Tag Archives: Franciscan(s)

Jeanne-Marie de Maillé

The Other Sister Research Group met on May 16th, 2025, to discuss the noblewoman Jeanne-Marie de Maillé who, after a chaste marriage, lived an intriguing religious life in widowhood, never entering a religious order. Her vita and canonization inquest are currently being compiled, translated, and commented on by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Bruce Venarde, and Edmund (Ed) van der Molen for their forthcoming volume, Jeanne-Marie de Maillé (1331-1414): Searching for Sainthood in Late Medieval France.

The circulated readings included the introduction and four chapters, one with an extract from the vita, “Chapter 3: A Pious Young Widow in the City,” and the others with extracts from the inquest: “Chapter 13: The Articles of Interrogation” “Chapter 20: The Testimony of Pierre des Aubuis,” and “Chapter 25: The Testimony of Jeanne la Carrée.” Each extract is followed by a commentary.

Renate started the presentations by explaining how she came across Jeanne-Marie while working on the political visions of other medieval women religious, such as Constance de Rabastens, and thanks to the work of André Vauchez: Jeanne-Marie had had a vision about the papal schism. Renate then suggested to Bruce that they work together on her vita by the Franciscan Martin of Boisgaultier and her inquest. After they started their collaboration, they came across Ed’s name, through A.J. Langley’s podcast “My Favorite Mystic,” as someone also working on Jeanne-Marie; they contacted him and all three decided to work together. The group’s three-part collaboration functions through a tripartite division of the vita and inquest texts. Each translates their sections of the primary sources and writes commentaries for them, but also comments on the others’ translations and commentaries with a colour-coded schema. They are in the later stages of the process, and Renate noted that their work on the texts has already begun to establish multiple additional projects, such as her current work on Jacques II de Bourbon (d. 1438), Comte de La Marche, who possibly sponsored Jeanne-Marie’s canonization inquest. Bruce added that their chosen structure for the book, which incorporates a commentary at the end of each chapter, has been influenced by the example of the recent publication A Female Apostle in Medieval Italy: The Life of Clare of Rimini, by Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field, and Valerio Cappozzo (2023).

Ed, the second speaker, explained that he discovered Jeanne-Marie through his doctoral research on the construction of saints’ identities. He is especially interested in exploring the disagreements that could develop over what kind of saints could emerge from canonization processes. His initial fascination with Jeanne-Marie was due to her liminal position between religious and lay. He considers the texts of the vita and the inquest to represent the first stages of saint-making, and, using the methodology of value theory, he emphasizes the differences in values that are apparent among the different proponents of Jeanne-Marie’s canonization. The initial stages of the canonization process invited people to negotiate, transform, and appropriate value of different kinds, encouraged the exercise of social creativity, and defined the values of the community. In general, Ed said, during the development of a saint’s cult, community consensus was important to the construction of saintly identity, yet multiple identities emerge from Jeanne-Marie’s dossier. As he pointed out, the two texts present additional questions: since there is no known surviving manuscript of the vita (only a seventeenth-century printed edition), the sources provide few answers to queries about the intended audience, purpose, and dissemination. Jeanne-Marie’s name does appear in a fifteenth-century breviary now in Besançon, suggesting her cult spread beyond her native region.

Next, Ed explained that Jeanne-Marie’s hagiographer extrapolated a make-shift set of religious vows for her in the vita encompassing poverty, chastity, and obedience through the mechanism of mystical visions of Mary and Christ and demonstrated, for example, by her refusal to remarry after the death of her husband. Within the vita, there is some effort to cloister her and to regularize her identity.

Bruce, the final speaker, discussed his entry into the project through an invitation by Renate. He also praised the group’s work process, which he emphasized is heavily collaborative in all aspects. This project was particularly attractive, he said, due to the manageable length of the inquest and its potential usefulness for both teaching and research. So far, only canonization inquests in partibus (organized from Rome) have been edited and translated. This will be the first translation into English (or any modern language) of the preceding stage, the diocesan inquest.

