Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation, Ca. 1420-1620: Discourses and Strategies of Observance and Pastoral Engagement [Illustrated] 9004309942, 9789004309944

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Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation, ca. 1420–1620

The Medieval Franciscans General Editor Steven J. McMichael

VOLUME 13

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tmf

Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation, ca. 1420–1620 Discourses and Strategies of Observance and Pastoral Engagement Edited by

Bert Roest Johanneke Uphoff

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Bernardino of Siena and Celestinus V. Fresco from ca. 1476 by Gian Giacomo of Lodi in the Cappella di San Bernardino, Chiesa di San Francesco, Lodi. Photograph courtesy of Pietro Delcorno. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Roest, Bert, 1965- editor. Title: Religious orders and religious identity formation, ca. 1420-1620 : discourses and strategies of observance and pastoral engagement / edited by Bert Roest, Johanneke Uphoff. Description: Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: The medieval Franciscans ; VOLUME 13 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed. Identifiers: LCCN 2015048705 (print) | LCCN 2015043092 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004310001 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004309944 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Monasticism and religious orders--Europe--History. | Identification (Religion)--History. | Catholic Church--Europe--History. | Europe--Church history. Classification: LCC BX2590 (print) | LCC BX2590 .R448 2016 (ebook) | DDC 271.009/031--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048705 Want or need Open Access? Brill Open offers you the choice to make your research freely accessible online in exchange for a publication charge. Review your various options on brill.com/brill-open. Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1572-6991 isbn 978-90-04-30994-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-31000-1 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents List of Illustrations vii Notes on Contributors viii 1 Introduction 1 Bert Roest and Johanneke Uphoff 2 The Observance’s Women: New Models of Sanctity and Religious Discipline for the Female Dominican Observant Movement during the Fifteenth Century 13 Sylvie Duval 3 Creating a Colettine Identity in an Observant and Post-Observant World: Narratives of the Colettine Reforms after 1447 32 Anna Campbell 4 Instruction and Construction: Sermons and the Formation of a Clarissan Identity in Nuremberg 48 Johanneke Uphoff 5 Canonical Change and the Orders of ‘Franciscan’ Tertiaries 69 Alison More 6 Transcending the Order: The Pursuit of Observance and Religious Identity Formation in the Low Countries, c. 1450–1500 86 Anna Dlabačová 7 Selections in a World of Multiple Options: The Witness of Thomas Swalwell, osb 110 Anne T. Thayer 8 ‘The Prayer Booklet of Eternal Wisdom’ (Der ewigen wiszheit Betbüchlin, 1518): Catechistic Shaping of Religious Lay Identity 126 Martina Wehrli-Johns 9 The Vineyard of Saint Francis 152 Koen Goudriaan

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The Name of God, the Name of Saints, the Name of the Order: Reflections on the ‘Franciscan’ Identity during the Observant Period 172 Ludovic Viallet

11

The American Inquisition and the Arabic Language: A Short Note about the Invention of the Moriscos in the Sixteenth Century 191 Alessandro Vanoli

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Grids for Confessing Sins: Notes on Instruments for Pastoral Care in Late Medieval Milan 201 Fabrizio Conti

13

Capuchin Reform, Religious Dissent and Political Issues in Bernardino Ochino’s Preaching in and towards Italy (1535–1545) 214 Michele Camaioni

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How to Write a Conversionary Sermon: Rhetorical Influences and Religious Identity 235 Emily Michelson



Index of Names 253 Index of Places and Subjects 256

List of Illustrations Dlabačová 6.1 Hugo van der Goes, Portinari-Altarpiece 100

Thayer 7.1 Bonaventure, Egregium opus subtilitate et devote exercitio praecellens parvorum opusculorum doctoris seraphici sancti Bonaventure, Secunda pars (Strasbourg, 1495), Ushaw College xvii. E.4.2, f. A1r. Liber magistri Thomas Swalwell 111 7.2 Bernardino Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Prima pars (Lyon: Johannes Clein, 1502), Ushaw College xviii B.4.24, f. 90 v 117 7.3  Textum biblie cum postilla domini Hugonis Cardinalis, Vol. 6 of 7 (Basel: Johann Amerbach for Anton Koberger, 1498–1502), Ushaw College xviii.B.3.10, f. k6v 120 7.4 Bernardino Busti, Rosarium sermonum, Prima pars (Lyon: Johannes Clein, 1502), Ushaw College xviii B.4.24, f. 88r 122

Wehrli-Johns 8.1 Christ in Agony (RRb 130, f. 5r) 135 8.2 The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalen (Ibid. f. 8r) 136 8.3 Christ as the ‘Man of Sorrows’ (Ibid. f. 67v) 137 8.4 Two Dominicans visit the house of the ‘Saintly Miller’s Wife’ (Ibid. f. 104r) 139 8.5 The Flagellation (Ibid. f. 117r) 140 8.6 The Carrying of the Cross (Ibid. f. 118r) 140 8.7 Huldrych Zwingli, Von götlicher und menschlicher Gerechtigheit (Zürich: Hans Froschauer, 1523), title page 148

Conti 12.1 Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things 204

Notes on Contributors Michele Camaioni (Ph.D. University Roma Tre, 2012) is a postdoctoral research assistant at Eberhard Karls Universität, Tübingen, where he is working on Italian early modern preaching within the project Bedrohungskommunikation in Predigten und Schauspielen des Spätmittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit. His research is concentrated on religious and political dissent in Renaissance Italy and on the history of the Capuchin Order in the early modern period. Among his recent publications are ‘Riforma cappuccina e riforma urbana. Esiti politici della predicazione di Bernardino Ochino’, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 67 (2013), 55–98; ‘Le vicende editoriali del Dialogo della unione spirituale di Dio con l’anima di Bartolomeo Cordoni tra censure preventive e tardivi interventi della Congregazione dell’Indice’, Schifanoia 42–43 (2013), 143–156. Anna Campbell (Ph.D. University of Reading, 2011) is a member of the Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Reading. Her research currently focuses on the intellectual and institutional history of the Poor Clares in the late medieval and early modern period, with a specific emphasis on the life and cult of St Colette of Corbie (1381–1447). Recent publications include ‘St Colette of Corbie and the Friars “of the Bull”: Franciscan Reform in Fifteenth-Century France’, in Rules and Observance: Devising Forms of Communal Life ­(Berlin-Münster: Lit Verlag, 2014), 43–66, and ‘At the request of the Duchess? Gift Exchange and the Gendering of Religious Patronage’ in Staging the Court of Burgundy, ed. A. Van Oosterwijk (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 183–190. She is currently working on the book of her thesis (forthcoming with Brill). Fabrizio Conti (Ph.D. Central European University – Budapest, 2011) has taught history of medieval Christianity and the history of magic and witchcraft in early modern Europe in the Department of History at the Ohio State University – Columbus (us) as a visiting lecturer during 2015. His research focuses on the intellectual history of Franciscan Observance and on the approach of Franciscan preachers towards witchcraft in the fifteenth century; on these topics he has published several articles and conference proceedings in English, Italian, and Hungarian. His monograph Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers: Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan was published by Brepols in 2015.

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Anna Dlabačová (Ph.D. Leiden University, 2014) is a postdoctoral fellow at the Université catholique de Louvain. Her research focuses on fifteenth- and early sixteenthcentury spiritual literature, religious culture and book production in the Low Countries. In her dissertation (Literatuur en observantie. De Spieghel der volcomenheit van Hendrik Herp en de dynamiek van laatmiddeleeuwse tekstversprei­ ding (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014) she explores the influence of the Franciscan Observance on Middle Dutch religious literature and the circulation of texts, focusing especially on the Spieghel der volcomenheit (Mirror of Perfection) written by the Franciscan Observant Hendrik Herp. Apart from her Ph.D. thesis Dlabačová has published on several aspects of Herp’s work, including its relation to Tauler’s sermons, and on early imprints of Middle Dutch lives of Christ. Sylvie Duval (Ph.D. Université Lyon 2/Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2012) is researcher at the École française in Rome. She is about to publish her Ph.D. thesis: «Comme des anges sur terre». Les moniales dominicaines et les débuts de la réforme observante, 1385–1461 (Rome: École française de Rome, 2015), and is currently working on the edition of the Vitae of the blessed Chiara Gambacorta (d. 1419) and Maria Mancini (d. 1429). She is also doing research on medieval testaments, and especially on Pisan testaments from the Great Plague to the beginnings of the fifteenth century. Koen Goudriaan (1950) is Professor emeritus of medieval history at vu University Amsterdam. His research focuses on the cultural and religious history of the Low Countries during the later Middle Ages. Over the last two decades his main field of interest has been the history of monastic orders, in particular the Devotio Moderna. A second recurring topic is the use of the early printing press as a means of transmitting religious knowledge to a wider, especially lay, audience. Emily Michelson (Ph.D. Yale University, 2006) teaches early modern European history at the University of St Andrews. She studies the religious cultures of Italy in the 15th-17th centuries, with particular interest in public devotional activities and the performance of religion. At present she is working on a major study of conversionary preaching to the Jews of Rome and its significance for Catholic reform. She is the author of The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (Harvard University Press, 2013), which examines vernacular Italian preaching during the Reformation era, and the co-editor of A Linking of Heaven and Earth (Ashgate, 2012).

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Alison More (Ph.D. University of Bristol, 2005) is Director of Mission and Ministry at the College of New Rochelle. Her research interests include the changing devotional climate of the high Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the new religious movements that developed at this time. She has recently completed a fellowship in Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard Divinity School, and has worked at the University of Edinburgh (uk) and Radboud University (nl). She has published on topics connected with medieval religious and gender history in Church History, Franciscan Studies, and Studies in Spirituality. Her monograph Rules, Regularisation, and Tertiary Religious Identity in the Low Countries, 1289–1450, will be published in the Brepols series Disciplicina Monastica. Bert Roest (Ph.D. University of Groningen, 1996) teaches medieval history at Radboud University Nijmegen. His research focuses on the intellectual and institutional history of religious orders in the late medieval and early modern period. His publications include A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden: Brill, 2004), Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares Between Foundation and Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013), and Franciscan Learning, Preaching and Mission c. 1220–1650. Cum scientia sit donum Dei, armatura ad defendendam sanctam Fidem catholicam…(Leiden: Brill, 2015). He also co-edits the Franciscan Authors Website (http://users.bart.nl/~roestb/franciscan/). Anne T. Thayer (Ph.D. Harvard University, 1996) teaches church history at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, pa, usa. Her research focuses on early printed resources for pastors, such as model sermon collections and pastoral manuals, and their usage in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in Europe. Her publications include Penitence in the Age of Reformations (edited with Katharine Jackson Lualdi, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); and Handbook for Curates: A Late Medieval Manual on Pastoral Ministry (a translation of Guido of Monte Rochen’s Manipulus Curatorum, introduction with Katharine Jackson Lualdi, Washington dc: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011). Johanneke Uphoff (ma Radboud University Nijmegen, 2013) wrote her Master’s thesis on the views on the religious identity of Clarissan nuns, as expressed in sermons by convent preachers and as reflected in the literary output of these women

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themselves. She started her Ph.D. at the University of Groningen in January 2015 as a member of the project group Cities of Readers: Religious Literacies in the Long Fifteenth Century. Her research investigates the participation of lay people in the transmission of religious knowledge in the long fifteenth century, through an analysis of personal miscellanies and book ownership. Alessandro Vanoli (Ph.D. University of Venice, 2001) is a specialist of Mediterranean and Atlantic relationships between Islam and Christianity from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. In addition, he studies idolatry accusations within the Islamic and Christian worlds. He was lecturer of mediterranean history at the University of Bologna. His books include Le parole e il mare: tre considerazioni sull’imaginario politico mediterraneo (Turin: Aragno Editore, 2005); La Spagna delle tre culture (Rome: Viella, 2006); La reconquista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009); La Sicilia musulmana (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012); Andare per l’Italia araba (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014). Ludovic Viallet (Ph.D. University of Grenoble, 1999) is Maître de Conférences in medieval ­history at the Université Blaise-Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand 2). As a specialist of social and religious history of the late Middle Ages, he has edited in collaboration with Frédéric Meyer two programmatic volumes on Identités franciscaines à l’Âge des Réformes (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2005 and 2011). Since a number of years, he devotes much of his research to reform currents within the Franciscan order in France and the German lands during the fifteenth and the early sixteenth century. His research habilitation, which he submitted in 2011, has been published as Les sens de l’observance. Enquête sur les réformes franciscaines entre l’Elbe et l’Oder, de Capistran à Luther (vers 1450 – vers 1520) (Berlin-Münster: Lit Verlag, 2014). In addition, he published Sorcières! La Grande Chasse (Paris: A. Colin, 2013). Martina Wehrli-Johns (Dr. phil. University of Zürich, 1980) has taught as a lecturer at the Universities of Vienna (au), Lucerne, Bern and Zürich. Her research focuses on the institutional and intellectual history of the mendicant orders, including Beguines and Tertiaries, lay piety and early prints. Her publications include: ‘Mystik und Inquisition: Die Dominikaner und die sogenannte Häresie des Freien Geistes’, in: Deutsche Mystik im abendländischen Zusammenhang, ed. Walter Haug & Wolfram Schneider-Lastin (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000), 223–252; ‘Die Straßburger Beginenverfolgungen (1317–1319) und ihre Nachwirkungen im

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Basler Beginenstreit. Neue Texte von Johannes Mulberg op zum Basler Inquisitionsprozess, in: Meister Eckharts Straßburger Jahrzehnt, ed. Andrès Quero Sanchez & Georg Steer, Meister-Eckhart Jahrbuch 2 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), 141–170; ‘Lebensregeln für Laien: Dionysius der Kartäuser als Kommentator der franziskanischen Drittordensregel und eines Regelwerkes für alle Christen (‘De doctrina et regulis vitae christianorum’)’, in: Das Gesetz – The Law – La loi, ed. Andreas Speer & Guy Guldentops, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 38 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 628–649.

chapter 1

Introduction Bert Roest and  Johanneke Uphoff Thanks to a research grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, a team of scholars from Radboud University Nijmegen, frequently in close collaboration with colleagues from other European and American universities, was able between 2010 and 2015 to develop a large interdisciplinary research project, entitled Religious Orders and Religious Identity Formation, c. 1420–c.1620. Three major aims of this project were (i) to break through conventual periodizations of history, (ii) to ask attention for the dynamics of religious renewal and the pastoral efficacy of religious orders during this same timespan – also to question received verdicts on the role and viability of these ecclesiastical bodies in the period leading up to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation –, and (iii) to elucidate the mechanisms of religious identity formation in the processes of normative centering connected with reform initiatives undertaken within the religious orders and within the Church at large. Either directly, or as an outflow of the collaborative links established with others, these research angles have fuelled a series of workshops and conference presentations, and have yielded a significant scholarly output, including theme issues of journals, collective volumes, individual articles, four monograph studies, two Ph.D. theses, and a number of smaller pieces. A substantial part of this research output has already been published or will be published in the near future. As such, we can look back on a very productive number of years. We are also confident that several publications will form the foundation for new research venues in the years to come.1 1 See for instance Franciscan Studies 71 (2013), which contains articles from two workshops, held in Bologna and Nijmegen on religious pluralism and identity formation in the Catholic world during the first half of the sixteenth century; Bert Roest, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Pietro Delcorno, Lazzaro e il ricco epulone. Metamorfosi di una parabola fra Quattro e Cinquecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014); Bert Roest, Franciscan Learning, Preaching and Mission c. 1220–1650: Cum scientia sit donum Dei, armatura ad defendendam sanctam Fidem catholicam…(Leiden: Brill, 2015); Alison More, ‘Institutionalizing Penitential Life in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Third Orders, Rules, and Canonical Legitimacy’, Church History 83 (2014), 297–323. Forthcoming are an additional monograph by Alison More, Ph.D. Theses by Pietro Delcorno and Anne Huijbers,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_002

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The present volume is the outcome of the final workshop held under the aegis of the Nijmegen research project. It was held at Radboud University and in Doddendael Castle on 16 and 17 June 2014. Building on perspectives and strands of thought developed during the previous meetings and on the outcomes of an ongoing evaluation of the latest developments in the field, this final workshop focused on four overlapping topics: Observant reforms and ­collective identity formation within the religious orders; religious identity formation and religious expression among the laity; homiletic and narrative constructions of religious subjects; tools and strategies in preaching, mission and the imposition of pastoral control. This allowed the participants to revisit a number of issues central to the research project as a whole, and to confront these with their own cutting edge expertise in relation to other projects they are currently working on. The June 2014 meeting not only amounted to a very lively workshop, but also brought forth thirteen contributions that address issues central to all sessions and that, according to our judgment, offer a very revealing re-evaluation of the socio-religious world of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, at times by means of concrete and in part highly localized case studies, as well as by means of essays with a larger scope. Within this re-evaluation a number of observations come to the fore immediately, and they can be presented as a list of propositions: – The transformative force of Observant reforms during the long fifteenth century had huge repercussions for energizing the mendicant and monastic worlds in ways that are still underestimated in present-day scholarship. Far from being a period of ‘monastic decline’, it saw a significant dynamic, both with regard to new foundations, and with regard to the ways in which order members reflected on their religious identity; – Observant spokesmen/women within religious orders could be closer and were often more open to the actions and writings of Observant reformers of other orders (and reform-minded secular clerics) than to those of the nonor not fully reformed colleagues within their own institutions. Although religious identity and order identity frequently went hand in hand, issues of reform could transcend order boundaries and lead to all kinds of collaboration and identification; – Struggles for religious reform and attempts at creating applicable guidelines for religious formation initiated a massive literary output in Latin and in the and a number of chapters in the collective volume Observant Reform in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. James Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

Introduction

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various European vernaculars, stimulating religious identity formation and religious normative centering both within and far beyond the religious orders. It was in the context of this literary output that a book market of religious literature emerged on a European scale that preceded the printing press. Almost immediately after the invention and dissemination of this new technology, clerics and devout lay people alike very quickly learned to exploit it; – The tremendous output of religious texts during and after the fifteenth century was closely bound up with the massive preaching campaigns by members of the Observant branches of the mendicant orders in particular, which for instance left written traces in the form of model sermon collections, confession handbooks, and more or less standardized manuals for catechetical instruction. The fifteenth century was a period of unprecedented pas­ toral professionalization, providing religious and lay people alike with encompassing models for shaping their religious identity, both from the pulpit and in written form; – Partly due to this increased exposure, lay people – secular authorities at different levels and the laity ‘at large’ – became keenly interested in religious reforms within and outside the religious orders, and were highly motivated to participate in pastoral and devotional renewal initiatives, in the context of the formation of a religious identity that they could call their own. A natural consequence of this was an increase in critical reflection on and condemnations of envisaged failures of religious observance by the regular and the secular clergy. This did not always lead to a simple endorsement of Observant over non-Observant or Conventual lifestyles. Local situations and the successful embeddedness of religious communities played a significant role in this; – Observant initiatives and related forms of Catholic renewal, including their pastoral aspects, had an ongoing effect far into the sixteenth century on all sides of the emerging confessional divide. Many developments interpreted by modern historians as typical identity markers of Reformation and Counter-Reformation culture have roots in earlier reform programs, and the mechanisms of religious identity formation triggered by them. Likewise, much of the criticism leveled by new evangelical movements against Catholicism had strong parallels with the complaints of reform-minded Catholics in earlier periods and should not always be taken as proof for late medieval religious decadence; – Still, it was in the course of the dynamic reform processes during the fifteenth century and their complex evaluation by participants and outsiders that new sensibilities towards religious practices and religious nomenclature

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arose, which fuelled many of the early sixteenth-century controversies. This is an area where new conceptions of living a viable religious life and new religious vocabularies emerged that over time disqualified religious identities and concomitant claims to religious excellence central to some Observant order branches. These are but a few of the more eye-catching outcomes of the workshop discussions and the articles based on them. A close reading of the latter reveals additional aspects, and suggests directions for future research, especially with regard to the interaction of ideas of religious reform with the changing realities on the ground. These realities included the missionary and discip­ linary challenges in the New World, the ongoing confrontation with Islam and the ‘neutralization’ of the Jewish presence, the new divisions within Christianity from ca. 1520 onwards, and the changing and increasingly dominant role of secular authorities in sanctioning, controlling and limiting forms of religious expression. This volume opens with four articles that focus on aspects of religious identity formation and the assertion of religious models within female religious communities, notably within an Observant context. At least since the later twelfth century, issues of control over female religious shaped much of the policies and the writings of order leaders and Church authorities alike. These concerns, epitomized in the famous papal decretal Periculoso (1298) and its aftermath in canon law, could easily make us believe that organized female religious life was first and foremost a problem that had to be regulated. It is certainly possible to write the late medieval history of female monasticism from this vantage point. At the same time, the Observant period was incredibly dynamic with regard to the foundation and reform of female religious houses, and also saw a significant cultural production by men and women involved with formulating genuine parameters for female religious life and with defending it against criticism. In her article ‘The Observance’s Women: New models of sanctity and religious discipline for the female Dominican Observant movement during the fifteenth century’, Sylvie Duval concentrates on the beginnings of the female Dominican Observant movement in Italy. More in particular, she zooms in on the hagiographical texts written in the context of these beginnings, which provided different models of religious life, some of them supposedly imitable, others not. Both male reformers and the women themselves were active in formulating such models, offering, so to speak, alternative religious identities under the ‘Dominican’ Observant umbrella. Issues of control eventually decided which of these models was able to dominate, and a proper

Introduction

5

analysis of this process sheds light on the directions taken within the female Observant Dominican movement, and on the overall Observant project of religious reform. Hagiographical models and other forms of writing also fulfilled tremendously important roles for the creation of a religious identity within the Colettine movement. Anna Campbell charts these roles in the second contribution to this volume, entitled ‘Creating a Colettine Identity in an Observant and PostObservant World: Narratives of the Colettine reforms after 1447’. She shows in particular that the Colettine identity, which of course was closely bound up with the reform initiatives and charisma of the ‘founding mother’ Colette of Corbie, cannot be studied in isolation. They can be seen as the product of, on the one hand, the conflicts with the leaders of the regular Observance sub vicariis within the Franciscan order (and their successors after the organizational overhaul of this order in 1517) and, on the other hand, the changing notions of sanctity between the fifteenth and the seventeenth century. This meant that the religious identity affirmed by and for Colettine women was likewise susceptible to change, even though the claim to a Colettine identity and the concomitant sense of continuity remained very strong throughout the period discussed in Campbell’s article. Johanneke Uphoff discusses in ‘Instruction and Construction: Sermons and the formation of a Clarissan identity in Nuremberg’ a specific model of religious life ‘preached’ in the Observant Poor Clare monastery in Nuremberg at the end of the fifteenth century. This Clarissan community, which unlike the Colettines was under the pastoral regime of the Observant Franciscans sub vicariis, is known for its highly literate culture and its well-educated and opinioned nuns, including the famous abbess Caritas Pirkheimer. Uphoff aims to unravel the constituting elements of an Observant Clarissan identity as it was proposed by several male Franciscan caregivers to this community, and to evaluate the ways in which their ‘sermons’ can be read. Thus, she gains a better understanding of some of the dominant aspects of the Clarissan religious identity put forward by these men, and to find out to what extent the nuns themselves were able to shape and express their religious identity. A part of the latter issue depends on the way in which we wish to understand written sermons copied and kept in female religious houses, and how we can  evaluate such texts alongside of the literary products authored by the women themselves. Within the Observant period, a major issue remained the status of Tertia­ ries and comparable not fully enclosed communities, most of which concerned women with a liminal status between the lay and the religious world. Alison More’s contribution ‘Canonical Change and the Orders of “Franciscan”

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Tertiaries’ shows clearly how, due to the pious presuppositions of many generations of order historians and the terminological confusion of late medieval and early modern sources, the institutional history of Tertiaries has never fully been understood. Major issues were and remain how to interpret the notion of a ‘third order’, to what extent tertiary communities can be connected institutionally and spiritually to the Observant Franciscans, and what space remained for non-enclosed and unregulated congregations by the fifteenth century and after. She demonstrates that historiographical attempts at presenting the medieval Tertiaries as part of a single order totally obfuscates the extremely complex situation on the ground, with its variety of penitential movements. These could have a fluid religious identity, both with respect to order allegiance and with respect to the distinction between secular and religious spheres. The next two contributions focus each in its own way on ‘national’, regional and even local and personal particularities of religious identity formation, showing that within overarching processes of reform, control and normative centering – frequently thematized in studies on the Conciliar movement and order wide struggles for religious Observance – there were multiple options and choices made at ‘national’, regional, local and personal levels. To some extent, tendencies towards regionalization, and the importance of local and even individual choices in the sphere of religion cohere with contemporary tendencies signaled by historians of late medieval political and socio-cultural developments. In that sense, there existed many connections between forms of regional and local patriotism, the development of regional cultural tastes, and the experience and expression of religious convictions. In her essay ‘Transcending the Order: The pursuit of Observance and religious identity formation in the Low Countries, c. 1450–1500’, Anna Dlabačová explores Observance as a factor of religious identity formation within the context of the late medieval Low Countries in general, and more in particular within a specific town, namely Bruges. Partly with recourse to one of the most famous Dutch Observant religious texts, namely Hendrik Herp’s Spieghel der volcomenheit, Dlabačová discusses universal as well as context-bound aspects of religious identity formation, arguing that Observance was part of more complex religious identities, even though the ideal of Observance could become a common, overarching and order-transcending ideal in religious communities. Zooming in on Bruges, the author shows that devout individual lay patrons or donors keen on religious reform and spiritual benefits did not automatically side with the Observants. For a variety of reasons, local patrons could support Observant and non-Observant or Conventual houses at the same time, combining, as it were, Observant and Conventual elements in their lay religious identity.

Introduction

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From another perspective, Anne T. Thayer discusses in ‘Selections in a World of Multiple Options: The witness of Thomas Swalwell, osb’ the individualized usage of pastoral resources by Thomas Swalwell, a Benedictine monk at Durham Priory in the early sixteenth century. Looking at the many annotations made by Swalwell in Bernardino Busti’s Rosarium sermonum predicabilium, Thomas of Chobham’s Summa confessorum, pseudo-Bonaventure’s De mundicia et castitate sacerdotum, and other works, it is possible to discern the applicability of specific texts, some of them with a near universal European dissemination, for a clearly localized clerical user of pastoral materials, who himself was active as a teacher, novice master, preacher and confessor. It becomes possible to position Swalwell as a Catholic traditionalist very conscious of latent and not so latent religious alternatives in Northern England from the late fourteenth-century Wycliffe controversy to the emerging evangelical currents of his own time, and very keen to establish a carefully balanced position with regard to issues such as penitence, contrition, indulgences and the power of the sacraments. It amounts to an insightful microstory of the religious identity of an English pastoral professional who died only a month before the dissolution of his own priory. Two contributions that likewise have a more situational perspective thematize aspects of book production and agendas of religious identity formation connected with it. Historians are understanding the necessity to integrate insights concerning the mechanisms of publishing in the context of the new medium of the printed book with those concerning ambitions of religious and lay people, who created manuals and larger compendia to foster the religious identity of specific groups and to propagate their own vision on religious life to wider audiences. From a methodological point of view, it means an integration of book history, cultural history and the history of religious ideas, exploiting as fully as possible the material and non-material aspects of the available source materials. This combinatory approach, advocated at least since the coming of age of the New Cultural History movement, renders important and at time unexpected insights, as also becomes clear from the articles in this volume. Martina Wehrli-Johns charts the production of a peculiar and highly interesting book in her case study ‘The Prayer Booklet of Eternal Wisdom’ (Der ewigen Wiszheit Betbüchlin, 1518): Catechistic shaping of religious lay identity’. The devotional book in question, printed in Basel in 1518, is a compilation that combined toned-down passages from Heinrich Seuse’s Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit with prayers and catechistic instruction material. It was financed and probably commissioned by the miller Marx Werdmüller from Zürich, and can be seen as a testimony of the religious beliefs of an affluent lay person shortly before the Protestant take-over of his town. More in particular, the careful

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choice of textual fragments, their configuration and possibly also the visual presentation of texts and images – the work contains strategically placed woodcuts of the Virgin and of scenes of the Passion that were at least in part  inspired by the works of local Basel artists, − provide an inkling of the religious identity propagated by this booklet, which on the one hand had a peculiar personal touch but on the other hand was clearly meant for wider dissemination, as also becomes clear from the address to the readers at the very beginning. In an ironic twist of fate, the most important illustration in this clearly Catholic booklet would very soon afterwards figure prominently on the frontispieces of catechistic works of the Zwinglian reform. In ‘The Vineyard of Saint Francis’, Koen Goudriaan discusses another highly significant book production, this time an ambitious Observant Franciscan publication project by friars of the Dutch order province, consisting of a hefty compendium of Dutch translations and reworkings of well-known late medieval hagiographical and legendary sources on Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan order. The work was issued not long after the famous 1517 bull Ite et vos, which had united all reformed Franciscan (sub-)branches under the leadership of the Observants sub vicariis, and had made this new Observant ­conglomerate the official leading branch of the Franciscan order. The Vineyard was conceived as the ultimate emblem of the Franciscan order and its evangelical form of life, exemplified by the stigmata of Francis, the ultimate ­imitator of Christ, and by the many saints the order had produced since its begin­nings, and meant to eulogize to the benefit of a wider audience the order’s seraphic and evangelical identity and its importance for the Catholic Church. Goudriaan carefully analyzes the work’s constituting elements and the medieval source texts behind them, and the professional way in which the Observant Fran­ ciscans exploited the opportunities of the printing press for this work and other texts. Yet he also shows how quickly the Vineyard, instead of an efficacious propaganda instrument, became an embarrassment for the Franciscans in the quickly changing religious landscape of the Low Countries in following decades, enticing them to withdraw as many copies of the book from the ­market as possible. The vulnerability of the Franciscan order to criticism by early sixteenthcentury reformers was connected with an enhanced susceptibility to religious nomenclature and the pretenses inherent in names and concepts claimed by the friars in their self-presentation since the thirteenth century. Several of the mechanisms behind this, and their function within the prolonged struggles between Conventual, Reformed and Observant Franciscan order branches are highlighted in Ludovic Viallet’s essay ‘The Name of God, the Name of Saints,

Introduction

9

the Name of the Order: Reflections on the “Franciscan” identity during the Observant period’. It charts issues of naming and attempts at differentiation through the adoption, defense and attack of specific labels (fratres de Observantia, Bernardini, Coletani, Martiniani, Clareni etc.) and other relevant common markers, such as the religious habit, all of which claimed to stand for a specific fidelity to or lamentable departure from an ‘original’ model. It also shows how, by the early s­ixteenth century, the name ‘Franciscan’ made its appearance to designate members of the Ordo Fratrum Minorum, as a reaction against earlier labels and concomitant divisions in the order. Yet the very name ‘Franciscan’, and its implications of following an order founder represented as the perfect imitator Christi and even as an alter Christus, soon became a problem during the disputes between Franciscan spokesmen and their early Lutheran and Calvinist opponents. Viallet connects such controversies with an early sixteenth-century ‘modernization of the symbolic’, which changed the parameters concerning the applicable vocabulary used in the labor of identity formation. Susceptibility to language and naming is also central to the contribution of Alessandro Vanoli, entitled ‘The American Inquisition and the Arabic Language: A short note about the invention of the Moriscos in the sixteenth century’. Reaching back to anxieties cultivated by fifteenth-century Spanish Observant preachers and publicists, but under the sway of an emerging new linguistic consciousness, sixteenth-century religious authorities venturing into newly discovered territories in the Americas came to attach a heightened importance to the languages used by immigrants. Vanoli seeks to formulate how this played out in the identification of Muslim practices, revealed by the inadvertent use of the ‘Morisco language’ and the performance of supposedly Arabic prayer formulas. Whereas these are to some extent vestiges of an actual Islamic presence (or an echo thereof) in the New World during and after the sixteenth century, Vanoli also poses as a tentative question whether the envisaged Muslim danger in the Americas was not in part created and projected by the very linguistic susceptibilities with which clerical professionals came to the task. The final three contributions to this volume focus more directly on aspects of pastoral mission, which, as said before, saw a pronounced professionalization during the era of Observant reforms. The three articles together encompass an interesting period of transition, namely from the times when the Observant pastoral machine reached full maturity, to its reception and transformation in the course of the sixteenth century. The articles in question again present specific case studies, each of which contains the seeds for much additional research.

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Fabrizio Conti’s ‘Grids for Confessing Sins: Notes on instruments for pastoral care in late medieval Milan’ concentrates on Observant pastoral mission in Milan and its surroundings during the second half of the fifteenth century. He demonstrates the friars’ strategic use of the printing press to produce specialized forms of pastoral literature that provided them and fellow clerics with materials and instructions to instill in the urban flock an encompassing set of behavioral and religious guidelines, guided by the Seven Deadly Sins, the Twelve Articles of Faith, the Ten Commandments and comparable normative grids. The way in which this literature was used – notably sermon collections and confession manuals – indicates that the friars interpreted their actions as a type of evangelization, indicating a consciousness of the partial nature of the Christianization of the laity under their care, and of the necessity to spread the Gospel message and the main doctrinal points of Catholicism to a population that had been nominally Christian for centuries. This preluded, in fact, on a conception of inner mission that would reach new levels of urgency a century later, as a corollary of the new missionary experiences in the non-European scene. Michele Camaioni’s contribution, entitled ‘Capuchin Reform, Religious Dissent and Political Issues in Bernardino Ochino’s Preaching in and towards Italy (1535–1545)’, zooms in on overlooked features of the homiletic activities of the Capuchin preacher Bernardino Ochino prior to his sudden flight to Calvinist Geneva. Instead of perusing Ochino’s Italian sermons for traces of heterodoxy, Camaioni focuses first and foremost on the social impact of Ochino’s Catholic preaching and its effects on the Italian political and religious networks surrounding him, which included influential members of the Colonna family, Juan de Valdés, as well as Giulia Gonzaga and her entourage. In this way, teleological interpretations can be avoided, and it becomes possible to properly contextualize Ochino’s tremendous successes as a Capuchin ­master preacher in the complex pre-tridentine Italian religious landscape. Camaioni illustrates how Ochino incorporated the most performative elements of inherited Observant preaching techniques, but was able to adapt them very successfully to the changing tastes of his times: leaving behind the constraints of the sermo modernus and adopting a more down to earth evangelical preaching that stayed closer to the texts of Scripture, focused on advocating inner piety, and was able to mediate socio-economic and religious conflicts. After Ochino’s flight to Geneva and the condemnations of his works, his pastoral works continued to circulate among Italian religious dissenters, whereas several translated editions of his later sermons and polemic writings were printed in a number of important Protestant centers North of the Alps.

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This volume closes with Emily Michelson’s article ‘How to Write a Con­ versionary Sermon: Rhetorical influences and religious identity’, which amounts to an elegant and thoughtful evaluation of conversionary preaching in Rome from the 1570s onwards. This phenomenon, which in part went back to earlier forms of mendicant preaching contra Judeos in Italy and Spain, obtained a new profile in the context of a self-confident and triumphant Counter-Reformation Catholicism. As it manifested itself, for instance in the sermons of Evangelista Marcellino, Cornelio Musso and Francesco Panigarola, it was both a missionary activity complementary to legislation that regulated the Jewish presence in Rome and the interactions between Jews and Christians, and a conscious religious display meant for Catholic spectators to enhance their religious devotion and the doctrinal safety of their religious identity. As a subgenre, conversionary preaching exhibited peculiar rhetorical and structural characteristics, reflective of its intended dual audience. Fundamentally indebted to medieval examples, it straddled theatrical polemics, exegetical persuasion, exemplary stories of conversion and celebratory eulogies of Catholic truth. The articles in this volume encompass a period in European history that normally is divided and discussed by different specialists – specialists of late medieval religion, Renaissance scholars, Reformation and CounterRefor­mation scholars – who of old did not communicate very well. Many of the boundaries that once split these specialties are no longer as impermeable as they once were. In that sense the programmatic visions of scholars such as Oberman, Ozment, Angenendt, Taylor, Zarri, Hamm, Evangelisti, and Rummel, to name but a few, have done much to transform historical perspectives. Still, it remains true that the impact of the mechanisms of religious identity formation cultivated during the age of Observant reforms normally is not taken into account when historians discuss issues of religious reform and confessionalization in the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century. It is our hope that this volume can help to change this. Many of the pressing themes connected to catechetical instruction, religious comportment and more encompassing visions of Catholic citizenship first formulated by fifteenth-century Observant preachers and educators, would remain recognizable for many of their early modern successors, notwithstanding the many changes and the new challenges that undoubtedly took place, and that should of course be given their proper due in any historical analysis worthy of the name. The fact alone that many of the works mentioned in the articles had a significant reception history should make us pause when we attempt to evaluate the constitutive elements of early modern religious life.

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Select Bibliography Delcorno, Pietro, Lazzaro e il ricco epulone. Metamorfosi di una parabola fra Quattro e Cinquecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014). More, Alison, ‘Institutionalizing Penitential Life in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Third Orders, Rules, and Canonical Legitimacy’, Church History 83 (2014), 297–323. Observant Reform in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. James Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Roest, Bert, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013). ———, Franciscan Learning, Preaching and Mission c. 1220–1650: Cum scientia sit donum Dei, armatura ad defendendam sanctam Fidem catholicam…(Leiden: Brill, 2015).

chapter 2

The Observance’s Women: New Models of Sanctity and Religious Discipline for the Female Dominican Observant Movement during the Fifteenth Century Sylvie Duval Introduction The reforming movement of the Observance is a complex phenomenon. Here we will deal with Dominican observance, and particularly with the female reform movement. Within Italy this reform began in Pisa in 1385, when the young Chiara Gambacorta founded, with four other nuns and their confessor Domenico of Peccioli, the new monastery of San Domenico in Pisa.1 This monastery gave birth to the female Dominican Observant movement in Italy facilitated by a new regulation of strict enclosure, issued by Pope Urban iv in 1387. This modified the prescriptions about strict enclosure already present in the nuns’ constitutions, written by Humbert of Romans in 1259. The Statuta monasterii Sancti Dominici2 obliged the nuns to put a big curtain in front of their parlors (as in Clarissan monasteries), and punished all those who would dare to remove this curtain or who would enter the strict enclosure without permission with a papal excommunication ipso facto. This regulation aimed to bring greater protection and isolation to the nuns. First issued for San Domenico in Pisa, these statuta were subsequently given to other Italian monasteries.3

1 See Sylvie Duval, ‘Chiara Gambacorta e le prime monache del monastero San Domenico di Pisa: l’osservanza domenicana al femminile’, in: Il velo, la penna e la parola. Le domenicane: storia, istituzioni e scritture, ed. Gianni Festa & Gabriella Zarri (Florence: Nerbini, 2009), 93–112 and Eadem, «Comme des anges sur terre». Les moniales dominicaines et les débuts de la réforme observante, 1385–1461 (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, forthcoming). 2 These Statuta consisted of two bulls: the first dated July 25, 1387 and the second dated April 9, 1426. These bulls were also issued to the Venetian monastery of the Corpus Christi. (See Bullarium Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, ed. Thomas Ripoll, (Rome: Mainardi, 1729–1740), ii, 665; iii 34–40; vii, 65). 3 The Pisan observance was granted by papal bulls to these monasteries: San Pier Martire (Florence), in Bullarium, ii, 578; San Iacopo a Ripoli (Florence), in Bullarium, iii, 400. Two nuns coming from San Domenico founded also the Corpus Christi monastery in Genoa (see Bullarium, iii, 278).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_003

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Chiara Gambacorta and her community were closely connected to the leaders of the order, particularly with Giovanni Dominici and Raimondo of Capua, as demonstrated by their letters.4 The first nuns of the community had all met Caterina of Siena, who came to Pisa in 1375. They also maintained relations with Alfonso of Jaén, St Birgitta of Sweden’s last confessor. All these connections put the Pisan community at the center of the Italian Observant network since the end of the fourteenth century. Here we will analyse the reforming process through its textual ‘propaganda’, that is, mainly through its hagiographical production. In particular we will analyse three texts, two vitae and a necrology, all of them written within the Pisan monastery of San Domenico during the fifteenth century.5 These texts are particularly relevant for the understanding of the new models the Dominican reform proposed to religious women. What is an ‘Observant saint’, or better, ‘a perfectly Observant woman’? We will see that Observant Dominican reformers tried to build different models, which included on the one hand their ‘spiritual mother’ Caterina, and on the other hand the ‘normal women’. Caterina Caterina of Siena is one of the greatest ‘spiritual mothers’ of the Occident. Surrounded by a group of disciples, the brigata, she was called la mamma by her closest friends. Among the caterinati, disciples and admirers of Caterina, we find almost all of those who became, after her death, the first promotors of the reform of the Dominican order in Italy: Raimondo of Capua, Giovanni Dominici, Tommaso ‘Caffarini’ of Siena, and Chiara Gambacorta. A Caterina, ‘Mother’ of the Observance in Italy6 Here I will not talk about the controversy concerning the exact role played by Caterina in the genesis of ‘her’ texts.7 Let us just remember, however, that Caterina’s secretaries were very educated persons: Raimondo of Capua, for 4 Giovanni Dominici, Lettere spirituali, ed. Maria Teresa Casella & Giovanni Pozzi, Spicilegium Friburgense, 13 (Fribourg: Edition universitaires, 1969); Raimondo of Capua, Opuscula et litterae (Rome: Typographia Polyglotta, 1899). 5 I am currently preparing the critical edition of these three texts. 6 See Duval, «Comme des anges sur terre», chapter 2. 7 The essential studies about Caterina of Siena as an author are : Robert Fawtier, Catherine de Sienne. Essai de critique des sources, 2 Vols. (Paris: Boccard, 1930); Eugenio Duprè-Theseider, ‘Il problema critico delle lettere di Santa Caterina da Siena’, Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano e Archivio muratoriano, 49 (1933), 117–238, and more recently : John W. Coakley,

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example, had studied theology and law in Bologna. The reciprocal influence between the divine but ignorant mother and her educated spiritual sons has then to be considered as a reality. The ideas of the Observant reform were born, partly, within this team.8 What are these ‘reforming’ ideas? Caterina, obviously, cannot herself be considered as an ‘Observant’ woman; she was just pleading for the renewal of the Church. But her ideas gave birth and strength to a reforming movement which, partly thanks to her disciples, spread through all the religious orders. Concerning the renewal of the Church, Caterina’s main ideas were at the same time innovative and traditional. On the one hand, she supported the ‘classical’ monastic way of life. She thought that being deliberately submitted to a rule and to the authority of a superior constituted the best way to ‘kill the proper pervert will’ (uccidere la propria perversa volontà), which she considered as the source of all sins. The Dialogue refers indeed to obedience as a ‘general key’ which gives access to all virtues.9 Paradoxically, Caterina herself did not belong to any religious order, but she did not think her way of life could be considered as a valid model for her disciples (male and female); on the contrary, she advised them to choose the ‘best way of life’, that is the monastic one.10 That is what happened to the young pisan girl Chiara Gambacorta, whom we will discuss later.11 On the other hand, one of the most recurrent ideas of Caterina is the importance of the individual in front of God. The ‘cell of self-knowledge’, la cella del cognoscimento di sé, is the way through which everybody can reach salvation, even if not inside the cloister. ‘Be careful of never going out of the cell of selfknowledge’ says God to Caterina in the Dialogue.12 This mental process allows

Women, Men and Spiritual Power. Female saints and their male collaborators (New York: Columbia University press, 2006). 8 About the role of Caterina of Siena’s disciples in the diffusion of her writings, see Suzanne Noffke, ‘The writings of Catherine of Siena: the manuscript tradition’, in: A Companion to Catherine of Siena, ed. Carolyn Muessig, George Ferzoco & Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 295–337. 9 ‘Guarda che tu non esca mai della cella del cognoscimento di te. […] Òttela [l’obedienzia] posta per una chiave generale, e così è.’ Caterine of Siena, Dialogo ed. Giuliana Cavallini, in: Caterina of Siena, Opera omnia (Pistoia: Provincia romana dei Frati Predicatori Centro riviste, 2002 (cd-rom)), chapter 166. 10 Several caterinati entered regular orders after Caterina’s death, in particular Stefano Maconi, who became general prior of the Carthusian order (for the urbanist part). 11 Caterina asked Chiara to enter regular religious life in a letter (Catherine of Siena, Lettere ed. Antonio Volpato, in: Caterina of Siena, Opera omnia, letter n° 262). 12 See above n. 9.

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everyone to submit him- or herself to a personal rule, and to know all the proper defaults and sins. According to Caterina, those who stay in the world and who choose to obey their ‘own rule’ – as she had done herself – choose the most difficult way to reach salvation, but they do take part in the common salvation. At the center of Caterina’s discourse, we find therefore obedience and the rule, but these concepts are not exclusively linked to the monastery, but rather to anyone’s capacity of being obedient to one’s own rule and to one’s own social and religious status.13 For Caterina the renewal of the Church indeed signifies the individual conversion of Christians – and not, for example, a reform of the structures of the Church, and even less a change in its dogma. According to her, the first people who had to convert themselves were the clerics – and, among them, the pope14 – since they were the guides of other Christians. These ideas are part of the core of the Observant reformers’ discourse: ‘obedience’ had to become ‘the key’ for all Christians. Moreover, reformers considered that the renewal of the Church should be initiated by regular clerics, since the secular ones, at the time of the Great Schism, were notoriously unable to do anything good. However, the Observant reformers did not emphasize very much Caterina’s idea of the ‘individual rule’, as this did not fit with the rather classical idea they had of their pastoral mission. They succeeded instead in giving Caterina a rule after she had died…15 13

14 15

‘Egli [il Verbo] ve la [l’obedienza] lassò per regola e per dottrina, dandovela come chiave con la quale poteste aprire per giognere al fine vostro. Egli ve la lassò per comandamento nella generale obedienzia. Egli ve ne consiglia, consigliandovi se voi volete andare alla grande perfezione e passare per lo sportello stretto dell’ordine, come detto è. E anco di quelli che non ànno ordine e non di meno sono nella navicella della perfezione: ciò sono quelli che osservano la perfezione de’ consigli fuore dell’ordine; ànno rifiutate le ricchezze e le pompe del mondo attuali e mentali e osservano la continenzia, chi in stato verginale e chi nell’odore della continenzia, essendo privato della virginità. Essi osservano l’obedienzia, siccome in un altro luogo ti dissi, sottomettendosi ad alcuna creatura alla quale s’ingegnano d’obedire con perfetta obedienza infino alla morte.’ Caterina of Siena, Dialogo, chapter 164. This theme is common to Caterina of Siena and Birgitta of Sweden. See F. Thomas Luongo, ‘Cloistering Catherine: Religious Identity in Raymond of Capua’s Legenda maior of Catherine of Siena’, Studies in medieval and Renaissance history, n.s. 3 (2006), 25–69. For the approval of the rule of the Dominican penitent women in 1405, see Martina Wehrli-Johns: ‘L’Osservanza dei domenicani e il movimento penitenziale laico. Studi sulla «Regola di Munio» e sul Terz’Ordine domenicano in Italia e in Germania’, in: Ordini religiosi e società politica in Italia e Germania nei secoli xiv e xv, ed. G. Chittolini and K. Elm (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), 287–329.

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B After Caterina’s Death: The Building of a ‘Non-Model’ As with many mothers, Caterina’s spiritual sons considered her an incomparable, but embarrassing person. Briefly after her death, the caterinati began to work for the diffusion of Caterina’s texts, but also for her canonization. Raimondo of Capua, her ‘greatest’ son, who became master general of the Dominican Order (Roman obedience) soon after her death, was appointed to be the writer of the Legenda, the hagiographic text which could be used for the desired canonization of Caterina, but also for the diffusion of her ‘model’ among all kinds of people.16 The Legenda Major was completed almost ten years after Caterina’s death. In his text, Raimondo of Capua ‘created’ the model of a virgin spouse to whom Christ had entrusted an exceptional mission on Earth.17 We must admit that Raimondo was in great difficulty: how could he justify the sanctity of a woman who had not been submitted to any authority? Caterina had been neither a married woman nor a professed nun; not only did this mean that she did not fit the contemporary norms of female behavior, but also that she could not be likened to any of the pre-existing great female hagiographic models (that of the canonized saints), except maybe for the ancient martyrs. All the ‘supernatural’ and mystical phenomena Raimondo describes about Caterina, and mainly her ‘holy anorexia’,18 are then aimed to prove the divine character of Caterina’s mission, and the complete Legenda can be read as the progression of the virgin spouse of Christ towards her martyrdom.19 In the context of late medieval society, it appears clearly that the model of Caterina as a modern martyr could not be proposed for imitation, and that Caterina’s sanctity had to be considered as a non-reproductible phenomenon. At this point, Raimondo could have compared Caterina of Siena to her patron saint, Catherine of Alexandria, but he did not; maybe he did not dare to, 16 17 18 19

There is a new critical edition of this text: Raimondo of Capua, Legenda Maior sive Legenda admirabilis Virginis Catherine de Senis, ed. Silvia Nocentini (Florence: sismel, 2014). See Nicole Bériou, ‘L’épouse du Christ’, in: Catherine de Sienne. Exposition à la Grande Chapelle du Palais des papes (Avignon: Palais des Papes, 1992), 101–119. Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985). Raimondo indeed describes Caterina’s death as a martyrdom. The conclusion of the third part of the Legenda is unequivocal : ‘Ex quo manifeste concluditur quod non modo auream per martyrii desiderium, sed etiam aureolam per actualem martyrii passionem est consecuta in caelis. Qua ex re deducitur ulterius apud intelligentem, quod in ejus canonizatione securius et brevius est procedendum sicut in canonizatione martyrum fieri per Ecclesiam consuevit […].’ Raimondo of Capua, Legenda Beate Catherine Senensis, in : Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis (Antwerp: apud Michaelem Conbarum, 1675), iii, 853–959 (958).

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or maybe he did not want the comparison to be obvious. Neither did he compare her to the numerous models of ‘local sanctity’, that of the mulieres religiosae who had been very popular in Italy. In fact, almost none of them had been officially canonized, and Raimondo’s idea of Caterina’s saintliness was that of a universal model, as opposed to the numerous local ones. On the contrary, we know that Tommaso Caffarini tried to compare Caterina to such local models. C Imitable Models Tommaso Caffarini of Siena was another ex-member of Caterina’s brigata. I am not going to look at his hagiographical and normative production, which has been very well studied already.20 I would just like to emphasize the fact that, while he was promoting Caterina of Siena’s cult in Venice, Tommaso wrote the Legenda of another woman, a penitent called Maria Sturioni, also known as the blessed Maria of Venice. As Fernanda Sorelli has demonstrated, contrary to Caterina’s model, that of Maria was an ‘imitable’ one. This is revealing, for it shows that the reformers considered hagiography as a powerful means to promote personal conversion through simple and efficient models, particularly for religious women. Abstract speeches could not be sufficient to impose a new way of life upon nonObservant communities, above all if they lacked, as many women did, intellectual education. Moreover, in the case of nuns, male reformers could not enter the strictly cloistered convents: the ‘practical’ reform was then always accomplished by religious women coming from other cloisters, who served as living models for their new sisters;21 the ‘imitable’ hagiographic models probably helped these reformers very much. Maria Sturioni’s Vita was such an imitable model for penitent women, but comparable models also existed for nuns.

The Case of Pisa

I would like to describe three hagiographical texts coming from the archives of the monastery of San Domenico in Pisa, which was the first female Dominican Observant monastery, founded in 1385 by the blessed Chiara Gambacorta. 20

21

See mainly Fernanda Sorelli: La Santità imitabile. «Leggenda di Maria da Venezia» di Tommaso da Siena (Venice: Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, 1984), and Dominican Penitent Women, ed. Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner (New York: Paulist Press, 2005). See Sylvie Duval : ‘Les déplacements des religieuses réformatrices. L’exemple des moniales dominicaines au xve siècle’, in: Des Sociétés en mouvement. Migrations et mobilité au Moyen Age. Actes du xle congrès de la shmesp (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010), 171–176.

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These texts, all collected together in a single manuscript from the sixteenth century,22 can be considered as a coherent collection that supports the observant identity of the community, as it was transmitted from one generation to another. The collection is composed of two Vitae: that of the blessed Chiara Gambacorta (d. 1419) and that of the blessed Maria Mancini (d. 1430). In addition, it contains a necrology, which comprises eight short texts about the nuns who died in the monastery between 1387 and 1403. Chiara Gambacorta’s Vita was probably written during the second half of the fifteenth century: we do not know the identity of the hagiographer, but it is quite certain that he or she was part of the community of San Domenico, as a confessor, a nun, or even an oblato. The most ancient version we have was copied from a lost manuscript between 1580 and 1598.23 Even if the two last copyists did not heavily modify the text they were reading,24 we do not know how many times the Vita had been re-written before. Hagiographies, indeed, are works in progress, and every copyist can reinterpret the text according to what he/she considers should be its main purpose.25 Chiara Gambacorta’s Vita is divided into two parts.26 In the first eight chapters, we can see the young Tora, later named Chiara, struggling against her family in order to fulfill her religious vocation. As described by Anna Benvenuti Papi’s study on hagiographical Italian texts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,27 the saint’s family is described as a ‘denied territory’: Tora, for 22

23

24

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26 27

Pisa, Archivio Arcivescovile, Ms C13. The manuscript contains Chiara Gambacorta’s Vita, copied from a lost manuscript; Maria Mancini’s Vita, copied from Serafino Razzi’s edition (see below n.38); the translation of the Necrologio by Razzi; another translation of the beginning of the Necrologio from a lost manuscript (the missal, see below n. 45); and other little texts all linked to the memory of the community. The whole manuscript is in italian; it was written continuously from the end of the sixteenth century till the middle of the eighteenth century. Ms C13 mentioned in the previous note. This copy of Chiara Gambacorta’s Vita was requested by Arcangela Gambacorta, who entered the monastery in 1580; Ms C13 was then used for the composition of a new version of this Vita in 1598 (Ms C2). The copyists of Ms C13 worked ‘mechanically’: the manuscript is full of errors, particularly due to the misunderstanding of the abbreviations present in the original text. Moreover, the Vita was copied by two different persons: the transition between the two hands occurs in the middle of a sentence. Ms C13 was used to compose a new version of the Vita, in 1598 (Ms C2, see above n. 23) in which the old text was ‘translated into the modern style’ (‘[…] à miglior forma la vita di questa santa si ridusse a stile historico et a parlare moderno’. Ms C2, 127). This division could be the result of a progressive composition/revision of the text. Anna Benvenuti Papi, In castro poenitentiae. Santità e società femminile nell’Italia medievale (Rome: Herder, 1990).

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example, is happy to be freed when her husband dies. She then secretly escapes her family house to enter the Clarissan monastery of San Martino, where she becomes ‘Chiara’. However, she is soon expelled from San Martino by her ‘parents and friends’, who assail the community with weapons and horses.28 After having been shut away for several months by her father – the hagiographer makes clear at this point that Chiara is living ‘like a recluse’ in her own house29 – she is finally allowed to pronounce her religious vows in the Dominican monastery of Santa Croce in Fossabanda. Once she enters the monastery, Chiara begins to act like a penitent, or a ‘little Caterina’ inside the cloister, with four other nuns: she eats herbs, and she wears poor and damaged clothes and shoes. Moreover, she often prays separately from the others in a kind of ‘private cell’ from which a miraculous odor escapes. I think it is precisely in this chapter (number eight out of sixteen chapters) that the transition between the two parts and, in a sense, the two models, can be observed. For at this point the hagiographer does not seem to approve of Chiara’s way of life very much. Even if it proves that she truly desires to consecrate her life to God, the author insists implicitly on the fact that her behavior does not display respect for the common life, for the peace of the convent and, finally, for the obedience due to the superiors. That is; even if she acts like a pious woman, Chiara’s behavior is the result of individualistic choices, which bring scandal inside the cloister. The hagiographer describes, for example, how her steps broke the silence of the cloister because she wore old and damaged shoes.30 If we want to use Caterina’s vocabulary, she did not yet manage to ‘kill her pervert will’.31 28

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This is an hagiographical topos, maybe inspired by the Vita of another female Dominican saint, Diana degli Andalò (d. 1236). See Angelita Roncelli, ‘Domenico, Diana, Giordano. La nascita del monastero di Sant’Agnese in Bologna’, in: Il velo, la penna e la parola. Le domenicane: storia, istituzioni e scritture, ed. Gianni Festa & Gabriella Zarri (Florence: Nerbini, 2009), 71–91. ‘Essendo missa questa giovana in prigione come dicto, et facta remita quella che desiderava d’esser monacha, et di ciò molto gioconda et allegra perché come desiderava era da ogni consolassione humana aliena et chiusa come desiderava, et etia[m] dalle cose necessarie, in però che non vi feceno né letto né altro luogho di riposo […].’ Ms C13, 15. ‘Li calzali rotti che le suore dismettevano si metteva in piedi, et quelli portava in modo che spesso si udiva dire alle suore: che angoscia è questa, per il romore che faceano quelli tristi calzari quando andava.’ Ms C13, 22. Another example can be found in chapter 6: ‘…mai non volse una minima cosa possedere, per l’austerita della santa poverta che ella tanto amava, in modo che piu volte senti dire che quando udiva quella parola che dice il sapiente Salomone, cioè: « Divitias et paupertate[m] ne dederis michi sed tantum victui meo tribue necessaria [prov. 30,8] », diceva non si potea in quel tempo con lui accordare per nulla, non parendoli fusse povertà quella quando havesse la necessità. Ma poi nel ditto [tempo] quando havea il peso della

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This ambiguous situation is settled in the next chapters: the reformer-nuns are transferred to a new monastery, San Domenico, in which they can lead a real common monastic life, and observe a stricter rule than that of the nonObservant monastery of Santa Croce. From the chapter dealing with the foundation of San Domenico onwards, the hagiographer does not show Chiara anymore as a penitent, but he constantly describes her as the ‘mother’ of her community.32 This community is that of her cloister (the nuns), but also that of the ‘family’ (the oblati33), and even that of the whole city of Pisa. The hagiographer indeed insists on Chiara’s influence, and on her capacity to convert people: ‘She had several spiritual sons and daughters, in every order and status, because she had no desire but the salvation of souls.’34 In an initial period, mainly during the Quattrocento,35 the stricter rules of enclosure did not separate nuns from external people, on the contrary, the strong material and juridic enclosure allowed for conversations because it served as an undeniable warranty for the morality of the religious women in question, who could neither be touched nor looked at. That is why the hagiographer describes Chiara at the same time as a contemplative nun and as an active reformer – a kind of other

32

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famiglia grande et delle inferme, all’hora, ricordandosi di questa parola, dicea che bene s’accordava con essa.’ We can notice here another kind of criticism: that of the Franciscan conception of poverty. Chiara’s Vita is also a text wich insists on the ‘Dominican’ identity of the saint, as opposed to a Clarissan one. This was not an innocent matter, since Chiara had first taken the veil in a Clarissan monastery, and had kept her ‘Franciscan’ religious name, referring to Chiara of Assisi. A beautiful exemplum of that maternal behavior can be found in chapter nine, when the prioress is described embracing a young tempted nun: ‘Havea gram’ conpassione a tutte le persone tribulate, e singularmente all’anime che fusse in tentatione, tanto che essendo una suora giovane in grande tentatione, e portando ella molta compassione, la facea spesse volte a sé chiamare, e orando per lei una volta tra le altre, tenendo la dit suora il suo capo in sul petto della priora piangendo, et ella abbracciandola et per lei pregando, sentì quella suora dal petto suo tanto odore et sì mirabile che ben pareva camera et habitacolo di Spirito Santo.’ Ms C13, 32–33. About the oblati or donati, called in Italian commessi, see Charles de Miramon, Les «donnés» au Moyen Age. Une forme de vie religieuse laïque, 1180–1500 (Paris: Le Cerf, 1999). ‘Di che havea molti figliuoli et figliuole in ogni ordine et ogni stato, pero che l’intento et desiderio suo altro non era se non la salute delle anime.’ Ms C13, 30. We find this kind of phenomenon even before. Simon Tugwell calls it the ‘apostolate of the window’ for the thirteenth century. See S. Tugwell. ‘The Nuns’, in: Idem, Early Dominicans. Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 387–431. From the end of the Quattrocento onwards, the parlor is much more perceived as a dangerous place by clerics and lay people, because of the presence inside the cloister of numerous non-willing nuns.

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mother of the Observance. According to him (or her), almost all the reform of the Dominican order is due to Chiara, ‘la beata Chiara Condutrice’. Men were confused because they saw that women preceeded them in virtue […]. Giovanni Dominici, Tommaso of Siena and other devout friars, drawn by a holy envy, founded an Observant convent in Venice.36 […] Brother Giovanni then founded another convent for women in Venice, now called the monastery of Corpus Christi, and they did all these things following the example of Chiara’s monastery, [Chiara was] their guide.37 This part of the text of the Vita, which emphasized the role of nuns at the beginning of the Dominican Observant reform, was removed from the modern versions of the text, or deeply modified.38 Even if Chiara Gambacorta’s Vita is quite different from other medieval female hagiographies, because of the marginal place allotted to supernatural events (visions, miracles) by the hagiographer, this text does not fit the standards of the modern period: Chiara indeed is described as a cloistered, but active and influential woman. The author of the Vita remains faithful to the model of the ‘spiritual mother’, in coherence with the traditional devotion of the monastery of San Domenico to Birgitta of Sweden,39 and Caterina of Siena.40 This Vita can thus be considered as a ‘transitional model’, which contains at the same time the new reforming claims of the Observance and the old schemes of local female sanctity. 36 37

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The hagiographer alludes here to the convent of San Domenico di Castello. ‘Confondevansi li huomini, vedendo che le donne antecedevano loro in virtù […] alcuni divoti frati, fra quali fu frate Giovanni Diminici et frate Thomaso da Siena et altri divoti frati, e per una santa invidia comincionno uno convento d’osservantia nella città di Venetia, per il cui odore et fama molti si feceno religiosi. Ordinò il ditto fra Giovanni […] un altro convento di donne in Venetia, che oggi dì si chiama il monasterio del Corpo di Christo, et tutto feceno per esempio del monasterio suo di questa beata Chiara condutrice.’ Ms C13, 30. Particularly in that of Serafino Razzi, Vite dei santi e beati del Sacro Ordine de’Frati predicatori così huomini come donne (Florence: Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1588), Aggiunta, 35–49, and in that of Ms C2 (see n. 23) written in 1598 by father Serafino Penacchi. See Ann Roberts, Dominican Women and Renaissance Art. The Convent of San Domenico of Pisa (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Caterina of Siena is never quoted explicitly in Chiara Gambacorta’s Vita, probably because the text was written before the official canonization of the mantellata (1461); she is, however, very present, especially through numerous implicit quotations of the letters she wrote to Chiara (see above n. 11).

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The second text, namely Maria Mancini’s ‘Vita’, is a strange document. No doubt it had been composed before Chiara’s Vita, even if the most ancient version we have is that of Serafino Razzi, which dates from 1586.41 This text indeed is not properly a Vita, even if Razzi tried to make it fit the classical hagiographical models. As said in its prologue, the text is an account of Maria’s numerous mystic visions written down by her confessor or by one of the nuns of the community, maybe even before her death (1430). At the end of the text, Serafino Razzi in fact confesses that in the manuscript he received from Pisa there were no details about Maria’s death, neither about possible miracles post-mortem. The text – which was originally in Latin42 – ends with the description of a vision. However, the main events of Maria’s life are described by the author: we know that she was married twice, that she had numerous children (this is a very embarrassing fact for Serafino Razzi: how could a widow be the messenger of God?),43 that she lived numerous years as a Dominican penitent or mantellata (during these years, she met Caterina of Siena), and that she finally entered the monastery of Santa Croce according to a divine revelation. There she met Chiara Gambacorta and became, with the other members of their group, one of the founders of the new monastery of San Domenico. The core of the text is composed of thirteen mystical visions, strongly influenced by Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations. Maria’s ‘Vita’ indeed can be considered as representative of the mystical idea of female sanctity, which was typical of the Trecento: the first purpose of the ‘Vita’ was that of the preservation and transmission of several divine revelations, much more than the presentation of a ‘perfect’ holy woman. The ‘Vita’ is really interesting for our purpose, because it highlights the choices operated by Chiara Gambacorta’s hagiographer. Maria and Chiara were contemporaries and friends. They both met Caterina of Siena in 1375, and they both led a life of mulieres religiosae before entering a regular monastery. Together they founded the new community of San Domenico, of which Chiara became the second prioress, and Maria the third (the first was Filippa Albizzi of Vico, as we will see below). However, if Maria’s ‘Vita’ is mainly a sequence of 41 Razzi, Vite dei santi e beati, Aggiunta, 21–31, at 30: ‘E fin qui sia detto, secondo che habbiamo ricavato da uno scritto à mano di dugento anni in circa, in lingua latina, havuto dal Venerabile Monastero di San Domenico di Pisa, questo presente anno 1586, che non dice più oltre.’ 42 See quotation above. Chiara’s Vita instead seems to have been written in Italian since the beginning. 43 See Razzi, Vite dei santi e beati, 30–31. Razzi, whose book had to be read in the modern monastic communities full of non-willing young nuns, did not stress the parallel established by Maria’s ‘Vita’ between the Pisan beata and Birgitta of Sweden.

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visionary descriptions, such accounts of mystical visions are almost absent from Chiara’s Vita. Maria and Chiara may have been two very different people. But the goal of a hagiography is not to portray someone faithfully. The differences between these two texts are due to their different goals: Chiara’s hagio­ grapher chose not to show the spiritual context in which the first female Observant reform was born, deeply influenced by the spirituality of the mulieres religiosae. As a result, the hagiographers of these two contemporary women portrayed them according to two different models: Maria’s ‘Vita’ is a collection of visions which has both a conservative and a testifying role: Maria’s visions were written in order to preserve what was considered as a divine message that could be used for people’s edification – such as Birgitta’s Revelations or Caterina’s Dialogue. The text tells almost nothing about Maria’s life inside the cloister: what we learn about her refers to her previous life, when she was a married woman and then a mantellata. Maria appears thus as a typical Italian medieval saint. Chiara’s Vita instead is intended to be an ‘educational’ treatise for young nuns and for all the persons linked to the monastic community. Like Maria of Venice’s Vita, Chiara’s Vita is therefore also an imitative hagiography, but for a different audience. Almost nothing is told about Chiara’s possible mystical visions, and the typical penitent behavior of the mulieres religiosae is censured by the hagiographer. The text instead is full of exempla about every-day religious life and, above all, about the respect for strict enclosure.44 The Statuta, the two bulls that contain the new regulation of strict enclosure, the core of Chiara’s reform, are even quoted and translated in her Vita. This text can therefore be considered as a real ‘handbook’ for the new nuns of San Domenico, which Chiara appears as a perfect observant prioress. The third text in the collection is the necrology of San Domenico.45 Compared to imitative hagiographies, necrologies constitute a more ancient

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One of these exempla is particularly violent: Chiara refused to let her own brother Lorenzo enter her monastery when, in october 1392, Iacopo d’Appiano and his supporters revolted against Chiara’s father, Pietro, lord of Pisa. Lorenzo, captured by his enemies, died shortly thereafter. Such like the two Vitae, the oldest copy of the necrology dates from the modern period (Pisa, Archivio Arcivescovile, Ms C40, dated 1600). I have found numerous descriptions of the manuscript used by the modern copyist: it was part of a medieval missal used by the nuns during the fifteenth century. Just as the Vitae, the necrology was re-writed several times, and I think that a version in Italian pre-existed the Latin version copied in Ms C40. It’s therefore very difficult to identify one or more authors of the text. However, several elements indicate that he and/or she was/were part of the community.

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model, typical of cloister literacy and of the Dominican tradition.46 During the  first years of the community’s existence (1385–1403), someone (maybe Domenico of Peccioli, the first confessor of the nuns) wrote such a necrology in San Domenico. During the same years, in Venice, Bartolomea Riccoboni, a nun belonging to the monastery of Corpus Christi, was writing her famous necrology and chronicle (1393–1436).47 San Domenico’s necrology contains some accounts of the lives of the nuns who died before 1403.48 Eight nuns are briefly portrayed: among them we find six widows, a young virgin (daughter of two oblati of the monastery), and a married woman.49 Within these little vitae we find the account of simple, almost ordinary, women’s lives: most of them were widows when they decided to ‘abandon the world’ and to consecrate their lives entirely to God. The author insists on their obedience to the rule, their attachment to poverty and modesty, and their love for the peace and the purity of the convent. They can all be considered, in a sense, as the ‘mothers’ of the monastery and their lives are proposed to their successors as examples to follow.

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I refer here to the famous necrologies of the Dominican convents of Pisa and Florence: Domenico of Peccioli & Simone of Cascina, Chronica antiqua conventus Sanctae Catharinae de Pisis, ed. Francesco Bonaini, Archivio Storico Italiano, Ser. i, 6, 2nd Part, Vol. 2 (1845), 397–594, and Necrologio di Santa Maria Novella, ed. Stefano Orlandi (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1955). In the Germanic area, we can also mention the Vitae sororum of Colmar: Les Vitae Sororum d’Unterlinden. Une édition critique du ms 508 de la bibliothèque de Colmar, ed. Jeanne Ancelet Hustache (Paris: Vrin, 1931), partly inspired by the Vitae fratrum written by Gérard de Frachet: Fratris Gerardo de Fracheto, Vitae fratrum ordinis praedicatorum, necnon Cronica ordinis ab anno mcciii usque ad mccliv, ed. Benedictus Maria Reichert (Louvain: E. Charpentier & J. Schoonjans, 1896). Bartolomea Riccoboni, Necrologio del monastero del Corpus Christi di Venezia, in: Giovanni Dominici Lettere spirituali, ed. Maria Teresa Casella & Giovanni Pozzi, Spicilegium Friburgense, 13 (Fribourg: Edition universitaires, 1969), 294–330. See also: Bartolomea Riccoboni, Life and death in a Venetian Convent. The Chronicle and Necrology of Corpus Domini, 1395–1435, ed. and trans. Daniel Bornstein (Chicago: The University of Chicago press, 2000). Biographies of: Francesca of Lavaiano, widow, d. 1387; Raniera of Lavaiano, widow, d. 1388 (before profession); Andrea Porcellini, widow, novices’ mistress in Santa Croce, d. 1393; Filippa Albizzi of Vico, widow, first prioress, d. 1395; Petra de Obriachi of Florence, widow, d. 1395; Giovanna, virgin, daughter of two oblati, d. 1403; sr Marietta of Genoa, widow, d. 1403; sr Iacopa Gettalebraccia, married, d. 1403. The story of the conversion of the young Iacopa and of her husband Andrea, who became a Carthusian monk, has also been written by Tommaso of Siena in his Historia disciplinae regularis instaurate in Coenobiis venetis ordinis praedicatorum, ed. Flaminio Corner, in : Idem, Venetae Ecclesiae illustratae (Venice: Pasquali, 1749), decas 11, Vol. 1, 167–234 (203).

