In Gregory IX's decretals we find the well-known dictum dubius in fide infidelis est.Footnote ¹ Interestingly, in a contemporary gloss by the Dominican Guillaume de Rennes (c.1240/5) in the Summa de Poenitentia of Raymundus de Peñafort (d. 1275), that same dictum was nuanced.Footnote ² Guillaume argued that if a person's faith is tempted by the ‘spirit of blasphemy’ with sorrow and anxiety, and that person eventually succumbs to the growing temptation despite fighting against it, then such doubt is not to be considered a sin.Footnote ³ According to the Dominican preacher Thomas de Cantimpré (d. 1272), Ugolino dei Conti di Segni, soon to become Pope Gregory IX (1227–41), was confronted with this particular spirit. In his Supplementum to the Vita of Marie d'Oignies (d. 1213), Thomas described how Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) gave Ugolino, then cardinal-bishop of Ostia, the finger-relic of Marie to help him in his fight against the spiritus blasphemiae and the doubts he was facing regarding his faith.Footnote ⁴

The anecdote has often been mentioned by scholars, but has not yet received any comprehensive attention. This essay seeks to contextualize the account of Jacques de Vitry's intervention, which is found only in Thomas de Cantimpré's writings and which raises a number of questions: What is the role of Marie d'Oignies and her finger relic? What did Thomas mean by the ‘spirit of blasphemy’ that plagued Ugolino, and can we find traces of the origins of Ugolino's doubts in other source material? And finally, what was Thomas's intention behind the story? I will show that doubt is the Leitmotiv connecting the stories of Jacques, Ugolino and Thomas, and argue that the anecdote not only gives us a glimpse of the nature of Ugolino's spiritual concerns but also reflects Thomas's efforts to promote both Jacques's influence on Gregory IX and the reputation of Marie d'Oignies. This contribution serves as a case study for the nature of the doubts faced by medieval churchmen as well as for the role of doubt in the hagiographical rhetoric surrounding the movement of the mulieres sanctae in the southern Low Countries in the thirteenth century.Footnote ⁵

Before looking into Ugolino's doubts, let me shed some light on the relation between Jacques de Vitry and Marie d'Oignies, specifically with regard to the relic finger.Footnote ⁶ Jacques's admiration for this mulier sancta and the spiritual influence they had on each other are unquestionable. Their close friendship and Jacques's role as her confessor ensured his lasting ties to the diocese of Liège and to the community of canons regular of St Nicholas at Oignies in particular. After a decade in the Holy Land as bishop of Acre (1216–26), Jacques returned to Oignies on several occasions and acted as a patron to the community, bestowing on the canons relics and gifts from the East. Through his Vita of Marie (c.1215), Jacques contributed greatly to the spread of Marie's reputation as well as to the development of the early Beguine movement.Footnote ⁷ In the Vita Jacques emphasized Marie's devoutness, contrition and spiritual strength, but also the extreme asceticism that would eventually lead to her death. As much as the sanctity of her body was central during Marie's lifetime, so her relics continued to play a crucial role after her death, further contributing to the construction of her memory and cult.Footnote ⁸ Marie had firmly rebuked Gilles d'Oignies, prior and founder of the community, for mutilating corpses in order to obtain relics, and had forbidden him to do any such thing to her body after her death.Footnote ⁹ Nonetheless, several of Marie's body parts were kept as separate relics. Aside from the seven teeth which her dead body miraculously spat out into the hands of prior Gilles,Footnote ¹⁰ it appears that at least one finger was removed shortly after 1213.Footnote ¹¹ Both Thomas de Cantimpré and Jacques de Vitry tell us that the latter wore a silver reliquary case containing one of Marie's fingers as a pendant. In a letter of 1216, Jacques recounted the miraculous rescue of his books and belongings from a turbulent river in Lombardy, as the basket in which he had stored the relic of Marie kept his mule afloat.Footnote ¹² Thomas wrote that during the journey from Acre to Rome, Jacques's ship was caught in a storm and, while the rest of the crew prayed to their respective saints, Jacques invoked the help of Marie through his reliquary pendant. In a vision, Marie promised she would pray for his salvation, showed her friend five new altars in the church of Oignies and told him to consecrate them. After the vision, the sea became calm.Footnote ¹³

