Introduction
In the history of religion, the fear of the end of time – the end of the world and one’s self with it – is perhaps the most “pervasive” and persistent “emotion in human experience”.1 By “last things”, theologians mean the events that happen at the end of the present age (death, judgement, heaven, hell), after a period of destruction and transition including wars, plague, famine, and other natural disasters. In this essay, I focus on the central role that Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations played in the dissemination by women mystics of political advice. In this framework, I argue that women’s contributions to exegetical reading practices of the Scriptures introduced new paradigms of a “shared” knowledge and language based upon a gendered reading of the Apocalypse for educational, evangelical or prophetical purposes, with implicit political references to their historical context.2 To restrict my enquiry, I will focus on the case study of Florentine nun, preacher, and visionary Domenica Narducci (1477–1553), one of those referred to as “Savonarola’s women”, from the Paradiso convent in Florence.3
First, I will briefly introduce Narducci and place her into dialogue with the broader context of the Italian political and millennialist discourse on “the last things” that accompanied the progress of the Reformation movement(s) in Italy. Her sermons against the state of corruption in the cities of Rome and Florence are characterized by a blend of apocalyptic images and her Mariology is deeply influenced by the teaching of Birgitta. Second, I will focus on one of the sermons she addressed to Caterina Cibo (1501–1557), Duchess of Camerino, who was involved in the Italian reform movement of the spirituali with Protestant reformer Bernardino Ochino (1487–1564) and Vittoria Colonna (1492–1547). As we will see, in 1533, the year in which the sermon was composed, the Duchess was struggling to keep external forces at bay in her realm and preoccupied with her daughter’s future. Finally, I will highlight how the use of Mary constructed a specific idea of womanhood that is at the center of God’s redemptive plan. The traits of the victorious Mary from the Apocalypse, which is the same Queen Mary who spoke to Birgitta many times in her Revelations, are in fact combined by Narducci on many occasions to depict female characters in her sermons. Those traits, like re-arrangeable mosaic tiles, are also used to reinterpret and colour elements of specific parables, such as the female figures from the parable of the Ten Virgins from the Gospel of Matthew (25:1–13). Narducci’s application of Apocalyptic Marian traits to female figures, among them Birgitta herself who figures as a character in the sermon she addresses to Cibo, not only reinforces her message from a rhetorical point of view, but also gives consistency to a sense of communal mission to which her spiritual daughters are asked to commit themselves. Here, the legacy of Birgitta’s figure, her sophisticated reading of the Virgin Mary as a vector to address political matters emerges as a paradigm that unites her supporters.
Context: The Legacy of Birgitta and Catherine at the Beginning of the Cinquecento
According to theologians, historical eschatology appears in one of three distinct forms, which are Messianism, Millennialism, or Apocalypticism.4 In contrast to mythical eschatology, historical eschatology is directed toward a single redemptive figure who, it is believed, will lead the people of God, now suffering and oppressed, to a better future. Within Christian thought, eschatology is profoundly linked to a sense of imminence and proximity, these being the peculiar traits of the narrative tone of the Apocalypse. After the Avignon period, the mid-Quattrocento and early Cinquecento were marked by fundamental historical turning points, including the Black Death of 1346–53, the Sack of Rome of 1527, and the Italian Wars from 1494 to 1559. The latter events are also framed by the spread of the Reformation movements in Central Europe, France, and Scandinavia.
As McGinn argues, “apocalypticism is a mirror held up to the age, an attempt by each era to understand itself” and to catalyse concerns over civic, political, and social matters.5 In the later fourteenth century and the fifteenth century, the biblical “woman clothed with the sun” of Rev. 12 in John’s Apocalypse soon became a topic that preachers, such as Vincent Ferrer, born in 1350, and Girolamo Savonarola, born in 1452 and burned at the stake in 1498, were using to awaken and impress their listeners.6 In parallel with the beginning of the Reformation, the causes of the political and religious crises confronted by the Italian realms both before and after the 1527 Sack of Rome were filtered and interpreted through apocalyptic themes. As we will see, in Narducci’s writings too, imminent worldly catastrophe may be averted and humanity saved by the renewal of devotion to the mother of Jesus, by adherence to her divine directives revealed to humanity by prophets and prophetesses, and by the enactment of the specific practices she prescribes in her appearances.
Narducci’s religious path is deeply connected to the legacy of Savonarola’s thought, but even more so to that of the most important and famous saints of the fourteenth century: Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena.7 As the essays in the ground-breaking collection Sanctity and Female Authorship have shown, the life, works, and experiences of Birgitta and Catherine provided not only a model of sainthood, but a wide range of exempla of female apostolate, divine authority and didacticism, as well as a sophisticated form of political prophecy for the women and men involved, centuries later, in continuing the reform of the Church.8 The two saints were linked to each other from the very beginning of the circulation of their works by their respective clerical circles and textual communities: in 1374, one year after the death of Birgitta, Catherine is suggested by Alfonso of Jaén, Birgitta’s editor and confessor, for the role of a “second Birgitta” in the campaigns for the return of the pope from Avignon and the necessity of a new crusade.9 On a textual level, Catherine’s perception of herself as an author was inspired by the legacy of Birgitta as a writer when she herself embarked on the writing of the Libro della divina dottrina in 1377.10 Their canonization processes were also fostered by the same clerical communities that “inextricably” linked the “saintly images” of Birgitta and Catherine “to their literary works”.11 What is striking about their legacy is that it did not end with a mere worship of their relics, but continued to live in the voices of future prophetesses and visionaries. In the words of the Carmelite nun and visionary Maria Maddalena de Pazzi, who lived in the second half of the Cinquecento, those reformers were seen as links in the same “cathena”, a sort of spiritual chain, and joined with one another in spiritual leadership.12 Among other things, what distinguished the saintly profiles of those two figures was that they were regarded as political visionaries whose mysticism was concretely linked to politics. More importantly, their stances were built upon “the two most powerful female figures in Christian history – namely the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene”.13 According to Unn Falkeid, Catherine and Birgitta used these earlier figures as “shields” that enabled them to undertake their harsh criticism of the Avignon papacy, as well as the corruption of political and ecclesiastical leaders.14
The paradigm of sainthood represented by Birgitta and Catherine combined, therefore, the need to live according to the Gospel with a civic sense that places Christianity at the center of their realpolitik. More than a century later, in 1533, Narducci would craft for the Duchess of Camerino, Caterina Cibo, a sermon in which she magisterially combined those elements together. She – Narducci – is now the magistra, reporting Birgitta’s words and teaching the Duchess as, in a prior century, both Birgitta and Catherine did with Queen Johanna of Naples. During those turbulent years, women like Narducci and, in parallel with her, Angela Merici in northern Italy, were gathering around their charismatic personae a web of communities into which, via a strong Mariology, they infused their voices with political undertones. One might ask, however, what were the characteristics of those turbulent years of the beginning of the Cinquecento that made those reformers look back to the legacy of Catherine and Birgitta above all the other saints?
