Mrs. Greening, An Inspiring Teacher

Myrtle Lillian Greening, Simi Valley High School (CA) English Teacher 

I had lunch this week with a friend and colleague I've known for nearly fifty years. Fifty years, and we are still finding out interesting new things about one another. At one point during our long conversation, he suddenly asked, "Did you always want to be a university professor?" 

My answer was no. And as I've thought about his question over the last few days, I'm pretty sure I would never have gone to college, much less become an English professor, without Mrs. Greening. She changed my life. 

Mrs. Greening, 
photo from my high-school yearbook,
The Pioneer (1968)

No one in my family had ever been to college—my mom always claimed to be the first person in her family ever to have graduated from high school, and while she said quite a few things that later proved to be, well, not quite true, I believe her, about this at least. And although he said nothing one way or another, I learned long after his death that my dad had never finished high school. 

When the idea of college came up, my mom was insistent that if I were really college material, somebody from a college or university would come knocking on my door and hand me an invitation. As far as taking the SATs (and paying to take a test?) or filling out a college application (and paying to apply?)—she wouldn't hear of it. No way. I think my mom really expected me to get a job and start working once I graduated. 

But Mrs. Greening encouraged me, and she helped me navigate the many difficulties I encountered. Because of her, I managed to take the SATs. This was an expensive exam for me, when I was earning fifty cents an hour babysitting! I applied to college too. I was accepted. And, thankfully, I got a scholarship that meant I could go.

I visited Mrs. Greening a couple of times once I started college, at least in the first year or two. But after that, I lost touch. I never forgot her, but I wish now with all my heart that I had let her know what I was doing—I owe her so much. In fact, I owe her the profession that I had for nearly forty years and, really, the life I have lived since I met her.

Mrs. Greening didn't think much of me when I first showed up in her twelfth-grade English literature class in the fall of 1967. I was too busy fooling around with my best friend, Karen Ley. On one particular day very early in the school year, we were elbow wrestling at the small table we shared in Mrs. Greening's classroom, and she was furious! 

Mrs. Greening, 
photo from my high-school yearbook,
The Pioneer (1968)

And this was when we were supposed to be reading Beowulf too. Later, long after that day when Mrs. Greening yelled at me in class, I thought of her often when I was reading Beowulf in Old English in a graduate seminar at the University of Washington. While pursuing my Ph.D., I decided to become a medievalist, and even now I consider Beowulf the most complex and moving work of literature I have ever read.

But in the first days in Mrs. Greening's class, I wasn't all that interested in the poem that would come to mean so much to me. I did fine—I remember Mrs. Greening being very surprised at the first essay I wrote for her, clearly not expecting too much of me. But, then, we read Hamlet.

I still remember the day in class when everything changed. It was very early in our reading of the play—the first scene, in fact. It's midnight, and a guard, Francisco, is waiting to be relieved by his replacement, Barnardo, who arrives right on time. The two are on the battlements of Elsinore Castle, cold and fearful—they've seen a ghost. Then Marcellus arrives, bringing with him Horatio, who thinks this ghost is all a "fantasy." Marcellus has brought Horatio along to wait with them, to see whether the apparition will appear again. It does come, a ghost that looks like the king who has just recently died . . . 

So far, simple enough. But then, after he sees the ghost for himself, Horatio says, "It harrows me with fear and wonder" (1.1.44). 

The Dell paperback Hamlet
we read in the fall of 1967--
I still have my copy

We had been reading slowly in class, everything pretty straightforward to that point, though I do remember some discussion about Francisco's jittery "Stand and unfold yourself"—the unusual verb choice, "unfold," is underlined in my copy of the text. (I still have the copy of Hamlet we used in our class, a Dell paperback that cost 35 cents!) 

But when we got to "It harrows me"—I remember Mrs. Greening explaining to us what a harrow was, making her fingers into the sharp tines of the tool made for cultivating a field, her hand dragging those tines through the air so we could imagine the metal teeth ripping up the earth. It was electric. And here I am, nearly sixty years later, with that scene in Mrs. Greening's classroom still fresh in my mind.

I have been able to find out a little bit about Mrs. Greening's life in the last couple of days using genealogical resources. Myrtle Lillian Palmer was born in Reeds, Jasper County, Missouri on 16 January 1918. That would have made her fifty years old when she was my twelfth-grade English teacher. 

In the 1920 US Census, when she was two years old, she was listed as the youngest of six children, the family living in Jasper County, Missouri, where her father Richard's occupation is listed as "farmer."

By the time of the 1930 Census, taken when Myrtle Lillian Palmer was twelve years old, she was living in Reeds, Jasper County, Missouri, in a household headed by her mother, Mira (from Elmira). The census taker writes "none" for Mira's occupation. Just the youngest two of Mira's children are still living with her in the home, Myrtle and her older brother. While there is no sign of her father, Richard Palmer, living with them—Mira is the head of the household—Mira indicates that she is married. I can't find Richard Palmer in this census.

By 1940, Mira (spelled "Myra" by the census taker) is living alone, now in Sarcoxie, Missouri, and says she is divorced. She lists her occupation as "seamstress," a job she has had for the last forty weeks. I can't find Richard Palmer in the 1940 Census either, but in the 1950 Census, he is living alone in Sarcoxie Township, Missouri (this census form says Sarcoxie is "1 3/4 miles from Reeds)." In the census, he says he is divorced.

But by the time of the 1940 Census, when her mother is living alone, working as a seamstress, Myrtle Lillian Palmer was no longer in Missouri. On 15 October 1938 in Los Angeles, California, Myrtle Lillian Palmer married Edward Frank Greening—she was just twenty years old. I would love to know how a very young woman got herself from Missouri to California. I haven't been able to find out anything,

Searching the various volumes of the Los Angeles City Directory, available online, I've been able to find listings for a "Palmer, Myrtle E." as early as 1924, working as a stenographer, but clearly this couldn't be the Myrtle Palmer I'm looking for—my Myrtle Palmer would have been a child. I check all the LA city directories from 1924 on, right through the 1930s, and I can't find the right Myrtle Palmer, Myrtle L., and after a few years, that other Myrtle, Myrtle E., disappears. 

But in 1938, I do find Edward Frank Greening in the LA city directory—he's a clerk, renting a place on Oakford Drive. These directories list wives in parentheses, and there's no (Myrtle) following his name, nor is there a listing for Myrtle Greening, in parentheses or otherwise, in 1939 or in 1940. To my great disappointment, this resource provides no helpful information at all. 

