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Consorella or Mantellata? Notes on Catherine of Siena’s Confraternal Legacy Emily A. Moerer Summary: In addition to her identity as a saint, reformer, political activist and visionary, Catherine of Siena was uniquely affi liated with two groundbreaking institutions of the late middle ages: the lay confraternity and the third order. This paper focuses specifi cally on the fi gure of Catherine in order to address several important questions related to confraternity studies, including the role of gender in distinguishing lay devotional groups, the nature of women’s participation in confraternities, and the problem of their practice of the discipline. The resulting study sheds new light on Catherine’s corporate devotional identity by documenting her commemoration in text, image, and historical memory as both a consorella and a mantellata. Caterina Benincasa (St. Catherine) was born in 1347 in Siena, a time and place rich in the demands and desires of a pious laity. One year later, the Black Death would diminish the commune’s population by approximately one-half (among the dead there was also Catherine’s twin sister), thereby increasing the surviving populace’s interest in actively participating in religious life as a means of better securing salvation for themselves and their family. Firmly a part of the context of late Medieval spirituality in Siena, Catherine, according to her biographers, began to have religious visions around the age of six, including one of the Virgin to which she vowed her virginity; because of this, she later opposed her family’s wishes to marry her, preferring instead to become her family’s servant.1 Around the age of twenty, Catherine became a member of a group of lay penitent women, the mantellate, or wearers of the Dominican habit.2 Catherine committed herself to long stretches of solitary prayer in her private room at home, engaging in spiritual exercises and deepening her devotion, but she also met with her sisters for devotions in their chapel. After this period of spiritual development, Catherine became a more public fi gure, and began to increasingly devote herself to charitable acts and 1 The events of Catherine’s early life are gleaned from the two primary biographies writ- ten about her: I miracoli, hereafter The Miracles, written by an anonymous Florentine in 1374 and published in English as The Little Flowers, and Legenda maior, hereafter Life of Catherine, written between 1385 and 1395 by Catherine’s confessor Raymond of Capua as her offi cial hagiography and published in English as Raymond of Capua, The Life of Catherine. Because the function of Catherine’s biographies was not simply factual but served instead to develop her cult and argue for her orthodoxy and sanctity, the exact dating of events is uncertain. 2 The biographical sources of The Miracles (age twenty-three) and the Life of Catherine (age eighteen) confl ict on this point, indicating, as Lehmijoki-Gardner has written, the Dominican Order’s interest in promoting the taking of the habit by penitents at a younger age, “Writing Religious Rules,” 672. Notes on Catherine of Siena’s Confraternal Legacy 3 community service by joining with a confraternity in the hospital of Siena to care for the sick stricken with repeated bouts of the plague. She also began to attract her own following, consisting of people who were drawn to Catherine’s charismatic spirituality, sought her guidance, and recognized her apparent saintly identity. By the time of her early death at the age of thirty-three, Catherine of Siena had traveled well beyond her native city to Florence, Pisa, Avignon and Rome, all the while exchanging letters with popes, queens, Sienese offi cials, and devoted followers. In addition to her identity as a saint, reformer, political activist, and visionary, the preceding biographical sketch highlights a unique aspect of Catherine’s character: she was directly affi liated with two of the groundbreaking institutions of the late middle ages, the lay confraternity and the mantellate, today commonly referred to as a third order.3 This article will focus on the fi gure of Catherine of Siena in light of several important questions related to confraternity studies. First, what is the difference between the two institutions of the confraternity and the third order? Second, what is the function of gender in constructing that difference? Finally, was it possible for women to embrace not only the identity of a member of a confraternity, but also that of a tertiary; in other words, was a lay religious woman in the late middle ages such as Catherine of Siena a consorella or a mantellata? The membership of both confraternities and third orders derived from the laity, citizens who congregated for devotions but lived at home among their families. While seeming to differ only as variations between two essentially similar entities, the corporate, lay institutions of the confraternity and the third order developed along gender lines.4 Freer than the third order, connected to a church (often mendicant) as a source of priests for their services and as a possible site for devotions, but without strict oversight, confraternities became an important site for laymen not only to express their piety, but also to form social bonds and a civic, communal identity. Third orders, on the other hand, developed primarily as an institution for women, especially those of the non-elite classes unable to afford the higher dowries necessary for entry into nunneries. Tertiaries, as members of the third order are called, are different from members of a confraternity because they are connected offi cially to one of the religious orders and live by a rule that normally follows those of monks and nuns, with exceptions made in accordance with their life in the world rather than in the convent.5 3 The issue of the appropriation by the Dominicans of the quasi-independent mantellate and their transformation into a formal third order will be discussed below. A “third order” is defi ned as a lay religious group associated with a Mendicant Order, but Lehmi- joki-Gardner notes that “tertiary,” a term used today for a member of such a group, was rarely used in the fourteenth century. See Lehmijoki-Gardner, introduction to Dominican Penitent Women, 2. 4 In fact, the early history of the two institutions is closely entwined, and it is diffi cult to separate the two in their early development. 5 Bornstein, “Spiritual Kinship,” 173–92; “Third Orders,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, 14:93–96. 4 Confraternitas 18:1 In Siena, the mantellate met in the Chapel of the Vaults in the church of San Domenico.6 This chapel was the scene of many signifi cant events recounted in Catherine’s biography, including the gift of her cloak to Christ disguised as a beggar, and the miracle of the column, when a votive candle fell on her head while she was having a vision, but she was not burned by it.7 The defi ning activity of this group was their presence in the chapel to pray. The Sienese mantellate, “worshipped together, shared their meals, and accompanied each other on visits to nearby towns” and generally “followed a structured life of devotion.”8 Other Sienese tertiaries probably did not regularly practice such extreme public devotion and service as Catherine did, but because she was a tertiary, rather than a married woman or a cloistered nun, she had this option. The development of the third order was signifi cant for creating an opportunity for laywomen’s communal religious practice. Previously, women were expected either to marry and live privately and piously within the home or become nuns and live in a convent. The third order provided an alternative whereby a woman could become both a member of an organized religious group and live outside the convent maintaining family ties and an active life. This alternative model for religious women was contested, however, as a brief discussion of its history will indicate. A major source for our knowledge of the early development of the Order of Penance of St. Dominic, as the Dominican Third Order is known, is found in Raymond of Capua’s Life of Catherine of Siena. Raymond narrates that Catherine joined the Order of Penance at the age of eighteen in order to establish her clear connection to the Dominican Order.9 According to Raymond’s account, the Order originated from a lay militia organized by St. Dominic and his followers to fi ght heretics, and it was only after this threat diminished that it transformed itself into a penitential group focused on prayer rather than fi ghting.10 Once the group had transformed, it most likely would have been the equivalent of the early laudese confraternities that trace their origin to Peter Martyr.11 6 For a discussion of the chapel, see Bacci, “La Cappella delle Suore,” 3–21. On the mem- bership of the mantellate, see I necrologi di San Domenico. 7 Raymond of Capua, Life of Catherine, 129–32, 122–23. 8 Lehmijoki-Gardner, “Writing Religious Rules,” 672. 9 Many later sources used this traditional history provided by Raymond to construct the history of lay penitential groups. However, as Kearns has pointed out, Raymond’s biog- raphy was written with the intention of spreading reform in the Dominican Order, and as such, he strove to write a history of the third order that was orthodox (Kearns, introduc- tion to Life of Catherine). Thus, Raymond’s description of Catherine joining the Order of Penance when she was eighteen contradicts the statement from The Miracles, written during Catherine’s life, that she took the habit of St. Dominic as a lay penitent when she was twenty-three.

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