At the beginning of the Cinquecento, for the second time since the Avignon captivity, the role of the Church as guide, temple, bride, and incarnated body underwent profound criticism as a result of two complementary trends that spread in parallel and influenced one another. On the one hand, we have the debate about the centrality of the Scriptures, initiated by Erasmus, that became part of the contenzioso between Catholics and Reformists. The so-called devotio moderna was directly linked to the development of a vision of faith that was experienced in private terms, without the mediation of external actors, through an intense meditation practice based on a private reading and understanding of the Gospels.15 On the other hand, this personal but textual approach to the sacred word, fostered by the realisation of the first vernacular translations of the Bible whose spread was facilitated by the printing press, was accompanied by the rediscovery of prophecy and mysticism in Central Europe. Those elements went hand in hand during a moment of political and religious transformation that was felt by many to be a millennial turning point and, by some, a sign of the actualisation of God’s anger toward humanity. Here, let us briefly develop the synergetic output of those two trends that characterised the religious perceptions of the century in which Narducci, one of the many spiritual daughters of Girolamo Savonarola, lived and preached.
Coinciding with the beginning of the Reformation, during which the Church’s authority faced, again, a radical wave of criticism, enhanced by nationalistic forces in Central Europe and driven forward in unprecedented ways by the new possibilities offered by the printing press, the Italian peninsula saw the revival of a strain of apocalyptic and prophetical narratives in print.16 The women and the men of the early Cinquecento, from the highest classes to the lowest, felt in need of a channel to voice their anger and fears. As Ottavia Niccoli has clearly shown, prophecy in fact circulated not only in the darkness, but openly in the streets and shops, helping to shape ordinary people’s devotion. Nonetheless, Manuzio’s preface to the Cinquecento copy of Catherine of Siena’s Letters pointed out to the world that his era needed to read and meditate on Catherine’s admonitions more than ever. Her letters, as the editor stresses, seemed to address perfectly the clerics of his own time as well as those of hers.17
Considering just the city of Florence, it provided fertile ground for female mysticism, alive with the phenomenon of the sante vive, as magisterially reconstructed by Gabriella Zarri, in addition to the revival of the prophetic tradition through Girolamo Savonarola’s calls for Christian renewal between 1452 and his death in 1498. Girolamo Savonarola and, subsequently, Juan de Valdes and Bernardino Ochino from Siena, were the key figures whom historians have traditionally considered the bridge between prior Medieval agitations for reform and the 16th-century Italian spiritual renewal.18 Their soteriology had Dominican and Franciscan roots, but the return to the Gospel, for Savonarola and Ochino especially, was also coloured by dark depictions in apocalyptic terms of a forthcoming ira Dei. This can be linked, respectively for the two men, to the legacy of Birgitta of Sweden and, probably, the circulation of Margaret Porete’s Specchio delle anime semplice (1311) among the first Capuchins.19 God’s anger is a force that shapes Narducci’s visions of the coming end of times and her prediction, for instance, of the Sack of Rome: in doing this, she was picking up imagery that was Birgittine in its roots, traceable to her training at the Paradiso convent in Florence.
Before focusing on Narducci’s Birgittine education, however, we should return to the problematic legacy of Birgitta as a political prophetess in the 16th century. Not only were her writings regarded with suspicion by the Catholic Church, to the extent that Savonarola denied having known of her prophecies at his trial, refusing to situate his thought within a Birgittine legacy, but Martin Luther also described the Swedish saint as crazy (“die tolle Brigit”) and accused her Revelations of being inspired by the Devil in one of his lectures on Genesis 30:9–11.20 It is remarkable that the wooden statues of Birgitta, and other female saints, that decorated the Vadstena abbey are devoid of hands, along with the books they were holding. This was done by Lutherans, both to reflect disdain for the Catholic past of the nation and, more generally, as a symbol that women were to be silent in the new established order.21
Both Birgitta’s and Catherine of Siena’s writings were circulating and being read in aristocratic contexts and religious houses. However, unlike the foremother of the reformed Dominican order, whose cult was fostered by Savonarola and his Piagnoni during their campaigns, Birgitta’s name was always indissolubly linked to the political and apocalyptic tone of the paradigm of prophecy that she incarnated. Specifically, themes such as the imminent necessity of conversion, the approach of the end of the world and the advent of the Antichrist. There is a further issue for the perceptions of Birgitta’s orthodoxy. Early in the 16th century the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–1517), called by Pope Julius II, formally condemned much of the use by preachers of political and apocalyptic prophetic content, including references to the Antichrist and the end of the world.22 The council, however, never denied the possibility of receiving true revelations from God and imposed, therefore, a set of procedures through which the content of prophetical discourses should be tested before they were announced to the public. Spiritual preachers were among Narducci’s followers, and her revelations were the objects of continued and scrupulous control by churchmen, before and after her break with the Piagnoni of the house of San Marco. She distanced herself from that latter group in 1509 to act independently and pursue her “personal” interpretation of Savonarola’s teaching and the Bible. This caused great turmoil among the Piagnoni to the extent that, in 1519, Narducci was accused of heresy on the basis of an erroneous interpretation of the Bible by the Dominican fra Tommaso Caiani.23
Nonetheless, precisely because of that apocalyptic tone, balanced with lively and “incarnated” descriptions of Christ’s nativity and His sufferings on the Cross, Birgitta’s name and writings were particularly popular among 16th-century men and women of letters as well as painters, such as Tintoretto and Sebastiano del Piombo.24 Among the litterati, one should include leading figures of their times such as Pietro Aretino, Lodovico Domenichi, Vittoria Colonna, Chiara Matraini and, subsequently, Tommaso Campanella. Birgitta was therefore one of those ambivalent authors, such as Augustine proved to be, that could be used in quite different ways in Catholic and Reformist circles respectively, depending on the aspects of her message that were emphasised.
The fortune of her apocryphal prophecies and visions, that circulated separated from the rest of her corpus, confirms the extent of the network and the variety of people interested in her message. However, her message circulated not only in the streets, but also inside the walls of aristocratic private houses: the Cibo, the Colonna, and the Acciaioli are only a few of the aristocratic families, often connected to the spirituali movement of the early Cinquecento, who helped to cultivate and disseminate a Birgittine cult during the years of the Reformation.25 Olaus Magnus, Archbishop-in-exile of Uppsala, for example, in his effort to confront Lutheranism in Sweden, crafted a biography of the saint to remind his people of the Catholic roots of the nation. That biography was then translated into the vernacular by the editor Lodovico Domenichi at the request of the Florentine noblewoman Margherita de’ Borgherini, from the Acciaioli family.