It is shortly after this miraculous rescue that one must date the meeting between Jacques and Ugolino, in the early months of 1226, upon Jacques's second and final return to Europe. Thomas, however, implied that the friendship between Ugolino and Jacques originated earlier.Footnote ¹⁴ Indeed, both Jacques's first encounter with the Franciscans and Ugolino's first encounter with the reputation of Marie and the early Beguines seem to have taken place around the same time, when Jacques, as bishop-elect of Acre, was received by Honorius III (1216–27) at Perugia in 1216.Footnote ¹⁵ Ugolino, who would be appointed cardinal-protector of the Franciscans at some point during 1217 or 1218, was a strong supporter of female (semi-)religiousFootnote ¹⁶ communities and certainly sympathetic to Jacques's emphasis on preaching, pastoral care and voluntary poverty, and to his efforts for the early Beguines.Footnote ¹⁷ Moreover, like Jacques, Ugolino was heavily involved in the preaching of the Fifth Crusade.Footnote ¹⁸ At the time of the meeting between Ugolino and Jacques in Rome in 1226, the latter was struggling with his own doubts regarding his mission in the East. After the failure of the Fifth Crusade, Jacques realized that neither the reform of the Christian communities in the Holy Land nor the fight against Islam was the easy undertaking that he had anticipated.Footnote ¹⁹ Seeking spiritual support and guidance, he appears to have visited Oignies to pray at Marie's tomb, before relinquishing his episcopal duties in Acre.Footnote ²⁰ Jacques's definitive return to Europe may have indeed prompted him to give the relic of Marie to his good friend, who seemed to need it more than he did. In Thomas's Supplementum we read that Jacques presented Ugolino with a heavy silver cup filled with nutmeg. Ugolino accepted the nutmeg as it was the ‘fruit of the East’, but turned down the cup, saying that it was ‘the fruit of the city of Rome’. Instead, the cardinal asked for Jacques's help as he was facing a spiritual crisis.Footnote ²¹ Jacques told Ugolino to read his Vita of Marie d'Oignies and, upon Ugolino's request, gave him her finger-relic.

In what seems to have been a very personal and private conversation between Jacques and Ugolino, or at least in what Thomas claimed he knew of this encounter, the cardinal confessed that his soul was troubled by a ‘spirit of blasphemy’ and overwhelmed by waves of temptation, driving him to desperation.Footnote ²² Ugolino noted how his suffering was eased when he was sitting with his brothers the cardinals, assembled in consistory, but succumbed to despair again as soon as he was alone. He feared that his worn spirit and exhausted body would not be able to bear the burden and was afraid that he would be cast out from the holy faith (sancte fidei omnino deiciar).Footnote ²³ Likewise, in his Vita of St Lutgard (Lutgard of Aywières, d. 1246), Thomas noted that Ugolino was savagely tempted (atrociter tentabatur) by the ‘spirit of blasphemy’.Footnote ²⁴