During the Q&A period, moderated by Joseph George Akl, Isabelle Cochelin asked how Jeanne-Marie’s hymen could have been inspected after her death (as mentioned in the inquest) to prove her virginity. Renate and Bruce suggested that there is no information about this in the text and mentioned the unique character of the expression used: claustrum virgineum integrum, incorruptum, atque intactum (“a whole, pure, and intact hymen”, Ch. 25). Such an expression does not appear to have been used elsewhere. Lori Walters provided the example of Joan of Arc, whose virginity was also checked, and she suggested that this was a fairly normalized practice. Isabelle clarified that her astonishment was related to Jeanne-Marie being dead when the examination occurred.

Laura Moncion suggested that Jeanne-Marie perfectly fits the description of an “other sister,” owing particularly to her interactions with lay society (taking care of pregnant women, attending baptisms, etc.). Laura asked whether Jeanne-Marie was performing midwife duties and whether she shared a spiritual or worldly relationship with the children whose baptisms she attended or those of the pregnant women she helped. She also asked who set the articles of interrogation in the inquest: a confessor, a court employee, or the community. In response to the latter question, Bruce answered that the hagiographer, local members of the clergy, and perhaps Jacques de Bourbon, the possible funder of the project, each had roles in the process. Renate added that it was most likely a joint project, although the preliminary inquest would have come from the diocese. Jacques de Bourbon’s procurator seems to have acted in his stead since he himself was not physically there: he was about to be married to Queen Joanna II of Naples. Despite these clues, there is no clear indication of who funded the project. There were only 16 witness across the course of a year, most of them from in or near Tours, so funding may simply have been piecemeal.

In response to Laura’s question about midwifery and godparentage, Ed answered that Jeanne-Marie did not necessarily act as a midwife, but she did act as godmother to at least one child, a son of Duke Louis I d’Anjou. While married, she also acted as a foster mother to three orphaned children, who vanish from the narrative after they are mentioned. She is, however, portrayed as a maternal figure. The narrative includes several miracles related to childbirth. In one example, Jeanne-Marie convinces a knight who is skilled in surgery to intervene in a successful caesarian birth. There are also examples of long-distance miracles related to childbirth, which are formulaic: the pregnancy seems doomed, Jeanne-Marie intervenes, and both mother and child survive. Ed added that she is viewed as both a spiritual and worldly maternal figure and godparent and perhaps even as a godparent to the wider community. This appears to have been a significant and purposeful theme in the texts provided through multiple examples of her nurturing of children’s spiritual development.

Lucy Barnhouse responded to Ed,s comments on maternal characteristics, suggesting connections to Laura Kalas’ theory that Margery Kempe did spiritual work that paralleled the roles of mothering and care that she would otherwise have fulfilled within a more traditional life path. Lucy then proposed that some of Jeanne-Marie’s activities complemented the work of hospital sisters. Some hospital records from France excluded pregnant women and foundlings from the hospital, perhaps due to concerns about noise. Thus, Jeanne-Marie was engaging in work that hospitals were not doing for various reasons; her embedment in her community might parallel some phenomena discussed in Ruth Salter’s “cure seekers.” Lucy then asked whether the three speakers have considered Jeanne-Marie’s potential relation to hospital work. Renate answered that Jeanne-Marie did work at a hospital at one point, but an unfortunate incident with an ill man, related to grapes and diarrhea, ended her employment there. Indeed, she was a “gig worker” and did not work in hospitals or the medical field in any consistent way.

Ed added that Jeanne-Marie’s hagiographer struggled to fit her into a box: almost a mystic, almost a recluse, almost a hospital worker, but none of them completely. She often shifted what she was doing, which led to issues crafting a distinct narrative and identity, further emphasizing the code-switching and liminality inherent in her narrative. Renate added that she wants to compare the vita and the inquest at some point in the future since many aspects of the inquest, such as Jeanne-Marie’s visions, are excluded from the vita. Some other aspects of Jeanne-Marie’s life, however, appear to have been over-emphasized and dramatized by the hagiographer. Her liberation of prisoners, for example, mentioned briefly in a written testimony, became a multiple-paragraph section in the vita. Within this context, determining how the hagiographer selected information to include in the vita is a matter of great interest.