Acting against such a complex background, Narducci stands as an important factor in the keeping alive of the memory of Birgitta among the nuns of her community but also among aristocratic women as well, using Birgitta as auctoritas for her right to preach and to lead, and as a subtext in her warnings against the corruption of the Church.
Domenica Narducci’s Early Birgittine Education
Domenica Narducci da Paradiso was born on 8 September 1473, in a Florentine suburb called Paradiso. Even though Narducci refused solemn vows until just before her death, her religious life grew following the exempla of Catherine of Siena and that of Saint Birgitta.26 At only nine years old, in 1481, Birgitta and Catherine, together with Saint Augustine, invited her to continue in her prayers for the clergy. Specifically, their prediction to the little girl focused on God’s will to renew His Church at the cost of immense suffering and plagues (“predicendole che Dio voleva rinnovare la Chiesa con molti flagelli”).27 After a couple of years spent with the Augustinian nuns of the Florentine monastery of Candeli, and one year at home as a bizzoca, she regularly visited the Birgittine Convent of Santa Maria del Paradiso in the Pian di Ripoli (Florence) between 1495 and 1497. She remained thereafter a devotee of the Swedish saint, wearing the “abito bigio” but without formally committing herself to the order.
The Santa Maria convent, in which Narducci lived for some years, was the major vector for the diffusion of Birgittine writing and thought in Italy. It was established in 1395, with funding from Antonio degli Alberti, and then expanded in 1404–1408 under the protection of the Florentine Republic and the Guelf party.28 It was also the first Birgittine house in Tuscany, and the third to be established after Birgitta’s death. There, the nuns could have experienced Birgitta with all their senses: from the simple architecture of the monastery and the frescoes of her life to the practice of reading, copying and meditating on her works. The saint was the subject of the altarpiece of the convent, of which there remains only a part of the saint’s face and the shape of her dark dress. Among the better-preserved remains of the original artistic decoration of the convent are events from Calvary culminating in the way to Paradise, the Salita al Paradiso, with impressive rows of saints that would have served as a balance to the Last Judgment, also frescoed, with a very probable reference to her Revelations.29
As anticipated, her encounter with the saint began in the convent of Il Paradiso in 1495, the moment when, wrapped in a grey mantel, she entered the Church and was enraptured “in ispirito”. In that moment, Christ addresses her as his bride (“sposa mia”), and tells her that the mantel she is wearing is that of Saint Birgitta who has been His “Cavalleressa” and apostle and the ambassador of His word on earth (“mandata nunzia, et ambasciatrice”).30 The military metaphors and connotations then continue as Narducci is told she should learn from the Saint and imitate her life in order to become a good soldier herself (“Impara da lei ad esser buona guerriera, et apparecchiati con l’imitarla al mio ossequio”).
Even though women were formally prohibited from preaching, Narducci soon began to do so, while only a bizzoca, fascinated by the promising sound of Savonarola’s reforms aimed at women. She continued to be a supporter of Savonarola after his death at the stake in Piazza Signoria and reported visions that corroborated the truths preached by the master, confirming his saintly status in heaven. The friar’s teaching played a major role in her early religious views, until at last she dissociated herself from the Piagnoni and the Ordo Fratrum Praedicatorum to pursue her personal reform and deeply Marian interpretation of Savonarola’s message. As Adriana Valerio points out, her programme of reform for the individual and the Church was universal and involved three main areas: religion, ethics, and politics. The return to Scripture was, in fact, linked to the Savonarolian ideal of the bene beateque vivendum. That is, the aim of reaching a condition of individual and social peace by serving God with humility and charitable deeds.31 Salvation, for Narducci, involves participation, and is not granted per sola fide as Lutherans were claiming – a view to which she was firmly opposed.32
Narducci ensured her independence from the Dominican hierarchy of San Marco by placing herself directly under the authority of the Bishop of Florence and finding a sort of via media in the conflicts between the Piagnoni and the Arrabbiati movements. In 1511, with her community of 15 spiritual daughters that would eventually grow to 50, she started building up the foundation of the monastery of the Holy Cross (Santa Crocetta), often simply called la Crocetta, under the jurisdiction of archbishop Giulio de Medici near the church of SS. Annunziata. The monastery received approval from the Pope in 1515, and from then on, Narducci would be known as “mother cicada” (“madre cicala”), establishing herself as an authoritative and charismatic voice, extending her influence far beyond her own devotees. Even though she preached only inside the monastery, her understanding of politics and religious zeal attracted visits from some well-known Florentine families, seeking advice or doctrinal clarification, and provided her with the financial capital to renovate and keep the monastery running. Many of Narducci’s extant writings, recovered by Adriana Valerio and Rita Librandi, are found in the Archivio del Monastero della Crocetta in Florence, which also houses archival documents related to the history of the Convent. The existing corpus includes Narducci’s Epistolary, with 130 letters written between 1506 and 1548, approximately 20 Sermons, delivered between 1507 and 1545, a spiritual Dialogue (1503), many Revelations and visions, recorded between 1507 and 1545, and several spiritual treatises.33
The Virgin Mary and the Renovatio Ecclesia
Scholars of Narducci, particularly the historian Adriana Valerio and philologist Rita Librandi, have stressed the strong search for independence that set her apart from the mass of Savonarola’s women. This is visible in her effort to establish her own community reflecting a strong Mariology and the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which she built up in her sermons as well as in her visions, such as that of the Tabernacolo that I will discuss below. Her independence was very consciously rooted and linked to Catherine of Siena and Birgitta’s revolutionary figures, and she was not afraid to reveal the Birgittine root of Savonarola’s thought in her sermons and letters. In the following paragraphs, I will briefly mention some of the fundamental aspects that characterise Birgitta’s and Savonarola’s Mariology with the aim of highlighting the dialogue that Narducci established with Savonarola’s conception of the Virgin Mary.