I am still left wondering how the woman I knew as Mrs. Greening made her way from Missouri to Los Angeles. In 1930, she was twelve years old, living at home. Eight years later, in 1938, a twenty-year-old Myrtle was in California, having lived there long enough to have met and married. Did she leave Missouri when she was eighteen? Did she travel alone, on a dream or a whim? It occurs to me that one of her older siblings might have moved to California, and she could have traveled west to live with a brother or a sister . . . 

I go back to the online genealogical sources and trace her siblings, four brothers and a sister. One brother moved to Kansas, where he died; another moved all the way to the West Coast, but to Seattle, where he died (and where I am living now). The rest of her siblings stayed put in Missouri. I can find no connections to California among any of them. I check the paternal line, and I can find no links to California associated with Richard Palmer's siblings, his father or his grandfather. I search the maternal line, and I can find no connection to California there, either.

I search for that Myrtle E. Palmer living in Los Angeles in the 1920s—she was born and died in Southern California. I see no links to Missouri or to the Richard Palmer who was Mrs. Greening's father. And just to be sure, I check back through the Palmers in Myrtle E.'s family as well.

Aside from the record of her marriage, I can find no sign of Myrtle Palmer Greening before the 1940 US Census, when she and her husband are living in Los Angeles, renting a house on East 7th Street. Neither one has anything listed under "occupation" or for the "type of industry" in which they are working—I wonder if Edward is in college, or maybe they are both in college, because at some point, Myrtle Palmer Greening did get a college education. 

There is a lengthy obituary for Mrs. Greening's husband, Edward Frank Greening, published in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat after his death in 2003. There he is called an "engineer extraordinaire" and said to have "helped the USA win the Cold War." According to the obituary, his family had moved from New Mexico to Glendale, California in 1921, so that explains how and why he was in California when he married Myrtle Lillian Palmer in 1938. (In case you're wondering, I searched the Glendale City Directories posted online by the Glendale Historical Society, and Myrtle Palmer doesn't appear to have been in Glendale prior to her marriage, at least not based on the information in these directories.)

His obituary indicates that Edward Greening was educated at "LAJC [Los Angeles Junior College, now Los Angeles City College] and USC [University of Southern California]," where his education was "often interrupted by events such as the depression, marriage, child, and World War II." According to the obituary, "he was among the last to be called to serve" during the Second World War, and was "on a destroyer approaching Japan when the [w]ar ended." 

I have no idea where Myrtle Greening was during the war years, or what she might have been doing when her husband was "on a destroyer approaching Japan"—other than knowing she was caring for a child, born in 1941. According to the 1950 US Census (when she was thirty-two), Mrs. Greening was still living in Los Angeles, now on Buffalo Avenue, her husband listing his occupation as a "newspaper carrier." I guess he hadn't become an engineer “extraordinare" yet. The couple had a nine-year-old son. According to the census, Myrtle was "keeping house." You have to love the 1950s—one of the questions is "Did this person do any work at all last week, not counting work around the house?" The census taker writes a big "N[o]" next to Myrtle Greening's name. Eight years later, Mrs. Greening's son graduated from Van Nuys High School. A 30 January 1958 article in the Valley News includes his name among ceremonies honoring those graduating mid-year. His photo also appears  in the 1958 Van Nuys High School Yearbook. So Mrs. Greening was living in Van Nuys at that time. 

But suddenly, after a great deal of digging, I find something—in the 31 October 1960 issue of the Valley News, there is an article titled "Valley Dean's List Honors 22 Students."* And there she is: among the "upper division students" who are honored for their grade-point average. The college she went to, then San Fernando Valley State College, is now the University of California, Northridge, just over the hill from Simi Valley, where Mrs. Greening was teaching in the academic year 1967-68, when I was in her class. This article confirms her residence as Van Nuys. With this lead, I could find the date when Myrtle Greening graduated from college. An article in the Valley State Sundial, dated 26 May 1960, "A Salute To Valley State's 1960 Graduates," lists "Myrtle Lillian Greening, English." 

By the time I knew Mrs. Greening, in the late 1960s, she was divorced. She never spoke of an ex-husband, or even a son. Edward Greening, who received such a lengthy and effusive obituary, had remarried in 1965 and had a second family. Mrs. Greening remained single.

Nor is there any obituary for her, or at least not one that I have been able to find. In fact, I can't find out much about Mrs. Greening's life after I graduated from high school. When she was my teacher, she lived in a small house on Eve Road in Santa Susana (in Simi Valley), which is where she regularly hosted a group of students for evening meetings of the Simi Valley High School Literature Club. 

I cannot remember all the books she introduced us to in Lit Club—I know we read Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, and I was so knocked out by it that she suggested I read his An American Tragedy. Wow. We also read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. So she wasn't introducing us to lightweight novels. She's the person who introduced me to J.R.R. Tolkien. I eventually bought the paperbacks published by Houghton Mifflin in the late sixties. I wish I had them now. (I still have Tolkien, in later, fancier editions.)

Looking online, I can easily find the house where we met for Lit Club all those years ago—it's worth nearly a million dollars today, but it doesn't look like much. The two-bedroom bungalow was built in 1956, so it wasn't that old when I spent many long evenings there, but it was very different than the tracts of look-alike houses that were being built on land that had once been walnut orchards or orange groves. The real-estate listing says the house now has an "open plan" that makes it look "larger than what it is." It wasn't open plan in the late sixties, but as soon as I saw the interior of the living room, with its stone fireplace and wood-beam ceiling, I remembered them. The small kitchen and living room, once divided, were warm and cozy. And there was no pool in the backyard either, as there is now.The Zillow listing describes this as "a newer flagstone pool with baja shelf and fountain waterfalls."

I have no idea when Mrs. Greening retired, but I've been able to narrow it down a bit. I found her photo among the faculty in the 1982 Simi Valley High School yearbook, The Pioneer, but by 1985, she is no longer pictured. She would have been sixty-five in 1983, so that makes sense. (There are only scattered yearbooks available online at Classmates.com.) 

Update: I just found a copy of the Simi Valley Star, published on 6 June 1985. On page 6 is a small article, "Retiring employees are recognized." And there she is: Myrtle Greening received a plaque from the Board of Education for her twenty-three years with the district. (So she began teaching at SVHS in 1962, just five years before I was in her class.)

Looking at property records, I can see that the property on Eve Road sold in 1997. According to online records I've been able to access, that seems to have been when Mrs. Greening sold it. But the United States Residence Database, 1970-2004, indicates that she was living in Oxnard, California, in May 1995. She would have been seventy-seven, so maybe it was time for her to let go of that small home on the half-acre lot. Did she want to leave? Did failing health mean she needed to leave? Could she no longer afford the house? Did she move to be closer to friends? I have questions but no answers. 