Next, Adam Davis asked, related to Ed’s comments on the competing versions of identity, how intensely Jeanne-Marie’s identities differed. He also asked how the ambition of female saints was discussed and represented, extending this question to the ambition of the hagiographer. How did writers stretch the boundaries of what was acceptable for women? Adam offered a comparison between Jeanne-Marie and Clare of Rimini, who both wished to drink from the chalice at Communion. While Clare did drink the wine, Jeanne-Marie’s mouth filled with blood in its place. In response to the first question, Ed answered that there are at least three or four versions of Jeanne-Marie that emerge from the narratives of different witnesses: worldly mystic, efficient healer, and St Martin-like character. The vita is meant to synthesize these different versions and produce a cohesive portrait. He added that her relationship with the Franciscans is emphasized in the vita through mutual support.  She also interacts with a lot of aristocratic networks connected to the Franciscans, which is emphasized in the vita but not by the witnesses, demonstrating significant value differences between different communities. Thus, the identities that emerge include Jeanne-Marie as a traditional healing saint, an idealized Franciscan saint, an otherworldly mystic, and a corporate civic saint. At the point in the process that is revealed by the two source documents, no significant synthesis between these perspectives has yet been achieved.

Bruce added that many aspects of sainthood were comprised in the two texts and that this seems to have been purposeful on the part of the hagiographer. Ed said that they seemed to be “ticking boxes” for different aspects of sainthood. Renate emphasized that no writings directly from Jeanne-Marie survive, unlike for some of her contemporaries such as St Colette of Corbie; we only have second-hand accounts of Jeanne-Marie’s religious philosophy.

Delfi Nieto-Isabel then asked how much we know about Jeanne-Marie.s “devotees” – the people who were behind the inquest and vita – especially about their social connections to Jeanne-Marie and to each other. She also asked what Jeanne-Marie’s exact relationship was to the Franciscans. How was she both reclusive and staying with them? Finally, she inquired about the language used to refer to Jeanne-Marie in the sources. Since Jeanne-Marie fulfilled so many different roles and appeared to have been buried in a Franciscan habit, how did people refer to her? To this last question, Renate answered that the description “hermitesse” was insulting to Jeanne-Marie. She compared Jeanne-Marie to Colette of Corbie, citing her forthcoming article (“La recluse et l’‘Hermitesse’: La place et la fonction de la réclusion et de l’érémitisme dans les vies de Sainte Colette de Corbie (1381-1447) et de la bienheureuse Jeanne-Marie de Maillé (1331-1414)” in Une autre Cité des dames: Hommage à Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, edited by Hélène Bellon-Méguelle, Camille Carnaille, Philippe Frieden, and Marion Uhlig, forthcoming): Colette was enclosed in a church for multiple years, but Jeanne-Marie had a retreat outside of Tours, at Notre-Dame de Planche-de-Vaux, where she stayed from time to time. She lived in a variety of places in and around Tours. Bruce added that she is not referred to as either a recluse or a beguine and that she seems to have been called a “hermitesse” because she used to dress in very simple clothing. Ed clarified that the texts describe her as a “holy woman,” “holy lady,” or “saint.”

Ed also answered Delfi’s question about networks around Jeanne-Marie. The bourgeois of Tours, for example, are demonstrated to have known each other, and their narratives suggest interaction among them. There is also an aristocratic support network, with a prominent Angevin element. There is not much connection in between these two networks, however. Bruce mentioned that there is also a local clerical network, not associated with Franciscans, but with St Martin’s Basilica.  Ed added that there are no Franciscan witnesses included in the inquest. Why? This seems odd, considering the vita’s emphasis on Jeanne-Marie’s Franciscan connection, apparent in both her relationships with individual Franciscans and with the order in a broader sense.