Birgitta’s Mariology is developed to its highest level in her Sermo Angelicus, the Angel’s Sermon, that contains a set of lections concerning Mary, originally conceived for the Birgittine nuns of her order to sing.34 Her interpretation has no precedent in medieval tradition, and, as Unn Falkeid points out, the Mary of the Sermo Angelicus assumes many faces and important theological meanings. She is the first witness of the Resurrection, the most refined preacher and, specifically, the magistra apostolorum, as well as the apocalyptic queen of salvation. Most importantly, she is “the mother of wisdom”, the paradigm of prophecy, as she already knew of the resurrection of her child, and is the co-redeemer of salvation. It is known that, for Birgitta, due to her childhood and background training in legal matters and Christian discourses, religion and politics became deeply related to each other.35 The merit of Birgitta is to have anchored her message in the profound wisdom of the Virgin, and to have placed women at the core of this reform in the physical world too. Birgitta’s Regula Salvatoris, in fact, tried to replicate this heavenly order, with Mary as the “true stepping stone between transitory and eternal life”, by giving administrative power to a woman, the badessa of the new order that she aimed to establish, an order that was originally conceived as double, meaning men and women living together, was to be a woman.36
Savonarola, too, was devoted to the Virgin, and venerated her as protectress and founder of the Dominican order.37 In the description of his journey through the celestial realms – the Compendium visions – Savonarola ends his pilgrimage with a dialogue with the Virgin as “the highest goal of his journey through the celestial city”, seated in all her majesty and immaculacy: “on a throne, clothed with the sun and covered with jewels”.38 He certainly granted to Mary the gift of prophecy in sermon XXIII on the book of Ezekiel, which was known to the nuns of La Crocetta as it was part of their library.39 Yet, his devotion to Mary had little space in his sermon and, without doubt, the mother of God did not have the same role in salvation as Birgitta envisioned for her. The only reason he advocated for the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin was to distance himself from the view of another Dominican theologian, Vincenzo Bandelli, who attributed to Mary the macula originalis like all humans.40 In contrast to the Swedish saint, he managed to decentralise Mary’s active role in disseminating Christ’s words – and, in doing this, women’s voices too – by asserting that she was perfect because she stayed quiet even though she was given the gift of prophecy (“stette cheta benchè havessi il done, & la gratia della profetia”). She never preached in public, being aware that preaching and debating in public were tasks designed for the men to undertake (“dirle in pubblico appartiene alli huomini”).41
Contrary to Savonarola, Mary dominates and guides the different stages of Narducci’s life, taking on the role of the teacher Narducci never had. Reading passages from her Vita, the Virgin actively helped Narducci in her mystic formation and journey by giving her “consigli” (suggestions) and guidance on how to find the way through her visions (“si doveva guidar nelle visioni”).42 Narducci stresses how she has been “ammaestrata” by Mary in her apostolate and, early in the years of her preaching in the so-called Vision of the Tabernacle of 1508, she reveals that Mary will be the magistra of the Angelic Pope in the reform of the Church and Christianity.
The Vision of the Tabernacle concerns primarily the question of the Immaculate Conception, the Incarnation, and the role of the Virgin in the history of salvation.43 Christ shows Narducci a beautifully adorned tabernacle in which – he tells her – he was conceived. The description is highly detailed as each part of the tabernacle refers to the physical body of Mary, and to her specific virtues. Most importantly, Christ explains to Narducci that in Mary’s intellect, represented by a globe, are rooted the branches of the Trinity (“Significa che la mia gloriosa madre sempre dico aveva nel intelletto suo la sanctissima Trinita”). In the second part of the sermon, Mary assumes the role of a regina in trono with the traits of the woman of the Apocalypse. In this case, Narducci seems to further develop and elaborate the pattern already given by Birgitta in the Sermo Angelicus and Rev. I:31.
In the second part of the sermon, Narducci offers a complete and detailed exegesis of the allegorical meaning of Mary’s apocalyptic symbolism and interlaces Mary’s apocalyptic traits with God’s plan for the renovatio ecclesiae. Her vestment then becomes the cloak for the new Church (“mantello della nuova Chiesa tutto [...] stellato”) and the stars in the mantle symbolise the people of the newly renewed community, that remain stable in their contemplative state, like stars in the sky. Most importantly, the Virgin will be, as anticipated, the teacher and guardian of the new pope: in this way, the new Church which Narducci envisioned is built upon the central action of Mary and her ethical perfection.44 Narducci eventually receives intellectual and spiritual knowledge, represented by the drop of milk that Christ gives her from the tabernacle at the end of the vision along with a drop of his blood. The milk symbolises nourishment – the wisdom of things divine – that Narducci needs to be able to fulfil her apostolate and to pass on to her community, like a magistra herself.45
The influence of the Sermo Angelicus and Revelations seems prominent here with regard to the theological role that Mary fulfils in Narducci’s eyes. While the Revelations informed a new discourse on the Nativity and Incarnation, Birgitta’s Sermo Angelicus dealt with Mary’s active role in salvation and stresses the profound wisdom of her mind. In contrast to Savonarola, Mary is mother of wisdom, magistra apostolarum (Sermo, feria II, lectio I–II), and the Queen of Heaven seated next to God (Rev. I:29, 31).
Birgitta in Narducci’s Letters
Although Birgitta is not mentioned in Narducci’s Dialogo, she is quoted in a few passages of her correspondence, which includes 130 letters, written between 1505 and 1548.46 She also features in the closing of a vision that Narducci had in 1533, described in one of her lengthiest sermons addressed to Duchess Caterina Cibo Varano, that will be analysed in detail below. Let us briefly consider the passages from epistles LXXIV and LXXVII in which Birgitta appears, and that are addressed respectively to a woman, whose name is unknown, and the nuns of the monastery of “Sancta Brigida”, that is, the Paradiso convent at which Narducci received her first religious instruction.
In epistle LXXIV, Narducci gives a short hagiography of the saint, inviting the addressee whom she calls “Madonna” to look at Saint Birgitta as an exemplum of widowhood.47 After God decided to take away her “sposo terreno”, Birgitta reached a perfect balance between living an active life and living a contemplative life:
She lived and pursued an active and contemplative life, and [God] sent her to many places [lit. ‘castles’] to remind all people of His name. She was persecuted and mocked by many, but she did not care about it, as she was a truly obedient bride […]. Therefore my Mother, think of her and observe the rules of the order that she has left you.48
She then offers an exegesis of Birgitta’s destiny, thus comforting her reader whose condition grouped her with many women who decided to change their lives after the death of their husbands in the early Cinquecento. Narducci explains the intentions of God and the function of suffering. Through suffering, he wanted to demonstrate how things of the world are untrue and fallacious, and that everything is governed by his will. In the letter, Narducci then compares Birgitta’s experience with that of the reader, who had been “sottoposta” (subordinated to) her husband before taking Christ for her heavenly spouse. In epistle LXXVII, Narducci returns to the concept of what it means to live a life that is contemplative and active at the same time, and how the nuns can replicate Birgitta’s experience in the present.49 Narducci invites them to turn their heads toward the “bottle” of Christ and taste the wine of his blood. If they do this – she writes – they will be able to abandon their previous identities and forget, in Catherine of Siena’s terms, themselves in Christ (“che voi abbandoniate e dimentichiate voi medesime”).