On 19 January 2000, Myrtle Lillian Palmer Greening died at the age of eighty-two. The Social Security Death Index notes her "Last Place of Residence" as Ventura, California. She is buried in Simi Valley. I hope some of her former students visit her gravesite on occasion. I know the next time I visit family in the area, I will lay flowers there, to commemorate the woman who changed my life.

Mrs. Greening's headstone,
Simi Valley Public Cemetery
(photo from Find a Grave)

*Among this list of students on the Dean's List is another of my high-school teachers, Gloria Gunther. What a surprise!

Olga of Kiev, Regent of Russia: "As the Day-Spring Precedes the Sun and as the Dawn Precedes the Day "

Olga of Kiev, regent of Kiev (died 11 July 969)

Although little of her early life is known, traditional accounts of Olga of Kiev claim that she was born in Pskov, a city that is now in northwest Russia. Her date of birth is unknown, as are her origins--some accounts claim she was of Viking descent, others that she was of Slavic descent. (This disagreement may reflect a larger dispute over whether the Rus' were of Scandinavian or Slavic origin.)

The earliest mention of Olga is found in the twelfth-century Russian Primary Chronicle (Povest' vremennykh let), which begins by claiming it preserves "the narratives of bygone years regarding the origin of the land of Rus', the first princes of Kiev, and from what source the land of Rus' had its beginning." These annals begin after Noah's flood, move on to the division of the world among Noah's three sons, skip to the destruction of the Tower of Babel, and quickly focus on "the long period of the Slavs," various "parties" of whom separated and spread among many lands. 

A detail from 
the fifteenth-century
Radziwill Chronicle
depicting Olga of Kiev

Rather quickly, the chronicler arrives at the figure of Igor of Kiev, who was the son of Rurik, a Varangian (Viking) chieftain who settled in Novgorod. Igor was "very young" when Rurik died (at some point in the 870s), becoming prince of Novgorod. Oleg, appointed by Rurik as Igor's regent, gets busy with lots of fighting, conquering, and killing, all in the boy's name, of course. Eventually Oleg "set himself up as prince in Kiev, and declared that it should be the mother of Russian cities. The Varangians, Slavs, and others who accompanied him, were called Russes."

As for Igor, "he followed after Oleg, and obeyed his instructions." Presumably one of Oleg's instructions that Igor obeyed was about his marriage. In 903, according to the chronicler, "[a] wife, Olga by name, was brought to him from Pskov." A later, sixteenth-century history, The Book of Royal Degrees (Stepennaya kniga), contains a fanciful story of how Igor was fishing in the Velikaia River in Pskov, how he got into a boat, then realized the "boatman" was not a man but a woman, Olga, "very beautiful, young, and brave." Since his "passions were kindled," Igor proceeded to act on his desires and "uttered shameless words to her." As one does.

Sources vary widely when providing a date of birth for Olga--many standard references, like the Encyclopedia Britannica, suggest the year "c. 890" for her birth, this date also offered by Michael C. Paul, in his recent biographical essay. If we accept this date, Olga would have been about thirteen at the time of her marriage to Igor.

After her brief mention in the twelfth-century chronicle, Olga's name disappears until the entry for 945, when Igor is killed by the Derevilians, whom he had attacked because they had lots of great stuff--his "retinue" had told Igor that the Derevilians were "adorned with fine weapons and raiment," and they urged Igor to go "after tribute." He did, and he was killed.

Then the chronicle return to the woman whom Igor had married decades earlier, Olga. She was in Kiev with her son, a two-year-old boy named Svyatoslav. According to the Primary Chronicle, the Derevilians hatched a plot after murdering Igor: "See, we have killed the Prince of Rus'. Let us take his wife Olga for our Prince Mal, and then we shall obtain possession of Svyatoslav, and work our will upon him."

They sent their twenty best men to Kiev, where Olga was waiting to receive them. She received the Derevilians with gracious words. When they delivered their offer, she replied, "Your proposal is pleasing to me; indeed, my husband cannot rise again from the dead. But I desire to honor you tomorrow in the presence of my people. Return now to your boat, and remain there with an aspect of arrogance. I shall send for you on the morrow, and you shall say, 'We will not ride on horses nor go on foot; carry us in our boat.' And you shall be carried in your boat."

Of course Olga was not at all pleased by the prospect of marrying Prince Mal. The chronicle goes into some detail about just what she had in mind for the men who had killed her husband--which is interesting, since the chronicle has passed over decades of Olga's life after her marriage to Igor without mentioning her at all. But the chronicle explains at length her plan for revenge. In short, Olga sets a trap, and the Derelians in their boat are buried alive. 

In one of her acts of vengeance, 
Olga burns some Derelians alive in a bathhouse
(from the fifteenth-century Radziwill Chronicle)

But this is just the first act of her terrible vengeance. The chronicle goes on for pages regaling its readers with details about Olga's brutal campaign against her enemies. About all this, historian Michael C. Paul notes, "the accounts of the vengeance Olga wrought on the Derevlians are probably not historically accurate; rather, they are hagiographic devices representing her behavior after baptism, demonstrating how Christianity tempered her pagan barbarism."

Aside from wreaking vengeance on her enemies, Olga began ruling Kievan Rus' on behalf of her son. According to the chronicle, she established laws, "collected tribute," and set up trading posts. Interestingly, the ruler's personal role in the collection of taxes seem to have caused a lot of resentment, particularly in Igor's case, so one of Olga's innovations was establishing a system of tax collectors. Returning to "her city of Kiev: in 947,  she "dwelt at peace with it." 

During her years as regent for her son, Olga "set about reforming the governmental structure" of Kiev. In The Czars, James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci write that she "had little interest in expanding the state," but she did preserve it, putting down rebellions and "recaptur[ing] lands lost during her husband's reign." By the time her son assumed his reign in 962, when Olga resigned as regent, she had not only "restored his domain to roughly the same borders" it had had at the time of Oleg's death, but she had put into place for her son a "well-organized government." 

In the mean time, about the year 955, Olga traveled to Constantinople--a city her husband had besieged (twice). Emperor Constantine VII was smitten, at least according to the Russian Primary Chronicle: "when he saw that she was very fair of countenance and wise as well, the Emperor wondered at her intellect. He conversed with her and remarked that she was worthy to reign with him in his city." 

Olga, however, reminded the emperor that she was a pagan--so she was soon being instructed by the patriarch of Constantinople: "He taught her the doctrine of the Church, and instructed her in prayer and fasting, in almsgiving, and in the maintenance of chastity." She was baptized jointly by the patriarch and the emperor. 

