Confessors As Hagiographers in Early Modern Catholic Culture∗

CONFESSORS AS HAGIOGRAPHERS IN EARLY MODERN CATHOLIC CULTURE∗

Jodi Bilinkoff

In a brief but infl uential essay, Peter Burke examined the 50 or so cases of men and women formally canonized as saints in the period following the Council of Trent. Burke asked, “What kind of person had the best chance, during the Counter-Reformation, of achieving this particular form of upward mobility?”1 He identifi ed certain key factors, such as sex, class, national origin, and affi liation with a particular religious order. Burke ended his essay by calling for “further study” of the “process of negotiation” between ordinary Christians and elites by which certain individuals came to be certifi ed as possessing heroic virtues and deserv- ing of veneration by the culture at large.2 In this essay I take up Burke’s call but will change the focus of inquiry from saints to saint-makers.3 This volume investigates the manifold

* This essay is a slightly abridged version of ch. 2 of my book Related Lives: Confessors and Their Female Penitents, 1450–1750 (Ithaca, N.Y., 2005). 1 Peter Burke, “How To Be a Counter-Reformation Saint,” in Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kaspar von Greyerz (London, 1984), pp. 45–55, at 49. 2 Ibid., p. 53. There is an extensive literature on sainthood, particularly for the pre-1500 period. Frequently cited general studies include: Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981); André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (1988; Cambridge, 1997); Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago, 1982); Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, 1984); Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Signifi cance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987); and Aviad Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago, 1992). For the post-1500 period, see Gabriella Zarri, “Living Saints: A Typology of Female Sanctity in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Women and Religion in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, ed. Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi (Chicago, 1996; orig. essay 1980), pp. 219–303; and Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why (New York, 1990). There are numerous studies of individual fi gures and geographical locations. 3 I am using the term saints here to mean anyone regarded as saintly or exemplary in their own times, not just those who were offi cially canonized. Burke recognizes this broader conceptualization as well, referring to “informally chosen holy people,” “unoffi cial saints,” and “local cults.” (“How To Be a Counter-Reformation Saint,” pp. 45, 47–48). 420 jodi bilinkoff interactions between confessors and their penitents. In early modern Catholic Europe and its colonies, priests frequently maintained close relationships with penitents, especially female penitents, whom they regarded as spiritually gifted. Many confessors felt further compelled to record the lives of these exemplary penitents and to publish or circulate them after the women had died. What inspired priests to become hagiographers? And, once they had made this literary, as well as pastoral decision, how did they go about the process of documenting the lives of their saintly penitents? In examining the extensive hagiographical literature of the early modern period, one can often catch a glimpse of the hagiographer at work, and gauge something of his objectives, his techniques, and his sense of vocation as an author.

From Confessor to Author

In 1609, the Jesuit Vincenzo Puccini published the life of his penitent and fellow Florentine Maria Maddalena de’Pazzi, two years after the death of the Carmelite nun. Puccini began his book with a state- ment of conviction and purpose. “The Eternal God always showed and does continually show himself wonderful in his Saints . . . that in every age some may be found. . . .” As “in these days of ours he has appeared wonderful in Suor Maria Maddalena,” Puccini declared, “I will therefore describe her life and death . . . in a plain manner, to the end that . . . everyone might (by looking into that glass of Goodness) be inﬂ amed with the heavenly ﬁ re which was ever burning and feeding upon her purest heart.”4

For other studies that have treated hagiographers as a group, see Thomas Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages (New York, 1988); José Luis Sánchez Lora, Mujeres, conventos y formas de la religiosidad barroca (Madrid, 1988); Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia, 1999); Alison Knowles Frazier, Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy (New York, 2005); and John W. Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators (New York, 2006). 4 Il sommo Dio si è sempre mostratò, e si và mostrando maraviglioso ne’ suoi santi; acciochè in ogni secolo si truovi . . . á nostri tempi á apparito mirabile in Suor Maria Maddalena . . . semplicemente si descrivera la vita e la morte sua, assinchè, si come ella disiderò, tutti possano, in quello specchio di bontà rimarando, inﬁ ammarsi di que el celeste fuoco, che del continuo abbruciò il suo purissimo cuore; Vincenzio Puccini, Vita della veneranda Madre Suor Maria Maddalena de’Pazzi Fiorentina (Florence, 1611), p. 1. I use here the English translation of 1619: The Life of the Holy and Venerable Mother Suor Maria Maddalena de Patsi . . . (Cologne?, 1619), p. 2. This is a facsimile edition in vol. 33 of the series English Recusant Literature, 1558–1640, ed. D. M. Rogers (Menston, UK, 1970).