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The biography of Filippa Albizzi of Vico, the first prioress of the monastery, is the longest one. The author insists first on her role in the foundation of the monastery and in the definition of the new statuta. Then he describes how well she governed the community. Contrary to the other little texts, we find in Filippa’s necrology the account of a mystical vision. The author, who is, in this part, identified with the first nuns’ confessor, Domenico of Peccioli, relates a vision that Maria Mancini received during the night of Filippa’s death. Maria saw Filippa arriving in Heaven: there the prioress met three saints, Augustine (author of the nun’s rule), Dominic (founder of the Dominican order) and Thomas Aquinas (another great Dominican saint). At that point, St Dominic addressed Filippa and said: ‘Spouse of Jesus Christ, [you are] my real daughter’.50 The meaning of Maria’s vision is clear: it justifies the reform promoted by the nuns of San Domenico since the beginnings of their community, by bringing from the afterlife the founder’s approval. This is undoubtedly part of the ‘education’ of young novices, who had to be convinced that the way of life in their monastery was the right one. However, compared to the other visions Maria received, which were really obscure – to such an extent that the nuns were afraid of them51 – this one seems almost too simple. Therefore I have my doubts about its authenticity, and we cannot exclude that this vision had been added to Filippa’s biography after its first redaction (c. 1395, after Filippa’s death). The importance of the ‘justification’ of the Pisan Observance was crucial during the whole fifteenth century: the reform indeed remained fragile for several years during the first part of the Quattrocento; moreover, at the end of the century, a conflict arose between two kinds of Observances: that of the Lombard congregation (to whom the monastery belonged) and that of Savonarola, who founded a new Observant congregation, the Tuscan one. The prioress of San Domenico, Gabriella Bonconti, was opposed to Savonarola’s new congregation.52 The necrology is 50

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Sponsa Christi Yhesu, Filia vero mea. Ms C40 (without page numbers). This vision strongly recalls that of Semia in the Legenda Maior (Caterina arriving in Paradise is called by the Virgin Mary dilectissima filia mea). When Maria received the vision of a big and frightening black horse, the nuns wrote to Alfonso of Jaén, who was, as former confessor of St Birgitta of Sweden, an expert of female mystical visions. The answer of Alfonso is copied within Maria’s ‘Vita’ (S. Razzi, Vite dei santi e beati, 28). The accounts of this disagreement can be read in Savonarola’s letters (Girolamo Savonarola, Lettere e scritti apologetici, ed. Roberto Ridolfi, Vincenzo Romano, Armando F. Verde (Rome: Angelo Belardetti, 1984), 42–53), and in the chronicles of San Domenico, written during the 1490’s by the prioress herself (Florence, Archivio di San Marco, Monastero San Domenico, Doc. n°7 ‘Libro Memoriale’). Some members of the new

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thus a text that bears the identity, and even more the pride, of the reformed nuns of San Domenico. As in Chiara’s Vita, the author of the necrology recalls not only the importance of the reform, but also the fact that it had been, from the beginning, promoted by the nuns themselves. This necrology (such as that of the Venetian Corpus Christi monastery) belongs thus also to the genre of ‘imitative hagiography’, and was part of the educational path of the Observant nuns.53

Catharinae Imitatrices

The female Dominican observant models consisted therefore of two types:54 on the one hand, there was an inimitable ‘mother’, Caterina of Siena; on the other, the recall to a ‘normal’ and obedient way of life, above all for the nuns, but also for the penitents, then called Tertiaries, who, from the second part of the fifteenth century onwards, were compelled to adopt a communal life.55 The great model of Caterina of Siena, who was shown by Raimondo of Capua at the same time as a weak woman and as the real spouse of Christ, personified the renewal of the Church: Caterina had been chosen by God for a special mission, which she carried out until her death. This model was not intended by Raimondo to be addressed only to women, but to every Christian person. The Observant reformers indeed built special and ‘practical’ models for religious women: for example that of Maria Sturioni for penitent women and that

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Tuscan congregation expelled the nuns’ Lombard confessor from San Domenico in August, 1494. Observant friars and nuns used also chronicles to promote their ‘perfect’ way of life and the heroism of the reformers, especially in the Germanic area. The chronicle written by Johannes Meyer is particularly important for the female observance: Johannes Meyer, Buch der Reformarcio predigerordens, ed. Benedictus Maria Reichert, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Dominikanerordens in Deutschland, 2–3 (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1909). See also Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles. Women writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). ‘Maria [Sturioni da Venezia] appare la riproduzione rimpicciolita e sbiadita di una figura che, per la sua eccezionalità non avrebbe comunque potuto esser eguagliata, per quanto intenzionalmente fedele ne fosse l’imitazione.’ F. Sorelli, La santità imitabile, 127–128. See Sylvie Duval, ‘Sant’Antonino e i monasteri femminili fiorentini: un riformatore ?’, in: Antonino Pierozzi. La figura e l’opera di un santo arcivescovo nell’Europa del Quattrocento, ed. Luciano Cinelli & Maria Pia Paoli, Memorie Domenicane, 43 (Florence: Nerbini, 2012), 101–118.

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of Chiara Gambacorta for nuns. These ‘minor’ models had to work as ‘manuals’ for young religious women, and were intended to be complementary to their rules.56 Did these models work? Until now, we have been on the ‘official’ or ‘dominant’ side of the reform: that of the male reformers and of their obedient, but also self-convinced, female colleagues. But the ‘Observant’ reform was much more complex, and the initiatives of various male and female reformers were numerous, and often contradictory.57 Within the Dominican order, the reform of the multiple and heterogeneous female convents was a great and difficult enterprise. And here we must confess that the hagiographic propaganda of the reformers did not work very well: it relied on a very paradoxical scheme, induced by their own perception of Caterina of Siena. This use of hagiographical texts was far from convincing to the mulieres religiosae, who obviously preferred much more to refer to the ‘great mother’ than to her pale disciples, and became therefore, after 1461, the Catharinae imitatrices.58 After Caterina of Siena’s canonization, the great diffusion of the Legenda Major led to a multiplication of various ‘imitators’, also described by Gabriella Zarri as ‘sante vive’.59 This canonization gave to the mulieres religiosae, that is to religious women who did not follow any clearly approved rule and who did not live within an official community, a new justification for their way of life (which Observant reformers wished to ‘regularize’). The hagiographers of these imitatrices openly referred to the new Dominican saint: ‘If, in St Caterina’s Legend, you replaced the name ‘Caterina’ by ‘Colomba’, you would see that their habits and facts converge almost totally’.60 Colomba of Rieti is a really interesting case, since she herself wanted to reform the female Dominican way of life, by creating new communities of 56

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That is, for the nuns, the Constitutions of 1259 and the Pisan statuta, and, for Dominican penitent women, the rule approved by the pope in 1405, thanks to Tommaso of Siena. See above page 1 and 4. About the Clarissan order, see Bert Roest, Order and Disorder. The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013). See also Anna Campbell’s essay elsewhere in this volume. This is an expression created by the Bollandists. Acta Sanctorum, Maii (Antwerp: apud Michaelem Conbarum), 1685, v, 319 (introduction to Colomba of Rieti’s Vita). Gabriella Zarri, Le Sante Vive. Profezie di corte e devozione femminile tra ‘400 e ’500 (Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990). ‘Si nella legenda de sancta Catherina da Siena, mutato el vocabolo, sia posta suora Colomba, ciò che de essa essentialemente de custumi e de facti ogni cosa se verifica totalmente.’ Sebastiano Angeli, Legenda volgare di Colomba da Rieti, ed. Giovanna Casagrande (Spoleto: Centro italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 2002), 155.

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Tertiaries for whom she wrote constitutions.61 Her reform was a kind of via media between the strictly enclosed life of the reformed nuns, and the new common life of the Tertiaries, both promoted during the fifteenth century by the Dominican order.62 Colomba had wished for her daughters a religious life without strict enclosure, but for which they should have taken, like nuns did, the three religious vows (it was then in conflict with the papal decree Periculoso of Boniface viii).63 Colomba knew, however, that she was fighting against the will of the religious authorities, and against the historical trend of the progressive imposition of strict enclosure upon all female communities, which would be officialized by the council of Trent (1563) and by Pius v (1566).64 She also knew that her daughters would have to fight to maintain their way of life.65 Through their imitative models, Observant reformers tried indeed to impose a more controlled female religious way-of-life. The penitential lifestyle of the mulieres religiosae was not as easily ‘controllable’ by confessors and male superiors as the strictly enclosed monasteries and the communities of Tertiaries. Even mystical spirituality was perceived as a dangerous and incontrollable kind of piety. The double scheme of the Observant hagiographic project was also an attempt to create a border between a saintly, but inimitable religious way of life (that of Caterina of Siena, which was also that of numerous mulieres religiosae of the past centuries), and more humble, obedient and imitable models. These models were therefore part of the great Observant project of ‘regularization’ of Christian life. 61 See Una santa, una città. Atti del Convegno storico nel V centenario della venuta a Perugia di Colomba da Rieti, ed. Giovanna Casagrande & Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1991), Constitutions, 142–159. 62 ‘Va inanzitutto rilevato che l’importanza di tali movimenti nel secolo xv deve essere collocata nell’onda lunga di un processo che, se da un lato ne esalta gli elementi di vivacità e modernità, dall’altro ne vede una progressiva omologazione alle strutture ecclesiastiche […]’. Gabriella Zarri : ‘Colomba e i movimenti religiosi del suo tempo’, in: Una santa una città, 89–107 (90). 63 This decree (1298) obliged all the professed nuns to live within strict enclosure. See: Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women. Periculoso and Its Commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington, d.c.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997). 64 Constitution Circa pastoralis. See Jean Leclercq, ‘Clausura in Oriente e in Occidente ’ in: Dizionario degli istituti di perfezione, ed. Guerrino Pelliccia & Giancarlo Rocca (Rome: Edizioni paoline, 1975), ii, col. 1166–1174. 65 [Colomba] ‘…dettece questo consiglio che noe non ne lassemo mae astringere a la clausura, ma che seguitassemo la regula del terzo ordine de S. Domenico como seguitò la nostra madre santa Chaterina.’ Una Santa, una città, 147.

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Select Bibliography

A Companion to Catherine of Siena, ed. Carolyn Muessig, George Ferzoco & Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012). Antonino Pierozzi. La figura e l’opera di un santo arcivescovo nell’Europa del Quattrocento, ed. Luciano Cinelli & Maria Pia Paoli, Memorie Domenicane, 43 (Florence: Nerbini, 2012). Bell, Rudolph M., Holy Anorexia (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985). Benvenuti Papi, Anna, In castro poenitentiae. Santità e società femminile nell’Italia medievale (Rome: Herder, 1990). Bériou, Nicole, ‘L’épouse du Christ’, in: Catherine de Sienne. Exposition à la Grande Chapelle du Palais des papes (Avignon: Palais des Papes, 1992), 101–119. Coakley, John W., Women, Men and Spiritual Power. Female saints and their male collaborators (New York: Columbia University press, 2006). Dominican Penitent Women, ed. Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner (New York: Paulist Press, 2005). Duprè-Theseider, Eugenio, ‘Il problema critico delle lettere di Santa Caterina da Siena’, Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano e Archivio muratoriano, 49 (1933), 117–238. Duval, Sylvie, ‘Chiara Gambacorta e le prime monache del monastero San Domenico di Pisa: l’osservanza domenicana al femminile’ in: Il velo, la penna e la parola. Le domenicane: storia, istituzioni e scritture, ed. Gianni Festa & Gabriella Zarri (Florence: Nerbini, 2009), 93–112. ———, ‘Les déplacements des religieuses réformatrices. L’exemple des moniales dominicaines au XVe siècle’, in: Des Sociétés en mouvement. Migrations et mobilité au Moyen Age. Actes du XLe congrès de la SHMESP (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2010), 171–176. ———, «Comme des anges sur terre». Les moniales dominicaines et les débuts de la réforme observante, 1385–1461, (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, forthcoming). Early Dominicans. Selected Writings, trans. Simon Tugwell (New York: Paulist Press, 1982). Fawtier, Robert, Catherine de Sienne. Essai de critique des sources, 2 Vols. (Paris: Boccard, 1930). Luongo, F. Thomas, ‘Cloistering Catherine: Religious Identity in Raymond of Capua’s Legenda maior of Catherine of Siena’, Studies in medieval and Renaissance history, n.s. 3 (2006), 25–69. Makowski, Elizabeth, Canon Law and Cloistered Women. Periculoso and Its Commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997).

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Miramon, Charles de, Les «donnés» au Moyen Age. Une forme de vie religieuse laïque, 1180–1500 (Paris: Le Cerf, 1999). Riccoboni, Bartolomea, Life and death in a Venetian Convent. The Chronicle and Necrology of Corpus Domini, 1395–1435, ed. and trans. Daniel Bornstein (Chicago: The University of Chicago press, 2000). Roberts, Ann, Dominican Women and Renaissance Art. The Convent of San Domenico of Pisa (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Roest, Bert, Order and Disorder. The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Sorelli, Fernanda La Santità imitabile. «Leggenda di Maria da Venezia» di Tommaso da Siena (Venice: Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, 1984). Una santa, una città. Atti del Convegno storico nel V centenario della venuta a Perugia di Colomba da Rieti, ed. Giovanna Casagrande & Enrico Menestò (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1991). Wehrli-Johns, Martina, ‘L’Osservanza dei domenicani e il movimento penitenziale laico. Studi sulla «Regola di Munio» e sul Terz’Ordine domenicano in Italia e in Germania’ in: Ordini religiosi e società politica in Italia e Germania nei secoli XIV e XV, ed. G. Chittolini and K. Elm (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), 287–329. Winston-Allen, Anne, Convent Chronicles. Women writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). Zarri, Gabriella, Le Sante Vive. Profezie di corte e devozione femminile tra ‘400 e ’500 (Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990).

chapter 3

Creating a Colettine Identity in an Observant and Post-Observant World: Narratives of the Colettine Reforms after 1447 Anna Campbell Introduction Colette of Corbie’s life and career have been until fairly recently the subject matter for hagiographers and pious biographers, keen to demonstrate Colette’s sanctity by emphasizing tropes common to the genre. From the moment of her death in 1447, a conscious effort was made both to promote Colette’s sanctity and to define a specific identity for the movement that she had founded. The first two Vitae were written by Colette’s confessor, Pierre de Vaux (c.1447), and by one of her close companions, sister Perrine de la Roche et de la Baume (c.1471), and as such are the most reliable texts about St Colette.1 Pierre de Vaux’s work is recognisable as an official hagiography structured along similar lines to those of St Francis and St Clare, whereas Perrine’s Memoires are relatively unstructured, and at times repeat entire passages from Pierre de Vaux’s account. The popularity of both texts is well-known – letters and memoires written by nuns after Colette’s death in 1447 make reference to Perrine’s writings,2 whilst Pierre de Vaux’s French text led to both Latin and Flemish translations by 1451.3 The accounts of Colette’s life and career thereafter until the early seventeenth-century were based mainly upon the Latin translation, demonstrating acceptance of Pierre de Vaux’s text as authoritative: for example, Michel Notel’s Vie de sainte Colette (1492) and the Vita by Josse Clichtou, the Franciscan confessor to Charles v (1512). Josse Clichtou’s work seems to 1 Les Vies de Sainte Colette Boylet de Corbie, Réformatrice des Frères Mineurs et des Clarisses (1381–1447), Écrites par ses Contemporains le P. Pierre de Reims, dit de Vaux, et Soeur Perrine de La Roche et de Baume, ed. Ubald d’Alençon, Archives Franciscaines, 4 (Paris: A. Picard fils, Maison Saint-Roch: 1911). (Hereafter the texts are referred to as Pierre de Vaux or Perrine followed by paragraph number). 2 See, for example, the letter of Catherine Rufiné, in: Ubald d’Alençon, ‘Documents sur la reforme de Ste. Colette en France’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum (afh) 3 (1910), 82–86. 3 Pierre de Vaux’s Vita was translated into Latin by the Franciscan Etienne de Juilly in 1450. This in turn was translated into Flemish in 1451 by Olivier de Longhe.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_004

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be  a summary of Pierre de Vaux’s Vita, though some of the details point towards  him having had access to information gathered as evidence for Colette’s canonization, such as the inclusion of facts from the testimony of the Vieillards de Corbie.4 Pious biographers writing in the early seventeenth century fell into the trap of hagiographical stereotyping, straddling as they did the boundaries of medieval hagiographical writing and more modern notions of biography. Writers such as the Abbot of Saint-Laurent, and Silvère d’Abbeville, composed their works during the seventeenth-century process for Colette’s canonization.5 Both works, particularly those of Silvère d’Abbeville are based upon many of the witness statements and memoires gathered for this process, but still their ‘histories’ tend towards emphasis of the marvellous. Moreover, these writers often portray male reformers as drawing upon Colette’s personal sanctity, in order to implement reforms of the order of Poor Clares, rather than recognizing Colette’s leadership. Thus these writings only give us part of the  picture of Colette’s career as leader of far-reaching reforms within the Franciscan order. Hagiographical writings by their very nature are written to emphasize the piety and virtues of an individual, whilst the historical context becomes merely a backdrop against which the conformance to the ideals of – in this case – female sanctity can be displayed. To Colette are ascribed actions, thoughts and feelings that owe more to hagiographical constructs than to reality. This is not to say that hagiographies cannot be important sources of historical information, but the realities of the reforms and the role of other protagonists, particularly the sisters, are downplayed. Whilst historians of the Franciscan order such as Luke Wadding and Jacques Fodéré both rely on historical documents for their accounts of Colette’s career as a reformer, they cannot not give us insight into the self-identity either of Colette herself, nor the men and women who joined her in those reforms. Moreover, they do not shed much light upon 4 Elisabeth Lopez, Learning and Holiness: Colette of Corbie (1381–1447) (St. Bonaventure, ny: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2011), 490. A copy of his Vita is in the 18th century canonization proceedings in the archives of the Monastère de Sainte-Claire de Poligny A41.D1, cahier 15. (Hereafter ‘Poligny Archives’). 5 Poligny Archives, Séries A28. L’Abbé de Saint-Laurent, La Vie de la Bienheureuse Collette, Reformatrice des Religieuses de Sainte Claire par L’abbé de St Lórent (Manuscript at Poligny, 1630), issued as Vie de Sainte Colette, réformatrice de l’Ordre de Sainte-Claire, faite sur les manuscrits de l’abbé de Saint-Laurent (Lyon: M.P. Rusand, 1835); Silvère d’Abbeville, Histoire chronologique de la bien heureuse Colette, Reformatrice des trois Ordres du Seraphique Pere S. François, selon les trois Estats de sa Vie: …Divisee en six Livres, (Paris: Veuve Nicholas Buon, 1629).

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the self-identity of the members of the reforms and how they sought to be Colettine in relation to a world that was increasingly hostile towards them. This is where we must turn to the literature written by members of the reforms in order to see how they defined themselves in the years after Colette’s death and beyond. The history of the Colettine reforms has a firm source base, and Colette herself left a number of writings that were widely circulated throughout the order. The text of her Constitutions, approved and published by the Guillelmo of Casale, the Franciscan minister general, and Pope Eugenius iv in 1434, comprised the legislative identity of the reforms; her letters and her more informal works, such as the Sentiments (1430) which provided the basis of the Constitutions, give us more of an idea of her personal thoughts. Other texts, such as the Intentions and the Testament, even if they were not penned by Colette herself, are sufficiently alike in their thinking and phrasing to her writings, that they were deemed ‘Colettine.’6 Alongside Colette’s writings, brothers and sisters of the reforms, both during the saint’s lifetime and beyond, left behind letters, memoires, chronicles and devotional works. As discussed above, the two most important are the Vitae by Pierre de Vaux and Sister Perrine; there are also letters and testimonies written by either contemporaries of Colette’s, or of her close companions, such as Catherine Rufiné, Marie de la Marche and Guillemette Chrestienne.7 The seventeenth century process for Colette’s canonization led to a number of new pieces of evidence for her life and sanctity in the form of memoires submitted by some of the monasteries, made up of earlier pieces as well convent annals and oral traditions committed to writing. Whilst a number of these demonstrate knowledge of Pierre de Vaux’s text, they are also essential witnesses to the movement’s self-identity. Bert Roest’s article on Colettine authorship has already examined some of  the documents mentioned, predominantly the letters written during Colette’s lifetime, the Testament, Catherine Rufiné’s letter, and the hagio­ graphies by Pierre de Vaux and Perrine de Baume.8 In sum, he found that through their writings, the Colettines had an individual and corporate

6 See Lopez, Learning and Holiness, Part Two, chapter 5, for a full discussion of these works. 7 Both the letter of Catherine Rufiné and Marie de la Marche are published by d’Alençon, ‘Documents sur la reforme’, 82–97. The testimony of Guillemette Chrestienne is part of the Memoires d’Hesdin, Amiens archives, cahier 23.13. 8 Bert Roest, ‘A Textual Community in the Making: Colettine authorship in the 15th century’ in: Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200–1500, ed. Anneke MulderBakker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 163–180.

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identity ‘that they could call their own.’9 Colette’s letters and Testament reveal the rhetoric of religious perfection, exhorting the sisters to an ‘uncompromising exercise’ of obedience, poverty, chastity, penitence, fasting, bodily discipline, enclosure, prayers and meditation on the Passion, and devotion to the Divine Office.10 Furthermore, at the same time as presenting herself and her sisters as humble and unworthy servants, she also demonstrates a confidence both in giving counsel to her confessors and acting as a spiritual mother to churchmen, secular rulers and friars alike. Letters written by sisters within the twenty years after Colette’s death, such as that of Catherine Rufiné from ca. 1472, reveal an understanding of their shared history and the need to keep it alive; they also give us facts about Colette’s life and career, and demonstrate an ability to write a ‘politically effective hagiography.’11 Pierre de Vaux’s Vita and Sister Perrine’s Memoires, as we have noted above, have a central role in the creation of Colettine self-identity. These two together are particularly important because, although in part they conform to hagiographical ideals, they give an insight into the stories from Colette’s life that were of particular importance to the order’s collective memory and identity. Perrine’s Memoires, moreover, approaches Colette’s life and career through the eyes of a female witness. The intention of this essay is to build upon Roest’s analysis of Colettine selfidentity by examining in more detail some of the narratives that were written by female members of the reforms after Colette’s death in 1447. The archives of the Colettine nuns contain numerous documents written by the sisters for different purposes. Early writings brought together from 1471 as part of the initial inquiries for canonization include the memoires of first-generation Colettine nuns, such as Elizabeth of Bavaria, Guillemette Chrestienne and Jeanne Labeur. Further memoires were gathered in 1511 under the general title of Memoires de Vévey.12 These documents together were written to capture their own personal recollections of Colette and the history of the reforms and to record their memories before the older sisters died, taking their stories with them. Like the Memoires of Perrine de Baume, or the letter written by Catherine Rufiné, these stories were a means by which the order could establish a ‘master narrative’ of the origin of the reforms as well as an identity based upon communal shared experiences. There is clear evidence that these women all knew Pierre de

9 10 11 12

Ibidem, 180. Ibidem, 166–168. Ibidem, 169. Amiens archives 23.21.

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Vaux’s Vita as well as Perrine’s Memoires, thus they add to an already rich culture of remembrance within the order.13 These early writings also establish Colettine identity in the face of the Observant reforms, clearly demarcating the Colettines from the Observants. Whilst Colette’s reforms maintained obedience to the Conventual minister general (sub ministriis) and sought reform from within a united Franciscan order, the Observants sought autonomy of their reforms from the normal Franciscan structure. Led by Giovanni of Capistrano, the Observants pursued their own reforms under their own vicar general (sub vicariis) and provincial vicars, granted to them in 1446 by Pope Eugenius iv’s bull Ut sacra ordinis Minorum religio.14 Thus the stories that the nuns chose to record have a clear purpose in distinguishing between their own ‘true Observance’ and what they perceive to be the misguided – even sinful – actions of the Observant brothers sub vicariis. Furthermore, as witness statements for the canonization process, these writings self-consciously focus on Colette’s personal sanctity, whilst also stressing that the qualities associated with female sanctity were part and parcel of the sisters’ collective identity. Writing about such virtues also provided devotional literature for present and future women to meditate upon and learn from. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a renewed call for information concerning Colette, the reforms, and any miracles performed through her intercession. For the most part, where the convents have managed to retain some of their archives – the Huguenot Wars having forced the closure or burning of several convents and the dispersal of the sisters15 – the responses reveal little more than what is already known from other sources, particularly from the Vitae. Nevertheless, the letters – particularly those from Besançon, Poligny and Le Puy – are valuable for the stories that are chosen and the details that are recounted, allowing us to see the oral traditions that have been passed down through generations of nuns.16 Others tell us, in the absence of any other 13 14

15 16

Poligny archives Series A74. Memoires de Vévey – Jeanne Labeur mentions the Vita. Guillemette Chrestienne also mentions the Vita in the Memoires d’Hesdin. Bullarium Franciscanum Continens Constitutiones Epistolas Diplomata Romanorum Pontificum: Ad Tres Ordines S.P.N. Francisci Spectantia, Nova Series ed. U. Hüntemann, J. M. Pou y Martí, 3 Vols. (Ad Claras Aquas (Quaracchi): ex typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae Quaracchi, 1929–49), i, no. 1007. (Hereafter bf, Nova Series i). The following convents were closed between 1535 and 1581: Geneva (1535), Vévey (1536), Orbe (1554), Castres (1561, re-founded 1632), Ghent (1578, re-founded by 1600), Anvers (1581). Amiens archives 18.V Memoires de Besançon from Abbess Claire Puget; Poligny Archives Series A2 Memoires de Poligny; Amiens 23.1 Seventeenth century document concerning the foundation of the convent of Le Puy. These testimonies were used as sources by both Silvère d’Abbeville and the Abbot of Saint-Laurent.

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material, of the virtues of other ‘blessed’ sisters from their convents who had continued and developed Colette’s legacy and espoused what was then perceived to be ideals of Colettine sanctity. Moreover, other than for the purposes of the papal curia, this flourish of writing at this particular juncture gives us a wealth of information about the nuns’ self-identity nearly two hundred years after their founder’s death.

The Colettines and the Observants

At the time when, in 1406, Colette was received into the order of Poor Clares by Benedict xiii and given permission by him to found a convent of reformed nuns in the diocese of Amiens that would live according to the rule of St Clare as approved by Innocent iv in 1253,17 several Franciscan Observant reform movements were already present in Italy, Spain and in France. The French Observant movement had its beginnings around 1370 in the convent of Mirebeau in Poitou when three friars from Touraine province petitioned their provincial minister for a house in which they could observe the rule more strictly.18 The brothers there sought autonomy of their movement within the Franciscan order, and although they were given various privileges by the Avignon pope, Benedict xiii, it was not until 1415 that they obtained autonomy through the bull, Supplicationibus personarum, issued by the Council of Constance. This allowed for the creation of a separate structure within the order and a separate obedience for twelve houses in the provinces of Touraine, Burgundy and France.19 Thus we can see already the potential for a rivalry between Colette’s reforms and those of the French Observance, even more so because Benedict had also authorized Colette to set up a parallel reform of the Friars Minor under obedience to the minister general, known as ‘Coletans’.20 As Ludovic Viallet notes, this explains the Colettine refusal to allow visitators of the Observance sub vicariis as she had no need of them.21 Moreover, Colette’s confessor, Henri de Baume, had been one of the reformers in Mirebeau, and 17 18 19 20 21

bf vii, 342, no. 1004 (1406). John R.H. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order: From Its Origins to the Year 1517, Reprint (London: Sandpiper Books, 1998), 380. bf vii, 493–495, no. 1362. Henri de Baume was appointed vicar under the minister general for both the male and female houses of the reforms in 1427. Ludovic Viallet, ‘Colette de Corbie dans le Contexte des Reformes Franciscaines du xve Siècle’, Antonianum 88:3 (2013), 453–469, at 469.

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had left there in part due to conflict within the house between those who desired reform from within, maintaining obedience to the minister general, and those who sought a separate obedience structure under vicars. This question of obedience was an issue, even in the early years of Colette’s reforms, and there were moments of conflict between the two reforming groups, such as a dispute over jurisdiction of the friary in the Burgundian town of Dôle.22 Yet the force of Colette’s personality and drive, the protection of powerful patrons, as well as the legislative unity of the order that came about from the approbation of her Constitutions by the pope and the minister general, meant that Colette’s reforms flourished and had a firm foundation for the future. The Colettine nuns who wrote their testimonies in the second half of the fifteenth century clearly show in their writings that part of the Colettine identity is defined by not being of the regular Observance. That these brothers (sub vicariis) were not seen as ‘true’ observers of the rule nor as men of pure life by the religious of Colette’s reforms is evident from the writings in particular of Catherine Rufiné and Elizabeth of Bavaria. Catherine Rufiné relates to us exactly how Henri de Baume came to leave Mirebeau, explaining that there were brothers there who decided that they would never be under the obedience of ordinary ministers and that Henri de Baume ‘did not consent to their opinion, neither could his conscience consent…sensing it would not be to the purity of his life.’23 Elizabeth of Bavaria likewise implies that the Mirebeau brothers were not deemed ‘true observers’ when she writes that before Colette’s reforms began around 1406, the only ‘worthy’ friars in all of France were Jean Pinet, Colette’s confessor from c.1402-5, and Henri de Baume.24 In this she echoes the words of Pierre de Vaux, suggesting that an element of ‘Colettine’ identity was the alignment of her reforms with the ‘true Observance’ sub ministriis. The memoires of Marie de la Marche and Jeanne Labeur hint that there was outright hostility between the Coletan friars and those of the regular Observance, even while Colette was still living.25 Both writers give accounts of a visit made by Giovanni of Capistrano to Colette in 1442, ostensibly with 22

23 24

25

See for example Marie Richards, ‘The Conflict between the Observant and Conventual Reformed Franciscans in Fifteenth Century France and Flanders’, Franciscan Studies 50 (1992), 263–281. d’Alençon, ‘Documents sur la reforme’ 85. Amiens Archives cahier 23.13. Jean Pinet was the prior of the reformist convent in Hesdin and a strict observer of the Rule who encouraged Colette towards a Franciscan vocation, and enclosed her in the anchorhold in Corbie in 1402. He was Colette’s confessor until his death in 1405. See notes 10 & 16 above.

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the aim of persuading Colette to join with the regular Observants.26 Hugolin Lippens suggests that Colette and Capistrano were not completely of one mind,27 but as Viallet notes, ‘Colette was, it seems, held in high esteem by Bernardino of Siena, a friend of Capistrano and the relationship between the two wings of the Franciscan reform (the supporters and opponents of institutional autonomy), had not yet witnessed the deterioration that was going to occur over the next ten years.’28 Jeanne Labeur’s testimony, however, suggests strong animosity between the rival camps, even while Colette was still alive. She tells us that the Observants were ‘tormenting and impeding’ the reforms that Colette was implementing, and that Capistrano was intending to ‘remove [them] from obedience to the general and provincials ... to be like them.’ Colette persuaded him to give her a reprieve of three days during which she and her sisters prayed night and day that he would relent and change his demands. God showed the nuns that Capistrano ‘sinned greatly by tormenting and disrupting [them]’, evidence for which came the next day when Capistrano returned to ask for mercy, saying that Colette’s reforms were ‘surely according to the will of God.’29 Likewise, Marie de la Marche’s testimony concludes that Colette’s reforms were ‘according to God and to St Francis.’30 At the time of Capistrano’s visit, however, the vicar of the Observance was still nominally obedient to the minister general. In 1443, Eugenius iv directed the newly-elected minister general, Antonio Rusconi, to appoint two vicars to oversee the Observant reforms; and with the publication in 1446 of Ut sacra ordinis minorum (drafted by Giovanni of Capistrano), the Observant vicars were no longer obliged to be obedient to the Conventual minister general. This bull then paved the way for them to seek jurisdiction over all reformed houses, including Colette’s.

26 27 28

29

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Marie de la Marche was living in the convent in Besançon at the time that Giovanni of Capistrano’s visit took place. Hugolin Lippens, ‘S. Jean de Capistrano en mission aux États bourgignons, 1442–1443’, afh 35 (1942), 263–266. Ludovic Viallet, ‘Colette of Corbie: The Role and Function of a “Living Saint” at the Time of the Mendicant Reforms of the Observance’. Paper read at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, May 2014. Translated from the French by Michael Cusato. He confirmed this decision in a letter shortly afterwards, confirming the privileges given to Colette by the minister general for the Coletan brothers to serve as their confessors and visitors, and not the Observant fathers. Poligny Archives, Acts of Canonisation D1 Cahier 14, 14vo. d’Alençon, ‘Documents sur la reforme’, 92.

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Whilst there was certainly tension between the two reforms around the time of Capistrano’s visit, Jeanne Labeur was clearly writing with more ‘current’ events in mind. After Colette’s death, rivalry between the two groups increased as the reforms became more widespread. Jeanne Labeur’s claim that Giovanni of Capistrano himself, one of the vicar generals appointed in 1443, gave up any idea of bringing Colette’s reforms under the regular Observance, was fundamental to the identity of the Colettine reforms, especially after Colette’s death in 1447, and surely was a sign to Capistrano’s successors to respect their autonomy and obedience to the minister general. As the Colettine position became more and more untenable with the growth of Observant reforms in the areas previously monopolised by Colettine houses – Burgundy, Savoy, Flanders and Bourbon – the continued resistance of the Coletan friars and Colettine nuns can only be seen in terms of maintaining their loyalty to their foundress and keeping unity in the order. Jeanne Labeur records that Colette warned the nuns that they must never allow themselves to come under the Observant vicars, that it would be their ‘destruction and very great desolation’ and that ‘it was better to die than to put themselves under them.’31 Yet this is unlikely to have been Colette’s position, given her silence in response to letters from the ultramontane vicar, Jean Maubert, regarding the unity of the two reform movements.32 Her approach appears more pragmatic, waiting to see the impact of the newly-created vicars upon the wider order as a whole. In the period following Colette’s death, therefore, when the Colettine family no longer had Colette herself, but instead only testimonies to her words and deeds while she was alive, it was important to emphasise Colette’s credentials as the legitimate leader of its reform, both of the female and male houses, and thereby legitimate their Colettine identity. Not even Colette’s Constitutions, which embody the institutional identity of her reforms, remained unique to the movement, as increasing numbers of female Observant houses followed them, often without being identified as being authored by Colette.33 It was also essential for the Colettine nuns to demonstrate their Franciscan identity, following in the exact footsteps of both Francis and Clare and receiving their approbation for the shape of the reforms both during Colette’s lifetime and beyond. The Memoires of the Colettine house of Vevey, of which Jeanne Labeur 31 32 33

Amiens 23.21 Memoires de Vevey 14ro. Jérôme Goyens ofm, ‘Trois Lettres Inédites de Fr. Jean Maubert Vicaire Général des Observants Ultramontains à Fr. Pierre de Vaux’, afh 5 (1912), 85–88. See Bert Roest, ‘The Poor Clares during the Era of Observant Reforms: Attempts at a Typology’, Franciscan Studies 69 (2011), 343–386 for more on the usage of Colette’s Con­ stitutions by other reformed houses.

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became abbess, firmly establish Colette as divinely appointed leader of the Colettine reforms. The writer of these pages states that she wants to highlight how, ‘by the grace and will of God, she was taken out of her anchorhold in order to reform all the three orders of St Francis,’ and that the pope gave Colette ‘full power and authority over all the three orders.’34 The fact that Benedict xiii at that time professed Colette as a Poor Clare and only gave her permission for a single foundation did not fit into her narrative, just as it had not fit into Pierre de Vaux’s narrative a few years earlier when he wrote that the pope had made her abbess and mother of all those who would embrace her reforms.35 In order to further legitimise her leadership, it was important that Colette’s authority was seen as divinely inspired. Elizabeth of Bavaria recounts a version of the story of the vision in which Colette is presented to Christ as the preferred agent of reform in the Franciscan order. Her version, however, is very different from both Perrine’s and Pierre de Vaux’s accounts, which both have only St Francis presenting Colette to Christ, though Pierre de Vaux adds the presence of the Virgin Mary. In this, they seem to be identifying Colette solely with Francis as a sort of alter-ego with a mission that is very similar to that of the order founder.36 Elizabeth of Bavaria’s account, however, has Colette being presented to Christ and the Virgin by Francis and Clare together, in the presence of John the Baptist and Mary Magdalen. In this version, it is the Virgin who decides upon Colette’s mission. It is interesting that Elisabeth’s account brings the women back into the story, who until this point have been missing, and identifies Clare as being of equal importance to Francis in determining the self-identity of the Colettines. The presence of Mary Magdalen is also of interest. In late medieval culture, Mary Magdalen had many contradictory roles, from being ‘apostle to the Apostles’ to a symbol of the contemplative life.37 Pierre de Vaux in his Vita demonstrated the ‘apostolic’ aspects of Colette’s mission, but Elisabeth’s portrayal of Mary Magdalen was intended to signify the contemplative life within

34

This echoes Pierre de Vaux’s Vita in which he claims that ‘elle sceut bien qu’elle est eust esté du très glorieulx père saint François requise et demandée à Dieu et octroyée et concédée pour refformer ses iij ordres et pour estre mère et principale d’icelle reformacion.’ (Pierre de Vaux, 13). 35 Ibidem. 36 Lopez, Learning and Holiness, 42. 37 For a recent study of Mary Magdalen in medieval culture, see: Mary Magdalene in Medieval Culture: Conflicted Roles, ed. Peter Loewen and Robin Waugh (New YorkAbingdon: Routledge, 2014). See also: Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

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the cloister.38 Colette’s Constitutions and Testament indicate the emphasis upon strict enclosure, and private and communal prayers that were central to Colettine spirituality.39 Lastly, these Memoires formed part of the witness testimony for the early investigations into Colette’s cause for canonization. Just as in 1450, Bernardino of Siena, one of the ‘Four Pillars of the Observance’, was canonized and therewith legitimized the regular Observant movement, so the Colettines sought similar status for Colette to validate their own identity. The testimonies emphasize particular virtuous behaviors associated with female sanctity. As we can see from Guillemette Chrestienne’s testimony, the portrayal of Colette was beginning to change. Guillemette Chrestienne’s in particular is evidently written in response to questions posed by the investigators. The text tells us that Colette was devoted to the Eucharist and to Christ’s Passion, that she saw heavenly and demonic visions, and fasted and suffered illnesses, which she endured with great patience. She also practised self-mortification, and lived the virtues of humility, poverty, patience, obedience and charity, and admonished her sisters to do likewise. The emphasis upon virtues removes Colette from her social and political context, and keeps her in the enclosure; it also takes away from a more specific Franciscan or Colettine distinctiveness. On the other hand, a successful canonization at this early period prior to the 1517 split would have thereafter secured a specific identity for Colette’s movement, marking it out as distinct from the regular Observance.

Colettine Identity in the Early Seventeenth Century

The letters from the seventeenth century and the choice of stories and oral traditions recounted therein allow us to question the extent to which the houses founded by Colette still saw themselves as ‘Colettine’ after a century of being under obedience to the regular Observance. For in 1517, Pope Leo x issued the bull Ite vos by which he divided the Franciscan order into two branches: the order of Friars Minor Conventual (unreformed) and the order of Friars Minor of the regular Observance (reformed). All ‘reform’ groups, including those associated with Colette’s reforms, were swept up into the

38 39

Nancy Bradley Warren, Women of God and Arms: Female Spirituality and Political Conflict, 1380–1600 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvaina Press, 2005), 26. For Colette’s Constitutions and Testament, see Lopez, Learning and Holiness, 235–265; 289–299.

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latter.40 This meant that the Colettine houses were now – finally – under the jurisdiction of the regular Observant friars rather than the Franciscan Conventuals: no longer were they clearly demarcated from the Observant houses.41 Colettine nuns tried to ensure that their confessors came from a former ‘Coletan’ house, unless they had an Observant confessor forced on them, as happened in Amiens in 1532.42 The nuns were unsure as to the strictness of the Observant observance of the rule, and there is no doubt that feelings aroused during the troubles between the Observants and Coletans prior to 1517 were slow to abate. It is perhaps telling, therefore, that Colette’s foundation at Amiens, desiring a more rigorous observance of the rule, requested in 1574 to be brought under Capuchin direction. They succeeded, and in 1612 it became a house of Capuchin nuns under the jurisdiction of the Capuchin friars of Paris. The Capuchins were a party of strict Observance, and given the numbers that defected to them from the regular Observance, it is likely that many of the smaller ‘Observantist’ factions saw the arrival of the Capuchins as an opportunity to reassert their own reformist identity. Although their foundations in Italy date back to 1525, the Capuchins only established themselves in France in 1574 in a house in Saint-Honoré, Paris. The first successful house of Capuchin nuns in France was founded in Paris between 1603–1606, with the former Colettine house in Amiens becoming the second.43 It is possible that reaching out to the Capuchins was a means by which Colettine nuns could escape from the ‘normalization’ imposed on them in 1517. Whilst the other Colettine houses did not follow suit, their letters show that they often were able to obtain Capuchin friars as their confessors, and thus kept alive their reformist heritage. The conversion of the Colettine house in Amiens into a house of Capuchin sisters rekindled an interest in the foundations and identity of the former

40

For more on the subject of Franciscan identity before and after 1517, see: Identités franciscaines à l’âge des Réformes, ed. Frédéric Meyer and Ludovic Viallet (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2005). 41 According to Wadding, Annales Minorum xvi, an. 1517 (n.23) & 60 (n.30), individual Colettine houses, including the house in Ghent in which Colette had died and which held her relics, obtained permission from the pope to protect them from immediate Observant jurisdiction. See Bert Roest, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform, (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 347. 42 Lopez, Learning and Holiness, 474–475. 43 Houses of Capuchin nuns were founded in Marseilles (1622) and Tours (1639). See Roest, Order and Disorder, 364.

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Colettine houses. The keenness of the nuns and their Capuchin confessors to revive Colette’s canonization process, which had lain dormant since c.1511, effected a far-reaching reawakening among the former Colettine houses as sisters searched their convent archives for the history of their foundations. During this time, the French Wars of Religion had torn apart numerous monastic foundations, including many of the former Colettine houses, some of which had been burned down, as was the case in Lezignan and Montbrison, for example.44 The abbess of Lezignan, writing to the abbess of Amiens in 1624, relates that many of the sisters in her house were ignorant of their history, knowing little of their foundress nor of her reforms.45 Similarly, the abbess of Lille revealed that she had not even heard of Colette until she began to investigate the foundations of the convent.46 This is a very common theme throughout many of the letters at this time. The push for canonization therefore led to a new awareness among the former Colettine houses to rediscover their religious heritage and distinct self-identity, based as it was upon strict observance of the rule of Clare of Assisi. By trawling through what was left of their archives, abbesses began to rebuild an image of their saintly foundress and once again placed Colette at the center of their communal identity, just as she had been in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This was aided by the papal bulls essentially beatifying Colette, and we have numerous accounts of the celebrations undertaken by the different convents and the communities in which they lived.47 This need to educate the sisters in their history, whilst on the one hand being a necessity if they were to reinvigorate the Colettine movement, was taken further and was translated into a more systematic instruction of novices in the ways of Catholic perfection. The Colettine Constitutions make many provisions for the reception of novices, but the specific instruction that Claire Puget identifies in the Poligny narrative is not specified as such in their statutes. Puget recounts that Colette instructed the novice mistress to ground her novices well in the profound meditation of the Passion, and to teach them how to follow and imitate Jesus Christ crucified with a great humility.48 She continues that Colette was careful to ground novices and the young in humility, and that whenever she returned from her travels, she herself would examine the 44 45 46 47 48

Amiens archives cahier 18–1624 Letter of Abbess of Lezignan to Abbess of Amiens; Amiens archives cahier 18 – 1624 Abbess Francoise Loysel to Benedict (Cap.) of Rouen. Amiens archives cahier 18–1624 Letter of Abbess of Lezignan to Abbess of Amiens. Amiens archives cahier 18 18 – 1624 Letter of Abbess of Lille to Abbess of Amiens. Amiens archives cahiers 17 & 18. Poligny archives Series A2, Memoires de Poligny (c.1623).

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novices, to ensure that in her absence, they had strived to make a ‘good, solid foundation of virtues and religious exercises.’ If they had not, she sent them to their novice mistress ‘to learn the good mores of religious [virtues] and follow the Divine Office.’ And then almost as a post-script she adds, ‘and from then this custom is kept in our monastery that the young religious remain under the direction of a mistress until they are twelve, when they have made their profession.’49 The language seems to be a self-conscious nod towards the changing religious climate and the increased awareness of the need to ensure better instruction, not least because increased knowledge of the religious ideals that underpinned their Colettine lifestyle enabled a greater awareness of their corporate identity. Finally, we see a closer identification between ‘Colettine’ and ‘Clarissan’ in the early seventeenth century memoires. In the fifteenth century, Viallet suggests that there is an issue as to whether the nuns of the reforms saw themselves as ‘Colettine’ or ‘Clarissan’.50 If we compare Colette’s Constitutions with Clare’s Rule, we find that Colette places far greater emphasis upon structure and organisation, obedience and discipline, correction of the sisters, and asceticism, rather than on poverty, which was central and crucial to Clare’s model of religious life. In Guillemette Chrestienne’s testimony, poverty is mentioned along with other virtues, whereas the other fifteenth-century texts that we have examined barely speak of poverty at all. This is partly due to the purpose of seeking to establish a ‘Colettine’ identity in the face of the expanding Observant reforms. Yet the fifteenth-century need to promote Colette as a figure-head was not as essential in the seventeenth century. We should remember that Colette sent to Assisi for a copy of Clare’s original rule in order to compose her Constitutions. The Memoires de Poligny inform us that Colette admonished the sisters, who are described here as ‘the true daughters of St Clare’ to follow in the footsteps of Clare, ‘renouncing all things for the love of God by living in a state of true evangelical poverty.’51 Conclusion The examples of Colettine identity formation that have been discussed in this essay are just a small selection from merely a handful of documents relating to the history of the Colettine reforms. Whilst few in number, they enable us to 49 50 51

Ibidem, 5v–6r. Viallet, ‘Colette de Corbie dans le Contexte des Reformes’, 461. Memoires de Poligny 5v–6r.

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build up a picture of the malleability of self-identity within the historical narratives relating to the Colettines. Once Colette, who naturally was central to the movement’s identity, had died, the ‘historians’ in the Colettine movement needed to fight for the legitimacy of the Colettine reforms in the face of opposition from the Observants sub vicariis. The claims to divine approval for such reforms, and the identification with St Francis as a means both of establishing authority, as well as associating the reforms with his ‘active’ ministry rather than Clare’s ‘contemplative’ ministry, was essential in order to remain a separate entity. In the light of the reforms of Trent, it was perhaps fortuitous in the end that the association of the Colettine reforms with the Conventual Observance was finally dismantled with the split of the Franciscan order in 1517. In the early years of the seventeenth century, there is a noticeable difference of emphasis with regard to self-identity. Whilst building upon their past, the Colettines of the early modern world appeared more self-consciously to identify themselves with the changes that had taken place in the European religious environment, and balancing this with the need to demonstrate and prove the sanctity of their founder in a way that conformed to the ever changing notions of sanctity. Moreover, there is a move towards reinstating the importance of Clare in this later period. The one distinct constant, however, was the person of Colette, whose life and cult was the ultimate source of Colettine identity. Select Bibliography Identités franciscaines à l’âge des Réformes, ed. Frédéric Meyer and Ludovic Viallet (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2005). Jansen, Katherine Ludwig, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Lopez, Elisabeth, Learning and Holiness: Colette of Corbie (1381–1447) (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2011). Mary Magdalene in Medieval Culture: Conflicted Roles, ed. Peter Loewen and Robin Waugh (New York-Abingdon: Routledge, 2014). Moorman, John R.H., A History of the Franciscan Order: From Its Origins to the Year 1517, Reprint (London: Sandpiper Books, 1998). Richards, Marie, ‘The Conflict between the Observant and Conventual Reformed Franciscans in Fifteenth Century France and Flanders’, Franciscan Studies 50 (1992), 263–281. Roest, Bert, ‘A Textual Community in the Making: Colettine authorship in the 15th century’ in: Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200–1500, ed. Anneke Mulder-Bakker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 163–180.

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———, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between Foundation and Reform, (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Viallet, Ludovic, ‘Colette de Corbie dans le Contexte des Reformes Franciscaines du XVe Siècle’, Antonianum 88:3 (2013), 453–469. Warren, Nancy Bradley, Women of God and Arms: Female Spirituality and Political Conflict, 1380–1600 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).

chapter 4

Instruction and Construction: Sermons and the Formation of a Clarissan Identity in Nuremberg Johanneke Uphoff Introduction When a nun professed, she was considered to be symbolically dead to the world, but her life carried on behind convent walls. With this new life came the pursuit of a religious identity as a bride of Christ and as a member of the convent’s community. Religious identity is of course a construction. Different ideas about the religious identity of a person or group can coexist, influence each other and become intertwined. The aim of this article is to show how religious male caretakers shaped the religious identity of nuns through the sermons they wrote for these women, and, in addition, that nuns could use these same sermons to shape their religious identity themselves. Three Franciscan sermons in a sixteenth century manuscript that is currently kept in the Bavarian State Library in Munich under the signature Cgm 4439 will serve as a case study.1 I argue that sources with texts originating from male religious caretakers written for nuns can not only be useful when we want to gain a better understanding of how these men wished to shape the religious identity of these women, but that they also offer us information on how nuns themselves were able to shape and express religious identity. In order to do so we have to keep in mind the active role that these women often played in the collecting and copying of these texts. These last decades medieval nuns are increasingly studied through sources of which they were the authors. This has proven to be a fruitful development, and has already resulted in many significant publications.2 That does not mean, however, that sources from religious men are useless in our quest to understand how nuns constructed and expressed their religious identity. This is not a step down from studying texts of which women 1 bsb, Cgm 4439. 2 An example of this is Anne Winston-Allen’s Convent Chronicles, in which the history of late medieval nuns, mostly from the German lands, is written through the prism of texts originating from these women themselves, focussing on topics related to the Observant reforms. See: Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles. Women writing about women and reform in the late Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_005

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were the author, but both a valuable addition and a necessity, because sources written by women are scarcer in comparison to sources written by men. Sermons in manuscripts can increase our understanding of this topic in an important way precisely because they are in many cases the collaborative product of convent preachers and nuns.

Manuscript Cgm 4439 and the St. Klara Convent in Nuremberg

Manuscript Cgm 4439 originates from the first half of the sixteenth century. It was composed in the Clarissan St. Klara convent, situated in the German city of Nuremberg. It contains six different texts, three of which stem from Franciscan preachers. The other three texts – a partial German translation of De triplici regione claustralium by the Benedictine reform abbot Johannes Trithemius, a prayer ascribed to the Cisterian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, and the so-called Weihnachtsansprache by an abbess of the Nuremberg Clarissan convent – will not be discussed in this article, but figure in the evaluation of the complete manuscript.3 The text by Trithemius is particularly important in this respect, because it is by far the largest text in this collection.4 When a manuscript contains several texts, the first text might often be the reason why the manuscript was created to begin with. It has been argued that this was also the case with the text of Trithemius.5 The inclusion of the other five texts might have been decided on afterwards. However, there was probably not much of a time gap between the copying of the text by Trithemius and the other texts into the manuscript, given that all the texts are clearly written by the same hand, which looks quite consistent throughout, although in some places the

3 Ottokar Bonmann has argued that the abbess in question is Caritas Pirckheimer. His conclusion is based on his dating of the deliverance of the speech. On the basis of the historical context and clues found in the manuscript itself, he concludes that this must be 1515. See: Ottokar Bonmann, ‘Eine unbekannte Weihnachtsansprache Charitas Pirckheimer’, Franzisk­ anische Studien 24 (1937), 182–189. Not many similar sources are known to us, which makes the text quite unique, but it has not yet received much scholarly attention. The most important contribution has been made by Eva Schlotheuber, who has emphasized the spiritual meaning of the text. See: Eva Schlotheuber, ‘Humanistisches Wissen und geistliches Leben. Caritas Pirckheimer und die Geschichtsschreibung in Nürnberger Klarissenkonvent’, in: Die Pirckheimer. Humanismus in einer Nürnberger Patrizierfamilie, ed. Franz Fuchs (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 89–118. 4 The text runs from f. 1r to f. 48v. 5 Bonmann, ‘Eine unbekannte Weihnachtsansprache der Charitas Pirckheimer’, 189.

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writing becomes a little uneven.6 The scribe thus might have planned to put all of the six texts in the manuscript from the outset.7 The attribution of Cgm 4439 to St. Klara in Nuremberg is undisputed given the fact that all Franciscan texts in the manuscript have been ascribed to people who can be directly connected to this convent. The St. Klara convent had previously been a community of Reunerinnen before joining the Clarissan order in 1279.8 After a long time of discontent with the lifestyle of, and the religious instruction received by their male religious caretakers, the nuns joined the Observance in 1452.9 The reform of the convent led to intensive contacts between the nuns and Franciscan Observant men who provided the cura monialium. The Observant aim of deepening religious understanding contributed to the nuns’ awareness of their community’s religious identity. This was brought about, among other things, by the reformist focus on the initial intentions of the respective order founders.10 In the case of Clarissan communities, this could also result into an increased awareness of the ties between the Poor Clares and the Franciscans, since Clare of Assisi had always considered her San Damiano community as part of the order founded by Francis of Assisi.11 St. Klara increasingly became a place for girls and women from prominent Nuremberg families who were often well educated, and the convent enjoyed a good reputation. Although the community was flourishing at the beginning of the sixteenth century, it soon faced dramatic developments. When the city council of Nuremberg opted for the Lutheran faith, this had far-reaching consequences for the religious houses in the city. Luther’s rejection of convent life 6 7 8

9 10

11

A second hand can be found in a few of the rubrics. It is evident that the manuscript is not a convolute, because every new text begins on the same folio on which the previous one ended. Pope Gregory x issued the papal bull Religionum diversitatem at the second council of Lyon in 1274, which forbade the founding of new orders without papal permission. The Reuerinnen (or Magdalenarinnen) had not received papal approval and therefore were forced to disband. In order to survive many of these groups of female religious took on a new religious order identity. The sisters of the Nuremberg community joined the Clarissan order with the help of the local Franciscans, who had already been providing the sisters with spiritual care. Bert Roest, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between foundation and reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 131, 189. Also see Bert Roest, ‘Observant reform in religious orders’ in: The Cambridge History of Christianity, 4: Christianity in Western Europe c.1100–c.1500, ed. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 446–457. Lezlie Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 32.

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as an appropriate Christian lifestyle led to the forced closure of many convents in areas that came under Lutheran control. The nuns of St. Klara suffered the first consequences of the implementation of the new faith in 1524, when the Nuremberg city council issued a series of measures that brutally affected the women’s religious life. One of these measures was the prohibition to take on new novices, ultimately causing the convent to die out in 1596, with the demise of the last nun of St. Klara. Manuscript cgm 4439 is believed to have been moved around that time from the Nuremberg convent to the Clarissan convent St. Jakob am Anger in Munich.12

The Franciscan Sermons in Cgm 4439

In her standard work on the medieval sermon, Beverly Kienzle has offered a genre definition that includes the following three characteristics:13 first, the sermon is essentially an oral discourse spoken by a preacher who addresses an audience; secondly, the preacher addresses the audience to instruct and exhort them; and finally, the topic is concerned with faith and morals and usually based on a sacred text. We will see that the sermons in Cgm 4439 possess all of these characteristics. Of course, a transition has taken place from the sermon as oral discourse to a written form. Nevertheless, these written texts originate from words once spoken by preachers and are thus oral in origin, or from texts that were at least meant for oral recitation. The presence of the second and third characteristic will be evident from the analysis below. Olivier Maillard The first sermon in the manuscript; Ansprache an die Nürnberger Klarissen über die Anfechtungen des Teufels, is attributed to the Observant Franciscan Olivier Maillard (1430–1502).14 Maillard was a French friar who had studied at the Franciscan Studium Generale of Paris and who later became a dedicated advocate of the Franciscan regular Observance. He was appointed three times as vicar general of the ultramontane Observant branch of the order.15 From the 12 13 14 15

http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/hs/katalogseiten/HSK0492_a128_JPG.htm [last consulted on 27 November 2014]. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, The sermon, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Age Occidental, 81–83 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 144–159. An edition of this text can be found in: Max Straganz, ‘Ansprachen des Fr. Oliverius Maillard an die Klarissen zu Nürnberg’, Franziskanische Studien 4 (1917), 68–85. Straganz, ‘Ansprachen des Fr. Oliverius Maillard’, 70.

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convent’s Totenbuch, we know that Maillard visited the St. Klara convent in Nuremberg twelve times.16 During these visits Maillard preached to the nuns and some of these sermons have been preserved.17 The scribe of Cgm 4439 remarks at the introduction of Maillard’s sermon that: ‘Dise nach volgende ler hat unß getun der aller wurdigst und wol seligste vater Oliverius maillardi’ [The following teaching has been given to us by our very blessed father Oliverius maillardi].18 The first line of Maillard’s actual text reveals the nuns as the intended audience: ‘Item ir sult gewarnt sein vor dem hinter listigen feint der niet auf hort nach und tag zu verieren die got gewichten junkfrauwen die dy upikeit der welt versmechen und xpo begeren an zu hangen.’ [Also you will be warned of the very cunning enemy who does not cease to delude day and night the to God devoted ladies who scorn the vanity of the world and desire to follow Christ].19 The sermon warns the nuns against the temptations and tricks of the devil and instructs them how to defy him. They should be prepared for the devil, who is always there to trick the ladies who have devoted themselves to God.20 Maillard states that the resulting temptations can take on the form of blasphemy, the questioning of faith but also that of the feeling of melancholy. After these warnings, the tenor of the text changes and Maillard urges the nuns not to let themselves be ruled by their fears for the devil’s schemes. Although the nuns should be careful, they should not frenetically shun the risk of being tricked. The best medicine against these temptations is not paying too much attention.21 The nuns should thus not let concerns about possible devilish temptations consume them before something has actually happened. The more the nuns focus on this danger prematurely, the worse they will be affected. When the devil does come, the nuns should defy him by telling the devil that it is not their wish to answer to him. They should ask him what he wants from them, so that they can refuse to 16

17

18 19 20 21

‘er [Maillard] hat unser convent Xii mal heimgesucht mit aller vetterlichen trew, gunst und füderung’. See: Johannes Kist, Das Klarissenkloster in Nürnberg bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts (Nuremberg: Sebaldus-Verlag 1929), 103. Straganz, ‘Ansprachen des Fr. Oliverius Maillard’, 71. More sermons and letters from Maillard to the Nuremberg Poor Clares can be found in a manuscript which is kept in the Clarissan convent of Bressanone (Brixen) under the signature Cod. S 11, Ms. 49. This codex contains two sermons and a letter by Maillard and probably dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century. These texts were also edited in the aforementioned article by Straganz. bsb, hs. Cgm 4439, f. 48v. Cgm 4439, f. 49r. Ibidem, f. 49r. Ibidem, f. 49r, ‘kein peser ertzney’.

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act accordingly.22 If they are not allowed to speak they can turn away the devil by making a sign of contempt.23 Hence the nuns should defy the devil but, at the same time, pay him as little attention as possible.24 Maillard also warns against the destructive force of melancholy (melan­ cholia).25 It is important for the nuns to serve God with a joyful heart. They might not know whether they will end up in heaven or hell, but they do not have to worry about this when they truly love God, because He will not abandon those who truly love Him.26 The nuns are allowed to ask God for His love and His help to strengthen their love for Him, but they should not ask Him to give them any special comfort or other kinds of ‘susigkeit’ [sweetness]. Instead they should be humble and resigned.27 Maillard likewise argues that it is important that the nuns are aware of their unworthiness of God’s grace. They should turn to Him and say: ‘O herr ich bekenn mich deiner genaden unwirdig spar mir solche ding piß in dein himelische vaterlant wann ich kan nichts darzy denn daz ich die genad verhon’ [Oh Lord, I acknowledge that I am not worthy of your mercy, spare me such a thing until in your heavenly fatherland because I can do nothing but disgrace this mercy].28 Maillard ends his sermon by stating that it is unnecessary to lament over things that pertain to our time on earth. Time on earth is short. Soon the nuns will be saved by the Lord, and none of their earthly sorrows will matter anymore. Maillard thus emphasizes the temporary nature of earthly life, which is insignificant compared to the eternity of the afterlife. From this sermon we can distill some of Maillard’s views on how he wishes ‘a Clarissan nun’ to be, since he describes the desired behavior when dealing with the fears of temptations. This desired behavior is an example of the views held by male religious caretakers on the religious identity of nuns. Maillard considers moderation and the perseverance of faith to be important qualities. The nuns should take little notice of the business of the devil. They should be aware of the dangers, but they should not dig deep into the contents of these 22 23

24 25 26 27 28

Ibidem, f. 49v. ‘ich bezeug daz solchs mein wil nit ist, sag waz du wilst so gib ich mein gunst nit dar zu.’ Ibidem, f. 49r. This could very well refer to the nuns’ vows of silence. In almost all Clarissan Observant convents there were strict rules about where and when the sisters could and could not speak, and what topics were allowed. Ibidem, f. 49r–49v. Ibidem, f. 50r. Ibidem, f. 49v–50r. Cgm 4439, f. 50r. Ibidem, f. 50v.

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dangers themselves. When the devil does come they should firmly defy him and turn to God instead. Humility is also important: nuns can ask for God’s love but should not desire from Him any special favors, and they should keep in mind their unworthiness of God’s mercy. Another wished-for characteristic is that the nuns should rejoice in serving God. Hence they should beware of feelings of melancholia caused by overly zealous anxiety. Furthermore, a nun should not occupy herself with worrying over earthly matters. After all, these are meaningless in the face of salvation and the afterlife. All these aspects are part of Maillard’s view of the ideal religious identity of the Observant Clarissan nuns he preached to. Stefanus Fridolin The sermon by Stefanus Fridolin (c. 1430–1498) is often referred to in modern scholarship as Lehre für angefochtene und kleinmütige Menschen.29 Fridolin was a German friar connected to the Strasbourg order province, who became an active advocate of the Observant reforms in the German lands. He acted as a preacher and confessor to the Nuremberg Clarissan convent from 1482 to 1487, and once again returned there as a preacher between 1489 till 1498.30 In Lehre für angefochtene und kleinmütige Menschen, Fridolin comments on the misguided views that nuns might hold regarding the act of committing sins. He focuses on correcting the thoughts of nuns who are overly anxious about sinning, and who are weighed down by scruples and feelings of gloom caused by this anxiety. When a nun believes that nothing of merit can be found in her, this must be considered as a clue that there is a great desire in her for goodness.31 When she thinks her life is full of evil, this feeling does not show the

29

30

31

Two editions of this text have been published so far: Ottokar Bonmann, ‘Eine Konferenz des Mystikers Stephan Fridolin bei den Nürnberger Klarissen. Erste Veröffentlichung eines alten Textes’, An heiligen Quellen. Religiöse Monatsschrift für Ordensfrauen 29:12 (1936), 367–373; Petra Seegets, ‘Lehre für angefochtene und kleinmütige Menschen’, in: Spättmittelalterliche Frömmigkeit zwischen Ideal und Praxis, ed. Berndt Hamm and Thomas Lentes (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 190–195. For more information on this sermon in the context of Fridolin’s other work, see: Petra Seegets, Passionstheologie und Passionfrömmigkeit im ausgehenden Mittelalter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 123–142. Bert Roest and Maarten Van der Heijden, Franciscan authors, 13th – 18th century: A cata­ logue in progress http://users.bart.nl/~roestb/franciscan/franauts.htm#_Toc426118162. [last consulted on 27 November 2014]. The Totenbuch of St. Klara states that Fridolin had been a preacher to the convent for sixteen years See: Bonmann, ‘Eine unbekannte Weihnachtsansprache der Charitas Pirckheimer’, 367. Cgm 4439, f. 50v.

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presence of evil but rather her abhorrence of sin.32 In a similar way, Fridolin discusses the fear of lack of faith, of not fulfilling God’s will, of not having enough remorse for sins, of only having remorse out of fear of hell and due to the anxiety of committing a deadly sin.33 In every case, Fridolin shows that the nun’s anxieties are driven by her desire to be a good Christian. He also rejects the fear of going to hell.34 In order to honor God, one must serve as a tool to His glory and do His will, even if this means going to hell.35 Not only should the nuns accept their fate in order to resign themselves to God’s will, but they should even rejoice in it, because they are contributing to the glory of God and honoring His judgment.36 Fridolin proceeds to show that this way of thinking is a perfect remedy against evil, as the nuns, in good spirit, can tell the devil that they are prepared to suffer for God’s glory.37 When the nuns do submit themselves entirely to God in this way they do not have to fear damnation, because if they are willing to go to hell in order to suffer for God’s glory, the pain of hell will not hurt them anyway.38 The nuns should want to be the way God has created them; even if that means that they are miserable, sinful and poor.39 Fridolin tells the nuns that they should not fret about whether or not they are committing a sin, but that they should let wiser people be the judge of that: ‘laß dich ander weiser lewt urteilen wan du pist jeczund verplent und verwickelt daz du dur niet sleber weiß genunck pist wann got fodert nit mer von unß dan wir vermugen’.40 At first glance, Fridolin seems to argue that the nuns are not able to judge their own sins because they are not objective in the matter, but this sentence might also signal the perceived limits to the nuns’ own thinking on religious matters. The remark that nuns should let wiser people judge their situation could imply  that Fridolin found it inappropriate for nuns to become involved in such theological matters in general, and that they should leave those to their male religious caretakers, who were considered to be ‘wiser’ in regard to theological issues. This interpretation suited the common religious gender hierarchy, in which women were not to concern themselves with matters of dogmatic 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Ibidem, f. 50v. Ibidem, f. 51r. Ibidem, f. 51r. Ibidem, f. 51r. Ibidem, f. 52r. Ibidem, f. 52v. Ibidem, f. 52v. Ibidem, f. 53r. Ibidem, f. 53v.

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theology. Fridolin ends his sermon by saying that the nuns should not overmuch focus on possible temptations. Instead they should place themselves into God’s mild hand, enabling them to function as tools for His glory in time and eternity. Fridolin’s sermon seems to steer away from the clichéd image of the woman as the ultimate sinner, who cannot be pious enough in order to counter the temptations of the devil. Fridolin does encourage the nuns to be pious and to avoid sin, but he also warns them not to let their religious zeal, which is a good thing in itself, turn into something that is counterproductive, namely a frantic fear of sin, causing feelings of melancholy. Instead, Fridolin wants the nuns to rejoice in their faith. In this sermon Fridolin shows himself concerned with the women’s inner experience of their religion. The sermon may come across as a consolation, but it is, in the first place, clearly a text of instruction. Fridolin employs this text to direct the nuns’ thinking, by contesting their misconceptions and handing them an alternative and ‘correct’ way of thinking. Johannes Einzlinger The third Franciscan sermon in the manuscript is by the German Observant Franciscan Johannes Einzlinger (d. 1497), and is referred to as Predigt von Gelassenheit.41 Einzlinger preached at the Nuremberg convent of St. Klara between 1481 and 1487. All his sermons known today were written for Clarissan nuns, like his sermon cycle entitled Predigten von der Lib Gottes.42 Many of Einzlinger’s sermons are reworkings of De septem itineribus aeternitatis, a work by the Franciscan mystic Rudolf of Biberach (b. before 1270 – d. after 1326).43 ‘Gelassenheit’, best described as a resigned and calm state of mind, is the sermon’s main theme. The ‘Gelassenheit’ Einzlinger talks about in this sermon means giving oneself entirely and willingly to God and resigning oneself to God’s plan and will. God should be the nuns’ highest priority in life and they should be ‘ganz gelassen’ in their dedication to Christ.44 One should always accept the will of God regardless whether this means happiness or suffering. Loving God means to be 41

42

43 44

Einzlinger, has not been the subject of academic research as much as Maillard and Fridolin, and to my knowledge no full edition of Predigt von Gelassenheit has yet been published. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 4575. A transcription of a few excerpts from the texts can be found in: Anton Linsenmayer, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Predigt in Deutschland am Ausgang des Mittelalters (Passau: J. Bucher, 1889), 50–53. Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 84. Cgm 4439, f. 54r, ‘herrem an dem kreuz’.

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‘gelassen’ in respect to His judgement, which God has already preordained, or will in the future.45 ‘Gelassenheit’ is not only important during one’s life on earth but also in life after death. If one truly loves God, one should also willingly remain in purgatory as long as God desires. The nuns should rejoice in His justice being carried out over unworthy mankind (including themselves).46 Einzlinger argues that there is no better way of dying, nor is there a nobler way of living, than to give oneself entirely to God in ‘Gelassenheit’, for better and for worse.47 Being either in heaven or hell should all be the same to the nuns, as long as it is God’s will.48 Einzlinger also states that ‘Gelassenheit’ is a more effective way towards God’s love than all spiritual practice could ever be.49 Still, if the nuns want to do good works they should remember three things. First of all: their only reason for doing good works should be to carry out the will of God. They should think: ‘oh lieber herr mocht ich in dem werck dem gotlichen willen in allen creaturen in himel und auf erden in allen dingen volprüngen alß du eß gemeint und gewolt hast mit den vernuftgen daz wilt ich gern thun’ […] [oh dear Lord may I accomplish in the work the Godly will in all creatures in heaven and on earth in all things the way that you have meant it and have wanted it with your wisdom that I want to do gladly].50 Secondly, those works should be done to praise God.51 Finally, one should honor God through good works and think: ‘o lieber herr mocht ich dir in den werck alle dy err erpiten die dir himel und auf erden je erpoten ist von allen creaturen und noch ewiglich erpoten sol warden […]’ [oh dear Lord may I offer you in the work the honor which in heaven and on earth is offered to you by all creatures and which will be offered to you for eternity].52 One might ask what difference there is between praising and honoring God, but for Einzlinger they seem to be separate things.53 Einzlinger argues that the nuns should offer their lives to God out of their love for Him:54 God’s will should be 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54

Ibidem, f. 54v, ‘wie er eß ewiglich gewolt von fur geordent hat oder noch orden wird’. Cgm 4439, f. 54v. Ibidem, f. 55r. Ibidem, f. 55r, ‘der is ein pilgram hie in himel une dort in dem grunt der hell Dez ster er allez geleich und begert allein dez willen gotez als er daz von wigkeit had geordent’. Ibidem, f. 55r. Ibidem, f. 55r–55v, ‘daz eß den willen gotez ist’. Ibidem, f. 55v, ‘got in den werck loben’. Ibidem, f. 55v–56r, ‘sul wir an sechen sein err in den wreck’. That this part of the sermon is a little confusing to read, might be due to the way the sermon was transmitted by the scribe. It could indicate that the sermon in manuscript Cgm 4439 is a reportatio. Cgm 4439, f. 56v.

