ABSTRACT
Women's weeping forms the basis for a powerful, resistive discourse in medieval Christian and Islamic hagiographic modes. This is keenly evident in Abū ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān as-Sulamī's (d. 1021) Dhikr an-Niswa al-Mutaʿabbidāaṣ-ṣūfiyyāt (Remembrances of Women Sufi Devotees), Abū al Faraj ibn al-Jawzī's (d. 1201) Ṣifat as-Ṣafwa (The Features of the Elect), and Jacques de Vitry's (c. 1170–1240) Vita Mariæ Oigniacensis (Life of Marie d’Oignies). The communities of women in these texts mobilize their extreme weeping to substantiate their intimacy with the Divine and to form acts of a loving pedagogy—a teaching practice driven by love for the Divine and fellow devotees. In turn, the women's weeping becomes a hermeneutic site in which women can resist others’ (mis)interpretations of their practice. I am interested in what might be termed the phenomenon of “tear-language” among these women: a hermeneutic and pedagogical discourse inspired by weeping practice.