After Olga's baptism, the emperor suggested that Olga marry him, but Olga is as intelligent as she is keen for vengance. "How can you marry me," she asks him, reminding him that during the baptismal ceremony, he had referred to her as his "daughter" in faith. The emperor recognizes he has been "outwitted," and sends her off home, "still calling her his daughter," with "many gifts of gold, silver, silks, and various vases."

I haven't been able to find a map
of Kievan Rus' under Olga,
but this map of the eleventh-century
state is a way to see the geographical
location and extent of the territory

Once back in Kiev, Olga tried her best to convert her son, but she was unsuccessful. There were already Christians in Kiev, but Svyatoslav was not interested, though he did not persecute them: according to the chronicle, "when any man wished to be baptized, he was not hindered, but only mocked."

As soon as Svyatoslav attained his majority, he was off to war. He "collected a numerous and valiant army," undertaking "many campaigns." During his absences, presumably, Olga once again acted on her son's behalf, though the chronicle is silent about that. 

However, when Kiev is besieged 968, Olga "shut herself up in the city" with her three grandsons. (The chronicle is also silent about when Svyatoslav might have married, when these children were born, and who their mother or mothers might be.) The siege is brutal, the inhabitants of the city suffering greatly, but Olga and her three grandsons are eventually rescued. Hearing of the suffering of the city (he receives a note from Kiev accusing him of "neglect"), Svyatoslav returns, "kiss[ing] his mother and children and regrett[ing] what they had suffered."

Svyatoslav tells his mother that he no longer wants to live in Kiev, preferring to move his government to the city of Pereyaslavets, because of its central location in his "realm." Olga does not want to go, and she laments that her son wants to leave her--she was, in the words of the chronicle, "in precarious health." She begged him to wait until she died before he left so that he could bury her. 

Three days later, in 969, Olga of Kiev died. 

In 972, Svytasoslav died, succeeded by his son eldest son, Yarapolk, though a civil war soon broke out, turning him against his brothers. Yarapolk killed one of his brothers, but when he died in 978, he was succeeded by his surviving brother, Vladimir. 

In 988, Olga's grandson, Vladimir "the Great," converted to Christianity. It took him a while--he remained a pagan, enjoying 800 concubines (reportedly) as well as several wives, and building temples to numerous gods. Finally, however, he decided to convert--because he wanted to marry a Byzantine princess, and he couldn't do that if he were a pagan. So Vladimir converted and married Anna, daughter of Romanos II and sister of the emperors Basil II and Constantine VIII. She wasn't thrilled about it. 

Michael Paul notes that Olga was "probably not formally canonized until the fourteenth century." In 1547 she was formally canonized by the Orthodox church and designated as Isapóstolos, "equal to the apostles." Her feast day is 11 July, conventionally accepted as the date of her death.

The Russian Primary Chronicle calls Olga of Kiev the "precursor of the Christian land" that Kievan Rus' would become, "even as the day-spring precedes the sun and as the dawn precedes the day."

Margherita da Trento, "Sister in Christ"

Margherita da Trento, "Sister in Christ" (burned at the stake on 1 June 1307)

Margherita da Trento--Margaret of Trent--is a shadowy figure. Not much is known about her origins or, indeed, her life. But we do know about her death. She was burned at the stake, as a heretic, on 1 June 1307.

What is also known is that she was a follower of a man known as Fra Dolcino, a radical religious reformer whose origins are as unclear as Margherita's. 

In 1300, Fra Dolcino assumed the leadership of the Apostolic Brethren (Apostilici), a religious group that had been founded by Gherardino Segarelli in 1260. Segarelli's movement was modeled on the way of life of the apostles--a life of poverty and simplicity. Segarelli set about preaching his views on the importance of penitence, fasting, and prayer. He condemned as corrupt not only the Church's wealth, but also its practices like tithes and indulgences.

A plaque memorializing Margherita da Trento,
Biello, Ponte de Maddalena*

Segarelli gained disciples for the mendicant life he espoused, and his movement spread from Lombardy. By 1287, in fact, his movement had spread so far that it was condemned by the council of Wurzburg. Segarelli and his Apostolic Brethren were also condemned by Pope Honorius IV in 1286 and Pope Nicholas IV in 1290.

Meanwhile, Segarelli had been imprisoned by the bishop of Parma in 1280 and then banished. After the papal condemnations of 1286 and 1290, Segarelli and several of his followers were imprisoned in 1294--four members of the group were burned at the stake, Segarelli condemned to perpetual imprisonment. He abjured his errors, but after relapsing (or being made to confess that he had relapsed), he was condemned for heresy, then burned at the stake on 18 July 1300.

After assuming leadership of the Apostolic Brethren following Segarelli's death, Fra Dolcino took the group in an even more rigorous direction: 

Dolcino was even more anti-hierarchical than his mentor. At the most basic level, the Dulcinites believed in the poverty and simplicity of the Christian life. “The congregation is founded on the principles of the Apostles, it follows the poverty,” began the first of Dolcino’s letters outlining his beliefs. However, [he] continued that that lifestyle should be “without any external constraints as a rule.” This idea did not just apply to the constraints set by the church; it also applied to those of society too.

The Dulcinites believed the only way to reform the church was to change society. So, aside from returning Christianity to its apostolic roots, they proposed destroying all hierarchies of power—including the feudal system and replacing it with an egalitarian society, which held all property in common. The Dulcinites justified their stance based on lines 44-47 of 'The Acts of the Apostles' which stated: “But all those who believed were together and had everything in common.” This philosophy appealed to the peasantry and dispossessed who were attracted to the idea of a redistribution of wealth.

Notably--and unlike the mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans--Dolcino welcomed women into his group of followers.

The Capture of Margherita and

Fra Dolcino 

(fresco, Antonio Ciancia da Caprile),

Church of SS. Quirico and Giulitta in Trivero, 1867

Fra Dolcino (despite his title, there is no evidence he took orders) retreated with his followers to the Trentino area, which is where he encountered Margherita, who became a member of the group. 

In a letter of 1303, Dolcino refers to himself as rector ("director," or leader), describing soror Margherita as pre ceteris sibi dilectissima, "most beloved to himself above all others." 

The identification of Margherita as "from Trento" comes from a deposition of 1304, in which one of the members of the group describes her as da Trento and claims that she had accompanied Fra Dolcino for at least a year.