Renate suggested that Jeanne-Marie had at last one direct international connection, as demonstrated by a letter from the King of Cyprus included in the inquest. The king was part of this aristocratic international network, demonstrating its far reach and the circulation of Jeanne-Marie’s reputation.

Alison More asked how useful it was (and is) to fit Jeanne-Marie into a specific box given the diversity of her identities. She suggested that women religious perceived their multiple identities as irregular and extra-regular ways of “life,” and not necessarily as distinct labels. She also asked about the definition of Jeanne-Marie’s tertiary identity and requested additional clarification about the absence of Franciscans among the witnesses. Renate answered that Jeanne-Marie was not officially called a tertiary but that such terminology has been applied in the source texts for other cases, such as that of St Colette, who took tertiary vows, as a recluse before becoming a Poor Clare. It appears that the Franciscans were trying to keep Jeanne-Marie safe throughout her life and that they eventually took her in on their land in Tours, though there was never an official affiliation. Ed suggested that Jeanne-Marie emphasized the Franciscan relationship when it was particularly helpful to her. Her chosen confessor was not a Franciscan, but, later in her life, she decided that Franciscans would provide permanence. Overall, she picked and chose based on differing circumstances. She was buried in the habit of St Clare. Thus, her burial garb was a statement of intent and not a reflection of reality. Bruce said that the relationship between the Franciscans and Jeanne-Marie appears to have been a mutually beneficial arrangement. Although Jeanne-Marie was most likely looking for stability with the Franciscans, the Franciscans would have benefitted from her reputation as a holy woman and significant figure in the region.

Renate added that there are some questions about Jeanne-Marie’s poverty since she donated many relics and riches to churches but still begged on the streets and took a vow of poverty. She also went on pilgrimages, which were expensive. These examples provide a contradiction regarding her financial means. Alison suggested that poverty might have been an identity marker, particularly for Franciscans, but was not necessarily a reality. Delfi added that, within her sources, there are many examples of tertiaries begging while also donating much – voluntary poverty was only possible with funding.

Next, Lori asked where the information about Jeanne-Marie’s connection to and criticisms of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria came from. Renate answered that this connection is mentioned in the vita and had been established because Jeanne-Marie was from the aristocracy. Lori asked as well about the dates of Jeanne-Marie’s interactions with the king and queen as related to the timing of Charles’ mental illness, and Renate responded that they occurred after 1392 and the onset of illness, providing context for Jeanne-Marie’s more significant interactions with Isabeau. Lori then asked whether the information in the vita might have been glossed during the writing process. Renate answered that this is unlikely, since Martin of Boisgaultier, her hagiographer, was simply trying to piece her identity together and did not include allegorical interpretation in his text. Bruce agreed that the dossier was not theological, and Ed suggested that the hagiographer’s sources were other vitae and that he was piecing his vita together from these examples.

Next, Lucy added to the discussion of the flexibility of Jeanne-Marie’s poverty, suggesting that this fluidity reflects the relationships of “other sisters” to the categorization of “poor” since they embraced the identities of service to the poor by being poor themselves (pauperes). Lucy suggested that such identification is related to a rhetorical construction of the poor and the identity of the poor within the Christian community, which hinges upon the distinction between deserving and undeserving poor.

Renate added that they do not know what happened to the canonization dossier later on. To whom was it delivered given that it was written during the Council of Constance and the tri-papacy? The manuscript of the vita no longer exists. Unlike the continued efforts to canonize St Colette, there were no other inquests related to Jeanne-Marie. Why? Renate said that André Vauchez has demonstrated that there was an early modern cult related to the hermitage of Notre-Dame de Planche-de-Vaux, but all of this appears to have had no continued impact.