Arguably, Thomas de Cantimpré's accounts merely sketch a vague idea of the nature of Ugolino's predicament. The notion of the spiritus blasphemiae is, however, rather interesting. Although blasphemia was generally understood as saying things unworthy of God, Alexander Murray has pointed out that ‘there is a specifically monastic tradition, going back to the Vitae patrum, of understanding the term to indicate mere wrong thinking about God'. Murray added that ‘when so used it is often in compounds like blasphemia cordis or spiritus blasphemiae’.Footnote ²⁵ The notion of the ‘spirit of blasphemy’ as an evil entity which tempts its victim into sin, as suggested in Guillaume de Rennes's gloss mentioned above, is shown more imaginatively in the Vita of the Dominican friar Henry Suso (d. 1366). In his chapter on ‘interior sufferings’, Suso told the story of his encounter with the ‘spirit of blasphemy’ and described it as a ‘hideous Moor, with eyes of fire and a terrific hellish look’ who tried to shoot fiery arrows through his heart.Footnote ²⁶ Upon invoking the help of the Virgin, the devil vanished.Footnote ²⁷ The encounter between Henry and the evil spirit is similar to the account of Thomas de Cantimpré in which he reported the effect of Marie's finger. Thomas wrote that one night, when Ugolino was secretly praying before his altar, a lethargy (torpor) began to flood his mind. The cardinal stood up and clasped Marie's finger tightly against his chest while asking for her intercession. Without delay, the ‘spirit of blasphemy’ was put to flight and the numbness of the mind disappeared.Footnote ²⁸

Thomas's use of the word torpor seems to identify further the nature of Ugolino's struggles. Ugolino's symptoms, a state of lethargy, despair, blasphemy in the form of distrusting God, and an impending dejection in his faith, point towards acedia, a spiritual depression.Footnote ²⁹ When relating Ugolino's predicament to acedia, the spiritus blasphemiae can be identified with the daemonium meridianum,Footnote ³⁰ the noonday demon, the personification of depression.Footnote ³¹ The use of Marie's finger relic to deal with this ‘possession’, or to ward off an evil spirit or demon, is evident.Footnote ³² With his story of the successful repelling of the evil spirit or demon, Thomas thus provided evidence for the authenticity of the relic and for the sanctity of Marie d'Oignies.Footnote ³³

Marie's reputation in dealing with doubt was well established by this time. Doubt features often in her Vita and Jacques noted that after her death Marie did not abandon those she loved and continued to guide and protect them from danger by providing secret signs that removed any doubt from the heart (a cordibus eorum dubitationem removens).Footnote ³⁴ In the Supplementum, Thomas emphasized that Marie never doubted Christ, and was ‘never once deceived by the enemy of man’.Footnote ³⁵ Moreover, he described how Jacques told Ugolino that God had granted Marie a ‘special grace of expelling blasphemous spirits’ (in effugandis blasphemie spiritibus). In the Vita, Jacques often portrayed Marie as the ideal intercessor when confronted with the ‘spirit of blasphemy’, which he saw as the most evil spirit of all temptations (contra spiritum blasphemie et desperationis preminebat).Footnote ³⁶ Jacques recorded how Marie helped a young Cistercian nun whom the devil attacked with ‘blasphemies and unclean thoughts’.Footnote ³⁷ Similarly, Thomas included the story of a pilgrim who, after joining the Cistercian order, was ‘troubled and stung by the spirit of blasphemy’.Footnote ³⁸

The hagiographical character of the source material relating the predicament of Ugolino demands a search for corroborating evidence. Aside from Thomas's account, are there any traces of the origins and nature of Ugolino's doubts in other documents? Ugolino had been a member of the College of Cardinals for almost three decades before ascending the papal throne in March 1227.Footnote ³⁹ Between 1207 and 1209, he was in charge of the crucial legation to protect the papacy's interests in the conflict between Otto IV and Philip of Swabia.Footnote ⁴⁰ The murder of Philip on 21 June 1208, and the consequent setback for the papal legation, seems to have coincided with the death of Ugolino's mentor and spiritual father Raniero da Ponza, a monk at the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova who was himself involved in papal diplomacy with Germany.Footnote ⁴¹ A letter from Ugolino to the Cistercians of the abbeys of Fossanova, Casamari and Salem, written sometime between 1207 and 1209, testified to Ugolino's profound grief at Raniero's death. The cardinal referred to the monk as his spiritual father and doubted whether he was worthy of his father's virtue because of the multitude of sins piled up over his own head. At the end of the letter, Ugolino noted that his many worries and difficulties, especially regarding his spirit, were hindering his activities in Germany.Footnote ⁴² Nevertheless, Ugolino's doubts do not seem to have affected his reputation. In March 1221 Honorius III appointed him as legate to the court of Frederick II and both the pope and the emperor were full of praise for the cardinal. Honorius praised Ugolino for his zeal and virtuous life, calling him incorruptible and a pillar and ornament of the Church.Footnote ⁴³ Frederick II, in turn, rejoiced at Ugolino's appointment and described the cardinal as honest, clear-sighted in religion, pure in life, resourceful, eloquent, knowledgeable and cautious.Footnote ⁴⁴