Fra Dolcino and his followers withdrew into the Valsesia region of Piedmont--they established their own community in this mountainous region, but in 1305, Pope Paul declared a crusade against them. Beset by these "crusaders," Dolcino and his followers retreated further, setting up a community on Mount Zebello, in Piedmont. They managed to hold out until 23 March 1307, when they were captured.

Fra Dolcino and Margherita da Trento were taken to Biello (Piedmont), where they were both condemned by secular authorities. Margherita was burned at the stake on 1 June 1307. After being forced to witness Margherita’s death, Dolcino was then executed.

Further details about Margherita abound--though they seem to be fantasies. She is, of course, widely reported to be very beautiful and, equally to be expected, from a wealthy family that she rejected by taking up her life of poverty. Other stories claim she rejected many suitors to follow Dulcino. Years later, in a deposition taken as part of further investigations of the Dulcinians, a man referred to as "ser Boninsegna," son of dominus Oddorico da Arco, claimed Margherita was his sister (thus the name she is at times called, Margherita Boninsegna) and that she had ruined his life. (He also claimed that Margherita was still alive, married, living in Vicenza, and the mother of a fifteen-year-old child . . . )

In his treatise Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis (A Practical Investigation of Heretical Perversion, the inquisitor Bernardo Gui claimed that Margherita was Dolcino's amasia (lover), his "partner in crime and heresy," and that she was pregnant with Dolcino's child at the time she was captured--with Dolcino claiming that the holy spirit had impregnated her. 

I've linked to helpful sources above, but I will note that the most reliable and complete is Marina Benedetti's entry on Margherita da Trento in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, available via Treccani (click here).

Dated but thorough is Antonio Gallenga's A Historical Memoir of Frà Dolcino and His Times, available at the Internet Archive (click here).

*This plaque commemorating Margherita da Trento was added to the Maddalena Bridge (Biello) in 2007, placed near the site of her execution. Ironically, I have found no photo online that can be enlarged to read the plaque, and no article transcribes it--not even the article noting the very few public commemmorations of women in Biello: "The 'Forgotten' Women of Streets and Squares: Biella Is No Exception, Only 10 Bearing the Names of Women; It is Even Worse for Monuments: the Only One is the Plaque Commemorating Margherita da Trento, wife of Fra Dolcino."

Antonia Pulci, Renaissance Playwright

 Antonia Tanini Pulci (7 May, the feast of St. Domitilla)

Although an English translation of Antonia Pulci's sacre rappresentazioni (literally "holy performances," or one-act sacred plays) has sat on my bookshelf for nearly thirty years, I somehow never got around to posting an essay here about the fifteenth-century Florentine writer.

Opening images in Bartolomeo de' Libri's 
1495 edition of Antonia Pulci's 
Rappresentazione di santa Guglielma
(from the Biblioteca Europea di
Informaziow e Cultura digital library)

I was reminded of that failure a few months ago when I wrote about Guglielma of Milan, an "unofficial" saint and posthumous heretic whose religious activities were officially suppressed. But those efforts to eradicate the life and afterlife of Guglielma and her story failed.

In 1425, some 140 years after Guglielma's death in 1281, a friar living in Ferrara, Antonio Bonfadini, 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 this vita or some version of it somehow found its way to the Florentine writer Antonia Pulci. Her sacra rappresentazione about Guglielma, The Play of Saint Guglielma (Rappresentazione di Santa Guglielma), preserved and popularized the story of Guglielma.

Antonia Tanini, later Pulci, was born around the year 1452, nearly thirty years after Bonfadini composed his life of Guglielma. She was the daughter of a Florentine merchant, Francesco d'Antonio di Giannotto Tanini, and his wife, Jacopa da Roma. The couple had seven children, including Antonia--six daughters and one son.* Francesco also had two children born out of wedlock, a son born before his marriage and a daughter born during his marriage.

Francesco Tanini's children were all well educated, Antonia and her sisters as well as her brothers. In their edition of Antonia Pulci's plays, James Wyatt Cook and Barbara Collier Cook note that Antonia received a "careful literary and religious education." Her plays demonstrate both the extent of her learning and "her mastery of several sorts of Italian verse." Later in her life, continuing to educate herself, she hired a tutor to instruct her in Latin.

Some three years after her father's death, when she was about eighteen years old, Antonia Tanini was married to Bernardo Pulci, a member of a distinguished Florentine family. Unfortunately, Bernardo's older brother bankrupted the family--while Bernardo may have been rich in literary aspirations and political patronage (he was supported by the Medicis), he was not a wealthy man. As a banker and speculator he was unable to retrieve the family's fortunes, and the couple lived in straitened circumstances. 

The title page of of Pulci's 
Rappresentazione di
Santa Domitilla:
"INCOMINCIA La rapresentatione di san-
 cta Domitilla uergine facta & compo-
 sta in uersi per mona Antonia
 dōna di Bernardo pulci lāno [l'anno]
M CCCC LXXXIII"

But as Elissa B. Weaver notes in her biographical essay on Antonia Pulci, "All of the Pulcis were writers." By 1483, Pulci herself had also begun to write, and at least three of her sacre rappresentazioni were printed in a two-volume collection of thirteen plays published in Florence in that year: Rappresentazione di Santa Domitilla, Rappresentazione di Santa Guglielma, and Rappresentazione di San Francesco. A fourth play in this collection, on Joseph, the son of Jacob, may also have been written by Pulci.** (One of her husband's plays is also printed in this anthology.)

In 1488, Bernardo Pulci died, leaving Antonia a widow. After her husband's death, Antonia Pulci became a tertiary, a "third order sister"--that is, while she continued to live in the secular world, she lived a religious life, as if she were inside a convent. 

Antonia Pulci did spend some of her time in the Dominican convent of San Vincenzo, known as Annalena, and some of the time at her mother's home. It was during this time that she sought out Francesco Dulciati to instruct her in Latin. 

In 1500, after securing the return of her dowry from the Pulci family (evidently she was entitled to the return since she and Bernardo had not had children), she seemed to have taken "more formal vows" and founded a house for Augustinian tertiaries, Santa Maria della Misericordia. She was enclosed there on 26 February 1500. It was there that she died on 26 September 1501.

Her foundation survived for three decades after Pulci's death, but it was eventually dissolved, seemingly because it was located outside the walls of the city of Florence, a somewhat dangerous location. The tertiaries moved inside the city, to the convent of San Clemente, near the friary of San Gallo, where Pulci's Latin teacher had become prior. 