In both cases, it is remarkable that Birgitta is used in order to demonstrate two concepts that were also linked to the authority of Narducci’s own voice.50 As we have seen, in letter LXXIV, Narducci uses the exemplum of Birgitta to affirm that in God a woman can reach full authority over herself. The addressee of the letter is said to have been tied (“legata”) to her earthly husband and she, because of this dependence, was not in charge of herself. In Narducci’s words, the reader can fully be “signora di voi” (“owner of herself”) only when widowed, and thus she can discover her true self in the essence of God like Birgitta did (“come fece la gloriosa Santa Brigida”). Secondly, in letter LXXVII, Birgitta is to be remembered as a supreme example because she was the first who tasted Christ’s blood from his cask, could forget herself and honour the Lord with her deeds and not only her words (“in fatti non in parole”). Nonetheless, in contrast to their spiritual mother who was chosen by God and experienced a different level of freedom of movement in her life, the nuns are asked to praise God within the convent walls with prayers and orations. They are to “run” towards her with their minds and hearts: “Noi siamo quelle che siamo in parole, perchè noi non facciamo l’opere; però madri mie correte dietro a lei” (“We are what we are in words, because we do not undertake works; but, my mothers, run toward her”).51
Narducci’s Sermon IX (25 August 1533)
According to the documents that tell of the relationship between Narducci and Cibo, Birgitta appears at least twice in her epistolary conversation with the Duchess, which continued from 1533 until 1542.52 In both cases, represented by a sermon Narducci wrote in 1533 and a letter from 1535, Birgitta is an example of widowhood, Christian virtue, and management.
The Duchess’ political concerns regarding the succession in her duchy, and her rivalry with the Church, paralleled her interest in the renewal needs of the Church and eventually led to her being accused of Protestantism by the Inquisition. Caterina Cibo’s husband, Giovanni Maria Duke of Camerino, died of the plague in August 1527, and thereafter Cibo proved to be a match for the several claimants to the ducal estate between 1527 and 1534. She repeatedly fought off the armed attacks on Camerino by neighbouring lords, and delayed her daughter’s marriage so she would not lose her inheritance rights.53 Giulia eventually married Guidobaldo della Rovere, the future Duke of Urbino, in 1534. Pope Paul III, who was against the union and an alliance that could have been dangerous for his temporal power, excommunicated Cibo, and Caterina was expelled from Camerino by a Papal decree of April 25 in 1534.54 The actual rule of Camerino itself was interdetto by the Pope on the 28th of March of 1535, and many of Narducci’s letters to the Pope, written on behalf of Caterina, were aimed at fostering reconciliation between the two.
Cibo’s relationship with the Franciscan friar Bernardino Ochino and the radical movement of the Capuchin Friars Minor, the autonomous branch of the first Franciscan Order, is an important factor in her life.55 Joining forces with Vittoria Colonna, she intervened with Pope Clement VII in favour of the Capuchin Reform in 1525. Colonna’s and Cibo’s protection rescued the Capuchins from being expelled from the Church and, ultimately, provided the order with a new location, the Monastery of Renacavata, three miles from Camerino. After the difficulties in her relationship with the Pope, once settled in Florence, the Duchess developed an intense relationship with Narducci and the Sienese preacher and, from 1534, General of the Capuchins, Ochino. Although Narducci and Ochino shared a common interest in the renovatio ecclesiae, their views on justification by faith and the role of human deeds in God’s plan for salvation were completely different, to the extent that Narducci warned the Duchess of the danger of her acquaintance with Ochino. After Cibo helped Ochino to escape to Geneva in 1542, Narducci sent one last letter to both, asking the Duchess and the friar to redeem themselves from Protestantism in the eyes of God.
Many years before the Duchess’s appearance in Ochino’s Seven Dialogues,56 she asked Narducci for a sermon, which was delivered on the 25th of August 1533. The introduction to the sermon provides its setting: it was delivered in the presence of the Duchess, along with Narducci’s sisters and confessors. The interests and needs of Caterina were well understood by Narducci, who appositely crafted the piece to look like a short political treatise on the education of a loyal and Christian ruler, strongly built upon a female genealogy of allegorical figures. Narducci embraces the role of magistra, just as Birgitta had for queens, knights, and sovereigns during her own life.57
As Narducci tells us, the vision that inspired the sermon was given to her by Mary, who sent a procession of ten queens to visit her during the night.58 This triumph or parade of “regine” is opened by three beautiful crowned women, followed by another five and finally by two others. Narducci says the final two stayed behind to give her “the sermon” and “the doctrine” Mary wished her to deliver (“venute a darmi il sermone e la dottrina ch’io volevo dire”). Having described the procession, Narducci unfolds the allegorical meaning of the vision and its characters. The ten queens are modelled on Mary of the Apocalypse, although they are also identified by specific attributes that make them recognisable. They are crowned with stars and gemstones, wearing beautiful vestments and shining with the Light of God. The first three present themselves to Narducci as Faith, Hope, and Charity, the three theological virtues. The next five queens are allegories of the five senses that, according to Christian psychology, needed to be tamed and spiritualised to serve God. The last two queens are historical characters: Saint Birgitta and her daughter Catherine of Sweden. Birgitta is described as an exemplary and virtuous lady, beautiful, aged about fifty or sixty years (“mirabile matrona, di statura bella e d’anni circa cinquanta o sexanta”) with a crucifix in her hands. Her vestment is made of golden flames (“fiamme d’oro”) and precious stones (“piena di pietre preziose”) with a dark cloak over it, embroidered with stars and glittering stones (“manto nero, pieno di stelle e pietre preziose”). Birgitta and Catherine are also said to be “soggolate”, meaning wearing the soggola, a veil to mark widowhood.
In the vision, Birgitta is the figure that interacts the most with Narducci and she gives a summary of her life to her, from having been a married and rich woman to taking Christ for her spouse.59 After lifting the crucifix, she stresses the contrast between past and present times: “Ero di stirpe nobile, ma le mia [sic] nobiltà terrene l’abandonai: le donai a chi me l’haveva date, dispensandole a’ poveri” (“I was of noble lineage, but I abandoned my earthly nobility: I gave it to those who had given it to me, dispensing it to the poor”). Although she was once a wealthy noblewoman, she chose Christ as her spouse, giving up her titles and luxuries to follow a Christian path. She took the souls of the world as her new family and educated her daughter Catherine, who would become Saint Catherine of Sweden, to be a bride, humble servant, and apostle of Christ.