After the legation of 1221, Ugolino seems to have been less active, and Guido Levi has suggested that the cardinal was gathering strength for his expected pontificate. Since the cardinals had chosen Honorius over Ugolino in 1216, the latter may have been anticipating the papal throne in the next papal election. Levi also alludes to a conflict between the pope and Ugolino's nephew, Riccardo Conti, over control of the city of Ostia. Levi suggests that there may have been a cooling on the pope's part towards his cardinal because of this.Footnote ⁴⁵ Ernst Brem, however, is not convinced that the actions of members of the Conti family would have impinged on Ugolino.Footnote ⁴⁶ Nonetheless, tensions between the cardinal's family and Pope Honorius may indeed have contributed to the doubts Ugolino was facing.

Ugolino's wish for Marie's support in 1226 was not his first invocation of a religious woman to provide spiritual help. In 1220, in a letter to Clare of Assisi, Ugolino wrote that he was weighed down by so many sins, that he had offended the Lord, and would no longer be worthy to be among his elect unless Clare's tears and prayers were to obtain him mercy.Footnote ⁴⁷

The cardinal's letter to Clare is reminiscent of his earlier letter mourning the death of Raniero da Ponza. Furthermore, Maria Pia Alberzoni, discussing Gregory IX's involvement in the new female religious movements, points to a later letter from July 1227 that Ugolino, by then Gregory IX, addressed to the Poor Clares of Sant’Apollinare at Milan.Footnote ⁴⁸ In this letter, too, Ugolino expressed his fear that he was not worthy to be among the elect of the Lord, for his many temporal concerns, especially since he had become pope, had kept him from spiritual contemplation. Ugolino's words in these letters leave little doubt regarding his uncertainties about his faith.Footnote ⁴⁹

While the source material may support Thomas de Cantimpré's account of Ugolino's crisis, we must also, however, consider that Ugolino was elected pope only a year later, and the assessment of the severity of the cardinal's doubts must therefore be nuanced. Neither his plea for spiritual support from Clare of Assisi and for her special prayers nor the emphasis on his sins was unusual: indeed, such language was common in the writings of the faithful concerned about their souls. Given Ugolino's support for the Franciscans and the Poor Clares, his letter to Clare perhaps testifies more to the cardinal's admiration for her devotion and religious life. The admiration Ugolino showed for Clare was part of a wider appreciation of the new order in the curia. Similarly, in a letter of 1216, Jacques de Vitry had observed that Honorius III and the cardinals greatly admired the Franciscans and the Poor Clares.Footnote ⁵⁰

Besides the perspective of Ugolino, Thomas's intentions in reporting the anecdote and (perhaps more importantly) the genre-specific characteristics of these hagiographic accounts also need to be considered. Thomas, born in 1201, grew up in Brabant and Liège. As a young boy, he heard Jacques preaching and was so impressed that he vowed to love and venerate the preacher.Footnote ⁵¹ Like Jacques, Thomas studied theology and became a successful preacher and a prolific writer. Inspired by Jacques's Vita of Marie d'Oignies, Thomas not only added a supplement to it, but also wrote hagiographies of other mulieres sanctae from Liège and Brabant, showing his admiration for these holy women.Footnote ⁵² And just as Jacques's Vita of Marie d'Oignies, dedicated to the ardent anti-Cathar bishop Foulques of Toulouse (d. 1231), was also intended to provide an alternative to Cathar women in the south of France,Footnote ⁵³ so too Thomas's Supplementum was more than a biographical account.