Francesco Dulciati wrote a brief biography of Antonia Pulci some years after her death. In this, he attributes to Antonia Pulci a play about Joseph, the son of Jacob (likely the sacra rappresentazione on that subject in the 1483 anthology). He also says she wrote a play on the topic of the Prodigal Son and another on Saul and David. Two plays on these subjects survive in later publications and are likely Pulci's. Dulciata also claims that, after her husband's death, Antonia Pulci continued to write, but religious poetry rather than plays, including a poem on the body of Christ, a copy of which, signed by Pulci herself, he says he has in his possession.

Opening text pages in Bartolomeo de' Libri's 
1495 edition of Antonia Pulci's 
Rappresentazione di santa Guglielma
(from the Biblioteca Europea di
Informazione Cultura digital library)

I've linked to several accessible sources above, including Cook and Cook's edition of Antonia Pulci's plays. Interestingly, this 1996 edition, published as a volume in the University of Chicago's The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series, was revised. In 2010, as part of the Toronto Series of The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, a bilingual edition, with a "fresh translastion" by James Wyatt Cook and edited by Elissa B. Weaver, published the "five plays securely authored by Antonia Pulci." (The earlier Cook and Cook volume had included "seemingly later plays" relying on "a tradition of attribution and internal correspondences with the plays of unquestioned provenance.") For this later volume, Saints' Lives and Bible Stories for the Stage: A Bilingual Edition, click here.

I have not addressed the performance issues of Pulci's plays in my post. For a larger discussion of convent theater, you may also enjoy Elissa B. Weaver's Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women.

*In their 1996 edition of Pulci's rappresentazioni, editors James Wyatt Cook and Barbara Collier Cook write that Francesco had five children born "in wedlock," but they list seven. (See Florentine Drama for Convent and Festival, Seven Sacred Plays, trans. James Wyatt Cook, eds. James Wyatt Cook and Barbara Collier Cook, 11). 

While Cook and Cook note that Antonia "was the daughter of a Florentine family whose fortunes as bankers were beginning to rise," Elissa B. Weaver's 2004 entry on Pulci for Italian Women Writers indicates that Antonia's father was a Florentine merchant. Because of Weaver's detailed archival work on this subject, I've followed her identification of Antonia's father as a merchant.

There has also been some confusion about the surname of Antonia's father, as noted by Weaver: 

Confusion regarding Antonia's name entered into literary history in the late nineteenth century, and from that time on she was thought to have belonged to the Giannotti family. This was the result of a misinterpretation of her father's name, undoubtedly based on a document from the period when he did not use a surname but two patronymics, the second of which was 'di Giannotto'. He appears in early tax records as Francesco d'Antonio di Giannotto in order to distinguish himself from others in his gonfalone (district of the city) named Francesco d'Antonio. When the family began to use a surname they took it from an earlier ancestor named Tanino.

Antonia Pulci's name is still noted as "Antonia Giannotti" in the  Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, for example (available here). In her biographical essay (2000), Anna Laura Saso claims that the surname Tanino "appears to be erroneous" (erronea appare). 

**On the complicated history and understanding of this collection of plays, widely attributed to the printer Antonio Miscomini, see Nerida Newbigin's "Antonia Pulci and the First Anthology of Sacre Rappresentazioni (1483?)," La Bibliofilia 118, no. 3 (2016): 337-62. There are different opinions about the date of publication of this volume, but Newbigin reasons that the volumes were likely published in 1483, and I've accepted her date of publication here.

Beatrice of Lorraine, Regent of Tuscany

Beatrice of Lorraine, marchioness and regent of Tuscany (died 18 April 1076)

Before his death in 855 (and after decades of rebellion and instability within the Frankish empire that had once been ruled by Charlemagne), the Carolingian emperor Lothair I divided his kingdom among his three sons--the northern third was given to Lothair II. This region, known as Lotharingen (in German) or Lotharii regnum (in Latin, "Lothair's kingdom"), would ultimately become known as Lorraine. 

Beatrice of Lorraine,
from a twelfth-century manuscript of

Donizo's Vita Mathildis

(Vatican Library,

Codex Vat. Lat. 4922, fol. 30v)

In this act of partition, Lothair I followed a divsion of territory that had occurred after the death of his father, Louis I, "the Pious." Louis was the only surviving son of Charlemagne, inheriting the entirety of the Carolingian empire after his father's death in 814. But during his tumultuous rule, he faced a series of civil wars (he had four rebellious sons by two different wives). 

After his death and yet another civil war, an attempt was made to settle the conflicts among his three sons. By the terms of the Treaty of Verdun (843), the empire was divided: Middle Francia was inherited by Lothair, East Francia, by Louis "the German," and West Francia. by Charles "the Bald." (No territory needed to be given to Louis' fourth rebellious son, Pepin, who had predeceased his father.)

And so, as Lothair I approached his death--after years of further unrest--he too attempted to solve conflicts by means of partition. He divided Middle Francia, the portion of the empire he had inherited following the Treaty of Verdun. The Treaty of Prüm (855) did not establish peace, however, and the result was further instability and conflict. 

It was by the terms of this agreement that Lothair II inherited what would become known as Lorraine from his father.* Lothair II would marry twice, but his "marital" history was more than a bit complicated. Although he had several children (at least two sons) by his second "wife," Waldrada, they were all declared illegitimate. Thus, when Lothair II died in 869, the succession was disputed, with control of Lorraine swinging between his two uncles, Louis the German and Charles the Bald.

In 870, by the terms of the Treaty of Mersen, Lorraine was once again partitioned, this time along slightly different lines. (And, interestingly, one of Lothair II's "illegitimate" sons, Hugh, got the duchy of Alsace under the deal.)

But conflict continued until 925, when the Germany king Henry I conquered Lorraine, establishing the kingdom as a duchy under German control. In 953, Henry I's son and successor, Otto I, deposed his rebellious son-in-law as duke of Lorraine and handed the title off to his own younger brother, Bruno. As archbishop of Cologne, Bruno did not marry and have children, but he did have two important feudal commanders to support him in Lorraine, Frederick, count of Bar, and Godfrey, count of Hainault.

In 959, Bruno, divided Lorraine, creating Upper and Lower Lorraine. Control of Upper Lorraine and the title of margrave were given to Frederick. After Bruno's death in 965, Frederick became duke of Upper Lorraine, and it was Upper Lorraine that was inherited by his grandson, Frederick II--who was Beatrice of Lorraine's father. 

All of this just to get us through something of Beatrice of Lorraine's paternal background! 

