SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Amicitia among Women: Fellowship & Pious Practice in the Vitae of Italian Saints A Dissertation Presented by Andrea Rebecca Boffa to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Stony Brook University December 2015 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Andrea Rebecca Boffa We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Sara Lipton Dissertation Advisor Professor, Department of History Joel Rosenthal Chairperson of Defense Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of History Alix Cooper Associate Professor, Department of History Leslie Zarker Morgan Professor of Italian and French Loyola University Maryland This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Amicitia among Women: Fellowship & Pious Practice in the Vitae of Italian Saints by Andrea Rebecca Boffa Doctor of Philosophy in History Stony Brook University 2015 Very broadly, friendship can be defined as a particular relationship between individuals that is reciprocal in nature. On the one hand, it is a relationship that is universal, but on the other hand friendship is a concept that is socially constructed and historicized through the meanings and functions a particular society gives to it and the ways in which the relationship is realized and performed. Furthermore, friendship is as much an idea as it is a lived experience. This dissertation examines friendship among women in medieval Italian cities of the thirteenth– and fourteenth– centuries. The primary focus of this study is an analysis of the hagiographies of a particular set of female saints from that period: women who leaned towards independence in their pious endeavors, or sought out new types of religious communities. In this period of spiritual experimentation when the authors of these texts were not sure quite how to present their subjects, these hagiographies provide unique insight into the female networks of companions and acquaintances in which the saints circulated. These holy women depended on other women for material, emotional, and spiritual support, yet at the same time the texts reveal a deep anxiety about these worldly connections. As representations of urban living, these narratives demonstrate the importance of friendship in the lives of medieval Italian women. Furthermore, the centrality of relationships beyond those of blood or kin was a key feature of Italian urban society. Within this context, a new model for friendship was developing, one that took elements from the traditional philosophical ideals of perfect friendship but applied them towards a society whose stability depended on a variety of overlapping connections of blood, kin, guild, parish, and neighborhood. Although women were not citizens or civic participants in the legal sense that there husbands, fathers, and brothers were, friendship was still a means through which women constructed their civil identity. iii Dedication Page For Jackson, Madeleine, and Milo iv Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter I: The Medieval Rhetoric(s) of Friendship ................................................................ 19 Classical Models of Amicitia........................................................................................................... 19 Early Christian Friendship and the Augustinian Model.................................................................... 25 Monastic Rules and the Dangers of Friendship............................................................................... 32 Spiritual Friendship and the Cistercian Ideal................................................................................... 36 Concerns of Friendship in the Convent ........................................................................................... 38 Expanding and Gendering the Discourse ........................................................................................ 50 Chapter II: Holy Women in Their Communities ..................................................................... 59 Friendship and Female Society in the Daily Life of a Tertiary .......................................................... 66 Making Lay Holy Life Acceptable .................................................................................................... 80 Chapter III: Friendship, Community and the Spiritual Path.................................................... 89 Friendship as a Path or Obstacle to Sanctity................................................................................... 90 Community in the Convent ...........................................................................................................100 A Female Confidante.....................................................................................................................105 The Unique Case of Benvenuta Bojani and her Most Special Friends .............................................111 Chapter IV: Civil Friendship: A New Model for Friendship ....................................................122 Friendship and Social Organization in Urban Life...........................................................................124 Friendship in the Eyes of Intellectuals and Poets: Latini, Boccaccio, and Dante..............................128 Tracing Women’s Networks: A Case Study of Lucchese Wills.........................................................143 Conclusion...........................................................................................................................154 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................159 v Acknowledgments While writing a dissertation can often feel like an experiment in isolation, I could not have done this without the help and support of a many people. First, I must thank my advisor, Dr. Sara Lipton, who has been so supportive through this process, but did not hesitate to challenge me. As an academic and a teacher, Sara continues to be a role model and a mentor. Dr. Joel Rosenthal, my unofficial second advisor, has been my greatest cheerleader these many years, and I am so grateful for all of his guidance and advice. I was fortunate to find additional readers who were willing to step in at the last minute, even though they were both out of the country doing research at the time. Thank you to Dr. Alix Cooper for her thoughtful comments and insight, and to Dr. Leslie Morgan for providing helpful resources and expertise about medieval Italy, and travelling up to Stony Brook to be a part of the defense. I must also thank Dr. Mary Hewlett. As my research paper advisor at University of Windsor, Dr. Hewlett first piqued my interest in Italy, and was a great help when I travelled to Lucca for archival research. Finally, I could not have done all this without the support of my family. I am fortunate to have parents who have always supported my choices. And I especially need to thank my husband, Doug Kalemba, who has been with me through this whole process, and has always had more faith in me than I have had in myself. vi Introduction The slighting of female friendship is part, then, of the more general slighting and devaluation of those activities of women that go beyond their traditional connections to men and family. Fern L. Johnson and Elizabeth J. Aries, “The Talk of Women Friends”1 As Brian Patrick McGuire writes in the introduction to his book about medieval monastic friendship, friendship is a universal social phenomenon; yet as he and other historians examining friendship have argued, while every time and place might have “friends” what that entails is different and varied.2 Today, friendships might be formed – and sometimes severed – with a few clicks of a mouse, while in the high Middle Ages, bonds of friendships might have been made official through sworn oaths. In our present age, how an individual identifies one’s “community” and interacts with it has dramatically changed in just a few short years, thanks to the advent of social networking and web 2.0, but most of us also acknowledge a difference between “Facebook friends” and our most intimate confidants. Friendship has been a topic of inquiry taken up by philosophers since the days of Aristotle, and, under the rubric of friendship theory, by all manners of academic thinkers, from sociologists to anthropologists to historians, in our present age.3 But friendship is a 1 Fern L. Johnson and Elizabeth J. Aries, "The Talk of Women Friends," Women's Studies International Forum 6, no. 4 (1983): 354. 2 Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience 350 - 1250 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1988), ix. 3 Interestingly, every academic discussion of friendship I have come across, from the medieval to the modern, has begun with Aristotle and his Nichomachean Ethics. 1 particularly ambiguous concept. Thus we might begin with a definition. The very useful Stanford Encyclopedia