Tag Archives: Council of Trent

The Other Sister Research Seminar: Identities on the Italian Peninsula

by Joseph George Akl

On September 29th, 2023, The Other Sister research group held a seminar on the topic of varieties of religious life on the Italian peninsula. Four invited speakers presented some of their work on the subject, which had been circulated to all 44 participants prior to the online meeting:

  • Mary Harvey Doyno, “Roman Women: Female Religious, the Papacy, and a Growing Dominican Order,” Speculum 97, no. 4 (2022): 1040–72.
  • Thomas Luongo, “Catherine of Siena’s Advice to Religious Women,” Specula 3 (2022): 99–124.
  • Ashley Tickle Odebiyi, “Betwixt and Between: The Formation of Non-Cloistered Religious Women’s Identities in Rome, 1400-1600,” 2–31. This unpublished chapter is from an upcoming monograph.
  • Thérèse Peeters, “To Overcome Distrust: Three Religious Initiatives by Genoese Women,” in Trust in the Catholic Reformation, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 231 (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 182–229.
    • The introduction from this publication (pages 1-36) was also circulated for additional context.

Each paper focused on the question of identity using the Italian peninsula as a case study. As is often the case with non-cloistered religious women, the issue around nomenclature was central. However, the aim of the discussion was not to box-in (or, in a manner, cloister!) these women, but to uncover their multifold identities and find non-cloistered religious women in sources where they have been overlooked.

Mary Harvey Doyno, associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Religious Studies at Sacramento State University, centered her discussion on the growth of the universal convent of San Sisto envisioned by Pope Innocent III and achieved by Honorius III (with the help of Dominic of Caleruega). She argued that, by considering Cecilia of Rome’s Miracula beati Dominici alongside the extant charter evidence from Santa Maria in Tempuli, she was able to give more visibility to Roman women religious and Dominicans, albeit one that was tied to the attempt to cloister all of Rome’s women religious.

Thomas Luongo, associate professor of history and the director of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Tulane University, focused his short presentation on the loaded question of Catherine of Siena’s identity as a woman religious. He asked what Catherine’s conception of her life and vocation was, and if we can even speak of a formal vocation when discussing Catherine’s identity – one that is completely idiosyncratic. Lunogo argued that Raymond of Capua’s life of Catherine positions her as following the Dominican order, even suggesting her as a friar, an identity that fits into Catherine’s advice of claustration to some women while never cloistering herself. Catherine’s lifestyle was an impossible one and Luongo added that if we try to make it work, pushing Catherine into the box of laity or of religious life, we ignore the tension at play.

Next, Ashley Tickle Odebiyi, assistant professor of history at Arizona State University, focused her discussion on the bizzoche of Rome and how, though each bizzoche house was associated with a different order, such as the Benedictines, Franciscans, or Dominicans, these women had networks and identities that crossed the borders of the male orders. Despite the limited extant documentation for some of these houses, Odebiyi has found commonalities between the Roman bizzoche in their clothing, affective piety, and service to the poor – a lens she believes is important to apply to the study of non-cloistered religious women in general, drawing on similarities between beguines, beatas, bizzoche and others.

Finally, Thérèse Peeters, author of Trust in the Catholic Reformation, asked what role did trust play in the post-Tridentine Church in general, a period characterised by distrust, especially of female religious. This distrust was exemplified by Genoa’s seventeenth-century magistrato delle monache which supervised and controlled female religious life in the city. Peeters examined three religious groups, the Turchine, Medee, and Brignoline, that, despite this climate, arose during the period in Genoa. She discussed the interplay between trust and freedom, with the freedom of choice, spirituality and movement increasing the women’s view of the trustworthiness of their own religious project, while similarly increasing the distrust of those whose support they needed. Peeters found that a higher level of trust was necessary for the women religious who acted publicly, while lower levels of trust were needed for religious groups who kept a lower profile.

The discussion began with Alison More asking about the interplay between identity and order. Mary Harvey Doyno answered that she is trying to understand this very thing. San Sisto is associated with the Dominican Order but it is clear that the friars did not think of it as theirs, at least not in the modern understanding of affiliation. At opportune times the friars point to San Sisto as an example of women in their order, but the relationship is never fully clear. Thomas Luongo also answered saying that, of course, Raymond of Capua did not wish to make Catherine a friar, this is impossible, but just as Mary Magdalene was a model for some, Catherine was made into a model for the friars. Luongo wished to underscore the difficulty (or the missing-the-point) of trying to clarify identities with labels.