As for Beatrice of Lorraine's mother. About the year 1012 or 1013, Frederick married Matilda of Swabia, a woman with her own relationship to the conflicts of this tumultuous geography. There had been some dispute about the validity of Matilda's first marriage, said to be consanguinous, though the couple remained together despite condemnation by the church.** After the death of her first husband, Matilda married Frederick despite very similar objections, that the two were too closely related to enter into a valid marriage. (Like her husband, Matilda of Swabia was a descendant of Charlemagne.)

Nevertheless, Frederick II and Matilda remained married and had three children: Sophie (born c. 1013-1018), Beatrice (born in Mantua c. 1013-1026), and Frederick (born c. 1017-1020). As you can see from the range of dates I've offered here, the birthdates--and, thus, birth order--of these children are not clear. Various dates and orders of birth are suggested by sources.

The seal of Beatrice of Lorraine
(reproduced in Nora Duff's Matilda of Tuscany,
La gran donna d'Italia)
 

Whatever the dates of their birth, the three children were still very young when their father died about the year 1026. Frederick's son succeeded his father as Frederick III, duke of Upper Lorraine, though I have found very little information about him. He seems to have died in 1033 because his sister Sophie inherited the county of Bar from him in that year. 

Meanwhile, after Frederick II's death and his son's succession, both Sophie and Beatrice were sent to the imperial household of the Holy Roman Emperor--their mother Matilda of Swabia's sister, Gisela, was married to Emperor Conrad III. (The marriage of Gisela and Conrad was also disputed because of their consanguinity--sheesh.) At the imperial court, the two girls were "nourished" by their aunt.

Matilda of Swabia was known to be at the imperial court with her sister and her children in 1030, but she died some time before January 1034. Her two daughters, Sophie and Beatrice, now "orphans," were "adopted" by their aunt.

It was at the imperial court of Conrad II and Gisela that a marriage was arranged for Beatrice with the the most powerful nobleman in northern Italy, Boniface of Canossa. From his father, Boniface had inherited the cities and counties of Mantua, Modena, Reggio, Parma, and Ferrara, among others. From his mother, he had inherited parts of Tuscany, including territory in and around Florence, Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia. Boniface supported the Holy Roman Empire in its various expeditions in northern Italy, and in 1027 Conrad awarded Boniface the lordship of Tuscany. 

In 1036, when Boniface attended the marriage of Conrad and Gisela's son, he seems to have met Beatrice. Recently widowed and childless, the fifty-two-year-old Boniface was soon married to Beatrice, then about seventeen years old, but perhaps a bit younger. In addition to her imperial connections, Beatrice brought her inheritance in Lorraine to the marriage: she was dame du château de Briey and "heiress of the lordships of Stenay, Mouzay, Juvigny, Longlier and Orval, all in the northern part of her family's ancestral lands."

After a magnificent marriage ceremony, Boniface and Beatrice took up residence in the ducal castle in Mantua, where the couple's "homecoming" was celebrated with lavish banquets and entertainments. Their court was known for its "brilliance and culture." 

Little documentation about Beatrice survives from the period, but during the years of her marriage, she seems to have spent most of her time in and around Canossa--there are references to her in Bologna (1040), Ferrara (1042), Mantua (1044), and Luca (1044).

During these years, Beatrice gave birth to three children. As with her natal family, the birth order and dates of birth of Beatrice's children are variously given, with only Matilda of Canossa's birthdate, 1046, generally agreed on. This year is derived from the epic poem about her life, Vita Mathildis, written by the monk Donizo of Canossa, who says Matilda was sixty-nine years old when she died in 1115. In addition to Matilda, Beatrice gave birth to a son, Frederick of Canossa (referred to in some chonicle sources, confusingly, as Boniface), and a third child, probably a daughter named Beatrice of Canossa, though some early chronicles indicate this child was also a boy, a younger son, "Beatricio." 

Boniface maintained his strong relations with the Holy Roman Empire after Conrad II's death in 1036, and received further territories, including Spoleto and Camerino, for his support for Conrad's son and successor, Henry III. In 1046, he hosted Henry, on his way to be crowned as emperor. But ultimately their relationship broke down, and the emperor may (or may not) have played a role in Boniface's assassination in 1052.

Boniface's son, Frederick, succeeded his father, with Beatrice of Lorraine assuming the role of regent for him. To protect his inheritance--to preserve what she could of Frederick II's lands and titles (as well as her own)--the widowed Beatrice needed to act quickly. In the words of a contemporary chronicler, Beatrice, having lost the protection of her husband, needed to find a new protector (Destitutam se priori marito desolatae domui patronuni paravisse). And so, Beatrice quickly married her cousin, Godfrey III, duke of Lorraine, probably in 1053.*** 

The marriage of Beatrice and Godfrey had, however, taken place without the permission of the emperor, Henry III, against whom Godfrey had already rebelled. Traveling to Florence in 1055 for a meeting with the pope, the emperor had Beatrice arrested--she and her daughter Matilda, then about ten years old, were taken as a prisoner to Germany. Her son, Frederick, remained in Tuscany. (It isn't clear whether Beatrice's third child was still alive at this point.)

But Frederick III did not survive for long, and it was rumored that the emperor had had both Frederick and Beatrice's third child killed, leaving only Matilda of Canossa as heir to Frederick II. (Beatrice of Lorraine would make a donation to the abbey of Santa Maria de Fenonica for the souls of of her husband, Boniface, her son, and her daughter, so perhaps that solves the question of her third child's sex).

As for Godfrey, he assumed control of Tuscany in the right of his wife and Matilda. The emperor died suddenly in October of 1056, succeeded by his son, Henry, a minor. The boy's mother, Agnes of Poitou, was appointed to act as the boy's guardian and regent--and she rather quickly reconciled with Godfrey of Lorraine. Beatrice and Matilda were released and reunited with Godfrey, who was recognized as margrave of Tuscany.

Beatrice of Lorraine, her husband, and her daughter, Matilda, were all in Rome in 1059, celebrating celebrating the election of Pope Nicholas II. Indeed, Beatrice played a role in three papal elections over the course of just a few years, those of Stephen IX (1057), Nicholas II (1059), and Alexander II (1061). Historian Valerie Eads notes that these elections were accompanied by a "turbulence" in Rome and that Beatrice "played an active role" in maintaining the peace, protecting the elections, and opposing the anti-popes supported by the empire. 