A first and rather subtle message in the Supplementum is Thomas's disappointment with Jacques's rise in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This moralizing character is evident in Ugolino's refusal to accept Jacques's gift of a silver cup mentioned above. Saying it was not a gift from the East, but from Rome, the cardinal implied that the cup represented temporal wealth. Through this anecdote, Thomas criticized Jacques's rise to power and wealth, accusing him of betraying the ideals of poverty and humility propagated by Marie d'Oignies. While it is clear, considering other parts of the Supplementum, that Thomas was trying to convince Jacques that his rightful place was with the community of Oignies rather than at the curia, these comments also reflect a broader contemporary criticism of the Roman prelates. Elsewhere in the Supplementum, Thomas claimed that ‘all of France with its abundance scarcely suffices for the annual taxes of cardinals’.Footnote ⁵⁴ Indeed, in the spirit of the reforms of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), and before his rise through the ranks of the Roman hierarchy, Jacques himself had expressed his dismay at the cardinals’ temporal concerns. Just as Ugolino lamented his lack of time for spiritual contemplation, so Jacques noted that ‘[at the curia] they are really absorbed by concerns for secular or temporal matters, . . . so much that it is hardly permitted to speak about spiritual matters’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Ironically, when Jacques became cardinal, he was accused of the same temporal concerns.

Moreover, the fact that in Thomas's account we encounter the ‘spirit of blasphemy’ predominantly in a Dominican context is surely no coincidence, and the story of Ugolino's triumph over his doubts should also be regarded as an exemplum.Footnote ⁵⁶ Thomas presented the story of Ugolino as a lesson for readers who found themselves in a similar predicament: as Pope Gregory IX, Ugolino could be compassionate about their weaknesses because he had been tempted as they were.Footnote ⁵⁷ The more important message, however, was Marie's exemplary devout life. Thomas noted that Jacques not only gave Ugolino Marie's finger to help him combat his doubts, but above all urged him to read the Vita to help him deal with his uncertainties. Elsewhere, Jacques referred to his books as the means by which he was able to subdue the devil;Footnote ⁵⁸ here he recommended that Ugolino read Marie's Vita to bring him back onto the right path. Similarly, through his Supplementum, Thomas also advertised the use of the Vita of Marie d'Oignies as an example for a devotional life.Footnote ⁵⁹ Marie was the paradigm of a mulier sancta and the embodiment of the vita apostolica: living a poor, humble, penitential and deeply spiritual life, concerned with the cura animarum of the faithful.Footnote ⁶⁰ Thomas's emphasis on the power of Marie's relics emulated Jacques's efforts to advance the reputation of his spiritual mother.Footnote ⁶¹ Jacques's Vita of Marie included most characteristics of a typical saint's life: her virtuous childhood, the renunciation of temporal possessions, persecution, and testimonies of her devotion and asceticism. However, he did not include the necessary miracula that would help to promote Marie to sainthood. Rather, the Vita echoed the focus on practical theology amongst his fellow preachers and theologians in the circle of Paris masters around Peter the Chanter. In the Vita Jacques emphasized the concern for pastoral care and the apostolic lifestyle demonstrated by Marie, and by extension other mulieres sanctae, providing his readers with an example to imitate. While he showed some appreciation for the burgeoning lay religious movements, he seems to have been reluctant to go too far in endorsing asceticism and devotion outside the walls of the cloister. In contrast, Thomas de Cantimpré, writing in the context of the rise of the friars, was more eager to elevate the mulieres sanctae to sainthood and added a number of miracula to Marie's Vita.

