serve as membership rites, ways of marking the individual as distinct from the rest of society and securing a place in a different order.
While I do not pretend to have definitive knowledge of medieval conceptions of the family or that this concept can be read back over the centuries, I do think that a theoretical framework like this can account for some of the startling acts of societal separation performed by saints. Dramatic acts of renunciation are required because of the strength of the bond among family members and among members of the church family. The stronger the tie, the greater force required to sever it. Framing the saints' acts of renunciation (including leaving the family) in terms of this conflict model allows for a new way of thinking about the structures of saints, the family, and society.