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their will. Einzlinger compares the way human sins relate to God’s mercy with the way a drop of water relates to a deep sea, which means that God’s mercy is much greater than the sins of the human race.55 Einzlinger concludes his sermon by stating that it is ‘Gelassenheit’ that God wants in a person. It is clear from this sermon that Einzlinger considers the inner experience of faith to be a very important aspect of the nuns’ religious lives; more important than, for instance, engaging in many religious practices. ‘Gelassenheit’ and the wish to perform God’s will are the elements that make the performance of good works valuable. Being a good Christian is not so much about good works themselves, but rather about the underlying motivation to perform them. Einzlinger seems to be of the opinion that ‘Gelassenheit’ should be a core element in the nun’s thinking about her religion and the attitude and experience evoked by this way of thinking. In this way ‘Gelassenheit’ forms an important part of the ideal religious identity envisioned by Einzlinger for Clarissan nuns.

Nuns’ Religious Identity in the Sermons of Maillard, Fridolin and Einzlinger

These sermons show how, according to Maillard, Fridolin and Einzlinger, nuns should think and behave in relation to the religious matters addressed in these texts. In this way religious caretakers shaped and expressed the religious identity of nuns through religious instruction and edification. The similarities of the views represented in these three sermons are evident. All three emphasize submitting oneself to God’s will as essential. Einzlinger’s theme of ‘Gelassen­ heit’ thus plays an important part in all three of these sermons. They also all stretch the importance to rejoice in the fate that God has chosen for them. Maillard and Fridolin specifically emphasize the dangers of becoming melancholic through anxieties concerning the devil, the fear to commit sins and the fear to suffer for these sins. Committing and surrendering oneself to God’s plan is the best remedy against these anxieties and the nuns should therefore serve God with a joyful heart. Altogether these sermons express an important underlying theme concerning the way in which these preachers envisioned the ideal religious identity of Clarissan nuns. Religious instruction through sermons like these aimed to steer the nuns towards this ideal. If we take into account that the sermons discussed here only form a small portion of the corpus of texts of religious instruction that must have been in circulation in the 55

Ibidem, f. 56v–57r, ‘ein tropf gegen den tifen mer’.

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Clarissan convents during late medieval times, it becomes clear that an intensive study of these texts can provide us with a more comprehensive view on the ideas of Observant Franciscan convent preachers about the religious identity of their female charges. From these texts we can extract some character traits that Observant Franciscan men would like to see in the women to whom they addressed themselves. These could, of course, be individual viewpoints, but given the great similarities between the sermons and their overlapping themes it is far more likely that these ideas were broadly shared by Observant Franciscan men. The very existence of these sermons indicates that the idealised image presented by the preachers did not match reality, because apparently there was a need for them. It is likely that these texts offer an indication of some of the issues that had to be dealt with in life behind convent walls. Particularly in reformed convents such as St. Klara in Nuremberg, nuns might have felt pressure to meet the strict and idealized standards of religious life. A strict compliance to the rule, austerity of convent life and increasing religious awareness were among the aims of the Observant reforms. These aims should deepen the nuns’ religious understanding and strengthen a community’s sense of identity. An example of how the nuns of St. Klara were reminded of these Observant aims is the visit of the Franciscan reformer Giovanni of Capistrano to the Nuremberg convent in 1452. Capistrano urged the sisters of the newly reformed community to strictly observe the rule and to emulate St. Clare.56 It has been argued that the visit of this famous Franciscan contributed to a smooth establishment of the Observance in the convent.57 However, it can also be argued that pressing the sisters to rule adherence and religious perfection may have caused undesired side effects, when nuns went over the top in their desire to meet with these demands. An increasing austerity and deepening of religious life might have caused some nuns to develop a great anxiety to sin and fear of not being worthy ‘brides of Christ’ and therefore being destined to burn in hell, resulting in feelings of unworthiness and melancholia. Observant reforms might thus have strengthened the nuns’ own awareness of their religious identity and of the ideal of convent life in productive as well as in less productive ways.58

56

Hanne Grießmann, ‘Visitacion und Reformacion. Zur Observanzbewegung der Fran­ ziskaner und Klarissen im Spätmittelalter’, in: Nürnberger Klarissenchronik, ed. Lena Vosding (Nuremberg: Selbstverslag des Stadtarchivs Nürnberg, 2012), 43. 57 Kist, Das Klarissenkloster in Nürnberg, 55. 58 Cgm 4439, f. 49r.

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Sermon Copying and Shaping Religious Identity

The three sermons discussed above represent preachers’ views on the religious identities of nuns. Yet how can such sermons tell us something about how nuns themselves shaped their religious identity? Sermons formed an important tool in the religious edification of Clarissan nuns. An emphasis on the spiritual importance of sermons is found in the Life of Saint Clare: Although she [Clare] was not educated in the liberal arts, she nevertheless enjoyed listening to the sermons of those who were, because she believed a nucleus lay hidden in the text that she would subtly perceive and enjoy with relish. She knew what to take out of the sermon of any preacher that might be profitable to the soul, while knowing that to pluck a flower from a wild thorn was no less prudent than to eat the fruit of a noble tree.59 In many cases, nuns were not mere listeners, but often played an active role in the copying, editing, collecting and exchange of these texts. A very important characteristic of sermons like the ones in Cgm 4439 is that they have been handed down through manuscripts copied in women’s convents and in many cases these manuscripts are our sole source of these texts. The scribes who have copied these sermons have thus played a decisive role in their preservation. In many medieval convents book production was part of daily convent life. In female religious houses the choir nuns themselves often took on the task of scribes. The Poor Clares of Nuremberg for example, acted as scribes for the convent’s chronicle.60 The question of what the practice of copying sermons must have comprised has led to an ongoing scholarly debate. Ideas about medieval memory techniques have played an important role in the way scholars viewed the process of transferring a sermon from an oral to a written text. In the 1960s, Wolfgang Stammler argued that most sermons were copied from memory afterwards and that preachers were rarely involved in this process.61 Paul-Gerhard Völker, 59

60 61

Translation taken from: Clare of Assisi. Early documents, ed. R.J. Armstrong (Saint Bonaventure, New York: Franciscan Institute Publication, 1993), 289. We must keep in mind that we are dealing here with a male representation of Clare of Assisi. For an intensive study of this chronicle see Vosding’s edition of the Nürnberger Klarissenchronik mentioned in note 56. Patrcia Stoop, Schrijven in commissie. De zusters uit het Brusselse klooster Jericho en de preken van hun biechtvaders (ca. 1456–1510) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2013), 29.

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on the other hand, has argued that it would be impossible to copy these sermons from memory and that there existed no shorthand that enabled listeners to copy the sermon while it was being preached, so that these notes could be written out afterwards.62 Preachers would not have risked their sermons being corrupted and might often themselves have provided the convent with a written draft of the sermon. Völker does state, however, that there were a few exceptions; convents in which indeed sermons (maybe with the aid of notes) were copied by scribes while they were being preached. He names St. Klara in Nuremberg as one of these exceptions. He argues that in convents like this there existed an exceptional and intensive form of literary interaction between the convent’s confessors and the nuns.63 The manuscripts in which this kind of copies have been preserved are, according to Völker, manuscripts for personal use, or for use by only a small group of people. Hans-Jochen Schiewer also supports the thesis that, in most cases, preachers wrote down their sermons themselves. He suggested that even when a colophon indicates that a nun copied the sermon from memory, for instance when it states that she kept the words in her heart after she had listened to the preacher, this should not always be taken literally.64 Mary Carruthers, however, has emphasized the importance of medieval memory techniques. Visual images could be used to support the auditory memory. A speaker could create strong visual images through expression and gesture. The speaker’s words could be attached to these images, thereby helping the listener recall what he or she had heard.65 It is plausible that techniques like this were also used by well-trained scribes who copied sermons, maybe as an addition to the notes they took. The question can be posed whether a form of short hand was really necessary in order to take notes during a sermon and to write them out at a later stage, especially when one takes into account the medieval abbreviation systems, which would speed up the writing process considerably (and can be considered as functioning shorthand systems in their own right). The combination of taking notes during the sermon and memory techniques might have made it possible for scribes to 62 63 64

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Paul-Gerhard Völker, ‘Die Überlieferungsformen mittelalterlicher deutscher Predigten’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 92:3 (1963), 212–227: at 215. Völker, ‘Die Überlieferungsformen mittelalterlicher deutscher Predigten’, 218–220. Thom Mertens, ‘Ghostwriting Sisters: The Preservation of Dutch Sermons of Father Confessors in the Fifteenth and the Early Sixteenth Century’, in: Seeing and Knowing. Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200–1500, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 121–141: at 122. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 94.

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copy sermons, without any need for a written copy provided by the preacher himself. We might also consider the possibility that several nuns made notes during a sermon simultaneously, which they could compare afterwards. Sometimes clues as to how a copy was made can be found in the text itself. We see an example of this in the sermon of Einzlinger, where the scribe has written: ‘daz wolt wolt ich gern und wiliglich thun’.66 The repetition of the word ‘wolt’ seems to be a mistake. A mistake of this nature might be easily made when the scribe copies the sermon from an example text, without paying too much attention. The character of this mistake might indicate that the text was copied from an example text and not from memory. Whether this example text concerns a text written by the preacher himself remains unclear. Bonmann has suggested that the sermons in Cgm 4439 might have been written with the aid of notes taken while the sermons were being preached.67 A mistake like the one mentioned above might well have slipped into the manuscript because it was already in the reportatio, which was made from the sermon by someone else than the preacher. The somewhat confusing passage in Einzlinger’s sermon discussed earlier may also be an indication that there was no written copy provided by the preacher himself. There are likewise many clues that indicate that nuns made extensive notes while they were listening to sermons. Caritas Pirckheimer (1467–1532), who is probably the best-known abbess of the St. Klara convent in Nuremberg, is said to have made drafts of the sermons of preachers like Fridolin. These drafts were subsequently turned into polished texts by other nuns, after which Pirckheimer carried out a final correction.68 Both the existence of such drafts and the final correction by Pirckheimer would not have made much sense if the sermons had been copied from texts written out by the preacher. Another indication that nuns wrote down the sermons without a written example from the preacher comes from the Bicken convent in Villingen. In the convent chronicle it is told that abbess Ursula Haider would commission young nuns to write down the sermons that were preached to them literally (von wort zue wort ufschriben) and how the abbess corrected their mistakes afterwards.69 It remains open to debate precisely how the activity of sermon copying was carried out. However, the evidence that has been gathered so far suggests that the 66 67 68 69

Cgm 4439, f. 56r. Bonmann, ‘Eine unbekannte Weihnachtsansprache der Charitas Pirckheimer’, 184. Lotte Kurras, ‘Klostergeschichte im Spiegel der Bibliothek’, in: Caritas Pirckheimer 1467– 1532, ed. Lotte Kurras and Franz Machilek (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1982), 91. Die Chronik des Bickenklosters zu Villingen 1238 bis 1614, ed. Karl Jordan Glatz (Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart 1881), 40.

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copying of sermons was executed in various ways, and at least for Nuremberg this included making drafts while the sermon was being preached. Adapting, Selecting and Exchanging The participation of nuns in the copying of sermons means that with manuscripts such as Cgm 4439 we are dealing with at least one intermediate person between the preacher and the reader: the nun who acted as the scribe, and who was able to leave her mark on the text. Whether a sermon was copied from memory, notes or an example text, scholars such as Thom Mertens have argued that nuns edited the sermons they copied. According to Mertens this editing sometimes was a necessity, because the sisters were unable to quote their preacher verbatim.70 Mertens states that by editing sermons, the sisters, in a way, took over the role of the preacher, writing in his name and on his authority.71 Patricia Stoop, in her book from 2013, has shown that the sisters of the Jericho convent in Brussels actively collected sermons and made adaptations to them, underlining the important role nuns played in the written tradition of sermons.72 We might not always be able to understand the motives behind additions and adaptations, but the fact that changes were made by female convent scribes is an indication that these women thought about what they copied, and more specifically, that they made choices during the process. However, because many sermons are only known through one source, the nature of such scribal alterations might often remain invisible to us. This is also the case with Cgm 4439. With this manuscript the only certain adaption made to the sermons by the scribe concerns the introductions, which tell us first and foremost how the preacher was valued by the scribe, lending a certain authority to the text. For example: ‘Dise noch volgende ler hat gethun der andechtig vater steffan vnd gehor zu angefochten und klein mutigen menschen’. This valued the text as a ‘teaching’ and gave it authority, because it came from a ‘pious priest’.73 The shaping of a religious identity can also be found in the act of collecting sermons. Some sermons were selected to be copied into manuscripts while others were not. In this way convent scribes influenced which preachers became ‘authors’ in the monastic collections and thus would become known

70

Mertens, like Völker, argues that no short hand existed which would have enabled the sisters to copy sermons truly verbatim. See: Mertens, ‘Ghostwriting sisters’, 133. 71 Ibidem, 130,131. 72 Stoop, Schrijven in commissie. 73 Cgm 4439, f. 50v.

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to a broader audience up until today.74 It remains debatable to what extent the nuns were allowed to decide what they were copying. Mertens argues that sisters copied sermons mostly out of personal motives and were not obliged to do this on behalf of the community, while Cynthia J. Cyrus states that obligatory considerations did play an important part in the motivations of scribes to copy a text.75 In the case of the Poor Clares of Nuremberg and Villingen an obligatory element was present, since we know that abbesses like Pirckheimer and Haider charged their nuns to write down sermons as both an educational and spiritual practice. In those cases it may have been the abbesses who decided which texts should be copied and were important enough to be preserved. The one of course does not exclude the other, and in both cases the selection of sermons that these women chose to codify can tell us a lot about which themes nuns (either the abbess or the scribe, or both) found important. Since the copying of texts was a time-consuming activity, it is unlikely that time was wasted on copying entire texts that were meaningless to the nuns (unless maybe for commercial purposes). A copied text might have benefited the whole community by ending up in the convent’s library or by passing from one nun to the other. The decision to copy certain sermons can be seen as a filtering process, saving those texts that suited the women’s interests and spiritual needs.76 Related to this is the activity of collecting sermons and joining them in one manuscript. Although it is quite plausible that manuscript Cgm 4439 was manufactured in the first place to contain the text by Trithemius, there seems to be some logic behind grouping the sermons by Maillard, Fridolin and Einzlinger, to serve as a coherent reading for the nuns, since the texts address very similar themes. It is possible that the abbess or scribe found it useful to have these sermons preserved together so that they could be consulted if necessary. In this way, the convent community could continue to benefit from the religious edification offered by their convent preachers long after the sermon was preached. Studying the preservation of sermons can provide us with an indication what themes the nuns found important. Due to the loss of manuscripts over time, this picture can never be comprehensive, but it will surely increase our understanding of how nuns viewed their own religious identity. Of course, it must be kept in mind that the choices nuns could make in these matters were limited by their circumstances. Nuns could only create 74

Cynthia J. Cyrus, The Scribes for Women’s Convents in Late Medieval Germany (TorontoBuffalo-London: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 117. 75 Mertens, ‘Ghostwriting sisters’, 135 and Cyrus, The Scribes of Women’s Convents, 173. 76 Cyrus, The Scribes for Women’s Convents, 46.

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their own views regarding this identity via the instructions and texts that were available to them. To some extent they had to make do with the texts (or oral presentations) that were provided to them by their male religious caretakers. In that way these caretakers played an influential role in shaping the religious identity of nuns. On the other hand, we must remember that religious communities could also obtain new texts through book donations, for example by pious lay people, and that it was not uncommon for convent communities to exchange religious texts.77 There exists a manuscript with sermons by Fridolin that was produced by scribes of the Clarissan convent of Söflingen. Johannes Kist has argued that this manuscript was copied from an earlier text, now presumably lost, which stemmed from the Nuremberg convent.78 A similar case concerns a manuscript that contains two dated sermons and a letter by Maillard. The ownership mark in the manuscript tells us it was once in the possession of Justina Plebin (d. 1521), who was a nun from the Clarissan house of Bressanone/Brixen.79 Both Straganz and Kist are convinced that the original audience of these sermons and the letter were the Poor Clares of Nuremberg. If both manuscripts indeed originate from a Nuremberg original, then they suggest that it was not unusual for convents to exchange sermons. Considering the fact that the nuns of St. Klara helped to reform the Bressanone convent, such contacts are rather plausible. Although we do not know who took the initiative for this particular exchange, it indicates that female communities actively participated in the exchange of texts. In that way, nuns might have been able to read sermons that were never preached to their community and to expand the convent’s library by choice. Furthermore, it is plausible that the exchange between nuns and male religious caretakers influenced the sermons these men created for the women in their charge. As already pointed out, the topics treated by the sermons in Cgm 4439 likely related to real problems encountered in convent life. The fact that these sermons were preserved at least indicates that the abbess or the scribe found these topics to be relevant. Problems like the ones discussed in these sermons might have come to the preacher’s attention through for example the confessions of nuns. It is also possible that the abbess requested the preachers 77

In 2015 the author of this article has started her Ph.D. research on the topic of the active participation of lay people in the religious textual culture of the late middle ages. The donation of religious books to religious communities by lay people and the shared devotional culture this implies is an important element of this research. 78 Kist, Das Klarissenkloster in Nürnberg, 121. 79 Straganz,‘Ansprachen fr. Oliverius Maillards’, 71, 72.

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to address these topics. Although this might be impossible to ascertain, it must be kept in mind that there might very well have been an exchange in this respect between nuns and their male religious caretakers, and that they may have influenced each other. Conclusion In this article I have studied the views of convent preachers on the religious identity of Poor Clares by analyzing three sermons in manuscript Cgm 4439. These sermons show very similar themes. The fact that these sermons have been preserved by female convent scribes makes the interpretation of this source not only more complicated, but also more interesting, precisely because they are the collaborative end product of preachers and nuns. Sermons preserved in manuscripts composed and copied by nuns can not only help us gain insight in the views convent preachers held and communicated to the nuns about the religious identity of the latter, but these manuscripts may also help us to gain an understanding of how sermons could help these women themselves to construct and express their religious identity. To do so, we must consider nuns as active participators in the reading, collecting, copying and exchanging of texts offered to them by their male caretakers. The question should thus not only be what these men wrote, but also what women chose to do with it. This approach will sometimes leave us with unanswered questions (as is often the fate of the historian), but it also offers us a way of thinking about sources that brings us closer to understanding the way sermons could function in convent life and add to the shaping of the religious identity of a community. The construction of the nuns’ religious identity was influenced by what they heard and read, and the sermons held by the convent preachers form an important part of this. The choices these women made in what sermons they deemed worth preserving and how they were collected, adapted and exchanged, are all indications of the nuns’ own views on their religious identity. Furthermore, we should consider that nuns might also have influenced the contents of the sermons held by their preachers. In that way, convent preachers and nuns could influence each other’s views on the religious identity of Clarissan nuns. Therefore we should not limit ourselves to the study of either the sources written by male religious or those written by nuns if we want to know more about the construction of the religious identity of the latter. The study of both types of sources can add to our understanding of how views on religious identity could be shaped, expressed, influenced and intertwined.

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Select Bibliography Bonmann, Ottokar, ‘Eine Konferenz des Mystikers Stephan Fridolin bei den Nürnberger Klarissen. Erste Veröffentlichung eines alten Textes’, An heiligen Quellen. Religiöse Monatsschrift für Ordensfrauen 29:12 (1936), 367–373. ———, ‘Eine unbekannte Weihnachtsansprache Charitas Pirckheimer’, Franzis­ kanische Studien 24 (1937), 182–189. Carruthers, Mary, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Cyrus, Cynthia J., The Scribes for Women’s Convents in Late Medieval Germany (TorontoBuffalo-London: University of Toronto Press, 2009). Grießmann, Hanne, ‘Visitacion und Reformacion. Zur Observanzbewegung der Franziskaner und Klarissen im Spätmittelalter’, in: Nürnberger Klarissenchronik, ed. Lena Vosding (Nuremberg: Selbstverslag des Stadtarchivs Nürnberg, 2012), 31–44. Kienzle, Beverly Mayne, The sermon, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Age Occidental, 81–83 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). Kist, Johannes, Das Klarissenkloster in Nürnberg bis zum Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts (Nuremberg: Sebaldus-Verlag, 1929). Knox, Lezlie, Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Kurras, Lotte, ‘Klostergeschichte im Spiegel der Bibliothek’, in: Caritas Pirckheimer 1467–1532, ed. Lotte Kurras and Franz Machilek (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1982), 90–102. Mertens, Thom, ‘Ghostwriting Sisters: The Preservation of Dutch Sermons of Father Confessors in the Fifteenth and the Early Sixteenth Century’, in: Seeing and Knowing. Women and Learning in Medieval Europe 1200–1500, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 121–141. Roest, Bert, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden: Brill, 2004). ———, ‘Observant reform in religious orders’ in: The Cambridge History of Christianity, 4: Christianity in Western Europe c.1100–c.1500, ed. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 446–457. ———, Order and Disorder: The Poor Clares between foundation and reform (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Schlotheuber, Eva, ‘Humanistisches Wissen und geistliches Leben. Caritas Pirckheimer und die Geschichtsschreibung in Nürnberger Klarissenkonvent’, in: Die Pirckheimer. Humanismus in einer Nürnberger Patrizierfamilie, ed. Franz Fuchs (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 89–118. Seegets, Petra, Passionstheologie und Passionfrömmigkeit im ausgehenden Mittelalter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998).

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Spättmittelalterliche Frömmigkeit zwischen Ideal und Praxis, ed. Berndt Hamm and Thomas Lentes (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). Stoop, Patrcia, Schrijven in commissie. De zusters uit het Brusselse klooster Jericho en de preken van hun biechtvaders (ca. 1456–1510) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2013). Straganz, Max, ‘Ansprachen des Fr. Oliverius Maillard an die Klarissen zu Nürnberg’, Franziskanische Studien 4 (1917), 68–85. Völker, Paul-Gerhard, ‘Die Überlieferungsformen mittelalterlicher deutscher Predigten’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 92:3 (1963), 212–227. Winston-Allen, Anne, Convent Chronicles. Women writing about women and reform in the late Middle Ages (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004).

chapter 5

Canonical Change and the Orders of ‘Franciscan’ Tertiaries Alison More Introduction Although both modern scholarship and traditional Franciscan chronicles depict the Franciscan ‘third order’ as a singular entity, close investigation reveals a very different picture. Instead of a singular order founded by Francis of Assisi (†1226), groups commonly discussed as ‘Franciscan Tertiaries’ or belonging to the ‘third order’ often have no connections to one another, and more importantly, no connections to the friars.1 While groups that adhered to the tertiary rule of 1289 certainly held a central place in the spiritual climate of the high Middle Ages, viewing them as part of a single order provides a very limited picture of the rich penitential movement. This  article examines the complex development of groups associated with the Franciscan third order, with a particular focus on the diverse federations and chapters given canonical approval in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Myth and History

As the idea of a ‘Franciscan third order’ is so commonly accepted in modern scholarship, a brief discussion of its foundation narrative is necessary. The earliest official papal document that mentions such an order was the 1289 bull Supra montem, in which the Franciscan pope Nicholas iv (r. 1277–92) claimed to give canonical recognition to an order that Francis of Assisi had founded for lay people.2 There is no evidence that Francis of Assisi founded a canonical 1 On the order as a whole see, Alison More, ‘Institutionalizing Penitential Life in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Third Orders, Rules and Canonical Legitimacy’, Church History 83:2 (2014), 297–323. On discussions of individual federations see for instance Hildo van Engen, De derde orde van sint Franciscus in het middeleeuwse bisdom Utrecht (Hilversum: Verloren, 2006). 2 ‘Ideoque gloriosus Confessor Bl. Franciscus huius ordinis institutor, viam ascendendi ad dominum verbo pariter et exemplo demonstrans, in ipsius sinceritate fidei suos filios erudivit, eosque illam profiteri, constanter tenere firmiter et opere voluit adimplere, ut per eius

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_006

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third order, or even that an official ‘order of penitents’ existed in the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, proponents of a Franciscan third order insist that this group was officially recognized since the early thirteenth century.3 They point for instance to the Memoriale propositi (1221, confirmed 1228), which is often regarded as the first official rule for this group. However, the Memoriale was not an official rule, and at closer inspection appears to be simply an attempt to regulate penitents in Northern and Central Italy. Groups of pious laywomen were subject to increasing regulation throughout the thirteenth century.4 As a result, they were encouraged to take on external signs of canonical religious life including confessors, regulatory structures, and recognizable religious habits. By the end of the thirteenth century, such groups were virtually indistinguishable from canonically recognized religious communities.5 Having a rule recognized at the highest levels of the Church represented another way that these women could be made to appear part of the traditional religious landscape, and the 1289 rule (like the rule of St Augustine) soon came to be seen as a marker of orthodoxy.6

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seminatam salubriter incedentes, mererentur post vite praesentis erastulum, eternae beatitudinis effici possessores.’ Edited in: Dossier de l’ordre de la pénitence au XIIIe siècle, ed. Giles Gérard Meersseman (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1961), 75. For the documents generally included in this construction, see History of the Third Order Regular Rule: A Source Book, ed. Margaret Carney, Jean François Godet-Calogeras, and Suzanne M. Kush (St. Bonaventure, ny: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2008). The same medieval documents are included in Giles Gérard Meersseman’s edition of statutes dealing with penitential life, but have no exclusive association with any particular order. See, Meersseman, Dossier, 1. For a discussion of these documents as Franciscan see, Ingrid Peterson, ‘The Third Order of Francis’, in: Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed. Michael Robson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 193–207; Robert Stewart, ‘De illis qui faciunt Penitentiam’: The Rule of the Secular Franciscan Order (Rome: Istituto historico dei Cappucini, 1991). In 1247, Innocent iv had ordered that the penitents in Lombardy and Florence be placed under the exclusive supervision of Franciscan confessors (Meersseman, Dossier, 22, 57 and 25, 58–59, n. 21). However, this decision was so unpopular that by 1260 penitents were again able to choose confessors from both the Franciscans and Dominicans (Meersseman, Dossier, 9, 38–40 and 65–67). For a discussion of this see, Elizabeth Makowski, ‘A Pernicious Sort of Woman’: Quasi-Religious Women in the Later Middle Ages (Washington, d.c.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005). On the rule of St Augustine see Luc Verheijen, La règle de Saint Augustin, 2 Vols. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1967).

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The situation grew steadily worse in the fourteenth century. To preserve their active lifestyle or distance themselves from accusations of heresy or immorality, communities of pious laywomen often adopted a recognized religious rule (either the 1289 rule or the rule of St Augustine). While this did not confer a canonical status on the women, it did allow them freedom from institutional scrutiny.7 Such communities are often discussed as ‘becoming’ Augustinian or Franciscan Tertiaries; however, the groups in question often neither formed internal ties, nor connections with the orders in question.8 The institutional affiliations of these ‘tertiary’ houses were quite fluid, and it was not uncommon for an individual house to be discussed (or to refer to itself) as having a number of different order identities.9 This haphazard program of identity creation was to change drastically with the influence of the Observant reform movement that swept through Western Europe from the end of the fourteenth century. Observant reform originated from a desire to return to stricter observation of religious rules. In religious orders, it was often interpreted as a desire to return to the original ideals of their founder or a pristine period within the Church.10 In addition, reformers attempted to educate and regularize pious lay associations, particularly households of non-monastic women. In the case of Observant Franciscans, this generally meant professing the ‘Franciscan’ tertiary rule of 1289, adhering  strictly to Franciscan cura and adopting characteristics closely associated  with traditional monastic life. Communities who made these changes under Franciscan Observant guidance are generally thought to be part of the ‘Franciscan tertiary order.’11 However, the Observants achieved limited success in their goal of establishing uniformity among houses of women that were now known as Franciscan Tertiaries. Although Observant reformers held fairly consistent ideals for Christianizing western society, the programs developed to do this varied 7 8 9

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Cf. Makowski, ‘A Pernicious Sort of Woman’, x–xxv. Cf. van Engen, De derde orde, passim. Bert Roest, ‘De Clarissen in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, ca. 1460–1572’, in: Monastiek observantisme en moderne devotie in de noordelijke Nederlanden, ed. Hildo van Engen and Gerrit Verhoeven (Hilversum: Verloren, 2008), 43–68. Bert Roest, ‘Observant Reform in Religious Orders’, in: The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 4: Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 446–457 (at 446). For a detailed discussion see Alison More, ‘‘New’ Orders and the Dynamics of Innovation’, in: Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. James Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 85–110.

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considerably, and Tertiaries in the Northern Low Countries lived very differently than Tertiaries in Southern Italy. The differences can be explained in part by variations in ecclesiastical changes in different areas of Europe. As well as the interests and agenda of individual Franciscans, the shape of groups associated with the Franciscan third order was determined by developments within the Church, significantly the Western Schism and the events commonly described as the Counter-Reformation.

Schismatic Regularization

From 1378–1418, the Western Schism divided Christendom. Although all of Europe still recognized the pope as head of Christendom, there was no ­clarity on who – precisely – that might be. From 1378–1407, there were separate papal curia in Rome and Avignon each with its own court, and complementary support of governments and saints.12 In 1407, an attempt by the Council of Pisa to resolve the question of multiple popes had the unintended consequence of proclaiming yet a third contender, Alexander v. In 1410, he was succeeded by John xxiii, who reigned until the schism was resolved by the Council of Constance and the election of Martin v in 1415. The question of allegiance to a particular pope was often decided by either geography or political alliances. Of the three men claiming to be pope, the Pisan Alexander and later John had the widest base of support throughout Europe.13 At first glance, John appears to be an unlikely candidate for making lasting and necessary canonical changes. Born to a noble family from Naples, John (or Baldassare Cossa as he was then known) spent his early life as a sailor. According to his enemies, this was little more than an opportunity for him to 12

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See Hélène Millet, L’Église du Grande Schisme 1378–1417 (Paris: Picard, 2009). As well as regularizing tertiary houses, John XXIII was instrumental in reforming other aspects of the Church. He even seems to have been willing to resolve the schism itself, although evidence suggests this was true only if it was resolved in his favor. For a discussion see Philip Daileader, ‘Local Experiences of the Great Western Schism’, in: A Companion to the Great Western Schism, 1378–1417, ed. Joëlle RolloKoster and Tom Izbicki (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 89–121. The Pisan popes were recognized by England, France (excluding some principalities in the South), most of the Empire (although not by Emperor Rupert himself), and by nine important Germanic archbishops. See, Howard Kaminsky, ‘The Great Schism’, in: The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Michael Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 696.

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make his fortune through piracy. Cossa later studied law at the University of Bologna, and his administrative talents, military prowess, and moral degeneracy attracted official attention. In particular, he was noted for his reputation for earning money through unscrupulous practices and indulging his voracious appetite for sexual adventure.14 Despite the colorful tales of Baldassare’s misadventures, he appears to have had some concern for bringing order to Christendom after his ‘election’ in 1410.15 As John xxiii, he issued a series of statutes to the houses living very different ways of life but claiming to belong to the third order in Flanders.16 His 1413 bull, Personas vacantes, both required tertiary communities to observe the so-called Franciscan rule of 1289, and added statutes regulating community life. Specifically, this bull explicitly demanded that the sisters profess vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity.17 It did not insist that the sisters observe clausura (something growing increasingly popular in the rest of Europe), but instead allowed them to continue active lives of service. Although they could work outside the community, they were required to distinguish themselves from their lay counterparts by wearing a scapular and the grey tunic, which resulted in them becoming known as the ‘Grey Sisters.’ In 1414, John confirmed that those who followed the statutes set out in Personas vacantes were officially recognized as ecclesiastical persons and entitled to the benefits of this estate.18 14

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Eustace J. Kitts, Pope John the Twenty-Third and Master John Hus of Bohemia (London: Constable, 1910), 1–14. There is very little recent work on John xxiii. For an overview see Hélène Millet, ‘John xxiii (c. 1360–1419)’, in: Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, ed. A. Vauchez et al., 2 Vols. (London-Chicago: James Clark & Co., 2001) i, 771. Cf. Hélène Millet, L’Église du Grande Schisme, 113–115. As well as his regularization of the Tertiaries, John was concerned with refuting the errors of John Wycliff and Jan Hus. Cf. Kitts, John the Twenty-Third, 52–74. …in partibus Flandriae, et praesertim in Episcopatu Morinen, ac in locis, scilicet Furnis, Novoportu, Ipris, Paupringis, Dixmunde, et Bergis. John xxiii, Personas vacantes, in: Annales Minorum, ed. Luke Wadding (Rome: Typis Rochi Bernabò, 1761) ix, no. 535; xviii, 653–654. It is important to note that the Tertiaries were not simply to profess allegiance to their legitimate superiors, but explicitly ‘Domino Iohanni papae & suis successoribus canonicae intrantibus.’ John xxiii, Personas vacantes, 654. Bullarium Franciscanum Romanorum Pontificum: Constitutiones, Epistolas, Ac Diplomata Continens: Tribus Ordinibus Minorum, Clarissarum, Et Poenitentium a Seraphico Patriarcha Sancto Francisco Institutis Concessa, 7 Vols. (Rome: Typis Sacrae Congregationis De Propaganda Fide, 1904)vii, n. 1315, 475–476.

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Although John’s Tertiaries are referred to as members of the ‘third order of St Francis’ or the ‘Grey Franciscan Sisters’, the links between this group and the friars are – if anything – even more precarious than those set out by Supra montem. John’s statutes make it clear that members of the third order were to have their own general chapters (separate for the brothers and sisters) and to remain independent. In Flanders and Northern France, many communities that followed the 1289 rule and the constitutions in John xxiii’s bull worked in hospitals and had separate statutes approved in 1483, which brought more uniformity to their group but did not re-affirm the Franciscan connection.19 John’s statutes were adapted by a variety of independent groups, largely in France and Flanders, who continued to be referred to as sisters of the third order. The statutes were confirmed by the postschismatic popes Martin v (in 1430) and Eugenius iv (in 1436), and continued to provide the basis for congregations of sisters founded into the nineteenth century.20

Observant Regularization

A very different process of regularization was occurring in Southern Europe. Here, Franciscan Observants were (generally) eager to provide for the spiritual care of these women, but only for houses that conformed to their ideals. In particular, Franciscan Observants seemed exceptionally wary of women who did not observe enclosure. The case of the tertiary house of Sant’Anna in Montegiove illustrates both controversies and adaptations.21 This community was founded by the Observant Franciscan Paoluccio Trinci in 1388. In 1397, it

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These were closely based on Personas vacantes, which is generally regarded as the foundational document for this movement. ‘Statuts des religieuses du tiers ordre franciscain, dites soeurs grises hospitalières,’ ed. Henri Lemaître, Archivium Franciscanum Historicum 4 (1911), 713–731. Martin confirmed these statutes in Ex apostolicase sedis providentia (Bullarium Fran­ ciscanum, vii, n. 1891, 736). Eugenius added his approval with Ad apostolicae dignitatis apicem (Bullarium Franciscanum, n.s. I, n. 264, p. 121). The same statutes were named as influencing the regulations followed by later groups such as the Grey Sisters founded by Marguerite d’Youville. See John Watts, A Canticle of Love: The Story of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2006), 24. Mario Sensi, ‘I Monasteri e bizzocaggi dell’osservanza Franciscana nel xv secolo a Foligno’, in: All’Ombra della Chiara Luce, ed. Aleksander Horowski (Rome: Istituto storico dei Cappuccini, 2005), 87–175.

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was placed under the direction of his relative, a pious widow named Angelina.22 Through the intervention of Boniface ix, Sant’Anna was granted an exemption from the 1317 decree Sancta Romana, which limited the foundation of semireligious houses. This privilege, combined with the social status of the women in Sant’Anna, soon caused other houses to request affiliation with this house, and resulted in a quasi-official network of ‘third order houses,’ which was eventually given official recognition by Martin v in 1428.23 In the same year as he recognized the Tertiaries of Montegiove, Martin v issued a bull that placed Tertiaries who called themselves Franciscan or wore a recognizably Franciscan habit under the care of the friars.24 However, conflicts over tertiary life continued. Giovanni of Capistrano’s Defensorium tertii ordinis (written in 1440) both presents and argues against problems associated with Tertiaries.25 Capistrano’s text mentions problems such as the use of the 1289 rule by non-Tertiaries, the definitive canonical divide between the lay and clerical states, and the difficulties of recognizing lay persons as having the secular or spiritual privileges associated with the ecclesiastical state. However, his defense counters by pointing out the advantages of recognizing the spirituality of lay people: the calendar of the saints includes many lay persons; the members of the third order follow an approved rule and profess their vows publicly in the hands of the bishop; and new religious orders had always been introduced into the Church in a variety of ways. Drawing on earlier writers such as Bartolomeo of Pisa (†1401), Capistrano gives several examples of tertiary saints who made positive contributions to the Franciscan family.26 The overall conclusion of the treatise is that the case for accepting the Tertiaries as full members of the Franciscan family outweighs any possible objections. Capistrano’s defense circulated widely in Northern Europe, and the image of an ideal enclosed tertiary who accepted spiritual advice and direction from the Observant Franciscans became prevalent. In 1447, Eugenius iv

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Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 147, n. 86. Bullarium Franciscanum n.s. iv, pt. 1, n. 598, 266. Cf. Mario Sensi, ‘Anchorites in the Italian tradition’, in: Anchoritic Traditions of Medieval Europe, ed. Liz Herbert-McAvoy (Wood­ bridge and Rochester: The Boydell Press, 2010), 87–88. Bullarium Franciscanum, n.s., vii, 715–716. Giovanni of Capistrano, Defensorium tertium ordinis (Venice: Antonius Ferrarius, 1580). The work of Chiara Mercuri has traced the evolution of a ‘canon’ of saintly members of  the third order. See Chiara Mercuri, Santità e propaganda: Il terz’ordine francescano nell’agiograpfia osservante, Bibliotheca Seraphico-Capuccina, 59 (Rome: Istituto storico dei Cappuccini, 1999).

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attempted to legislate this with the bull Ordinis tui, which subjected Franciscan Tertiaries to the same enclosure guidelines as Clarissan nuns.27 Nevertheless, there continued to be a number of communities (commonly referred to as Tertiaries) who professed the 1289 rule, but neither observed enclosure nor cultivated links with the friars. A passage from the biography of Bernardino of Feltre (†1494) shows that enclosure also continued to be problematic throughout the fifteenth century: These women refuse to stay enclosed in any place, and go wherever they please; however they pray the minor liturgical office in bare feet. Not wishing to assume the spiritual care of these women, the friars said they had two choices: either to be enclosed in a monastery or to remain in their own homes where they would be controlled by their fathers.28 While it is possible that some of the Franciscan Tertiaries mentioned in this text were perfectly aware of Capistrano’s defense and the wishes of the Observants, there were numerous other communities that followed the 1289 rule, but explicitly chose to maintain their independence from the friars and their ideals. While commonly discussed as Franciscan Tertiaries, federations such as the Chapters of Utrecht, Zepperen, and Cologne followed the 1289 rule, but continued to receive spiritual care from clerics attached to the Devotio moderna, who held very different concerns.29 Like the Grey Sisters, such federations did not necessarily demand enclosure, and hence caused the ire of reformers such as the biographer of aforementioned Bernardino. Like the Observant Tertiaries, the active communities of women received support at the highest levels of the Church. In 1430, Martin v (who had just given official recognition to Observant Tertiaries in 1428) confirmed John xxiii’s 1414 recognition of the Grey Sisters. In 1440, the community of Grey Sisters in St. Catherine’s convent (in St. Omer) obtained papal approval for their form of life. The system of regulations and exemptions for women professing the 1289 rule was to grow more complex: although the 1447 bull Ordinis tui had affirmed the monastic status of Tertiaries and subjected them to the 27 Eugenius iv, Ordinis tui, in: Bullarium Franciscanum n.s., i, n. 1045, 524–526. 28 ‘…vanno dove vogliono, però dicono l’ufficio piccolo scalcie: li frati non vollero cura di queste donne, ma dicevano che facesser l’una de duoi, o si restringessero in un monastero, et harebbero in tal occasione cura di loro, o si stino in casa di loro padri, et in governo de’suoi.’ Bernardino Guslino, La vita del beato Bernardino da Feltre, ed. Ippolita Checcoli (Bologna: Compositori, 2008), 116. 29 van Engen, De derde orde, 339–350.

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regulations required of female monastics, it was quickly recognized that this could not apply to all communities. In 1448, Nicholas v declared that the 1447 requirements did not apply to sisters serving in hospitals in most of France and Flanders.30 This was confirmed by Sixtus iv in 1481, shortly before official statutes for the Grey Sisters were approved in 1483.31 Inter Cetera Regulae In 1517, the eleventh session of the Fifth Lateran Council acknowledged members of the third order as part of the Church, and affirmed their right to live as they chose. However, the same council was adamant that there was a discernable difference between quasi-religious movements that conformed to the religious life and those that remained part of the laity. Councilors decreed that the ‘monastic’ Tertiaries should be granted the same rights as religious, but other pious lay associations had no legal claim to this status, saying, To avoid the cheapening of ecclesiastical censures, and sentences of interdict being regarded as of little importance, members of the said third orders are in no way to be admitted to hear divine services in the churches of their orders during a period of interdict […]. But those living in an official group, or dwelling with enclosure, and women who are leading a life of virginity, celibacy or chaste widowhood under an expressed vow and with a habit, ought to enjoy the privileges of the order of which they are Tertiaries.32 However, the (often) contradictory legislation applied to Tertiaries in the fifteenth century meant that the process of determining which groups were ‘official’ was far from obvious. In 1521, Leo x attempted to address the ongoing concerns over the question of third orders with a new rule, issued in the papal bull Inter cetera.33 Leo’s 30 Nicholas v, Sedis apostolicae gratiosa, in: Bullarium Franciscanum n. s., i, n. 1194, 606–607. 31 Sixtus iv, Iniunctum nobis, in: Bullarium Franciscanum n. s., iii, n. 1433, 724–725. 32 Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 Vols. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990) ii, 648. This session took place in 1516, and was presided over by Leo x. The council itself lasted from 1512–1517. Cf. Alison More, ‘Institutionalization of Disorder: The Franciscan Third Order and Canonical Change in the Sixteenth Century’, Franciscan Studies 71 (2013), 147–162. 33 Stewart, ‘De Illis’, 211; Regis Armstrong and Ingrid Peterson, The Franciscan Tradition (Collegeville, mn: The Liturgical Press, 2010), xii; Peterson, ‘The Third Order of St. Francis’, 204.

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justification for this was quite simple: that the order Francis of Assisi had founded for men and women living in the world now incorporated many different forms of life and had to be revised to accommodate this diversity.34 It attempted to ensure the third order met the requirements set out by the Fifth Lateran Council, and steer it towards a more monastic way of life. Rather than the vague requirement of ‘Franciscan supervision’, found in the 1289 rule, Leo’s rule explicitly required that all communities be supervised by Franciscans and included several provisions for the roles these individuals would play in community life. As had long been the case with monastic communities, those aspiring to join the third order were now obliged to spend a period of one year living in the community before being accepted as members.35 This can be said to be a sort of pseudo-novitiate, and at the end of this year, their desire to become religious was made public by taking three vows: obedience, poverty and chastity.36 Nevertheless, Leo’s rule was far from a resounding success. Leo died in 1521, shortly after the rule was issued, and never had an opportunity to promote its implementation.37 Moreover, the general reforming trends of the sixteenth century resulted in a number of new rules and new orders. Because the Council of Trent did not reaffirm the ban on new forms of religious life that had been repeated since the thirteenth century, new orders were now founded without the historical revisionism that was common (and necessary) earlier.38 New non-monastic orders were free to write their own rules, or to adopt rules written specifically for them, and groups founded in the sixteenth century made no claim to having an association with established religious orders.39 Perhaps 34

‘Verum, quia temporis decursu, spirante illo Spiritu sancto, non solum viri conjugati, mundique hujus incolae, pro quibus a beato Francisco praefata tertia regula edita fuerat, verum etiam innumerarum virginum chori tribus essentialibus, et a quibusdam etiam clausurae nostra auctoritate assumptis votis, constructiseque monasteriis quamplurimis, non sine militantis Ecclesiae fructu multiplici et aedificatione, praefato tertii ordinis jugo sua colla subdiderunt.’ (Leo x, Inter cetera, 147). 35 Leo x, Inter cetera, 147–148. 36 ‘…ubi a Praelatis requisitus fuerit, vivendo in obedientia, sine proprio, et in castitate’ (Leo x Inter cetera, c. 2, 148). 37 For a further discussion of this see, More, ‘Institutionalization’, 147–162. 38 Cf. Karen Stöber, ‘Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities in their Writing of History’, in: Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities, ed. Anne Müller and Karen Stöber (Berlin: lit Verlag, 2007), 370. 39 John Patrick Donnelly, sj, ‘New Religious Orders for Men’, in: The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 6: Reform and Expansion 1500–1660, ed. R. Po-Chia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 162–179. Cf. Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism 1450–1700:

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most importantly, Leo’s rule made no mention of enclosure, which was becoming increasingly important for female religious communities. In 1563, the twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent confirmed that religious women were to be enclosed.40 While the council seemed to agree that enclosure was necessary for moniales, there were a number of dissenting voices regarding whether this should also apply to non-monastic groups such as penitents and Tertiaries. Certain bishops argued that many so-called tertiary groups had professed simple (rather than solemn) vows, or had no tradition of enclosure.41 At the same time, officials from major religious orders, including the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites, argued that it was improper to expect Tertiaries to observe something they had not promised when entering religious life.42 In 1566, the newly-elected Pius v addressed this confusion through his bull Circa pastoralis. This was explicit in its claim that the need for enclosure applied to all communities of women – whether the

40

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A Re-Assessment (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 25–44. Cf. Gabriella Zarri, ‘Female Sanctity, 1500–1660’, in: The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 6, 180–200; Johannes A. Mol, ‘The Hospitaller Sisters in Frisia’, in: Hospitaller Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Anthony Luttrel and Helen Nicholson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 179–208. Specifically, the Council restated and re-affirmed the decree Periculoso, passed by Boniface viii in 1298. See Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils ii, 777–778. For a discussion of Periculoso see James Brundage and Elizabeth Makowski, ‘Enclosure of Nuns: The Decretal “Periculoso” and its Commentators’, Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994), 143–155. Raymond Creytens includes serveral examples of bishops and religious leaders who argued that tertiary groups should be permitted to live in ‘open monasteries’ as they had either never observed enclosure, or lived under simple (rather than solemn) vows.  See, Raymond Creytens, ‘La Riforma del Monasteri Femminile dopo i Decreti Tridentini’, in: ii Concilio de Trento e la Riforma Tridentina (Rome: Herder, 1963), 49–57. From the Augustinians: ‘Procurator ordinis D. Augustini. – Nullus potest cogi ad id quod est consilii. Clausura non est de substantialibus trium votorum, exemplum Religiosorum quibus non est indicta clausura. – Nullus debet obligari ad plura et arctiora quam regula ordinaverit, et beatus Augustinus in Epist. 109 non precipit. clausuram etc. – Aliquae moniales habent privilegium Pauli iii ut possint vivere in observantia absque clausura. Ergo ex vi decreti non precipitur omnibus clausura etc. – Videretur expedire ut non exirent. Sed censet non licere eas cogere’ From the Franciscans: ‘Procurator ordinis Sit Francisci. – Quod constitutio Bonifatii non fuit ab omnibus approbata. Ideo illae tantum moniales quae profitentur clausuram cogantur etc., aliae vero non; quia subditi extra promissum non debent cogi, ut ait B. Bemardus. Hortentur tamen omnes etc.’ (Cited in Creytens, ‘La riforma’, 57–58).

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vows were expressed tacitly or explicitly, whatever name they went by and regardless of what their own rules said about enclosure.43 However, female communities involved in hospital or charity work were not easily discouraged. In the years that immediately followed Trent and the statements of Pius v, these women and those responsible for their spiritual care began to distance themselves from the official religious life, and reclaim their earlier identities as communities of pious laywomen. Instead of adopting rules with canonical weight or pontifical approval, which would have forced them to adopt enclosure, women formed secular institutes such as the Dévotes, Ursulines, and the English Ladies (also known as Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary or Mary Ward sisters).44 Later examples include the Klopjes or ‘spiritual virgins’ of the Netherlands.45 At the same time, the popular acceptance and tenuous claims to canonical exemption enjoyed by the Grey Sisters meant that they also continued to lead active lives. The same was true for tertiary communities in Spain and Portugal. The Portuguese Observant Andreas Insulanus or Alvares (1547–53) wrote new rules for the third order that were confirmed by Pope Paul iii in 1547.46 Mindful of 43

‘Universas et singulas moniales, tacite vel expresse religionem professae, etiam si conversae aut quocumque alio nomine appellentur, etiam si ex institutis vel fundationibus earum regulae ad clausuram non teneantur, nec unquam in earum monasteriis seu domibus, etiam ab immemorabili tempore, ea servata non fuerit, sub perpetua in suis monasteriis seu domibus debere de coetero permanere clausura, iuxta formam dictae Constitutionis Bonifacii Papae viii praedecessoris nostri, quae incipit: Periculoso, in sacro concilio Tridentino approbatam, et innovamus in omnibus et per omnia, ac illam districte observare mandamus.’ (in Bullarium diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum Pontificum Taurensis, 25 Vols. (Augustae Taurinorum: Seb. Franco, et al., 1862) vii, 447–450). Cf. Creytens, ‘La Riforma’, 62–77. 44 Marie Amélie Le Bourgeois, Les Ursulines d’Anne de Xainctonge (1606) (Saint-Étienne: Éditions Universitaires, 2003), 114–138; Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal and Buffalo: McGill/Queens University Press, 1990). Cf. Susan E. Dinan, Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France: The Early History of the Daughters of Charity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 17–22. 45 See the work of Marit Monteiro on communities of ‘spiritual virgins’ (or klopjes): Marit Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden: Leven tussen klooster en wereld in Noord Nederland gedurende de zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996); Eadem, ‘Power in Piety: Inspiration, Ambition and Strategies of Spiritual Virgins in the Northern Netherlands during the Seventeenth Century’, in: Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality, ed. Laurence LuxSterritt and Carmen M. Mangion (Palgrave MacMillan: New York, 2011), 115–130. 46 Paul iii, Ad fructus uberes, in: Annales Minorum, ed. Wadding, xviii, 437–446. Cf. Gabriele Andreozzi, Il Terzo Ordine Regolare di San Francesco Nella Sua Storia e Nelle Sue Leggi, 2 Vols. (Rome: Editrice Franciscanum, 1993) ii, c. xvii, 452–453.

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the plurality that existed in the so-called third order, and the fact that requirements for the religious life of men and women were different, this rule included separate sections for tertiary friars,47 nuns,48 and lay people.49 Paul’s confirmation of these rules stated quite clearly that there were three parts to this ‘order of penitence.’50 Rather than avoiding this reality, these rules tried to accommodate all three different forms of life. Both the rule for friars and the rule for nuns showed signs of the same monasticization that can be seen in Leo’s rule. The third rule, however, is significantly different. Instead of the conspicuous regularization that characterized tertiary rules from the later fourteenth century onwards, this document virtually restated the requirements of Nicholas’s 1289 rule: lay members of the ‘third order’ had to be free from suspicion of heresy, and be of good character.51 An additional requirement was that this was to be verified by a period of observation. Once accepted, members of this ‘lay third order’ were required to wear a black habit like the ‘third order friars’ governed by the same rules. They were also required to carry out specific devotional practices such as attending mass and fasting. The secular elements of the rule are apparent in its discussion of marriage. The third rule of Andreas explicitly permitted married people to enter, but required them to live chastely with their spouse.52 Perhaps most importantly, the third group is explicitly referred to as being a ‘third state’ (tertium statum). Its members were clearly not traditionally religious, did not (necessarily) live in community, and were not enclosed. As the fact that they were lay and not religious was explicitly stated, the third branch of the third order would not have been affected by canonical legislation targeting communities of unenclosed women who lacked clerical supervision. This ‘third order of the third order’ was specifically designed for people living in the world. As such, it was arguably closer to the spirit of the early penitents than many of the earlier forms of life associated with tertiary groups. Both its clarity and the fact that it was written by a Franciscan minister general ensured that this triple rule of 1547 quickly became popular in communities that were connected with the Franciscans, particularly in Spain and Portugal.53 The creation of three ‘states’ within the third order was to have a 47 Paul iii, Ad fructus uberes, 437–446. 48 Paul iii, Ad fructus uberes, 447–455. 49 Paul iii, Ad fructus uberes, 455–459. 50 Paul iii, Ad fructus uberes, 436. 51 Paul iii, Ad fructus uberes, 455–456. 52 Paul iii, Ad fructus uberes, 456. 53 Cf. Roest, Franciscan Literature, 203–204.

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significant effect in other parts of Europe. In 1568, Pius v allowed one official exception to Circa pastoralis. In his Ea est officii nostri, Pius drew attention to these divisions, and distinguished the moniales tertii ordinis (who were to be enclosed) from sorores tertii ordinis (who were free to continue lives of active service).54 Pius confirmed that these sorores were permitted to continue in their way of life provided that they accept spiritual care and direction from the Observant friars. This appears to have been intended only for groups that followed the 1547 rule (or the ‘third state of the third order’). However, Observant friars who were responsible for tertiary groups in Northern Europe (particularly those created by the Pisan Pope John xxiii with his 1413 bull Personas vacantes) argued that this also applied to the women under their care. Given the complex and contradictory chain of canonical legislation relating to Tertiaries, the fact that there was little resolution should come as no surprise. Conclusions Supra montem did not create an order in 1289, yet it was to have a tremendous effect on Franciscan tertiary identity. Initially, houses that professed this rule generally retained their own autonomy and had no shared system of governance. The late medieval Observant program of creating a tertiary order identity met with some success, but certain groups (who were still referred to as Tertiaries) continued to live active forms of religious life. The concessions granted by the three separate ‘states’ for Spanish and Portuguese congregations and to communities in Northern Europe following the model presented in Personas vacantes show that the place for active congregations was recognized by the later medieval and early modern Church. Moreover, these appear to have been motivated by social need rather than by ideals of codification. The perennially liminal women – neither religious nor lay – who created new forms of religious life within the tertiary framework not only draw attention to the fluid boundaries of order identity for women in the later medieval and early modern periods, but also to the problematic distinction between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ spheres. Evaluating the complexities associated with the Franciscan tertiary order becomes impossible if one approaches it as a single unified group. It is only by examining the individual chapters, federations and units that were discussed as ‘Franciscan Tertiaries’ as separate ‘orders’ with diverse identities that it becomes possible to evaluate and 54

Annales Minorum, ed. Wadding, xx, 568–570.

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understand the contributions that these women made to the ecclesiastical and social world of Western Europe in the later medieval and early modern periods.

Select Bibliography

A Companion to the Great Western Schism, 1378–1417, ed. Joëlle Rollo-Koster and Tom Izbicki (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009). Anchoritic Traditions of Medieval Europe, ed. Liz Herbert-McAvoy (Woodbridge and Rochester: The Boydell Press, 2010). Andreozzi, Gabriele, Il Terzo Ordine Regolare di San Francesco Nella Sua Storia e Nelle Sue Leggi, 2 Vols. (Rome: Editrice Franciscanum, 1993). Armstrong, Regis and Peterson, Ingrid, The Franciscan Tradition (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2010). Bireley, Robert, The Refashioning of Catholicism 1450–1700: A Re-Assessment (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). Brundage, James and Makowski, Elizabeth, ‘Enclosure of Nuns: The Decretal “Periculoso” and its Commentators’, Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994), 143–155. Creytens, Raymond, ‘La Riforma del Monasteri Femminile dopo i Decreti Tridentini’, in: II Concilio de Trento e la Riforma Tridentina (Rome: Herder, 1963), 49–57. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 Vols. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990). Dinan, Susan E., Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France: The Early History of the Daughters of Charity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). Donnelly, John Patrick, SJ, ‘New Religious Orders for Men’, in: The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 6: Reform and Expansion 1500–1660, ed. R. Po-Chia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 162–179. Dossier de l’ordre de la pénitence au XIIIe siècle, ed. Giles Gérard Meersseman (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1961). History of the Third Order Regular Rule: A Source Book, ed. Margaret Carney, Jean François Godet-Calogeras, and Suzanne M. Kush (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2008). Hospitaller Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Anthony Luttrel and Helen Nicholson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). Kaminsky, Howard, ‘The Great Schism’, in: The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. Michael Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 685–696. Kitts, Eustace J., Pope John the Twenty-Third and Master John Hus of Bohemia (London: Constable, 1910). Le Bourgeois Marie Amélie, Les Ursulines d’Anne de Xainctonge (1606) (Saint-Étienne: Éditions Universitaires, 2003).

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Makowski, Elizabeth, ‘A Pernicious Sort of Woman’: Quasi-Religious Women in the Later Middle Ages (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005). Mercuri, Chiara, Santità e propaganda: Il terz’ordine francescano nell’agiograpfia osservante, Bibliotheca Seraphico-Capuccina, 59 (Rome: Istituto storico dei Cappuccini, 1999). Millet, Hélène, L’Église du Grande Schisme 1378–1417 (Paris: Picard, 2009). Monteiro, Marit, Geestelijke maagden: Leven tussen klooster en wereld in Noord Nederland gedurende de zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996). ———, ‘Power in Piety: Inspiration, Ambition and Strategies of Spiritual Virgins in the Northern Netherlands during the Seventeenth Century’, in: Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality, ed. Laurence Lux-Sterritt and Carmen M. Mangion (Palgrave MacMillan: New York, 2011), 115–130. More, Alison, ‘Institutionalization of Disorder: The Franciscan Third Order and Canonical Change in the Sixteenth Century’, Franciscan Studies 71 (2013), 147–162. ———, ‘Institutionalizing Penitential Life in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Third Orders, Rules and Canonical Legitimacy’, Church History 83:2 (2014), 297–323. ———, ‘New’ Orders and the Dynamics of Innovation’, in: Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. James Mixson and Bert Roest (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 85–110. Peterson, Ingrid, ‘The Third Order of Francis’, in: The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi, ed. Michael Robson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 193–207. Rapley, Elizabeth, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal and Buffalo: McGill/Queens University Press, 1990). Roest, Bert, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction Before the Council of Trent (Leiden: Brill, 2004). ———, ‘De Clarissen in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, ca. 1460–1572’, in: Monastiek observantisme en moderne devotie in de noordelijke Nederlanden, ed. Hildo van Engen and Gerrit Verhoeven (Hilversum: Verloren, 2008), 43–68. ———, ‘Observant Reform in Religious Orders’, in: The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 4: Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. Miri Rubin and Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 446–457. Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities, ed. Anne Müller and Karen Stöber (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2007). Sensi, Mario, ‘I Monasteri e bizzocaggi dell’osservanza Franciscana nel XV secolo a Foligno’, in: All’Ombra della Chiara Luce, ed. Aleksander Horowski (Rome: Istituto storico dei Cappuccini, 2005), 87–175. Stewart, Robert, ‘De illis qui faciunt Penitentiam’: The Rule of the Secular Franciscan Order (Rome: Istituto historico dei Cappucini, 1991).

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Van Engen, Hildo, De derde orde van sint Franciscus in het middeleeuwse bisdom Utrecht (Hilversum: Verloren, 2006). Verheijen, Luc, La règle de Saint Augustin, 2 Vols. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1967). Watts, John, A Canticle of Love: The Story of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2006). Zarri, Gabriella, ‘Female Sanctity, 1500–1660’, in: The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 6: Reform and Expansion, ed. R. Po-chia Hsia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 180–200.

chapter 6

Transcending the Order: The Pursuit of Observance and Religious Identity Formation in the Low Countries, c. 1450–1500 Anna Dlabačová Introduction It is a commonly held view that the Late Middle Ages, and especially the fifteenth century, was an age of religious reform. The pursuit of a pure and intense spiritual life was present among religious and laymen alike. Within most religious orders movements came into being that focused on the strict observance of the rule.1 This, in turn, had important repercussions for the religious identity within the orders in question. The introduction of an Observant branch almost certainly led to struggles: the very designation alone (i.e. Observant) indicated a break between the members adhering to the Observance and the ‘old’ members. It implied serious doubts about the latter group’s lifestyle and its interpretation of the rule.2 Within one order, the controversies between the Observants and ‘non-Observants’ (or ‘Conventuals’) could lead to intense debates and even physical fights. Cases in point are the events surrounding the introduction of the Observance in the Franciscan friary in the town of Mechelen (Malines) in 1447.3 In first instance, the Conventuals refused to leave their friary, and when they did, they 1 E.g. Bert Roest, ‘Observant Reform in Religious Orders’, in: The Cambridge history of Christianity, Vol. 4: Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. Miri Rubin & Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 446–457. 2 Daniel Stracke, Monastische Reform und spätmittelalterliche Stadt. Die Bewegung der Franziskaner-Observanten in Nordwestdeutschland, Westfalen in der Vormoderne. Studien zur mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Landesgeschichte, 14 (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2013), 139–140. 3 The following is described in J. Withof, ‘De hervorming der minderbroeders te Mechelen rond 1450’, Bulletin du cercle archéologique, litteraire et artistique de Malines 35 (1930), 37–55, with references to the relevant archival materials. Recently see also Anna Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie. De Spieghel der volcomenheit van Hendrik Herp en de dynamiek van laatmiddeleeuwse tekstverspreiding, Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen, 149 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014), 43–44. On the property and books of the Conventuals see H. Ooms, ‘Een vijftiende-eeuwse boekenlijst uit het voormalig minderbroederklooster te Mechelen’,

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_007

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virtually looted the building, taking books and furniture with them.4 More importantly, they did not leave town, but settled in various houses that belonged to family members or people otherwise linked to and supportive of the Franciscan (Conventual) friary, which had been part of Mechelen’s urban life and identity since the late thirteenth century.5 The take-over of the friary by the Observants, led by the famous preacher Jan Brugman (†1473), was only the starting point of a yearlong rivalry between the Observant friars, supported by the Burgundian Duke Philip the Good (†1467), and the Conventuals, supported by at least part of the urban community. At several occasions, Conventuals forced their way into their old friary at night, leaving behind Observant friars injured and bleeding. One very intriguing case concerns Nikolaas Roelants, a Conventual friar who first joined the Observants but after a few months decided that the Observant lifestyle was not for him. After he fled the friary he ganged up with other Conventuals and together – armed and dressed as ordinary citizens – they assaulted Observant friars travelling between Antwerp and Mechelen. Eventually, Philip the Good ordered their arrest.6 The accounts of the situation in Mechelen provide a telling example of the unsettling effects the introduction of the Observance could have on the Franciscan identity on a local scale. Whereas the Observance could be highly disruptive within a single order, comparable ideas of Observance and the pursuit of an Observant lifestyle seem to have had a conciliating and unifying effect among Observant members of various religious orders and reform movements. In his study of the Franciscan Observance in the Northwestern region of Germany, Daniel Stracke has for example pointed to the collaboration between Observant Franciscans and Benedictines of the reformed congregation of Bursfeld in conducting visitations of houses of Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life.7 This contribution explores the Observance as a factor in the formation of religious identity in the Low Countries in the second half of the fifteenth century – within and outside religious orders. Firstly, I would like to draw Franciscana. Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de minderbroeders in de Nederlanden 45 (1990), 77–86. 4 Withof, ‘De hervorming’, 48. 5 For general information on the Franciscan friary in Mechelen see Jozef Baetens, ‘Minderbroederkloosters in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. Kloosterlexicon: 47. Mechelen’, Franciscana. Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de minderbroeders in de Nederlanden 44 (1989), 3–62. 6 Withof, ‘De hervorming’, 50–51. 7 Stracke, Monastische Reform, 110–113 and 144–145.

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attention to the role of vernacular religious literature in the process of identity formation in Observant religious communities, with a few examples of the use of religious literature and the ideals these texts convey. Within the broad fifteenth-century Observant movement religious texts were an important instrument for shaping and promoting Observant ideals. My focus will be on the Spieghel der volcomenheit (Mirror of Perfection), written by the Franciscan Observant Hendrik Herp. In this section, I also would like to point to the difficulties in identifying a religious identity connected specifically to a single religious order or a religious movement in the late medieval period. I shall argue that the introduction of strict Observance was an important component in the process of religious identity formation within religious communities, but that it could not stand alone, and always took shape within a specific context. Secondly, I will discuss the role of the Observance (and the Franciscan Observance in particular) in the formation and expression of religious identity of lay people in a late medieval town. I will take a closer look at one of the cultural centers of the Low Countries, Bruges, where for nearly half a century an Observant Franciscan friary existed alongside an ‘old’ Franciscan friary populated by Conventuals. In this second section the geographical scope is narrowed, but the perspective broadened, as it takes into account the interaction of the Observance with an urban society, and with the social and political identity of its patrons. Lay people enjoyed a far greater leeway in shaping their religious identity than members within a specific religious community. I will argue that this allowed for a peaceful, pragmatic coexistence of Observant and Conventual elements in the make-up of the religious identity of prominent inhabitants of Bruges.

Religious Literature and the Pursuit of Observance as an Order-Transcending Element in Religious Identity Formation

Fifteenth-century religious literature, its transmission and use, form an attractive study-object to understand the formation of religious identity. However, it seems to be a difficult task to point to order-related identity markers within many fifteenth-century texts. A case in point is the Middle Dutch Spieghel der volcomenheit, written by Hendrik Herp (†1477) between circa 1455 and 1460.8 8 An edition of the Middle Dutch text together with the Latin translation made in Cologne by the Carthusian Peter Blomevenna between 1496 and 1504 can be found in Hendrik Herp, Spieghel der volcomenheit, ed. Lucidius Verschueren, Vol. 2, Tekstuitgaven van Ons Geestelijk Erf, 2 (Antwerp: Neerlandia, 1931). On the Spieghel and its transmission see Dlabačová,

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The Spieghel is a mystical handbook, guiding the reader through all stages of mystical ascent. The text has a classical division in three parts (the active, contemplative, and super-essential contemplative life), which are preceded by a first section that introduces twelve types of mortification (xii Stervinghen). This first section serves as a an introduction to the spiritual life, but also as a kind of ‘insurance’, by pointing to the rigorous nature of devoting oneself to a life of mystical ascent. It could put off people who were not sufficiently motivated or whose constitution was not suitable for pursuing a spiritual life.9 Herp wrote the text after he switched to the Franciscan Observance in 1450. Previously, he had been a Brother of Common Life, and rector of houses of Brothers of Common Life in Delft and Gouda.10 Gouda was also home to the first Franciscan Observant friary in the Low Countries. This friary served as an outpost and operating base for the new movement; important members gathered here, and it was from Gouda that existing Franciscan friaries were reformed and new friaries founded: examples are Leiden and Delft (both 1445), Antwerp (1446) and the aforementioned discordant reformation in Mechelen (Malines) in 1447.11 It was in Gouda that Herp probably got acquainted with the Franciscan Observance and its members. In 1450 he left to travel to Rome, where he himself converted to the Franciscan Observance. After his return to the Low Countries he was



Literatuur en observantie and Hendrik Herp, Spieghel der volcomenheit, ed. Lucidius Verschueren, Vol. 1, Tekstuitgaven van Ons Geestelijk Erf, 1 (Antwerp: Neerlandia, 1931). In general on Herp see Benjamin De Troeyer, Bio-Bibliographia franciscana neerlandica ante saeculum xvi, Vol. i: Pars biographica. Auctores editionum qui scripserunt ante saeculum xvi (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1974), 108–110; Idem, ‘Herp, Hendrik’, in: Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon iii, Gert van der Schüren – Hildegard von Bingen, ed. Wolfgang Stammler et al. (Berlin [etc.]: De Gruyter, 1981), 1127–1135; Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, Vol. 4: Die niederländische Mystik des 14. bis 16. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999), 219–228 and Anna Dlabačová, ‘Hendrik Herp: observant en mysticus. De «Spieghel der volcomenheit» (ca. 1455 /1460) in nieuw perspectief’, Queeste. Tijdschrift over middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden 15–2 (2008), 142–167. 9 Abstracts in Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 55–78 and Herp, Spieghel, vol. 1, 155–158. 10 Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 28–37. 11 See Mirjam Schaap, ‘Over “qwaclappers” en ander schadelijk volk. De laatmiddeleeuwse hervorming van Noord-Nederlandse minderbroederkloosters bezien vanuit de interne machtsstrijd binnen de orde’, in: Monastiek observantisme en Moderne Devotie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, ed. Hildo van Engen & Gerrit Verhoeven, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen, 110 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2008), 17–20. Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 39–40.

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immediately appointed to a high office within the movement: he became the guardian of the newly reformed friary in Mechelen, and between 1470 and 1473 he was the provincial vicar of the Franciscan Observance in the Cologne province. It was in Mechelen that Herp wrote his Spieghel, making it one of the first vernacular texts produced by the Franciscan Observance in the Low Countries.12 Although Herp wrote the text as a Franciscan Observant, the text itself seems to contain surprisingly little that points to Franciscans or a specific ‘Franciscan identity’ – whatever that may be. Herp does use exempla from the Legenda Maior, and in this context mentions St Francis three times.13 He also incorporates works by Franciscan authors such as Rudolf of Biberach (circa 1270 – after 1326) into his Spieghel, but equally cites non-Franciscan authorities such as Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux.14 Furthermore, Herp found inspiration in the writings of Jan van Ruusbroec and fourteenth-century Dominican authors such as Johannes Tauler.15 Rather than communicating an explicitly Franciscan-colored set of religious ideals, the Spieghel conveys a message of spiritual poverty, of mortification (sterven), of a total absorption of one’s will into the will of God, of freeing one’s soul from its lower faculties that impede the soul’s mystical ascent, but also of obedience to the father or mother superior. Worldly goods such as luxurious foods, beverages, and clothes are only to be used insofar as they are necessary, according to one’s status, well-being, constitution and infirmity. It is the desire for these things that is sinful and the soul has to be stripped of this longing.16 According to Herp, one should be very careful when it comes to visions – they can just as easily be the work of the devil – and avoid an overly strict ascetic regime of bodily spiritual exercises, such as fasting or vigils.

12 Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, especially 39–42. 13 Herp, Spieghel, Vol. 2, 193, lines 58–59; 249, lines 52–53; 331, line 13. 14 Herp, Spieghel, Vol. 1, 148–149 on Biberach, cf. Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 69–70. For Thomas Aquinas see Herp, Spieghel, Vol. 2, 21, line 9; 213, line 18; 395, line 5. Herp cites for example from Bernard’s Sermones super Cantica Canticorum: 143, line 98; 315, lines 146–147; 341, lines 83–90; see also 167, lines 22–26. He also ascribed the Epistola ad fratres de Monte (Guillaume of St-Thierry) to Bernard: 219, lines 19–20. 15 On Herp and Tauler see Anna Dlabačová, ‘Tauler, Herp and the changing layers of mobility and reception in the Low Countries (c. 1460–1560)’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 84 (2013), 120–152. See also Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 57–58, 63–64, 70, 90; Herp, Spieghel, Vol. 1, 147–150; Ruh, Geschichte, 228. 16 Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 63; Herp, Spieghel, Vol. 2, 33–35.