Adrian Kammerer next asked two questions. First, he wanted more information on Amata from Cecilia’s Miracula who had spirits expelled from her by Dominic of Caleruega, as she does not seem to be cloistered even later in the writings. Second, he wondered if the charters from Santa Maria in Tempuli discussed by Doyno complicated not only the distinction between nuns and other sisters, but also the one between conversae and other sisters. Doyno answered that though she wished she had more information on Amata, it is not clear what becomes of her from the documentation. As for the second statement, she agreed that this understanding can be broadened to include semi-religious women, and how she was interested by the abbesses’ attempts to nod to a larger community of women, outside of the smaller community of nuns. The fact that this larger community was involved in guarding the convent’s patrimony is understood by Doyno as a red flag for Innocent III or Honorius III, aiding the idea of a universal convent.

Maiju Lehmijoki Wetzel asked if it was too radical to assert that the Dominican Order did not exist before women were involved. Doyno answered that, though radical, the statement identifies that the institution, and therefore perhaps the identity, is formed around a process of including everybody but giving women a clear, contained space. Luongo specified that even during Catherine of Siena’s life, the identity of the order was still being articulated. There is a clarity organisationally for men that does not exist for women. It is this lack of organisation for the women that brings these questions. However, Luongo added that if one digs deeper, there is a variety in the friars’ identities as well, which could also bring a (diverse) range of issues.

Michèle Mulchahey stated that in the discussion on the tension between the cura monialium and mendicancy, scholarship focuses on the friars’ relationships with women, but, with women being cloistered, there were also the problems linked with property and ownership. Would this not be a real stumbling block to including women into the order? Doyno agreed but added that in her reading of the situation, the convent of San Sisto really remained under the control of the papacy, who had asked Dominic for assistance. So there were no real issue of the properties of women creating a problem with the friars’ mendicancy during the thirteenth century. Luongo wondered if, by Catherine’s time, there is a sense that this concern has folded into the situation concerning the Dominican Reform. He added that it is often forgotten that during Catherine life there was a female Dominican community in Sienna that interacted with Catherine and the mantellate.

Sioban Nelson asked Doyno to explain her comment that the Church needed this universal convent to grow. Doyno responded that though there was a resource element to this need, Innocent III had the idea to create a Church for the entirety of Christendom and to be able to articulate authority in this way. This amorphous growth is what she conceptualised when stating that this was needed for the Church to grow.

Carla Thomas asked if we should think of Catherine having a vocation in her time or are we projecting a modern notion onto her when saying this. Dr. Luongo suggested that “vocation” is probably a term we are using with a modern sense and that it is not entirely applicable.

Isabelle Cochelin asked if these women were allowed to choose their confessors or spiritual advisors. Peeters answered that the smaller of the three female groups in Genoa, the Medee, had this choice and they often picked the Jesuits. The cloistered women in Genoa had this decision made for them. Odebiyi gave the example of Santa Francesca who chose two confessors in her life, neither one coming from the Benedictines of Mount Olivet with whom her house of bizzoche was affiliated. Doyno was unsure and said that the sources seem to suggest that Dominic was selected for the women rather than the other way around. Luongo answered that even though Catherine made everything seem like a choice, the choice of confessor was made for her. However, she had a close relationship to Raymond of Capua, who berated Catherine’s early confessors in his work.

Michael Hahn enquired as to when the term “Dominican” is first used as well as asking if we are perhaps imposing a modern identity onto the period when using the terms “Dominican” or “Franciscan” to speak of the orders. Doyno answered that the appellation “Order of Preachers” was used during Innocent III’s reign and that Amanda Power has dealt with this historiographical issue for the Franciscans. She answered that thinking about the historical narrative being fabricated when we connect these non-cloistered religious women to the mendicant orders is important, as Alison More has written, but this fabricated narrative also gives us the false sense that there is a coherent identity for the mendicants earlier than there was. Odebiyi added that her sources use the terms Third Order of Saint Francis and then pinzochere in the same documents, which complicates the understanding of these women’s identity. This is why she has opted to simply use the term bizzoche instead of tertiaries. Michèle Mulchahey added that the earliest use of the term ordo in relation to the Dominicans was to designate their propositum and refered to their preaching.