After the vision the exegesis follows, and Narducci lectures on the queens she has encountered. The queens go hand-in-hand, in each group, because virtues and senses need one another to protect the fortress of the spirit. Birgitta is used as a point of comparison for exemplarity, and she is in glory because she has embraced those queens inside her (“aveva adornato queste regine in lei”). By doing this, her senses and will are perfectly aligned with God, in the same way that the Virgin accepted the divine call in the Annunciation. The vestment is also adorned by God’s “inspirations” (“ispirationi che Dio le aveva mandato”) and her black cloak, which shines because of its embroidered stars, alludes to her condition of widowhood which is sanctified by her following the star of God (“aveva santificato l’amanto vedovile”). The explicit references to the figurative attributes of Mary in the Apocalypse are set in front of a background blended with military allusions. After the death of her husband, Birgitta is said to have faced battles and persecution from both men and demons, but came through triumphant (“vittoriosa”). The military allusions seem to coalesce with the story by marking its different aspects and passages. In one of those, Narducci establishes a comparison between the different functions that captains, soldiers, and horses have in battle, and the simile is placed just before the vision of the five queens. She then exhorts her spiritual daughters to follow their leaders, and to learn from Birgitta who has followed her queens.60
In the concluding part of the sermon, Narducci finally explains the ultimate meaning of the figures of Birgitta and her daughter: Birgitta represents “reason” (“ragione”) that in Christian terms coincides with spiritual understanding, whereas her daughter Catherine represents the virtue of “constancy” (“perseveranza”). The sermon ends with a list of suggestions addressed to the Duchess to help her in life, including that she should live with reason and constancy both to avoid sensuality and temptations and also to be able to govern well and be a good mother. She has to act independently and follow her inner queens towards Christ. Like Birgitta, she needs to embrace fortitude (“stare forte”) and fight in the name of Jesus (“combattere per l’amor di Iesu Cristo”) who, like a captain, fortifies and gives new munitions to the spirit (“rinfresca e fortifica le regine”).
Overall, Narducci presented Birgitta to the Duchess as an exemplum of widowhood and motherhood, and a role model in spiritual, civic, and intellectual terms. Birgitta is depicted with recourse to the apocalyptic traits of Mary and, in Narducci’s vision, she is almost a contrafigura of Mary herself in spirit, behaviour, and fortitude. She has listened to God’s call, and she has been persecuted and won battles to finally reach eternal life. Birgitta is also a symbol of the renewed Church, as her mantle of stars shows, in the same way Mary’s cloak did in the Vision of the Tabernacle decades earlier. Being the last in the parade also has, from a theological and rhetorical point of view, an important meaning. Narducci explicitly gives to the regina Governatrice, the last of the queens, who represents the allegory of “reason” that closes the procession of the other spiritualised virtues in order to lead from behind. In light of Joachim of Flore’s conception of nearness, by appearing at the end of the procession, Birgitta with her daughter becomes the living proof of the third age of the Spirit as being “the last” means to give substantia and knowledge of what has happened before. In a word, she is reason: logos.61
By applying Marian apocalyptic elements to historical figures, Narducci represents the saint as the supreme tabernacle of military and intellectual virtues or, in other words, her ideological leader. This is an example that continues the assimilation of insights by Birgitta more than a century before on the relationships among reason, justice, and Christian faith: these are aspects and concerns that cannot be separated from one another in Birgitta’s development and thought. Her Mariology was conceived with strongly political aspects, and this scheme continues in the lesson from Narducci: they were both political visionaries sanctioned as such by their superiors. In this way, Cibo and her daughter are invited to take part in this parade, or lineage, of allegorical and historical queens and link their personal dimension to the universality of history.
Conclusion
The relationship between Mariology and politics has a long history that still needs to be fully understood in relation to female writing, particularly that taking the thought of Birgitta of Sweden as its point of departure. In recent decades, scholars have contributed, in different ways, to reconstructing the contribution of women to theology, whose exegeses “appear to be pursued with a different focus from men authors”.62 The apocalyptic culture of the late Quattrocento developedd during a time particularly favourable to women, who were the central players, at least until the first half of the 16th century, in a reformation in capite and in membris of the Church, involving the entire hierarchy, from the Vicar of Christ to His last son and daughter. Having recovered these texts, it appears that they share similar lines of enquiry and focus on the recurrent symbol of the figure of Mary, whether stressing her Immaculate Conception or her Apocalyptic courage, to catalyse their support for a reform that takes into account the role of women in society. As we have seen with Narducci, the gendering of the prophetic word through the use of elements from Marian apocalypticism to characterise historical or allegorical figures allows women to take center stage. In the same way, we can look at the modalities of eschatology in other women authors of religious literary texts highlighting their legacy and influence on each other, and their use of gender to convey eschatological meaning. This is significant for the history of knowledge at a time when women were constructing new paradigms of knowledge for themselves through a deep consideration, and reconstruction, of a female lineage of intellectual leadership.
Jessica A. Boon and Erick Knibbs, “Introduction,” in The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality, ed. Eric Knibbs, Jessica A. Boon and Erica Gelser (Cham: 2019), 1–14 (2).
In the Introduction of The End of the World, the editors point out that “no edited collection to our knowledge brings gender as a lens to bear on the texts and contents of the apocalyptic” or “take a female author as their primary topic” (see Boon and Knibbs, “Introduction,” 4). The only essay that has approached the topic so far, from a theoretical point of view that distinguishes eschatological and apocalyptical visions by women from those by men, is Alessandra Bartolomei Romagnoli, “Profetismo femminile ed escatologia,” in Attese escatologiche dei se-coli XII–XIV dall’età dello Spirito al “Pasto Angelicus”. Atti del convegno l’Aquila 11–12 settembre 2003, ed. Edith Pásztor (Deputazione Abruzzese di Storia Patria: 2003), 127–62. The topic has only recently begun to be addressed by scholars, as exemplified by the essays in the chapter “Part I: Gendering the Apocalypse,”’ in The End of the World, 17–69 to which the reader is referred for an up-to-date bibliography. It is striking that there is not one woman author mentioned as having contributed to apocalyptic literature in the core text by Bernard McGinn, Visions of The End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: 1998 [2nd ed.]).
The expression is from Tamar Herzig, Savonarola’s Women: Visions and Reform in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: 2008).
Richard Landes, “Eschatology,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica, January 22 (2016), https://www.britannica.com/topic/eschatology.
McGinn, “Preface,” in Visions of The End, xiv.
Jessica A. Boon, “The Marian Apocalyptic of a Visionary Preacher: The Conorte of Juana de la Cruz, 1481–1534,” in The End of the World, 41–68 (60–61).
On Domenica Narducci’s life, see Gerardo Antignani, Vicende e tempi di suor Domenica da Paradiso (Siena: 1983); Adriana Valerio, Domenica da Paradiso. Profezia e politica in una mistica del Rinascimento (Spoleto: 1992); Isabella Gagliardi, Sola con Dio: La missione di Domenica da Paradiso nella Firenze del Primo Cinquecento (Florence: 2007). See also Meghan Callahan, “Suor Domenica da Paradiso as ‘alter Christus’: Portraits of a Renaissance Mystic,” Sixteenth Century Journal XLIII/2 (2012), 323–50.