After 1060, Godfrey returned to Lorraine, leaving Beatrice in Italy, though the two were together again in Rome in 1062 and 1063. During these years, Beatrice took an active rold in papal politics and reform as well as governing Tuscany on behalf of her daughter. In November 1069, Beatrice returned to Lorraine with her husband and daughter, but by December Godfrey III of Lorraine lay dying. Before his death, Beatrice arranged for her daughter, Matilda, to be married to Godfrey's son, another Godfrey (he would succeed his father as Godfrey IV).****

Beatrice of Lorraine,

from a 14th century manuscript of 

Donizo's Vita Mathildis

(Biblioteca Panizzi, MS Turri E52)

Beatrice remained loyal to her second husband, commemorating their marriage in a seal (reproduced above) dating to 1073. The legend reads, "May you always be happy, dear Godfrey, Beatrix" (Sis semper felix, Gotfredo cara, Beatrix). But the younger Godfrey and Beatrice's daughter, Matilda, were not well matched, and after the birth and death of a daughter in 1071, Matilda left her husband and rejoined her mother.

Although Matilda of Tuscany was by now fully old enough to rule in her own name, Beatrice continued to exercise power as "dux of Tuscany." In her entry on Beatrice of Lorraine in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Margherita Giuliana Bertolini details Beatrice's "jurisdictional activity" (attività giurisdizionale) involving ecclesiastical institutions in the years from 1070 through 1076 in various locations, including Florence, Lucca, Siena, Perugia, Arezzo, and Pisa. Interestingly, given her past involvement in papal politics, Beatrice appears not to have played a role in the 1073 papal election of Gregory VII--she received news of the election by letter. 

During these years Beatrice also founded and endowed a number of religious institutions, including monasteries,  churches, and hospitals, in Siena, Arezzo, Luca, Florence, Parma, and Mantua, among other places (these are detailed by Bertolini).

Beatrice's daughter, Matilda of Tuscany, never reconciled with her husband, Godfrey. He was assassinated on 27 February 1076 while fighting on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV during what has become known as the Investiture Controversy--for her part, Matilda supported papal power against imperial power. 

On 18 April 1076, just two months after the death of her son-in-law (and stepson), Beatrice of Lorraine died. When he came to write his great epic poem about the life of Matilda of Tuscany, the Italian monk Donizo of Canossa noted the pivotal role that Beatrice had played during her lifetime: "She persuaded [the emperor] to peace with love for the pope, / And the the pious pope for love of the king" (Pontificis pacem regem suadebat amore / Atque pium papam de regis amore rogabat, quoted by Bertolini--my Latin is really bad these days, so I hope this translation is close).

The tomb of Beatrice of Lorraine,
Camposanto, Pisa

Beatrice of Lorraine was buried in a Roman sarcophagus in the cathedral church of Pisa, her burial arranged by her daughter. Her tomb was relocated inside the church in the fourteenth century, and then moved to its current location, in the Camposanto, in the nineteenth century. (For an excellent analysis of the tomb and its construction, click here.)

Letters from and to Beatrice of Lorraine are available at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters (click here).

There is a full-length biography of Beatrice of Lorraine, Elke Goetz's Beatrix von Canossa und Tuszien :Eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte des 11. Jahrhunderts (1995).

 

*For Paul B. Pixton's summary of all this, in Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia, click here.

**Canon law concerned itself with the blood relationships among those who would marry. For a discussion of consanguinity as an impediment to a valid marriage, click here.

***Godfrey III, "the Bearded," duke of Lower Lorraine, was a member of the house of Ardennes-Verdun, Beatrice of the house of Ardennes-Bar. In her entry on Beatrice of Lorraine in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Margherita Giuliana Bertolini notes that after the death of Frederick II of Upper Lorraine in 1033, the House of Ardennes-Bar became "extinct," and  Gothelo, duke of Lower Lorraine, of the house of Ardennes-Verdun, was invested with Upper Lorraine, uniting the once-divided territories. After Gothelo's death, his son Godfrey eventurally succeeded to his father's role ("eventually" because there had been conflict and rebellion). Notably, Bertolini suggests that Godfrey had "probably" (probabile) administered Beatrice's holdings (dei beni) in Upper Lorraine. 

****Godfrey IV was the son of Godfrey III's first wife, Doda.

Rebecca Guarna and the Practice of Medicine

 Rebecca Guarna, doctor, fl. 1200 (1 April)

Like Trota before her and Costanza Calenda after, Rebecca Guaarna is one of the renowned mulieres Salernitanae ("women of Salerno") who were trained in medicine in that Italian city during the Middle Ages. 

Detail from a manuscript 
illustration of a female healer,
14th century
(MS 544, Miscellanea Medica XVIII,
from Wellcome Collection, London)

A reference to this long tradition was made by Antonio Mazza, prior of the Collegium Medicorum of Salerno, who wrote the earliest history of the institution. In Urbis Salernitanae Historia et Antiquitates (1681), Mazza noted that there had been "many erudite women" who trained at the school, women who "in many fields surpassed or equaled in ingenuity and doctrine not a few men and, like men, were remarkable in the field of medicine." Among the women he names is Rebecca Guarna.

In his multi-volume history of the the Scuola Medica Salernita, historian Salvatore de Renzi notes that, while much about Rebecca Guarna is "unknown" (her dates of birth and death, for example), she belonged a noble and noteworthy family whose members include Archbishop Romualdo Guarna, who had himself studied medicine at Salerno. (Romualdo Guarna died on 1 April 1182, so I've used the date of his death as the occasion to write about Rebecca.) 

Citing Mazza, Renzi lists the medical treatises which Rebecca Guarna is said to have written: De febris (On Fevers), De urinis (On Urines), and De embrione (On Embryos).

In addition to Mazza's reference to Rebecca Guarna and to Renzi's documentary research, she is mentioned by scholars who have written about the history of medicine, and in particular about the history of women in medicine, but there are, unfortunately, no further details. They span the decades: Henry Ebenezer Handerson's The School of Salernum: An Historical Sketch of Medieval Medicine (1883), James J. Walsh's Old Time Makers of Medicine (1911), Melina Lipinska's Les Femmes et le progrès des sciences médicales (1930), Muriel Joy Hughes's Women Healers in Medieval Life and Literature (1943), Kate Campbell Hurd-Meade's A History of Women in Medicine, from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century (1973), and Leigh Whaley's Women and the Practice of Medical Care in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800 (2011)

I have been unbelievably excited to discover that there is a street in Salerno named in honor of Rebecca Guarna, the Via Rebecca Guarna. I am including a picture of the street, even though it's from an article with a headline about the "urban degradation" in Salerno! Sure, trees are falling, but THERE IS A STREET NAMED FOR REBECCA GUARNA!!

(Evidently the urban blight seen in Via Rebecca Guarna is a thing, because there are a couple of earlier articles, like this one, with photos of trash everywhere, but I'm still happy.)

Here it is, if you're ever in the area: