The Sermons of Caterina Vigri and Franciscan Observantist Reform
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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Sorelle Mie: The Sermons of Caterina Vigri and Franciscan Observantist Reform A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of History School of Arts and Sciences Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy © Copyright All Rights Reserved By Kate Elizabeth Bush Washington, D.C. 2016 Sorelle Mie: The Sermons of Caterina Vigri and Franciscan Observantist Reform Kate Elizabeth Bush Director: Katherine L. Jansen, Ph.D. Caterina Vigri [St. Catherine of Bologna, (1413–1463)] was a Poor Clare novice- mistress and abbess. She is most noted by scholars for her spiritual autobiography, the Sette armi spirituali as well as the biography Specchio d’illuminazione, written by disciple Illuminata Bembo shortly after her death. This leader, recognized for her own sanctity, also composed numerous vernacular sermons to cultivate the holiness of her sisters, members of Clarissan communities at Ferrara and Bologna. Though these didactic addresses were never published during her lifetime, thirty-five are preserved in a manuscript entitled Vita, costumi, morte e miracoli della Beata Catherina da Bologna, compiled by apostolic protonotarius Paolo Casanova in 1606. This dissertation uses Caterina’s sermons as well as the Ordinazione (her commentary on the Rule of St. Clare) to examine her role in the Franciscan Observant Reform Movement of the fifteenth century. By explicating how daily spiritual life functioned in Caterina’s houses, this project fills a lacuna in the current scholarship on Clarissan reform in Italy. Studies on this movement, where they exist, often focus on broad institutional narratives instead of such quotidian reform activities. These behaviors are crucial, however, because they demonstrate the counter-intuitive truth that women often adopted the strictures of Observance to enhance communal flexibility. While exploring the conversational nature and educational content of Caterina’s frequent sermons, this thesis shows that, just like contemporary male Franciscans, Caterina’s preaching constituted the core of her Observant identity. The content of this preaching was varied, and drew extensively upon cultural trends outside of the cloister, as is exhibited by Caterina’s use of heated anti-Jewish rhetoric, her complex consideration of the animal kingdom, and extensive employment of layered scriptural stories. In providing a detailed analysis of one woman’s sermon corpus, this project invites further investigation of how female preaching shaped European intellectual and religious culture at the end of the premodern age. This dissertation by Kate E. Bush fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in History approved by Katherine L. Jansen, Ph.D., as Director, and by Dr. Nelson H. Minnich, Ph.D., and Dr. Jennifer R. Davis, Ph.D. as Readers. ___________________________________________ Katherine L. Jansen, Ph.D., Director __________________________________________ Nelson H. Minnich, Ph.D., Reader ___________________________________________ Jennifer R. Davis, Ph.D., Reader ii For my Grandmother: Margaret Eileen Doyle Eyerman, who always loved school. iii CONTENTS Abbreviations……………………………………………………………......................v Acknowledgements………………………………………………………....................vi Introduction……………………………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter 1: Observantia de la professione: Caterina Vigri’s Reform Praxis………….37 Chapter 2: Quanto satisfare vi posso: The Sermoni as Clarissan Conversation……...82 Chapter 3: Ostantissima ostinatione: Anti-Judaism and Observant Identity………..116 Chapter 4: Loro discepole: Scripture, Poverty, and the Animal Voice……………...160 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………196 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….207 iv ABBREVIATIONS Places: CDB Corpus Domini Bologna CDF Corpus Domini Ferrara Archives: AGA Archivio Generale Arcivescovile di Bologna, Archivio della Beata Caterina AS Archivio di Stato di Bologna Works: Exp. Explicatio Primae Regulae S. Clarae of John of Capistrano (1445) Laudi Laudi, trattati e lettere ed. Serventi Ord. Ordinazione of Caterina Vigri [AGA 25, 2] RSC Rule of Saint Clare (1253) RUrb Rule of Urban IV (1263) Ser. I Sermoni, ed. Sgarbi Ser. MS Vita, costumi, morte e miracoli della Beata Catherina da Bologna, Paolo Casanova [AGA 13, 1] SA Sette armi spirituali, ed. Degl’Innocenti Specchio Specchio d’illuminazione, ed. Mostaccio v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation, like Caterina’s own work, was supported by a lively intellectual community. Firstly, I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Katherine L. Jansen as well as my readers Professors Nelson H. Minnich and Professor Jennifer R. Davis for proffering their expertise throughout the writing process, and for helping me to secure university funding even when resources were scarce. Their reading at all stages was patient and meticulous and I thank them for challenging me to be the best scholar that I could be. For their words of encouragement and common sense during my time as a budding graduate student at CUA, I would also like to thank Professor Philip Rousseau, Professor Leonora Neville, Dean Laura Mayhall, and Department Secretary Ramon Sola. I am grateful, too, for the unflagging good-will and scholarly acumen of my fellow graduate students at Catholic University. Truly, there are few places where it could be as challenging or fulfilling to become an historian and a medievalist, and it is impossible to mention all of my peers who spurred me on to success as I entered candidacy. In particular, however, I owe thanks to Mary Zito Smith, Joanna Lamb, Vanessa Corcoran, Ephraim Harel, Jay Harrison and Laura Hohman, as well as to Sarah Spalding, for her invaluable comments on an early draft of Chapter Three. I was also fortunate enough to have received, early on, the support of the American Catholic Historical Association in the form of the 2011 John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award. I am also grateful for the many warm welcomes that I received when I ventured away from the CUA campus. I would like to thank the organizers of the 2012 Gender and Medieval Studies Conference in Manchester for providing me with a springboard for my ideas, as well as with the Kate Westoby Travel Award. I owe further thanks to the Franciscan Institute and to members of Women in the Franciscan Intellectual Tradition, vi particularly Lezlie Knox, for inviting me to present at Kalamazoo in 2014. I am especially indebted to Professor Dan Smail at Harvard for welcoming me to the Harvard Medieval History Workshop during my three years in Boston. I am so happy to have met several eminent medievalists and many new colleagues there; and I would like to thank Zoe Silverman, Rowan Dorin, Shane Bobryki and Leland Grigoli for their erudition and enthusiasm. My research has also been made possible by the hard-working librarians, archivists, and curators at several institutions. I would like to acknowledge the aid of the staff at CUA’s Mullen library, as well as the more recent help from the staff at the New York Public Library. I owe many thanks to Anthony De La Puente in the Widener Privileges Office and the rest of the team at The Harvard University libraries. In Bologna, the staff at the Archivio di Stato was most helpful, and the employees of the Archivio Generale Arcivescovile were efficient, patient, and showed ultimate faith by referring to me as “Dottoressa Bush.” I extend my thanks, as well, to the nuns of Corpus Domini Ferrara for allowing me in to their complex for an informative tour by Caterina- enthusiast Claudio Bettini. Claudio’s assurance that “any friend” of the Saint was “a friend of his” was most heartening; and it spurred me on during my long journey of research and writing. Without the patience, love, and support of my large and growing family, this project would not have come to fruition. It is dedicated to my grandmother Eileen Eyerman, who passed away during my first year of graduate study, but has nonetheless been with me each year since. My parents Margaret and George Bush and my aunt Nancy Eyerman have also been with me each step of the way. My brother Benjamin vii Bush, my sister Rachael Aurand, and their partners are a true motivation and joy, as are my nieces and nephews of all ages. I am grateful for the hospitality of my cousin Timothy Doone and his wife Colleen, who opened up their lovely home in Bologna to me in Fall 2013, making my archival research possible. Thanks is due as well to my aunt Kate Doone, who accompanied me to many old churches with great faith and energy. Infinite thanks are also owed to my many friends, old and new, whose insight and conviviality along the way (even when my conversation made little sense) will never be forgotten. Finally, for his tireless humor, daily cheerleading, and unflagging belief that our dreams would succeed best together, I thank my wonderful partner, Dereks Onjray Thomas. viii INTRODUCTION And thus all of us together, may we be—I pray you sisters—truly united. May we know, with peaceful hearts, that we are all pilgrims and outsiders who, in this miserable world, will never have...a permanent city or home, a mother’s family or a father’s. It is as if we were complete foreigners without kinship or friendship with anyone. It is only with our holy and exemplary works...that we can aspire to heaven, which is our true homeland...1 It may be true that Caterina Vigri (St. Catherine of Bologna, 1413–1463) felt that she had no homeland but heaven. But she is still a silent resident of the monastery of Corpus Domini in Bologna, even five hundred fifty-nine years after her death. The tiny chapel in the house that she founded is not always open, but when it is, it is crowded with faithful friends. These pilgrims and natives come to pray and to look curiously upon Caterina’s brown and barefoot body, surrounded as it is by glass, red velvet, and gold.2 But the faithful do not only come to see precious objects.