Delfi Nieto-Isabel summarised the major themes of this meeting’s discussion asking if we are boxing in the non-cloistered religious women when trying to categorise them and impose identities onto them. She asked if this was a heritage handed down to us by the Church authorities of the period and if, ultimately, these are useless categories, even when thinking across the north-south European border. Doyno agreed and brought to light the fact that this confusion does not happen with male groups, and Odebiyi added that this categorisation comes from the sources, which can obscure real commonalities between groups. Peeters specified that for the women she studied, categorisation depends on the type of project the women were trying to set up. Sometimes a fluid identity can serve a group. Luongo added that not all had access to Latin, through which many ideas were spread, which can lead to some of the regional divides

Consecration and Conversion between Rite and Symbol: an English Summary of an article by Gabriella Zarri

 

Gabriella Bruni Zarri, “Consacrazione e conversione tra rito e simbolo,” in Vestizioni: Codici normativi e pratiche religiosae, ed. Sofia Boesch Gajano and Francesca Sbardella (Rome: Viella Libreria editrice, 2021), p. 13-36.

Summarized in English by Mary Maschio

When a young woman entered a convent in Early Modern Italy, her vocation was symbolised by the acceptance of monastic dress, including the veil, but also by the rejection of secular clothes. Zarri’s bipartite study focuses first on dressing, the accoutrements received by girls as they entered the nunnery, and then on undressing, the discarding of the clothes and jewels associated with a certain social status in order to signal an abhorrence of worldly vanity. These two acts were associated respectively with St Catherine of Alexandria (fig. 1) and St Mary Magdalene (fig. 2 of the article).

  1. Mystical marriage of Saint Catherine. Bologna, Fototeca Zeri. Anonymous Ferrarese of the sixteenth century.

The first part of the article discusses the clothing and objects given to a novice as she entered the monastery for the first time and then, more briefly, the corresponding items of dress that were conferred when a nun made her permanent vows and the variations in clothing between convents. Whilst the rite of consecration was inspired by ancient marriage ceremonies, the ceremony of dressing and the entry of the novice into the convent were more closely modelled on baptism. Each item and piece of clothing represented an aspect of the spiritual journey that the postulant was undertaking. In some rituals, we find a crown of thorns. An anonymous Lombard painting from the first half of the sixteenth century, probably commissioned to commemorate a novice’s entry into a convent, follows the model of St Catherine and the Child Jesus, but the ring is replaced with a crown of thorns (fig. 3 of the article). The words to which the Child Jesus points are also found in the Dominican rite of dressing from Genova (fig. 4 of the article).

A document from the second of half of the sixteenth century describing the ritual as it took place in the Augustinian convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Bologna is particularly interesting for the level of detail it includes about the ceremony of dressing. Following the council of Trent, the process for entering a nunnery became far more rigorous: a postulant would spend a year at the monastery, followed by a month-and-a-half at home. During this period, she was expected to dress modestly and refrain from partaking in worldly pleasures. If accepted as a novice, she would be sent a small crown of thorns and a copy of the rule of St Augustine. In contrast to the grand processions of the preceding century, it was stipulated that the entry to the convent should not resemble a marriage procession. The girl should arrive simply, accompanied only by her family. Mass was celebrated in the exterior chapel, followed by the ceremony of dressing. The priest blessed each item in turn: first the girdle, the chain of perfection, then the veil, the sign of humility and submission to the lord. The novice’s hair was then cut. The collar and wimple followed. The dressing proper then commenced: she removed her secular clothes, the priest dressed her in a black habit, to remind her of Christ’s suffering, girded by a sash to guard against the temptations of the flesh, a scapular as a shield against adversity, a white veil, a sign of continence and purity, and finally a crown of thorns, for Christ. She was handed a cross to signify her rejection of the world and a candle. The last step was the bestowal of a new name. Unusually, in this convent it was the celebrant rather than the girl herself who chose this name. After a final blessing, she was led to the grille to greet her family and friends. These celebratory meetings could continue for up to three days, during which time the girl often received precious objects or artworks to commemorate the ceremony.

