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Wilgefortis

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Saint
Wilgefortis
Saint Wilgefortis, 18th century German painting
Saint Wilgefortis, 18th century German painting
Virgin and martyr
Venerated in Folk Catholicism
Canonized Pre-Congregation
Major shrine Sigüenza Cathedral, Spain
Feast 20 July[1]
Attributes Bearded woman; depicted crucified, often shown with a small fiddler at her feet, and with one shoe off[2]
Patronage Relief from tribulations, in particular by women who wished to be liberated from abusive husbands[3]

Wilgefortis (Portuguese: Vilgeforte) is a female folk saint whose legend arose in the 14th century,[4] and whose distinguishing feature is a large beard. According to the legend of her life, set in Portugal and Galicia, she was a teenage noblewoman who had been promised in marriage by her father to a Moorish king. To thwart the unwanted wedding, she had taken a vow of virginity, and prayed that she would be made repulsive. In answer to her prayers she sprouted a beard, which ended the engagement. In anger, Wilgefortis' father had her crucified.

Her name is thought to have derived from the Latin "virgo fortis" ("courageous virgin").[5] In England her name was Uncumber, and in Dutch Ontkommer (meaning one who removes difficulties, specifically here from people who are suffering).[6]

In German lands she was known as Kümmernis ("grief" or "anxiety"). In Poland she was called Frasobliwa ("sorrowful"), while in the Czech Lands she received the name Starosta ("sorrow" or "concern"). She was sometimes confused with a female martyr saint known as Liberata in Italy and Librada in Spain ("liberated") whose feast day is on July 10; while Saint Liberata is a crucified, beardless female usually with a crown, Wilgefortis is always depicted with a beard and generally crownless. In France, Wilgefortis is known as Débarras ("riddance"). The confusion between the martyr Saint Liberata and Wilgefortis extended to places such as Sigüenza, Spain, where Liberata was widely venerated.[7]

While venerated by some Catholics, Wilgefortis was never officially canonised by the church, but instead was a popular intercessor for people seeking relief from tribulations, in particular by women who wished to be liberated ("disencumbered") from abusive husbands.

History

Art historians have argued that the origins of artistic depictions of Wilgefortis can be found with Eastern-style representations of the crucified Christ, and in particular the Holy Face of Lucca, a large 11th-century carved wooden figure of Christ on the Cross (now replaced by a 13th-century copy), bearded like a man, but dressed in a full-length tunic that might have appeared to be like that of a woman instead of the loin cloth familiar and by the Late Middle Ages normal in depictions in the West.

The Holy Face is sometimes described as typical of early Byzantine robed crucifixes.[8] But no comparable large carved figures formed part of Byzantine art, whilst there are several surviving from Germany. Any Byzantine influence is very remote, as the face and hair are typical of German crucifixes, and many Ottonian manuscripts show robes in crucifixions. The Byzantine examples are from icons, illuminations or small relief carvings.[9]

The theory is that when the composition was copied and brought north of the Alps over the next 150 years, in small copies by pilgrims and dealers, this unfamiliar image led Northerners to create a narrative to explain the androgynous icon.[10] Some older images of the crucified Christ were repurposed as Wilgefortis, and new images clearly intended to represent the saint created, many with female clothes and breasts. Some older images of Christ on the cross are argued to have already deliberately included hints at an androgynous figure for theological reasons.[11] Single images normally showed Wilgefortis on her cross, but two prominent standing images where she carries a smaller cross as an attribute as part of a group of saints, are mentioned below. Images showing a set of scenes covering the whole legend are unusual, but a German one of 1513 is illustrated here.

Veneration

The popularity of prayer in the period of the Middle Ages has been connected to the Devotio Moderna and related devotional movements, where meditation and identification with the sufferings of Christ was encouraged by writers such as Thomas à Kempis, author of The Imitation of Christ, or encouraged by Geert Groote to focus on simplicity, obedience, and following the book The Imitation of Christ, circulating from the 1420s.[12]

St. Wilgefortis remained popular in the North of England until the end of the Gothic period; there is a carving of her in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey, standing while holding a cross, with a very long beard.[2] She also appears in a similar pose, very lightly bearded, on the outside of a triptych door by Hans Memling.[2]

Her cult was decisively suppressed during the late 16th century (after a period in the 15th and 16th centuries in which she was popular), and thereafter disappears from high art, although lingering well into the 20th century in more popular forms, especially in Bavaria and Austria,[13] but also in northern France and Belgium. In the 12th-century church of Saint-Étienne in Beauvais, there is a 16th-century wooden statue of Saint Wilgefortis on the cross. She is depicted in a full blue tunic with a substantial beard. She is venerated by the name of Santa Librada in Argentina and Panama.[14]

She is often shown with a small fiddler at her feet, and with one shoe off. This derives from a legend, also attached to the Volto Santo of Lucca, of a silver shoe with which the statue had been clothed dropping spontaneously at the feet of a poor pilgrim. In Wilgefortis's version, the poor devotee became a fiddler, perhaps in the 13th century.[15]

See also

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Wilgefortis — A fabulous female saint known also as UNCUMBER, KUMMERNIS, KOMINA, COMERA, CUMERANA, HULFE, ONTCOMMENE, ONTCOMMER, DIGNEFORTIS, EUTROPIA, REGINFLEDIS, LIVRADE, LIBERATA, etc.

