Children of Adoption - People Fas Harvard

Children of Adoption
double cloisters in the seventh century, Saint Cagnoald ruled the
monks in one wing and his sister, Saint Burgundofara, ruled the nuns
in the ~ther.~' The Order of Fontevrault and the Brigittines adopted
the same organizati~n.~~ (For the mortification of the flesh, at times
monks and nuns at Fontevrault would sleep in the same bed.)45 The
only order founded in England, the Order of Saint Gilbert of Sempringham,
was a double cloister of cohabiting Brothers and sister^.^^
Saintly Sibling Love in Possible Sources of 'Measure for Measure'
Measure for Measure primarily reflects insight into a psychological
dimension of monachism rather than direct influence from the biographies
of the sibling or incestuous saints I have described (although a
good case could be made for influence by Hartman's story of Gregory).
Yet other saintly men and women whose names or biographies
critics have cited as Shakespeare's sources have similarly ambiguous
relations with blood kin.
Saint Bernard. The name Barnardine in Measure for Measure may
derive from an incidental name-Bernardine-in Erasmus's Funus,
which partly concerns the behavior of friars at a dying man's bedside.45
(Compare the Duke's ars moriendi speech, 3.1.5-41.) Erasmus's "Bernardine"
may in turn refer to the Order of Saint Bernard-the Bernardine~.~~
"Barnardine" may just as well recall Bernardine of Siena,
Bernardine Ochino, or Bernard of Vienne, however, and such echoes
probably say little about the play.47 Yet the spiritual affinity between
brothers and sisters in Measure for Measure does recall the love of Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux for his sister Humberlina, as well as his remarkable
sermons on sibling love-both typical of the Christian monachal
tradition.
After Bernard left home with his brother Andrew to enter the austere
monastery of Citeaux, the story goes, Humberlina came, richly
dressed, to visit them. Andrew greeted her, "Why so much solicitude
to embellish a body destined for worms and rottenness, while the soul,
that now animates it, is burning in everlasting flames?" Humberlina
answered, "If my brother Bernard, who is the servant of God, despises
my body, let him at least have pity on my soul. Let him come, let
him command; and whatsoever he thinks proper to enjoin I am prepared
to carry OU~."~~ Some time thereafter she entered a convent.
In Bernard's famous sermons On the Song $Songs, sisterly virginity
and the theme "my sister as my wife" (soror mea sponsa) are sexualized,
in a manner familiar from other sibling saints.49