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Spiritual exercises are always the most important, and in themselves they can have a weakening effect on the body.17 Of course we can discern some Franciscan aspects (e.g. the ideal of poverty), and if we position Herp as a Franciscan Observant, his work becomes almost automatically ‘Franciscan’ and a pillar of Franciscan Observant spirituality in the Low Countries. But Herp’s adherence to the Franciscan Observance did in no way limit his audience to this order, nor did it restrict his work to form the identity of the Franciscan Observance. The message of his Spieghel is a universal fifteenth-century message of an inner reform, an inner process of soulreformation,18 and in principle able to support any kind of institutional reform or rule observance, be it Franciscan, Dominican, Carthusian, or within the context of the institutionalized Modern Devotion, where communities took on (stricter) rules (for example replacing the Third Rule of St Francis with the Rule of St Augustine) and converged in chapters with additional statutes.19 That the text served a ‘universal Observant ideal’ is confirmed by its manuscript dissemination: the text can be found in convents of Tertiaries under pastoral care by Franciscan Observants, but also in the community of Regular Canonesses at Diepenveen, where the women kept to the ‘Windesheim Obser­ vance’, in the convent of Maaseik (which had adopted the Rule of Augustine and associated itself with the Chapter of Venlo), in a tertiary convent belonging to the Chapter of Utrecht, and in the Carthusian monasteries in Amsterdam and Roermond.20 The most intriguing example of Herp’s Spieghel co-shaping the religious ideals and identity of women within the fifteenth-century Observance is probably the early reception of Herp’s work in Nuremberg. Between 1466 and 1473 the father confessor of the Observant Dominican sisters, Heinrich Haß, had the Spieghel translated for the women under his pastoral care. The entry in the library catalogue of the convent is ambiguous about whether Haß himself was the translator, or whether he had the book translated by someone else: ‘unser

17 Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 73–74; 76; 204–205; Herp, Spieghel, Vol. 2, 293–301 and 379. 18 On the concept of soul-(re)formation see e.g. Walter S. Melion, ‘Introduction: Meditative Images and the Psychology of Soul’, in: Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Idem, R.L. Falkenburg & Todd M. Richardson, Proteus, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols 2007), 1–36. 19 Koen Goudriaan, ‘Het Sint-Agnesklooster en de Moderne Devotie’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 81 (2010), 18–19. 20 See Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, especially 106–116 and 156–203.

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peichtiger vater Haß, hat sy uns teutzsch lasen machen’.21 It is also interesting that the sisters believed the text to have been preached by Peter Kirchschlag (‘hat gepredigt der erwirdig vater meister Peter von Kirchslag’). Like Heinrich Haß and unlike Herp, Kirchschlag was not a Franciscan Observant, but a member of the Dominican Observance. In the 1460s he reformed several Dominican monasteries in the Rhineland. On the basis of the catalogue inscriptions, Kristina Freienhagen-Baumgardt has argued that Kirchschlag learned about Herp’s Spieghel in this region, and that he was the one who brought the text to Nuremberg.22 Whatever might have been the case, fact is that one text representing a set of religious guidelines and ideals was easily transferred from one Observant order to the other. The women of the Dominican convent had taken on the Observance, and they could deepen and intensify their spiritual life through the study of a spiritual text that originated within the Franciscan Observance. The Spieghel was used as ‘reform literature’; as a text that could help to establish a spiritual reform in support of institutional reform.23 Furthermore, the Spieghel also played a role in the reform-process within the convent of Regular Canonesses of St Mary/Rose of Jericho in Brussels. The communal life of these women was reformed, when the convent of Jericho was established in 1457 through the merger of two existing houses. The new convent was put under the supervision of monasteries that belonged to the Chapter of Windesheim.24 As an inner spiritual counterpart to their institutional reform, the sisters became active in copying spiritual texts. They are well-known for their sermon collections based on sermons held by their father 21

Kristina Freienhagen-Baumgardt, Hendrik Herps «Spieghel der volcomenheit» in oberdeutscher Überlieferung. Ein Beitrag zur Rezeptionsgeschichte niederländischer Mystik im oberdeutschen Raum, Miscellanea Neerlandica, 17 (Louvain: Peeters, 1998), 44–45; Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 156. 22 Freienhagen-Baumgardt, Hendrik Herps «Spieghel», 44–47; cf. Barbara Steinke, ‘“Den Bräutigam nehmt euch und habt ihn und verlasst ihn nicht, denn er verlässt euch nicht.” Zur Moral der Mystik im Nürnberger Katharinenkloster während des 15. Jahrhunderts’, in: Gottes Nähe unmittelbar erfahren. Mystik im Mittelalter und bei Martin Luther, ed. Berndt Hamm, Volker Leppin & Heidrun Munzert, Spätmittelalter und Reformation, neue Reihe, 36 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 139–164. 23 Steinke, ‘“Den Bräutigam nehmt euch”’, 150–153. Freienhagen-Baumgardt, Hendrik Herps «Spieghel», 44–47. Cf. Dlabačová, ‘Hendrik Herp: observant en mysticus’, 159 and 161. 24 The history of the convent has been thoroughly studied in: Patricia Stoop, Schrijven in commissie. De zusters uit het Brusselse Jericho en de preken van hun biechtvaders (ca. 1456– 1510), Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen, 127 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2013), see especially 47–54.

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confessors and by visiting preachers, which have been thoroughly studied by Patricia Stoop.25 Not only did the library of the Jericho convent contain a manuscript of Herp’s Spieghel, which had been copied by one of the sisters, some of the community’s visiting preachers were Franciscan Observant friars.26 They came from the nearby friary of Boetendaal, which had been founded by Hendrik Herp in 1467, at the request of Isabella of Portugal (widow of the Burgundian Duke Philip the Good).27 The introduction to one of the sermon collections compiled by the sisters, in this case by a team of compilers that included Elizabeth van Poylc – the sister who also copied the convent’s manuscript of the Spieghel –, refers to the great talent of the Boetendaal friars. The sisters considered the sermons by one friar in particular, Dionysius of Holland, to be deeply inspiring for their spiritual life.28 One of the sermons held by such Franciscan Observant preachers is of special interest for the question concerning the role of the Observance in religious identity formation. The rubric introducing this sermon announces that it had been preached by the leader of the Observant Friars Minor of the province of Cologne.29 The sermon advocates a combination of the outer, practical, and strict adherence to the rule with an inner, spiritual reform, manifesting mystical elements. Departing from the Biblical theme from Ecclesiastes 3:4, Tempus flendi et tempus ridendi, the provincial vicar’s sermon relates that the tempus flendi is connected to God’s judgment and that the pain awaiting the soul in purgatory is unimaginable. The text therefore urges the sisters to strictly keep 25 Stoop, Schrijven in commissie. Cf. Thom Mertens, ‘Ghostwriting Sisters. The Preservation of Dutch Sermons of Father Confessors in the Fifteenth and the Early Sixteenth century’, in: Seeing and knowing. Women and learning in medieval Europe, 1200–1550, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Medieval women: texts & contexts, 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 121–141. 26 The Spieghel-manuscript is Brussels, kbr: 2136. Stoop, Schrijven in commissie, 272–275; Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 118–123. 27 Archangelus Houbaert, ‘Minderbroederskloosters in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. Kloosterlexicon 9. Boetendaal’, Franciscana. Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de minderbroeders in de Nederlanden 30 (1975), 82–83; Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 52–53. 28 The manuscript containing this collection is Gent, ub: 902. An edition of the introduction (f. 1r–2v) is provided in Stoop, Schrijven in commissie, 450–451. See also Mertens, ‘Ghostwriting sisters’, 121–141, especially 138–139, and Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 124–125. 29 Gent, ub: 902, f. 17r: ‘[…] het welke predicte die eerwerdighe provincial der ordenen van Sinte Francissicus(!) observanciën’. Stoop, Schrijven in commissie, 274. Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 125. The preacher was probably Michael de Lyra, who was vicarius provincialis between 1476 and 1479.

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to the observance of their rule so that their souls will not have to experience this indescribable pain: Die minste pine des vagheviers es meerder dan alle die pine deser tijt. Ya al waren tsamen gheleet alle die pinen die oeyt martelaren gheleden ende alle siecten oft crancheiden der menschen ende soe wat herten oft sin beswaren, beanxten, perssen oft bedroeven mach, soe en waert nochtan niet te rekenen teghen die minste pine inden vaghenviere. Hierom moghen wij wel voer ons sien in tijts ende pinen ons regule observancie ende beloefften nauwe te houden, neerstich sijn ten chore ende bouen al sorchuoldich in onse ghetijden.30 The least pain of purgatory is greater than all the pain in this lifetime. Even if all the pains were to be suffered together that were ever experienced by martyrs and all people’s sickness or illnesses, and all that presses and burdens the heart and mind and causes anxiety, even then it would not count against the least of pains in purgatory. That is why we should keep this in mind and endeavor to strictly keep to the observance of our rule and our vows, be diligent in the choir and above all careful in keeping the divine office. [my italics] Towards the end of the sermon, the provincial vicar urges the sisters once more to strictly observe their rule, and thus spur on others to perform good deeds: Want den cloesterlieden hoirt toe driest ende neersticheit te hebben tot alder goeder observanciën. Ende een yeghelijc sal hem pinen dair in die vuerichste ende wackerste te wesene, opdat sijn werken toenen dat hi den tragen mach trecken ende vermanen tot alle dien datmen van Gods wegen sculdich es te doene ende te latene.31 The inhabitants of monasteries should be industrious and diligent in keeping to a correct observance. And each individual should put all effort in being the most devout and fiery therein, so that his works may show to exhort and spur on the lukewarm to all those things that they have to do and to abstain from because of God. The preacher repeatedly instructs the sisters to keep strictly to the observance of their rule. Through its focus on rule observance the sermon does

30 Gent, ub: 902, f. 18r. 31 Gent, ub: 902, f. 23v.

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not convey a specifically Franciscan ideal or identity, but rather a universal Observant ideal. Revealing is the fact that the preacher speaks of all members of religious communities (cloesterlieden) and advises to keep to the strict observance of ‘our rule’. The preacher and his audience did not adhere to the same rule – the preacher adhered to the Rule of St Francis and the sisters to the Rule of St Augustine –, but as long as everyone strictly keeps to it they fulfill the ideal of the Observance. The Observance can therefore be part of a set of ideals that together form a religious identity, but can in itself not substitute a religious identity: it always functions within a context that is further framed and defined by a specific rule, supplementary constitutions, and a particular setting, which may include a set of religious literature such as Herp’s Spieghel, pastoral care by Observant member from a range of religious orders, etcetera. The set of ideals that the Observance becomes part of and that defines its specific nature can build on materials from a range of religious orders. If we take the women in Jericho as an example, we can discern a number of influences: they follow the Rule of St Augustine and through their father confessors they are linked to the mystical tradition of Groenendaal, Windesheim and the Windesheim Observance.32 Through the visiting preachers and their sermons they undergo an influence from the Franciscan Observants, but there are also Dominican Observants from the Brussels monastery who visit the convent and edify the sisters.33 Apart from Herp’s Spieghel the sisters had a large set of spiritual texts at their disposal, including writings by the fourteenth-century mystic Jan van Ruusbroec, the fourteenth-century dialogue called Malogranatum, which originated within the context of religious reforms in Bohemia, and various other texts.34 All of these elements somehow co-formed the ideals the women pursued, with the Observance as an overarching ideal.

32

On the Windesheim Observance see Koen Goudriaan, ‘De observantie der conversinnen van Sint-Augustinus’, in: Monastiek observantisme en Moderne Devotie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, ed. Hildo van Engen & Gerrit Verhoeven, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen, 110 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2008), 193–194. 33 Stoop, Schrijven in commissie, 279–298 and 456–458; Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 134–135. On the Observant Dominicans in the Low Countries see e.g. Servatius Petrus Wolfs, ‘Dominikanische Observanzbestrebungen: die Congregatio Hollandiae (1464– 1517)’, in: Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, ed. Kaspar Elm, Ordensstudien, 6; Berliner historische Studien, 14 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989), 273–292. 34 On the library see Stoop, Schrijven in commissie, 146–153. Cf. Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 129–132.

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Within a single order the members who called for reform could get into severe struggles with the members who wanted to maintain the status quo. However, the propagators of a stricter observance from different orders collaborated in their pursuit of reform. The provision and exchange of texts that supported the reform, by deepening spiritual life and improving education, formed an important part of this collaboration.35 Nevertheless, the Observance in itself is not an identity, but merely and ideal that can be integrated into, and overarch, a much more complex religious identity, built out of a variety of elements derived from the rule in question, supplementary constitutions, pastoral care, and religious literature. All groups that strive to internalize the ideal of the Observance share a common denominator in their religious identity. This common denominator can function as a unifying ‘tool’ among different ideals and identities, or among various orders, groups, movements, and chapters. The effect of the Observance on religious identity within the world of the religious could thus be twofold: it was a trigger for severe struggles within a single order and an integrating force on the level of various Observant orders and movements. The question arises how the introduction of the Observance influenced religious identities outside religious communities. What effect did the introduction of the Observance have on religious practices by laymen within a late medieval town? Did it have the same disruptive and unifying effects within an urban society and were lay religious ideals and identities shaped in a similar fashion (i.e. by incorporating the Observance into a complex set of ideals)? Did it affect the religious ideals and thereby the religious identity of laypeople, and if so, in what way?

Observance and Lay Religious Identity Formation in Bruges

This section explores the role of the Franciscan Observance in the religious identity formation of laypeople in a single city. One of the cultural and political 35

E.g. Werner Williams-Krapp, ‘Die Bedeutung der reformierten Klöster des Predigerordens für das literarische Leben in Nürnberg im 15. Jahrhundert’, in: Studien und Texte zur literarischen und materiellen Kultur der Frauenklöster im späten Mittelalter: Ergebnisse eines Arbeitsgesprächs in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, 24.–26. Febr. 1999, ed. Falk Eisermann, Eva Schlotheuber & Volker Honemann, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 326–328; Eva Schlotheuber, ‘Bücher und Bildung in den Frauengemeinschaften der Bettelorden’, in: Nonnen, Kanonissen und Mystikerinnen. Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften in Süddeutschland, ed. Idem et al., Studien zur Germania Sacra, 31 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 241–262.

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centers of the Low Countries, Bruges, provides an intriguing case  study. For more than fifty years, this city harbored two Franciscan f­riaries, one with a Conventual and one with an Observant signature. To assess the influence of the Franciscan Observance on Bruges’ cultural and religious life, it is necessary to first take a look at the introduction of the Observance in Bruges and to see how the exceptional situation – at least  for the Low Countries – of two Franciscan settlements in one city came about. The Franciscans settled in Bruges during St Francis’s lifetime (†1226), possibly in 1225, and between 1244 and 1248 a monastery within the city walls was constructed on the Braambergstraat.36 Built with gifts from Florentine merchants, the friary and church were spacious and accommodated more than a hundred friars. The Franciscan church was home to chapels belonging to various guilds and also was a central meeting place for international merchants and Bruges’ high society: Spanish, Bask, and Castilian merchants occupied the chapel of the Holy Cross and from 1414 onward shared the chapel with the Florentine merchant community.37 The exclusive Confraternity of Our Lady of the Dry Tree (Ten Droghen Boome), founded sometime before 1396 in support of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception defended by the Franciscans (its name refers to St Anne’s infertility), occupied a chapel in the church as well.38 After a visit by Giovanni of Capistrano and a failed attempt to reform the Bruges friars in the 1440s, the Observance was introduced in Bruges in the 1460s.39 In 1461, Jean de Baenst, counselor of the Duke of Burgundy, offered the Observants a piece of land or, according to Wolfthal, his house in Bruges so that they could form a monastery there. This attempt to introduce the 36

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Archangelus Houbaert, ‘Minderbroederkloosters in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden. Klooster­ lexicon: 12. Brugge’, Franciscana. Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de minderbroeders in de Nederlanden 32 (1977), 119–120. The friars first settled outside the city walls, only to move to the Braamberg (later Recollectenhof or Astridpark) in 1244–1245. Houbaert, ‘Minderbroederkloosters 12’, 121; Maximiliaan Martens, Artistic Patronage in Bruges Institutions, ca. 1440–1482, Vol. i, PhD Dissertation (Santa Barbara: University of California, 1992), 307–308. See also P. Sebald van Ruysevelt, ‘De franciskaanse kerken. De stichtingen van de 13de eeuw. Brugge’, Franciscana. Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de minderbroeders in de Nederlanden 29 (1974), 29–39. Houbaert, ‘Minderbroederkloosters 12’, 121. Houbaert, ‘Minderbroederkloosters 12’, 123. Wolfthal mistakenly states that Capistrano even founded new Observant friaries in Leiden and Alkmaar (both 1445), and Antwerp (1446), see Diane Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers, Flemish Friars, and the Patronage of the Portinari Altarpiece’, in: Cultural Exchange between the Low Countries and Italy (1400– 1600), ed. Ingrid Alexander-Skipnes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 11.

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Observance in Bruges did not succeed, due to opposition from the Braamberg friars, and the Observants had to leave already after a few months. In 1462 they settled in Sysele, two miles from Bruges and outside the jurisdiction of the Bruges government. Duke Philip the Good probably gave the land to the Observants for this settlement.40 It was Isabella of Portugal who initiated the return of the Observants to Bruges when she donated grounds for the building of a new friary at the Ezelspoort, just outside the city walls, in the parish of St James.41 In 1466 the construction of this new Observant friary received papal approval from Pope Paul ii and in 1468, on July the 24th, Isabella herself supposedly laid the first stone of the building. The church of the Observants was consecrated in 1478.42 Yet only on 30 October 1515 was the Observance introduced in the old Franciscan friary on the Braamberg by its first Observant guardian, Jean Glapion (†1522).43 This brought an end to the existence of two Franciscan friaries with different affiliations – one Observant and one Conventual – which had lasted for almost fifty years. To justify the existence of two different Franciscan Houses, the ideals and identities of the two groups had to differ significantly. I will approach the differences in identity from the perspective of lay patronage and look into the role of the Franciscan Observance in the formation of laypeople’s religious identity. One of the main benefactors of the new Observant friary was the Florentine merchant Tommaso Portinari. In 1465 he became partner and manager of the Bruges branch-establishment of the Medici bank. He was deeply associated with Bruges’ society and even with the Burgundian court.44 In 1467 Portinari donated land for the new Observant friary at the Ezelspoort and his name is also associated with the older settlement at Sysele.45 Besides 40

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Houbaert, ‘Minderbroederkloosters 12’, 123; Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 11, 13–14; Susanne Franke, ‘Between Status and Spiritual Salvation: The Portinari Triptych and Tommaso Portinari’s Concern for his Memoria’, Simiolus 33–3 (2007/2008), 127. Houbaert, ‘Minderbroederkloosters 12’, 124. Houbaert, ‘Minderbroederkloosters 12’, 124. Cf. Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 12 and Martens, Artistic Patronage, 313. According to Martens, it was Margaret of York who laid the first stone of the Observant friary. Houbaert, ‘Minderbroederkloosters 12’, 125. The introduction of the Observance was not without struggle: after the friars of the Braamberg asked to join the Observance in November 1511, the provincial first introduced the Coletan reform in the friary. This reform was short-lived, as the magistrate chose to support the Observants in a lawsuit that lasted from 1513 to 1515. In the verdict the Observants were given the disposal of the friary on the Braamberg. Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 9. Ibidem, 12. Some of the land was returned to Portinari in 1479 by Theobald Roris, the guardian of the Observants. The sheer size of the land diminished the state of purity of

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Isabella of Portugal, Portinari was one of the major supporters of the Obser­ vance in Bruges.46 At the height of his career, presumably in October 1474, Portinari commissioned an altarpiece from Hugo van der Goes, portraying the adoration of the shepherds, which can provide clues about Portinari’s religious ideals and his religious identity.47 Recently, Jessica Buskirk has argued that the interpretation of a later painting by Van der Goes should be approached from the angle of ‘the people for whom he produced the painting’, and not so much from the angle of the painter, as Van der Goes was working in ‘a patron-driven environment’.48 The Franciscan Observants were active, public preachers in touch with laypeople and they produced various vernacular texts aimed at a large audience of lay and religious readers, the aforementioned Spieghel by Hendrik Herp being one of the first.49 Their presence in Bruges was undisputed from the late 1460s onwards, when the new church and friary were built at the Ezelspoort. In the case of the Portinari triptych (see Fig. 6.1), we know that the patron was a

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the Observants, and because of its size it was difficult to enclose it properly. Cf. Franke, ‘Between Status’, 127. According to Franke, Portinari had almost equal rights with Isabella as regards the extent of the endowments: Franke, ‘Between Status’, 128. He is also mention in a 1500 entry in the necrology of the Observants as deserving of perpetual memory because of his generosity to the friars: Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 13. In 1470 Portinari got married and his first son was born in 1472. The altarpiece might have been a response to the birth of his first son: Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 5. On the altarpiece, Portinari’s support of the Observance see also Franke, ‘Between Status’. Jessica Buskirk, ‘Hugo van der Goes’s Adoration of the Shepherds: Between Ascetic Idealism and Urban Networks in Late Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 6:1 (2014), 2. See for a vernacular text that originated in Bruges D.A. Stracke, Korte handleiding tot de theologia mystica of het beschouwende leven naar een handschrift uit het jaar 1492 (Antwerp: Uitgever Neerlandia, 1932) and Thom Mertens, ‘The Middle Dutch Mystical Whitsun sermons from 1492 mediating Johannes Gerson’, in: Between Lay Piety and Academic Theology. Studies presented to Christoph Burger on the occasion of his 65th birthday, ed. Ulrike Hascher-Burger, August den Hollander & Wim Janse, Brill’s series in church history, 46 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 79–98. Jean Glapion wrote Die tijtcortinghe der pelgrimagien des menschelijcken levens (nk 3101). The Observant Franciscans embraced the medium of the printing press in the last quarter of the fifteenth century and first half of the sixteenth century, which was symptomatic of their ambition to circulate their works among a large audience. On the Franciscan Observance as a literary movement in the Low Countries, see Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie. On the Observant Franciscans and the printing press see also Koen Goudriaan, ‘The church and the market: vernacular religious works and the early printing press in the Low Countries, 1477–1540’, in: Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages. Instructing the soul, feeding the spirit, and awakening the passion, ed. Sabrina Corbellini, Utrecht studies in medieval literacy, 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 93–116.

Figure 6.1  Portinari-Altarpiece, © Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Su concessione del Ministero dei beni e delle attività culturali e del turismo. Courtesy of MiBACT

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major supporter of the Observant reform of the Franciscan order. Is it possible to distil Portinari’s religious patronage and ideal from the painting he commissioned? Art historian Diane Wolfthal has pointed to the Observant ideal of poverty as a key element in the triptych.50 Poverty is idealized in the painting by Mary wearing a plain blue dress and kneeling on the bare earth, the infant Christ lying naked on the bare stable floor and the three shepherds playing a major role in the inner, holy circle right around the infant Christ. The shepherds are portrayed in an especially prominent, lively, and expressive fashion, and are even closer to Christ than Joseph.51 Furthermore, they play a role in the background of the painting, which depicts the annunciation to the shepherds. In the background scene on the right wing an escort of the Magi must ask peasants the way to Christ’s birthplace. According to Wolfthal, this suggests that only the simple, humble peasants know the way to Christ, a topos also found in mystical texts such as the Spieghel: simple, humble people have better access to God.52 In addition, the ideal of poverty is expressed by ‘the lack of sumptuous clothes and royal bearing’ of the Magi, looking more like ordinary travelers than kings.53 In fact, the very choice of the Adoration of the Shepherds in itself  seems to align with a certain influence of the Franciscan Observance on  the  painter’s patron: it was not a common subject for the central panel of  Netherlandish altarpieces and the theme was closely associated with Franciscan piety.54 Even the choice of painter could reflect Portinari’s desire to idealize poverty: previously Portinari had commissioned paintings from Hans Memling. According to Wolfthal, ‘Hugo visualizes a world more in line with the Observants’.55 In 1475, possibly while still working on the Portinari altarpiece, Van der Goes went to live in the Augustinian canonry of Rooklooster, near Brussels, where he spent a lot of time reading a spiritual book in the Dutch 50 51

52 53 54 55

Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 5–6, 16. The exceptional energy, dignity, gravity, sincerity and warmth of the shepherds is described by Dhanens (Elisabeth Dhanens, Hugo van der Goes (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1998), 262–292) and cited by Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 6 and 9. According to her, the treatment of the Adoration of the Shepherds was unusual amongst Netherlandish painters and although earlier Flemish panels include shepherds in adoration scenes, they are generally excluded from the inner circle. E.g. Herp, Spieghel, Vol. 2, 181, lines 31–39. Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 6. Ibidem, 14. According to Wolfthal, many Franciscan texts idealize the poverty and devotion of the shepherds. Ibidem, 2 and 16.

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vernacular. Ridderbos suggested that in Rooklooster Van der Goes might have familiarized himself with Herp’s Spieghel, which, in turn, could have influenced his work.56 It can thus be argued that in his commission, Portinari chose to emphasize the ideal of poverty through a number of features. At the same time the triptych is magnificent in size, and the saints and the donors wear expensive garments.57 Susanne Franke has studied the way the donors are portrayed. Portinari’s social ambitions within Bruges society and the Burgundian court are clearly illustrated with the similarities between the garb worn by the banker, his wife and children, and that of the attire in which for example Charles the Bold and Margaret of York are portrayed. The whole family is dressed according to Burgundian court fashion, as one might expect from someone of Portinari’s standing who wanted to further enhance his status.58 On the one hand, the painting was an expression of Portinari’s concern for his soul and a desire to neutralize any negative consequences of his banking activities.59 On the other hand, the painting satisfied his ambition to climb in Bruges’ society.60 In this context, it is intriguing that Portinari was also a frequent visitor of the church of the Conventual Franciscan friars on the Braamberg. He was a prominent member of the confraternity of the Dry Tree. As mentioned previously, the confraternity occupied a chapel in the Franciscan church on the Braamberg and, in stark contrast to the ideal of poverty, penance and prayer propagated by the Observant Franciscans, the confraternity’s chapel was lavishly decorated with statues, paintings, chandeliers, organs, and expensive liturgical objects and books.61 Its members included all Burgundian Dukes from Philip the Good to Philip the Fair, their wives Isabella of Portugal, 56

Bernhard Ridderbos, De melancholie van de kunstenaar. Hugo van der Goes en de oudnederlandse schilderkunst (Den Haag: Sdu Uitgeverij, 1991), 200–205; Margaret L. Koster, Hugo van der Goes and the Procedures of Art and Salvation (London: Miller, 2008), 9 and 12–16. 57 Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 8. Cf. Koster, Hugo, 39–44 on the garments of the angels: with their priestly robes they invest the painting with a liturgical quality. 58 Franke, ‘Between Status’, 131–137, argues that the triptych was initially not made to be shipped to Florence, as happened in 1483, but to be displayed in the family chapel in Bruges where Portinari wanted to be buried. 59 As a merchant banker his activities depended on usury, which was of course, deemed sinful. Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 3–4 and 16. 60 Cf. Franke, ‘Between Status’, 141 and Jean C. Wilson, Painting in Bruges at the Close of the Middle Ages. Studies in Society and Visual Culture (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 54–58. 61 Martens, Artistic Patronage, 310.

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Margaret of York and Mary of Burgundy, prominent members of Bruges society such as Lodewijk van Gruuthuse and Jan van Nieuwenhove, a number of prominent musicians, artists (Petrus Christus and Gerard David), and foreign merchants such as Portinari himself and Giovanni Arnolfini. Portinari must have been a leading member, because in 1469 he signed a contract on behalf of the confraternity.62 At the same time, he supported the Observant friary at the Ezelspoort. Tommaso Portinari was not the only one to support both the Observant and Conventual Franciscan friars. The Spanish merchants, for example, adopted a similar strategy in forming their religious identity and distributing their possibilities for intercession. In addition to masses they had read at the Conventual friary, they also obtained a chapel in the church of the Observants, and in 1474 their representative Garcia de Contreras ordered five stained glass windows to be installed there.63 In a charter from circa 1500, they even emphasized their simultaneous support of both the Conventual and Observant Franciscans: ‘And knowing that those of the Spanish nation have erected a certain other chapel at the Observants outside the city of Bruges [Ezelspoort], they have, nevertheless, always continued as usual to have their weekly Mass read in this chapel [Braamberg] of the Friars Minor’.64 Other prominent members of the confraternity of the Dry Tree, such as Isabella of Portugal, chancellor Jean de Baenst and Mary of Burgundy, continued their patronage of both branches.65 This seemingly ambivalent position of lay patrons, and the ambivalence present in the Portinari triptych, can in my view be explained through the 62 Martens, Artistic Patronage, 308–310. Cf. Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 11. On 20 June 1469 Portinari co-signed a contract, together with Petrus Christus, Jan van Nieuwenhove and others, laying down the conditions for the use of the chapel in the church of the Franciscans. It specified the number of religious services to be held in the chapel, directions for paying the priests celebrating and the brethren singing the mass, and regulations concerning the ownership of gifts to the chapel: Martens, Artistic Patronage, 309. He also published the contract with an English translation on 492–497 (doc. 88). 63 Previously, the chancellor of Charles the Bold, Guillaume Hugonet, had ordered windows for the choir of the Observant Church. Martens, Artistic Patronage, 307, 313–314. The merchant’s arms were to be placed at the top of the windows and in 1483 the merchants ordered another set of stained glass windows for their chapel. On Hugonet cf. Franke, ‘Between Status’, 128. 64 Citation taken from Martens: Martens, Artistic Patronage, 314. See also Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 12. 65 Martens, Artistic Patronage, 314. Mary of Burgundy, for example, donated an expensive damask cope to the confraternity of the Dry Tree: Martens, Artistic Patronage, 310.

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coexistence of religious ideals with social ideals and ambitions, and through a pragmatic division of investments in intercession. As a merchant banker, Portinari was conscious of the fact that his business activity depended on usury and therefore placed his soul in jeopardy. Through his patronage of the Franciscan Observance, Portinari could counteract any negative connotations that might be linked to his profession. In the altarpiece he commissioned from Van der Goes, Portinari’s support of the Observance is reflected through the emphasis on poverty, while the way he and his family are portrayed reflects his membership of the Conventual organization of the confraternity of the Dry Tree and depicts Portinari’s social ambitions and his ambitious assimilation with the Burgundian court. This ambivalence, or perhaps rather conjunction of religious poverty and richness connected to his (social) status, is key to his choices of religious patronage and to his religious identity in sum. It can explain why Portinari, but also other members of Bruges’ high society, supported both the Observants and the Conventuals at the same time – something which would be inconceivable within religious circles, where the introduction of the Observance (especially in the Franciscan order) gave rise to serious altercations between the two groups.

Final Remarks

In religious orders and communities, the Observance could become a common, overarching and order-transcending ideal. Although the actual Obser­ vance was given a somewhat different interpretation within each order and movement – according to the rule and supplementary constitutions – it nevertheless seems that the mutual interests were strong and that the Observance was a unifying aspect within religious circles. As a common aspect in various religious identities that in themselves were quite different, the Observance became a powerful tool for building a collective, order-transcending identity. This process can be observed particularly well in the transmission and use of spiritual literature. In the reality of an urban setting the Observance ideal became part of an even more complex set of ideals and co-shaped the religious identity of laymen. The interplay between social ideals, political ambitions, religious ideals and practical care for intercession in order to secure the salvation of one’s soul, resulted in a mixture that in the first instance might seem rather ambivalent. The way the Observance was integrated and found its place in a layman’s ­religious identity was thus significantly different from the situation within religious orders: instead of creating an overarching ideal, the Observance existed

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next to other ideals strongly connected to the Conventual friars. From the perspective of a member of an Observant community, the support of both groups (Conventual and Observant Franciscans) by Tommaso Portinari, Jean de Baenst or Mary of Burgundy, would have seemed incongruous. However, the example of Bruges shows that laypeople could be much more flexible in combining their set of ideals and following their pragmatic needs on several levels, social and religious. The strategy Portinari adopted was a pragmatic one. In embracing the Franciscan Observance and the ideal of (spiritual) poverty he primarily counteracted any negative associations between his occupation and usury, while his membership of the Dry Tree and his support for the Conventual friars was chiefly aimed at social profit. Still, these causes were not strictly separated.66 Wolfthal states that ‘Portinari’s support [of the Franciscan Observance] does not seem to have been motivated by the hope of gaining profitable contracts from the Flemish elite’ and that his support of the Observance was an act of ‘genuine religious devotion’ and concern for his eternal soul.67 In my opinion, both aspects of social and spiritual profit were combined in Portinari’s patronage of the Observant Franciscans. In fact, it is the very same combination that we saw in the triptych painted by Hugo van der Goes and that can be observed in Portinari’s religious identity as a whole. Contradictory to Wolfthal’s claim that the Burgundian Dukes were no major supporters of the Observance – based on the situation in Bruges – the Franciscan Observance was actively supported throughout the Low Countries by the Dukes and their wives.68 Even in Bruges Isabella of Portugal and Jean de

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In his support of the Observant friars, Portinari might have followed the example of Cosimo de Medici, in whose home Tommaso lived from the age of three, and who was a major patron of the Observance in Florence, supporting the Observant reform of the Franciscan and Dominican order, and the reformed Augustinian Canons of the Lateran Congregation: Nicolai Rubinstein, ‘Lay Patronage and Observant Reform in Fifteenthcentury Florence’, in: Christianity and the Renaissance. Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, ed. Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse (ny): Syracuse University Press, 1990), 65. Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 9 and 15. Ibidem, 14. The Dukes supported other religious reforms and ‘Observant orders’ such as the Carthusians as well. See Marjan De Smet & Paul Trio, The Involvement of the Late Medieval Urban Authorities in the Low Countries with Regard to the Introduction of the Franciscan Observance, Preprint / Facultaire Groep Letteren, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Campus Kortrijk, 103 (Kortrijk: Facultaire Groep Letteren kulak, 2004), 12–17; Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 38; Martens, Artistic Patronage, 331.

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Baenst did actively support the Observants.69 In 1451, when Philip the Good was already zealously engaged in supporting the Observant friars in Mechelen, he paid a large sum of money to replace the stained glass windows of the Conventual church at the Braamberg that were broken during a storm. He ordered the placement of his coat of arms on each window, thus explicitly linking his name and authority to the Conventual Franciscans.70 Philip’s behavior – and that of other prominent members of Bruges society who simultaneously supported both Franciscan ‘branches’ – can be explained partially through the prominence of the Conventual friary in Bruges, housing prestigious insti­tutions that involved important urban networks, such as the confraternity of the Dry Tree.71 Thus, for a long time, members of Bruges’ high society could combine Observant and Conventual elements in their religious identity by maintaining their spiritual poverty through their support of the Observance, and their social status and other aspects of their spiritual welfare through their support of the Conventual friary and the confraternity of the Dry Tree. When in 1515 the Observant Friars Minor took over the Conventual friary on the Braamberg, it quickly became apparent that the splendor and lavishness of the furnishings of the chapel of the Dry Tree confraternity were not acceptable for Observant friars. The confraternity could keep its chapel, but had to comply with the new, Observant rules: all luxury was to be banned, and female associates were no longer allowed to enter the premises of the friars.72 Select Bibliography Between Lay Piety and Academic Theology. Studies presented to Christoph Burger on the occasion of his 65th birthday, ed. Ulrike Hascher-Burger, August den Hollander & Wim Janse, Brill’s series in church history, 46 (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

69

Cf. Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 15: ‘Since this act [Portinari’s support of the Observance] did not ally Portinari with the Dukes of Burgundy or other potential clients, it is unlikely to have been motivated by business interests, which suggests that Tommaso, like Cosimo [de Medici] before him, was capable of sincere religious devotion.’ 70 Martens, Artistic Patronage, 307. See also Wolfthal, ‘Florentine Bankers’, 13. 71 Martens, Artistic Patronage, 305, cf. 314. According to Martens, the patronage of the Observant reform by for example Portinari and Isabella should not be considered as a radical shift. 72 Martens, Artistic Patronage, 314.

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Buskirk, Jessica, ‘Hugo van der Goes’s Adoration of the Shepherds: Between Ascetic Ideals and Urban Networks in Late Medieval Flanders’, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 6:1 (2014), 1–37. DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2014.6.1.1. De Smet, Marjan & Trio, Paul, The Involvement of the Late Medieval Urban Authorities in the Low Countries with Regard to the Introduction of the Franciscan Observance, Preprint / Facultaire Groep Letteren, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Campus Kortrijk, 103 (Kortrijk: Facultaire Groep Letteren kulak, 2004). Dlabačová, Anna, ‘Hendrik Herp: observant en mysticus. De «Spieghel der volcomenheit» (ca. 1455 /1460) in nieuw perspectief’, Queeste. Tijdschrift over middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden 15–2 (2008), 142–167. ———, ‘Tauler, Herp and the changing layers of mobility and reception in the Low Countries (c. 1460–1560)’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 84 (2013), 120–152. ———, Literatuur en observantie. De Spieghel der volcomenheit van Hendrik Herp en de dynamiek van laatmiddeleeuwse tekstverspreiding, Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen, 149 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014). Franke, Susanne, ‘Between Status and Spiritual Salvation: The Portinari Triptych and Tommaso Portinari’s Concern for his Memoria’, Simiolus 33–3 (2007/2008), 123–144. Freienhagen-Baumgardt, Kristina, Hendrik Herps «Spieghel der volcomenheit» in oberdeutscher Überlieferung. Ein Beitrag zur Rezeptionsgeschichte niederländischer Mystik im oberdeutschen Raum, Miscellanea Neerlandica, 17 (Louvain: Peeters, 1998). Gottes Nähe unmittelbar erfahren. Mystik im Mittelalter und bei Martin Luther, ed. Berndt Hamm, Volker Leppin & Heidrun Munzert, Spätmittelalter und Reformation, neue Reihe, 36 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). Goudriaan, Koen, ‘De observantie der conversinnen van Sint-Augustinus’, in: Monastiek observantisme en Moderne Devotie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, ed. Hildo van Engen & Gerrit Verhoeven, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen, 110 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2008), 167–211. ———, ‘The church and the market: vernacular religious works and the early printing press in the Low Countries, 1477–1540’, in: Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages. Instructing the soul, feeding the spirit, and awakening the passion, ed. Sabrina Corbellini, Utrecht studies in medieval literacy, 25 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 93–116. Image and Imagination of the Religious Self in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Walter S. Melion, R.L. Falkenburg & Todd M. Richardson, Proteus, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols 2007). Koster, Margaret L., Hugo van der Goes and the Procedures of Art and Salvation (London: Miller, 2008). Martens, Maximiliaan, Artistic Patronage in Bruges Institutions, ca. 1440–1482, 2 Vols., PhD Dissertation (Santa Barbara: University of California, 1992).

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Mertens, Thom, ‘Ghostwriting Sisters. The Preservation of Dutch Sermons of Father Confessors in the Fifteenth and the Early Sixteenth century’, in: Seeing and knowing. Women and learning in medieval Europe, 1200–1550, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Medieval women: texts & contexts, 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 121–141. Reformbemühungen und Observanzbestrebungen im spätmittelalterlichen Ordenswesen, ed. Kaspar Elm, Ordensstudien, 6; Berliner historische Studien, 14 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989). Ridderbos, Bernhard, De melancholie van de kunstenaar. Hugo van der Goes en de oudnederlandse schilderkunst (Den Haag: Sdu Uitgeverij, 1991). Roest, Bert, ‘Observant Reform in Religious Orders’, in: The Cambridge history of Christianity, Vol. 4: Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. Miri Rubin & Walter Simons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 446–457. Rubinstein, Nicolai, ‘Lay Patronage and Observant Reform in Fifteenth-century Florence’, in: Christianity and the Renaissance. Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, ed. Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse (NY): Syracuse University Press, 1990), 63–82. Ruh, Kurt, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, Vol. 4: Die niederländische Mystik des 14. bis 16. Jahrhundert (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999). Schaap, Mirjam, ‘Over “qwaclappers” en ander schadelijk volk. De laatmiddeleeuwse hervorming van Noord-Nederlandse minderbroederkloosters bezien vanuit de interne machtsstrijd binnen de orde’, in: Monastiek observantisme en Moderne Devotie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, ed. Hildo van Engen & Gerrit Verhoeven, Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen, 110 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2008), 17–40. Schlotheuber, Eva, ‘Bücher und Bildung in den Frauengemeinschaften der Bettelorden’, in: Nonnen, Kanonissen und Mystikerinnen. Religiöse Frauengemeinschaften in Süddeutschland, ed. Idem et al., Studien zur Germania Sacra, 31 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 241–262. Stoop, Patricia, Schrijven in commissie. De zusters uit het Brusselse Jericho en de preken van hun biechtvaders (ca. 1456–1510), Middeleeuwse studies en bronnen, 127 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2013). Stracke, Daniel, Monastische Reform und spätmittelalterliche Stadt. Die Bewegung der Franziskaner-Observanten in Nordwestdeutschland, Westfalen in der Vormoderne. Studien zur mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Landesgeschichte, 14 (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2013). Wolfthal, Diane, ‘Florentine Bankers, Flemish Friars, and the Patronage of the Portinari Altarpiece’, in: Cultural Exchange between the Low Countries and Italy (1400–1600), ed. Ingrid Alexander-Skipnes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 1–21. Williams-Krapp, Werner, ‘Die Bedeutung der reformierten Klöster des Predigerordens für das literarische Leben in Nürnberg im 15. Jahrhundert’, in: Studien und Texte zur  literarischen und materiellen Kultur der Frauenklöster im späten Mittelalter:

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Ergebnisse eines Arbeitsgesprächs in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, 24.–26. Febr. 1999, ed. Falk Eisermann, Eva Schlotheuber & Volker Honemann, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 311–329. Wilson, Jean C., Painting in Bruges at the Close of the Middle Ages. Studies in Society and Visual Culture (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). Withof, J., ‘De hervorming der minderbroeders te Mechelen rond 1450’, Bulletin du cercle archéologique, litteraire et artistique de Malines 35 (1930), 37–55.

chapter 7

Selections in a World of Multiple Options: The Witness of Thomas Swalwell, osb Anne T. Thayer Introduction In 2008, John van Engen delivered his presidential address, ‘Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church,’ to the American Society of Church History. He argued that while the forces of centralization so characteristic of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did not disappear, in the fifteenth century ‘energy shifted decisively to local forces’.1 As Van Engen noted, even a universal standard like annual confession ‘proliferated into a range of options animated by a spectrum of personal attitudes’. This was not a symptom of dysfunction, he argued, but rather ‘a new form of functioning,’ ‘a world of multiple options’.2 The proliferation of popular resources for pastors in the late medieval period was integral to this world of multiple options. The model sermon collections and pastoral manuals, which assisted clergy in their efforts to cultivate Christian identity in their flocks, functioned on several levels. At a Europewide level, they claimed to simply offer the teachings of the Church, setting forth universal understandings and expectations for Christians. Regionally, variations in theology and spiritual tone may be discerned in the distinctive emphases of popular works and in the growing use of vernaculars in print. And, as such resources were used by readers, personal appropriations were made, which in turn were offered to others in preaching and confession, both reflecting and contributing to more localized spiritual characters. Such individualized usage, selected from multiple options, was intended by the authors and publishers of pastoral resources, and evidence of it may be found in the marginal notes left by readers. This essay will present facets of two important aspects of Christian identity, affirmation of faith and forgiveness of sins, at each of these three levels, as witnessed by model sermon collections, pastoral manuals, and the marginal annotations in such books by Thomas Swalwell, a 1 John van Engen, ‘Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church’, Church History 77:2 (2008), 257–284. 2 Ibidem, 263, 269, 264.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_008

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Figure 7.1 Bonaventure, Egregium opus subtilitate et devote exercitio praecellens parvorum opusculorum doctoris seraphici sancti Bonaventure, Secunda pars (Strasbourg, 1495), Ushaw College xvii. E.4.2, f. A1r. Liber magistri thomas swalwell. Reproduced by kind permission of the trustees of ushaw college

representative from the last generation of Benedictine monks at the Durham Priory in northeastern England (See Fig. 7.1). Model sermon collections were the works of seasoned preachers designed to help others with the task of preaching, a key vehicle for inculcating and explicating Christian identity. They were generally prepared with the liturgical year in mind: de tempore collections offered sermons for the Sundays and major festivals of the liturgical year, de sanctis collections resourced the feast days of the saints, while quadragesimale collections focused on preaching for Lent. Published by the thousands, model sermons are often considered ‘typical’ medieval sermons; although they do not tell us what was preached by any particular preacher in any particular place at any particular time, because of their widespread and routine use, they reveal what many European parishioners heard from the pulpit in both style and content. Some had widespread printing histories, others were more regionally popular.3 Most were printed in Latin although intended to support preaching in the vernacular. A preacher could use these sermons whole or mine them for outlines, authorities, or exempla. Encouragement for individual appropriation is readily observable in the finding aids which were printed with many of these collections. A model sermon collection heavily annotated by Thomas Swalwell, our monk, was the Rosarium sermonum predicabilium, or ‘Rose Garden of preachable words’.4 The  author, Bernardino Busti (Bernardinus de Busti), an Italian Observant Franciscan, claims that he has created this garden by selecting ‘choice flowers’ 3 Anne T. Thayer, Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), chapter 2. 4 Bernardino Busti, Rosarium sermonum predicabilium, Pars prima (Lyon: Johannes Clein, 1502), Ushaw College xviii.B.4.24. Part I goes from Septuagesima through the fourth week of Lent.

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from a wide range of sources; he urges the user to do likewise. Bernardino writes at the start of the topical index: ‘Although this volume contains only forty sermons, from them a hundred good preachings can be made, for one can make a particular sermon out of parts of many sermons’.5 Swalwell’s marginal notes show him doing just this. Bernardino also includes instructions on how to use this Lenten collection to preach de tempore and on the Virgin Mary. Pastoral manuals were another important genre of clerical resource produced in profusion in the later Middle Ages. These provided ‘how to’ advice, especially for the lower clergy, on quite a range of pastoral tasks. The Cura pastoralis offered guidance on how to answer a bishop’s ordination questions. The Stella clericorum focused on the dignity of the priesthood and exhorted clergy to lead holy lives. Thomas Aquinas’s De articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis supported catechesis. Michael Lochmaier’s Parochiale curatorum offered guidance on legal and administrative issues such as tithes, first fruits, and the blessing of second marriages. The manual most often copied and printed across Europe was the Manipulus curatorum of Guido of Monte Rochen (Guy de Montrocher).6 Its three sections (administration of six sacraments, the sacrament of penance, and basic catechesis) lay out best practices for the curate and offer guidance in theological thinking. Covering similar material, the English vernacular Instructions for Parish Priests, by the Augustinian John Mirk, not surprisingly had a more regional popularity. Swalwell annotated such examples as Thomas of Chobham’s Summa confessorum and pseudo-Bonaventure’s De mundicia et castitate sacerdotum.7 Like model sermon collections, these manuals offered authoritative guidance, but encouraged personalized use in pastoral settings. For instance, the longest chapter in Guido’s Manipulus is ‘On the questions to be asked during confession’. This is also the chapter that was most likely to be annotated by

5 Ibidem, f. 4r. ‘Licet autem hec pars siue hoc volume solum contineat quadraginta sermones: de ipsis tamen fieri poterunt centum bone predications. Nam de multorum sermonum quelibet parte poterit fieri predicatio particularis.’ 6 Guido of Monte Rochen, Manual for Curates: A Late Medieval Manual on Pastoral Ministry, ed. and trans. Anne T. Thayer and Katharine Jackson Lualdi (Washington dc: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), xxii–xxiii; Peter A. Dykema, ‘Handbooks for Pastors: Late Medieval Manuals for Parish Priests and Conrad Porta’s Pastorale Lutheri (1582)’, in: Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late Medieval and Reformation History, ed. Robert J. Bast and Andrew C. Gow (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 143–162. 7 Thomas of Chobham, Summa confessorum, Cambridge, Trinity College, ms 365. PseudoBonaventure, De mundicia et castitate sacerdotum ([Paris: J. Higman, c. 1494–97]), Ushaw College xviii.G.4.13.

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users, a testimony to its practical value.8 Guido takes the reader through each of the seven deadly sins offering a series of questions. If the sinner confesses to avarice, the confessor should ask: ‘Have you ever committed fraud or deceit, or ever told a lie or committed perjury either in buying or selling or making some other contract?’ If the sinner says yes, the priest can ask for more detail. ‘Let the confessor ask which, and why, and in what ways, against whom, how often, and in what cases’.9 But, Guido warns the priest not to ask about specific modes of avaricious behavior lest he inadvertently suggest additional avenues for sin. At the end of this section, Guido writes, ‘Thus the priest will be able to shape his questions according to this teaching, and regarding these, the unction which he received from God and experience will teach more than further reading’.10 In other words, personalized practice under the guidance of the Holy Spirit makes perfect. As noted, Thomas Swalwell offers a case study of a local user of such widespread pastoral resources. He entered religious life around 1483, was ordained in 1486, then sent to Durham College at Oxford where he became a bachelor and then doctor of theology. The remainder of his life was spent in Durham where he held a number of significant administrative offices in the priory.11 He participated in the liturgical life of the community, heard confessions, taught schoolboys and novices, and took his turn preaching on Sunday afternoons to the laity in the cathedral’s Galilee chapel.12 We do not have any spiritual texts or sermons written by Swalwell, but the notes in his many extant books bear tangible witness to his pastoral concerns. His marginalia follow the patterns for marking in books typical of his day, making careful selections from the multiple options his resources offered him. Topical key words are written in the margins, biblical texts and other important passages are underlined, lists are numbered, conclusions are noted, crossreferences to other works are added, schematic diagrams are drawn to show 8 9 10 11

12

Guido of Monte Rochen, Handbook for Curates, xxxvi–xl. Ibidem, 229. Ibidem, 235. Durham Liber Vitae: London, British Library, ms Cotton Domitian A.vii, Edition and digital facsimile with introduction, codicological, prosopographical and linguistic commentary, and indexes, 3 (Prosopographical commentary) (London: British Library, 2007), 393–396; A.J. Piper, ‘Dr Thomas Swalwell, Monk of Durham, Archivist and Bibliophile (d. 1539)’, in: Books and Collectors, 1200–1700, ed. J.P. Carley and C.G.C. Tite (London: British Library, 1997), 71–100. Rites of Durham: Being a description of all the ancient monuments, rites, & customs belonging or being within the monastical church of Durham before the suppression. Written 1593, Surtees Society, 107 (1902, reprinted 1964), 39.

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the structure of particular passages. Thus we may observe his engagement with pastoral resources that were intended to support the wider Church, using them in ways that both reflect and contribute to shaping the piety of northern England in the early sixteenth century.

Affirmation of Christian Faith

Affirmation of a fairly consistent set of teachings formed the Church-wide core of Christian catechesis and identity formation. Guido’s Manipulus curatorum has a section on basic catechesis so that the priest can teach the people committed to him ‘what is to be believed, what is to be asked, what is to be done, what is to be fled, and what is to be hoped for’.13 Here he elaborates on the articles of the faith, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the gifts of the blessed. Model sermon collections offer similar resources for basic catechesis. For example, on the first Sunday in Lent, the Franciscan Michel Menot compares the five wounds of Christ to five teachings that you need to keep in your heart – what is to be believed, what is to be done, what is to be hoped, what is to be feared, and what is to be fled – as conveyed in the Creed, the Commandments, the mercy of Christ, and the forgiveness of sins.14 Even when sermons are not explicitly catechetical, such basic teachings are included in the model collections. The Sermones discipuli de tempore et de sanctis of Johannes Herolt, a German Dominican, was the most popular printed model sermon collection on the eve of the Reformation.15 Among the finding aids in some of its editions was a list of the Ten Commandments indicating where to find material to preach on each. There were similar lists for the seven deadly sins, the six works of mercy, the Lord’s Prayer, and the articles of faith.16 Similar lists show up in more regionally popular works, along with material having local relevance. Mirk’s English vernacular Instructions for Parish Priests calls for explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, Ave Maria, Creed, Ten Command­ ments, seven sacraments, mortal and venial sins.17 His model sermon collection, 13 14 15 16 17

Guido of Monte Rochen, Handbook for Curates, 272. Michel Menot, Sermons Choisis de Michel Menot, ed. Joseph Nève, Bibliothèque du XVe Siècle (Paris: Edouard Champion, 1924), 214. Cf. Thayer, Penitence, 17. E.g., Johannes Herolt, Sermones discipuli de tempore et de sanctis unacum promptuario exemplorum (Strasbourg: [Martin Flach], 1492). John Mirk, Instructions for Parish Priests: Ed. from ms Cotton Claudius and six other manuscripts, ed. Gillis Christenson, Lund Studies in English, 49 (Lund: Gleerup, 1974).

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the Festial, includes a sermon on the Lord’s Prayer and guidance on how to teach the Ave, but also sermons on two Shrewsbury saints, Winefrede and Alkmund.18 Guido’s Manipulus curatorum was written in Spain during the Reconquista and raises some locally resonant issues. In his catechetical elaboration of the Second Commandment, he asserts that Christians should not swear by false gods. He notes, however, ‘I believe that where it is expedient, a Christian can receive an oath from a Saracen made through his gods’.19 Likewise, while a Christian man cannot contract marriage with ‘a Jewish, Saracen, gentile or pagan woman,’ unless she converts, he notes that a Jewish man can marry a Jewish woman or a Saracen man marry a Saracen woman.20 Guido also poses the question, ‘Can Jewish children be baptized against their parents’ wishes?’ He then lays out the arguments of various authorities for and against and ultimately leaves this up to the judgment of the reader.21 Turning now to the individual level, Thomas Swalwell’s marginalia regarding the creed and articles of faith reveal him to be, not surprisingly, a vigorous supporter of traditional Christian faith. He annotates passages on the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Ave Maria, and so on in various of his books. What is striking is the attention he pays to religious alternatives. Along with personal curiosity, this may well bear indirect witness to both northern England’s historic association with Wyclif, as well as to new religious currents circulating in England during the last decades of his life.22 Bernardino Busti’s Rosarium sermonum predicabilium includes explicitly catechetical material in several of its Lenten sermons. Sermon 13 is on faith; its three major divisions are the definition of faith, the articles of faith, and vices that impede faith. Swalwell’s marginal comments focus on the certainty and scriptural basis of Christian faith. In the first division, Swalwell has such comments as, ‘Why faith is called the foundation of all virtues and of the spiritual building; exemplum of how it is foundational;’23 ‘how faith is called proof, not

18

19 20 21 22

23

John Mirk, John Mirk’s Festial. Edited from British Library ms Cotton Claudius A.ii, ed. Susan Powell, 2 Vols., Early English Text Society, os 334 and 335 (New York: Oxford Uni­ versity Press, 2009–2011). Guido of Monte Rochen, Handbook for Curates, 298. Ibidem, 144–146. Ibidem, 29–30. Anne Hudson, ‘Wyclif and the North: The Evidence from Durham’, in: Life and Thought in the Northern Church c. 1100–c. 1700: Essays in Honour of Claire Cross, ed. Diana Wood (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), 87–102. Bernardino Busti, Rosarium, f. 85r. ‘fides cur dicitur fundamentum omnis virtutum sunt edificij spiritualis; exemplum quomodo est fundamentalis.’

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appearance;’24 ‘the certainty of the faith is beyond certainty, demonstrated logically with exemplum’.25 In the second division of the sermon, Bernardino’s text takes up each of the articles of faith according to the Apostles’ Creed. Swalwell leaves it mostly clean; he simply notes, ‘the articles suffice,’ and provides a cross-reference to the Rationale divinorum officium of Durandus of Mende.26 This part of the sermon ends with a discussion of who needs to believe which articles of the Creed explicitly. Swalwell has a schematic at the bottom of the page indicating that the articles can be believed implicitly or explicitly by the simple. The text says that those who are part of the life of the church must know the articles of the Creed explicitly. Swalwell underlines that they learn the Trinity in the act of signing themselves and saying, ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’ He further writes ‘the articles are to be spoken about in various festivals,’27 reflecting Bernardino’s discussion of learning about the incarnation at Christmas, the resurrection at Easter, etc. (See Fig.  7.2). The third section of the sermon takes up vices that impede faith and is largely clean except for a note on lust and a miracle told against avarice. The pastoral import of his selective annotations is clear. The next sermon in the Rosarium follows on this discussion of faith. It is on Pagans, Saracens, and Jews and has copious marginalia. Many model sermons employed comparisons to such groups as foils to exhort Christians to godly behavior, but Swalwell’s interest in the underlying text seems somewhat more substantial. As he studies these multiple options, he seems to want to understand his own faith better for he writes, ‘the truth is better recognized by comparison’.28 Bernardinus’ introductory section asserts that there is one true faith. Swalwell writes, ‘There is one true faith, namely, ours is true, since it is infused into us by God’.29 This is followed by a note announcing the proofs for the faith offered by Duns Scotus.30 Swalwell numbers them all and provides keyword notes for several. Regarding miracles, he writes using direct address, ‘how the miracles of Christ sufficiently confirmed your faith’.31 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Ibidem, f. 85v. ‘quomodo fides dicitur argumentum non apparencium.’ Ibidem, f. 85v. ‘certitudo fidei est vltra certitudinem demonstratam logice cum exemplo.’ Ibidem, f. 86r. ‘sufficia, articules; vide in racionali divinorum li.4 c 25 f68 et f68 et li. Odium per.1.c.’ Ibidem, f. 90v. ‘articuli possunt credere implicite, explicite a simplicibus sum et sic. articuli memorantur in diversis festivitarum.’ Ibidem, f. 102r. ‘distintando veritas plures invenitur.’ Ibidem, f. 93r. ‘una sola fides scilicet vestra est vera cum a deo nobis infusa.’ Ibidem. f. 93r. ‘doctorem subtilie probantes fidei veritatem.’ Ibidem, f. 95r. ‘quomodo miraculam christi sufficienter confirmabant fidem vestram.’

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Figure 7.2 Bernardino busti, Rosarium sermonum, prima pars (Lyon: Johannes Clein, 1502), Ushaw College xviii B.4.24, f. 90 v. Reproduced by kind permission of the trustees of ushaw college

The first division of the text discusses pagans, mostly classical writers. Although Swalwell asserts elsewhere in the volume that it is fine to use these writers as authorities when they agree with Scripture,32 here his notes stress the unity of the divine essence and the folly of saying that there is no God. The sermon’s second division takes up Muslims. Swalwell writes a cautionary note near the start of this heavily annotated section. ‘Note that these fictions are better for reading than for preaching’.33 Several of his notes return to the theme of miracles and the confirmation of Christian faith. Because the Apostles preached with God’s help, they were able to make converts everywhere and confirm their message with signs; true Christian faith is not based on earthly power or wisdom. Muslims do not do genuine miracles.34 He leaves clean the discussion of the giving of Muslim law. In Bernardino’s third division, Jews are discussed. Swalwell starts out following the prophecies of the Old Testament that were fulfilled in Jesus, but gradually gives up. After many pages of text, he highlights 32 33 34

Ibidem, f. 6r. ‘non sufficit allegare vera dicta gentilium sine confirmatione sacre scripture.’ Ibidem, f. 98r. ‘nota hi figmenta potius legenda quam predicanda.’ Ibidem. f. 98v. ‘exemplum. nota burdam hanc.’

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one of the numerous passages in the Rosarium with oratorical flourishes, passages he usually leaves clean. Along with traditional anti-semitism, his desire to cultivate Christian identity may be recognized here. He writes ‘against the Jews’ next to ‘O unbelieving Jews, accept the Christian faith as authentic, and no longer remain in your stubborness, and you faithful Christians rejoice and give thanks to God who made you his faithful ones, and to those of you remaining in the obedience of the faith he will give grace in the present and in the future he will grant eternal glory’.35 Interestingly, Swalwell also underlines some of the protections and permissions Jews have, such as not being forced to convert and the right to celebrate their own rituals, information with more practical relevance in Bernardino’s Italy than in Swalwell’s England.36 Swalwell’s ardent concern for the true faith and his careful attention to the beliefs of Jews and Muslims is confirmed by his annotations elsewhere, such as in a copy of Alfonso de Spina’s Fortalitium fidei.37 This apologetic work was written by a Spanish Franciscan to support aggressive preaching strengthening Christian believers and refuting heresies, especially those of Jews and Muslims.38 In book four, for example, he attentively follows Alfonso’s discussion of the Christian articles of the faith and how Muslims disagree, with such comments as, ‘Muslim understanding’; ‘the error of Muhammad is that of the heretic Arius’; ‘here see some true testimony about our Lord Christ in the Muslim Koran’; ‘the angelic salutation said in the Muslim sense’; ‘why the Saracens hold the Holy Land’; ‘conclusion that Christ was the messiah of the Christians, Jews and Saracens’.39 While Jews were an important part of the Christian theological imagination and the Muslims had recently been expelled from Spain, it is quite 35

36 37 38

39

Ibidem, f. 102r. ‘contra judeos. Igitur iudei increduli accipite fidem christiana: sic autenticam: et amplius non permanete in vestra duritia: et vos fideles christiani gaudete deo gratis agite, qui vos fideles suos fecit: et permanentibus vobis in obseruatione fidei dabit in presenti gratiam suam: etin futuro gloriam tribuet semiternam.’ Ibidem, f. 102 v. Alfonso de Spina, Fortalicium fidei (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1485), Ushaw College xviii. B.1.2. Francisco Javier Rojo Alique, ‘Fifteenth-century Franciscan Preachers in Castile: The Example of Valladolid,’ in: Franciscans and Preaching: Every Miracle from the Beginning of the World Came about through Words, ed. Timothy J. Johnson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 353–381, at 357. Alfonso de Spina, Fortalicium fidei, f. 106v. ‘sensum machometum’; f. 107r. ‘error machometi heretici aricis’; f. 108r. ‘hic vide quedam testimonia vera de domino nostro Christo in alchorano machameti, dicitur salutatione angelicum sensum machometum’; f. 142v. ‘cur saraceni tenent terram sanctam’; f. 100r. ‘conclusio quod christus erat virus messias christianorum, judeorum et saracenorum.’

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possible that the religious tumult of the 1520s and 1530s encouraged Swalwell to study attentively the resources that engaged false versions of the Christian faith. This may be seen more clearly in the forgiveness of sins.

Forgiveness of Sins

Beginning again at the widest level, the topic of penitence was pervasive in model sermon collections and central to many pastoral manuals across Europe. These resources agree on the universal expectations for Christians who fell into post-baptismal sin. They were to engage in self-examination and cultivate contrition for their sins. At least once a year, they were to make a complete confession of their sins to an authorized priest, not omitting any of the relevant circumstances (when, where, how often, etc.). The priest would speak words of absolution. Penitents were then to do whatever satisfaction the priest assigned, to pay off the temporal penalties of their sins and cultivate needed virtues. Without denying any aspect of these universal expectations, regional variations may also be discerned. These were differences in emphasis grounded in various historical strands of penitential theology, and they contributed to the changing religious landscape of the sixteenth century. Sermon collections with a ‘rigorist’ message stressed the role of the penitent in the successful forgiveness of sins, locating it in the depth of one’s contrition and the vigor of one’s satisfaction. These were most popular in Germany and southern France. At the other end of the penitential preaching spectrum were ‘absolutionist’ sermons that stressed the absolving power of the priest as the essence of the sacrament of penance. Especially popular in Italy and Northern France, these exhorted sinners to come to confession to receive absolution far more vigorously than they urged either contrition or satisfaction. ‘Moderate’ sermon collections struck a balance between the responsibilities of the penitent for contrition and the spiritual help available through the priest.40 This was the message conveyed in John Mirk’s Festial, the model sermon collection most frequently printed in late medieval England. Where would Thomas Swalwell, our individual witness, fall on this ­spectrum? At present, I have no evidence that he annotated Mirk, yet his  marginal notes in other works suggest that he is likely to have shared Mirk’s moderate approach. Two key resources for Swalwell’s preaching on forgiveness of sins come from opposite ends of the penitential spectrum. 40

See Thayer, Penitence, chapter 4, also pp. 186–187.

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Figure 7.3 Textum biblie cum postilla domini Hugonis Cardinalis, Vol. 6 of 7 (Basel: Johann Amerbach for Anton Koberger, 1498–1502), Ushaw College xviii.B.3.10, f. k6v. Reproduced by kind permission of the trustees of ushaw college

Bernardino Busti’s Rosarium sermonum is absolutionist in tone.41 In contrast, a volume of the Gospels with commentary by the thirteenth-century Dominican, Hugh of St. Cher, is rigorist, teaching that forgiveness is achieved in the penitent’s contrition and announced, rather than effected, by the priest.42 Judging by his annotations, Swalwell seems likely to have conveyed the importance of self-examination and contrition along with strong confidence in the power of the sacrament, a typically moderate message. Swalwell’s confidence is grounded in the mercy of God. For example, concerning Matthew 21:1 (Jesus at the Mount of Olives), our monk highlights a bit of Hugh’s commentary with underlining and two schematic diagrams. Jesus is praised as a doctor who heals others, who heals himself, and who makes himself medicine for others. He exhibits misericordia magna, magnor, supermaxima: great mercy that is slow to punish sinners and kind to the repentant; greater mercy in reconciling the offender and joyfully converting him; and the greatest mercy in always forgiving and giving himself to sinners (See Fig.  7.3).43 In a 41 42

43

Bernardino Busti, Rosarium, e.g., Sermon 13, section BB on indulgences, f. 87r. sq. Textum biblie cum postilla domini Hugonis Cardinalis, Vol. 6 (Basel: Johann Amerbach for Anton Koberger), Ushaw College xviii.B.3.10; e.g., the discussion of the power of the keys (Mt16:19), ff. i4r–v. This is not a model sermon collection in the traditional sense. However, as the homily style of preaching, in which the sermon is structured by discussing a biblical pericope a phrase at a time, was reviving under humanist influence in this time, such Bibles with running commentary were most useful. Anne T. Thayer, ‘The Postilla of Guillermus and Late Medieval Popular Preaching’, Medieval Sermon Studies 48 (2004), 57–74. Textum biblie cum postilla, f. k6v.

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discussion of the sacrament of penance later on in Matthew, Swalwell notes that confession seals Christ in the penitent as a tomb is sealed, with the confessor standing as guard.44 Such confidence does not obviate the need for contrition. Sermon 31 of the Rosarium focuses on contrition in three major divisions: necessitatis, diversitatis and utilitatis. Swalwell highlights a portion of the first division in which exempla and similitudes are offered to prove the need for contrition. Bernardino urges penitents to sing a six-note song of contrition. Swalwell writes in the margin, ‘thus sing with these six notes: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la’.45 As the text takes up each note, it is underlined and named in the margin, and the initial words of the supporting biblical texts are underlined, in typical Swalwell fashion. Swalwell’s purported hearer is thus likely to be urged to intend to keep divine precepts, bitterly acknowledge one’s sin, hope in God and believe in salvation by Christ’s merits, be made worthy of fruits of repentance, be freed from sin in confession. And finally to sing ‘la’, ‘so that one’s penitence and all other good works may be done neither out of fear of death or the pains of hell in particular, nor even from a desire for fame or another evil goal, but from charity and love of God’.46 While this affirms the need for contrition, it also points to hope for salvation through Christ’s merits and being set free from sin through sacramental confession. Amidst the late medieval world of multiple options, Swalwell’s personal appropriation of penitential material also includes issues of contemporary theological controversy. While the topic of good works was longstanding preaching material, it became acute in Luther’s wake. Leaving much of a sermon on good works in the Rosarium clean, our monk’s annotations are suggestive of contemporary debates. Do the predestined need to do good works? Yes, for according to the six exempla highlighted and Swalwell’s marginal note, ‘no one is predestined except conditionally’. Good works ensure that one reaches one’s good end, and ‘knowing oneself to be saved, one should not stop doing good’.47 For example, in order to be healed, it is important to follow the physician’s instructions and take the appropriate medicine; spiritually, this includes the medicine of penitence. The conclusion of this section of the sermon is an 44 45 46

47

Ibidem, f. n6r. Bernardino Busti, Rosarium, ff. 200r–v. Swalwell also highlighted this sermon in the volume’s index, f. 4v. Ibidem, f. 200v. ‘ut penitentiam suam et omnia alio bona opera faciat non timore mortis vel penarum inferni principaliter, nec etiam ex una gloria vel alio malo fine, sed ex charitate et amore dei.’ Ibidem, f. 239r. ‘exemplum quomodo nullus est predestinarius nisi condicionaliter. sciens se salvandis non cessarem benefacere.’

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Figure 7.4 Bernardino Busti, Rosarium sermonum, prima pars (Lyon: Johannes Clein, 1502), Ushaw College xviii B.4.24, f. 88r. Reproduced by kind permission of the trustees of ushaw college

affirmation of grace and Swalwell underlines the relevant biblical quotations (Ezekiel 33:14–16; Proverbs 3:4). Indulgences, too, were receiving much attention in the 1520s and 1530s. In Sermon 13 of the Rosarium on faith discussed above, the creed’s article on the forgiveness of sins includes a long discussion of indulgences. Swalwell has significantly marked this material, and, interestingly, seems to have done so twice. Two colors of ink are evident in the annotations, and several of the darker ones have the ‘spikier’ appearance associated with Swalwell’s later years. The earlier set of marginal notes track the text with comments like ‘definition of indulgence’; ‘whether the pope can give indulgences’; ‘how indulgences avail for the dead in purgatory with exemplum’; ‘on the dignity of the indulgence granted to St. Francis by Pope Honorius iii’.48 The apparently later set of notes suggests an interest in challenges to the practice of indulgences and are found in the section of the sermon on impediments to indulgences. For example, ‘I am strong against those not believing in indulgences, note the exemplum’.49 The underlying text asserts that faith is required for indulgences to work (See Fig.  7.4). Bernardino wrote,

48

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Ibidem, f. 87r. ‘diffinitio indulgencia, aut papa potest indulgencias dare’; f. 88v. ‘quomodo indulgencie valent defunctis in purgatorio cum exemplo’; f. 89r. ‘de dignitate indulgencie concesse beato francisco et de tercie honorij pape.’ Ibidem, f. 88r. ‘contra non credentes indulgentias valeo nota exemplum.’

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Once a certain religious was saying to me, ‘I don’t believe that through these indulgences one escapes the pains of purgatory unless one will have done works of penitence.’ I responded, ‘They won’t help you because you don’t have faith in them. But they will be good for me for I firmly believe that I will escape the penalties for sin by them’. And in sign of this it is said in Luke 7, ‘Let it be done to you as you have believed,’ and in the same place ‘Your faith has made you well’.50 Another of Swalwell’s apparently later notes says: ‘how it is understood that intention counts for deeds’.51 Here the text discusses whether or not one must fulfill the conditions of an indulgence, or simply intend to do so. Good intentions have their benefits, such as augmenting grace and thus contrition, but do not avail for indulgences. This same passage continues with a discussion of how much indulgence one gets for one’s money. Swalwell writes, ‘against the rich giving little for indulgences’.52 Thus Swalwell seems to adopt a traditional view of indulgences, but does not lose sight of the pastoral value of fulfilling their conditions. Conclusion Popular resources used by late medieval pastors helped shape Christian identity on universal, regional, and personally localized levels. In Thomas Swalwell we may see a monk at work, selecting materials from the books available to him as he prepared for his pastoral duties. He shared in the universal expectations for Christians promulgated by model sermon collections and pastoral manuals, affirming the unique truth of the Christian faith as expressed in the Creed and urging participation in the sacrament of penance. An enduring regional character may be seen in his moderate approach to the forgiveness of sins, stressing both the need for contrition and trust in the power of the sacrament. The desire to affirm the Roman Catholic faith in the face of heresy had both universal and regional dimensions in the early sixteenth century, but 50

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Ibidem. ‘Et immo cuidam religioso dicenti mihi. Ego non credo quod per istas indulgentias homo euadat penas purgatorij, nisi opera penitentie feceritur. Ego respondi. Tibi non proderunt, quia in eis non habes fidem. Sed bene mihi, qui firmiter credo per eas euadi penas pro peccato debitas. Et in huius signum dicitur Lu. vij. Sicut credidisti fiat tibi, et ibidem. Fides tua te saluum fecit.’ Ibidem, f. 88v. ‘quomodo intelligitur quod voluntas reputatur pro facta.’ Ibidem. ‘contra diuites paruum dantes pro indulgencijs.’

