Guglielma of Milan, Unofficial Saint and Posthumous Heretic

Guglielma of Milan, Unofficial Saint, Posthumous Heretic, and Maybe a Princess of Bohemia? (died 24 October 1281)

In the year 1260, a woman who called herself Guglielma arrived in Milan. Apparently a widow, she was accompanied by a man she called her son. In the city, she lived a life devoted to her religious faith, attracting a devoted following. She died on 24 October 1281 and was buried first in the small parish church of San Pietro all'Orto, her body moved later to the Cistercian monastery of Chiaravalle.

Fresco in the church of 
San Andrea in Brunate
( Italy), c. 1450;
Identified by Barbara Newman
as a depiction of Guglielma, 
blessing two of her followers

These are the few verifiable biographical details of Guglielma's otherwise unremarkable life. It's her afterlife that is remarkable.

Guglielma's "history," as far as her background and connections, her religious activities, and her teaching, is now known only through the testimony of her followers given during an inquisitorial investigation in 1300. 

By the time of Guglielma's death, her religious famiglia "had come to believe," to quote historian Barbara Newman's words, that Guglielma was "the Holy Spirit herself, incarnate, in the form of a woman." 

Her followers were led by the man she called her son, Andrea Saramita, and a nun, Sister Maifredo da Pirovano. Although Guglielma herself seems to have denied their claims, the layman and the nun persisted in their teaching that the Holy Spirit, in the person of Guglielma, had come to re-establish the Church. Further, Guglielma's son "predicted that Guglielma would effect a Second Coming on Pentecost 1300." Cleansed and renewed, the Church would then be able to save the souls of Jews, pagans, unbelievers, heretics, and "Saracens." And, since the Holy Spirit, in Guglielma, "had chosen to appear in female form," Sister Maifredo would become the new pope, a woman replacing corrupt popes like Boniface VIII.

Guglielma's followers came to the attention of the inquisition as early as 1284 and again in 1296, but it took nearly twenty years for them to be brought before an inquisition. The investigation began with the examination of Maifreda da Provano in April 1300; the formal trial began in July and ended only in December of that year, resulting in the condemnation of Andrea Saramita and Sister Maifredi as heretics. They were burned at the stake. A second nun, judged a relapsed heretic, was also burned at the stake, while others of Guglielma's followers were assessed "hefty fines" and were condemned to wearing "penitential crosses."

Brunate (Cuomo, Italy)

As for Guglielma herself, dead for twenty years? She was posthumously condemned for heresy. Her body was dug up, her bones were burned, the ashes were scattered, and every attempt was made to make Guglielma disappear--images of her were destroyed, texts written by her followers were destroyed, and the tomb at Chiaravalle where she had been buried was "dismantled."

But, 150 years later, a cycle of paintings devoted to Guglielma appeared in the church of San Andrea, in Brunate, a small village in the province of Cuomo, overlooking Lake Cuomo, some thirty miles northeast of Milan. Only one fresco remains there today, the image that Newman argues represents Guglielma and her two followers (above). 

In the surviving records of the inquisition, several of those who were examined, including Andrea Saramita, the man who arrived in Milan with Guglielma and whom she claimed as her son, said that Guglielma was the daughter of the the king of Bohemia (or maybe his sister, at least according to the testimony of one person).

If these claims are correct, and some scholars think they could be, Guglielma was the daughter of Přemysl Otakar I, king of Bohemia, and his second wife, Constance of Hungary, a woman named Blažena Vilemína. If this surmise is correct, Guglielma would be the sister of Agnes of Bohemia (d. 1282), canonized 12 November 1989. Guglielma would also be a first cousin of Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231), canonized 25 May 1235, and a cousin to Elizabeth's niece, Margaret of Hungary (d. 1270), canonized 19 November 1943. She would also be related to Hedwig of Silesia (d. 1243), canonized in 1267--Hedwig was Elizabeth of Hungary's aunt, but I haven't quite worked through her relationship to Guglielma.

But there is no surviving evidence of Guglielma's birth. In Newman's words, "The only problem with this scenario is the absence of any corroborating Bohemian documents."

Despite all efforts to eradicate Guglielma, her story did not die. In 1425, a friar living in Ferrara wrote her vita, a saint's life. This work, filled with incredible and entirely made up detail, does not seem to have been widely read (only one manuscript copy survives), but the vita or some version of it somehow found its way to the Florentine writer Antonia Pulci, whose play on Guglielma's life, The Play of Saint Guglielma (Rappresentazione di Santa Guglielma), preserved and popularized the story of Guglielma.

The most complete and accessible (for English speakers) account of Guglielma of Milan is Barbara Newman's "The Heretic Saint: Guglielma of Bohemia, Milan, and Brunate" Church History 74, no. 1 (2005): 1-38. There is much to Guglielma's afterlife that I have not detailed here, including much about Sister Maifreda, a member of the Visconti family.

If you can read Italian, I recommend Luisa Muraro's Guglielma e Maifreda Storia di un’eresia femminista (3rd edition, Milan: Libreria delle donne), an ebook available in its entirety here.

A thorough analysis of the surviving records of the inquisition is here.

For a view of the "wandering princess" motif in religious cults like the one that grew up around Guglielma, see Dávid Falvay's “'A Lady Wandering in a Faraway Land[:] The Central European Queen/Princess Motif in Italian Heretical Cults"  Annual of Medieval Studies at Central European University Budapest, 8 (2002): 157-179 (available here).

Chiesa di Sant'Andrea Apostolo,
Brunate