A final element to consider is Thomas's own doubt. Jacques only mentioned the silver reliquary pendant with Marie's finger once and did not claim explicitly that it was Marie who had saved his mule from drowning. Thomas, on the other hand, attributed two more miracles to Marie's finger-relic. These specific instances, however, need to be seen in the context of the author's love and admiration for another mulier sancta, St Lutgard of Aywières, and the Vita he wrote in her memory.Footnote ⁶² It is known that Thomas tried to convince the abbess of Aywières to give him Lutgard's hand after her death. We read in the Vita Lutgardis that, when she found out about his intentions, Lutgard asked her friend what he planned to do with her hand. Thomas replied that he believed her hand would be good for his body and soul. When Lutgard told him that one of her fingers would suffice, he answered that no part of her body would be enough for him, unless he had her hand or head to comfort him when she was gone.Footnote ⁶³ In his Vita Lutgardis Thomas revealed the intention behind his emphasis on Marie's relic, for he told those who berated him for venerating Lutgard's finger that Jacques had cut off Marie's finger even though she was not yet canonized.Footnote ⁶⁴ Faced with the thought of losing Lutgard, Thomas seems to have used the account of the miracles attributed to the finger of Marie d'Oignies as a justification for his obsession with obtaining a relic of his own spiritual mother. As Marie's finger had protected and consoled Jacques and Ugolino, Thomas hoped that Lutgard's relic would not only protect his body and soul but would also help to console him.

Jacques's assistance in overcoming Ugolino's doubts provided the foundation for a lifelong friendship between the two prelates. Alberic de Trois-Fontaines noted that upon the election of Ugolino as the new pope in 1227 Jacques was called to travel to the papal see ‘with haste’ (cum festinatione); the new Pope Gregory IX appointed him as cardinal-bishop of Tusculum, a high-ranking position in the Roman Church.Footnote ⁶⁵ In so far as we can reconstruct these events from hagiographical texts, and taking into account Thomas's agenda in the Supplementum, it would seem that Jacques and Ugolino had earlier encountered each other at a crossroads, at a time when both were struggling with doubts about their careers. Jacques's intervention seems to have given Ugolino the strength to overcome his doubts and move on to become pope. Ugolino, in turn, helped Jacques to continue his reform and his crusade efforts as his close advisor in the curia.Footnote ⁶⁶

Thomas de Cantimpré's description of the temptation of Ugolino by the ‘spirit of blasphemy’ might be taken as a rhetorical device employed by the preacher to make his account of the cardinal's tribulations more dramatic. As in Jacques de Vitry's writings, the spiritus blasphemiae is used as an allegorical personification of doubt, much as it is in the story of Henry Suso mentioned above. Doubt in the form of an evil spirit also ties in with the seven gifts Marie receives from the Holy Spirit: she is given seven virtues which Jacques presents as seven spirits.Footnote ⁶⁷ Nonetheless, while Thomas may have exaggerated the severity of the cardinal's crisis in order to emphasize the intercessory role and power of Marie, Ugolino's own writings do seem to testify to his doubts regarding his worthiness for his office. For the reader today, therefore, the story of Ugolino provides a glimpse of the doubts of a medieval prelate: his suffering upon the death of his mentor and his uncertainty about his worthiness for the office of cardinal, and later that of pope, would eventually lead him to the brink of acedia. The value of Thomas's account, however, transcends its anecdotal biographical information. The story of Ugolino serves as an exemplum and has a clear didactic value. Through it, and despite the subtle criticism of Jacques's temporal concerns, Thomas had a chance to ascribe to two of the people he most admired, Jacques and Marie, a crucial role in Ugolino's ascent to the throne of St Peter. The Vita of Marie was portrayed as a model life for the reader to imitate and as the perfect tool for the overcoming of doubt. The intercessory powers of Marie d'Oignies against the temptations of doubt, despair and blasphemy were made clear. Through the relic of her finger, Marie's intercessory powers triumphed against Jacques de Vitry's doubts, repelled the ‘spirit of blasphemy’ vexing Ugolino, and alleviated Thomas de Cantimpré's despair when faced with the loss of his own personal saint, Lutgard.