The common practice of demanding a dowry for novices meant that entry into convents was usually restricted to girls from wealthier families and that institutions became linked to specific important households within a city. Ceremonies of dressing therefore varied between convents. The portrait of Caterina de’ Pazzi made before her entrance into the convent depicts her in secular clothes (fig. 5 of the article), indicating a desire to preserve her worldly and familial identity even as she supposedly renounced them upon entry into religious life.

In all convents, the rite of profession was shorter than that for entry as a novice. The most important of these was the black veil, but there is no mention of the ring that is commonly found in other rites of profession. Afterwards, the sister was once again permitted to meet family and friends at the grille for three days.

In all convents, nuns were given two types of clothing: one set for work and private prayer, and another for prayer in the chapel. Nuns’ habits also reflected the varying economic fortunes of their convents and differed between rural and urban institutions. The convent of San Giovanni Battista di Bologna, a wealthy Dominican foundation, included detailed descriptions of rather luxurious clothes in its rule. This document confirms that nuns’ habits did follow contemporary fashions to some degree, that there were different clothes for novices and fully professed sisters, and that exceptions could be made in the case of illness or other pressing circumstances. Another document from a Bolognese convent, that of San Ludovico e Alessio, testifies to the personal goods a nun had in her cell.

The second part of the article looks at the rejection of secular clothes. This normally marked entry into a convent but was also relevant in a number of other situations. It is no coincidence that this practice went hand in hand with the increasing popularity of the cult of St Mary Magdalene and the rising number of convents for reformed prostitutes at the end of the fifteenth century. Wealthy women would also signal their conversion to a more spiritual life by their rejection of luxurious clothes. The most famous case is that of Vittoria Colonna, who became a contemplative in her widowhood. At the urging of numerous preachers, many women abandoned their finery without necessarily entering convents. This practice was encouraged by written texts and images, as well as by preaching. A translation of a sermon by Pedro Chavez from 1561 on the conversion of St Mary Magdalene describes her casting off her fine clothes. A visual representation of such a scene is found in the altarpiece designed by the Bolognese painter Francesco Cavazzoni for the parish church of St Mary Magdalene in Strada San Donato in 1582 (fig. 6 & 7).

  1. Francesco Cavazzoni, Preaching of Christ to the Magdalene, 1582. Bologna, Parish Church of Santa Maria Maddalena, High Altar.
1580, chiesa priorale e parr. Maddalena Bologna
  1. Detail from Francesco Cavazzoni, Preaching of Christ to the Magdalene, 1582. Bologna, Parish Church of Santa Maria Maddalena, High Altar.

A possible inspiration for this painting is that by the Milanese artist Gaudenzio Ferrari in San Cristoforo di Vercelli, from around 1530. A later example by a Brescian painter, perhaps Francesco Ricchino or perhaps Agostino Galeazzi, was created in the context of the growing popularity of the Compagnia di Sant’ Orsola which included many charitable matrons. The position of Cavazzoni’s painting, above the main altar of an urban parish church, ensured that the message was widely transmitted in Bologna. The Franciscan Antonio Pagani was particularly interested in women’s spiritual life and frequently used St Mary Magdalene as an example. In response to the spiritual needs of the day, he championed the idea of secular women living in community, not bound by vows but subject to a rule. Entrance into this community was made not by a liturgical rite, but by the rejection of fine clothes as a mark of distinction from other women.

Zarri’s consideration of dressing and undressing highlights the importance of clothing in the construction of religious identity in Early Modern Italy. The examples from written and visual sources highlight the symbolism imbued in the clothes and objects given to novices and newly professed nuns, but also reveal the concessions to practicality, and even to fashion. This acceptance of religious dress had its counterpart in the rejection of secular and luxurious clothes, which came in itself to signify the adoption of a more devout life in lay women’s communities (fig. 8).

 

  1. Mulier dicta DIMESSA. Filippo Bonanni, Ordinum religiosorum in ecclesia militanti catalogus eorumque indumenta in iconibus expressa et oblata, 1738.