Isabelle suggested that the nobility was occupied by other events, such as the end of the Hundred Years’ War and Charles VI’s illness, and that there was no religious order to help develop a sustained, devoted cult. She also followed up on Adam’s question about ambition. Renate answered that we do not have much information about Jeanne-Marie’s ambition, since we do not have access to her thoughts in her own words, only her actions as seen through a secondary lens. She does not appear to have been ambitious in terms of pursuing a singular goal, but she was possibly ambitious in the number of things she tried to do and in her liminality and refusal to adhere to a single identity. She also generally refrained from overstepping the boundaries of social acceptability, though she was attacked in Paris and accused of witchcraft.

Bruce added that, once, someone threw a stone at her, but she was never pursued by the inquisition. Renate mentioned that she only appears to have been accused of witchcraft by one person, but this never happened in Tours, where she was very well known. Bruce and Renate also discussed small incidents where she was mistreated or rejected for her clothing and poor appearance and one incident in which her brother acted as if he did not recognize her. Ed added that the question of ambition might be applied to the intention to achieve sainthood, which was unacceptable since a large part of holiness relates to humility. We do not know if Jeanne-Marie attempted to present herself as a saint. How much of her action was deliberate? The hagiographer was also attempting to create this persona for Jeanne-Marie, ticking many of the boxes of sainthood on her behalf: how much of this construction was the agency of the hagiographer and how much of it was the agency of Jeanne-Marie?

Bruce concluded that Jeanne-Marie was very old at the time of her death and that much of the vita reflects her early life. Thus, much of the information in the vita must have been provided by Jeanne-Marie herself.

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

The Other Sister Research Seminar: Habits and Habitual Dress

by Isabelle Cochelin and Alison More

On November 7, 2022, The Other Sister research group held a seminar on the topic of Habits and Habitual Dress. Four invited speakers presented some of their work on the subject, which had been circulated to all participants prior to the meeting:

  • Alejandra Concha Sahli, “Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire, and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Religious Orders,” in Medieval Clothing and Textiles 15 (2019):137-56.

For additional information, we also sent: Alejandra Concha Sahli, “Habit Envy: Extra-Religious Groups, Attire and the Search for Legitimation Outside the Institutionalised Orders”, 3rd chapter of “The Meaning of the Habit: Religious Orders, Dress and Identity, 1215-1650”, PhD thesis, UCL, 2017.

  • Kirsty Schut, “Death and a Clothing Swap: An Unusual Case of Death and Burial in the Religious Habit in Fourteenth-Century Naples,” Viator (2019): 185-226.

 

  • Thomas M. Izbicki, “Nuns Clothing and Ornaments in English and Northern French Ecclesiastical Regulations,” in Refashioning Medieval and Early Modern Dress, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Maryn Clegg Hyer (Boydell and Brewer, 2019), p. 237-54.

 

As befits the subject, our discussion on habits was comprised of many threads. The issue of what constituted religious dress, what (and whether) it conveyed authority were addressed along with more practical concerns such as sewing and purchasing garments. In all, it seems that both the growing fields of material history and study of The Other Sister are rich areas for further study.

The work of Dr. Alejandra Concha Sahli, who teaches medieval history and works in public policy in Chile, explores identity and issues of legitimation connected with the visual appearance of beguines. By adopting aspects of the appearance of more traditional nuns, newer religious movements could more easily secure a legitimate role in the social and religious landscapes. They were, however, also often accused of borrowing the habits of others, and thus coming under attack. Dr Concha Sahli mentioned Nathan Joseph’s 1986 book Uniforms and Nonuniforms: Communication through Clothing, as useful to understand that, in the Middle Ages, the “habit made the monk”.

Dr. Kirsten Schut, a Mellon Fellow at the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, focused her discussion on the new directions for research explored in her article, other articles in progress as well as her book project on entrance ad succurrendum and lay death and burial in religious habits. In particular, she mentioned the taking of the habit on the deathbed as sometimes representing the final stage in the journey of a tertiary. While the majority of cases of lay individuals choosing to be buried in a religious habit in her rather extensive bibliographical catalogue involve habits of traditional orders, mainly Dominican and Franciscan, Dr. Schut identified cases of women wanting to be buried in the habit of a ‘beguine,’ ‘vestita,’ ‘mantellata,’ ‘pinzochera,’ or third order. These cases were largely from Italy and Southern France, but this might be more reflective of the sources than practices. Overall, donning a religious habit on one’s deathbed demonstrates another unofficial way individuals could be linked to a religious order after their death.

