Mutilated Martyrs: Gendered Violence & “Becoming Male” in an Antependium of Virgin Martyrs

The tortured and mutilated bodies of seven virgin martyrs stand side by side in an antependium woven around 1430 in Nuremberg. The Virgin Martyrs Tapestry is a striking representation of female saints’ martyrdoms that has yet to be fully analyzed for its potential contributions to discourses about hagiographic iconography, suffering and pain, religious constructs of gender, and sexualized violence in the fifteenth century. Nuanced interpretations of the iconography, with reference to images of Christ, enlighten and recontextualize the tapestry’s brutal depiction of the virgin martyrs. My analysis of the tapestry engages with this unusual presentation of virgin martyrs, stripped and statically accepting brutal torture that far exceeds their textual legends by weapons wielded by disembodied hands, as avenues for imitatio Christi. This interpretation considers the tapestry’s visual program, its enigmatic portrayal of torturing hands, late medieval attitudes toward pain and suffering, and the phenomenon of Christian women “becoming male” to transcend their femininity. Theologically and iconographically, the martyrs’ portrayals in the tapestry mirror the human and divine aspects of Christ.