The gift of tongues: Women's
xenoglossia in the Later Middle Ages.
Other descriptions include access to hidden knowledge (gnosis) and foreign languages (
xenoglossia), drastic changes in vocal intonation and facial structure, the sudden appearance of injuries (scratches, bite marks) or lesions, and superhuman strength.
Thus curatorial experience should stress this process, which is also reflected in the works themselves, as in the Johannesburg collective the Center for Historical Reenactrnents's
Xenoglossia, Reenactments's
Xenoglossia 2010-11.
The instantaneous ability to communicate in a language one does not know is called xenoglossia. Christine F.
The book's admirable first half is essential for further work on medieval accounts of xenoglossia. Expanding the list of medieval holy men and women reputed to be xenoglossic from the representative dozen studied by Stanley Burgess ("Medieval Examples of Charismatic Piety in the Roman Catholic Church," in Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism, ed.
"X is for
XENOGLOSSIA, which the dictionary explains as 'an ability claimed by the likes of mediums and clairvoyants to speak a language with which they are unfamiliar.'" Quite.
The paper argues that Custance's being understood is best explained by recognizing the tale's reliance on the hagiographical trope of xenoglossia, the sudden, miraculous ability to speak or understand a foreign language.
I argue that in rewriting Custance from his sources, Chaucer creates a monolingual, Latin-speaking woman whose words are translated into English by means of a miracle usually experienced by medieval saints, the gift of xenoglossia, or the miraculous ability to speak, understand, or be understood in a foreign language that the recipient has never learnt formally.
Cooper-Romparto, Christine F., The Gift of Tongues: Women's
Xenoglossia in the Later Middle Ages.