Professor Thomas Izbicki, a historian of Canon Law, now retired from Rutgers, who is also active in DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics and Fashion), began his presentation by pointing out that the subject combined two of his major interests, clothing and the value of religious visitations. Differences in wealth among the nuns were often expressed in difference in clothing, even within one house. He also raised the issue of textiles produced in houses of women for non-liturgical purposes. Women’s houses were generally not given the same kind of financial support as the houses of their male counterparts. Before the seventeenth century, nuns were not allowed to teach. More attention should therefore be given to the ways these houses were able to produce goods (such as sweets or sewing works) to survive financially and stay afloat.

Professor Gabriella Zarri, now retired from the University of Florence, who is responsible for some of the foundational work on non-traditional women religious, focused on the role and purpose of a habit. Pointing out that many major rites of passage are marked by ceremonies of clothing or unclothing (from birth to death), she traced the ways this manifested itself in female religious life with reference to marriage iconography, and the cult of Mary Magdalene. Zarri touched upon the meaning of some elements of profession, such as the reception of a crown of thorns to be transformed into the afterlife into a crown of glory. She also discussed the Dimesse, an order of widows, whose habits were simple, but retained elements of the elegance associated with the social status of women in the world (see fig. 8 in the English summary of her article).

The discussion began with the issue of tertiaries, and the significance of the change of habit as the final stage in the journey of a tertiary. Kirsten Schut pointed to the frequency of burial in religious habits. The habits were often switched from tertiary to monastic habit. Delfi Nieto raised the issue of queens who were buried in religious habits, sometimes even tertiary habits; there is certainly a need for further exploration of this practice. Joseph Akl asked if the religious habits donned at death were always specific to a religious group to which Kirsten Schut answered positively, at least until the 19th century/early 20th century, when secular undertakers used more generic clothing.

The discussion then moved to the Cult of the Magdalene.

The issue of what constituted religious dress was also mentioned. Alejandra Concha Sahli elaborated on when the “clothing” of beguines became official. Kirsten Schut also raised the issue of veils. There does not seem to be much clarity on when “official” decisions were made about clothing, but Gabriella Zarri pointed out that it was stable in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Meghan Lescault asked about if/when habits were officially designated as “sacramentals”. It is a theological category that was not very clearly defined, at least in the Middle Ages. Prof. Izbicki referred to Cordelia Warr’s 2010 book, Dressing for Heaven: Religious Clothing in Italy, 1215-1545. Dr Schut pointed out that a link was often made between baptism and taking a habit. Again, the ceremony of veiling seems to be key. Katherine Walter Clark pointed out that there were comparable practices for the veiling of widows.

Fr. Augustine Thompson mentioned that habit was a key part of Dominican penitential identity. He added that, curiously, by the fifteenth century, women associated with the Dominican penitential movement were increasingly portrayed as cloistered nuns rather than as tertiaries.

As well as a liturgical dimension, there were many practical concerns related to the habit. Eva Cersovsky asked who was making them. Answers to this question were diverse: some female communities might have taken care of making their own habits but it does not seem to have been the norm. Parallels with the recluses were discussed in the chat.

Isabelle Cochelin asked if there was a clear distinction between the habits of nuns and the ones of non-cloistered religious women. She also asked who was the woman in black beside Mary-Magdalene in the 1582 painting by Francesco Cavazzoni of Christ’s Sermon to Mary Magdalene presented by Professor Zarri during her presentation (see fig. 6 in her article and the English summary of her article). Professor Zarri answered that it could be a widow as the clothing of widows was similar to that of nuns. Dr. Concha Sahli pointed out that the difference between beguines’ habits and nuns’ remains an open question.