Sanctity and Female Authorship: Birgitta of Sweden & Catherine of Siena, ed. Maria H. Oen and Unn Falkeid (New York, London: 2020). See also Gabriella Zarri, Le sante vive. Cultura e religiosità femminile nella prima età moderna (Turin: 1990), 104; Peter Dinzelbacher, “L’azione politica delle mistiche nella chiesa e nello stato: Ildegarda, Brigida e Caterina,” in Movimento religioso e mistica femminile nel Medioevo, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher and Dietger R. Bauer (Milan: 1993), 269–337; Adriana Valerio, “Donne nel Medioevo,” in Le donne e la riforma della Chiesa, ed. Cettina Militello and Serena Noceti (Bologna: 2017), 97–107; Anna Scattigno, “Caterina da Siena nella vocazione religiosa femminile tra Quattro e Cinquecento,” Segni e Comprensione 94 (2018), 90–107.
Thomas F. Luongo, The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena (London, Ithaca: 2006), 58.
Jane Tylus, “Mystical Literacy: Writing and Religious Women in Late Medieval Italy,” in A Companion to Catherine of Siena, ed. Carolyn Muessig, George Ferzoco and Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Leiden: 2012), 178–79.
Maria H. Owen, Unn Falkeid, “Introduction,” in Sanctity and Female Authorship, 7; Thomas F. Luongo, “Birgitta and Catherine and Their Textual Communities,” in Sanctity and Female Authorship, 14–34.
Cit. in Scattigno, “Caterina da Siena nella storia,” 106.
Unn Falkeid, “Constructing Female Authority. Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, and the Two Marys,” in Sanctity and Female Authorship, 53–73 (55–57).
Falkeid, “Constructing Female Authority,” 57.
Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy, ed. Meneghin Alessia, Marco Faini, and Corry Maya (Leiden: 2018). See also Adriana Valerio, “Premessa. Donne e riforme nella Chiesa al tempo di Lutero,” in Bibbia, donne, profezia. A partire dalla Riforma, ed. Letizia Tommasone and Adriana Valerio (Florence: 2018), 5–17 (7).
Bernard McGinn, “Savonarola and Late Medieval Italian Apocalypticism,” in Visions of the End, 277–83 (277).
See Carlo Dionisotti, Aldo Manuzio umanista e editore (Milan: 1995), xxxviii–xxxix. Henri D. Saffrey, “Les images populaires des saints Dominicains à Venise au XVe siecle et l’édition par Alde Manuce des ‘Epistole’ de sainte Catherine de Sienne,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 25 (1982), 241–312.
Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (London and New York: 1999), 100–105.
Adriana Valerio, “Verso Savonarola: Profezia e Politica in Brigida di Svezia,” in Verso Savonarola. Misticismo, profezia, empiti riformistici fra Medioevo ed Età Moderna, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini and Giuseppe Picone (Florence: 1999), 25–34. Michele Camaioni, Il Vangelo e l’Anticristo. Bernardino Ochino tra francescanesimo ed eresia (1487–1547) (Turin: 2019), 48.
On Savonarola, see Herzig, Savonarola’s Women, 22. On Luther see Barbara Obrist, “The Swedish Visionary: Saint Bridget,” in Medieval Women Writers, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens, Georgia: 1984), 227–51 (236).
Birgitta Fritz, “The History and Spiritual Life of Vadstena Abbey,” in A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden, 132–58.
Adriano Prosperi, “Dalle ‘divine madri’ ai ‘padri spirituali’,” in Women and Men in Spiritual Culture, XIV–XVII centuries. A meeting of South and North, ed. Elisja Schulte van Kessel (The Hague: 1986), 71–90; Bartolomei Romagnoli, “Profetismo femminile ed escatologia,” 149.
Gagliardi, Sola con Dio, 192.
Thomas H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphi: 1996), 197.
Birgitta met Niccolò Acciaioli, who was chief minister of the Kingdom of Naples, thanks to the mediation of lady Lapa Buondelmonti (A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden, 225). Along with the Acciaioli family in Naples, Birgitta’s cult was also popular among the Florentine leading families of the Medici, the Alberti, the Buondelmonti, and the Soderini. On this, see Anthony Butkovich, Revelations: Saint Birgitta of Sweden (Los Angeles: 1972), 86.
I sermoni di Domenica da Paradiso. Studi e testo critico, ed. Rita Librandi and Adriana Valerio (Florence: 1999) xxxvii, lxxxvi–xciii. Gagliardi, Sola con Dio, 155.
I sermoni di Domenica da Paradiso, xxxv.
Antonio di Niccolò di Jacopo degli Alberti obtained papal permission in 1392, one year after the canonization of the saint, to found and endow the extensive monastery dedicated to Birgitta in the Pian di Ripoli, known as “del Paradiso” after the nearby family villa of that name. The monastery is intimately linked to the political events that shaped the Alberti family: the first group of nuns had to abandon the premises, and the property was confiscated, after Niccolo’s exile in 1401. See also Luigi Passerini, Gli Alberti di Firenze. Genealogia, storia e documenti, 2 vols. (Florence: 1869), 2: 199–218; Patricia Lee Rubin, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-century Florence (New Haven and London: 2007), 19.
Daniele Rapino, Il Paradiso degli Alberti. Storia e recupero del monastero della Vergine e di Santa Brigida (Florence: 2014). For the manuscript culture that characterises the monastery, see Rosanna Miriello, I manoscritti del Monastero del Paradiso di Firenze (Florence: 2007) and for the circulation of apocryphal works by Bridget, see Brian Richardson’s chapter in this volume.
The episode is reported and described in Ignazio Del Nente, Vita e costumi ed intelligenze spirituali della venerabil madre suor Domenica del Paradiso […], 2 vols (Venice: 1662), 1: 88–89.
Adriana Valerio, “Le lettere di Domenica da Paradiso tra Bibbia e Profezia,” Hagiographica 6 (1999), 235–56 (237). In particular, see Epistle CXXVI. The epistles are available in a critical edition edited by Gerardo Antignani, Domenica da Paradiso. Scritti spirituali, 2 vols (Poggibonsi: 1984–1985), 1: 91–254.
Valerio, “Le lettere,” 246.
For the single editions of Narducci’s works see I sermoni di Domenica da Paradiso, ed. Librandi and Valerio; and Rosa Piro, Le ‘substantiae’ dei sermoni e delle visioni di Domenica Narducci da Paradiso (Florence: 2004). Her Dialogue is edited by Rita Librandi and Adriana Valerio, “Il Dialogo di Domenica da Paradiso,” Archivio per la storia delle donne, I (2004), 55–144. For a detailed list of Narducci’s published and still unpublished texts, with reference to the corresponding manuscript tradition, see Rosa Piro, “I testi inediti e le metafore di Domenica da Paradiso,” Chroniques italiennes 27.1 (2014), 17–48 (21–27).
Falkeid, “Constructing Female Authority,” 59–62.
On Birgitta’s political discourse and the characteristics of the ideal Christian king see particularly, along with its bibliography, Unn Falkeid, “The Political Discourse of Birgitta of Sweden,” in A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden, 80–102.
Cit. Falkeid, “Constructing Female Authority,” 60.