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Swalwell also engaged this issue in Durham alongside his own interest in Jewish and Muslim beliefs. On the contentious issue of forgiveness, his strong pastoral concern is visible as he affirmed the importance of good works and the validity of indulgences. Luther’s critique of monastic vows attacked Swalwell’s way of life. Although not explored here, at some point during the last fifteen years of his life, Swalwell annotated the virulently anti-Lutheran Contra temerarium Martini Luteri de votis monasticis iudicium by Johannes Dietenberger, confirming his attention to contemporary spiritual issues and calling the Church to live up to its calling.53 Swalwell’s commitments seem very likely to have both reflected and contributed to the resistance to radical religious change found in Northern England in the early decades of the sixteenth century. Swalwell died a month before the dissolution of his priory, and many of his books were given to younger monks who took them along when they left the monastery. A number of these remained in the hands of local Catholic landowners until coming into library collections in the nineteenth century.54 Both Swalwell’s books and his marginalia bear witness to the multiple options and local energy so central to Christian identity formation in the late medieval Church. Select Bibliography Doyle, A.I., ‘The Library of Sir Thomas Tempest: Its Origins and Dispersal,’ in: Studies in Seventeenth-century English Literature, History and Bibliography, ed. G.A.M. Janssens and F.G.A.M. Aarts (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984), 83–93. Dykema, Peter A., ‘Handbooks for Pastors: Late Medieval Manuals for Parish Priests and Conrad Porta’s Pastorale Lutheri (1582)’, in: Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late Medieval and Reformation History, ed. Robert J. Bast and Andrew C. Gow (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 143–162. Hudson, Anne, ‘Wyclif and the North: The Evidence from Durham’, in: Life and Thought in the Northern Church c. 1100–c. 1700: Essays in Honour of Claire Cross, ed. Diana Wood (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), 87–102.

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Johann Dietenberger, Contra temerarium Martini Luteri de votis monasticis iudicium (Cologne: Ceruicornus, 1524), Durham Cathedral Library B.V.58. A.I. Doyle, ‘The Library of Sir Thomas Tempest: Its Origins and Dispersal,’ in: Studies in Seventeenth-century English Literature, History and Bibliography, ed. G.A.M. Janssens and F.G.A.M. Aarts (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984), 83–93.

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Piper, A.J., ‘Dr Thomas Swalwell, Monk of Durham, Archivist and Bibliophile (d. 1539)’, in: Books and Collectors, 1200–1700, ed. J.P. Carley and C.G.C. Tite (London: British Library, 1997), 71–100. Rojo Alique, Francisco Javier, ‘Fifteenth-century Franciscan Preachers in Castile: The Example of Valladolid,’ in: Franciscans and Preaching: Every Miracle from the Beginning of the World Came about through Words, ed. Timothy J. Johnson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 353–381. Thayer, Anne T., Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). ———, ‘The Postilla of Guillermus and Late Medieval Popular Preaching’, Medieval Sermon Studies 48 (2004), 57–74. Van Engen, John, ‘Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church’, Church History 77: 2 (2008), 257–284.

chapter 8

‘The Prayer Booklet of Eternal Wisdom’ (Der ewigen wiszheit Betbüchlin, 1518): Catechistic Shaping of Religious Lay Identity Martina Wehrli-Johns Introduction ‘The Prayer Booklet of Eternal Wisdom’ (Der ewigen wiszheit Betbüchlin) is a small devotional book in octavo (ca. 9.69 × 15.14cm) with 216 paper folios, printed in Basel the second day of June 1518 by Jacob Wolff of Pforzheim, active in this city since 1482 as a printer and editor.1 The title refers to the ‘Little book 1 Cf. Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts (vd 16) 142, S 6101 (www.gateway-bayern.de/index_vd16.html) lists only four copies: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München; Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz; Köln, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek; Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg. The digitalized copy of  the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek used here (Sign. Asc. 518 d) is available under: urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10997563-5. Besides this I used the copy of Zürich, Zentralbiliothek, Sign. RRb 130, not in the catalogue vd 16, as well as the following copies in Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, Sign. Aleph Ex66, in Luzern, Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek, Sign. U19.11359.8, and St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Sign. Ink. 1588 (provenience: Dominican sister convent St. Katharina of Wil, ch), and Freiburg i. Br., Universitätsbibliothek, K 6921. For the printer Jacob Wolff of Pforzheim see Romy Günthart, Deutschsprachige Literatur im frühen Basler Buchdruck (ca. 1470–1510), Studien und Texte zum Mittelalter und zur frühen Neuzeit, 11 (Münster: Waxmann 2007), 34; For the online list of his prints see: e-rara.ch: Wolff von Pforzheim, Jacob (Offizin, Basel); cf. also Jakob Franck, ‘Jacob von Pforzheim’, in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (1881), online: url: http// www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd138857571. Frank Hieronymus, Oberrheinische Buchillustrationen 2: Basler Buchillustrationen 1500– 1545.  Universitätsbibliothek Basel, 31. März bis 30. Juni 1984, Publikationen der Universitätsbibliothek Basel, 5 (Basel: Universitätsbibliothek, 1984), 138–140 (Nr. 166). A brief analysis of the content in: Rüdiger Blumrich, ‘Die Überlieferung der deutschen Schriften Seuses. Ein Forschungsbericht’, in: Heinrich Seuses Philosophia spiritualis. Quellen, Konzept, Formen und Rezeption, ed. Rüdiger Blumrich & Philipp Kaiser, Tagung Eichstätt 2.-4. Oktober 1991, Wissensliteratur im Mittelalter, 17 (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1994), 189– 201, here 197–198; Martina Wehrli-Johns, ‘Mariengebete in Zürcher Frühdrucken der Offizin von Hans Rüegger’, in: Strenarum lanx. Beiträge zur Philologie und Geschichte des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit. Festgabe für Peter Stotz zum 40-jährigen Jubiläum des Mittellateinischen Seminars der Universität Zürich, ed. Martin Graf & Christian Moser (Zug: Achius, 2003), 209–233, here 221–224.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_009

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of Eternal Wisdom’ of the Dominican Heinrich Seuse (†1366) [Suso], from which about a third part of the Basel booklet is taken. The two other parts consist of prayers and various texts with catechetic instruction material. A printer’s notice at the end of the book informs us that it had been produced at the expenses of a certain Marx Werdemüller from Zürich,2 who probably was the commissioner as well. The donor came from a well-known dynasty of millers in Zürich, who were since 1429 the hereditary fief holders of one of the mills along the river Sihl nearby the Dominican sister convent of Oetenbach to whom the mill belonged. Marx or Marcus Werdmüller (*ca.1480–†1538) was the second son of Hans Werdmüller the younger (†1504) and an elder brother of Heinrich (†1548) and Jacob Werdmüller (†1559). While Marcus and Heinrich took over the mill business from their father, their youngest brother Jacob made his career as a shopkeeper, tradesman and soldier in the service of the papal court.3 The Werdmüller were members of the baker’s and miller’s guild and participated as such in the city council and government.4 Small in size and artistic value, this almost unknown early print is of interest for historians of religious culture in quite some respects. First of all, it is an important testimony of the religious beliefs of a wealthy Zürich craftsman only a few months before the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation in this city.5 Secondly the ‘Prayer Booklet’ of Marx Werdmüller sheds light on a new type of printed instruction to lay people, combining a quite famous text of late medieval devotional literature with a collection of prayers and other treatises, and informing the reader how to fulfil his duties towards God and the church. A third aspect of special interest is the catechistic shaping of lay religious identity in this book, recognizable in the linguistic and visual presentation of the prayers and in the choice of texts, with special references to the social situation 2 Betbüchlin, f. 218r: ‘Gedruckt und vollendet in der loblichen stat Basel/durch meyster Jacoben von Pfortzheim/in costen Marx Werdemüller von Zürich…’ 3 Cf. Leo Weisz, Die Werdmüller. Schicksale eines alten Zürcher Geschlechtes, 3 Vols. (Zürich: Schulthess, 1949) i, 3–8; Bd. 3, Stammtafel 1. 4 Cf. Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zürich, ‘Liste der Zürcher Räte’ (online): ‘Werdmüller Heinrich’, ‘Werdmüller, Jacob’. Weizs, Werdmüller, 9–15, 16–59. Martin Lassner, ‘Werdmüller Jakob’, in: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, ed. Stiftung Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, 13 Vols. (Basel, Schwabe, 1988–2014), online: http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D15476. 5 The Protestant Reformation in Zürich was implemented by Ulrich (Huldrych) Zwingli (†1531) from Wildhaus (Canton of St. Gallen ch), who was appointed in January 1519 as a pastor of the Grossmünster in Zürich. While preaching he gradually underwent a change in his religious beliefs and habits, which alienated him by 1522 from the Catholic Church. In January 1523 he won the support of the city authorities. See Ulrich Gäbler, Huldrych Zwingli. Eine Einführung in sein Leben und sein Werk, (Munich: Beck, 1983), 44–68.

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of the reader. This personalized approach raises the question who might have been the compiler of this ‘Prayer Booklet’, leading us again to the historical context and to some hypotheses concerning the religious groups behind this transfer of theological knowledge to a devote miller.

Seuse’s ‘Little Book of Eternal Wisdom’ Transformed into a ‘Prayer Book’

The Betbüchlin, as we will call it from now, opens at the backside of the titlepage with a short address to the reader, which declares that this book was made in honor and gratitude to the Almighty God in his trinity as well as in honor of the Virgin Mary, for the instruction and forthcoming of every human being willing to return to the celestial fatherland to which all are called.6 After that comes the calendar of saints, not in the order of the liturgical year, but in the order of the months from January to December, together with vernacular health regulations for each month. Graphic figures aid to calculate the Sunday letters and the Golden Number of the years. Another page notes the four Ember days for fasting, the four seasons and the lunar calendar, all of them accompanied by verses. A combination of the Golden Number and the twelve signs of the Zodiac helps to discover the best days for bloodletting. From the end of the fifteenth century, this kind of information belonged to every calendar, and can for instance also be found in the different editions of the famous Hortuli animae.7 The Betbüchlin, however, lacks the other major parts of those Hortuli, such as the Little Office of the Virgin Mother and the Penitential Psalms. Instead, preceded by a detailed table of content of the entire volume, it begins (f.1) with its major topic, announced as: ‘This is called the booklet of 6 ‘Zuo lob/ere/vnd danckberkeyt got der heiligen tryheit der hochen maiestet jn der ere Marie der iungkfrauen //vnd allem himmelschen haer/vnsz zuo eyner vnderwysunge vnd fu’rdrung allen den die da willen vnnd begirdt hant in das himmels vatter landt/dar zuo mir beruefft seint…’ 7 For late medieval calendars see Martin Germann, ‘Fundort Bucheinband: ein Zürcher Kalender auf das Jahr 1482. Mit einem Überblick über die Zürcher Offizin und ihre Drucke 1479 bis um 1481’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (1993), 66–87, here 66–68. For the calendar in the Hortuli animae see for example the vernacular edition, Strasbourg 1503, VD16 H 5079 (‘Ortulus Anime’), digitalized copy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, sign. Res/P.lat, 2205. For the Hortuli animae in general see Gerhard Achten, Das christliche Gebetbuch im Mittelalter. Andachts- und Stundenbücher in Handschrift und Frühdruck, 2nd Edition (Berlin: Reichert, 1988), 141; Peter Ochsenbein, ‘Hortulus animae’, in: Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Kurt Ruh et al., 14 Vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978–2008) iv (1983), 147–154.

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Eternal Wisdom’ (Disz heisset der Ewigen wiszheit Betbüchlin), almost a verbatim citation of the first sentence of the epilogue of Heinrich Seuse’s work, changing only the word büchlin (booklet) into the word Betbüchlin (prayer booklet). By doing so, the compiler uses Seuse’s epilogue, which explains the purpose of the work by this Dominican,8 as a sort of a general prologue for all parts of his own volume. The compiler then continues that at the end of the section on ‘Eternal Wisdom’, the reader will find ‘forty delicious prayers’, most of them gratified with a great number of indulgences, assuring the reader that those prayers bring fruit only when they are completed by good works, in accordance with the will of God. After the prayers the book will give the reader additional instruction in the sacrament of the Eucharist, and this is followed by extracts from the Gospel with the teaching of Christ and an explanation of the Ten Commandments and their fulfillment by the Virgin Mary. At the end of his little introduction the compiler excuses himself for having left out some parts of ‘Eternal Wisdom’ and the ‘Instruction to the sacrament’, because he feared the book would become too voluminous. Hence, the introduction itself makes evident that the Betbüchlin was not a collection of texts put together accidentally, but a careful compilation, carried out by one person, who seemed to have a certain catechistic plan in mind, and who was responsible for the choice of texts as well as for their particular visual and linguistic presentation. Subjecting the Seuse part of the Betbüchlin to closer scrutiny, one discovers quickly that the compiler took great liberties with regard to the original. As was the case in the second edition of the German works of Seuse, printed in 1512 in Augsburg by Hans Othmar in collaboration with the editor Johann Rynmann of Oeringen, our compiler changed the old middle German word ‘Minne, minneglich’ for the modern term of love: ‘Liebe, lieblich’ (love, lovely).9 In other respects, however, he copied neither the text of Seuse’s second printed edition nor that of the first Augsburg edition of 1482, put together by the Dominican 8 Betbüchlin, f. 1r–3r., cf. Karl Bihlmeyer, Heinrich Seuse. Deutsche Schriften, (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1907; Frankfurt: Minerva, unveränderter Nachdruck, 1967), 2. Buch: Büchlein der Ewigen Weisheit [Bdew], 324, 3–9. 9 See Blumrich, ‘Überlieferung’, 195–196; Dieter Breuer, ‘Zur Druckgeschichte und Rezeption der Schriften Heinrich Seuses’, in: Frömmigkeit in der frühen Neuzeit. Studien zur religiösen Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, ed. Dieter Breuer, Chloe, 2 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984), 29–49, here 35–36. For the Seuse- print Augsburg 1512 see Verzeichnis VD16 S 6097. i consulted the digitalized copy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, sign. 2 P.lat. 1430 a (urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb10813510-8).

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Felix Fabri of Ulm.10 The Basel compiler apparently had at hand a manuscript of his own, which he could shorten and alter as he liked. In contrast to the early prints and the manuscript transmission of the German works of Seuse,11 the compiler also was definitely not interested in the traditional iconographic program of the work. Instead, he created his own cycle of illustrations, in which the ‘Servant of Eternal Wisdom’ and his spiritual daughter do no longer appear. The compiler was familiar with the story that Seuse was buried in the Dominican convent of Ulm ‘in the state of greatest sanctity’, as he introduces him in his little prologue.12 This idea had come up in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, when the convent of Ulm adopted the Observant reform. Since then the pictorial hagiography of the German Dominican mystic, basically already fixed in the illustrations of the first manuscript of the ‘Exemplar’, was well established in early printed editions of his works.13 Therefore the lack of any portrait of the author in the Betbüchlin seems quite remarkable. 10

11

12

13

Cf. Blumrich, ‘Überlieferung’, 194–195; Breuer, ‘Druckgeschichte’, 35. For the Seuse-print Augsburg 1482 I consulted the digitalized copy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, sign. 2 Inc.c.a. 1261 (urn.nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00031701-6). Cf. Stephanie Altrock/Hans-Joachim Ziegeler, ‘Vom diener der ewigen wisheit zum Autor Heinrich Seuse. Autorschaft und Medienwandel in den illustrierten Handschriften und Drucken von Heinrich Seuses >Exemplar< ‘, in: Text und Kultur: mittelalterliche Literatur 1150–1450, ed. Ursula Peters, Germanistische Symposien, Berichtsbände, 23 (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2001), 151–188, here 164–188; Martin Kersting, Text und Bild im Werk Heinrich Seuses. Untersuchungen zu den illustrierten Handschriften des Exemplars (Mainz: Phil. Diss., 1987). Bihlmeyer, Deutsche Schriften, 46*–57*. Betbüchlin, f. 1v: ‘Es ist zu° wissen, das bruder Heinrich Suesz brediger ordens von Costentz/begraben zu° Ullm mit grosser haeilikeit jm Bredigerkloster, der ist, der das buoch von der ewigen wyszheit hat von der gnad gottes gemacht vnd was ein Brediger der christenlichen kilch/von dem das búchli der merteil sagt.’ (It is worth knowing that the ‘Book of Eternal Wisdom’, from which the major part of the book tells, was made by brother Heinrich Süess, called the Suess, of the Order of Preachers of Constance and buried in the state of greatest sanctity in the Preachers convent of Ulm. He was a preacher of the Christian church). Cf. Martina Wehrli-Johns, ‘Das >Exemplar< – eine Reformschrift der Dominikanerob­ servanz? Untersuchungen zum Johannesmotiv im >Horologium< und in der >Vita< Heinrich Seuses’, in: Predigt im Kontext, ed. Volker Mertens, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, Regina D. Schiewer, Wolfram Schneider-Lastin (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 347–376, here 363–366. P. Angelus M. Walz, ‘Der Kult Heinrich Seuses’, in: Heinrich Seuse. Studien zum 600. Todestag 1366–1966, ed. Ephrem M. Filthaut (Cologne: Albertus Magnus Verlag, 1966), 437–454, here 438–440; Jeffrey F. Hamburger, ‘Medieval Self-Fashioning: Authorship, Authority, and Autobiography in Seuse’s Exemplar’, in: Christ among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph Wawrykow, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 430–461, here 434–435, fig. 45 and 46. Sabine Griese, Text-Bilder und

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The version of Seuse’s ‘Book of Eternal Wisdom’ in the Betbüchlin has some distinguishing features: it foregoes the usual chapter division, but keeps in general the chapter headings, sometimes lightly modified to facilitate the reading process. As already announced in the foreword, substantial parts of the original content are left out, and several words or sentences were changed for expressions that were easier to understand. Smaller portions of the text, often ending by the word ‘Amen’, help to transform the book into a sort of prayer book, which justifies the new title Betbüchlin der ewigen wiszheit (Prayer Booklet of Eternal Wisdom). In general, the compiler had great respect for the work of Seuse, but occasionally he seemed to capitulate before the sophisticated philosophical items developed in his work. For example, at the end of the prologue, when Seuse writes: therefore let every fervent soul hasten after the first out-pourings of this sweet doctrine, so that she may learn to contemplate them in their origin, where they were in all their loveliness and ravishing beauty,14 the Betbüchlin says only: therefore a diligent man should hasten after this sweet doctrine, to learn about the origin of eternal wisdom,15 leaving aside the Neo-Platonist doctrine of Pseudo-Dionysius concerning the emanation of being from the first principle.16 The same happens with the important paragraph of chapter seven where, as Rüdiger Blumrich has shown,

14

15 16

ihre Kontexte. Medialität und Materialität von Einblatt-Holz- und -Metallschnitten des 15. Jahrhunderts, Medienwandel – Medienwechsel – Medienwissen, 7 (Zürich, Chronos, 2011), 161–169. See Bihlmeyer, Deutsche Werke, 200, 1–3: ‘…so soll ein vliziger mensch den usvergangen rúnsen dieser suezen ler nah ilen, daz er si lerne an sehen nah dem ursprunge, do sú in ir leblichi, in ir wúnklicher schonheit waren.’ My translation of the Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit follows in general the online English translation of C.H. McKenna, O.P.: The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, by Blessed Henry Suso, trans. C.H. McKenna (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1910), 12. This English translation is based on Melchior Diepenbrock, Heinrich Suso’s, genannt Amandus, Leben und Schriften, 2nd Ed. (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 1837). Betbüchlin, f. 2v–3r: ‘Und darvmb so sol ein flyssig mensch disser tútschen suessen ler noch zien das er sy lern ansehen nach dem vrsprungk der ewigen wyszheit.’ Cf. Rüdiger Blumrich, ‘Die gemeinú ler des >Büchleins der ewigen WeisheitExemplar< ‘, in: Text und Kultur: mittelalterliche Literatur 1150–1450, ed. Ursula Peters, Germanistische Symposien, Berichtsbände, 23 (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2001), 151–188. Bettelorden, Bruderschaften und Beginen in Zürich, ed. Barbara Helbling et al. (Zürich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2002). Blumrich, Rüdiger, ‘Die Überlieferung der deutschen Schriften Seuses. Ein Forschungsbericht’, in: Heinrich Seuses Philosophia spiritualis. Quellen, Konzept, Formen und Rezeption, ed. Rüdiger Blumrich & Philipp Kaiser, Tagung Eichstätt 2.–4. Oktober 1991, Wissensliteratur im Mittelalter, 17 (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1994), 189–201. Breuer, Dieter, ‘Zur Druckgeschichte und Rezeption der Schriften Heinrich Seuses’, in: Frömmigkeit in der frühen Neuzeit. Studien zur religiösen Literatur des 17. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, ed. Dieter Breuer, Chloe, 2 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1984), 29–49. Durrer, Robert, Bruder Klaus: die ältesten Quellen über den seligen Nikolaus von Flüe, sein Leben und seinen Einfluss, 2 Vols. (Sarnen: Ehrli; unveränderter Nachdruck der Ausgabe 1917–1921, 1981). Frech, Stephan Veit, ‘Einsiedeln 1522. Meister Leu übersetzt Erasmus für die Zürcher Reformation’, in: Erasmus in Zürich. Eine verschwiegene Autorität, ed. Christine Christ- von Wedel and Urs B. Leu (Zürich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2007), 176–192. Gäbler, Ulrich, Huldrych Zwingli. Eine Einführung in sein Leben und sein Werk, (Munich: Beck, 1983). Griese, Sabine, Text-Bilder und ihre Kontexte. Medialität und Materialität von EinblattHolz- und -Metallschnitten des 15. Jahrhunderts, Medienwandel – Medienwechsel – Medienwissen, 7 (Zürich, Chronos, 2011). Günthart, Romy, Deutschsprachige Literatur im frühen Basler Buchdruck (ca. 1470–1510), Studien und Texte zum Mittelalter und zur frühen Neuzeit, 11 (Münster: Waxmann 2007). Hamburger, Jeffrey F., ‘Medieval Self-Fashioning: Authorship, Authority, and Autobiography in Seuse’s Exemplar’, in: Christ among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph Wawrykow, Notre Dame Conferences in Medieval Studies, 7 (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 430–461. Hieronymus, Frank, Oberrheinische Buchillustrationen 2: Basler Buchillustrationen 1500–1545. Universitätsbibliothek Basel, 31. März bis 30. Juni 1984, Publikationen der Universitätsbibliothek Basel, 5 (Basel: Universitätsbibliothek, 1984). ———, Sprache und Übersetzung im Basler Buchdruck bis zum Dreissigjährigen Krieg, Publikationen der Universitätsbibliothek Basel, 35 (Basel: Bibliothek der Universität Basel, 2003). Hofmann, Annelies Julia, Der Eucharistie-Traktat Marquards von Lindau, Hermea, 7 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1960).

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Hofmann, Georg, ‘Seuses Werke in deutschsprachigen Handschriften des Mittelalters’, Fuldaer Geschichtsblätter 45 (1969), 113–206. Hollstein, F.W.H., German Engravings etchings and Woodcuts. CA. 1400–1700, vol. I: Achen-Altdorfer (Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger, 1954). Kersting, Martin, Text und Bild im Werk Heinrich Seuses. Untersuchungen zu den illustrierten Handschriften des Exemplars (Mainz: Phil. Diss., 1987). Knape, Joachim, ‘Sebastian Brant als Lieddichter’, in: Lied im deutschen Mittelalter. Überlieferung, Typen, Gebrauch, Chiemsee-Colloquium 1991, ed. Cyril Edwards et al. (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1996), 309–333. Koegler, Hans, ‘Über das Flugblatt der Juliusgeschenke und die Druckwerke des Hans Rüegger in Zürich’, in: Schweizerisches Gutenbergmuseum 12 (1926), 47–54. ———, ‘Die illustrierten Erbauungsbücher, Heiligenlegenden und geistlichen Auslegungen im Basler Buchdruck der ersten Hälfte des XVI. Jahrhunderts (Mit Ausschluß der Postillen, Passionale, Evangelienbücher und Bibeln)’, Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 39 (1940), 53–157. Mossman, Stephen, Marquard of Lindau and the Challenges of Religious Life in Late Medieval Germany. The Passion, the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary, (Oxford: University Press, 2010). Sexauer, Wolfram D., Frühneuhochdeutsche Schriften in Kartäuserbibliotheken. Untersuchungen zur Pflege der volkssprachlichen Literatur in Kartäuserklöstern des oberdeutschen Raums bis zum Einsetzen der Reformation, Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe I, 247 (Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 1978). Staedtke, Joachim, Anfänge und Blütezeit des Zürcher Buchdrucks, (Zürich, Orell Füssli, 1969). Stähli, Marlies, ‘Das Zürcher Fraumünster und seine Bibliothek im Mittelalter’, in: Das Fraumünster von Zürich. Von der Königsabtei zur Stadtkirche, ed. Peter Niederhäuser und Dölf Wild, Mitteilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich, 80 (2012), 45–73. Traunbauer, Ingeborg, Beiträge zum mystisch-ascetischen Schrifttum des deutschen Mittelalters, (Wien, Diss. manuscript, 1955). Walz, P. Angelus M., ‘Der Kult Heinrich Seuses’, in: Heinrich Seuse. Studien zum 600. Todestag 1366–1966, ed. Ephrem M. Filthaut (Cologne: Albertus Magnus Verlag, 1966), 437–454. Wehrli-Johns, Martina, ‘Mariengebete in Zürcher Frühdrucken der Offizin von Hans Rüegger’, in: Strenarum lanx. Beiträge zur Philologie und Geschichte des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit. Festgabe für Peter Stotz zum 40-jährigen Jubiläum des Mittellateinischen Seminars der Universität Zürich, ed. Martin Graf & Christian Moser (Zug: Achius, 2003), 209–233. ———, ‘L’Immaculée Conception après le concile de Bâle dans les provinces dominicaines et franciscaines de Teutonie et de Saxe: débats et iconographie’, in: L’Atelier du Centre de Recherches Historiques 10 (2012) (http://acrh.revues.org/4280).

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———, ‘Das >Exemplar< – eine Reformschrift der Dominikanerobservanz? Untersuchungen zum Johannesmotiv im >Horologium< und in der >Vita< Heinrich Seuses’, in: Predigt im Kontext, ed. Volker Mertens, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, Regina D. Schiewer, Wolfram Schneider-Lastin (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 347–376. Winston-Allen, Anne, Stories of the Rose. The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).

chapter 9

The Vineyard of Saint Francis Koen Goudriaan Introduction1 One of the most remarkable products of the Antwerp printing press made its appearance on December 12, 1518. Den Wijngaert van Sinte Franciscus (‘The Vineyard of St Francis’; henceforth Vineyard) was published by the well-known printer Hendrik Eckert van Homberch. It is a voluminous compendium of texts in Dutch related to St Francis and the Franciscan order, issued in small-folio format, measuring 428 folio’s and printed in two columns. Apart from an introductory woodcut showing St Francis with his stigmata, the book is not illustrated. Its compiler does not make himself known by name; his profile clearly is that of an Observant Franciscan belonging to the Cologne Province. The volume has been preserved in an unusually large number of copies: over forty of them are known.2 In its title, the Vineyard echoes the first words of the papal bull Ite et vos in vineam meam, with which pope Leo x during Pentecost 1517 put an end to the protracted conflict between the various branches of the Franciscan order. He united all reformed Franciscans under the leadership of the Observants and declared them to be the authentic representatives of the Franciscan tradition. In reaction, the Conventuals left, and although the 1517 bull has become generally known as the Bulla Unionis, it might as well have been called a ‘bull of separation’.3 The reference in the title of the Vineyard to the bull, issued a year 1 The following abbreviations are used: nk = Nederlandsche Bibliographie 1500–1540, ed. Wouter Nijhoff & M.E. Kronenberg, 3 Vols. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1923–1961). ilc  =  Incunabula Printed in the Low Countries, ed. Gerard van Thienen & John Goldfinch (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1999). bbfn Bio  =  Bio-bibliographia franciscana Neerlandica saeculi xvi. i: Pars biographica, ed. B. de Troeyer (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1969). bbfn Bib  =  Bio-bibliographia franciscana Neerlandica saeculi xvi. ii: Pars bibliographica, ed. B. de Troeyer (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1970). 2 nk 2208; bbfn Bib 710. I consulted the copy in the collection of the Royal Library in The Hague, sign. 227 A 8. 3 John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 569–585; D. Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Franciscan Order: From Saint Francis to the Foundation of the Capuchins (Rome: Capuchin Historical Institute, 1987), 640–642.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_010

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and a half before, is explained in some detail in the Prologue.4 The metaphor returns in the global division of the compendium in three books: the first book is dedicated to the branches of the vine, meaning St Francis himself; the second book treats the flowers, referring to the saints of the Franciscan order; and book three discusses the fruits represented by the companions of St Francis and later prominent Franciscans. The Vineyard was an emblem of the Franciscan order as this manifested itself in the sixteenth century. In this article, we will first review its structure and content, departing from the hypothesis that the Vineyard was a fresh and original compilation based on Latin sources but making use of existing vernacular texts. The compendium was clearly intended for a general audience; this makes it worthwhile to investigate how the Vineyard presents the Franciscan order to the public at large. Clues as to the context of the production of the Vineyard are followed up. A remaining task is to investigate the truth of a report on an attempt made by the Franciscans to withdraw the Vineyard – which had become an object of mockery – from circulation in 1566, the year of the iconoclastic fury. This finally raises the question as to whether the Vineyard’s publication came at an opportune moment. Offering a comprehensive analysis of the content of the Vineyard and its sources is not the aim of this article. In large measure, this task has been done already a century ago by Bonaventura Kruitwagen. In an extensive article this great Franciscan scholar presented a source-critical and literary analysis of the compendium.5 Since then, the Vineyard as such has been treated only once, by Benjamin de Troeyer in his Bio-bibliographia franciscana.6 De Troeyer endorsed the earlier treatment by Kruitwagen while offering a full bibliographical description of the Vineyard. He succeeded in identifying the Ghent historiographer Marcus van Vaernewijck as the originator of the story on the attempt of the Franciscans to suppress the Vineyard. Kruitwagen was aware of the ‘Franciscan question’, the debate on the relationship and value of the primary sources on the life of St Francis. This debate had been set in motion by Paul Sabatier’s 1894 hypothesis on the Legenda Trium Sociorum (Legend of the Three Companions), which he considered – in its unabbreviated form – as the original source on the life of St Francis.7 4 Unfol. [a2r–a4v]. 5 Bonaventura Kruitwagen, ‘Den Wijngaert van Sinte Franciscus’, Neerlandia Franciscana 1 (1914), 43–72; 135–155. 6 bbfn Bio, 43–46; bbfn Bib 710. An earlier brief treatment: Wilhelmus Antonius Schmitz, Het aandeel der Minderbroeders in onze middeleeuwse Literatuur (Nijmegen: Dekker en Van de Vegt, 1936), 61–63. 7 Paul Sabatier, Vie de Saint François d’Assise (Paris: Fischbacher, 1894).

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The debate continued after 1914 and took a dramatic turn when the Legend of the Three Companions was declared a forgery. But the publication in 1967 of Sophronius Clasen’s thorough study on the Legenda Antiqua S. Francisci resulted in a complete rehabilitation of this Legend.8 In his 1914 article Kruitwagen, however, had postulated that the debate on the Latin sources on St Francis did not directly affect the Middle Dutch textual tradition on St Francis which was at the base of large parts of the Vineyard.

Structure and Content

The limited compass of this article does not allow for an in-depth analysis of the structure and content of the Vineyard. An argument can be made, however, for considering the volume as a relatively independent and well-ordered work, which pursued its goal of bringing home a specific message about the Franciscan order with some consistency. Though Kruitwagen acknowledges the independence with which the compiler worked and adduces enough detail to substantiate this, his overall analysis tends to consider the Vineyard as one more stage in a progressive series of (re)compilations of Franciscan materials.9 He pays much attention to the sources and we will make use of his results gratefully. But he is not really interested in the structure imposed by the compiler on the varied materials inserted in the volume; at one point he even calls it a hotchpotch.10 In contrast, De Troeyer approaches the Vineyard as a ‘well-structured book’, and proves his point by offering a brief but generally convincing survey of its structure.11 This viewpoint will be adopted here, too. And as the compiler repeatedly claims that everything he tells has been translated from Latin sources,12 a point of attention will be the extent to which he had to make these translations afresh. The tripartite structure of the Vineyard leaves nothing to be wished for in terms of logic and clarity: the first book deals with St Francis himself, the ­second with the saints of the three Franciscan orders and the third with the other assets of the Franciscan movement, including its prominent members and its privileges. This main division is implemented with consistency: cross 8 9 10 11 12

Sophronius Clasen, Legenda antiqua S. Francisci, Studia et Documenta Franciscana, 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1967). Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 48: ‘het werk van een zelfstandigen compilator’; Ibidem, 47: ‘maakt hij weer een nieuwe compilatie’. Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 64: ‘samengeraapt’. bbfn Bio, 45: ‘een goed geordend boek’. The survey: Ibidem, 43–45. In the following we will refer to the numbering assigned by De Troeyer to the successive parts. More about this claim in the next section of this article (‘Audience and intention’).

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­references are inserted now and then,13 transitions between one section and the next are clearly demarcated and explained.14 Of course, it proved beyond the capability even of this composer to eliminate all overlap. St Bernardino figures both in book two and in book three.15 The list of companions of St Francis inserted in book one differs from the one in book three, where he gives them a thorough treatment.16 But on the whole, the composer keeps a firm grip on the variegated material included in the volume. For the structure of the Vineyard the compiler did not rely on any of the standard collections circulating in the Low Countries. One of Clasen’s 1967 results had been the identification of a ‘Franziskusbuch der Franziskanerprovinz Colonia’, which has been preserved in 24 manuscripts.17 In his first book the composer of the Vineyard could have opted for following this (Latin) Cologne Francis Book, but a quick comparison of the content of this collection with the Vineyard shows that they are completely dissimilar.18 Unlike the Cologne book, our compiler combines the Legenda Maior by St Bonaventure with a second full treatment of the life and miracles of St Francis, which he calls the ‘Old Legend’ and which relies on various sources. As to the vernacular Dutch tradition on St Francis, already before producing his separate study on the Vineyard, Kruitwagen had published a seminal article in which he identified a cluster of texts in Middle Dutch which mostly were copied together (37 manuscripts), and for which the Vineyard itself serves as a partial textual witness.19 Since then, this group of texts has become known as the ‘Dutch Franciscan treatises’ and has been studied in more detail by Kurt Ruh, Sophronius Clasen and Julius van Gurp, and Jan Deschamps.20 In fact, the 13 14

E.g. fol. 337r refers to the main treatment of the indulgences (iii.1). Almost every section has a prologue of its own; and for the transition after the first twelve companions (fol. 388v) see below. 15 Fol. 229v–253r; 392r. 16 Fol. 64r; 337v. 17 Clasen, Legenda antiqua, 167–169. 18 Clasen, Legenda antiqua, 167–169; bbfn Bio, 43. 19 Bonaventura Kruitwagen, ‘De Middelnederlandsche handschriften over het leven van Sint Franciscus en zijn eerste gezellen’, De Katholiek. Godsdienstig en letterkundig maandschrift 128 (1905), 151–191. 20 Kurt Ruh, Bonaventura deutsch: ein Beitrag zur deutschen Franziskaner-Mystik und – Scholastik, Bibliotheca Germanica, 7 (Bern: Francke, 1956), 237–239; Sophronius Clasen and Julius van Gurp, ‘Nachbonaventurianische Franziskusquellen in niederländischen und deutschen Handschriften’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 49 (1956), 434–482; J. Deschamps, ‘Middelnederlandse vertalingen van Levens en Legenden van de H. Franciscus van Assisi. Handschriften en drukken’, Franciscana 31 (1976), 59–73. Survey: Die  deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. K. Ruh, Vol. 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1980), 845–847.

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double treatment of the legend of the founder in the Vineyard bears some resemblance to the Dutch Franciscan treatises. But here too there are noticeable differences. The standard collection exhibits, in addition to the Legenda Maior, the Legenda Minor, and in its remaining parts passages on the companions are integrated with the legend of St Francis himself. The Vineyard keeps these apart, relegating the companions to book three. Book one, apart from a Prologue (i.1), consists of four parts: the Legenda Maior (i.2), the Old Legend of St Francis (i.3), an exposition on the Indulgence of the Portiuncula (i.4), and a characteristic piece called Sinte Franciscus Souter (The Psalter of St Francis). The Legenda Maior was the official biography of St Francis, and the authority of its writer, St Bonaventure, is explicitly recognized in the Prologue of the Vineyard. The compiler includes the Treatise on the Miracles with which Bonaventure ends his Legend: of course this contributed to the greatness of the Franciscan order, which he wanted to prove. A Dutch version of the Legenda Maior was available. This had been printed twice before,21 but the text in the Vineyard contains a prologue of its own that is lacking in the printed editions, and the text at places has been rephrased considerably.22 For the ‘Old Legend’ (i.3) Kruitwagen has identified a variety of sources, which are reworked thoroughly by the compiler.23 Apart from the Legend of the Three Companions he made use of the Speculum Perfectionis – a compilation, dating to around 1330, of material about St Francis not included in the Legenda Maior,24 and available in a recent printed edition (Venice, 1504) – and of the Liber de Conformitate Vitae Beati Francisci ad Vitam Domini Ihesu by Bartolomeo of Pisa,25 which had been finished in 1399 and was edited in Milan in 1510 and 1513. The Speculum Perfectionis is a hortatory work presenting the life of St Francis as a perfect imitation of the Life of Christ, serving as an example to be followed by the readers, originally the members of the order during the period of disorientation after the crisis of the struggle about poverty. The Liber de Conformitate pursues the same goal with a more detailed narrative. The Souter is a late medieval meditative text, purportedly translated from Latin and pseudepigraphically attributed to St Francis himself.26 Until recently, 21

ilc 428 (Antwerp, Leeu, 1491; I consulted The Hague, rl, 150 F 17); nk 466 (Leiden, Seversz, 1504; copy: Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, Prentenkabinet, 325 E 1). 22 This differs from Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 50; bbfn Bio, 43. 23 Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 51–58. 24 Clasen, Legenda antiqua, 324–343. 25 Moorman, History, 396–397; Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 117 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), 473–474. 26 Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 59–62; idem, ‘Sinte Franciscus Souter’, Neerlandia Franciscana 1 (1914), 237–245.

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only a truncated version of this text was known. It announces to consist of three parts, one on the Creator, one on the Savior and the third part on Man; but none of the known textual witnesses contained the third part. In 2007, however, Youri Desplenter published the find of a Brussels manuscript which gives the complete version.27 The Vineyard shares the incomplete version with most of the manuscripts and with the separately printed editions of the Psalter; probably it is based on one of the latter.28 Book two of the Vineyard contains a long parade of the most important saints of Franciscanism, organized according to the three orders. All of these hagiographies had to be translated from Latin,29 with the possible exception of the Legend of St Clare (written by Thomas of Celano). A Dutch version of her life circulated already both in manuscript and in print. The printed version was appended to the 1491 and 1504 editions of the Dutch Legenda Maior,30 but again it is improbable that the Vineyard followed one of these printed editions. If we follow the intention of the compiler, the third book of the Vineyard consists of only three parts. After a Prologue (iii.1) it starts with a ‘Little Treatise on the Order of St Francis and how the Friars Minor excel above all Religions’ (iii.2), a short systematic tract which deals among other things with the offices and masses for the dead offered in Franciscan monasteries. The concept of the superiority of the Franciscan ‘religion’ is central to the Vineyard, as will be explained later on. The Little Treatise is followed by a long section dealing with the companions of St Francis (iii.3–10). This part of book three not only comprises the twelve companions proper, but also the doctors, the popes, the cardinals, the secular lords, the prominent members of the Clarisses and of the Tertiaries, and additional order statistics, as is made clear by the general register which concludes the Vineyard.31 Book three finishes with a survey of the indulgences granted to the order (iii.11).32 Kruitwagen’s extensive analysis of its sources makes clear to which degree the discussion of the companions in the Vineyard is both akin to and different from the standard treatment of the companions in the Dutch Franciscan treatises and in the text printed in 1514 by Hayen.33 For two of the companions 27

28 29 30 31 32 33

Youri Desplenter, ‘Sinte Franciscus Souter. Een populaire postincunabel met een handschrift vervolledigd’, Spiegel der Letteren 49:2 (2007), 231–246. The manuscript is Brussels, rl, ii 3738 (ca. 1530–1560). nk 1910–1914; 3888; another edition appeared in 1546. I consulted copies of nk 1912 and 1913 in the Royal Library of The Hague. Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 62–63. ilc 428; nk 466. This analysis differs from the one given by De Troeyer. Latin collections of indulgences had been printed in Leipzig in 1495 and Venice ca. 1500. Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 65–68. Printed edition: nk 1354 (ʼs-Hertogenbosch: Hayen, 1514).

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treated in the Vineyard, Juniperus and Jacopone, the compiler had to rely on the Liber de Conformitate by Bartolomeo of Pisa. Once he switched to this prolific source, the compiler deliberately continues his story with later famous order members, first those mentioned in the Liber de Conformitate, then those who came after Bartholomeo, with the popes, the cardinals etc. following suit.34 The order statistics presented thereafter, based on the acts of the General Chapter of 1506, constitute the point of culmination for this exhaustive narrative on the following of St Francis. The whole set-up of book three is devised so as to connect later generations of the order as closely as possible to the founder. It remains to be seen how organically the ‘vineyard’ metaphor is connected to this well thought-out composition. The truth is that the reference to the title of the 1517 bull Ite et vos in vineam probably came as an afterthought. The compiler was working on the volume already in 1514,35 and could not have anticipated the events of 1517. Apart from the Prologue, the ‘vineyard’ motif hardly plays any role in the Vineyard.36 The Prologue has been built principally around the biblical Parable of the Vineyard (Mt 20: 1–16; the bull refers to verse 4). Additionally it draws on the motif of the ‘true vine’ of John 15:1–8, which gives occasion to exhort the readership to imitate St Francis, who himself was a perfect mirror of Christ. The Prologue opens aptly with a quotation from Jeremiah 2: 21, where God reproaches his people for its infidelity, although He had planted a special vineyard for them: a good starting point for a complaint about the wickedness of the times. The general Prologue is followed by a separate foreword to book one, which is based on an adroit quotation from Genesis 40: 9–10: the vine with the three branches seen by Pharaoh’s cupbearer whose dream is interpreted by Joseph. The vine is St Francis, the three branches refer to the Friars Minor, the Clarisses and the order of Tertiaries. At the end of the general Prologue,37 already another tripartite division had been introduced, distinguishing the branches, the flowers and the fruits of the vine. This, however, was done in a manner that does not result from exegetical necessity and is not very convincing. So the ‘vineyard’ motif has been added rather artificially. To sum up: the compiler of the Vineyard went to considerable lengths to present his audience with a well-structured comprehensive view on the Franciscan order. He carefully selected and reworked his source material. Where he could, he made use of existing translations, but for many sections of 34 35 36 37

Cp. the transition Vineyard fol. 388v. Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 67 suggests that the compiler is somewhat rambling here; I disagree. Fol. 392r. I found a reference only in the seventh chapter of the Little Treatise, fol. 336r. Unfol. [a3r].

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the volume he had to do the job all by himself. The result is quite different from a chronicle giving a continuous narrative on the vicissitudes of three centuries of Franciscan history: it is a compendium which highlights the founder and the early generations, and presents the later greatness of the order by connecting it as directly as possible with those glorious beginnings.

Audience and Intention

What type of public did the composer have in mind and what was the impression of the order he wanted to transmit to this audience? The choice of the vernacular alone would suffice as proof that the composer of the Vineyard intended the work for the general public. But he is explicit about it, in the Prologue and in the colophon – the translation of the Latin writings had been undertaken ‘to the profit of all good Christian people’38 – as well as in the course of the text, for example at the start of the Old Legend.39 Those members of the audience who want to know more are encouraged to ask the friars:40 apparently the envisaged primary readers were not supposed to belong to a convent. At the end of the Old Legend the compiler addresses his audience as ‘simple unlearned people’, who may be edified by the material assembled from a variety of sources, provided they leave the ‘difficult points to the wise and learned men who occupy themselves with Latin writings on a daily basis’.41 Of course this does not imply disparagement of the Latin sources. Quite the contrary, the anonymous composer throughout tries to lend authority to his narrative by stressing that it has been translated from ‘authentical Latin books’.42 An interesting clue to the specific milieu in which the intended readership of the Vineyard may be sought, is given by the two poems opening and closing the compilation. They betray affinity with the production of contemporary chambers of rhetoric, with their elaborate rhyme patterns and – in the case of  the concluding poem – its recurring stock line (referein) – ‘Praise you, ­armsbearer of Christ’s wounds’ – and its addressing the ‘Prince’ in the final 38 39 40 41

42

Prologue: unfol. [a3r]; colophon: fol. 408v: ‘ten profijte van allen gueden kersten menschen’. Fol. 48r: ‘seer profitelijck…allen kerstenen menschen’. Fol. 331r: ‘die macht vanden selven broeders vraghen’; cp. fol. 337v. Fol. 145r: ‘slechte simpele ongheleerde menschen […] achterlatende alle arguacien den wijsen ende gheleerde mannen die daeghelicx int latijn ende inder scrifturen hem becommeren’. E. g. in the Prologue, unfol. [a3r] and on fol. 330v.

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strophe.43 That it was not illusory to expect interest for the Franciscan case on the side of the rhetoricians is shown by the career of the famous poetess and supporter of the Friars Minor Anna Bijns.44 Conspicuously absent from the Vineyard are the Franciscan rule as well as the commentaries on it by people like Bernardino of Siena and Giovanni of Capistrano. Accentuation of the Franciscan rule and its contested interpretation would inevitably have implied again drawing attention to the near-perennial conflicts within the order, which we know to have greatly annoyed the general public. The gist of the new situation of 1517 was exactly that this strife had been ended by the Bulla Unionis. How deliberate the choice not to enter into polemics must have been, becomes clear when we compare the Vineyard with, for example, the Minorica elucidativa, which was printed in Deventer in 1497.45 That Latin compendium contained – in addition to the Franciscan rule – tracts pro and contra the separation of the Observants from the Conventuals, and quite a lot of documentary evidence on the long battle of the preceding century. Nothing of the kind is inserted in the Vineyard. Full weight is given, instead, to the adoption of the common Franciscan heritage as a basis for the claim to represent the true following of the founder. Expectedly, though he abstains from internal polemics, the compiler leaves no occasion unused to impress the outside world with the superiority of the Franciscan order and the prominent place it rightly takes in the life of the Church. Again and again the phrase recurs that this order is excellent ‘above other religions’: in connection with the indulgence of Portiuncula,46 in the title of the Little Treatise,47 in the introduction to the lives of the early companions,48 and when he announces the 1506 statistics.49 The term ‘religion’ is used consistently in its narrow technical meaning, which makes it the equivalent of ‘monastic order’. The Prologue sets the tone, by interpreting the vineyard in the title of the bull as referring to ‘the religion of the Friars Minor’,50 and the Little 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50

Resp. unfol. [a1v] and unfol. [DD5v–6r]. Quotation: ‘Lof wapendragere van Christus’ wonden’. Herman Pleij, Anna Bijns, van Antwerpen (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2011); Judith Keßler, Princesse der rederijkers. Het oeuvre van Anna Bijns: argumentatieanalyse, structuuranalyse, beeldvorming (Hilversum: Verloren, 2013). ilc 1597; Bio-bibliographia franciscana Neerlandica ante saeculum xvi. ii: Pars bibliographica, ed. L. Mees (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1974), nr. 77. ‘…boven andere religien…’ Fol. 148r. Fol. 327r. Fol. 337v. Fol. 401r. Unfol. [a2v]: ‘…der minderbroeders religie’.

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Treatise gives a theological explanation of the term with reference not only to the Observant Stephan Brulefer,51 but even to an important outside authority: the Dominican St Thomas Aquinas.52 On the whole the Vineyard is a rather irenic work. But of course this does not preclude some Observant window dressing. Though concentrating on the beginnings of the order, the Vineyard also pays attention to developments and events of more recent times, and this is done in such a way that sufficient light is falling on the Observant family, without resorting to polemics. Among the saints whose life is retold in book two figures St Bernardino.53 The illustrious company of St Francis is extended so as to include recent Observants like Giovanni of Capistrano, Bernardino of Siena (again!), Bernardino of Feltre, Olivier Maillard and Dirk Coelde.54 The report on the indulgence of Portiuncula is opened with a long quotation from the Rosary of Sermons by the Observant Bernardino Busti, which was printed in 1498.55 When mentioning the 1481 extension of this indulgence, which made it possible for members of the three Franciscan orders on certain conditions to receive it while staying at home in their convents, the compiler stresses the fact that pope Sixtus iv granted this privilege on the request of the Observant vicar-general Pietro of Naples.56 Among the exempla inserted in the concluding pages of the Old Legend is a vision seen by a tertiary sister: it is replete with the kind of criticism on the flagging of Franciscan life the Observants used to launch at their opponents in the fifteenth century.57 The recent bull by pope Leo x (22 January 1516) which gave permission to celebrate the feast of St Daniel and his companions may not be of a particularly ‘Observant’ nature.58 The previously mentioned statistics for the year 1506, however, mention only the Observants and skip the Conventuals.59 The last person mentioned in the catalogue of the cardinals issuing from the Franciscan order is Cristoforo of Forlí, who was raised to this rank the moment he became the first Franciscan minister-general recruited from the Observants in 1517.60 The link introduced between the compilation as 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

On this person see Moorman, History, 538. Fol. 328r. Fol. 229v–253v. Fol. 392r; cp. Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 67–68. Fol. 145r–v. On him see Moorman, History, 529; 543; Roest, Franciscan Literature, 78. Fol. 146v. Fol. 139v–141v; cp. Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 58. R Fol. 183v. Fol. 401r–v. Fol. 396r–v.

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a whole and the issuing of the Bulla Unionis is the point of culmination of the Observant tendency of the work. It is this reconstituted Franciscan order that is recommended to the general audience. Evidently, to make the argument complete, an exposition of the reasons why lay people should favor the Franciscans is required. The compiler hints several times at the advantages that the laity may derive from the (Observant variety of the) Franciscan order. Repeatedly, he takes the opportunity to elaborate on the indulgences granted to the order and to those who favor it. In book one, the double narrative on the life of St Francis – according to the Legenda Maior and to the Old Legend – is followed by an exposition of the indulgence of Portiuncula, with which he was bestowed.61 The Little Treatise on the order in book three hints not only at the offices and masses for the deceased provided by the order,62 but also at its indulgences, including the Roman ones which members of the first, second and third order, as well as those associated with them could earn in their own convents.63 The availability of indulgences, of course, is intimately linked to the hearing of confessions. This, too, is a topic on which the composer dwells. In the Little Treatise he stresses the right enjoyed by the Friars Minor and the other mendicants to hear confession – notwithstanding the obstruction which parish priests might offer – ‘on behalf of all faithful believers and to the joy of all those who love our (three) orders’.64 The Vineyard ends with a full treatment of the indulgences granted to the order, both those which can be earned in Rome (as announced in the Little Treatise) and those available in the churches of Franciscan friars, Clarissan nuns and Tertiaries. They are presented in a calendar, which is printed on a separate quire, the only one in the volume printed in black and red.65

Origin and Production

The appearance of the Vineyard marks the culmination of an increasingly more intensive publishing activity by the Franciscans via the printing press. Franciscan literature in Dutch was flowering during the decades before and 61 62 63 64 65

Fol. 145r–156v. Fol. 335v. Fol. 337r. Fol. 336r: ‘ten orbaer alle ghelovighe menschen ende tot bliscape denghenen die dese ordenen beminnen’. Fol. 403r–418v; the second part of this quire contains an explanation on the seven stations in Rome.

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after the turn of the sixteenth century. Traditionally, the Devotio Moderna is credited with the leading role in the production of vernacular religious literature in the Low Countries. Recent scholarship, however, is beginning to realize that this does less than justice to the part played by the Franciscans.66 The pride of place in this blossoming of Franciscan literature is taken by Spieghel der Volcomenheit (Mirror of Perfection) by Hendrik Herp.67 In the early decades of the sixteenth century the Observants were also at the forefront with respect to engaging the printing press for the distribution of texts of religious instruction. They contributed by far the largest number of texts from any one particular order.68 The Observants probably became acquainted with this new medium when they engaged it for the printing of polemical works in Latin relating to the order-internal conflicts between themselves, the Coletans and the Conventuals. The 1497 Minorica elucidativa, mentioned already, is a case in point. For their vernacular publications in the Low Countries, the Franciscan Observants did not engage one printing house in particular. But in the 1510’s the most prominent printer active on their behalf was Hendrik Eckert van Homberch, who had his workshop in Antwerp.69 This explains why it was Eckert who accepted the impressive task of printing the Vineyard. Details about the way the compiler and the printer found each other are not available. The compiler remains anonymous; we do not even know where he resided.70 The bottom line is that we are looking for a convent in the Duchy of Brabant: when the compiler mentions Dirk Coelde of Munster as one of the latest luminaries of the order, he locates his preaching activities ‘in these lands of Brabant’.71 This circumstance alone would suffice to ask the question whether Matthias Weynsen may have been involved in the production of the Vineyard. At the moment it was published, he was in an early phase of his career, which eventually would make him the most prominent of all Observants in the Low  Countries. All along his career he was an active patron of Franciscan 66

67 68 69 70 71

In June 2013, a workshop in Leiden, organised by Anna Dlabačová and Danielle Prochowski, was dedicated specifically to this topic. Some of the papers have been published in 2014 in a special issue of the periodical Ons Geestelijk Erf. Anna Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie. De Spieghel der volcomenheit van Hendrik Herp en de dynamiek van laatmiddeleeuwse tekstverspreiding (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014). For details see Koen Goudriaan, ‘De Franciscanen, de leken en de drukpers’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 85:4 (2014), 230–266. On this printer and his connection to the Observants see Dlabačová, Literatuur en observantie, 219–224. Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 140–142, suggests two names of inhabitants of the Louvain convent, but his argument is inconclusive, as he himself admits. Fol. 392r: ‘in dese landen van Brabant’.

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­literature.72 In 1518 Weynsen was still no more than a local guardian, but the convent for which he was responsible was the one in Antwerp. Already in those years he had manifested an interest in the possibilities of the printing press, as well as in the general order policies. In 1517, he had been instrumental in seeing the Fasciculus mirre through the press.73 At that moment Weynsen was guardian of the Leiden convent. The following year, he moved to Antwerp. From there he sent a letter to Willem of Alkmaar, the new provincial minister of Cologne; this letter was printed by Adriaen of Berghen as an introduction to a collection of recent documents, including the Latin Bulla Unionis from 1517.74 The letter was a report by Weynsen on a mission to Rome, made on behalf of the Cologne Franciscans in order to look after the implementation of this bull. Weynsen’s letter was intended as support for his addressee, whose position was still contested within the order. Now that the Observants had been recognized as its authentic representatives, the provincial ministers had to be recruited from among their ranks, but in the case of Willem of Alkmaar disagreement reigned. The tone of Weynsen’s letter is strikingly similar to the one set in the Vineyard. He starts with extolling the Franciscan order as expressing the way of life most fitting to Christ as God’s Son incarnate and to the Church, using the term nostra religio in the narrow institutional sense (‘our order’), which we also find in het Vineyard. Referring his readership to Bartolomeo of Pisa, Weynsen praises the order for all the popes, cardinals, bishops, kings, dukes, counts, barons and saints it has produced.75 He then describes the order as ‘a heavenly plantation […] under the shadow of whose branches all people are eager to rest, whose fertility everybody praises and the sweetness of whose fruit all people wish to taste’.76 He ends with presenting the statistics of the order for 72 73 74

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I have treated Weynsen’s career and dealings with the printing press in more detail in ‘De Franciscanen, de leken en de drukpers’; the older literature is also mentioned there. nk 922. nk 4416 = bbfn Bib 708. The dates given for the letter and for the edition are incompatible with each other: I take them to mean 23 January 1518 and 18 January 1519, respectively. Reedited by Fidentius van den Borne, ‘De observantie-beweging en het ontstaan der provincie Germania Inferior (1529)’, in: Collectanea Franciscana Neerlandica, ed. F. van den Borne a.o., 2 Vols. (’s-Hertogenbosch: Teulings, 1931), 135–199, there 194–199, on the basis of the Polius-Bürvenich manuscript kept in Düsseldorf. Van den Borne, ‘Observantie-beweging’, 194: ‘tot Summos Pontifices, supremae dignitatis Cardinales, ac sacrae rei Antistites, Regesque, Duces, Comites et Barones […] sanctos […] teste Barthol. Pisano’. Van den Borne, ‘Observantie-beweging’, 195: ‘coelestis […] plantatio […] sub ramorum ejus umbra omnes quiescere festinent, omnes foecunditatem laudent, fructus ejus dulcedinem gustare cupiant universi’.

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the province of Cologne: 47 Observant convents with over 1900 friars, fourteen monasteries of Observant Clarisses and almost forty convents of Franciscan Tertiaries.77 It is difficult to imagine that these parallels with the Vineyard are due to chance. If, indeed, Weynsen did play some role in the production of the Vineyard by Eckert’s press, this may have touched upon the finances necessary for it. Weynsen, a scion of a Dordrecht patrician family, conversed in the best circles and was able to persuade people to invest in an enterprise such as the Vineyard. That this was a costly affair we would have guessed anyway, but Van Vaernewijck states very explicitly, when he relates how the Franciscans in 1566 tried to suppress the Vineyard: ‘although they had made great expenses for it’.78 According to the title page, the Vineyard was printed cum gratia et privilegio: with an ‘octrooi’ from the government in Brussels. Such a privilege granted the monopoly for the printer on the given edition during a number of years, protecting him against copying by rival printers and assuring him of the opportunity to earn back his investment.79 It may safely be assumed that the capital invested in the production of the Vineyard did not come from the Franciscans themselves. In earlier research I have adduced evidence that, generally speaking, the Church was not involved directly in the financing of printing enterprises: it was her policy to leave the risk to the entrepreneur.80 This must have been true a fortiori for the Observant Franciscans, who took their poverty principle very seriously. Consequently, they were dependent on the willingness of outsiders to finance their publications. A case in point is the 1509 Speculum minorum, which was printed at the cost of the printer Martin Morin.81 Another possibility was to find an outside benefactor prepared to advance the capital necessary for printing a voluminous work. In 1539 Weynsen intervened successfully with Gregorius Bonte, a rich benefactor of the order, to provide the money for printing the Commentarii in Lucam of St Bonaventure by Johannes Mahusius.82 77 78

79 80

81 82

Van den Borne, ‘Observantie-beweging’, 199. Marcus van Vaernewijck, Van die beroerlicke tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelijk in Ghendt 1566–1568, ed. Ferd. Vanderhaeghen (Ghent: Annoot-Braeckman, 1872), 166: ‘ende hadden nochtans zeer groten cost daer an ghehangen’. P.G. Hoftijzer, ‘Copyright and piracy’ in Bibliopolis. History of the printed book in the Netherlands (Zwolle and The Hague: Waanders/ Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 2003) 34. Koen Goudriaan, ‘The Church and the Market: Vernacular Religious Works and the Early Printing Press in the Low Countries, 1477–1540,’ in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages. Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, ed. Sabrina Corbellini (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 93–116. bbfn Bib 743. The colophon expresses gratitude vis-à-vis his charitativa elemosina. nk 463 = bbfn Bib 764; cp. ‘De Franciscanen, de leken en de drukpers’.

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Something similar may have occurred in 1518 in the case of the Vineyard, although we have no direct evidence for it. Reception We are left with the story told by Marcus van Vaernewijck in his report on the time of troubles in the Netherlands about the embarrassment of the Franciscans with the Vineyard during the iconoclastic fury of 1566.83 Now that they realized that the book had become the object of much derision, they started to recover as many copies of it as possible and withdrew them from circulation. As an illustration of the offensive points it contained, Vaernewijck retells correctly the story of a Friar Minor who was raptured in the spirit to heaven, to be disappointed at not discovering St Francis there.84 After some prayer, however, he was granted the privilege to see how St Francis came flying over towards him, leaving the wound in Christ’s chest in which he had been hidden. Van Vaernewijck’s comment is that some deemed this heretical, and in any case it attracted mockery. The historiographer inserts this report in his detailed account of the 1566 iconoclasm in the churches of the Dominicans and Franciscans in Ghent. It served as a parallel to something that had happened to the Dominicans. Their church counted among its treasures a panel with a strange iconography: Dominicans in full habit pulling some boats filled with beautiful maidens through the water, although a bridge was close by. But now the panel had been withdrawn from sight by placing an alabaster epitaph in front of it. Van Vaernewijck makes clear that he himself disapproves of the panel.85 The common element in the two incidents is the estrangement between the mendicants and the populace, which is reported by Van Vaernewijck in a remarkably detached way. The truth of the story has been doubted by Kruitwagen and De Troeyer: both of them point to the large number of copies of the Vineyard that have been preserved.86 But both scholars are Franciscans themselves, and – with all due respect – they are perhaps not entirely free from apologetic tendencies. Van Vaernewijck was both well-informed and a faithful Catholic. The story about the panel in the Dominican church is too precise to be fictional, and the same may be true for his report on the Vineyard. After all, 83 84 85 86

Van Vaernewijck, Beroerlicke tijden, 165–166. Vineyard, fol. 137r–v. Van Vaernewijck, Beroerlicke tijden, 165–166. Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 143–155; De Troeyer in bbfn Bio, 45–46.

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the attempt – in Ghent! – to suppress the volume may have been unsuccessful. What insight do we gain if we take it for the truth? Evidently, in the course of the sixteenth century even loyal Catholics had become ambivalent with respect to the way the mendicants fulfilled their mission. In the incident reported by Van Vaernewijck it was the medieval mysticism around the wounds of Christ that was understood no longer. But criticism of the content of the Vineyard may have been broader, and of course the attacks by the humanists on the mendicants generally cannot have been without effect on the evaluation of the very volume the Franciscans were so proud of. Let us return once more to the year of its publication and try to imagine how its reception may have been. Contrary to what Kruitwagen thinks, a confrontation with humanism was no part of the intention of the compiler of the Vineyard. His address to ‘simple, unlearned’ people, setting them apart from those steeped in Latin knowledge, was traditional and not specifically pointed against humanist criticism.87 In 1518 it was still possible to consider both Observantism and Humanism as contributions to the necessary renewal of the Church.88 If we are right in associating Matthias Weynsen with the production of the Vineyard, it might be relevant to draw attention once more to his 1518 letter. Addressing his Holland co-patriot Willem of Alkmaar, Weynsen boasts of the Batavian descent of the inhabitants of this province and of the many pious and learned men it brought forth, among whom Erasmus is especially mentioned.89 With hindsight, however, we may conclude that the timing of the Vineyard was unhappy. The choice of its compiler to highlight the beginnings of the order and to stress its excellence in terms of its age-old heritage, well founded as it may have been from the viewpoint of a movement long torn apart by conflict and now finally come to rest, was unfortunate after all because it confronted the general public with an ideal of Christian life which was quickly becoming outdated. The ample space given to the narration of the many ­miracles witnessed by the order did not anticipate the increasing scepticism in this field. Presenting indulgences as the main advantage lay people could expect from the order was – to put it mildly – rather ‘unzeitgemäss’ in the year after Luther’s 95 Theses. Stressing once more that the monastic life, and in 87 88

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Fol. 145r; Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 58; 70. See e.g. Geoffrey Dipple, Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation. Johann Eberlin von Günzburg and the Campaign against the Friars (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), 15. Van den Borne, ‘Observantie-beweging’, 199.

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­particular that of the mendicants, was the proper embodiment of religio, ignored the rejection of exactly this claim and the vindication of a Christian life for people in the world by men like Erasmus.90 But it was especially the portrayal by the Friars Minor of their founder as the perfect imitator of the life of Christ that caused indignation and induced the reproach of blasphemy. Of course, the true intention of this Franciscan theology around the likeness of the life of St Francis to the life of Christ was not blasphemous at all.91 The Speculum Perfectionis, for example, one of the sources of the Vineyard for the Old Legend, makes clear that the life of St Francis could serve as a mirror for every friar, assisting him to make his life more perfect, only because Francis himself was a mirror of the holiness of our Lord and an image of His Perfection. In the Liber de Conformitate by Bartolomeo of Pisa (finished in 1399) this idea is systematized and illustrated by traditions which – admittedly – are not always well founded. And these ideas are reflected in the Vineyard, whose Prologue introduces the Franciscan order as the ‘mirror without stain’ of the presence of Christ our Savior.92 Both the Liber de Conformitate and the Speculum Perfectionis were ingredients to the Vineyard, and a prominent Franciscan such as Matthias Weynsen endorsed Bartolomeo’s work. However, in the course of the sixteenth century this concept was understood no longer. A satirical reworking of the Liber de Conformitate was published in Germany by Erasmus Alberus in 1542 under the title Alcoranus Franciscanorum; Luther himself wrote a foreword to it.93 This work became known in the Low Countries only much later. But in this region it was probably the Vineyard that became the focus of the irritation in a way that was comparable to the fate of Bartolomeo’s book elsewhere. One of the extant copies contains a note warning the reader not to burst out in laughter because of the silliness of the book, and then expressly refers to Bartolomeo’s Liber de Conformitate as its source.94 A couple of years after the iconoclasm fury, the Calvinist writer Marnix of St Aldegonde mentioned the Vineyard a few times in passing in his satire The Beehive of the Roman Catholic Church.95 He puts it on an equal footing with the Golden Legend and the Vitas Patrum, and of course 90

Cornelis Augustijn, Erasmus: his life, works and influence, transl. J.C. Grayson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991) Ch. 5; James Tracy, Erasmus of the Low Countries (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 38–40; 78–85; 90–94. 91 Clasen, Legenda antiqua, 324–326. 92 Unfol. [a2v]. 93 Cf. Moorman, History, 397. 94 Adduced by Kruitwagen, ‘Wijngaert’, 147. 95 Philips van Marnix, Lord of St Aldegonde, De Bijenkorf der H. Roomsche Kercke (originally 1569), ed. A. Lacroix & A. Wi, i, 57–58; ii,73.

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all three collections are condemned. The point Marnix makes with respect to the Vineyard is exactly that it presents Francis’s life as even outdoing the life of Christ. The testimonies of both Vaernewijck and Marnix prove how closely the Vineyard was bound up with the identity and public image of the (by now Observant) Franciscan order. We would do well to take Vaernewijck’s report seriously as an indication that in the course of the century the Vineyard became an embarrassment for the Franciscans. Conclusion When the compiler of the Vineyard set out to compose his compendium on St Francis and his followers, he worked according to a pre-conceived plan. He wished to impress his readers with the excellence of the Franciscan order, which was based on the close imitation of the perfect example of its founder, and which manifested itself in its great number of saints, the prominence of so many other of its members and adherents, its privileges and its indulgences. In order to reach his goal the compiler did not shrink from excerpting and translating a large quantity of Latin sources, making use where possible of existent Dutch versions. He mastered his materials to such a degree that he could integrate them into a well-organized whole. When he started his labor, the rivalry between the various branches of Franciscanism still had not come to an end. The compiler kept aloof from direct polemicism, but he made clear his Observant partisanship by the implicit manner in which he presented recent highlights of the history of Observantism as the natural sequel to the great beginnings in the times of St Francis and the early generations after him. The increasingly self-conscious way in which his fellow Franciscans resorted to the printing press must have encouraged him to start his enormous enterprise, in the confidence that he would be able to see it through the press. One of the persons whose support he enjoyed may have been Matthias Weynsen. There are no traces of a change of plans by the intervening issuing of the bull Ite et vos in vineam, which put an end to the conflicts between Conventual and Observant order factions. But, obviously, the compiler could not ignore this extraordinary occasion: he now wrote a Prologue based on the ‘vineyard’ motif and adapted the title of the volume, leaving it otherwise as it was. No doubt, at the moment the Vineyard appeared, the expectation was that it would mean a fresh start in the relationship between the Franciscan order and Christian society at large. However, the compiler could not have foreseen

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the speed with which religious mentalities would change during the sixteenth century. Soon the Vineyard with its accentuation of the miracles, indulgences and privileges attached to the Franciscan order, its vindication of the monastic life as the religio par excellence and its adherence to the idea of St Francis’s conformitas would be outdated.

Select Bibliography

Augustijn, Cornelis, Erasmus: his life, works and influence, transl. J.C. Grayson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). Bibliopolis. History of the printed book in the Netherlands ed. Marieke van Delft and Clemens de Wolf (Zwolle and The Hague: Waanders/ Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 2003). Bio-bibliographia franciscana Neerlandica ante saeculum XVI. II: Pars bibliographica, ed. L. Mees (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1974). Bio-bibliographia franciscana Neerlandica saeculi XVI. I: Pars biographica, ed. B. de Troeyer (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1969). Bio-bibliographia franciscana Neerlandica saeculi XVI. II: Pars bibliographica, ed. B. de Troeyer (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1970). Borne, Fidentius van den, ‘De observantie-beweging en het ontstaan der provincie Germania Inferior (1529)’, in: Collectanea Franciscana Neerlandica, ed. F. van den Borne a.o., 2 Vols. (’s-Hertogenbosch: Teulings, 1931), 135–199. Clasen, Sophronius, Legenda antiqua S. Francisci, Studia et Documenta Franciscana, 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1967). ——— and Gurp, Julius van, ‘Nachbonaventurianische Franziskusquellen in niederländischen und deutschen Handschriften’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 49 (1956), 434–482. Deschamps, J., ‘Middelnederlandse vertalingen van Levens en Legenden van de H. Franciscus van Assisi. Handschriften en drukken’, Franciscana 31 (1976), 59–73. Desplenter, Youri, ‘Sinte Franciscus Souter. Een populaire postincunabel met een handschrift vervolledigd’, Spiegel der Letteren 49:2 (2007), 231–246. Dipple, Geoffrey, Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation. Johann Eberlin von Günzburg and the Campaign against the Friars (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996). Dlabačová, Anna, Literatuur en observantie. De Spieghel der volcomenheit van Hendrik Herp en de dynamiek van laatmiddeleeuwse tekstverspreiding (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014). Goudriaan, Koen, ‘The Church and the Market: Vernacular Religious Works and the Early Printing Press in the Low Countries, 1477–1540,’ in: Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages. Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, ed. Sabrina Corbellini (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) 93–116.

