Call me suspicious. I credit feminist biblical scholar, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, for coining the phrase “hermeneutics of suspicion” with relation to historical texts–the idea being that we need to recognize that all texts are created in a socio-cultural context–and that there are assumptions, biases, and agendas operating in the production and dissemination (let alone preservation) of these texts. Thus a text created by, preserved by, transmitted by, and declared “holy” by men working in a highly patriarchal and hierarchal (if that’s not redundant) system needs to be approached with suspicion, particularly when and where women or gender roles (or rules) are discussed.

So I am suspicious when I read about married women whom the Church has designated as saints only to emphasize a narrative about their well-preserved virginities. Such is the case with Queen Osith, who lived in the 800s. Butler offers up this rather amazing and, to my mind, suspicious detail:

Osith was married young to a king of the East Angles (in present-day Britain); but the same day obtained his consent always to live as a virgin.

This must have been quite the king–being at least nominally Christian, he took as a wife someone who would never give him children (enabling him to preserve a bloodline for his rulership) and binding him from (legitimately) marrying another. Instead, Butler tells us that the king built Osith a big monastery, which Osith ruled over in her virginly ways for “many years with great sanctity.”

Marauding Danish barbarians attacked the British Isle and beheaded Queen Osith…not because she was a popular monarch of those that these attacking forces wanted to eliminate and thereby demoralize those they were seeking to subdue, but, according to Butler, because of “her constancy in her faith and virtue.”

The idea that the king agreed to Osith’s virginity and that the Danes killed her because of this (?) makes me focus on the reason for this Calendar of Saints in the first place: it is not to render verifiable details of Christians from the past, but to instruct present-day readers on the best Church-approved ways to live.

The lesson? Women: nothing could be more important or at least preferable to this God than your virginity–whether you are single or married.

But why?!*

*Asking this type of question seriously can be quite threatening.