The legend makes her a Christian daughter of a pagan King of Portugal. In order to keep her vow of chastity, she prayed God to disfigure her body, that she might evade the command of her father to marry a pagan prince. God caused a beard to grow on her chin, whereupon her father had her crucified. Connected with this legend is the story of a destitute fiddler to whom, when he played before her image (or before her crucified body), she gave one of her golden boots. Being condemned to death for the theft of the boot, he was granted his request to play before her a second time, and, in presence of all, she kicked off her other boot, thus establishing his innocence.

The legend is not a Christian adaptation of the Hermaphroditus of Greek mythology or of other androgynous myths of pagan antiquity, as it cannot be traced back further than the fifteenth century. It rather originated from a misinterpretation of the famous "Volto Santo" of Lucca, a representation of the crucified Saviour, clothed in a long tunic, His eyes wide open, His long hair falling over His shoulders, and His head covered with a crown. This crucifix, popularly believed to be the work of Nicodemus, is preserved in the Basilica of Lucca and highly venerated by the people. In the early Middle Ages it was common to represent Christ on the cross clothed in a long tunic, and wearing a royal crown; but since the eleventh century this practice has been discontinued. Thus it happened that copies of the "Volto Santo" of Lucca, spread by pilgrims and merchants in various parts of Europe, were no longer recognized as representations of the crucified Saviour, but came to be looked upon as pictures of a woman who had suffered martyrdom.

The name Wilgefortis is usually derived from Virgo fortis, but recently Schnürer has shown that Wilgefortis is probably a corruption of Hilge Vartz (Vartz, Fratz, face), "Holy Face". This would corroborate the opinion that the legend originated in the "Volto Santo". The old English name Uncumber, as also the German Oncommer and their equivalents in other languages, rose from the popular belief that every one who invokes the saint in the hour of death will die ohne Kummer, without anxiety. When the cult of St. Wilgefortis began to spread in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, her name found its way into various breviaries and martyrologies. Thus a breviary, printed at Paris for the Diocese of Salisbury in 1533, has a beautiful metric antiphon and prayer in her honour. Her feast is celebrated on 20 July. She is usually represented nailed to a cross: as a girl of ten or twelve years, frequently with a beard, or as throwing her golden boot to a musician playing before her, sometimes also with one foot bare.

References

  1. Back to citation "Wilgefortis". Catholic Encyclopedia.
  2. Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Back to citation occurrence 2.2 Skoda, Hannah (1 April 2023). "St Wilgefortis and Her/Their Beard: The Devotions of Unhappy Wives and Non-Binary People1". History Workshop Journal. 95: 51–74. doi:10.1093/hwj/dbad005. ISSN 1363-3554.
  3. Back to citation Stein, Sadie (21 July 2014). "Paying Tribute to Saint Wilgefortis". The Paris Review. Retrieved 4 June 2025.
  4. Back to citation Friesen (2001), p. 15.
  5. Back to citation More, Alison (2018). Fictive orders and feminine religious identities, 1200–1600. Oxford University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0198807698.
  6. Back to citation Levin, Carole (2000). "St. Frideswide and St Uncumber: Changing images of female saints in Renaissance England". In Mary Burke (ed.). Women, writing, and the reproduction of culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. pp. 223–237. ISBN 978-0-8156-2815-6.
  7. Back to citation Friesen (2001), pp. 47–48.
  8. Back to citation John Shinners (2003). "Religion, Popular: Cult of Saints", in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, Supplement 1. ISBN 0-684-80642-8
  9. Back to citation G Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, Vol. II, 1972 (English trans. from German), Lund Humphries, London, figs 327–37, 379–394, 455–75, ISBN 0-85331-324-5
  10. Back to citation James Hall, A History of Ideas and Images in Italian Art, p. 172, 1983, John Murray, London, ISBN 0-7195-3971-4
  11. Back to citation Friesen (2001), pp. 27–29.
  12. Back to citation Friesen (2001), pp. 21–32.
  13. Back to citation Friesen (2001).
  14. Back to citation Marcella Althuas-Reid. Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender, and Politics. (London. Routledge: 2000), pp.83–87
  15. Back to citation Friesen (2001), Chap. 3; Sharzer, Leonard A; Jones, David A; Alipour, Mehrdad; Pacha, Kelsey Jacob (2020). "Religious Attitudes Toward Gender-Confirming Surgery". In Schechter, Loren S. (ed.). Gender Confirmation Surgery: Principles and Techniques for an Emerging Field. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature. p. 238. ISBN 978-3-030-29093-1; Gilbert, Rosalie (2020). The Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women. Coral Gables, FL: Mango Media Inc. ISBN 978-1-64250-308-1; Arnold, Bettina (2002). ""Sein und Werten": Gender as Process in Mortuary Ritual". In Nelson, Sarah Milledge; Rosen-Ayalon, Myriam (eds.). In Pursuit of Gender: Worldwide Archaeological Approaches. Walnut Creek, CA and Oxford, UK: Rowman Altamira. p. 250. ISBN 978-0-7591-1676-4.

Bibliography

  • Friesen, Ilse E. (2001). The Female Crucifix: Images of St. Wilgefortis Since the Middle Ages. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN 0-88920-365-2.

Further reading

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