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———, ‘De Franciscanen, de leken en de drukpers’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 85:4 (2014), 230–266. Incunabula Printed in the Low Countries, ed. Gerard van Thienen & John Goldfinch (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1999). Keßler, Judith, Princesse der rederijkers. Het oeuvre van Anna Bijns: argumentatieanalyse, structuuranalyse, beeldvorming (Hilversum: Verloren, 2013). Kruitwagen, Bonaventura, ‘De Middelnederlandsche handschriften over het leven van Sint Franciscus en zijn eerste gezellen’, De Katholiek. Godsdienstig en letterkundig maandschrift 128 (1905), 151–191. ———, ‘Den Wijngaert van Sinte Franciscus’, Neerlandia Franciscana 1 (1914a), 43–72; 135–155. ———, ‘Sinte Franciscus Souter’, Neerlandia Franciscana 1 (1914b), 237–245. Moorman, John, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Nederlandsche Bibliographie 1500–1540, ed. Wouter Nijhoff & M.E. Kronenberg, 3 Vols. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1923–1961). Nimmo, Duncan, Reform and Division in the Franciscan Order: From Saint Francis to the Foundation of the Capuchins (Rome: Capuchin Historical Institute, 1987). Pleij, Herman, Bijns Anna, van Antwerpen (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2011). Roest, Bert, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 117 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004). Ruh, Kurt, Bonaventura deutsch: ein Beitrag zur deutschen Franziskaner-Mystik und – Scholastik, Bibliotheca Germanica, 7 (Bern: Francke, 1956). Schmitz, Wilhelmus Antonius, Het aandeel der Minderbroeders in onze middeleeuwse Literatuur (Nijmegen: Dekker en Van de Vegt, 1936). Tracy, James, Erasmus of the Low Countries (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996).

chapter 10

The Name of God, the Name of Saints, the Name of the Order: Reflections on the ‘Franciscan’ Identity during the Observant Period Ludovic Viallet Introduction The period of the institutional emergence of movements de observantia, which began more or less with the Council of Constance, was also a period of violent controversy concerning Bernardino of Siena’s promotion of the devotion of the holy name. Not even a century later, the implosion of the order of Friars Minor coincided with public disputes in which early ‘Lutherans’ reproached the Observants for their peculiar identification with Francis and their choice for the name ‘Franciscans’. It seems impossible not to situate the extreme divisions and rivalries characteristic of the Franciscan order family during the fifteenth century in the context of a period that was more than ever before obsessed with issues of determination, distinction and identification, especially with recourse to naming. In other words, since the beginnings of scholasticism, the question of names (the name of God and the Virgin, the name of saints and angels) was considered to be essential, in connection with the issue of the efficacy of the word (verbum), both within Catholic orthodoxy and in its fringe movements.1 Hence this contribution amounts to an invitation to reflect on the intensity of differentiation (and hence identification) processes among the Friars Minor, and to chart their implications.

At the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century: A Necessity of Identity

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Franciscan order experienced a profound crisis of identity, which no doubt was the result of decades of fragmentation and conflicts, but which was also linked to the question of models and practices. Already during the thirteenth century it had not been easy to be 1 In particular in the domain of divinatory magic. Cf. Julien Véronèse, ‘La magie divinatoire à la fin du Moyen Âge. Autour de quelques experimenta inédits’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 21 (2011), 311–341, esp. 326–328.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_011

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a ‘Friar Minor’; it was even more complicated at the dawn of the modern era, because the image had become blurred – or rather, there existed several images of Franciscanism. The question of identity was exacerbated by the question of institutional fragmentation, denounced, for example, in the Libellus ad Leonem (1513) of the Camaldolese friars Pietro Quirini and Paolo Giustiniani. The Franciscan case in particular would have been on their mind when they ­advocated a simplification of the monastic landscape, proposing a regrouping of all  branches according to the rule professed by the orders (Benedictine, Augustinian, Franciscan), but also a veritable homogenization of order identity in relation to the form and length of the habit, the order name, and, of course, in relation to religious conduct.2 The criticism of the diversitas religiosum and the flowering of mendicant lifestyles was not new. It had been expressed time and again since the thirteenth century. New was the diversification of branches within a specific order, which now reached unprecedented proportions. Maria Pia Alberzoni has underlined how, from the early thirteenth century onwards, the monastic rule lost ‘to a large degree its value as a point of reference for the realization of an ideal religious life’, and obtained a more legal dimension, leaving to other texts, above all hagiography (but also constitutions and statutes) ‘the function to indicate the guiding ideas of spirituality’ for the different movements.’3 Notwithstanding the extreme character that the question of rule observatio obtained within the order of Friars Minor, one should not see it as exceptional. Also in other orders the obsession with the letter of the rule and the power of authoritative models had become important, as well as a structuring factor, especially among the various Observant movements. While it was denounced in the Libellus ad Leonem, the multiplication of ‘congregations’ had in fact been the result of the dynamics of reform. The mendicants in particular manifested from the mid fifteenth century onwards an officially approved process of producing Observant congregations, which were seen as the only possible way to implement reforms. Among the Friars Minor, what in the beginning was a requirement (namely to return to the observance or larger observance of the Rule) became a claim of identity (being de observantia), and subsequently, from 1443–1446 onwards, an institutionalized 2 Lettera al Papa. Paolo Giustiniani e Pietro Quirini a Leone X, ed. Geminiano Bianchini (Modène: Artioli Editore, 1995), 115–116. I permit myself to refer to Ludovic Viallet, ‘Social control, Regular Observance and Identity of a Religious Order: a Franciscan Interpretation of the Libellus ad Leonem’, Franciscan Studies 71 (2013), 33–51. 3 Maria Pia Alberzoni, ‘Le idee guida della spiritualità’, in: Mittelalterliche Orden und Klöster im Vergleich. Methodische Ansätze und Perspektiven, ed. Gert Melville & Anne Müller (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2007), 63 (my translation).

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branch of the Order of Friars Minor (the ‘Observance’), linked to a process of empowerment under the authority of vicars largely independent from the normal order structures. The ‘Cismontane’ constitutions of 1443, the first specifically ‘Observant’ normative text, that is to say pertaining to a group on the road towards partial institutional separation, thirteen years after a failed attempt at reaching a consensus expressed in the ‘Martinian’ constitutions (1430), are explicit on this point: they insist on the importance of instructing religious postulants. Giovanni of Capistrano affirmed in these constitutions that the name ‘friars of the Observance’, which was attributed to a movement of which he himself was the principal promoter, found its justification in the formation of young friars in respecting the true Franciscan life.4 Whereas the Observance sub vicariis gradually gained power, it did not have a monopoly over reformatory requirements in the name of a larger fidelity to the Franciscan rule. In confrontation with it, around 1450, during the early days of institutional separation, moderate reformers issued a number of polemic texts. These moderate reformers were partisans of the middle way reform sub ministris, and they designated their adversaries as those qui se dicunt de Observantia. The use of the verb dicere, whether or not used pronominally, was therefore completely part of a set of discursive strategies and processes of legitimation or identification. This strategy was employed on both sides: The 1461 statutes of the Cismontane Observance sub vicariis placed the Coletans, who were hostile to the institutional autonomy of reformist groups – considering it as a betrayal of the obedience advocated by the order founder Francis of Assisi – at the same level as those Hungarian Observants who had recently succeeded to be relieved from the authority of the Cismontane vicar, and instead came directly under the authority of the minister general (hence, in this particular case, Observants sub ministro!). The Cismontane statutes state: Item quod fratres dicti de Observantia qui non sunt subjecti cure Vicarii generalis tractentur in locis nostris humaniter sicut fratres Conventuales, cujusmodi sunt Ungari et Burgundi.5 4 Chronologia historico-legalis Seraphici Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Sancti Patris Francisci, 1 (Naples: Aemilius Cavallus, 1650), 106 (Ch. ix): ‘Hinc, et Sanctissimus D.N. Eugenius Papa iv […] pluries mihi innuit, sicut nonnulli reverendissimi domini cardinales suaserunt, ut in qualibet provincia curarem providere de bona instructione juvenum, tam in scientiis, quam in moribus, et exemplari vita Observantiae Regularis: ut nomen nobis impositum (fratrum videlicet de Observantia) ex consequentia rei suum laetum, et perfectum consequatur effectum in cunctis pertinentibus ad salutem.’ 5 Statuta Observantium Cismontanorum in Compendium Redacta in Congregatione Generali Auximi an. 1461, ed. A. Van den Wyngaert, in: Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 16 (1923), 493–506, at 501 (art. 38). These statutes restate a decision made at the Roman Chapter of 1458.

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To qualify the Coletans and the Hungarian Observants as dicti de Observantia, meant to deny them the quality of being true Observants. This goes to show that, in so far as the institutional fragmentation within the Franciscan order family had become extreme, it displayed a certain logic, directly linked to the  requirement of reform. And it had become the carrier of a necessity of identity. The papal letter Ite vos from May 1517, which sanctioned the separation of Conventuals and ‘reformed’ friars (including both the Observants sub vicariis and those who had remained ‘under the provincial ministers’, such as the Coletans mentioned earlier) gathered the latter under the exclusive name of ‘Friars Minor of Saint Francis of the Regular Observance’, suppressing all labels used before (‘omissa diversitate nominum praedictorum’), and forbidding from henceforth each and every attempt at renaming. The way in which Francesco Gonzaga, in his De origine Seraphicae Religionis Franciscanae evoked the history of the Coletans and the end of their existence some ten years before the official division of the order seems significant: … et isti Coletani, et illae Coletanae dictae sunt. Ad huius quoque beatae sororis Coletae normam, et exemplum plura sanctimonialium coenobia de prima beatae virginis Clarae Regula in Italia, per beatum patrem Bernardinum de Senis etiam reformata, atque aedificata sunt. Hi tamen fratres Reformati sive Coletani, cum illis in centesimo generali Capitulo Rome, anno Domini 1506 sub Iulio ii. Pont. Max. celebrato […] a patribus facultas data esset, ut infra annum vel Conventualibus, vel Observantibus, reiecto huiusmodi Coletano nomine, unirentur, post elapsum biennium, anno videlicet Domini 1508. Observantibus adhaeserunt, illisque Provinciis nomen dedere, in quibus eorum conventibus subsistere contingit. Fuerunt et alii quidam fratres de Capucio sive de sancto Evangelio (quos Provinciae sancti Gabrielis aliqui, et merito tribuunt) Reformati, qui, quod simul cum praefatis Coletanis patribus etiam Observantibus eodem tempore adhaeserint, nec adeo magni nominis aut numeri fuerint, data opera, silentio praetereuntur.6 The loss of their autonomy meant for the ‘Coletans’ giving up their name. This abandonment even was the condition for their integration into one of the two principal branches of the order: the Conventuals or the Observants sub vicariis, who had come to form the majority. The Coletans still merited a few lines in 6 Francesco Gonzaga, De origine Seraphicae Religionis Franciscanae ejusque progressibus, de Regularis Observanciae institutione, forma administrationis ac legibus, admirabilique ejus propagatione (Rome: Basae, 1587), 25. My underlinings.

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the oeuvre of Gonzaga, in view of the importance of their name and their number, counter to the Spanish friars ‘of the Holy Gospel or of the Capuce’, led by Juan of Guadelupe, who by our author were considered a negligible quantity. There again, the importance of naming was not new: giving a name (in papal sources, in the jus proprium and in literature) was a proper aspect of the foundation of an order and of the cultivation of its memory.7 Yet by the fifteenth century, the proliferation of names to me seems to have been more linked with phases of pre-institutionalization and with processes of naming that can be qualified as ‘coming from the outside’; that is to say performed by those who, being on the outside (albeit sometimes very close to), felt the need to identify them.

Identity and Identification: The Habit and the Name

In which other section of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century society did the need to affirm one’s collective identity make itself felt with such acuity and complexity? Aristocratic lineages used the coat of arms and, from this period onwards, as Christiane Klapisch-Zuber has shown, the genealogical tree;8 the urban universitates likewise had at their disposal an arsenal of tools to exalt the sentiment of pertaining to a civic community, the prestige and seniority of which had to be underlined. Nevertheless, within the Franciscan order family, the problem had become more delicate, for it was necessary to define oneself and to differentiate oneself not only from other religious institutions, but also within the Ordo Fratrum minorum. The question of obtaining a collective identity was connected with the affirmation of the autonomy of a specific Observant project, by defending a norma in the face of other normalizing pressures and to obtain its recognition within a specific social space.9 It implied therefore the regrouping of individuals 7

8 9

As recalled by Cécile Caby, ‘Fondation et naissance des ordres religieux. Remarques pour une étude comparée des ordres religieux au Moyen Âge’, in: Mittelalterliche Orden und Klöster im Vergleich, ed. Melville & Müller, 119–120. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, L’Ombre des ancêtres. Essai sur l’imaginaire médiéval de la parenté (Paris: Fayard, 2000). Giovanni of Capistrano used the term norma in particular in his letter from November 1452 to Albert Puchelbach, the guardian of the Nuremberg friary. This letter is a veritable formative program for young Observant friars. See: Chronica Fratris Nicolai Glassberger Ordinis Minorum Observantium, Analecta Franciscana, 2 (Quaracchi: Typografia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1887), 342. Today, as in the past, the issues surrounding collective identity remain the same. See for instance Richard Wittorski, ‘La notion d’identité collective’,

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(by making them identical) around a set of relevant common markers, notably in the visual domain. For the friars of the small congregation that was formed in Umbria from ca. 1388–1390 onwards under the authority of Paoluccio Trinci (also known as Paoluccio of Foligno), the necessity to differentiate themselves was of course not the same as for the Observants sub vicariis sixty years later. In the process of identity segmentation that unfolded during a long first half of the fifteenth century, the requirement to adhere to a norma that differed from what was in force in the remainder of the Franciscan order went hand in hand with a growing need of identification. What was at stake was the fidelity to a model (presented as original) but also, in a more pragmatic fashion, the recuperation of alms from the faithful, who had to be able to negotiate the landscape of the regulars. An early sixteenth-century chronicle from Breslau (Wroclaw), composed by an Observant friar, to be sure, reports that the Conventuals had recuperated from a certain bonus vir and from a fuller the bread and clothing destined for their Observant rivals, thanks to an easy deceptive answer to the question asked by the two lay persons in question (Estis de loco s. Bernhardini?).10 Especially in a society in which thinking was still largely determined by a symbolic explanation of the world, based on a correspondence between inaccessible internal states of affairs and their manifest external signs – on the correspondence, at least partially, of interior homo and exterior homo, as was shown in particular by the doctrine of the occulta cordis implemented in the

10

in: La question identitaire dans le travail et la formation. Contributions de la recherche, état des pratiques et étude bibliographique ed. Mokhtar Kaddouri, Corinne Lespessailles, Madeleine Maillebouis & Maria Vasconcellos, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), 195–213, at 196: For a group it means to ‘…répondre d’abord au besoin de se défendre vis à vis des contraintes qui lui sont imposées, mais aussi de revendiquer une définition autonome de son propre projet d’existence et enfin d’être reconnu dans l’espace social.’ Cited in Ferdinand Doelle, Die Observanzbewegung in der sächsischen Franziskanerprovinz bis zum Generalkapitel von Parma 1529 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1918), 74, note 4. The Sankt Bernardinus friary had been founded in 1453 by Giovanni of Capistrano. A century after the process of unification and schism had reconfigured the order, early modern chronicles did not necessarily have a clear understanding of what had happened. Hence, Nikolaus Pol, while recalling at the beginning of the seventeenth century the reform of the Conventuals of Breslau (Wroclaw) from December 1506 – a community that since the times of Matthias Döring had been placed under a diluted regime of the Martinian constitutions – failed to understand that it meant a return to the proper observance of the Martinian constitutions and not the creation of ‘something else’: ‘Die Mönche Martins Ordens wurden ab[ge]setzet und andere Franziskaner-Ordens eingenommen.’ Nikolaus Pol, Jahrbücher der Stadt Breslau, 2, ed. Johannes G. Büsching (Breslau: Graß und Barth, 1815), 188.

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domains of confession or justice – it was nearly impossible to seek a clear distinction between identity and identification.11 The question of the religious habit probably provides the best illustration of this.12 Based on the assumed correspondence between ‘exterior habit’ and ‘interior habit’, the General Chapter of the Dominicans justified on 16 May 1456 the necessary uniformation of clothing practices among all those who claimed to be members of the order of Friars Preachers: Item. Cum habitus exterioris conformitas ex interioris habitus conformitate provenire soleat, volumus et ordinamus, quod in toto ordine nostro ubique et presertim in provinciis Hispanie et Portugallie fratres omnes habeant cappas non alterius coloris quam nigri; cappas vero grisei coloris qui habent, eas aut tingi faciant colore nigro aut, destructis eis, pannos earum ad alios usus exponant. Qui vero huiusmodi cappas dimittere neglexerint, cappis ipsis per provinciales priventur, et noviciorum necessitatibus applicentur.13 It is almost natural, here, to connect the interior habitus with the scholastic habitus (along the lines of the Aristotelian hexis), in the midst of the passage from potency to act – according to Thomas Aquinas, the repetition of the deeds informed by the habitus reinforced the habitus itself. In his scrutiny of the long-term history of this word, all the way up to Pierre Bourdieu’s operational concept,14 Françoise Héran has rightly pointed out that from the same matrix (the habitus: a manner of being – and of presenting oneself – towards others, as a state, but also, through an actualization of the past and through a process of activation, as a disposition) the word evolved into habit, via the passage from Latin to the vernacular, to indicate at the same time the corporal appearance, the vestment and the mental habit. The French language has sub11

Peter Von Moos, ‘Occulta cordis. Contrôle de soi et confession au Moyen Âge’, Médiévales 29 (1995), 131–140, and 30 (1996), 117–137. 12 See Peter Von Moos, ‘Das mittelalterliche Kleid als Identitätssymbol und Identifikationsmittel’, in: Unverwechselbarkeit. Persönliche Identität und Identifikation in der vormodernen Gesellschaft, ed. Peter Von Moos (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004), 123–146. 13 Acta Capitulorum generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, iii: Ab anno 1380 usque ad annum 1498, ed. B.M. Reichert (Rome-Stuttgart: Typographia Polyglotta, 1900), 262. 14 According to Pierre Bourdieu, the functioning of habitus is based on: ‘l’intériorisation de l’extériorité et l’extériorisation de l’intériorité.’ See: Idem, Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, précédé de trois essais d’ethnologie kabyle (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 225 (First edition Geneva: Droz, 1972).

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sequently ­primarily retained the first of these meanings, whereas in English the second has become dominant.15 In the medieval ‘face-to-face’ society, habit was expected to generate a common sense that guided the interactions, and hence the normative expectations of a collectivity and each of its members.16 Originally, the habit was not just any type of clothing. It was an ‘established appearance’, showing off the functions with which the bearer was, in all senses of the word, invested, and authorizing him to act in conformity with these functions. As every other habit, but more than others, in so far as it marked the difference and the break with the remainder of society, the monastic habit constituted therefore a fixation, on the individual, ‘of a collective, objectified habitus’.17 One should take into account how many Observant reforms of the fifteenth century were grounded in a vindication of the norm and of obedience, within a setting that transgressed by far the boundaries of the cloister and the world of the regular clergy. One could affirm the saying ‘Tell me what you are wearing, and I will tell you whom and what you should obey’ to underscore how much, within the Observant era – and, in a larger sense, the era of repression of e-normia – the habit was not only the instrument of identification, but also an identity marker, and therefore, by its very essence, a marker of adhesion to a norm. This norm itself was considered to be enunciated by a rule and by customs, and assimilated through the apprenticeship of the novitiate and the discipline of repetition. For sure, one should also keep in mind, when engaging with the means used in the fifteenth century to respond to the necessity of identity – in particular the designation by a name – what was the weakness inherent in certain practices considered to be characteristic for the Franciscan life, including the practice of mendicancy. For by considering a Franciscan habitus (or a 15

16 17

Françoise Héran, ‘La seconde nature de l’habitus. Tradition philosophique et sens commun dans le langage sociologique’, Revue française de sociologie 28 (1987), 385–416: at 389. The expression ‘mise à l’actif du passif’ (i.e. the ‘activation of the passive’) is from F. Héran (392–393). To take up a vocabulary forged by Erving Goffman, especially in his Interaction Ritual. Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (New York: Double Day Anchor, 1967). Héran, ‘La seconde nature de l’habitus’, 389, note 8. Both in the West and in Byzantium existed an age-old tradition of Christian monasticism, codified by Gratian’s Decretum, which closely linked the vita evangelica of the monks with their vestis angelica. See Jörg Sonntag, Klosterleben im Spiegel des Zeichenhaften. Symbolisches Denken und Handeln hochmittelalterlicher Mönche zwischen Dauer und Wandel, Regel und Gewohnheit (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2008), especially chapter 4 (‘Vom Mönchshabit. Identifikation, Identität und Differenzierung am theoretischen Knotenpunkt des Klosters als Imaginaire’).

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Franciscan ethos) as being natural, one forgets that several of its essential components were by no means clearly defined or unanimously understood. Hence the quest of mendicancy, which never obtained a level of consensus among the ecclesiastical authorities, but which constituted an important practice for the Friars Minor on the material level, as well as on the level of the crystallization of Franciscan identity and its place in the reform projects of the fifteenth century, at the same time made the religious particularly vulnerable to criticism. The growing grievance concerning ‘valid begging’ within late medieval society, and the accusation of hypocrisy (hypocrisis), which was still raised against the Observants sub vicariis by the partisans of a more moderate reform, and subsequently by Lutheran reformers, did much to undermine its credibility. Still, its ‘grammar’ was hardly mentioned in the order legislation, not even among the Capuchins, even though the Capuchin propositum insisted on a mendicant lifestyle.18 We can add to this that the reformers of the Observance aimed at limiting the mobility of religious people, guiding them to a life of prayer inside the monastery, and that they fought against intermediate stages of religious life – such as the life of Beguines – or felt compelled to restrict them carefully – through the development of the Third Order – even though they were themselves very active in the world. Taking into account the manner in which the Observants reaffirmed the importance (yes even the sacrality) of the monastery and the practice of begging, the justification of the latter activity, which was a moment of leaving the cloister, gave rise to a process of buttressing – especially via a ritual dimension – that has no parallel in the normative sources and in other documents that refer to the practice. The naming processes used in the fifteenth century sometimes reached back to a text, as was the case with the ‘Martinians’, whose fidelity to the c­ onstitutions 18

I have underlined the weak spot in Franciscan order legislation with regard to begging conditions in Ludovic Viallet, ‘La réforme franciscaine au miroir de ses textes. Jalons pour une anthropologie du vivre franciscain au xve siècle’, Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 10 (2005), 335–336. See also my more recent study ‘Pratiques de la quête chez les religieux mendiants (Moyen Âge – Époque moderne)’, Revue Mabillon, n.s. 23 (2012), 263–271. The Capuchin constitutions, revised between 1529 and 1643 (and in use until the early twentieth century) do not develop the issue of begging either. The principal and nearly only preoccupation of the chapter in question, namely chapter four, which in its sentences echoes chapter four of the Franciscan rule, is the re-affirmation of the prohibition for the friars to receive money. See Constitutiones Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Capuccinorum saeculorum decursu promulgatae, Vol. i: Constitutiones antiquae (1529–1643). Editio anastatica, ed. Fidel Elizondo (Rome: Curia Generalis ofmcap., 1980). For an English translation, see: The Capuchin Constitutions of 1536. A New Translation in English, ed. Paul Hanbridge (Rome: Collegio San Lorenzo da Brindisi, 2007/ Revised 2009).

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issued by Martin V in 1430 only obtained a veritable character of identity formation in the face of other reform movements, notably the Observance sub vicariis. More often, these processes made reference to a person. Hence designations as ‘Clareni’, ‘Bernardines’, ‘Amadeites’, ‘Coletans’… This has to be approached as a general phenomenon of ‘delocalization of origins’, the principal element of which have been discussed by Cécile Caby, and of which the Franciscan order no doubt has been the emblematic example.19 But it also expresses the weight of fifteenth-century reformers – the weight of ‘living saintliness’ – and the inflections they have given to the Franciscan life, for example by the nearly totemic way in which, after the death of the titular figure, one could identify certain order branches. Thus the ‘Villacrecians’ of the second quarter of the sixteenth century, under the aegis of minister general Francisco Quiñones, came to bear the name of a man, Pedro of Villacreces (d. 1422), via a process of identification that anchored the present in the specifics of a past marked by the actions of a saintly person – comparable in the way in which the reference to Colette of Corbie marked the Coletans, who where, in fact ‘Martinians’ (i.e Observants sub ministris adhering to the Martinian constitutions of 1430).20 On the contrary, one could say, the label given to the Hungarian Observants from the 1470s onwards reflects the particular situation they were in. They had been conceded a vicariate distinct from the Bosnian Observant vicariate in 1448. Ten years later they succeeded in being placed under the direct jurisdiction of the Minister General (a position that lasted until 1502). Hence they not only differed from ‘Reformed Conventuals’, but also from the Observance sub vicariis, which predominantly had been given shape by Italian reformers such as Giacomo della Marca and Giovanni of Capistrano, for whom Bernardino of Siena had been the dominant model figure.21 The faithful probably had no or 19

20

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Caby, ‘Fondation et naissance des ordres religieux’, 124–125. See also the reflection on the ‘functional mobile centers’ characteristic of the mendicant orders in Nicolangelo D’Acunto, ‘Le forme della comunicazione negli ordini religiosi del xii e xiii secolo: il centro’, in: Die Ordnung der Kommunikation und die Kommunikation der Ordnungen, B. 1: Netzwerke: Klöster und Orden im Europa des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts, ed. Cristina Andenna, Klaus Herbers & Gert Melville, Aurora – Schriften der Villa Vigoni, 1.1 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012), 253–260. They did, in fact, follow the Martinian constitutions, even if Henry de Baume issued around 1430 a set of statutes for ‘Coletan’ friars despatched to communities of Colettine sisters to serve of the latter (one confessor, his socius and two lay friars in charge of seeking alms). On the dimension of the original model, which one had to imitate – a position that Bernardino of Siena had for Giacomo della Marca and his companions, see Lorenzo Turchi, ‘Bernardino da Siena e la santità di Giacomo della Marca: dal “prendere forma” del

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only a very limited perception of this additional differentiation. But the autonomy from Observant structures contributed to free the process of naming from all influences: the Hungarian Observants became therefore the ‘friars of Cseri’ (fratres Cherienses), a label that probably derived from a mixture of the color of their habit (gray) and the name of one of the oldest friaries in the Hungarian vicariate (Cseri).22 After a period that was characterized, after a fashion, by the question of models (or of ‘interpolated models’), the Observant movements of the sixteenth century were more designated by practices linked to religious habits or the spiritual life (‘Discalceate friars’, ‘Friars Minor of the Eremitic life’ [i.e. the Capuchins], ‘Recollects’): Signs of attempts at regenerating the propositum by means of insisting on certain leading ideas (Leitideeen) and their incarnation (or incorporation) in religious practices; possibly also signs of a reaction in the face of the excessive space taken by certain saintly models that had accentuated the sentiment of weakening the unity of the order. It is a cruel irony, as we will see, that by their insistence on Francis, the Friars Minor were not protected against criticism. In many ways, the name ‘Franciscan’, which made its appearance at the beginning of the sixteenth century, signaled a reaction against the partition of the order that had become extremely excessive, even against what were perceived as signs of infidelity (a different name, an aberrant habit, pretentious particularities on the level of the usus pauper…). The various reform movements have all done their part in the process of re-attachment to the Father figure. The fifteenth-century Franciscan order-tree depictions linked to the Observance testify to this. These depictions integrate Christ suffering on the cross to validate the figure of the ‘co-crucified’ (Francis), placed at the center of the order branches, therewith constituting a ‘veritable mystical body’ rooted in poverty and tied up with a relation marked by suffering, source of rejuvenation.23 Ultimately, did the Observants anything else than pursue the process of hyperbolic exaltation of the figure of Saint Francis that had been at work in the order since the thirteenth century?24 The order eventually paid the

22 23

24

discepolo alla “costruzione dell’immagine” del Maestro’, in: Gemma Lucens. Giacomo della Marca tra devozione e santità. Atti dei convegni (Napoli, 20 novembre 2009; Monteprandone, 27 novembre 2010), ed. Fulvia Serpico, Quaderni di San Giacomo, 3 (Florence: Sismel – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013), 13–48. Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, Les Franciscains observants hongrois, de l’expansion à la débâcle (vers 1450 – vers 1540) (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2008), 69–70. Dominique Donadieu-Rigaut, Penser en images les ordres religieux (xiie-xve siècles) (Paris: éd. Arguments, 2005), 335 and more extensively 308–335 (‘François et les arbres christocentriques’). André Vauchez, ‘Les stigmates de saint François et leurs détracteurs dans les derniers siècles du Moyen Âge’, Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire 80 (1968), 595–625: at 623.

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price for it, in the confrontation with the violent criticism of Luther and his partisans, who came with an accusation of idolatry that they did not have to invent, but that the developments of prior decades had given more power.

The Name of the Father

It is well known that criticisms were levied against the Friars Minor ever since the mid thirteenth-century, notably in the context of the mendicant-secular controversy. These criticisms included the accusation that the friars attributed to their saints too many miracles, verging on deceit.25 During the following century, the divinization to which Francis was prone still aroused attacks, even as the pretention of the Friars Minor to be pre-eminent as a religious order based on the superiority of their founder saint.26 The way in which Giovanni of Capistrano during his mission in central Europe (1451–1456) used the very recent canonization of Bernardino of Siena, likewise brought forth violent opposition. The figure of the Sienese preacher, whose propagation of the devotion to the Name of God had caused accusations of heresy, as it would incite to idolatry, became during the second half of the fifteenth century closely linked with the progress of the Observance sub vicariis. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, in Silesia and Upper Lusatia, the hostility of the Reformaten (Martinians attached to the Franciscan Saxony province) towards the ‘Bernardines’ (connected with the Observant vicariate of Bohemia) expressed itself predominantly through the criticism of being ashamed of using the name of Saint Francis, a criticism that was coupled with questioning the ­sanctity of Bernardino of Siena.27 In January 1510, one of the Reformaten from 25 26

27

Ibidem, 606–608. Ibidem, 618–623. The theme of the conformity of Francis to Christ appeared with the Legenda Major of Bonaventure, to support a messianistic meaning that made the Poverello the angel of the sixth seal, thanks to whom is inaugurated a time of renewal of the Church. André Vauchez has underlined that what remained to some extent a metaphor in the writings of Bonaventure, became ‘une réalité chez les théologiens franciscains de la fin du xiiie siècle’, developing into a theology of divinization of Saint Francis, which Bartolomeo of Pisa only illustrated in a literal fashion in his De conformitate. Ibidem, 622. The relevant passage in the Observant chronicle is cited in Doelle, Die Observanzbewegung, 226 (Beilagen, 7): ‘Allegantes contra nos, quod non haberemus studia neque horas caneremus, ipsi essent de vera et regulari observancia, nostram observanciam non mediocriter infamantes, asserentes nos verecundari paterni nominis sancti Francisci, et faceremus nos nuncupari Bernnardinenses et ipse sanctus Bernhardinus, si non esset canonisatus propter separacionem a conventualibus, nunquam canonisaretur, quasi ecclesia errasset in sua canonisacione. Ecce perfidia pessimorum obstinatorum deformatorum!’.

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the Neisse (Nysa) friary could state: ‘jam totum sumus unum, jam nulli sunt Bernhardinenses vel fratres s. Bern[ar]dini, sed omnes sumus Franciscini’.28 A few years earlier, in a letter from 8 September 1501 addressed to the authorities of Glogau (Głogów), the guardian of the Crossen friary (Krosno Odrzańskie) complained about the ‘new sect of the Bernardines’. Before attacking the way of life of the Observants (‘they are ashamed of visiting the Poor, from house to house, as we are supposed to do according to our rule…’),29 he had directed his criticism against the fact that these friars fooled the faithful, by claiming by their very name the sanctity – imported from strange lands – of a man who had never created an order nor left behind a rule.30 During the period in which reformatory theology was beginning to emerge, hence at the moment of decisive choices, the Franciscans were in the front lines: at Jüterbog during Lent and Easter 1519, in the face of the preaching of Franz Günthers and Thomas Müntzer, at Wittenberg during the disputatio of October 1519. The exchanges, which sought more to discredit the adversary than to deepen theological understanding, led the friars to a questioning of their own history and their own identity, which touched on the status of Francis and his stigmata, but also on the respective place of labor and mendicancy in their way of life, and on their past (and present) of unceasing internal quarrels. Their adversaries denounced the label ‘Franciscans’, for the only viable name, founded on Christ alone, within a Church that had to be unified, was that of ‘Christian’. Hence, at Wittenberg, Andreas Bodenstein (Carlstadt) had the following exchange with a Franciscan:31 28 29

30

31

Ibidem, 85, note 1. Chrysogonus Reisch, Urkundenbuch der Kustodien Goldberg und Breslau, i. Teil: 1240–1517 (Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1917), 324, n. 751: ‘Dy alleyn dem vorgenanten orden gross vordriß und schaden thwen und eyn gar vil closter awßleschen ader off mynste geringern gotesdynst, geystliches leben und bruderliche lybe, wenne sy alleyne bütthen wellen eyn sthetin beyn edeln und reychen lewten, sich schemen von hawße czw hawße noch unserm regel dy armen pawr czw besuchen alß wyr armen mwssen thwen’ (my underlining). Ibidem: ‘[…] dy newe secte der Bernhardiner, dy do sich krönen und rühmen eyner fremden heligket, durch welche sy betrigen dy werleth, zo doch S. Bernhardinus, als y mir got helffe und alle zeyne heligen, keynen orden und regel ny hot gemacht, sondern under der czvchth und regel S. Francisci, dem sy vorkysen eym namen und vorlogken, ist heligk gestorben.’ Disputationes Minoritice (Leiden: Jan Severc, ca. 1520), kept in the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, 80 he. ord. 104/20 Rara, A 8v, cited by Johannes Schlageter, Die sächsischen Franziskaner und ihre theologische Auseinandersetzung mit der frühen deutschen Reformation, Franziskanische Forschungen, 52 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2012), 37.

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[Carlstadt] ‘Paulus maxime vetat schismata in ecclesia fieri. Jam vero tot fiunt schismata, quod ordines religiosorum. Reprehendit namque quosdam, qui Petri, qui Pauli, qui Apollo dicebantur. Ait namque : ‘Numquid Paulus pro vobis crucifixus est ?’ [Reply of the Franciscan] ‘Et si ipsi Fratres Francisci haberent nomen, nihilominus supra Christum fundati essent.’ [Carlstadt] ‘Nempe ! Hoc ipsum credo, alias enim supra diabolum. Sic et illi a Paulo reprehensi supra Christum fundati erant, quia abluti sacro fonte baptismatis credentes in eum et solum nomen ejus habentes, et tamen reprehendebantur. Si ergo non estis Francisciani [sic], quia supra Christum fundati, et utique non estis ! Et quia Francisciani [sic], non Christi, quia Francisci. Et per consequens non estis christiani, sed infideles et sequestrati a christiana religione. Scio et hoc moveri reverendum patrem Martinum, et conscientiam amariorem inde habere, sicut et de illo, potius quod non manibus laborantes neccessaria habeant corporis quam elemosinis sustentari.’ Carlstadt’s critique, founded in particular on Paul, 1 Cor. 1, 10–13, targeted division: to lay claim to a person meant breaching the unity of the Church by creating sectae, after having rejected the name of God. The same accusation was used by Luther in his De votis monasticis from 1521: At institutio voti, dum docet opera, fidem evacuat (ut diximus) et inde abiecto nomine Dei suum erigunt. Neque enim Christiani amplius nec filii Dei, sed Benedictini, Dominicani, Franciscani, Augustiniani dicuntur: hos et suos patres prae Christo iactant. Neque enim hoc nomine salui et iusti fieri praesumunt, quod baptisati, quod Christiani sunt, sed hoc solo, quod sui ordinis nomen habent. Ideo in suum nomen confidunt, in hoc gloriantur, quasi baptismus et fides iam olim velut naufragio perierint. Non ergo assumunt et invocant nomen Domini nisi in vanum, sed nomen suum, quod per opera erexerunt.32 Kaspar Schatzgeyer, the minister of the Franciscan Upper Germany Province, answered this violent attack directly. Founding himself likewise on Paul (1 Cor. 11, 1), he claimed that it was possible to imitate Christ by imitating Francis, as others imitated Benedict, and underlined that the names used to designate a religious status did not touch the very essence of Christianity: 32

D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesammtausgabe, 8 (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1889), 618, l. 5–13.

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Replicator Sequitur. Et inde abiecto nomine Dei suum erigunt ut Benedictini, Franciscini, etc. dicantur. Quero abs te potestne aliquis vocari clericus, alius laicus / alius in matrimonio constitutus / alius viduus absque nominis Domini iactura? Dices / utique: quare? Quia status illi fidem non variant, precepta Dei non mutant / sacramenta non alterant et universaliter nihil eorum que christiane et evangelice sunt institutionis pervertunt. Quare ergo non idem de monasticis sentis / quorum institutum est non solum Christianismum non violare verum quoque in integrum statuere. Essentiale ne est Christianismo ut nullo alio nisi Christiano intituletur nomine. Nomina que pretendis ab Christianismi essentialibus non derivant. De hoc plenius infra conatu sequenti. Iterum abs te quero cum me nomino Franciscinum et ex corde imitator ejus et doctrine et vite esse exopto / potestne hoc stare cum fide et in nomine Jesu Christi fiducia? Dices quod non / quia ais, hos et suos patres pre Christo jactant. Ve mihi, quia non possum patrem meum Franciscum imitari, ut ex eo Franciscini nomen usurpem, sine blasphemia Christi et iniuria nominis divini. In tantum sibi adversantur vita et doctrina Christi et S. Francisci, ut alterius titulus in alterius [g] vergat iniuriam, ut nec subalternatio quepiam ibi valeat inveniri? […] Vides, quia et nominis Christi gloria stare potest cum sancti Benedicti, Francisci et Dominici titulis, qui sicut in vita cum Christo omnimodam pro fragilitate humana habere conati sunt quadraturam, sic et in sequacibus conformitatem ad Christum exoptaverunt, ut Benedictinus alius non sit nisi conformis S. Benedicto in quibus ipse conformis est Christo. Unde Paulus ait: ‘Estote imitatores mei sicut et ego Christi’.33 33

Replica contra periculosa scripta post Scrutinium divine scripture jam pridem emissum emanata, Augsbourg 1522 [consulted at: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Digitale Bibliothek, which dates it to 1520], Tormentum quartum, F 4v°–Gr°. The beginnings of the fourth tormentum is a retake of the attacks of the De Votis monasticis: f3v° Autor: ‘[…] Et inde abiecto nomine Dei suum erigunt. Neque enim Christiani amplius, sed Benedictini, Franciscini dicuntur hos et suos patres pre Christo iactant. Ideo in suum nomen confidunt / in hoc gloriantur / non ergo assumunt nomen Domini nisi in vanum, sed nomen [f4r°] suum / quod per opera erexerunt. […] Impossibile est eum / qui operibus et votis nititur non querere proprio nomine salutem. Habet enim opera et merita preter Christi opera et merita / habet ergo et nomen aliud preter Christi nomen. Hoc est esse Christum. Hec est blasphemia nominis Domini in gentibus quod sanctitas et sanctificatio alteri quam nomini Domini iam passim tribuitur. Omnium enim ore ordines eorum sancti dicuntur quasi sanctificent suos observatores aut quasi sanctum sit in eis incedere.’

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It is clear that in the encounter with the Franciscans the reformatory criticism went beyond the question of the unity of the Christian Church. Or rather, it pushed the question to its extreme, by bringing the threat to bear on the very status of Francis – ‘alter Christus’ – in the eyes of those who laid claim to it. For Johann Eberlin von Günzburg, as for others, Bartolomeo of Pisa’s De Conformitate – approved by the order at the General Chapter of Assisi in 1399, but printed at the beginning of the sixteenth century – as well as the sermons on and images of Francis were testimonies of attempts to elevate Francis to the level of Christ, and as such were expressions of idolatry.34 As Servus Gieben has demonstrated, the Franciscan emblem of the ‘Conformities’ appeared at the end of the fifteenth century in Flanders35: the iconography was contemporaneous with the canonization of Bonaventure (1482), and a Flemish text from 1518, De Wijngaert van Sint Franciscus (The Vineyard of Saint Francis) attributes its origin to a choice of the seraphic doctor.36 Its original version depicted the two hands [of Christ and Francis] united with the same nail, underscoring the eternal union of each Friar Minor, and the order as a whole, with the crucified Christ. The further development of the emblem took only a few years, for the ‘classical’ form of the emblem (two crossed arms, one of which showing clearly the wound of Christ and the other one of the stigmata of Francis) was already present in the second edition of the printed edition of Bartolomeo of Pisa’s De Conformitate from 1513. This way of depicting the exceptional conformity of the order founder with Christ, brought about by the stigmata, gave rise a few decades later to a vicious attack in the reformed treatise of Erasmus Alberus: Der Barfuser Muenche Eulenspiegel und Alcoran (1542). Conclusion After this winding, chaotic and very incomplete trajectory, it is necessary to arrive at a very provisional conclusion on at least two different levels. It is fairly 34

35 36

The treatise De Conformitate vitae Beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Jesu redemptoris nostri of Bartolomeo de Rinonichi (Bartolomeo of Pisa) was printed for the first time around 1500 at Venice (s.d.), and thereafter was reissued at Milan in 1510 and 1513. On the fallout of this work in the early modern period, see especially Elisabeth Labrousse, ‘Bayle et saint François’, in: Mouvements franciscains et société française, xiie-xxe siècles (Études présentées à la Table ronde du cnrs, 23 octobre 1982), ed. André Vauchez (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 149–155. Servus Gieben, Lo stemma francescano. Origine e sviluppo (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2009), 12–17 and 34–35. See for an in-depth treatment of this work the essay of Koen Goudriaan in this volume.

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clear that, in the history of the order of Friars Minor, the years of the pontificate of the Franciscan Sixtus iv (1471–1484) – marked by a ‘politics of equilibrium’,37 which manifested itself in particular by his protection of several ‘Observant’ groups (‘Clareni’, ‘Amadeati’, ‘Capriolanti’) under the direct authority of the Franciscan minister general – and maybe even more the period under the long generalate of Francesco Sansone (Francesco Nani, 1475–1499), followed by that of Egidio Delfini (1500–1506), have been decisive in the symbolic affirmation of the unity of the Franciscan order family, even when attempts at institutional re-unification (through reform) prior to 1517 encountered many obstacles. This labor of identity formation, centered on the reference to the founding father (Francis), exposed the friars to criticism more than ever before. In addition, when one tries to put these phenomena in the context of Western European cultural history, one could postulate that such dynamics of expression in the construction of and the controversies over identity concerning what protagonists pretended to be and would like to portray, in connection with the regular reforms de observantia, have occupied an important part in the maturation of the awareness of identity, in the reflection on the relation between signifier and signified, and beyond that on certain forms of cultural communication during the ‘Renaissance’.38 Maybe these dynamics of identity expressions were part of what on could call the ‘modernization of the symbolic’, by contributing to liberate even more the symbol from the grasp of the sign, in such a way that it offered a content of thought in the clearest and strongest possible way;39 all this ultimately by employing the accrued effectiveness of a word, the horizontal dimension of which had become more and more marked since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as an instrument of mediation in human society.40 37 38

39

40

As emphasized in Grado G. Merlo, Nel nome di san Francesco. Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanesimo sino agli inizi del xvi secolo (Padua: efr-Editrici Francescane, 2003), 352. Concerning the reflection on the modi significandi and the difference between sign and symbol, essential for a an understanding of the Christian theory of the sacraments, see the works of Irène Rosier-Catach, since her ‘Res significata et modus significandi: les enjeux linguistiques et théologiques d’une distinction médiévale’, in: Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter, ed. Sten Ebbesen, Geschichte der Sprachtheorie, 3 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1995), 135–168, and especially La Parole efficace. Signe, rituel, sacré (Paris: Seuil, 2004). Do we need to call this back to mind? The symbol does not make us know what is a thing, it ‘makes us think’ about the thing in question – according to the expression of Paul Ricœur, La Symbolique du mal (Paris: Aubier, 1960), 332. It helps us to make progress, via analogy, in the search for meaning. Voir Irène Rosier-Catach, ‘Le pouvoir des mots au Moyen Âge: diversité des pratiques et des analyses’, in: Le Pouvoir des mots au Moyen Âge, ed. Nicole Bériou, Jean-Patrice Boudet, Irène Rosier-Catach (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 9–16: at 15.

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Alberzoni, Maria Pia, ‘Le idee guida della spiritualità’, in: Mittelalterliche Orden und Klöster im Vergleich. Methodische Ansätze und Perspektiven, ed. Gert Melville & Anne Müller (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2007), 55–85. Bourdieu, Pierre, Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, précédé de trois essais d’ethnologie kabyle (Paris: Seuil, 2000). Caby, Cécile, ‘Fondation et naissance des ordres religieux. Remarques pour une étude comparée des ordres religieux au Moyen Âge’, in: Mittelalterliche Orden und Klöster im Vergleich. Methodische Ansätze und Perspektiven, ed. Gert Melville & Anne Müller (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2007), 115–137. Cevins, Marie-Madeleine de, Les Franciscains observants hongrois, de l’expansion à la débâcle (vers 1450 – vers 1540) (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2008). D’Acunto, Nicolangelo, ‘Le forme della comunicazione negli ordini religiosi del XII e XIII secolo: il centro’, in: Die Ordnung der Kommunikation und die Kommunikation der Ordnungen, B. 1: Netzwerke: Klöster und Orden im Europa des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts, ed. Cristina Andenna, Klaus Herbers & Gert Melville, Aurora – Schriften der Villa Vigoni, 1.1 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012), 253–260. Doelle, Ferdinand, Die Observanzbewegung in der sächsischen Franziskanerprovinz bis zum Generalkapitel von Parma 1529 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1918). Donadieu-Rigaut, Dominique, Penser en images les ordres religieux (XIIe-XVe siècles) (Paris: éd. Arguments, 2005). Gieben, Servus, Lo stemma francescano. Origine e sviluppo (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2009). Goffman, Erving, Interaction Ritual. Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (New York: Double Day Anchor, 1967). Héran, Françoise, ‘La seconde nature de l’habitus. Tradition philosophique et sens commun dans le langage sociologique’, Revue française de sociologie 28 (1987), 385–416. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, L’Ombre des ancêtres. Essai sur l’imaginaire médiéval de la parenté (Paris: Fayard, 2000). Merlo, Grado G., Nel nome di san Francesco. Storia dei frati Minori e del francescanesimo sino agli inizi del XVI secolo (Padua: EFR-Editrici Francescane, 2003). Mouvements franciscains et société française, XIIe-XXe siècles (Études présentées à la Table ronde du CNRS, 23 octobre 1982), ed. André Vauchez (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984). Ricœur, Paul, La Symbolique du mal (Paris: Aubier, 1960). Rosier-Catach, Irène, ‘Res significata et modus significandi: les enjeux linguistiques et théologiques d’une distinction médiévale’, in: Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter, ed. Sten Ebbesen, Geschichte der Sprachtheorie, 3 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1995), 135–168.

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———, La Parole efficace. Signe, rituel, sacré (Paris: Seuil, 2004). ———, ‘Le pouvoir des mots au Moyen Âge: diversité des pratiques et des analyses’, in: Le Pouvoir des mots au Moyen Âge, ed. Nicole Bériou, Jean-Patrice Boudet, Irène Rosier-Catach (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 9–16. Schlageter, Johannes, Die sächsischen Franziskaner und ihre theologische Auseinandersetzung mit der frühen deutschen Reformation, Franziskanische Forschungen, 52 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2012). Sonntag, Jörg, Klosterleben im Spiegel des Zeichenhaften. Symbolisches Denken und Handeln hochmittelalterlicher Mönche zwischen Dauer und Wandel, Regel und Gewohnheit (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2008). Turchi, Lorenzo, ‘Bernardino da Siena e la santità di Giacomo della Marca: dal “prendere forma” del discepolo alla “costruzione dell’immagine” del Maestro’, in: Gemma Lucens. Giacomo della Marca tra devozione e santità. Atti dei convegni (Napoli, 20 novembre 2009; Monteprandone, 27 novembre 2010), ed. Fulvia Serpico, Quaderni di San Giacomo, 3 (Florence: Sismel – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013), 13–48. Vauchez, André, ‘Les stigmates de saint François et leurs détracteurs dans les derniers siècles du Moyen Âge’, Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire 80 (1968), 595–625. Véronèse, Julien, ‘La magie divinatoire à la fin du Moyen Âge. Autour de quelques experimenta inédits’, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 21 (2011), 311–341. Viallet, Ludovic, ‘La réforme franciscaine au miroir de ses textes. Jalons pour une anthropologie du vivre franciscain au XVe siècle’, Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 10 (2005), 335–336. ———, ‘Pratiques de la quête chez les religieux mendiants (Moyen Âge – Époque moderne)’, Revue Mabillon, n.s. 23 (2012), 263–271. ———, ‘Social control, Regular Observance and Identity of a Religious Order: a Franciscan Interpretation of the Libellus ad Leonem’, Franciscan Studies 71 (2013), 33–51. Von Moos, Peter, ‘Occulta cordis. Contrôle de soi et confession au Moyen Âge’, Médiévales 29 (1995), 131–140, and 30 (1996), 117–137. ———, ‘Das mittelalterliche Kleid als Identitätssymbol und Identifikationsmittel’, in: Unverwechselbarkeit. Persönliche Identität und Identifikation in der vormodernen Gesellschaft, ed. Peter Von Moos (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2004), 123–146. Wittorski, Richard, ‘La notion d’identité collective’, in: La question identitaire dans le travail et la formation. Contributions de la recherche, état des pratiques et étude bibliographique ed. Mokhtar Kaddouri, Corinne Lespessailles, Madeleine Maillebouis & Maria Vasconcellos, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), 195–213.

chapter 11

The American Inquisition and the Arabic Language: A Short Note about the Invention of the Moriscos in the Sixteenth Century Alessandro Vanoli Introduction Starting from the middle of the fifteenth century, more people were becoming conscious of varieties of language. In relation to his phenomenon, some scholars have gone so far as to speak of a ‘crisis’ of language at the end of the Middle Ages. However, as suggested by Peter Burke,1 ‘discovery’ seems a more appropriate word than ‘crisis’, since the change to be described in the following pages was gradual rather than sudden, not a moment but a process. At a philosophical level, the revival of the classics during the Renaissance inspired a return to the ancient debate over the relation between words and things, as expressed in Plato’s dialogue Cratylus and in Aristotle’s treatise On Interpretation.2 At a more pragmatic level, language consciousness was encouraged by the fact that increasing numbers of people were studying Greek and Hebrew, as well as different European vernaculars. Interest in the history of languages and in linguistic diversity becomes more visible around the year 1500, including the discussion of several ideas that in a more formal dress we would now describe as forming part of ‘sociolinguistics’. In this paper i would like to offer a short reflection on the possible relationship between this new linguistic consciousness and the definition of some specific collective identities. The case and the point of departure for this short analysis is the Morisco presence in the New World; and more precisely the reflections about the Arabic language in the inquisitorial activity in the Mexican territories at the end of the sixteenth century. There is a long-lasting historiographic debate about the nature of inquisitorial investigations and the linguistic tools used during the trials. We know how languages were important to define collective and personal identities; and in 1 Peter Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 16ff. 2 Ibidem.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_012

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this sense, we know how important languages were as inquisitorial tools to analyze the soul of the accused. This is true also for the Arabic language: in Spain, Portugal and other European regions, the Inquisition that investigated the Moriscos produced a lot of references to the linguistic attitude of the accused; because the use of the Arabic language could be a first sign of a religious attitude. The point of departure for the next pages is just here: over the past decades new studies have shown how, starting from the first period of the conquest, Muslim people were present also in the New World. To investigate this presence, historians have a lot of sources at their disposal, but above all the inquisitorial records. Now, is it possible to find also in the Americas some evidence of a linguistic inquisitorial interest? And, if this is the case, could these linguistic elements help us to identify some specific social attitudes related to the Arabic language in the New World? The following pages do not provide an answer but present a first attempt at posing the question.3

Traces of Arabic in Mexico

In 1583, Francisco López Africano, a merchant residing in the mining district of Copala, in northern New Spain, was denounced for speaking in the ‘Morisco language’ and praying in Arabic (algarabía). Francisco had been born in North Africa and, according to one of his accusers, Juan de Santiago, it was known publicly that, ‘while praying in his house…[López] invokes the name of Muhammad, crossing his arms before his breast, saying “oh Muhammad, oh Muhammad” two and three times.’4 Another accuser asserted that he ‘spoke for a long time as if praying, and finally he ended by saying two or three times Allah and Muhammad, and when he said this, his arms were crossed.’5 When he asked López what language he was using and what he was saying, he replied that it was ‘the Morisco language, and it was of no consequence, because in his land they spoke that language, and when this witness asked him how far his 3 For the next considerations, I will use three examples coming from the excellent study: Karoline P. Cook, Forbidden Crossing: Morisco emigration to Spanish America, 1492–1650, PhD. Diss. (Princeton University, November 2008). 4 agn (Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico), Inq. vol. 127, f. 404r. ‘…haziendo oracion en su casa…ymboca el nombre de Mahoma cruçando los braços delante de los pechos diziendo o Mahoma o Mahoma dos y tres vezes.’ 5 agn, Inq. vol. 127, f. 410v. ‘…ablo un buen rato como rezando y al cabo acabo con deçir dos o tres beces ala y mahoma y quando esto deçia tenia cruzados los braços.’

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land was from that of the Muslims, the said Francisco López replied that it was one or two leagues away from the land of the Muslims.’6 Another witness against him, Guiomar, the slave of Pedro de Torres Arçe, told Mexican inquisitors what she had heard from an indigenous woman named Ynes, a servant in the same household and López’s concubine. According to Guiomar, Ynes told her that ‘Francisco López is not like the other Christians because at midnight he gets up to pray and then he bows to his knees before the images and prays in another language, unlike the one that the Christians use, and one that I cannot understand, although I can speak Castilian, and therefore I do not know what he says.’7 This is perhaps one of the first written testimonies of the Arabic language in the New World. Its relationship with the Inquisition allows us to add some considerations.

Persecution of Islamic Practices

Even for the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, the Americas represented a challenge of enormous proportions: for a long time, in these immense new territories, the problem of religious control was almost unsolvable.8 The Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, did not immediately impose the Inquisition: the first steps to grant inquisitorial powers in the New World were taken between 1517 and 1519. At first, local clerics or bishops exercised control in matter of faith through episcopal courts. The formal Inquisition tribunal was created in 1569, but did not begin to operate regularly until 1571.9 The Mexican and Lima tribunals were part of a political decision made by Philip ii 6 agn, Inq. vol. 127, f. 410v. ‘el dho Fran[cis]co Lopez le respondio que era lengua morisca y que no era nada sino que alla en su tierra ablavan aquella lengua y este declarante le pregunto que que tanto estaba su tierra de la de los moros y el dho Fran[cis]co Lopez respondio que una legua o dos estaba su tierra de la de los moros.’ 7 agn, Inq. vol. 127, f. 413v. ‘…no es Francisco Lopez como los otros xpianos por que a media noche se lebanta a rrezar y se hinca de rodillas delante de las ymagenes y reza en otra lengua no como la que rreçan los xpianos que aunque yo se hablar en Castilla no la entiendo y ansi no se lo que dize…’ 8 About this topic see S.B. Schwartz, All Can Be Saved. Religious Tolerance and Salvation in Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 2008), 125–129. 9 Historia de la iglesia en la América Española, ed. Leon Lopétequi and Felix Zubillaga (Madrid: bac, 1965), 373–375; Ricardo García Cárcel and Doris Moreno Martínez, Inquisición: Historia crítica (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2000), 158–161.

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to strengthen royal power in the Indies, by using the Inquisition as a means of ideological control. Early installments of the inquisitorial tribunals in the colonies had sometimes pursued, persecuted, and even executed Indians who rejected conversion or who questioned matters of faith. And, if it is true that no American bishops had been invited to attend the Council of Trent,10 it is also true that both the Crown and the Church sought to keep America free from the contagion of groups or ideas thought dangerous and heretical. But the task proved impossible. As we have seen, legislation prohibited the immigration of Conversos, and this was followed by prohibitions directed against slaves from particular West African groups known to be Muslims.11 But immigrants often found ways to circumvent this legislation. It was exactly the presence of the traditionally suspected groups – Conversos, Moriscos, and foreigners who might be Protestants –, as well as the fear for dissident opinions and immoral behavior, that pushed the establishment of the Inquisition in the Indies. The tribunals of the Inquisition in the Americas were not very active: around 3000 cases prior to eighteenth century. A significant number of these cases concerned people charged with blasphemy, heretical propositions and sexual improprieties.12 There was also an activity against natives,13 and against judaizing Conversos, especially those of Portuguese origin. But persecutions of Islamic practices were relatively few and they concerned above all West African slaves of Muslim origin or Christian renegades. But, if it is probably true that the persecution of Islamic practices was rather limited, it is true as well that some points of the problem need to be better investigated: a lot of inquisitorial sources are still to be studied. Furthermore, in this kind of sources it is not always easy to identify the Moriscos: not only does it appear that in the New World the term morisco was used from early on to indicate more generically the Mestizo,14 but also the investigations about 10

11 12 13

14

Francisco Mateos, ‘Ecos de América en Trento’, Revista de Indias 6 (1945), 603–604; Severo Aparicio, ‘Influjo de Trento en los Concilios Limenses’, Missionalia Hispanica 29 (1972), 215–239: at 238. About these limitations, see Jean Pierre Tardieu, L’inquisición de Lima et les hérétiques étrangers XVIe–XVIIe siècles (Paris: Harmattan, 1995), 19–22. Werner Thomas, Los protestantes y la Inquisición en España en tiempos de Reforma y Contrarreforma, (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 2001), 7–50. Richard E. Greenleaf, ‘The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain: a study in Jurisdictional Confusion’, The Americas 22:2 (1963), 138–166; José Traslosheros, ‘El tribunal eclesiástico y los indios en el arzobispado de México hasta 1630’, Historia Mexicana 51:3 (2002), 485–717. Serafin Fanjul, ‘Los moriscos y América’, in Idem, La quimera de al-Andalus (Madrid: Siglo xxi, 2004), 138–139.

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them often were not concentrated on uncovering a presumed hidden Islamic faith, but on other sins, namely those pertaining to the sexual sphere or to heretical propositions. As has been recently noted, references to the ‘sect of Muhammad’ were also in the New World frequently inserted inside speeches concerned with certain types of religious relativism or generically Protestant ideas.15 This is undoubtedly true. Still, the issue of the linguistic sensibilities exhibited both by the inquisitors and by the witnesses, could offer us another point of view.

The Case of María Ruiz

The case of Francisco López was not the only inquisitorial act in which this attention for the ‘morisco’ language appeared. Some years after him, in 1594, María Ruiz denounced herself before Mexican inquisitors. She did so at the insistence of her confessor, who was required to remit cases of heresy to the Inquisition, as it claimed it was the sole institution with the power to absolve this sin.16 María was a Morisca born in the town of Albolot in the Alpujarras Mountains of Granada; and she had been residing in Mexico City for approximately ten years, where she was married to an old Christian, who was involved in buying and selling wine. During her trial, she provided an account of her life that included descriptions of her religious practices in both Spain and Mexico. Many of the devotions that Ruiz described during her trial parallel those in the inquisitorial testimonies of Moriscos in Spain. These included praying in Arabic and invoking Muhammad. In front of the Inquisitor, she declared that ‘Her mother taught her prayers in Arabic, and until three years ago, after she had come to this land [Mexico], she had always practiced Islam and believed in it, although she did not do the ceremonies that her said mother carried out…because as she had said, her parents were cautious around her and were afraid she would reveal them’17 Given the fact that she went to the inquisitor ‘motu proprio’, she was reconciliada with ‘only’ the confiscation of her goods to the amount of 200 pesos. The ‘Oracion Arabiga’ pronounced during the trial was transcribed as follows: 15 Schwartz. All Can Be Saved, 125ff. 16 agn, Inq. vol. 151, exp. 5, f. 3r. 17 agn, Inq. vol. 151, exp. 5, ff. 3v–4r. ‘…y q hasta avra tres años que esta vino a esta tierra siempre estuvo en la guarda de la secta de Mahoma y la creyo aunque no hazia las ceremonias que la dha su madre hazia…porque como dho tiene sus padres se recatavan de esta y temian no los descubriesse.’ See Cook, Forbidden Crossing, 122.

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VESMELA A DOLAYMA TACORREBAT GUENTA TAQUETACTE GUANITANE NECAYTE, que según ella quería decir, el Sol se ha puesto, mis pecados están escritos y a mi señor se me han olvidado. It has been argued that behind this inaccurate phonetic transcription could be hidden the following Arabic sentence: Bismi-Llāh ‘adadu l-ayyām itaqū wa atqū anta taqqī tātī wa ana ṯāni naqīti, which means: ‘In the name of God, for the number of days (that is forever). I prevent to prevent. You are devoted so come and I also purify.’18 What is evident above all – apart from the comprehensible errors of phonetic transliteration made by the inquisitors – is that the translation proposed by Maria is not related to the Arabic text. Perhaps Maria’s Castilian version could correspond to other Arabic words: Agarabat eshemsu wa dzanubi maktuba wa ana ya Saidi nasituha, meaning: ‘the sun disappeared and my sins are written and I, oh Lord, forgot them.’ Hence, here we have the not so strange case of a Muslim woman of Iberian origins who used an Arabic formula without understanding its meaning, and proposed an interpretation by using a Spanish version that amounts to the translation of a completely different Arabic prayer. These examples testify to an interesting (and really not studied) Islamic presence in the New World during the first century of the conquest, but they testify also an understandable cultural detachment. Yet I think that these cases pose another question that still needs investigation. Could this linguistic misunderstanding be related also to the inquisitors?

Missionary Language Strategies

Over the past century, historians have shown how the linguistic problem was related to the activity of the first missionaries in the New World and their strategy of evangelization. This is the history of the first artes (the name used to indicate the grammars) and the vocabularios, but also of the doctrinas, sermonarios, confesionarios, and translations of parts of the New Testament.19 Concomittant with this production came the systematic learning of the local languages; a learning that was decided upon and prescribed already in the first 18

19

Julio Jimenez Rueda, ‘Proceso contra María Ruiz, morisca’, Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación (México) 18:4 (1947), 363–471: the author provides the translation proposed by Mariano Fernández Berbiela, teacher of Arabic at the Univeridad Nacional de México. Robert Ricard, La conquista espiritual de México (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), 121 First issued as La Conquête spirituelle du Mexique (Paris 1933).

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American councils. For example: the Mexican council of 1555 not only recommended its participants the intensive use of the local vernaculars, but it also underlined the necessity to publish doctrinal texts translated in those idioms.20 One of the strongest obstacles that the missionaries soon faced in this project, was the extreme variety of the local languages. So they decided to select and ‘domesticate’ (domesticar) one language that could unify and homogenize their message. In general, Nahuatl was spoken, or at least to some extent understood in the majority of the Mexican regions, in parallel with the local dialects. So the missionaries changed strategy, and instead of learning each and every local tongue started to teach and diffuse Nahuatl in such a manner that already around 1584 it was possible to find natives that understood it from Zacatecas to Nicaragua (the same happened in Brasil with the Tupi language).21 In other words, the missionaries generated a ‘common language’ (a lengua general, as it is called in a cédula of the year 1580),22 and in addition made all efforts to reproduce it graphically with phonetic and alphabetic European signs. In this sense, it is strange and interesting at the same time to discern the contradiction between this linguistic policy and the persecution of the residual forms of Arabic.23 We may assume that this apparent contradiction could be caused by the strong impact in the New World of the linguistic strategies operated in Spain against the Muslims. We know very well, for example, the fortunes in the Americas of the work of Pedro de Alcalá, the Spanish friar (may be a converso) who produced important tools for the conversion of the Muslims, namely a Doctrina and an Arte para ligeramente aprender lengua arabiga (Granada: Juan de Varela de Salamanca, 1505), so far as we know the oldest Arab-Castilian grammar.24 But we may assume as well that the presence of

20

Documentos sobre política lingüística en Hispanoamérica, 1492–1800, ed. Francisco Solano (Madrid: csic, 1991), L (50).; Jaime Valenzuela Marquez, ‘El lenguaje y la colonizacion cultural de America en el siglo xvi’, in: Arte y cultura en la época de Isabel la Católica, ed. Valdeón Baruque (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2003), 5. 21 Ricard, La conquista espiritual, 123–124; Valenzuela Marquez, El lenguaje y la colonizacion, 9. 22 The cédula of Philip ii (september, 19, 1580) is quoted in Ricard, La conquista espiritual de México, 124. 23 This contradiction has been observed by Nicolás Sánchez Albornoz, ‘De las lenguas ameriandias al castellano. Ley o interacción en el periódo colonial’, Colonial Latin American Review 10:1 (2001), 49–67: at 53. 24 Ricard, La conquista Espiritual de México, 189–190; and also idem, ‘Morisques et Indiens. Notes sur quelques procédés d’évangélisation’, Journal de la société des Américanistes 18 (1926), 350–357. A more recent study is Antonio Garrido Aranda, Moriscos e Indios.

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traces of Arabic in the inquisitorial texts mentioned above could be signifiers of the effort to establish and to manipulate a specific cultural identity, made more thinkable, in a manner of speaking, by the linguistic policy adopted by contemporary missionaries, who were, like the inquisitors, the product of the same (predominantly mendicant) religious school system.

A History of Arabic in the New World?

Much later, in 1660, Cristóbal de la Cruz, a North African slave, denounced himself before the Inquisition in Veracruz, claiming to be afflicted by doubts about his Christian faith. De la Cruz also described Muslim beliefs and practices that he claimed to have observed during his first years in Algiers (North Africa). De la Cruz mentioned some invocations – as usual recorded and translated into Spanish by the inquisitors – such as Mehamet and arçolha, which mean in the Castilian language, he said, Muhammad close to God’; abdelcadher, which means ‘powerful one, remember your servant’; abdelcadher xilale, which means ‘do not forget it’.25 He added that he invoked Muhammad, saying Laila ulala mohamat uhuersolala, which meant ‘Muhammad close to God’, and that he called on and invoked Muhammad, believing that he was a true prophet and powerful to free him of his tribulation and the cares in which he found himself.’26 Also in this case, as in that of María mentioned previously, we face a Morisco who stated to know Arabic, but who showed a very feeble intimacy with this language, given the fact that it seemed impossible for him to recognize and translate correctly the the shahada, that is the Islamic creed and first pillar of Islam: lā ʾilāha ʾillā-llāh, Muḥammadun Rasūlu-llāh, which translates as: ‘There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.’ He also reported to have spoken with ‘a Muslim who was not baptized, who was in Santo Domingo’, and he added a lot of details about his faith and the possibility to practice it in the New World. Precedentes hispánicos de la evangelización en México, (México: Universidad Nacional de México, 1980). 25 Cook, Forbidden Crossing, 128; ahn, Inq. 1729, exp. 10\4\f. 3v. ‘Mehamet y arçolha que quieren dezir en Lengua Castellana Mahoma junto a dios, abdelcadher, que quiere dezir, poderosso acuerdate de tu sierbo, abdelcadher xilale que quiere dezir no lo olvides.’ 26 ahn, Inq. 1729, exp. 10\5\f. 19r. ‘Y llamaba a Mahoma no era diziendo Mahamet y arçola por que esto esta mal escrito sino diziendo Laila ulala mohamat uhuersolala que en lengua Castellana quiere dezir Mahoma junto a dios y que lo llamaba e imbocaba a Mahoma creyendo que era berdadero propheta y poderosso para librarlo de su tribulazion o cuidado en que se hallava.’

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Almost two centuries after the conquest, Muslim people navigated around the Atlantic Ocean, as pirates, as mariners, as slaves, or as cooks. The case of Cristóbal de la Cruz is not so isolated, and now we begin to become aware of this Atlantic presence, not large but significant.27 But here the language is the problem. A history of Arabic in the New World remains to be written, and maybe it will show that Arabic was not just related to the memory of an Iberian past, but also with the uncertain destiny of an Atlantic community that could exist by virtue of the many oversea exchanges, and maybe reconstructed some of its features – even its linguistic features – by looking in the mirror of the inquisitors. Bibliography Aparicio, Severo, ‘Influjo de Trento en los Concilios Limenses’, Missionalia Hispanica 29 (1972), 215–239. Burke, Peter, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Cook, Karoline P., Forbidden Crossing: Morisco emigration to Spanish America, 1492– 1650, PhD. Diss. (Princeton University, November 2008). Fanjul, Serafin, La quimera de al-Andalus (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2004). García Cárcel, Ricardo and Moreno Martínez, Doris, Inquisición: Historia crítica (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2000). Garrido Aranda, Antonio, Moriscos e Indios. Precedentes hispánicos de la evangelización en México, (México: Universidad Nacional de México, 1980). Greenleaf, Richard E., ‘The Inquisition and the Indians of New Spain: a study in Jurisdictional Confusion’, The Americas 22:2 (1963), 138–166. Historia de la iglesia en la América Española, ed. Leon Lopétequi and Felix Zubillaga (Madrid: BAC, 1965). Jimenez Rueda, Julio, ‘Proceso contra María Ruiz, morisca’, Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación (México) 18:4 (1947), 363–471. Mateos, Francisco, ‘Ecos de América en Trento’, Revista de Indias 6 (1945), 603–604. Ricard, Robert, ‘Morisques et Indiens. Notes sur quelques procédés d’évangélisation’, Journal de la société des Américanistes 18 (1926), 350–357. Ricard, Robert, La conquista espiritual de México (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986). Sánchez Albornoz, Nicolás, ‘De las lenguas ameriandias al castellano. Ley o interacción en el periódo colonial’, Colonial Latin American Review 10:1 (2001), 49–67. 27 Cook, Forbidden Crossing, 129–130.