Donald Weinstein, Savonarola: the Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet (New Haven and London: 2011), 152.
Boon, “The Marian Apocalyptic,” 60.
According to the reconstruction of the monastery’s library, there were some works by Savonarola, among which were the Compendio di Rivelazione, the Prediche sopra Ezechiele, the treatise De Simplicitate Christianae Vitae and the Triumphus Crucis. Valerio, Domenica da Paradiso, 5–10.
Weinstein, Savonarola: the Rise and Fall, 153.
Savonarola then concludes that “sta bene alla donna stare cheta: & non stare sempre a cicalare” (“it is good for the woman to be quiet: & not always to chat”). Herzig, Savonarola’s Women, 351. The fact that Narducci, on the contrary, was called “madre cicala” could be seen as another open challenge to Savonarola’s remark.
Del Nente, Vita e costumi e intelligenze spirituali, 1:16–17.
The Vision of the Tabernacle is transcribed in Antignani, Scritti Spirituali, 2: 199–252 from which the quotations are taken. On this particular vision see Librandi, I Sermoni, cxxvi–cxxviii; Gagliardi, Sola con Dio, 104–20; Piro, Testi inediti e metafore, 28–30.
“La mia gloriosa Madre insegnerà Lei a questo nuovo pastore et di continuo ne averà diligente cura et lo difenderà con il manto della mia grazia et di lui sempre averà custodia, perché questa santa renovatione sarà tutta opera sua” (“My glorious Mother will teach this new shepherd and will continually take care of him and will defend him with the mantle of my grace and will always have custody of him, because this holy renovation will be all his work”). Antignani, Scritti Spirituali, 2: 236. Translation and emphasis are mine.
On this episode see Gagliardi, Sola con Dio, 105. On the symbolism around milk and blood related to the Virgin, see Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq, “Le Lait et le Sang de la Vierge,” in Le Sang au Moyen Âge: Actes du Quatrième International de Montpellier Université Paul-Valéry (27–29 novembre 1997), ed. Marcel Faure (Montpellier: 1999), 145–62. See also Elisabetta Lurgo, La beata Caterina Racconigi fra santità e stregoneria. Carisma profetico e autorità istituzionale nella prima età moderna (Florence: 2013), 232–33, 252–53.
Valerio, Le lettere di Domenica, 238.
Antignani, Scritti spirituali, 2: 180–82 (181).
“Rimase nella vita attiva e nella contemplativa ed ella attendeva all’una e all’altra, mandavala per li castelli a ricordare il nome suo ed ella da molte persone era perseguitata, schernita e beffata di nulla non si curava, era veramente sposa obbediente […]. Però Madre mia considerate un poco a lei e osservate l’ordine che ella vi ha lasciato” (translation and emphasis are mine).
Antignani, Scritti spirituali, 2: 183–87 (184).
In 1507, Narducci defended women’s right to preach in Italy with a close and contextual reading of Paul’s words to the Corinthians (“Mulieres in ecclesia taceant”, 1 Cor: 14:34). See Adriana Valerio, “‘Et io espongo le Scritture’: Domenica da Paradiso e l’interpretazione biblica. Un documento inedito nella crisi del rinascimento fiorentino,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 26 (1994), 499–534.
The way that she illustrates her point uses the terminology of Catherine of Siena and her philosophy of the self. The willing surrender of self that follows the taste of Christ’s blood, the true nourishment, is in fact a central theme in Catherine of Siena. Catherine’s philosophy is, however, applied here to read the figure of Birgitta, thus creating a blend of images, exempla, and philosophical traditions.
The relationship between Domenica Narducci and Caterina Cibo is documented in seven letters and two sermons that Narducci addressed to the Duchess. See Adriana Valerio, “Caterina Cibo e la spiritualità Savonaroliana attraverso il magistero profetico di Domenica da Paradiso,” in Munera Parva. Studi in onore di Boris Ulianich, ed. Gennaro Luongo (Naples: 1999) 141–54, see in particular 147 (n. 14).
On Caterina Cibo see Franca Petrucci, “Cibo, Caterina,” in DBI, vol. 25 (1981), 238–40; Pierluigi Moriconi (ed.), Caterina Cybo, duchessa di Camerino (1501–1557): Atti del convegno, Camerino, Auditorium di S. Caterina, 28–30 ottobre 2004 (Camerino: 2005); Diana Robin, Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago and London: 2007), 162–68.
Maria Teresa Guerra Medici, Famiglia e potere in una signoria dell’Italia centrale: I Varano di Camerino (Camerino: 2002), 63.
This certainly continues the religious interest in moral reformation that characterized her family lineage. She was the sister-in-law of writer, mystic and reformer Camilla Battista da Varano, a Poor Clare nun and author of two autobiographical treatises, religious manuals and the mystical treatise I Dolori mentali of 1488. The mystic, who died in 1513, combined the profile of a writer with that of being a leading guide of the monastery of Santa Maria Nuova in Camerino. On the relationship between the two, see Gabriella Zarri, “Caterina Cibo duchessa di Camerino,” in Donne di potere nel Rinascimento, ed. Letizia Arcangeli and Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi (Rome: 2008), 575–93 (579–80). On Camilla Battista Varano see the recent edited volume by Pietro Messa and Massimo Reschiglian, Un desi-derio senza misura. La santa Camilla Battista da Varano e i suoi scritti (Assisi: 2010).
The Dialogues contain conversations that Ochino had with Caterina Cibo in 1538 and were completed in 1542, although circulating in manuscript form long before their appearance in print. Janet Levarie Smarr, Joining the Conversation: Dialogues by Renaissance Women (Ann Arbor: 2005), 44–51 (45).
Birgitta was maestra at the court of Magnus II in 1335 and, thereafter, at that of Giovanna of Aragona in Naples between 1365 and 1367.
The sermon can be read in Librandi and Valerio, I sermoni di Domenica da Paradiso, 127–41. English translations are mine unless otherwise stated.
“Sappia ch’io son santa Brigida, la quale rimasi vedova de lo sposo material e terreno. Innanzi ch’io rimanessi vedova, io ero maritata, che havevo tolto lo sposo celeste et havevolo sempre meco” (“Know that I am Saint Birgitta, who was widowed of her material and earthly bridegroom. Before I was left a widow, I was married, I excluded the celestial spouse but always had Him with me”). I sermoni, 129.
In another passage, the soul is described as a fortified city, and by referring to the image of the city (the “strettoio” and the “torchio”) Narducci freely blends apocalyptic images from different semantic contexts.
In the Middle Ages, apocalyptic thought had been shaped by Joachim of Fiore’s (1135– 1202) eschatological reading of history, according to which it develops over three ages of increasing spirituality, as shown both in the figures of the Old and New Testament and the structure of the Bible.
Boon and Knibbs, “Introduction,” in The End of the World, 4.