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Schwartz, S.B., All Can Be Saved. Religious Tolerance and Salvation in Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 2008). Tardieu, Jean Pierre, L’inquisición de Lima et les hérétiques étrangers XVIe–XVIIe siècles (Paris: Harmattan, 1995). Thomas, Werner, Los protestantes y la Inquisición en España en tiempos de Reforma y Contrarreforma, (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 2001). Traslosheros, José, ‘El tribunal eclesiástico y los indios en el arzobispado de México hasta 1630’, Historia Mexicana 51:3 (2002), 485–717. Valenzuela Marquez, Jaime, ‘El lenguaje y la colonizacion cultural de America en el siglo XVI’, in: Arte y cultura en la época de Isabel la Católica, ed. Valdeón Baruque (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2003), 1–19.

chapter 12

Grids for Confessing Sins: Notes on Instruments for Pastoral Care in Late Medieval Milan Fabrizio Conti Introduction Pastoral efforts fostered by the Observant Franciscan friars of St. Angelo’s in Milan during the second half of the fifteenth century developed through many paths and directions.1 Fundamental to all of them was the writing of specialized literature, spread by means of a deliberate use of the printing press, through which the Milanese preachers and confessors aimed at providing other friars with material and instructions fostering a type of behavioral framework strongly centered on the Ten Commandments, which was certainly meant for educating the laity and shaping identities that were not only religious. The works of Bernardino Busti (Rosarium sermonum, Venice, 1498) and his master Michele Carcano (Confessionale generale de la gran tuba, Venice, 1484; Sermones quadragesimales de decem preceptis, Venice, 1492) represent examples of the ways the friars debated and approached a number of topics including the Jewish issue, the foundation of the Montes pietatis, the spread of economic morals, the problem of idolatry and licit Christian devotion, just to name a few.

The Centrality of Sin

The problem of sin was a central concern for the friars. The role that sin and penitence played in theological reflection and pastoral practice from the second half of the fourteenth century onwards has been discussed and analyzed from different points of view.2 Jean Delumeau has spoken of the emergence of 1 I draw a complete picture of these friars and the themes they engaged with in my book Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers. Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan, Europa Sacra, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). 2 See for instance: Shame Between Punishment and Penance. The Social Usages of Shame in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. Bénédicte Sère and Jörg Wettlaufer (Florence:

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_013

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a process of acculturation centered on the sense of guilt in the early modern period, in spite of the contemporary Renaissance spirit.3 Delumeau views this together with the increasing sense of fear, another of his major fields of investigation. These feelings might be well represented by the Stultifera navis (Das Narrenschiff or The ship of fools) composed by Sebastian Brant in 1494, in which the ship leading to Narragonia, the land of fools, is loaded with fools, each one of whom represents a different vice. The passengers of the ship set out to sea without any point of reference, neither maps nor compass; this has been seen as a desire to represent the ‘ship of Christianity’ endangered on the waves of a particularly ill-omened century. Similarly, the painting The ship of fools (1500–1502) by Hieronymus Bosch represents a ship of sinners who proceed irreparably towards perdition while singing and laughing. Both the fools and the ship become metaphors for life, mirrors of everyday sinful behavior and at the same time a safe haven for the satirical revelation of the weaknesses of various social classes.4 Sacramental confession is naturally related to sin. Canon 21 Omnis Utriusque Sexus, issued by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, rendered confession obligatory for the first time in individual and auricular forms.5 According to this canon, once a year each believer had to confess his or her sins to a priest, and take the Eucharist at least at Easter. In this way, an articulated form of private confession, placing the confessor and the penitent in direct and exclusive connection, emerged as an obligation in the western Christian tradition after a century of theological development. Lateran iv has been seen as identifying confession as ‘one of the main rituals we rely on for the production of truth’, with preachers and confessors performing an increasingly more precise

SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013); Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, ‘La classificazione dei peccati tra settenario e decalogo (secoli xiii–xv)’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 5 (1994), 331–395; Thomas Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). 3 Jean Delumeau, Le péché et la peur. La culpabilisation en Occident (xiii–xviii siècle) (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 206. 4 See Delumeau, Le péché et la peur, 234–235; Massimo Centini, Bosch. Una vita tra i simboli (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2003), 54–55. 5 Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo, Giuseppe L. Dossetti, Perikles-P. Joannou, Claudio Leonardi, Paolo Prodi, Hubert Jedin (Bologna: Centro Editoriale Dehoniano, 2013), 245. Brenda Bolton describes the Fourth Lateran Council as ‘a show with a meaning’: the careful preparation of the Council reflected the creation of the most important body of disciplinary and reform legislation of the medieval Church: Brenda Bolton, Innocent iii: Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), 57.

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f­unction in the transmission of Catholic faith, in relation to a more defined strategy in the matter of pastoral control.6 During the fifteenth century, when the pastoral activities and texts of the Observant Franciscan preachers spread, the indications of Canon 21 encouraged the identification of possible deviations from social and religious norms. Friars approached the world of sin in a multifaceted way, relying on different types of grids to classify it. Everyday behaviors were checked and determined following traditional intellectual coordinates, as well as according to new pastoral aims. Within these grids, the Ten Commandments played a central role, along with several older schemes, with the Seven Deadly Sins as the most important among these. The success of the iconography of the seven vices was unparalleled, though it developed rather late if one considers the early usage of the scheme. Around the fourth decade of the fourteenth century, Buonamico Buffalmacco painted the frescos of the Last Judgment in the Camposanto of Pisa, representing the subdivision of sinners in hell according to seven typologies directly inspired by the Seven Deadly Sins. Buffalmacco’s painting constituted a model for further representations of the scheme; in particular, the iconographic motif describing the way a sin is punished is prominent in the Pisa painting, including the depiction of a mean person as someone who eats burning coins.7 Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (c. 1490) (see Fig. 12.1), on the other hand, articulates differences in social class.8 His representation of the vices is centered on the divine eye at the center of the painting, with its imago pietatis – the representation of Christ as the Man of Sorrows – bearing the Latin inscription Cave Cave Deus Videt (‘Beware, beware, the Lord is watching’) which encourages one’s selfanalysis by perusing the Seven Deadly Sins; this certainly mirrors contemporary individualizing trends of piety.9 6 See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); Roberto Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati. La confessione tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002); Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman. Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), 14. 7 Jérôme Baschet, Les justices de l’au-delà. Les representations de l’enfer en France et en Italie (xii–xv siècle), (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1993). 8 Laura D. Gelfand, ‘Social Status and Sin: Reading Bosch’s Prado Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things painting’, in: The Seven Deadly Sins. From Communities to Individuals, ed. Richard Newhauser (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 229–256. 9 See Elliott, Proving Woman, 10; Gelfand, ‘Social Status and Sin’, passim; Henry Luttikhuizen, ‘Through Boschian Eyes: An Interpretation of the Prado Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins’, in: Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, ed. Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2012), 261–281.

Figure 12.1 Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

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The Importance of Introspection

The fifteenth century saw a tendency toward collective introspection, through the individualization of sins and the analysis of one’s own behavior. Confession manuals are very clear in showing this tendency, also by means of a pastoral approach that is, again, ad status oriented. Thus, Carcano’s Confessionale requires the confessor to begin scrutinizing the penitent by considering ‘the condition of the sinner, namely what his profession (arte) is, so that the confessor can easily grasp what mistakes the penitent may be prone to.’10 A more precise identification of sins went hand in hand with a better understanding of the person kneeling in front of his confessor, also because in the understanding of the friars specific types of sin were especially linked to each human profession. The confessor even tried to make the penitent understand the reason why he must go to confession. Carcano’s text highlights that three reasons contribute to this obligation: an explicit command of the ‘Holy Mother Church’ (Canon 21 clearly lies behind this statement); the need of seeking one’s spiritual salvation; a sense of guilt in being aware of having offended God, one’s own soul, and one’s neighbor. What is more, the seriousness of the sins committed is directly related to the social status of the penitent and to the degree of the penitent’s knowledge in matters of faith; thus getting to know whether the penitent is a priest, a friar, or a layperson (and in this latter case what his profession was) is meaningful even in this regard. Carcano’s text develops this when it speaks of the ‘circumstances’ concerning the sinner that have to be checked by the confessor. The background and the context of committing sin are relevant for the correct understanding of the actions of the penitent: the confessor has to inspect what types of sin have been committed, in which place the penitent has sinned, with whom, how many times, in which way, whether autonomously or tempted by someone else, during what period, whether during festive days or not, etc. The process of confessing sins, therefore, has to be very detailed, at least according to the confessor’s intentions, and it has to produce a complete understanding of what was going on at the moment of sinning, which means, as we said, understanding the circumstances of sins. A rigid scheme is applied, although Carcano could not help but indicate the need for the confessor to be

10

‘Poi el sacerdote debe domandare la conditione del peccatore: cioè che arte è la sua, aciò che possa conoscere facilmente in quali errori possa quella persona cadere.’ Carcano, Confessionale, [A1v]. I have used the copy published in Venice in 1484 held in Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale.

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kind and to support the penitent with kind words (dolci parole); in this way the confessor aims at facilitating the confession of the penitent. The typical flow of communication and the establishment of different roles in the moment of confession, and more generally, the relationship between the pastors and their flock have been seen as implying the ‘substantial subordination of the faithful to the cultural hegemony of the clerics and to their religious models.’11 However, deciding to what extent the relationship between the clergy and the faithful was really based on a sort of cultural/social subordination of the latter to the former would require a more detailed inquiry, and this should take into account differences as to chronology and geographical settings. The difficulty of such an analysis is due to the fact that almost all the evidence comes from the side of the elites, and so attempting to analyze the ‘communicative transactions’ occurring between the clergy and the various types of the population that constituted the laity would prove to be a very hard job. Nevertheless, from a general point of view, one can say that a certain degree of asymmetry was clearly part of the communicative transactions occurring between different social groups; this is part of the issue of the relationship between the pulpit and the nave, or between the preachers and their audience. To reconstruct this type of relationship means to hint at what lies beyond the word, which implies to analyze the intellectual structures and the grids through which preachers and confessors understood reality. Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the practice of penitence arrived at a crucial turning point. The sacrament began to be referred to with the verb confiteri, which expressed the central act of confessing one’s sins privately, while previously it was generally indicated by the word poenitentia, which on the contrary gave importance to (public) penance. The rigid classification based on the Seven Deadly Sins, which appeared during the second half of the thirteenth century, was followed by more multifaceted classifications that employed different grids to evaluate sin. Michele Carcano’s Confessionale points to what has been defined the ‘multiplication of sin’ through the employment of nine major schemes of classification, showing the typical matrix used by an Observant Franciscan preacher in the fifteenth century for hearing confession.12 The schemes on the basis of which, according to Carcano, confessors should interrogate penitents were, 11 Rusconi, L’ordine dei peccati, 71. 12 Carla Casagrande, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati. I cataloghi dei peccati nella letteratura pastorale dei secoli xiii–xv’, in: La peste nera: dati di una realtà ed elementi di una interpretazione. Atti del xxx Convegno storico internazionale, Todi 10–13 ottobre 1993, (Spoleto: cisam, 1994), 253–284.

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successively: the twelve articles of faith; the Ten Commandments; the Seven Deadly Sins; the five senses; the seven virtues; the seven beatitudes; the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit; the seven sacraments, and the bodily and spiritual works of mercy. As we see, the traditional usage of the Seven Deadly Sins is put together with several other schemes. We know that among these the Ten Commandments would be progressively gaining ground.

The Centrality of the Decalogue

The Rosarium sermonum of Bernardino Busti favors three schemes among all those the tradition provided him with: the Seven Deadly Sins, the twelve articles of faith, and the Ten Commandments. In Busti’s understanding, the Seven Deadly Sins describe all the major types of human moral fallibility; the twelve articles of faith, according to the tradition, were considered to be composed by the apostles themselves after they gathered in Jerusalem for Whitsunday, and are described as the ‘foundations of the Church of God’.13 The centrality of the Decalogue as the most important classificatory scheme is due to its nature as divine law: the core doctrinal structure of the Rosarium sermonum revolves around it. This scheme became progressively more successful between the thirteenth and the fifteenth century, and for the period following the Reformation and Counter-Reformation the Decalogue has been connected to the emergence of a pastoral/theological view that was broader than that fostered by the Seven Deadly Sins. According to this view, the relationship linking the faithful to God was gaining prominence, which pointed to a sort of vertical orientation, centered on the sin of idolatry and built on the Ten Commandments.14 While Busti elaborated on the Decalogue as lex divina in Sermon 16 of his Rosarium sermonum, he exemplified an important aspect of the late medieval Franciscan approach to pastoral care. The Decalogue shows itself as a set of commandments having the twofold nature of being a moral code oriented towards God (through the first three commandments) and a code meant for humans (through the subsequent seven commandments). This characterization of the Decalogue is set in Peter Lombard’s Sententiae, one of the great theological sources for medieval preachers. On the Franciscan side, Busti and 13 Busti, Rosarium, Sermon 13, 86ra. I have used the copy published in Venice in 1498 held in Rome, Biblioteca Angelica. 14 John Bossy, ‘Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments’, in: Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 214–234.

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other preachers relied on Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, who in his Collationes de decem praeceptis wrote on the basis of the Ten Commandments that justice was oriented both towards God and towards humanity. The important role that, according to Busti, preachers had with regard to re-evangelizing the faithful is similarly based on the Decalogue: it constituted the most elaborated structure of the moral indications that the preacher passed on to the laity. Through his cycle of doctrinal sermons centered on the Ten Command­ ments, starting with Sermon 16, Busti aimed at providing his readership of preachers with the foundations for the moral instruction of the faithful. Sermon 16 ‘On the Commandments’ is both about the First Commandment, and at the same time functions as a sort of introduction to the entire Decalogue. The sermon is intended for the second Sunday of Lent, and prepares the faithful for Easter and yearly confession. The sermon is organized into three sections: the first is an introduction to the Decalogue and to its role as divine law; the second deals with the divine cult and focuses on idolatry; the third is a list of transgressions of the First Commandment, which is in other words a modelscheme for ­classifying superstition. In this organization of his preaching material, Busti’s adherence to Carcano’s Sermones quadragesimales is evident. Carcano described ‘the excellence of the commandments of God with respect to their comparison with human laws’ in terms that Busti reused, although Carcano went further by hinting at the rewards one can expect from observing divine law, ‘of which in no laws can be found something comparable’. As Carcano argued, the peculiarity of Christians is that they have been promised ‘the glory of the angels’ (Mt. 43).15 The Decalogue becomes therefore a way to reach eternal salvation, a sort of ladder that the faithful can climb, ensuring them to follow the right path to Paradise.

Grids for Confessing Sins, Preaching and Cultural Transformation

The use of a number of different grids to classify sin has a practical implication in the moment of confession. Sermon 35 of the Rosarium sermonum explains the principle of ordinate confiteri, which is confessing one’s sins according to the order provided by the grids used by the confessor. The Seven Deadly Sins constitute the starting point, followed successively by the Ten Commandments, the precepts of the Church, the twelve articles of faith, the seven gifts of faith, the bodily and spiritual works of mercy; the senses, the four cardinal virtues, 15 Carcano, Sermones quadragesimales, Sermon 18, 43ra. I have used the copy published in Venice in 1492 held in the Biblioteca Comunale of Velletri.

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the three theological virtues and ‘all the other moral virtues’. However, Busti wanted the preacher to adhere to more than simply the theological schemes made available by tradition. Like Carcano, before enlisting these schemes, Busti warned that sins must also be analyzed from the point of view of one’s own personal biography, by remembering the sins committed throughout one’s life. Connecting the order of the confessional grids to personal memories might be considered a signal of a certain openness towards a use that was innate to the penitents’ habit, and it also clearly rendered confession much more ‘autobiographical’. The adoption of such a large number of grids, although the Decalogue is central, may also suggest the existence of precise classificatory strategies and, ultimately, the existence of a worldview that looked at human beings in society as permanently prone to sin. In line with this, confession became the moment at which the behavior of the Christian and his knowledge of the principles of faith were checked, according to the same point of view that characterized the action of late fifteenth century friars with regard to the moralization of urban audiences. Interestingly, following what had to be quite a common feeling for late ­fifteenth-century people, Carcano identified specific targets: ‘our enemies’. Most of these were external enemies: Turks, Tartars, and Saracens. Yet he soon also identified an internal target in the ‘false Christians’.16 The aim of a confessional – and of pastoral literature in general – has to be seen precisely in strengthening the community of true Christians and to provide its spiritual defense both from its external enemies and from the internal false Christians. On the one hand it is tempting to inscribe these views within what Delumeau has interpreted as a new process of Christianization carried out in Europe by the reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; on the other hand, this would also imply recognizing the existence of the ‘Christian Middle Ages’ as an issue.17 Even without subscribing unconditionally to the thesis of Delumeau, it is possible to trace precise efforts on the part of the clergy in response to the increasingly palpable necessity for reform and conversion of the laity. Instead of speaking of the ‘legend’ of the Christian Middle Ages, one might think of the existence of different types, and probably different ‘degrees’ of being a faithful Christian. To this matter even the debated category of ‘acculturation’ has been applied, suggested by ‘the imposition of cultural superiority 16 Carcano, Confessionale, [B7v]. 17 Jean Delumeau, Un chemin d’histoire: Chrétienté et christianisation (Paris: Fayard, 1981), 138 ff.; Delumeau, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), 237ff; 266  ff.; John Van Engen, ‘The “Christian Middle Ages” as an Historiographical Problem’, The American Historical Review 19/3 (1986), 519–552.

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by dominant élites on subject populations’.18 Busti himself spoke of ‘evangelization’, implying the need for a new spread of the Christian message to populaces that were clearly already Christian for centuries. Later, after the Council of Trent, reformers often employed expressions such as ‘internal missions’ to describe their efforts of evangelizing those who were supposed to be Christian faithful, and ‘our Indies’ to describe geographical areas within Christian Europe which the clergy had discovered to be suffering from a serious deficit of Christian education.19 This newly acquired awareness gave rise to the impression among clergymen that they were not in Europe but rather in one of the overseas uncivilized lands frequented by missionaries, as if they were in India.20 The efforts of the fifteenth-century urban preachers might thus be considered within such a context of European Christianization, which passed through different phases. It is definitely the happy fate of the historian to be able to consider the significance of a historical period with the benefit of a much broader view than the perspective of those who lived in the period under discussion. On the one hand, as mentioned, the consistency of the early modern process of evangelization would possibly question the effectiveness of the pastoral efforts carried out by the friars before the Council of Trent; on the other hand, more probably, it might indicate the existence of a divide between cities and countryside with regard to pastoral permeability: the pastoral efforts of the later ‘internal missionaries’ focused, in fact, in particular on the peripheral areas. The conformity of moral behaviors – and of beliefs and behaviors considered ‘superstitious’ – to specific moral schemes played an important role in the eyes of preachers and missionaries.21 Penitential confession, and within this 18 19 20

21

Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons. The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 508 ff. Cf. also Delumeau, Un chemin d’histoire, 113 ff. Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), 551–599; Delumeau, Le Catholicisme, 284 ff. Thus, the Jesuit Silvestro Landini, sent to Corsica as a missionary in 1553, discovered the internal ‘savages’, peasants, shepherds, and woodmen completely ignorant of the principles of Christianity: Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 551 ff. It has been noted that the ‘Conviction of the obvious solidity of a Christianization fulfilled once and for all’ was put in question precisely by the re-emergence of beliefs and fears connected to the world of ‘superstition’: Zelina Zafarana, ‘Cura pastorale, predicazione, aspetti devozionali nella parrocchia del basso Medioevo’, in:  Pievi e parrocchie in Italia nel basso medioevo: Atti del vi Convegno di storia della Chiesa in Italia (Firenze 21–25 sett. 1981) (Rome: Herder, 1984), 493–540: at 494. This essay has been re-issued in Da Gregorio vii a Bernardino da Siena. Saggi di Storia medievale. Con scritti in ricordo di Zelina Zafarana ed. Ovidio Capitani, Claudio Leonardi, Enrico Menestò, and Roberto Rusconi (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1987), 201–248.

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the use of multiple grids for confessing sins, can definitely be seen as part of these fifteenth-century efforts for (re)evangelizing and moralizing the faithful. Along with confession, the role of preaching has to be highlighted here. Preaching is the key activity to transmit what should matter for Christians. It is a communicative process, a ‘system of communication’ in itself, and as such it is profoundly related to the process of transmission and shaping of specific behaviors.22 In this way, the models preached by a friar became mental and then behavioral structures to the extent that they succeeded in becoming part of the thinking of the faithful, at least in the aims of the preachers. Preachers preached to the faithful on the basis of a stratified intellectual tradition and of their personal experience on the ground. As we know, the exempla they recounted, besides being nice pieces of literature, can also contain references to autobiographical material. Probably both the preacher’s reference to literary and intellectual topoi and their recalling personal events might be considered forms of ‘memories’. Using the categories employed by Jan Assmann, we can define the intellectual tradition the preachers referred to, which were the established set of theological/juridical categories on the basis of which the preacher developed his sermon, as a sort of ‘cultural memory’, because it ‘oriented itself on the basis of fixed points set in the past’; the personal experience gained on the ground or the outcomes and effects of the preacher’s pastoral activity, can be defined as a sort of ‘communicative memory’, the one referring to a recent past. This latter would be shown, for instance, by those exempla in which the preachers recapped what happened to them while preaching in given cities. In this way, one may say that preachers aimed at establishing what Assmann has called a ‘connective structure’, a piece of communication that linked them to the faithful on the basis of a set of religious rules and values aiming at establishing a common cultural soil and fostering shared identities.23 The work of confessors situated itself within this ‘connective structure’, where preaching and confession became two sides of the same coin: moments of in-depth inquiry and instruction of the faithful. The detailed but also flexible ‘check-lists’ provided by the grids for interrogating the penitents on their sins were both instruments for pastoral care and the signs of a specific mentality of the friars that aimed at classifying human behavior, both for preparing souls for eternal salvation and to guide them in this life. 22

23

Cf. Carolyn Muessig, ‘Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages: An Introduction’, in: Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 13 ff. Cf. Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1992).

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Select Bibliography

Assmann, Jan, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1992). Baschet, Jérôme, Les justices de l’au-delà. Les representations de l’enfer en France et en Italie (XII–XV siècle), (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1993). Bolton, Brenda, Innocent III: Studies on Papal Authority and Pastoral Care (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995). Bossy, John, ‘Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments’, in: Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 214–234. Casagrande, Carla, ‘La moltiplicazione dei peccati. I cataloghi dei peccati nella letteratura pastorale dei secoli XIII–XV’, in: La peste nera: dati di una realtà ed elementi di una interpretazione. Atti del XXX Convegno storico internazionale, Todi 10–13 ottobre 1993, (Spoleto: CISAM, 1994), 253–284. Casagrande, Carla and Vecchio, Silvana, ‘La classificazione dei peccati tra settenario e decalogo (secoli XIII–XV)’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 5 (1994), 331–395. Clark, Stuart, Thinking with Demons. The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). Conti, Fabrizio, Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers. Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan, Europa Sacra, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). Delumeau, Jean, Le péché et la peur. La culpabilisation en Occident (XIII–XVIII siècle) (Paris: Fayard, 1983). ———, Un chemin d’histoire: Chrétienté et christianisation (Paris: Fayard, 1981). Elliott, Dyan, Proving Woman. Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004). Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1978). Gelfand, Laura D., ‘Social Status and Sin: Reading Bosch’s Prado Seven Deadly Sins and Four Last Things painting’, in: The Seven Deadly Sins. From Communities to Individuals, ed. Richard Newhauser (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 229–256. Luttikhuizen, Henry, ‘Through Boschian Eyes: An Interpretation of the Prado Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins’, in: Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, ed. Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J. Ridyard (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2012), 261–281. Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002).  Prosperi, Adriano, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: Einaudi, 1996).

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Rusconi, Roberto, L’ordine dei peccati. La confessione tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002). Shame Between Punishment and Penance. The Social Usages of Shame in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. Bénédicte Sère and Jörg Wettlaufer (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2013).  Tentler, Thomas, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). Van Engen, John, ‘The “Christian Middle Ages” as an Historiographical Problem’, The American Historical Review 19/3 (1986), 519–552. Zafarana, Zelina, ‘Cura pastorale, predicazione, aspetti devozionali nella parrocchia del basso Medioevo’, in: Pievi e parrocchie in Italia nel basso medioevo: Atti del VI Convegno di storia della Chiesa in Italia (Firenze 21–25 sett. 1981), ed. Cinzio Violante et al. (Rome: Herder, 1984), 493–540. 

chapter 13

Capuchin Reform, Religious Dissent and Political Issues in Bernardino Ochino’s Preaching in and towards Italy (1535–1545) Michele Camaioni Introduction This paper aims at investigating some overlooked features of the preaching and the propagandistic activity of the illustrious Capuchin Bernardino Ochino da Siena (1487–1564) during his Italian ministry. Regarded by Roland H. Bainton as ‘the Savonarola of Cinquecento’, it is well known that Ochino was an outstanding preacher in the 1530s, who achieved great fame amongst Catholics before his sudden conversion and his astonishing flight from Italy to Calvin’s Geneva in August 1542, at the time of the founding of the Roman Inquisition.1 Financial worries and doctrinal disagreements forced Ochino to constantly move with his family from Geneva to Augsburg and from London to Basel and Zürich. In the following decades he stood out as one of the prominent figures among the eretici italiani del Cinquecento, a composite intellectual and religious movement, the historiographical relevance of which has been demonstrated for the first time by the groundbreaking studies of Delio Cantimori.2 Historians have rightly distinguished this heterogeneous movement of exiles religionis causa – composed of bishops, friars, humanists, laypeople, noblemen and women – from the group of the refugees who abandoned Catholicism to firmly join Lutheranism and Calvinism. Because of their radical and sceptic antidogmatism, these representatives of the humanistic and religious culture 1 Roland H. Bainton, The Travail of Religious Liberty: Nine Biographical Studies (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1951), 148 (the latter Italian edition was issued in Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001). For an introduction to the period, see John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy. Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton, ny: State University, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1991); Massimo Firpo, Inquisizione romana e controriforma. Studi sul cardinal Giovanni Morone e il suo processo d’eresia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992); Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Torino: Einaudi, 1996). 2 Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1939). See now the edition Eretici italiani del Cinquecento e Prospettive di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Torino: Einaudi, 1999).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_014

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of the Italian Renaissance could not find a permanent position in the new Lutheran or Reformed orthodoxies. As a matter of fact, today they are rather counted among the exponents of the so-called Radical Reformation.3 Refused and condemned by both Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches, with their lives and their thought they gave a strong contribution to the cultural, intellectual and philosophical process which led to the genesis of modern ideas of tolerance and of freedom of opinion and expression.4 On this basis, scholars have traditionally studied Ochino’s Italian and Franciscan period and analyzed the few surviving texts of his Italian sermons, trying, above all, to find out precocious traces of his heterodox thought or of a nicodemitic support for the cause of the Reformation.5 This approach focuses on the much debated question of the Italian Reformation, and has been very effective in enlightening the close relationship between Ochino and the Spaniard alumbrado Juan de Valdés.6 Valdés was the spiritual master of the heterodox spiritual circle of Naples, frequented in the 1530s by Ochino ­himself, and by some of the main figures of Italian political and religious life of the time, including the humanist Marco Antonio Flaminio, the ‘inquiet

3 See George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Kirksville, mo: Truman State University Press, 20003), 799–896, 943–989. 4 On this topic, see Massimo Firpo, ‘«Boni christiani merito vocantur haeretici». Bernardino Ochino e la tolleranza’, in: La formazione storica dell’alterità. Studi di storia della tolleranza nell’età moderna offerti a Antonio Rotondò. Tomo i: Secolo xvi, ed. H. Mechoulan, R.H. Popkin, G. Ricuperati, L. Simonutti, 3 Vols. (Florence: Olschki, 2001), 161–244, and now in: Massimo Firpo, « Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede». Studi sulla vita religiosa del Cinquecento italiano (Milan: Unicopli, 2003), 247–320. 5 See Karl Benrath, Bernardino Ochino of Siena, trans. H. Zimmern (London: James Nisbet, 1876); Benedetto Nicolini, Bernardino Ochino e la Riforma in Italia (Naples: Ricciardi, 1935); Roland H. Bainton, Bernardino Ochino esule e riformatore senese del Cinquecento (1487–1563) (Florence: Sansoni 1940). See also ‘Ochino’, in: The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature (ca. 1750– 1997), ed. John Tedeschi and James M. Lattis (Ferrara: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2000), 361–378. 6 For an overview, see Silvana Seidel Menchi, ‘The Age of Reformation and CounterReformation in Italian Historiography, 1939–2009’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 100 (2009), 193–217. On the recent debate, see William Hudon, ‘Religion and Society in Early Modern Italy. Old Questions, New Insights’, The American Historical Review 101:3 (1996), 783– 804; John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2000); Massimo Firpo, La presa di potere dell’Inquisizione romana 1550–1553 (Bari-Roma: Laterza, 2014).

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noblewoman’ Giulia Gonzaga, and the powerful and broad-minded English cardinal Reginald Pole.7 This paper, which briefly epitomizes the provisional results of an ongoing study on Ochino and the rise of the Capuchin Order, faces this very same topic, but proposes a different approach, attempting at investigating the social impact of Ochino’s preaching in Italy and its effects on the political and religious networks which supported him.8 Special attention is paid, from this perspective, to the connection with the Colonna family, a mainstay of the imperial party in Italy, and to Ochino’s commitment to the first establishment of the Capuchin Order in the Italian peninsula. The intention, in other words, is to avoid a teleological and idealistic approach, that focuses too much on the development of Ochino’s thought, and to place the preaching of this important religious leader of the Italian Cinquecento in the concrete context of the religious and political struggles of the pre-tridentine period. Ochino’s eventful life, with the passage from the Observance to the new Capuchin Order and then into the fold of the Reformation, allows us to cast a keen glance at this period characterized by great complexity and doctrinal flux, during which different types of spirituality and competing views of theological and disciplinary reform of the Church confronted each other not only from the outside, but also on the inside of the Catholic world and of the Roman curia.9 Moreover, the analysis of Ochino’s vicissitudes can be useful in order to obtain a better comprehension of the developments of preaching during the first half of the sixteenth century, when the medieval model of sermo modernus

7 See José Constantino Nieto, Juan de Valdés and the origins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation (Geneva: Droz, 1970); Daniel A. Crews, Twilight of the Renaissance. The Life of Juan de Valdés (Toronto–Buffalo–London: University of Toronto Press, 2008); Massimo Firpo, Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation (Burlington, vt: Ashgate, 2015). On Valdés’s fellows, see Thomas Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince & Prophet (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Anne Overell, Italian Reform and English Reformations, c. 1535–c. 1585 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi, Una gentildonna irrequieta. Giulia Gonzaga fra reti familiari e relazioni eterodosse (Roma: Viella, 2012). 8 For such an approach to Italian preaching, see Corrie Norman, ‘The Social History of Preaching: Italy’, in: Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Taylor (Leiden-Boston: Brill 2001), 125–191. 9 Appropriately, Euan Cameron speaks of an ‘inchoate’ or ‘primitive’ phase of reform. Euan Cameron, ‘The Reformation in France and Italy to c. 1560’, in: La Réforme en France et en Italie. Contacts, comparaisons et contrastes, ed. Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Alain Tallon (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2007), 17–33; Idem, The European Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 132–137.

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was gradually replaced by new preaching trends, as that set by Ochino and by other highly praised mendicant preachers, many of whom supported the cause of an humble, direct and ‘evangelical’ preaching, based directly on the text of Scripture and concentrated on the rediscovery of inner piety.10 Expressed through vernacular sermons addressed to mixed audiences, as we will see, this preaching style was particularly suited to convey reform ideas, to mediate between different social groups and to address the challenges issued by an era of unprecedented social and religious changes.11 In this attempt, I chose to focus the attention on the last part of Ochino’s Italian ministry (1535–1542) and on the first years of his exile in Geneva (1542– 1545). These two specific and interrelated moments of his life seem particularly appropriate to study the impact of his preaching and writing in a context of political and religious uncertainty, as that outlined by the Italian background at the time of the convocation of the Council of Trent. This period was indeed dominated by the conflict over the control of the Roman Curia between various groups, parties and movements involved in the reform process, including the Intransigenti, led by the theatine inquisitor Gian Pietro Carafa (then Pope Paul iv), and the Spirituali, to whom Ochino was linked, and who promoted an ­erasmian idea of Church reform, based on antidogmatism, tolerance and theological dialogue with the Protestants. 10

11

See John O’Malley, ‘Content and Influence of Works about Preaching before Trent: The Franciscan Contribution’, in: I Frati Minori tra ’400 e ’500. Atti del xii convegno internazionale (Assisi, 18-19-20 ottobre 1984) (Naples: esi, 1986), 27–50, and: Idem, Religious Culture in the Sixteenth Century. Preaching, Rhetoric, Spirituality, and Reform (Aldershot: AshgateVariorum, 19982), iv. On Italian preaching in the Early Modern period, see also Roberto Rusconi, ‘Predicatori e predicazione’, in: Storia d’Italia. Annali 4: Intellettuali e potere, ed. Corrado Vivanti, (Turin: Einaudi 1972), 949–1035; Lina Bolzoni, ‘Oratoria e prediche’, in: Letteratura italiana 3:2 (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), 1041–1074; Carlo Delcorno, ‘Forme della predicazione cattolica tra Cinque e Seicento’, in: Cultura popolare e cultura d’élite nell’arco alpino tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Ottaviano Besomi and Carlo Caruso (Basel: Birkhauser, 1995), 275–302; Giorgio Caravale, Predicazione e Inquisizione nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Ippolito Chizzola tra eresia e controversia antiprotestante (Bologna: Il Mulino 2012), 13–30; Emily Michelson, The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (Cambridge, ma–London: Harvard University Press 2013); Pietro Delcorno, Lazzaro e il ricco epulone. Metamorfosi di una parabola fra Quattro e Cinquecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014), 9–65. On this topic, see Anne T. Thayer, Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Taylor (Boston-Leiden: Brill, 20032); Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 20072); John Frymire, The Primacy of the Postils: Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2010).

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Preaching and Capuchin Reform

Bernardino Ochino was born in Siena in 1487. In 1506 he entered the famous Observant convent of La Capriola, in his native city. There he studied scholastic theology, following which he received his first preaching appointments. In the 1520s, he played an important role in the harsh struggle of Sienese Observants for autonomy from the Florence Province.12 Then, between 1530 and 1531, he acted as commissary of minister general Paolo Pisotti of Parma for the Cismontane branch of the Observant order. In this capacity, he managed to appease disagreements that had risen among the friars of the Venetian province, in cooperation with the Teatine bishop Gian Pietro Carafa and the bishop of Verona Gian Matteo Giberti, to whom he would be closely linked until his flight from Italy.13 These experiences increased Ochino’s familiarity with political issues and allowed him to gain a deep understanding of decision-making processes and interactions between ecclesiastical and civil powers in complex urban contexts. A few years later, in 1534, he joined the new order of the Capuchins, founded in 1525–1528 by Matteo of Bascio, Ludovico of Fossombrone and a small group of Observant friars and wandering preachers, who wanted to restore the pure and strict observance of the Franciscan rule.14 As a Capuchin, Ochino preached 12 13

14

See Marino Bertagna, ‘L’Osservanza di Siena e le sue vicende storico-politiche dal tardo Quattrocento al primo Seicento’, Studi Francescani 82 (1982), 367–436. See Edoardo da Alençon, ‘Gian Pietro Carafa vescovo di Chieti (PAOLO iv) e la Riforma nell’Ordine dei Minori dell’Osservanza’, Miscellanea Francescana 13 (1911), 33–48, 81–92, 112–121, 131–144. For an account of the internal developments of the Franciscan order between the fifteenth and sixteenth century, see Duncan Nimmo, Reform and Division of the Medieval Franciscan Order. From Saint Francis to the foundation of the Capuchins (Rome: Istituto Storico Cappuccino, 1987); Pacifico Sella, Leone x e la definitiva divisione dell’Ordine dei Minori (Omin.): la bolla ‘Ite vos’ (29 Maggio 1517) (Grottaferrata, Rome: Quaracchi, 2001); Ludovic Viallet, Les sens de l’observance. Enquête sur les réformes franciscaines entre l’Elbe et l’Oder, de Capistran à Luther (vers 1450–vers 1520) (Berlin: lit Verlag, 2014). On Giberti, see Adriano Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e Controriforma. G.M. Giberti (1495–1543) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1969). Melchior a Pobladura, Historia Generalis Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Capuccinorum. Pars prima (1525–1619) (Rome: Institutum Historicum Ord. Fr. Min. Cap., 1947); Nimmo, Reform and Division, 642–658; Elisabeth G. Gleason, ‘The Capuchin Order in the Sixteenth Century’, in: Religious Orders of the Catholic Reformation. In Honor of John C. Olin on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, ed. Richard L. DeMolen (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), 31–57; Giovanni Miccoli, ‘Problemi e aspetti della vita religiosa nell’Italia del primo Cinquecento e le origini dei cappuccini’, in: Ludovico da Fossombrone e l’ordine dei cappuccini, ed. Vincenzo Criscuolo, (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1994), 9–48.

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in the main Italian cities and achieved great success among both the elites and the crowds, due to his strong oratory skills and his ability to move his audience. His sermons became great urban events and were outstanding examples of the new evangelical homiletic style developed in Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century. These sermons were, as well, effective instruments of doctrinal propaganda. During his last Italian period, when he became vicar general of the Capuchin order (1538), Ochino unceasingly preached justification by faith alone, a doctrine proposed by Luther which, at that time, the movement of the Spirituali believed Catholics ought to accept in order to favor reconciliation with the Protestants. This strategy, supported by some of the most influential representatives of the Italian imperial party, failed to achieve its goal, as in 1541 cardinal Gasparo Contarini could not persuade Pope Paul iii and the Roman curia to approve the agreement on justification he had  reached with Melanchton, the Lutheran delegate, at the imperial Diet of Regensburg.15 It’s worth noting that before fleeing from Italy, Ochino contributed to the spread of the thought of the Spirituali not only with his preaching, but, as we will see, also through informal talks with individuals and small groups of laypeople, friars and nuns. Various and different were, therefore, the networks and the audiences to whom he was able to address his message, and the places on the Italian scene, public (churches, piazze, open spaces) and private (monastery cells, courts, households), where he was present. This ability allowed him to exert an influence on different levels of society and to obtain from civil and religious authorities the approval for various urban initiatives, pastoral projects and religious innovations, such as the building of Capuchin convents, extrajudicial reconciliation’s rituals, the introduction of new devotions among confraternities (for instance the prayer exercises of the Quarantore) and the financing of new charitable institutions, especially houses for orphans and young neglected women.16

15

16

See Peter Mateson, Cardinal Contarini at Regensburg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972); Elisabeth Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and Reform (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 186–256; Gigliola Fragnito, Gasparo Contarini. Un magistrato veneziano al servizio della cristianità (Florence: Olschki, 1988), 57–69. See Michele Camaioni, ‘Riforma cappuccina e riforma urbana. Esiti politici della predicazione italiana di Bernardino Ochino’, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 67 (2013), 55–98. On the Quarantore, see Costanzo Cargnoni, ‘Le quarantore ieri e oggi. Viaggio nella storia della predicazione cattolica, della devozione popolare e della spiritualità cappuccina’, Italia Francescana 61 (1986), 325–460; Bert Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004), 558–559.

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This ad gentes projection was in agreement with the Capuchin constitutions of 1536, the ninth chapter of which theorized a model of vita mixta for the friars, exhorting them to seek a balance between eremitic contemplation and practical activities among people, such as poor relief and popular preaching. In these constitutions of 1536, written in part by Ochino himself, preaching is regarded as a natural and necessary aspect of an evangelical life, and as a vehicle of expression of the friars’ evangelical and Christ-centred spirituality.17 Nevertheless, this ‘evangelical’ preaching was deemed by some contemporaries to be ‘Lutheran’ because of its emphasis upon evangelical freedom and the primacy of grace, an accusation levelled against the Italian Spirituali as well. Thus, it is unsurprising that in 1536 the poetess and powerful noblewoman Vittoria Colonna, who was at that time the most enthusiastic patron of the Capuchin order, shielded Ochino and his fellow Capuchins from this accusation with these defiant words, addressed to a commission of cardinals which had to judge Capuchin orthodoxy: ‘Si san Francesco fu haeretico, li soi imitatori son lutherani’.18

Preaching, Religious Involvement and Political Dissent among Laypeople

Bernardino Ochino was one of the few privileged Italian preachers of the first half of the sixteenth-century who saw his works into print during his lifetime. The trial records of the archive of the Roman and the Venetian Inquisitions 17

18

‘Refined, embroidered and pretentious words do not go with the naked and humble Crucified, as do plain, simple, humble and lowly words instead, which are divine and ardent words full of love after the example of Paul, the vessel of election, who did not preach with sublime expressions and human eloquence, but in the power of the Spirit. Therefore we exhort the preachers to imprint blessed Christ upon their hearts and to give themselves into His serene possession so that through the superabundance of love He may be the one who speaks in them, not only with words but especially through their deeds.’ Quoted from Paul Hanbridge, The Capuchin Constitutions of 1536. A New Translation in English, www.capuchinfriars.org.au/files/Translation%201536.pdf. A critical edition of the original text of Capuchin constitutions (Naples: Giovanni Sultzbach, 1537) is in the anthology I frati cappuccini. Documenti e testimonianze del primo secolo, ed. Costanzo Cargnoni, 5 Vols. (Perugia: Edizioni Frate Indovino, 1988–1993) i, 249–464. Concetta Ranieri, ‘«Si san Francesco fu eretico, li suoi imitatori son luterani». Vittoria Colonna e la riforma dei cappuccini’, in: Ludovico da Fossombrone e l’ordine dei cappuccini, 337–351. Colonna’s letters and writings in defence of the Capuchins are now edited in I frati cappuccini ii, 179–281.

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give us precious insight in the broad diffusion of these writings in the milieu of Italian religious dissent during the Cinquecento.19 Despite the attempt of the Roman Congregation of the Index to remove them from public and private circulation, some of these books have come down to us. Two of Ochino’s surviving works are sermon collections, written versions of his popular ‘prediche’. Although they don’t allow us to reconstruct the whole oral dimension of his preaching (gestures, intonation of voice, reactions of audiences), these texts are a significant testimony to Ochino’s communication style and homiletic strategies. The edition entitled Prediche predicate, printed in Venice in 1541, is surely the product of a reportatio and appears to correspond verbatim to the words delivered from the pulpit by the Sienese Capuchin preacher in Lucca in 1538 (five sermons) and in Venice in 1539 (two sermons).20 The other edition, entitled Prediche nove, comes probably from a reportatio as well, and was released in Venice in 1541.21 The content of the two books is similar. Nevertheless, some internal linguistic and stylistic elements suggest that Ochino – or one of his followers – revised the text of the Prediche nove before publishing it, increasing the frequency of some keywords and linguistic expressions – for instance ‘viva fede’, ‘precioso sangue’, ‘beneficio di Cristo’ – typical of the spirituality of the Spirituali and of the Valdesian circle.22 Although we don’t have further information on its editorial history, it is quite possible to affirm that this written version of Ochino’s sermons prepared the Italian public for the reception of 19

20

21 22

See, for instance, Silvana Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, 1520–1580 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri 19902), ad ind.; Federica Ambrosini, Storie di patrizi e di eresia nella Venezia del ’500 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1999), ad ind. Prediche, predicate dal r. padre fra Bernardino da Siena dell’ordine de’ frati Capuccini, ristampate novamente. Et giontovi un’altra predicha, (Venetia, per Bernardino de Viano de Lexona Vercellese, Adì 16 marzo 1541). Modern edition in I frati cappuccini III/1, 2115–2306, and in Patterns of Perfection. Seven Sermons preached in Patria by Bernardino Ochino, ed. Philip McNair (Cambridge: Anastasia Press, 1999). An account of the discovery of this rare book, preserved in the British Library, is found in Philip McNair and John Tedeschi, ‘New Light on Ochino’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 35 (1973), 289–300. This edition reports the texts of eight sermons preached in Venice in 1539 and of one sermon delivered in Perugia probably in Advent, 1539. Prediche nove predicate dal reverendo padre frate Bernardino Ochino senese generale dell’ordine di frati Capuzini nella inclita città di Vinegia del MDXXXIX (Vinegia: Nicolò d’Aristotile da Ferrara, detto il Zoppino, maggio 1541). Another edition of Prediche nove, entitled Prediche del reverendo padre Bernardino Occhino senese…predicate nella inclita città di Vinegia, del MDXXXIX, was released in Venice in december 1541 (‘in Vinegia, per Francesco di Alesandro Bindoni & Mapheo Pasini compagni, Del mese di decembrio’). The text of Prediche nove is now edited in I frati cappuccini III/1, 2115–2306.

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the message of the Beneficio di Christo, the anonymous and highly influential book published in Venice in 1543 by the movement of the Spirituali spearheaded by Marcantonio Flaminio and Reginald Pole. This text supported justification by faith, inner spirituality and a dialogue with reformed theology, and was released with the purpose of influencing the agenda of the Roman Church and the contemporary Tridentine debate on these themes.23 During his Italian ministry, moreover, Ochino was the author of a collection of humanistic and neoplatonic texts of religious argumentation, entitled Dialogi sette (Venice, 1540 and 1542).24 If the Prediche were, more or less, directly connected with his oral preaching, the Dialogi appear to be more complex texts: they are on the one hand reminiscent of the oratory style of the Prediche, but contain on the other hand passages that, with their lyrical and intimistic tone, reveal traces of the spiritualism of the first Capuchins – heirs of the mystical Franciscan tradition – and of the confidential talks held within the elitary spiritual circles attended by Ochino and by some of his powerful and cultured supporters, as the Duchess of Camerino Caterina Cibo, the poetess Vittoria Colonna, and the noblewoman Giulia Gonzaga.25 To the name of Giulia Gonzaga an interesting episode can be attached, which provides valuable insight in the interaction between preaching, writing and printing in the Italian Renaissance world, and in the function of preaching in shaping lay religious identity in the pre-tridentine period. Giulia Gonzaga was part of the large crowd that, in Lent 1536 (and again in 1540 and 1541), 23

Benedetto da Mantova and Marcantonio Flaminio, Il beneficio di Cristo, ed. Salvatore Caponetto (Turin: Claudiana, 1975). 24 Dialogi sette del reverendo padre frate Bernardino Occhino senese generale de’ frati Capuzzini (Vinetia: per Nicolò d’Aristotele detto il Zoppino, 1540 and 1542). Modern edition in I «Dialogi sette» e altri scritti del tempo della fuga, ed. Ugo Rozzo (Turin: Claudiana, 1985); I frati cappuccini iii, 445–530. See Roest, Franciscan Literature, 418–419. 25 On the spiritual and ideological connections between Franciscan Spirituals and Capuchins, see Optat de Veghel (Optatus van Asseldonk), ‘La réforme des Frères Mineurs Capucins dans l’Ordre franciscain et dans l’Église’, Collectanea Franciscana 35 (1965), 5–108; Costanzo Cargnoni, ‘Fonti, tendenze e sviluppi della letteratura spirituale cappuccina primitiva’, Collectanea Franciscana 48 (1978), 311–398; Thaddeus MacVicar, The Franciscan Spirituals and the Capuchin Reform, ed. Charles McCarron (St. Bonaventure, New York: The Franciscan Institute – St. Bonaventure University, 1986); Michele Camaioni, ‘Libero spirito e genesi cappuccina. Nuove ipotesi e studi sul Dyalogo della unione spirituale di Dio con l’anima di Bartolomeo Cordoni e sul misterioso trattato dell’Amore evangelico’, Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pietà 25 (2012), 303–372. On Neapolitan and Florentine spiritual circles, see Diana Robin, Publishing Women. Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 15–26, 160–191.

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attended the successful sermons delivered by Bernardino Ochino in Naples. As recorded by the chronicler Gregorio Rosso, the Capuchin friar preached on this occasion with such ‘spirit’ and ‘devotion’, ‘che faceva piangere le pietre’ (‘that it made stones cry’).26 The emperor Charles v, who was visiting Naples at that time on his way back from the triumphant military expedition of Tunis, was deeply impressed by Ochino’s preaching and changed his opinion about the Capuchin Reform, which the Observant leaders had described to him as consisting of a group of undisciplined and quarrelsome friars.27 Ochino’s inspiring sermons likewise acted as a strong call to personal reform on Giulia Gonzaga. As a result of the exhortation to repent and of the exaltation of God’s merciful love launched from the pulpit, the noblewoman felt a painful inner contradiction, which she confessed to her friend and spiritual master, Juan de Valdés.28 Between 1536 and 1540, Valdés transcribed the subsequent spiritual conversation originating from Ochino’s sermons in literary form in his Alfabeto cristiano.29 After Valdés’s death in 1541, the manuscript of this interesting pedagogical and initiatic dialogue was preserved by Giulia Gonzaga herself, and could be finally printed in Venice in 1545.30 Ochino’s ­presence in the Alfabeto cristiano is not limited to the starting scene of the dialogue, studded with references to ‘our preacher’ and his moving sermon. Further passages of the text show indeed the adoption by the author of ­metaphors and other figures of speech taken from Ochino’s Prediche.31 These 26 27

28

29 30

31

Gregorio Rosso, Istoria delle cose di Napoli (Naples: Giovanni Gravier, 1770), 70. Quoted among others by Bainton, Bernardino Ochino, 34. See Melchior a Pobladura, ‘El Emperador Carlos v contra los capuchinos. Texto y commentario in una cartà in edita: Nàpoles, 17 ennero 1536’, Collectanea Franciscana 34 (1964), 373–390. ‘The sermon of the preacher have worsened this contradiction in my mind, and so I feel terribly disturbed and torn – on the one hand, between my fear of the inferno and my love of paradise and, on the other, between the fear of people’s slanderous talk about me and my love of honor in this world.’ The translation is in Robin, Publishing Women, 20. Juan de Valdés, Alfabeto cristiano. Domande e risposte. Della predestinazione. Catechismo, ed. Massimo Firpo (Turin: Einaudi, 1994). Before publishing the Alfabeto cristiano, Gonzaga probably edited and managed the draft Valdés had left her, contributing to infuse it with that emotional outpouring which characterizes especially its beginning. Under these circumstances, scholars like Robin consider Gonzaga ‘co-author’ of the Alfabeto cristiano. See Robin, Publishing Women, 18–26. See, for instance, the depiction of human life as a comedy (a common place of Renaissance culture) or as a difficult ford (a quotation from Plato), which recur respectively in Ochino’s fourth Predica held in Lucca in 1538 and in the sixth one preached in Venice in 1539 ‘il terzo dì de Pasqua’. See Valdés, Alfabeto cristiano, 29–30, 54; Patterns of Perfection, 28–29; I frati cappuccini, III/1, 2164–2165, 2280.

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e­ lements suggest that the relationship between Ochino and Valdés was characterized by a mutual exchange of ideas, writings and even rhetorical expressions – showing that we are dealing with an intertwined relationship that is far more complex than what scholars have generally assumed, as they describe Ochino as a disciple of the charismatic heresiarch Valdés.32 Studied and considered by historians for its importance as a summa of Valdesian thought, the Alfabeto cristiano deserves attention also for the information it allows us to gather about the interactions between public preaching and private talks among laypeople. Although its literary nature suggests to exert caution in considering it as a reliable historical document, the Alfabeto depicts a likely and typical communication process, which involves public and private orality (Ochino’s sermon delivered from the pulpit, Gonzaga’s and Valdés’s confidential conversation), private handwriting of a text (Valdés’s first composition of the Alfabeto in Spanish, Gonzaga’s translation and revision) and a broader diffusion of its revised version through the printing press. Thus this kind of approach to the Alfabeto cristiano not only allows us to observe Ochino’s Italian preaching in its political and social context, but also provides the opportunity to better understand the dynamic relations between various forms of communication (preaching, talking, handwriting, printing), which were mutually interrelated in the sixteenth-century’s mediatic network. Ochino’s preaching and meditation on the evangelical figure of the Magdalen provides another interesting case study. During the late medieval period, the preaching of the friars had been a key instrument in the spread of the cult of this saint, proposed as a perfect model of repentance, conversion and mystical love.33 Ochino inherited Magdalen’s preaching model from the 32

33

The scholarship’s conviction that Ochino was, as many other main figures of the Italian Reformation, a mere disciple of Valdés, is closely associated to two testimonies given in the 1560s during the inquisitorial trials of the Valdesian protonotary Pietro Carnesecchi. The first one belongs to Giovan Battista Scotti, who testified that Ochino had been converted to heresy in Naples by Juan de Valdés, ‘a great master of the Lutheran sect’ (‘se diceva dal detto Valdesio fu sedutto in Napoli fra Benardino Ochino di Siena […] questo Valdesio era un gran maestro della setta luterana’). The second testimony was given by Pietro Carnesecchi himself, according to whom Valdés in Naples in 1540 provided Ochino with a ‘carticella’, an outline that the preacher then customarly used as an instruction to elaborate the scheme of the sermon he would preach the following day. I processi inquisitoriali di Pietro Carnesecchi (1557–1567), 2 Vols, 4 tomes (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 1998–2000) i, 141 (Deposizione di Giovan Battista Scotti, Bologna, 10–11 agosto 1560); II/1, 143 (xi costituto di Pietro Carnesecchi, Roma, 23 luglio 1566). Katherine L. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen. Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, New Yersey: Princeton University Press 2000).

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Sienese devotional context and from the example provided by his Franciscan Observant predecessors, contributing to its development through his adaptation of the traditional exegesis of this popular evangelical figure to the main doctrinal issues of his time.34 A sermon delivered by Ochino in Venice in 1539 and entirely dedicated to the Magdalen, reveals that the figure of the ‘sinful saint’, who was saved ‘because she loved much’, was functional for preaching to large audiences the doctrine of justification by faith alone.35 In Ochino’s mind, Mary Magdalen was similar to another evangelical figure, that of the ‘good thief’, to whom he dedicated one of his Dialogi sette.36 Her sudden and dramatic conversion was proof that the faithful were saved by God without the help of good works. Magdalen was, in other words, the perfect model of that ‘viva fede’ exalted by Ochino, by the Spirituali, and by those who, in the Catholic field, were convinced that good works were the consequence, not the requirement, of justification.37 Ochino was particularly devout to Mary Magdalen. When he still was an Observant friar, he had made the pilgrimage to the grotto of Sainte Baume, the place where, according to Jacopo of Varagine’s Legenda aurea, the saint lived several years after fleeing from Palestine and landing in the surroundings of Marseille.38 Vittoria Colonna was likewise deeply devoted to Mary Magdalen. We know that, at the beginning of the 1530s, the noblewoman commissioned at least two pictures of the saint to help her meditation. One was painted by 34

35

36

37

38

On Siena’s Renaissance devotion to the Magdalen, see Philippa Jackson, ‘The Cult of the Magdalen: Politics and Patronage under the Petrucci’, in: L’ultimo secolo della Repubblica di Siena. ii: Arti, cultura e società, ed. Mario Ascheri, Gianni Mazzoni and Fabrizio Nevola (Siena: Accademia Senese degli Intronati, 2008), 391–403. Bernardino Ochino, Predica predicata in Vinegia il giorno della festa di S. Maria Maddalena. M.D.XXIX. This sermon was then published in the Prediche nove booklet (Venice, 1541). Critical edition in I frati cappuccini III/1, 2290–2306. See Rita Belladonna, ‘Bernardino Ochino’s Fourth Dialogue (“Dialogo del Ladrone in Croce”) and Ubertino da Casale’s “Arbor vitae”: adaptation and ambiguity’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 47 (1985), 125–165; Eadem, ‘Motivi umanistici e ascetismo medievale nel Dialogo quarto di Bernardino Ochino’, in: Validità perenne dell’umanesimo. Atti dei Convegni internazionali del Centro di studi umanistici ‘Angelo Poliziano’ (Montepulciano, 1983–1984), ed. Giovannangiola Tarugi (Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 1986), 21–33. See Michele Camaioni, ‘«Per sfiammeggiar di un vivo e ardente amore». Vittoria Colonna, Bernardino Ochino e la Maddalena’, forthcoming in: El Orbe Católico. Transformaciones, continuidades, contrastes y sentimientos de la religiosidad entre Europa y América (siglos iv–xix) (Santiago de Chile, 2015). See Michele Camaioni, ‘Note su due episodi del periodo italiano di Bernardino Ochino’, Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 116 (2009), 121–148.

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Tiziano, the other by Pontormo on the basis of a drawing by Michelangelo, then a close friend of her.39 Colonna also wrote sonnets and other brief spiritual works dedicated to the Magdalen. It’s worth noting that these devotional texts were written by Colonna after Ochino’s preaching on the Magdalen, or under the direct, private suggestion of the Capuchin Sienese preacher, who was at that time a sort of spiritual master to her. Rinaldo Corso, one of the first commentators of Colonna’s printed collection of Rime, pointed out this detail, showing a case of intertextuality which helps us to deepen our understanding of the interaction between preachers and laypeople in the pre-tridentine years. Commenting upon Colonna’s sonnet Donna secura, accesa, e da l’errante, Corso referred to Ochino’s Predica on the Magdalen, suggesting that the poetess had composed her sonnet on the basis of the sermon delivered by the Capuchin preacher in Venice in 1539, and then published in the Prediche nove collection (1541).40 Moreover, Ochino’s devotion to the Magdalen had significant pastoral implications. In his quoted sermon of 1539, in fact, he recommended women to follow the example of the Magdalen in refusing luxury; he exhorted them to collect alms for the monastery of the Convertite of Padova and proposed the institution of a ‘compagnia’ in the city to help young poor women to grow up with dignity, to obtain good dowries and then marry with honor. We should note that Ochino’s care for young marginalized women was not episodic. Not only in Venice, but also in Florence, in Perugia and in Rome he persuaded the 39 See Barbara Agosti, ‘Vittoria Colonna e il culto della Maddalena (tra Tiziano e Michelangelo)’, in: Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, ed. Pina Ragioneri, (Florence: Mandragora, 2005), 71–81. For a precious account on Colonna’s ambiguous spirituality see Gigliola Fragnito, ‘Vittoria Colonna e il dissenso religioso’, ibidem, 97–105; Eadem, ‘Vittoria Colonna e l’Inquisizione’, Benedictina 27 (1990), 157–172. 40 ‘As well as this, the Reverend Father Friar Bernardino of Siena in some of his sermons cites a place near Marseilles, where he has been, called Baumes. It was in that place Mary Magdalen practiced penitence for so long, and now they have there an image of her nude and with her loose hair flowing down over the ground beneath her. It is on this topic that I believe the poet composed the sonnet under discussion’. See Rinaldo Corso, Dichiaratione fatta sopra la seconda parte delle Rime della divina Vittoria Colonna marchesana di Pescara, in Bologna, per Gian Battista de Phaelli, a dì xx di aprile 1543, K ii v. The English translation of this passage is in Abigail Brundin, Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 166. On a supposed edition released in 1542, see Sarah C. Faggioli, ‘Di un’edizione del 1542 della «Dichiaratione» di Rinaldo Corso alle Rime spirituali di Vittoria Colonna’, Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 191 (2014), 200–210. On Ochino’s references, censored by the editor in the edition of the book published in Venice in 1558, see Monica Bianco, ‘Le due redazioni del commento di Rinaldo Corso alle Rime di Vittoria Colonna’, Studi di Filologia Italiana 56 (1998), 271–295.

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citizens and the magistrates to establish new confraternities and houses dedicated to this task. In the case of Perugia, the financial support for this institution, called ‘Casa delle Deleritte’, was secured by the founding of a new mount of piety called Mons puellarum. Perugia was one of the Italians cities where Ochino’s preaching was very effective and where the Capuchin preacher wielded great influence on the local government. In the field of poor relief, in addition to the ‘Casa delle Deleritte’, he was able to set up a charitable institution for orphans, which was called ‘Casa dei Cappuccinelli’. Like his famous and homonymous forerunner Bernardino of Siena, who in the fifteenth century had contributed to the drafting of Perugia’s Statutes, Ochino interfered in the city’s political life.41 As we have seen, the strong ad gentes predisposition theorized in the 1536 Capuchin constitutions led Ochino and his brethren to collaborate closely with the civil and religious urban authorities in order to promote charitable institutions and related initiatives that aimed to preserve cities from social conflict. In specific contexts, this force of persuasion expressed by popular preaching could take the form of overt criticism of social order and ruling powers. It is what probably happened, according to a hypothesis needing further investigation, in the case of Ochino’s 1539 Advent preaching in Perugia, which probably contributed to legitimate the rebellion against Pope Paul iii: that brief but harsh conflict known as the ‘Salt War’, started by the city in 1540 with the support of Ascanio Colonna, the brother of Vittoria.42

From Nicodemism to Propaganda. Ochino’s Printed Genevan Sermons (1542–1545)

Ochino’s ability to employ different means of communication to reach and persuade different audiences made him a typical religious mediator between 41 Camaioni, Riforma cappuccina, 71–72. For an overview, The Politics of Ritual Kinship. Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy, ed. Nicholas Terpstra (Cambridge, uk: Cambridge University Press 2000). 42 Camaioni, Riforma cappuccina, 81–97. On Vittoria Colonna’s diplomatic role in the Salt War, see Robin, Publishing Women, 79–101. On Colonna’s family harsh struggle for power with Pope Paul iii Farnese, which involved Ascanio and Vittoria’s endorsement of the Capuchin Order and of the Valdesian movement, see Francesco Gui, ‘Il papato e i Colonna al tempo di Filippo ii’, in: Sardegna, Spagna e Stati italiani nell’età di Filippo ii (Cagliari: AM&D, 1999), 485–557; Idem, ‘La Riforma nei circoli aristocratici italiani’, in: Cinquant’anni di storiografia italiana sulla riforma e i movimenti ereticali in Italia 1950–2000, ed. Susanna Peyronel (Turin: Claudiana, 2002), 69–124.

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various strands of reform and between oral, printed and written culture. As we have seen, his multiform and flexible communication strategy allowed him to broadcast his message at different levels of society and to achieve important results, until his radical evangelism drew the attention of the reorganized Roman Inquisition. Finally, the cloud of suspicion that had risen around Ochino forced him to leave Italy in 1542, seeking in Geneva a safer place from where to carry on his heterodox plans.43 Initially welcomed with open arms by the leading reformer of the Swiss city, John Calvin, the former Capuchin continued to look at Italian audiences and to employ Italian volgare (‘vernacular’) in his writings during the first years of his exile.44 Nevertheless, he was forced to adapt his methods of communication to the new situation. On the one hand, in fact, he was no longer forced to preach ‘in mascara’ (‘masked’), that is to adopt nicodemitic precautions in delivering his message.45 On the other hand, anyway, by fleeing and overtly attacking the Roman Church (one of the first texts he released in Geneva was the biting pamphlet Imagine di 43

44

45

On Ochino’s flight, see Gigliola Fragnito, ‘Gli «spirituali» e la fuga di Bernardino Ochino’, Rivista Storica Italiana 84 (1972), 777–813, edited also in Eadem, Gasparo Contarini, 251– 306, and in Eadem, Cinquecento italiano. Religione, cultura e politica dal Rinascimento alla Controriforma, ed. Elena Bonora and Miguel Gotor (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012), 141–188. On the first period of Ochino’s exile, see Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, 148–168; Benedetto Nicolini, ‘Bernardino Ochino esule a Ginevra 1542–1543’, in Ginevra e l’Italia, ed. Delio Cantimori, Luigi Firpo, Giorgio Spini, Franco Venturi, and Valdo Vinay (Florence: Sansoni, 1959), 135–147, and in Idem, Aspetti della vita religiosa politica e letteraria del Cinquecento (Bologna: Tamari Editori, 1963), 31–57. Calvin was pleased by Ochino’s arrival in Geneva. A few weeks later, he wrote to Pierre Viret: ‘Whoever knows Ochino, is convinced that Christ’s kingdom has no small gain in him. The better I learn to know the man, the more I honor him’. Nevertheless, he didn’t renounce to examine his doctrine, as he mentioned in April 1543 to the former Franciscan Konrad Pellikan: ‘Because I do not trust the Italian spirits, I have conversed fully with Ochino about single points of our faith […]. I then saw and can most positively declare that Ochino agrees with us in every particular’. Both letters are quoted in Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, 150–152. The rhetorical reference to a ‘masked preaching’ which had become unbearable for him, recurs in several of Ochino’s private letters and public writings of 1542–1543, so that it can be considered a key element of the apologetic narrative of the flight that the former Capuchin preacher elaborated in the first period of exile, to legitimate his dramatic choice among his Italian fellows and to gain ground in the new context of Geneva. See, for instance, the letter written to Vittoria Colonna from Florence, on 22 August 1542 (‘Dapoi che farei più in Italia? Predicar sospetto et predicar Christo mascarato in gergo’). Text in Ochino, I «Dialogi sette» e altri scritti, 123–125, and in I frati cappuccini ii, 259–262.

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Antechristo),46 he had lost the pulpit and, with it, the direct contact with his audience. Thus, in order to continue preaching to the Italian crowds, he turned to writing and launched an intensive propaganda campaign through the printing press.47 As a matter of fact, the oral dimension of his ministry decreased in importance (Ochino was unable to speak French fluently, so in Geneva he preached in Italian for a small community of exiles), whereas the several printed versions of his sermons and polemic writings, covertly delivered in Italy by his supporters, became quickly the main instrument of his preaching, focused in this phase on the appeal for Reformation, on the criticism of Catholic ‘superstitions’ and on the support of justification by faith alone.48 46

47

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Bernardino Ochino, Imagine di Antechristo (Geneva: Jean Girard, [1542]). Text in Ochino, I «Dialogi sette» e altri scritti, 147–152. On this topic, see Antonio Rotondò, ‘Anticristo e Chiesa romana. Diffusione e metamorfosi d’un libello antiromano del Cinquecento’, in: Forme e destinazione del messaggio religioso. Aspetti della propaganda religiosa nel Cinquecento, ed. Antonio Rotondò (Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 1991), 19–164, and now in: Idem, Studi di stori ereticale del Cinquecento, 2 Vols. (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2008) i, 45–199. During his stay in Geneva (October 1542-August 1545), Ochino sent to press a collection of Prediche (1542), at least six volumes of Sermones (1543–1544), the Imagine di Antechristo (1542), the Epistola di Bernardino Ochino alli molto magnifici signori…della Balìa della città di Siena (1543), the Expositione…sopra la Epistola di S. Paulo alli Romani (1545), and several polemic writings addressed to Catholic controversialists, such as the Epistola magistri Hieronymi lucensis ad Bernardinum Ochinum senensem cum responsione eiusdem Bernardini; the Responsio Bernardini Ochini senensis ad Marcum Brixiensem; the Responsio ad Mutium Iustinopolitanum, qua rationem reddit sui discessum ab Italia and the Risposta a lettere di fra Bernardino da Siena mandate a vari personaggi d’Italia in sua escusatione. All these books were probably published by the printer Jean Girard. See the foreword of Ochino’s first printed collection of Prediche, released in Geneva in October, 1542: ‘Dapoi adunque Italia mia, che con la viva voce, non posso per hora più predicarti, mi sforzarò scrivere, et in lingua volgare, aciò sia più comune, et pensarò che Christo habi così voluto, aciò che io non habi altro respecto che alla verità. Et perché la giustificatione per Christo è principio della vita christiana, però incominciarò da essa.’ Bernardino Ochino, Prediche di Bernardino Ochino da Siena [on the frontispiece: Si me persequuti sunt, et vos persequentur. Sed, omnia vincit veritas] (Ginevra, Jean Girard, 1542 die x Octobris, c. A 2v.). See also Ochino, I «Dialogi sette» e altri scritti del tempo della fuga, 128. In the latter Responsio ad Mutium (1543), the former Capuchin explained his publishing strategy even more clearly: ‘Nelli primi vinti sermoni che già sonno in luce, ho apertamente mostrata la iustificatione per Christo […]. Nelle altre vinti che ancho sonno in luce, [h]o facto veder chiaro, chome li voti de religiosi humani, et primi membri di Antechristo, sonno invalidi et impii, et che non c’è altra vera religione al mondo che quella di Christo. Et nelli altri sequenti che hora si imprimano, si vedrà, chome quella che havete per chiesa di Christo è la vera Babillonia, nella quale colui che tiene el principato, è epso Antechristo.’ Ochino, Responsio ad Mutium, c. [a 7 rv].

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Although several texts of the Sermones issued in 1543–1544 were probably revisions of draft sermons that Ochino had delivered in Italy between 1535 and 1542, the style and the structure of Ochino’s reformed sermons are, at least partially, different from the Italian ones. While the Italian surviving Prediche are, as we have seen, the product of reportationes, the Genevan Sermones were carefully edited and revised by Ochino, who since the summer of 1541 had planned to send to press a complete and authorized edition of his sermons.49 As a matter of fact, these texts are similar to short doctrinal treatises and, in comparison with the printed Italian sermons, appear to follow more closely the rules of written communication. Ochino’s first volume of Genevan Prediche produced mixed reactions in the Catholic field. If the learned Agostino Seripando, valued preacher and general of the Augustinian Order, found the doctrine preached in it ‘christianissima’,50 the conservative Tommaso Sanfelice, bishop of Cava, argued that under the cover of justification by faith, the Sienese preacher was delivering a striking attack ‘against the Apostolic See’.51 In any case, by the end of 1543 all of Ochino’s writings had been forbidden by the Roman Church and by the main Italian civil governments, worried by the potential political implications of his call for reform and of his radical exegesis of the Pauline doctrine of the primacy of the Spirit.52 Yet censorship and prohibition could not stop the circulation of Ochino’s works in the circles of religious dissent spread throughout the Italian Peninsula. Moreover, from 1543 onwards several translated editions of Ochino’s sermons and polemic ­writings were printed in Geneva, Magdeburg, Neuburg an der Donau and, in the following years, in Augsburg, London, Ipswich, Basel, Zürich and other

49

50 51

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According to Carnesecchi’s account, when in June or July 1541 the Capuchin preacher was visited by the protonotary and Marcantonio Flaminio in Florence, he ‘said that he was writing and collecting his sermons with the intention to put them to press, as then he did’ (‘disse che scriveva et metteva insieme le sue prediche per farle stampare, come fece poi’). Processi Carnesecchi II/3, 1112 (cv costituto di Pietro Carnesecchi, Roma, 6 marzo 1567). See Edmondo Solmi, ‘La fuga di Bernardino Ochino secondo i documenti dell’Archivio Gonzaga di Mantova’, Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 15 (1908), 23–98: 97. See his letter from Trent, 30 October 1542, where he wrote: ‘Di nuovo non c’è altro che li scritti di f. Bernardino li quali s’intende che smascaratamente discorre sotto il color de la justificatione e de la salute christiana assai livorosamente contro la Sedia Apostolica.’ Quoted in Paolo Negri, ‘Note e documenti per la storia della Riforma in Italia. 2: Bernardino Ochino’, Atti della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino 47 (1911–1912), 57–81: 80. See Ugo Rozzo, ‘Introduzione’, in Ochino, I «Dialogi sette» e altri scritti, 19–21.

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Europeans cities.53 The former Capuchin had become, literally, albeit not really, ‘a preacher without an audience’.54 Bibliography Bainton, Roland H., Bernardino Ochino esule e riformatore senese del Cinquecento (1487– 1563) (Florence: Sansoni 1940). ———, The Travail of Religious Liberty: Nine Biographical Studies (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1951). Belladonna, Rita, ‘Bernardino Ochino’s Fourth Dialogue (“Dialogo del Ladrone in Croce”) and Ubertino da Casale’s “Arbor vitae”: adaptation and ambiguity’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 47 (1985), 125–165. Bolzoni, Lina, ‘Oratoria e prediche’, in: Letteratura italiana 3:2 (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), 1041–1074. Brundin, Abigail, Vittoria Colonna and the Spiritual Poetics of the Italian Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Camaioni, Michele, ‘Note su due episodi del periodo italiano di Bernardino Ochino’, Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 116 (2009), 121–148. ———, ‘Libero spirito e genesi cappuccina. Nuove ipotesi e studi sul Dyalogo della unione spirituale di Dio con l’anima di Bartolomeo Cordoni e sul misterioso trattato dell’Amore evangelico’, Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pietà 25 (2012), 303–372. ———, ‘Riforma cappuccina e riforma urbana. Esiti politici della predicazione italiana di Bernardino Ochino’, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 67 (2013), 55–98. Cameron, Euan, ‘The Reformation in France and Italy to c. 1560’, in: La Réforme en France et en Italie. Contacts, comparaisons et contrastes, ed. Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi, and Alain Tallon (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2007), 17–33. Cameron, Euan, The European Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 53

54

Further study is needed on the editions of Ochino’s works after 1542 and on their circulation outside Italy. A partial but useful list of Ochino’s writings is in Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, 299–304. On Ochino’s overall itinerary after leaving Geneva in 1545, see Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, 168–298; Bainton, Bernardino Ochino, 73–161. Specific insights in Mark Taplin, The Italian Reformers and the Zürich Church, c. 1540–1620 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 111–169, ad ind.; Overell, Italian Reform and English Reformations, 41–60, 191–195. A penetrating analysis of the process of identity formation and self-understanding experimented by a Franciscan preacher who, joining the Reformation, lost as Ochino his natural audience and had to look at new ways to achieve his goals, is outlined by Pietro Delcorno, ‘Between Pulpit and Reformation: the “Confessions” of François Lambert’, Franciscan Studies 71 (2013), 113–134.

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Cantimori, Delio, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento (Florence: Sansoni, 1939). Caravale, Giorgio, Predicazione e Inquisizione nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Ippolito Chizzola tra eresia e controversia antiprotestante (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012). Cargnoni, Costanzo, ‘Le quarantore ieri e oggi. Viaggio nella storia della predicazione cattolica, della devozione popolare e della spiritualità cappuccina’, Italia Francescana 61 (1986), 325–460. Crews, Daniel A., Twilight of the Renaissance. The Life of Juan de Valdés (Toronto– Buffalo–London: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Delcorno, Carlo, ‘Forme della predicazione cattolica tra Cinque e Seicento’, in: Cultura popolare e cultura d’élite nell’arco alpino tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Ottaviano Besomi and Carlo Caruso (Basel: Birkhauser, 1995), 275–302. Delcorno, Pietro, ‘Between Pulpit and Reformation: the “Confessions” of François Lambert’, Franciscan Studies 71 (2013), 113–134. ———, Lazzaro e il ricco epulone. Metamorfosi di una parabola fra Quattro e Cinquecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014). Cantimoro, Delio Eretici italiani del Cinquecento e Prospettive di storia ereticale italiana del Cinquecento, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Torino: Einaudi, 20022). Forme e destinazione del messaggio religioso. Aspetti della propaganda religiosa nel Cinquecento, ed. Antonio Rotondò (Firenze: L.S. Olschki, 1991). Firpo, Massimo, Inquisizione romana e controriforma. Studi sul cardinal Giovanni Morone e il suo processo d’eresia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992). ———, «Disputar di cose pertinente alla fede». Studi sulla vita religiosa del Cinquecento italiano (Milan: Unicopli, 2003). ———, La presa di potere dell’Inquisizione romana 1550–1553 (Bari-Roma: Laterza, 2014). ———, Juan de Valdés and the Italian Reformation (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015). Fragnito, Gigliola, Gasparo Contarini. Un magistrato veneziano al servizio della cristianità (Florence: Olschki, 1988). ———, ‘Vittoria Colonna e l’Inquisizione’, Benedictina 27 (1990), 157–172. Frymire, John, The Primacy of the Postils: Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2010). Gleason, Elisabeth G., Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and Reform (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). ———, ‘The Capuchin Order in the Sixteenth Century’, in: Religious Orders of the Catholic Reformation. In Honor of John C. Olin on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, ed. Richard L. DeMolen (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), 31–57. Hudon, William V., ‘Religion and Society in Early Modern Italy. Old Questions, New Insights’, The American Historical Review 101:3 (1996), 783–804. Jackson, Philippa, ‘The Cult of the Magdalen: Politics and Patronage under the Petrucci’, in: L’ultimo secolo della Repubblica di Siena. II: Arti, cultura e società, ed. Mario Ascheri, Gianni Mazzoni and Fabrizio Nevola (Siena: Accademia Senese degli Intronati, 2008), 391–403.

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Jansen, Katherine L., The Making of the Magdalen. Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, New Yersey: Princeton University Press 2000). MacVicar, Thaddeus, The Franciscan Spirituals and the Capuchin Reform, ed. Charles McCarron (St. Bonaventure, New York: The Franciscan Institute – St. Bonaventure University, 1986). Mayer, Thomas, Reginald Pole: Prince & Prophet (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Menchi, Silvana Seidel, Erasmo in Italia, 1520–1580 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri 19902). ———, ‘The Age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Italian Historiography, 1939–2009’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 100 (2009), 193–217. Miccoli, Giovanni, ‘Problemi e aspetti della vita religiosa nell’Italia del primo Cinquecento e le origini dei cappuccini’, in: Ludovico da Fossombrone e l’ordine dei cappuccini, ed. Vincenzo Criscuolo, (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1994), 9–48. Michelson, Emily, The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (Cambridge, MA– London: Harvard University Press 2013). Nieto, José Constantino, Juan de Valdés and the origins of the Spanish and Italian Reformation (Geneva: Droz, 1970). Nimmo, Duncan, Reform and Division of the Medieval Franciscan Order. From Saint Francis to the foundation of the Capuchins (Rome: Istituto Storico Cappuccino, 1987). Norman, Corrie, ‘The Social History of Preaching: Italy’, in: Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Taylor (Leiden-Boston: Brill 2001), 125–191. O’Malley, John W., ‘Content and Influence of Works about Preaching before Trent: The Franciscan Contribution’, in: I Frati Minori tra ’400 e ’500. Atti del XII convegno internazionale (Assisi, 18-19-20 ottobre 1984) (Naples: ESI, 1986), 27–50. ———, Religious Culture in the Sixteenth Century. Preaching, Rhetoric, Spirituality, and Reform (Aldershot: Ashgate-Variorum, 19982). ———, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). Overell, Anne, Italian Reform and English Reformations, c. 1535–c. 1585 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Pettegree, Andrew, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007)2. Prosperi, Adriano, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Torino: Einaudi, 1996). Ranieri, Concetta, ‘«Si san Francesco fu eretico, li suoi imitatori son luterani». Vittoria Colonna e la riforma dei cappuccini’, in: Ludovico da Fossombrone e l’ordine dei cappuccini, ed. Vincenzo Criscuolo, (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 1994), 337–351. Rambaldi, Susanna Peyronel, Una gentildonna irrequieta. Giulia Gonzaga fra reti familiari e relazioni eterodosse (Roma: Viella, 2012).

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Robin, Diana, Publishing Women. Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Chicago – London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007). Roest, Bert, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004). Rusconi, Roberto, ‘Predicatori e predicazione’, in: Storia d’Italia. Annali 4: Intellettuali e potere, ed. Corrado Vivanti, (Turin: Einaudi 1972), 949–1035. Sella, Pacifico, Leone X e la definitiva divisione dell’Ordine dei Minori (Omin.): la bolla ‘Ite vos’ (29 Maggio 1517) (Grottaferrata, Rome: Quaracchi, 2001). Taplin, Mark, The Italian Reformers and the Zürich Church, c. 1540–1620 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). Tedeschi, John, The Prosecution of Heresy. Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton, NY: State University, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1991). Thayer, Anne T., Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). The Italian Reformation of the Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: A Bibliography of the Secondary Literature (ca. 1750–1997), ed. John Tedeschi and James M. Lattis (Ferrara: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2000). The Politics of Ritual Kinship. Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy, ed. Nicholas Terpstra (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2000). Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo, ed. Pina Ragioneri, (Florence: Mandragora, 2005). Viallet, Ludovic, Les sens de l’observance. Enquête sur les réformes franciscaines entre l’Elbe et l’Oder, de Capistran à Luther (vers 1450–vers 1520) (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2014). Williams, George H., The Radical Reformation (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 20003).

chapter 14

How to Write a Conversionary Sermon: Rhetorical Influences and Religious Identity Emily Michelson

Introduction: A New Sermon Genre?

The cardinals, pilgrims, and tourists who crowded into the oratory of Rome’s Trinità dei Pellegrini confraternity on Saturday afternoons witnessed the birth of a new opportunity in rhetoric. This was not, of course, their primary purpose. They had come to watch the unparalleled spectacle in which Rome’s ancient Jewish community sat through elaborate sermons aimed at their conversion. Conversionary preaching was not a new phenomenon; mendicants had practiced it since the thirteenth century. But weekly conversionary preaching, formally instated for the first time in Rome in the 1570s and 1580s, took place in a wholly new setting. In the years when conversionary preaching was first established, the context of a resurgent and triumphant CounterReformation urban Rome was only just emerging. The Reformation had brought new attention to the value of interior conversion, and indeed, of religious choice among confessions. Conversionary preaching itself was for the first time in Europe legislated, regular, and frequent. The sermons themselves ostensibly served a population with a nascent and distinct religious identity: New Catholics from the Roman Jewish community. This new form of conversionary preaching in Rome was born of twin drives. On one hand, it complemented other legislation regulating the behavior of Jews and other non-Christians.1 On the other hand, it accompanied a growing interest in urban religious display for Catholics that encouraged pious spectatorship, such as religious plays, public devotions, and church-hopping pilgrimages. Both of these trends were intended to increase the religious identity and loyalty of Catholics in Rome, against fears of heretical undercurrents and as part of a confessionalizing drive towards lay education and participation. Conversionary preaching served this purpose for Christians by providing a spectacle that publicly demonstrated how nonbelievers might freely choose Catholicism. 1 Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy 1555–1593 (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1977); Attilio Milano, Il Ghetto di Roma: Illustrazioni Storiche (Roma: Carucci editore, 1988). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi 10.1163/9789004310001_015

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The task of housing, feeding, funding, and above all, teaching the Jewish catechumens and neophytes fell to a group of allied organizations and religious orders.2 New religious orders, particularly Oratorians and Jesuits, took much of the public glory in this endeavor, but older orders, especially Franciscans and Dominicans, had an important influence. As the first preachers to Jews, mendicant orders in the middle ages set the initial terms for the rhetoric, structure, and general approach to conversionary preaching. Furthermore, the great mendicant preaching traditions of the Middle Ages influenced all preaching, both conversionary and Christian. In the early modern period, mendicants had to adapt their preaching heritage to the changed environment of post-Tridentine Rome. Conversionary preachers, and the network of institutions and dignitaries that supported them, had specific concerns for the religious identity of the new converts. They wanted to make sure that converts embraced their new faith willingly and knowledgeably, and they feared recidivism. Neophytes in Rome formed an unprecedented group- not legislated into Christianity as they were in Spain, and more deeply rooted in their own city than any other Jewish community in Europe. As a result, conversionary preaching in Rome provided an unprecedented opportunity to develop a new genre of sermon, adapted to the particular needs of its target audience. Sermons were a plastic genre in the middle ages and the early modern Period. The late medieval sermo modernus had come into vogue to replace the patristic homily because it suited the training of mendicant preachers; later, in the post-Tridentine period, bishops and their vicars revived the homily as an apt teaching tool for weekly diocesan preaching.3 The Tridentine decree on reading scripture in churches encouraged the revival in Italy of the exegetical homily and the lectionary.4 Furthermore, some of the most renowned conversionary preachers were themselves converts from Judaism, and therefore were not immersed in long-standing preaching traditions within the Church, mendicant or otherwise. For all these reasons, a new style of early modern conversionary sermon might plausibly have developed for a new urban and devotional context. By the late sixteenth century, conversionary preachers confronted a widening menu of relevant rhetorical styles. Various categories of literature influenced 2 Lance Gabriel Lazar, Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). 3 Emily Michelson, The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2013), 22–23. 4 Ibidem, 153–156.

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conversionary preaching to Jews. The earliest of these were the polemics and sermons produced in the context of the thirteenth-century disputations in Paris and Barcelona between Jews and Christians, all spearheaded by the Dominican order. These sermons became the most direct point of comparison for Roman conversionary sermons, but by no means the only one. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Observant Franciscans, as part of their burgeoning preaching mission, dwelled extensively on Jews in their sermons, providing a context for how Jews should be discussed in public settings. More recently, Jewish converts to Christianity in Italy wrote treatises documenting the reasons for their conversion. These converts were in some cases closely linked to conversionary preaching. To some extent these various sermon forms could contradict each other because of their very different origins. Particular questions about rhetoric apply to conversionary sermons. To what extent did early modern conversionary preachers rely on or rehearse the polemical arguments of the medieval disputations? Conversely, to what extent did they introduce new themes? Thirdly, how did preachers choose to discuss Jews in a context where Jews were the ostensible and professed audience but not by any means the only one? Did preachers, for example, address Jews directly, and if so, with what tone? Did they address, or show knowledge of, the concerns of the Roman Jewish community? To what extent did they incorporate or mention the context of Roman conversionary efforts on other fronts? How did they incorporate the Christian audience that also attended these sermons? These questions encompass the two greater contradictions that defined conversionary preaching. First, they help us to identify the contradiction between real and imaginary Jews: between the many Jewish families who had lived in Rome since Antiquity, as opposed to the theological category known as ‘Jew’ defined by Christian theologians for its relationship to Christianity.5 Second, they encapsulate the contradictory goals of reaching contrasting audiences at once. Conversionary sermons never had a single audience, and they were always public events. The alleged target audience – Roman Jewish potential converts – sat near catechumens and neophytes, who had already started on the path to conversion. These groups attended conversionary preaching both to strengthen their own fledgling Catholic identity, and to demonstrate 5 See Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999); and especially David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, 1st Ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013).

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the success of the conversionary mission. Equally important were the Christian spectators, from Cardinals to tourists, who attended sermons to Jews on a regular basis.6 Conversionary preachers needed to address these multiple audiences simultaneously, and sometimes at cross-purposes. Because of these complexities, and because they reflected their pressures of the Counter-Reformation Roman context, conversionary sermons capture an especially tense moment in Jewish-Christian relations. We must therefore assume that preachers thought extensively about how to construct their sermons to Jews. In this, they were helped by the example of prominent recent neophytes, who approached their former co-religionists with conversionary zeal. Collaboration and competition between converts and mendicants became a hallmark of Roman conversionary preaching. Yet in the long run, it was ultimately the contributions of the mendicants, and their extensive preaching heritage, that determined the nature of conversionary sermon rhetoric, and in so doing, revealed the sermons’ true purposes.

Two Medieval Precedents for the Conversionary Sermon

Two influential categories of medieval sermon rhetoric set the precedents for early modern conversionary preaching. Both of these categories contributed to the complex interplay between Christians and Jews in sermon rhetoric, and helped to determine how a preacher might speak publicly about Jews. Literature arising out of the context of polemics was primarily textual, rational, and exegetical. Largely dominated by Dominicans, it was ostensibly aimed directly at Jews for their conversion. Yet although it claimed to address Jews directly, in all cases the implicit Christian audience was as important as the explicit potential converts. Jewish convert preachers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ‘appear to have been driven by a desire to please Christians and harm Jews.’7 Meanwhile the anti-Jewish preaching of medieval mendicants, which flourished somewhat later, did not claim to address Jews directly, but did discuss Jews extensively. This preaching was dominated in Italy by Franciscans but strongly influenced by the preaching of the Spanish Dominican Vincent Ferrer. It was largely scathing, bitter, and incendiary.

6 Gregory Martin, Roma Sancta (1581), ed. George Bruner Parks (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1969) provides extensive description borne out by other sources. 7 Paola Tartakoff, Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250–1391 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 89–90.

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The Maimonidean controversies of the early thirteenth century, the Paris Talmud burning of 1240 and especially the Barcelona disputation of 1263 all made the theological differences between Christians and Jews into a public concern. As heresy, orthodoxy, and conversion took on added importance throughout southern Europe, these debates sought to demonstrate that Jewish texts could prove the superiority of Christianity.8 The disputations in particular bolstered a growing tradition of conversionary or polemical adversus Judaeos literature written by mendicants and converts, most notably the Dominicans Raymond of Penyaforte and Ramon Marti, and the convert Paul Christiani.9 These treatises and sermons established the basic forms of conversionary rhetoric. The Hebrew Bible and the rabbinic texts of the Mishnah, Talmud, and Midrash could all be reinterpreted as supporting Christian doctrine. Within this vast corpus of texts, certain passages became touchpoints for Christian polemics, and were deployed repeatedly to support a standard set of arguments: that the Messiah has already come, that Jesus is the Messiah; that he was born of a virgin; that God is triune; that the Mosaic law has been superseded.10 Proselytizers sought to demonstrate such mastery of Jewish texts as to prove their own interpretations true and the Jewish readings false. The entire act of staging a disputation, as scholars have long pointed out, seemed to validate the fundamental similarities between Christians and Jews. By offering detailed counter-readings of Jewish textual traditions, the Christian proselytizers confirmed the parallel importance of exegesis, close reading, and textual interpretation within both faiths. Both groups, however unnaturally, exchanged religious ideas, and both ‘had to function in the same cultural world

8 9 10

Robert Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge, uk ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 7–10. The field of Jewish-Christian relations in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is vast. The scholarship cited in the course of this discussion is not intended to be comprehensive. Fausto Parente, ‘Il Confronto Ideologico tra L’ebraismo e La Chiesa in Italia’, in: Italia Judaica. Atti del I Convegno internazionale, Bari, 18–22 Maggio, 1981 (Rome: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1983), 303–381; Fausto Parente, ‘La Chiesa e il “Talmud”: L’atteggiamento della Chiesa e del mondo cristiano nei confronti del “Talmud” e degli altri scritti rabbinici, con particolare riguardo all’Italia tra xv e xvi secolo’, in: Gli ebrei in Italia, Storia d’Italia: annali, ed. Corrado Vivanti, vol. 11, 2 vols. (Torino: G. Einaudi, 1996), 521–643; Robin J.E. Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 139–144; Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity, 19–20.

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of contested religious truths.’11 Jews were given the right to respond, however artificially; indeed the response of Rabbi Moses ben Nachman at Barcelona is one of the most famous texts of medieval Jewish history.12 Nonetheless, the disputations were above all a performance, not a debate, and the theatrical nature of disputations (and the resulting sermons) also made them inflexible.13 Since their object was to use ancient texts to prove eternal truths, they could not, by definition, address local or specific circumstances. Their arguments were meant to be based on reason, and universally applicable. They were indeed universally applied; the same texts, interpretations, and polemics formed the basis of sixteenth and seventeenth-century conversion rhetoric (and beyond). As a result, the Jews addressed in such literature were never the real Jewish communities of a specific time and place. Instead they were the ‘imaginary’ Jews, the theological antagonists of Christianity. In this way, the genre developed by the mendicants to address Jews directly could only use the most abstract terms. Other medieval mendicant traditions provided a different approach. The preaching revival of the later Middle Ages, led by Observant Franciscans, offered a very different model for the public discussion of Jews. To some extent this model also derived from the Barcelona disputations and the preaching of Paul Christiani.14 But in an age of financial crisis, plague, and upheaval, Jews became pointed targets of social unrest, especially in fifteenth-century Italy.15 Celebrated preachers, particularly Bernardino of Siena, Bernardino of Feltre, and Giovanni of Capistrano, engaged in rabble-rousing excoriation of Jews. They framed their discussions in practical and social terms.16 Bernardino of Siena explicitly forbade social interactions such as medical care, financial

11

Quotation from Jonathan M. Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking JewishChristian Relations in the Middle Ages, (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 2007), 67. 12 David Berger, ‘Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages’, The American Historical Review 91:3 (1986), 576–591; Robert Chazan, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 13 Tartakoff, Between Christian and Jew, 88–91; Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews, 127–128, 135. 14 Harvey J. Hames, The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century, The Medieval Mediterranean, 26 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2000), 113–114. 15 Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity, 7–10 argues for a specific sense of threat in late medieval Italy. 16 Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, ‘Jews and Judaism in the Rhetoric of Popular Preachers: The Florentine Sermons of Giovanni Dominici (1356–1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380– 1444)’, Jewish History 14:2 (2000), 175–200.

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loans, or even utensil-borrowing. Especially during the Lenten Passion cycle, Bernardino’s preaching mixed prohibitions, excoriation, and groundless antiSemitic myths with no distinction.17 These friars were often motivated by the perceived threat of Jewish violence (or proselytization) against Christians, and by the desire to eliminate usury. In many Italian cities, their sermons led directly to anti-Jewish violence and legislation. Preachers also successfully promoted the foundation of Monti di Pietà, Christian lending societies deliberately aimed at uprooting Jewish bankers. They encouraged the imposition of distinguishing signs, restrictions on freedom of movement and commerce, and in many places, expulsion.18 The preachers’ revival of ritual murder accusations led directly to violent attacks on local Jewish communities.19 For good or for ill (usually ill), these mendicants treated Jews, for all their theological deficiencies, as a real physical presence, living in cities alongside the Christian audiences for these sermons. Their sermons set a precedent for how to preach about Jews in front of Christians, a model for later conversionary sermons that attracted a Christian audience as part of their mission. In this way, two apparently contradictory rhetorical modes provided fodder for early modern conversionary preaching, with its persistently multilayered audiences. Disputational and conversionary sermons to Jews were largely exegetical, while mendicant sermons about Jews could be threateningly precise. Both modes were potentially relevant to the conversionary sermons of early modern Rome.

Early Modern Conversionary Sermons: Mendicants and Converts

The establishment of systematic conversionary preaching in the late sixteenth century represented a moment of particular interest in Jewish conversion, 17 18

19

Franco Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 164–218. For an introduction to this vast subject see Roberto Rusconi, ‘Predicatori ed Ebrei nell’arte Italiana del Rinascimento’, Iconographica 3 (2004), 148–161; Ben-Aryeh Debby, ‘Jews and Judaism’, passim. Diane Owen Hughes, ‘Distinguishing Signs: Ear-Rings, Jews and Franciscan Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance City’, Past & Present 112 (1986), 3–59. R. Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); For Italy, see, most recently Jussi Hanska, ‘Mendicant Preachers as Disseminators of Anti-Jewish Literary Topoi: The Case of Luca da Bitonto’, in: From Words to Deeds: The Effectiveness of Preaching in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014), 117–138.

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which also manifested in other measures: Talmud burnings; the expulsion of Jews from all of the Papal States except Rome and Ancona; financial incentives; the foundation of a casa dei Catecumeni and a later college for Neophytes; the establishment of the Roman ghetto. Two papal bulls from Gregory xiii established preaching as a fixed weekly practice.20 Further information about conversionary preaching in its early years comes in part from sermon texts themselves, as well as the accompanying legislation, and from other sources such as the memoirs, most famously of Michel de Montaigne and the English priest Gregory Martin.21 Sermons were to be held every Saturday afternoon, in various churches or oratories near to the ghetto. Jewish attendance was compulsory: a rotating third of population of adult Roman Jews was forced to attend, with names taken at the door, and regular controls of the audience. The post of ‘predicatore degli ebrei’ was intended a fixed position usually given to a theologian. A cardinal was appointed to oversee the whole process. In addition to the precedents set by the medieval disputations and the mendicant preaching revival, the early modern Period brought new rhetorical possibilities to conversionary sermons. Rome in the late sixteenth century was a festival of preaching, with celebrated preachers delivering grandiose and wellattended sermons in all the major pulpits of the city. Furthermore, preachers in sixteenth-century Rome could also draw on the model of contemporary conversionary narratives, written by the most prominent successes of the Counter-Reformation’s conversionary drive. The position of one of the first conversionary preachers in Rome, Evangelista Marcellino, demonstrates how all of these rhetorical influences could converge in the conversionary pulpit. Marcellino left behind one published volume of conversionary sermons; the most complete example of such preaching ever printed.22 As an Observant Franciscan and lifetime preacher, Marcellino would have been trained in the rhetorical traditions of his order. Marcellino did not preach exclusively to Jews. His main pulpit was the Franciscan mother church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and he preached in prominent churches elsewhere. He therefore had many occasions to draw on highly developed Franciscan rhetoric. Indeed, the star preacher of the late sixteenth century, Francesco Panigarola, held a residency in Aracoeli in the early 1580s during Marcellino’s

20 Vices Eius Nos in 1577 and Sancta Mater Ecclesia of 1584. 21 Martin, Roma Sancta (1581); Donald Murdoch Frame, Montaigne’s Travel Journal (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983). 22 Sermoni quindici sopra il Salmo centonove fatti agli Hebrei di Roma dal rpf Evangelista Marcellino (Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1583).

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period of conversionary preaching.23 Marcellino would also have been well aware of the sermons of Cornelio Musso, who held a fixed pulpit in San Lorenzo in Damaso from which he launched a forty-year career of celebrity preaching. Musso’s collected sermons, the fruit of a lifetime, were published just as Marcellino began his own preaching career. Franciscan preachers like Musso and Panigarola influenced other friars in Rome. Some of Marcellino’s brothers in the monastery of Aracoeli owned books by both preachers. In 1596, just four years after Marcellino’s death, the convent was required to send lists of its library holdings to the Congregation of the Index, as were all religious houses in Italy. These lists show that another convent member, Francesco Palumbara, reported owning one volume of Musso’s sermons and six works by Panigarola, as well as a book by Marcellino himself. Another brother, Girolamo of Napoli, owned Panigarola’s commentary on Jeremiah. Naturally the library in general also held many works of medieval rhetoric.24 For such preachers in Christian pulpits, the most direct precedent for discussing Jews was the Observant Franciscan anti-Jewish rhetoric of Bernardino of Siena and his colleagues. Any sixteenth-century Franciscan – Observants such as Marcellino and Conventuals such as Musso and Panigarola – would have been well steeped in this rhetoric even when their own sermons followed more erudite preaching models. The mandate of Franciscan preachers was to persuade and delight listeners.25 Even though they were required to follow the papal bull’s injunction to refute Jewish theology, they could therefore also have found ways to worked in the telling examples, vivid references, and memorable images that comprised the earlier mendicants’ techniques of persuasion. Indeed, many of Musso’s Lenten themes – Jewish deracination, ingratitude, malice, and stubbornness – recall this tradition. In Christian pulpits, both Marcellino and Musso evoked Jews often in their sermons. Unlike their Observant forbears, however, both of them avoided the harsh language and the specificity of medieval mendicants. Where Bernardino of Feltre and others railed against Jewish social and economic practices, mendicants in sixteenthcentury Rome used the most an abstract and unspecific evocation of Jews, 23 24 25

Emily Michelson, ‘Dramatics in (and out of) the Pulpit in Post-Tridentine Italy’, The Italianist 34:3 (September 2014), 449–462. Le Biblioteche degli ordini regolari in Italia (rici) database, http://ebusiness.taiprora.it/ bib/index.asp. Accessed on 26 January 2015. John O’Malley, ‘Form, Content and Influence of Works About Preaching Before Trent: The Franciscan Contribution’, in: I Frati Minori tra ‘400 e ‘500 Atti Del xii Convegno internazionale (Assisi: Centro di Studi Francescani, 1984), 27–50; Corrie Norman, Humanist Taste and Franciscan Values: Cornelio Musso and Catholic Preaching in SixteenthCentury Italy (New York: Peter Lang, 1998).

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with no reference to their social roles. Indeed, in most cases Jews appeared in these sermons only to serve as a theoretical counter-example in sermons that addressed the behavior of Christian listeners. Perhaps the Observant mendicant model, however popular it proved in fifteenth-century Siena, held less weight in a city that had already established its Monte di Pietà (in 1534) and decided on a policy of ghettos (from 1555) rather than expulsions as a means of Jewish segregation. Marcellino certainly also knew the work of three of the most prominent converts who were his contemporaries. He became preacher to the Jews alongside Andrea del Monte, the first conversionary preacher and later Hebraist at the Vatican Library. The two preachers collaborated closely; Marcellino claims to have shared the pulpit with Del Monte for a decade, and spoke highly of his colleague.26 Del Monte left behind two polemical works against Jews, and an oration for Julius iii, all now held in manuscript in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. His major work, Libro chiamato ­confusione de’ Giudei, e delle lor false opinioni, was written in the first half of the 1550s.27 It is a compendium of arguments against Judaism, intended to be read publicly ‘nelle botteghe di qualunche artigiano si sia’ and meant explicitly to educate a wide range of audiences: Christians, catechumens, Jews, and even preachers.28 His other treatise, Della verita della venuta del Messia alli Hebrei (Lettera di Pace), was also intended to be read aloud in synagogues. The treatise argued that the Messiah has already come, and contains rebuttals of supposed Jewish objections, and an injunction to convert. In addition to Del Monte’s works, the treatises of two other prominent converts also appeared in print in the same year as Marcellino’s own conversionary sermons. One of them, Fabiano Fioghi, held a post teaching Hebrew at the Collegio dei Neofiti, established in 1577 for the specific purpose of training converts as conversionary preachers. The Collegio employed many former Jews as teachers and linguists. Fioghi’s role as its Hebraist, then, was to teach converts to use Hebrew in the conversionary pulpit as Marcellino did. The neophytes brought in to listen to Marcellino’s Saturday sermons would therefore have been Fioghi’s students. Fioghi also served on a papal committee to create 26

27 28

For evidence of the association between Marcellino and dell Monte, see Emily Michelson, ‘Evangelista Marcellino: One Preacher, Two Audiences’, Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pietà 25 (2012), 105–202: at 190. The dating is explained in the dbi, s.v. Andrea del Monte. Andrea Del Monte, Confusione degli Ebrei, Biblioteca ApostolicaVaticana, Vat. Lat. 14627, f ii v.

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a collection of sciptural conversionary passages intended to appeal to both Catholics and Jews.29 His Dialogo fra il cathecumino et il padre cathechizante contains a chapter dedicated to an analysis of psalm 109/110, ‘Dixit Dominus Domino meo sede a dextris meis.’ This psalm was also the extended subject of Marcellino’s own volume of sermons. Psalm 109/110 was a familiar conversionary source, but far less common than other Biblical passages, such as Isaiah 7 and 53. A third convert, Giovanni Paolo Eustachio, also formed part of the cohort of former Jews who remained engaged with Hebrew texts. Eustachio became a professor of Hebrew in Rome, a censor of Hebrew books, and a specialist in Hebrew texts at the Vatican Library. He also worked closely with del Monte and Fioghi; he and Fioghi were present when del Monte’s inventory was read at his death, and Del Monte and Eustachio each held the position of scrittore at the Vatican Library over the course of the late sixteenth century.30 Eustachio left behind a large body of literature in manuscript and print, but his major treatise, the Salutari Discorsi, was written in 1575 and published in 1582. The works by these three converts also take a textual and polemical approach to conversion, but they differ in important ways from Marcellino’s volume. Marcellino’s set of fifteen sermons provided an extended analysis of one psalm, number 109 in Christian numbering. Following in the tradition of medieval polemicists, Marcellino read the psalm closely, dissecting its grammar and its various rabbinical interpretations. He used this expertise in Jewish sources to argue that this psalm, like all Jewish texts, actually demonstrates Christian truths: Christ as Messiah and Redeemer, the Trinity, the virginity of Mary, the necessary misery of Jews. But whereas Marcellino’s sermons stick closely to exegetical arguments, seeking to prove Catholic doctrine through close readings and grammatical analysis, the works of converts introduced new tones and also new arguments. Del Monte’s major treatise, the Confusione de giudei, e delle lor false opinioni, famously contains a level of animosity towards Jews 29

30

Piet Van Boxel, ‘Robert Bellarmine Reads Rashi: Rabbinic Bible Commentaries and the Burning of the Talmud’, in: The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy, ed. Joseph Hacker and Adam Shear (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 121–132; Piet Van Boxel, ‘Cardinal Santoro and the Expurgation of Hebrew Literature’, in: The Roman Inquisition, the Index and the Jews: Contexts, Sources and Perspectives, ed. Stephan Wendehorst (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004), 19–34. Barbara Leber, ‘Jewish Convert in Counter-Reformation Rome: Giovanni Paolo Eustachio’, Ph.D dissertation (University of Maryland, 2001); also Todd Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold (Princeton University Press, 2015), 43–44; Franco Buzzi and Roberta Ferro, Federico Borromeo fondatore della Biblioteca Ambrosiana: atti delle giornate di studio 25–27 novembre 2004 (Milan-Rome: Biblioteca ambrosiana, 2005), 482–485.

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that Marcellino’s work lacks. Del Monte’s text routinely refers to ‘petty Jews’ and describes their depravity: ‘the God of the Jews today, who mourns so and is despondent because of their evilness…’; ‘…all in all they [the Jews] were idolatrous, lustful, and homicidal.’31 Del Monte, born in Fez and converted in Rome in the 1550s, was far less deeply rooted in monastic traditions and mendicant rhetoric than was his associate Marcellino. As with many converts, his animosity was more personal than historic.32 But Del Monte was also far more willing to make an argument that reflected his specific environment. His Lettera della Pace contains a section refuting the supposed Jewish objections to conversion. This section starts to introduce new themes that would, by the end of the century, become standard Counter-Reformation posturing. Long before Panigarola would make the same argument in his collected Prediche of 1577, Del Monte argued that the Christianization of new worlds was a sign of the victory and truth of Catholicism: Today in our own times, we ourselves see the faith of the blessed Christ disseminated in many kingdoms of India and of the Antipodes, who until now were unknown, in verification of the sayings of the prophets, so much so that not only may you see it recognized by all the known nations of the world, but even, in these days, in many countries which were completely unknown, whether in histories, or cosmographies, or by any other means, and you may learn with how much zeal, and how miraculously, they have turned to the faith of Christ our savior, and how sacredly they live, because every day, there are news and notifications of new people, and kingdoms, who come to this holy faith, and already very accurate histories have been published, especially by the Jesuits, who work so hard for conversion.33 31

32 33

‘…del moderno dio di giudei, il quale talmente si duole et è malincoloso per la lor cattività.’ Confusione deli Ebrei, f49r.; ‘nel sommo grado fussero stati idolatri, lussuriosi, et homicidi.’ f54r. Leber, ‘Jewish Convert’, 187–189, notes the wide variation in levels of hostility that converts, including the three discussed here, displayed towards Jews. ‘vedendo noi stessi hoggi a nostri tempi la fede di Christo benedetto essere dilatata in moltissimi Regni dell’India et delli Antipodi, li quali fino a infin hora sono stati incogniti, per verificarvi li detti delli profeti, talmente, che non solo vediate quella da tutte le nationi del mondo conosciuta, ma a questi tempi in moltissimi paesi de quali non mai s’ha havuto notitia, ne per historie, ne per cosmografi, ne per alcun’altro modo, Et con quanto desiderio, et quanto miracolosamente recorsano alla fede di Christo salvator nostro, et quanto santamente vivano lo potete sapere/ per che ogni giorno, se ne ha nuova et si ha aviso de nove genti, et Regni, che vengono a questa santa fede, et gia ne sono date fuora fidelissime

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The emphasis on converting new lands became a primary emphasis of the Counter-Reformation.34 Del Monte’s individual praise of the Jesuits anchors his conversionary exhortations to a specific era. Like Del Monte, Fabiano Fioghi also introduced unconventional subjects alongside theological arguments, but focused on ritual. Where traditional polemical literature consistently treated Jews as an abstract and eternal category, and ignored ritual life or the distinctiveness of Roman Jewish traditions, Fioghi devoted eight chapters (out of a hundred) to rebutting Jewish rituals – offended precisely by their continuity in the face of Christian arguments against them. Fioghi embraced the challenge of refuting Jewish domestic practices, starting from the most well known (not eating pork), proceeding to the most intimate (practices around circumcision and menstrual cycles) and ending with Jewish festivals before returning to his discussion of the Messiah. Each of these chapters briefly reviews the Biblical precedent for the Jewish law, and then explains why Christian doctrine considers the practice superseded. The dialogue form keeps Fioghi’s tone informal and straightforward throughout, with far less of the animosity that marked Andrea del Monte’s work. Some of that animosity does appear in Eustachio’s treatise from the same year. Most of his Saluti Discorsi is a straightforward and traditional textual argument for a Christian Messiah based on Rabbinic sourses, but Eustachio’s disdain for his ‘fratelli della carne’ seeps through: ‘their promises have been lies and pretenses…all the hopes that your ancient holy fathers had in the Messiah have been in vain and frustrated, so many of your Rabbis who interpret innumerable texts about the Messiah have been liars. Let the world be rid of all of the books of the Hebrew Rabbis; let all the writings of the prophets be burned that say that our holy fathers are mad; let each person cry out that God is not to be found [there] because the God of the Hebrews is a liar.’35 Eustachio’s

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historie, massime di questi R.di Padri del Giesu, che’in questa conversione tanti si affatiggano.’ Andrea del Monte, Della verita della venuta del Messia alli Hebrei…intitulate Lettera di Pace, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Neofiti 37, 169r–170r. See also Francesco Panigarola, Prediche Sopra gl’Evangelii di Quaresima (Rome: Stefano Paolini, 1577), 277 and incirca. See for example Simon Ditchfield, ‘Decentering the Catholic Reformation: Papacy and Peoples in the Early Modern World’, Archiv Fur Reformationsgeschichte 101 (2010): 186–208. ‘…sono state bugiarde, & finte le promesse, che di lui ci ha fatto per li Profeti, sono state vane, & frustatorie tutte le spieranze, che i vostri antiqui & santi Padri hanno havuto nel’Emssia, sono bugiardi tanti vostri Rabbini, i quali espongono testi innumerabili intendersi del Messia.Tolgansi dunque dal mondo tutti i libri de i Rabbini Hebbrei brucinsi tutte le scritture deli profeti, dicasi, che sono stati pazzi tutti i Santi Padri nostri, gridi ogn’uno, che non si truova Iddio, poi che il Dio de gli Hebbrei e’ un bugiardo.’

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treatise ends with a long discourse on the life of a convert, more affable and far more specific about the road to conversion. It closes with an exhortation to seek out the casa dei catecumeni, ‘where the bread of the word of God will be administered to you, and the holy articles of faith, and you will be instructed in how to live as a Christian.’36 In this way, while the general content of Eustachio’s treatise echoes long-standing medieval traditions formed by mendicants, his language, like that of Andrea del Monte, uses examples that would have been impossible for his medieval antecedents. Only in a society with a broad network of conversionary institutions could Eustachio invoke the casa de Catecumeni as part of his exhortations. Eustachio’s treatise reflects the peak period of optimism for Roman Jewish conversion, which perhaps explains the cluster of conversionary works published around 1582. Conclusion The work of these three neophytes and others highlights compelling new alternatives and additions to long-standing conversionary pulpit rhetoric. Treatises by converts strengthened the case for a harsher and more antagonistic tone, and set a new precedent for including contemporary context, such as the conversionary efforts in Rome and the growing overseas missions. Yet Andrea del Monte proved unpopular in the pulpit and Fioghi and Eustachio’s works were not widely distributed at the time.37 Despite the centrality of new Christians such as these to the conversionary mission, their rhetorical innovations did not displace the exegetical model inherited from the medieval disputations. A mendicant conversionary preacher such as Marcellino remained equally indebted to more conventional preachers such as Musso and Panigarola, who inherited – but did not always employ – the histrionics and harsh language of the mendicant preaching revival.

36

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Giovanni Paolo Eustachio, Salutari discorsi composti da M. Giovan Paolo Eustachi Nolano, Gia Hebbreo, hor Christiano…ad utilita’ d’Hebbrei (Rome: Giovanni Battista Cappelli, 1582), 12r. ‘…ala casa de Catecumeni, over ti sara’ ministrato/ il pane dela parola di Dio, sarai ammaestrato de i santi artioli de la fede, & instrutto del modo del viviere Christano.’ Salutari Discorsi, 48r. On this addendum to the Discorsi, see Leber, ‘Jewish Convert’, 194–208. Eustachio’s treatise was only printed in one edition. Fioghi’s dialogue was later reprinted in 1611 and in 1628. For Andrea del Monte, see dbi.

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Ultimately, the content of conversionary sermons in the sixteenth century conformed most closely with the techniques and approaches developed in medieval polemics. Marcellino’s sermons relied heavily on his knowledge of Hebrew grammar, and on long-standing theological arguments. References to the contemporary Roman audience, or to the expanding Catholic world, were imperceptible. This pattern holds for other conversionary sermons from these decades, a small category that includes sermons preached by Domenico Gerosolomitano in Rome, Vitale Medici in Florence in 1582 and Faustino Tasso in Naples in 1575, and one sermon by Benedetto Biancucci to the Jews of Rome in 1605.38 Only later into the seventeenth century would conversionary preachers more consistently incorporate both the tone and specificity of conversionary treatises, as well as the global rhetoric of the Counter Reformation, in sermons to Jews. Because they adhered to a particular strain of medieval rhetoric that emphasized abstract, eternal concepts over vivid local imagery, early modern conversionary sermons could never have had a primary goal of direct persuasion. Instead, they continued their function as a public performance, demonstrating the truth of Christianity in order to fortify a Christian audience.39 This model of assembling a congregation in order to preach to the choir proved versatile; it worked equally well in medieval Spain and in Counter-Reformation Italy – two regions beset, in different ways, by fears of heresy and schism. Yet it must be noted that in the later context, conversionary preachers had to ignore much more material, both rhetorical and historical, in order for their sermons to remain more or less the same as ever. The decision to maintain tradition demonstrates how in these contexts, as in many others, Jews proved a powerful foil for strengthening the threatened religious identity of a Christian laity that, in attending these spectacles, fulfilled its true purpose.

38

Vitale Medici, Omelie Fatte alli Ebrei di Firenze…et Sermoni Fatti in Piu compagnie della detta citta, (Florence: Nella stamperia de’ Giunti, 1585); Faustino Tasso, Venti ragionamenti familiari sopra la venuta del Messia…fatti in Napoli ad alcuni hebrei (Venice: Giovanni Battista Somasco, 1585); Benedetto Biancucci, Lettione fatta alli Hebrei di Roma, nell´Oratorio della Santissima Trinità de´ Pellegrini, & Convalescenti, li 8 di ottobre 1605 (Rome: Zanetti, 1606). The manuscript sermons of Gerosolomitano are held at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, along with three volumes of his Hebrew translation of the Gospels and his autobiography. The sermons date from the period 1576–1583 and are written in Hebrew and Italian using Hebrew characters. I have not yet been able to examine them for inclusion here. 39 Chazan, Fashioning Jewish Identity, 17–18.

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Select Bibliography

Ben-Aryeh Debby, Nirit, ‘Jews and Judaism in the Rhetoric of Popular Preachers: The Florentine Sermons of Giovanni Dominici (1356–1419) and Bernardino Da Siena (1380–1444)’, Jewish History 14: 2 (2000), 175–200. Berger, David, ‘Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages’, The American Historical Review 91: 3 (1986), 576–591. Chazan, Robert, Barcelona and Beyond: The Disputation of 1263 and Its Aftermath (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). ———, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). ———, Fashioning Jewish Identity in Medieval Western Christendom (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Cohen, Jeremy, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999). Ditchfield, Simon, ‘Decentering the Catholic Reformation: Papacy and Peoples in the Early Modern World’, Archiv Fur Reformationsgeschichte 101 (2010): 186–208. Elukin, Jonathan M., Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). Endelman, Todd, Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Modern Jewish History (Princeton University Press, 2015). Hames, Harvey J., The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century, The Medieval Mediterranean, 26 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2000). Hanska, Jussi, ‘Mendicant Preachers as Disseminators of Anti-Jewish Literary Topoi: The Case of Luca Da Bitonto’, in: From Words to Deeds: The Effectiveness of Preaching in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014), 117–138. Hsia, R., The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). Lazar, Lance Gabriel, Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). Leber, Barbara, ‘Jewish Convert in Counter-Reformation Rome: Giovanni Paolo Eustachio’, Ph.D dissertation (University of Maryland, 2001). Michelson, Emily, ‘Evangelista Marcellino: One Preacher, Two Audiences’, Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pietà 25 (2012), 105–202. ———, The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). ———, ‘Dramatics in (and out of) the Pulpit in Post-Tridentine Italy’, The Italianist 34: 3 (September 2014), 449–462. Milano, Attilio, Il Ghetto di Roma: Illustrazioni Storiche (Roma: Carucci editore, 1988).

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Mormando, Franco, The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Nirenberg, David, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, 1st Ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013). Norman, Corrie, Humanist Taste and Franciscan Values: Cornelio Musso and Catholic Preaching in Sixteenth-Century Italy (New York: Peter Lang, 1998). O’Malley, John, ‘Form, Content and Influence of Works About Preaching Before Trent: The Franciscan Contribution’, in: I Frati Minori tra ‘400 e ‘500: Atti del XII Convengno internazionale (Assisi: Centro di Studi Francescani, 1984), 27–50. Owen Hughes, Diane, ‘Distinguishing Signs: Ear-Rings, Jews and Franciscan Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance City’, Past & Present 112 (1986), 3–59. Parente, Parente, ‘Il Confronto Ideologico tra L’ebraismo e La Chiesa in Italia’, in: Italia Judaica. Atti del I Convegno internazionale, Bari, 18–22 Maggio, 1981 (Rome: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali. Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1983), 303–381. ———, ‘La Chiesa e il “Talmud”: L’atteggiamento della Chiesa e del mondo cristiano nei confronti del “Talmud” e degli altri scritti rabbinici, con particolare riguardo all’Italia tra XV e XVI secolo’, in: Gli ebrei in Italia, Storia d’Italia: annali, ed. Corrado Vivanti, vol. 11, 2 vols. (Torino: G. Einaudi, 1996), 521–643. Rusconi, Roberto, ‘Predicatori ed Ebrei nell’arte Italiana del Rinascimento’, Iconographica 3 (2004), 148–161. Stow, Kenneth R., Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy 1555–1593 (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1977). Tartakoff, Paola, Between Christian and Jew: Conversion and Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon, 1250–1391. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). Van Boxel, Piet, ‘Cardinal Santoro and the Expurgation of Hebrew Literature’, in: The Roman Inquisition, the Index and the Jews: Contexts, Sources and Perspectives, ed. Stephan Wendehorst (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2004), 19–34. ———, ‘Robert Bellarmine Reads Rashi: Rabbinic Bible Commentaries and the Burning of the Talmud’, in: The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy, ed. Joseph Hacker and Adam Shear (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 121–132. Vose, Robin J.E., Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Index of Names Abbot of Saint-Laurent 33, 36 Adriaen of Berghen 164 Agostino Seripando 230 Albrecht Altdorfer 134, 138, 142 Alexander v 72 Alfonso de Spina 118 Alfonso of Jaén 14, 26 Ambrosius Holbein 135 Andrea del Monte 244, 247–248 Andrea Porcellini 25 Andreas Alvares 80–81 Andreas Bodenstein (Carlstadt) 184 Angelina of Montegiove 75 Anna Bijns 160 Antonio Rusconi 39 Arcangela Gambacorta 19 Aristotle 191 Ascanio Colonna 227

Charles the Bold 102 Chiara Gambacorta 13–15, 18–27 Chiara of Assisi/Clare of Assisi 44, 50, 60 Claire Puget 36, 44 Colette of Corbie 5, 32–47, 181 Colomba of Rieti 28–29 Cornelio Musso 11, 243, 248 Cosimo de Medici 105, 106 Cristóbal de la Cruz 198–199 Cristoforo of Forlí 161

Bartolomea Riccoboni 25 Bartolomeo of Pisa 75, 156, 158, 164, 168, 183, 187 Benedetto Biancucci 249 Benedict xiii 37, 41 Bernardino Busti 7, 111, 115, 117, 120–122, 161, 201, 207–21Bernardino Guslino 76 Bernardino Ochino 10, 214–234 Bernardino of Feltre 76, 161, 240, 243 Bernardino of Siena 39, 42, 141, 160, 161, 172, 181, 183, 226, 227, 240, 241, 243 Bernard of Clairvaux 49, 90 Birgitta of Sweden 14, 16, 22–24, 26 Bonaventura of Bagnoregio 111, 155, 156, 165, 183, 187, 208 Boniface viii 29, 79 Boniface ix 75 Buonamico Buffalmacco 203

Eberhard Mardach 136 Elizabeth of Bavaria 35, 38, 41 Elizabeth of Poylc 93 Erasmus 148, 167, 168 Erasmus Alberus 168, 187 Etienne de Juilly 32 Eugenius iv 34, 36, 39, 74–76, 174 Evangelista Marcellino 11, 242, 244

Caritas Pirckheimer 5, 49, 62, 64 Caterina Cibo 222 Caterina of Siena 14–18, 22–24, 27–29 Catherine of Alexandria 17 Catherine Rufiné 32, 34, 35, 38 Charles v 32, 223

Diana degli Andalò 20 Dionysius of Holland 93 Dirk Coelde 161, 163 Domenico Gerosolomitano 249 Domenico of Peccioli 13, 25, 26 Duns Scotus 116 Durandus of Mende 116

Fabiano Fioghi 244, 247 Felix Fabri 130 Filippa Albizi of Vico 23, 25–26 Francesca of Lavaiano 25 Francesco d’Assisi/Francis of Assisi 8, 50, 69–70, 78, 174, 220 Francesco Gonzaga 175 Francesco Palumbara 243 Francesco Panigarola 11, 242, 247 Francesco Sansone 188 Francisco López Africano 192–193, 195 Francisco Quiñones 181 Franz Günthers 184 Faustino Tasso 249 Gabriella Bonconti 26 Garcia de Contreras 103

254 Gasparo Contarini 219, 228 Georg Carpentarius 147 Gerard David 103 Gérard de Frachet 25 Giacomo della Marca 181–182 Gian Matteo Giberti 218 Gian Pietro Carafa 217–218 Giovanna (virgin) 25 Giovanni Arnolfini 103 Giovanni Dominici 14. 22, 25, 240 Giovanni of Capistrano 36, 38–39, 40, 59, 75–76, 97, 160, 161, 174, 176, 177, 181, 183, 240 Giovanni Paolo Eustachio 245, 247–248 Girolamo of Napoli 243 Giulia Gonzaga 10, 216, 222–223 Gregorio Rosso 223 Gregorius Bonte 165 Gregory x 50 Gregory xiii 242 Gregory Martin 238, 242 Guido of Monte Rochen (Guy de Montrocher) 112–115 Guillaume Hugonet 103 Guillaume of St-Thierry 90 Guillelmo of Casale 34 Guillemette Chrestienne 34–36, 42, 45 Guiomar 193 Hans Holbein 135 Hans Memling 101 Hans Othmar 129 Hans Rüegger 126. 147 Heinrich Haß 91–92 Heinrich Seuse 7, 126–131, 133–136, 141, 144–147 Hendrik Eckert van Homberch 152, 163 Hendrik Herp 6, 88–95, 99, 101–102, 163 Henri de Baume 37–38, 181 Hieronymus Bosch 202–204 Honorius iii 122 Hugh of St. Cher 120 Hugo van der Goes 99, 101–102, 105 Iacopa Gettalebraccia 25 Iacopo d’Appiano 24 Innocent iv 37, 70 Isabella of Portugal 93, 98–99, 102 Jacob Wolff of Pforzheim 126, 146 Jacopone da Todi 158

Index of Names Jacopo of Varagine 225 Jacques Fodéré 33 Jan Brugman 87 Jan Hus 73 Jan van Nieuwenhove 103 Jan van Ruusbroec 90, 95 Jean de Baenst 97, 103, 105–106 Jean Glapion 98–99 Jean Maubert 40 Jeanne Labeur 35–40 Jean Pinet 38 Johann Eberlin von Günzburg 167,187 Johannes Dietenberger 124 Johannes Einzlinger 56–58, 62, 64 Johannes Herolt 114 Johannes Mahusius 165 Johannes Meyer 27 Johannes Tauler 90 Johannes Trithemius 49, 64 Johann Rynmann of Oeringen 129 John xxiii 72–74, 76, 82 John Mirk 112, 114–115, 119 John Wyclif 7, 73, 115 Josse Clichtou 32 Juan de Guadelupe 176 Juan de Santiago 192 Juan de Valdés 10, 215–216, 221, 223–224 Julius iii 244 Justina Plebin 65 Kaspar Schatzgeyer 185 Katharina von Zimmern 148 Leo x 42, 77–78, 152, 162 Leo Jud 148 Lodewijk van Gruuthuse 103 Lorenzo Gambacorta 24 Ludovico of Fossombrone 218, 220 Ludwig Moser 147 Luke Wadding 33, 73, 80, 82 Luther 50, 92, 121, 124, 167–168, 172, 180, 183, 185, 214–215, 219 Marco Antonio Flaminio 215, 222, 230 Marcus van Vaernewijck 153, 165–167, 169 Margaret of York 98, 102–103 Marguerite d’Youville 74 Maria Mancini 19, 23, 26 María Ruiz 195–196

255

Index of Names Maria Sturioni (Maria of Venice) 18, 27 Marie de la Marche 34, 38–39 Marietta of Genoa 25 Marnix of St Aldegonde 168–169 Marquard of Lindau 145–146 Martin v 72, 74–76, 181 Martin Morin 165 Marx Werdmüller 7, 127, 142–143, 146–148 Mary of Burgundy 103, 105 Matteo of Bascio 218 Matthias Weynsen 163–165, 167–169 Michael Lochmaier 112 Michelangelo 226 Michel de Montaigne 242 Michele Carcano 201, 205–206, 208–209 Michel Menot 114, Michel Notel 32 Moses ben Nachman 240 Nicholas iii 81 Nicholas iv 69 Nicholas v 77 Niklaus of Flüe 142 Nikolaas Roelants 87 Olivier de Longhe 32 Olivier Maillard 51–54, 56, 58, 64–65 Paolo Giustiniani 173 Paolo Pisotti of Parma 218 Paoluccio Trinci 74, 177 Paul ii 98 Paul iii 80–81, 219, 227 Paul Christiani 239–240 Pedro de Alcalá 197 Pedro de Torres Arçe 193 Pedro de Villacreces 181 Perrine de la Roche 32, 34–36, 41 Peter Blomevenna 88 Peter Kirchschlag 92 Petra de Obriachi of Florence 25 Petrus Christus 103 Philip the Fair 102 Philip the Good 87, 93, 98, 102, 106 Pierre de Vaux 32–41 Pietro of Naples 161 Pietro Quirini 173 Pius v 29, 79–80, 82

Plato 191, 223 Pontormo 226 Pseudo-Bonaventure 7, 112 Raimondo of Capua 14, 17–18, 27 Ramon Marti 239 Raniera of Lavaiano 25 Raymond of Penyaforte 239 Reginald Pole 216, 222 Rinaldo Corso 226 Rudolph of Biberach 56, 90 Savonarola 26, 214 Sebastian Brant 141, 146, 202 Serafino Penacchi 22 Serafino Razzi 19, 22–23, 36 Silvère d’Abbeville 33, 36 Simone of Cascina 25 Sixt Buchsbaum 141 Sixtus iv 77, 141, 161, 188 Stefano Maconi 15 Stefanus Fridolin 54–56, 58, 62, 64–65 Stephan Brulefer 161 Theobald Roris 98 Thomas Aquinas 26, 90, 112, 161, 178 Thomas Müntzer 184 Thomas Murner 146 Thomas of Chobham 7, 112 Thomas Swalwell 7, 110–124 Tiziano 226 Tommaso Caffarini of Siena 14, 18 Tommaso Portinari 97–107 Tommaso Sanfelice 230 Urban iv 13 Ursula Haider 62, 64 Vincent Ferrer 238 Vitale Medici 249 Vittoria Colonna 220, 222, 225–228 Willem of Alkmaar 164, 167 Ynes 193 Zwingli 127, 147–148

Index of Places and Subjects Adversus Judaeos literature 239 Albolot 195 Alcoranus Franciscanorum (see Liber de Conformitate) 168 Alfabeto cristiano (Juan de Valdés) 223–224 Algiers 198 Amadeites 181 Americas 191–200 Amiens 34–35, 37–38, 40, 43–44 Amsterdam (Carthusian monastery) 91 Ancona 242 Ansprache an die Nürnberger Klarissen über die Anfechtungen des Teufels (Olivier Maillard) 51–54, 65 Antwerp 87, 89, 97, 152, 163–164 Arabic language 9, 191–200 Aracoeli 242–243 Arte para ligeramente aprender lengua arabiga (Pedro de Alcalá) 197 Augustinian order 71, 79, 101, 112, 173, 185 Ave Maria 114–115, 137–138 Ave sancta Maria 141 Avignon 37, 72 Basel 126–127, 130, 134–135, 138, 142, 144, 146–147 Benedictine order 7, 49, 87, 110–124, 173 Beneficio di Christo 221–222 Bernardines 181, 183–184 Besançon 36, 39 Boetendaal (friary) 93 Bohemia (reforms) 95, 183 Bologna 15, 20, 73, 226 Braamberg (Franciscans) 97–98, 102–103, 106 Brabant (duchy of) 163 Brigata 14, 18 Brixen/Bressanone (convent of Poor Clares) 52, 65 Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life (see Devotio Moderna) Bruges 88, 96–99, 102–106 Bulla unionis (see Ite et vos in vineam meam) 152, 160, 164 Burgundy (Franciscan province) 37, 40 Bursfeld (Benedictine reform congregation) 87

Calvinism 214 Camposanto of Pisa (with Last Judgement paintings by Buonamico Buffalmacco) 203 Capriolanti 188 Capuchin order 10, 43–44, 180, 182, 214–230 Capuchin sisters 43–44 Carmelite order 79 Casa dei Cappuccinelli 227 Casa dei Catecumeni 242, 248 Caterinati 14–15, 17 Chapter of Cologne 76 Chapter of Utrecht 76, 91 Chapter of Venlo 91 Chapter of Windesheim 91, 92, 95 Chapter of Zepperen 76 Circa pastoralis (bull) 29, 79, 82 ‘Cismontane’ constitutions of 1443 174 Clareni 9, 181, 188 Coletans 9, 37–40, 43, 98, 163, 174–175, 181 Colettine house in Amiens 34f, 37–38, 43–44 Colettine house in Lezignan 44 Colettine house in Lille 44 Colettine house in Montbrison 44 Colettine house in Vevey 35–36, 40–41 Colettine reforms 5, 32–47, 181 Collationes de decem praeceptis (Bonaventura of Bagnoregio) 208 Collegio dei Neofiti 244 Cologne (Observant Franciscan ­province) 90, 93, 152, 155, 164–165 Commentarii in Lucam 165 Confession 110, 112–113, 119, 121, 144, 147, 162, 178, 201–213 Confessionale generale della gran tuba (Michele Carcano) 201, 205–206, 209 Confraternity of Our Lady of the Dry Tree (Bruges) 97, 102–106 Confusione de giudei, e delle lor false opinioni (Andrea Del Monte) 244–246 Contra temerarium Martini Luteri de votis monasticis iudicium (Johannes Dietenberger) 124 Conventuals 3, 6, 8, 36, 38–39, 42, 43, 46, 86–88, 97–98, 102–106, 152, 160, 161, 163, 169, 174–175, 177, 181, 243

257

Index of Places and Subjects Conversos 194 Copala 192 Corpus Christi (monastery, Venice) 13, 22, 25, 27 Council of Constance 37, 72, 172 Council of Pisa 72 Council of Trent 29, 46, 78–80, 194, 210, 217, 230 Counter-Reformation 1, 3, 11, 72, 207, 235, 238, 242, 246–247, 249 Cratylus (Plato) 191 Crossen friary (Krosno Odrzańskie) 184 Cseri (Hungarian Franciscan friary) 182 Cura monialium 50, 71, 76, 91 Cura pastoralis 112 De articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis (Thomas Aquinas) 112 Decalogue (see Ten Commandments) De divinis nominibus (pseudo-Dionysius) 132 Defensorium tertii ordinis (Giovanni of Capistrano) 75 De interpretatione (Aristotle) 191 Delft 89 Della verita della venuta del Messia alli Hebrei (Andrea Del Monte) 244, 247 De mundicia et castitate sacerdotum (pseudo-Bonaventure) 7, 112 Den Wijngaert van Sinte Franciscus 152–171, 187 De origine Seraphicae Religionis Franciscanae (Francesco Gonzaga) 175 Der Barfuser Muenche Eulenspiegel und Alcoran (Erasmus Alberus) 187 Der Ewigen Wiszheit Betbüchlin 7, 126–151 De septem itineribus aeternitatis (Rudolf of Biberach) 56 De triplici regione claustralium (Johannes Trithemius) 49 Dévotes 80 Devotio Moderna 76, 91, 163 De votis monasticis (Luther) 124, 185–186 Dialogi sette (Bernardino Ochino) 222, 225 Dialogo (Caterina of Siena) 15–16 Dialogo fra il cathecumino et il padre cathechizante (Fabiano Fioghi) 245 Diepenveen (community of Regular Canonesses) 91 Diet of Regensburg 219 Discalceati 182

Doctrina (Pedro de Alcalá) 197 Dôle 38 Dominican/Dominican order 4, 5, 13–30, 70, 79, 90–91, 92, 95, 105, 114, 120, 127, 129–130, 136, 139, 142–143, 146, 147, 161, 166, 178, 185, 236–240 Donna secura, accesa, e da l’errante (Vittoria Colonna) 226 Durham 7, 111, 113, 115, 124 Durham College (Oxford) 113 Ea est officii nostri (bull) 82 Ecclesiastes 3:4 93 Enclosure 13f, 21, 24, 29, 35, 42, 74, 76–77, 79–80 English Ladies 80 Exegesis 225, 230, 239 Ezelspoort (Observant friary, Bruges) 98–99, 103 Festial (model sermon collection by John Mirk) 115, 119 Fifth Lateran Council 77–78 Florence 25, 70, 100, 102, 105, 218, 226, 249 Fortalitium fidei (Alfonso de Spina) 118 Fourth Lateran Council 202 Franciscan/Franciscan order 5, 6, 8–9, 21, 32, 33–37, 39–43, 46,48–51, 54, 56, 59, 69–85, 86–93, 95–99, 101–106, 111, 114, 118, 145, 146, 152–171, 172–190, 201, 203, 206, 207, 215, 218, 222, 225, 228, 236, 237, 238, 240, 242–243 ‘Franciscan’ tertiary rule of 1289 73–76, 78, 81–82 ‘Franciscan’ third order 6, 69–83, 91, 161 Fratres Cherienses 182 Friars Minor of the Eremitic life (see Capuchin order) Geneva 10, 36, 214, 217, 227–231 Ghent 36, 43, 153, 166–167 Glogau 184 Gouda 89 Grey Franciscan sisters 73–74, 76–77, 80 Groenendaal (mystical tradition of) 95 Horologium (Heinrich Suso) 136, 147 Hortulus animae 128, 138, 141 Humanism 120, 146, 167, 214, 215, 222

258 Imagine di Antechristo (Bernardino Ochino) 228–229 Indulgences 7, 120, 122–124, 141, 146–147, 155–157, 160–162, 167, 169–170 Inquisition 9, 191–200, 214, 220–221, 228 Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (see English Ladies) Instructions for Parish Priests (John Mirk) 112–114 Intentions (Colette of Corbie) 34 Inter cetera (bull) 77–78 Intransigenti 217 Islam 4, 9, 193–200 Ite et vos in vineam meam/Ite vos (bull) 8, 152, 158, 169 Jesuits 210, 236, 246–247 Jews/Judaism 4, 11, 115–118, 124, 201, 235–251 jus proprium 176 Jüterbog 184 Klopjes 80 La Capriola (convent, Siena) 218 Le cahier de soeur Perrine (Perrine de Beaume) 32–36, 41 Leiden 89, 97, 164 Legenda antiqua sancti Francisci 154–156, 168 Legenda aurea (Jacopo of Varagine) 225 Legenda maior sancti Francisci (Bonaventura of Bagnoregio) 90, 155–157, 162, 183 Legenda maior sive Legenda admirabilis virginis Catherine de Senis (Raymond of Capua) 16–17, 26, 28 Legenda minor sancti Francisci (Bonaventura of Bagnoregio) 156 Legenda sanctae Clarae virginis (Tommaso of Celano) 60, 157 Legenda trium sociorum 153–154 Leggenda di Maria da Venezia/Maria Sturioni (Tommaso Caffarini of Siena) 18 Lehre für angefochtene und kleinmütige Menschen (Stefanus Fridolin) 54 Le Puy 36 Lettera della pace (Andrea Del Monte) 246 Letter of Catherine Rufiné and Marie de la Marche 32, 34–35, 38 Letters of Colette of Corbie 34–35

Index of Places and Subjects Libellus ad Leonem (Pietro Quirini and Paolo Giustiniani) 173 Liber de conformitate vitae beati Francisci ad vitam Domini Ihesu (Bartolomeo of Pisa) 156, 158, 168, 178, 183, 187 Libro chiamato confusione de' Giudei, e delle lor false opinion (Andrea Del Monte) Lombard congregation 26–27 Lucca 221 Lutheran/Lutheranism 9, 50–51, 124, 172, 180, 214–215, 219–220, 224 Maaseik (community of Regular Canonesses) 91 Malines (see Mechelen) Malogranatum 95 Manipulus curatorum (Guido of Monte Rochen) 112, 114–115 Manuscript production 19, 49–50, 60–66, 93 Martinians 9, 174, 177, 180–181, 183 Mary Ward sisters (see English Ladies) Mechelen 86–87, 89–90, 106 Memoires de Poligny 36 Memoires de Vévey 35, 40 Memoires d’Hesdin 34–36 Memoriale propositi 70 Mexico 192–199 Milan 10, 156, 187, 201–213 Minorica elucidativa 160, 163 Mirebeau (convent of, Poitou) 37–38 Moniales tertii ordinis 79–82 Mons puellarum 227 Montes pietatis 201, 227 Morisco language 9, 191–200 Muslims 9, 117–118, 124, 192–200 Naples 72, 161, 215, 223–224, 249 Necrology of San Domenico (Pisa) 14, 19, 24–27 Neisse friary (Nysa) 184 New World 4, 9, 191–200, 246 Nuremberg 5, 48–68, 91–92, 136, 176 Observantes sub vicariis 5, 37–42, 51, 86–106, 173–190, 216 Omnis utriusque sexus (decree of Lateran iv) 202 Oetenbach (Dominican convent) 127, 143

Index of Places and Subjects Order of Friars Minor Conventual (see Conventuals) Order of Friars Minor of the regular Observance (see Observantes sub vicariis) Order of penitents 16, 18, 23–24, 27–29, 69–85 Ordinis tui (bull) 76 Paris 43, 51, 237, 239 Parochiale curatorum (Michael Lochmaier) 112 Passion 8, 35, 42, 44, 134–135, 137–138, 144–145, 147, 241 Pater Noster 137–138, 143 Paul (1 Cor.) 185 Paul ii 98 Paul iii 80–81, 219, 227 Periculoso (papal decree) 4, 29–30, 79–80 Perugia 221, 226–227 Personas vacantes (bull) 73–74, 82 Pisa 13–15, 18, 21–30, 72, 82, 203 Poligny 33, 36, 44–45 Poor Clares 5, 13, 20–21, 28, 33–47, 48–68, 76, 162 Portinari triptych (Hugo van der Goes) 99–105 Predicatore degli ebrei 242ff Prediche (Francesco Panigarola) 242ff Prediche nove (Bernardino Ochino) 221ff Prediche predicate (Bernardino Ochino) 221ff Predigten von der Lib Gottes (Johannes Einzlinger) 56 Predigt von Gelassenheit (Johannes Einzlinger) Radical Reformation 215 Rationale divinorum officium (Durandus of Mende) 116 Recollects 182 Reuerinnen 50 Revelations (Birgitta of Sweden) 23–24 Roermond (Carthusian monastery) 91 Rome 11, 72, 89, 162, 164, 175, 226, 235–251 Rooklooster (Augustinian canonry) 101–102 Rosarium sermonum predicabilium (Bernardino Busti) 7, 111–122, 161, 201–213 Saint-Honoré (Capuchin house in Paris) 47 Salutari Discorsi (Giovanni Paolo Eustachio) 245–248 Salt War 227

259 Sancta Mater Ecclesia (bull) 242 Sancta Romana (decree) 75 San Damiano (Clarissan convent) 50 San Domenico (Dominican monastery, Pisa) 13–30 San Martino (Clarissan monastery, Assisi) 50 Santa Croce (Dominican monastery, Fossabanda) 20ff Sant’Anna (tertiary house, Montegiove) 74–75 Sententiae (Peter Lombard) 207 Sentiments (Colette of Corbie) 34 Sermo modernus 10, 216–217 Sermones discipuli de tempore et de sanctis (Johannes Herolt) 114 Sermones quadragesimales de decem preceptis (Michele Carcano) 201, 208 Sinte Franciscus Souter 156–157 Söflingen (Clarissan convent) 65 Sorores tertii ordinis/Tertiaries 5–6, 27, 29, 69–85, 91, 157, 158, 162, 165 Speculum minorum 165 Speculum perfectionis 156, 168 Spieghel der volcomenheit (Hendrick Herp) 6, 86–107, 163 Spirituali 217, 219, 221–222, 225, 228 Spiritual virgins (see Klopjes) Statuta monasterii Sancti Dominici 13ff St Angelo (Franciscan friary, Milan) 201 St Catherine’s (in St. Omer) 76 Stella clericorum 112 St Jakob am Anger (Clarissan convent, Munich) 51 St Klara (Clarissan convent, Nuremberg) 48–68 St Margaret in Basel (Charter house, Basel) 142, 146 St Mary/Rose of Jericho (convent of Regular Canonesses, Brussels) 63, 92, 93, 95 Stultifera navis (Sebastian Brant) 202 Summa confessorum (Thomas of Chobham) 7, 112 Supplicationibus personarum (bull) 37 Supra montem (bull) 69, 74, 82 Sysele (friars) 98 Ten Commandments 10, 114–115, 129, 145, 201, 203, 207–209 Tertiaries (see Sorores tertii ordinis)

260 Testament (Colette of Corbie) 34–37, 42 Teutonia (Dominican Observant province) 146 The Fall and Redemption of Man (Albrecht Altdorfer) 134 The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (Hieronymus Bosch) 203–204 The Ship of Fools (Hieronymus Bosch)  202 Totenbuch of the St. Klara convent, Nuremberg 52–54 Trinità dei Pellegrini (confraternity, Rome) 235 Ursulines 80 Usus pauper 182 Ut sacra ordinis minorum (bull) 36, 39

Index of Places and Subjects Venice 18, 22, 25, 221–224, 225, 226 Vices eius nos (bull) 242 Vie de sainte Colette (Pierre de Veaux) 32–41 Villacrecians 181 Villingen (convent of Poor Clares) 62, 64 Vita della beata Chiara Gambacorta 19ff Vite dei santi e beati del Sacro Ordine (Serafino Razzi) 22–23, 26 Weihnachtsansprache (abbess of St. Klara Nuremberg) 49 Western Schism 16, 72–74 Windesheim 91–92, 95 Wittenberg 184 Zepperen (see Chapter of Zepperen) Zürich 7, 126 214, 230–251