The "Notorious" Joanna I, Queen of Naples

Joanna I, queen of Naples (recognized as heir presumptive, 4 November 1330)

Earlier this year I posted about Joanna II of Naples (1373-1445)--today we'll look at the Joanna who preceded her as queen regnant of Naples.

A detail of a fresco, Certosa di San Giacoma, Capri,
featuring Joanna, painted during her lifetime

Born in 1328, Joanna became the heir presumptive to the throne of Naples after her three elder siblings died, followed by the death of her father, Charles, duke of Calabria.

On 4 November 1330, her grandfather, King Robert of Naples, also known as "Robert the Wise," named his granddaughter his heir, rather than his nephews. He may have made the best decision possible, but maybe not the wisest?

Following the ceremony of homage to Joanna, her grandfather created her duchess of Calabria (1333) and princess of Salerno (1334). He also arranged for the girl's marriage to her cousin, Andrew, son of one of those overlooked nephews, Charles of Hungary, the king hoping to obviate any claims by the boy's father on the throne of Naples. The two children were married 1333 (at ages five and six--yet one more example of "traditional" marriage . . . ).

Before King Robert died in 1343, he formally arranged for Joanna's succession--but, by the same will, he did not name any role for Andrew. In the event of Joanna's death, according to Robert's plan, she was to be succeeded by her younger sister, Maria of Calabria (born posthumously to Joanna's parents, Charles of Calabria and Marie of Valois).

In 1343, Joanna was still too young to rule in her own right; on her regency council was Sancha of Majorca, her step-grandmother (King Robert's second wife)--who was a strong advocate for the young queen before being forced out of the regency council a year later, in 1344. (Sancha, dowager queen of Naples, became a nun at the convent of Santa Maria della Croce in Naples, which was known as the place of the buried-alive [sepolte vive]. She died there eighteen months later.)

The result of Sancha's removal from the regency was conflict among the remaining parties--in addition to Andrew's family in Hungary, there were competing claims from King Robert's younger brother and one of Joanna's cousins, Charles, duke of Durazzo, son of King Robert's youngest brother, who tried to cement his "rightful" claim to the throne of Naples by marrying Joanna's younger sister. 

Despite all the competing claims and strife, Joanna was crowned queen of Naples--by the pope--on 28 August 1344. And, following her grandfather's will, she opposed the coronation of her husband, Andrew. He received the title of "king," but no crown and no role in governing. (Joanna also inherited from her grandfather the title of queen of Jerusalem and Sicily.)

Continued opposition, conspiracy, and maneuvering resulted in Andrew's assassination in 1345. Joanna was, of course, blamed for the murder. (She also gave birth to Charles Martel, Andrew's posthumous child, on Christmas Day, 1345.)

In 1347, Joanna married Louis of Taranto, a first cousin (I'm not even going to try to explain the relationships), in order to secure her crown, but the result was disaster for her and for Naples. Louis of Hungary, the older brother of Joanna's assassinated first husband, invaded Naples, and Joanna was forced to flee, leaving behind her son. (The boy was sent to Hungary by Louis--and died there, in 1348, not yet three years old.)

Joanna and her second husband wound up in Provence, where Joanna was countess. She also traveled to Avignon to meet with Pope Clement VI; she arranged for his dispensation for her second marriage (the closely related couple had married without a papal dispensation), managed to acquire a papal declaration of innocence for her suspected involvement in Andrew's murder, and, in return, sold Avignon to the papacy. (In 1307, the papacy had been removed from Rome to Avignon, where it would remain until 1377. Clement VI was the fourth pope to reside in Avignon--and since the papacy was in the city, it was a benefit for the papacy to have rights to the city.)

In her exile, Joanna gave birth to her second child, a girl named Catherine of Taranto (she would die in 1349, about one year old). After Louis of Hungary left Naples during the plague, Joanna and her husband were able to retake the city--but, in the process, her husband effectively took all power and control from the queen. 

After the Hungarians returned to attempt to reclaim Naples in 1350, Louis agreed to rule with Joanna. Joanna gave birth to a second daughter, Françoise of Taranto, who lived only a few months. Louis and Joanna managed to retake territories, restore order, and remain in power, but in 1362, Louis of Taranto died. 

Freed from her second husband, Joanna ruled alone, with varying degrees of success and calm, despite having married her third husband, James IV of  Majorca, who proved to be deranged, and then a fourth, Otto, duke of Brunswick-Grubenhagen, who at least tried to protect her rights in Naples against various (and plentiful) male claimants.

Joanna I of Naples, on her throne and with her sceptre,
from the church of St. Mary Magdalen,
Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, Provence;
Louis and Joanna issued a charter in favor of the church

In the end, though, one of those determined men, Charles of Durazzo (a different Charles of Durazzo, this one Joanna's second cousin and, also, the husband of Joanna's niece Margaret of Durazzo, the youngest daughter of Joanna's sister Maria), invaded Naples in 1381, forcing Joanna to surrender and then imprisoning her. He had her killed on 27 July 1382. 

Although Charles of Durazzo claimed that the queen died of natural causes, other witnesses claim she was either strangled while she was kneeling in prayer or smothered by feather mattresses. Having been excommunicated by the Roman pope, Urban VI, for her support of the Avignonese pope, she could not be given a proper burial--her body was thrown into a well.

Two interesting notes: Birgitta of Sweden visited Naples between 1365 and 1372, meeting Queen Joanna. About the relationship between the queen and the future saint, Nancy Goldstone writes, "Joanna was . . . profoundly affected" by Birgitta. Birgitta herself would characterize her relationship with the queen as "one of a mother instructing an obedient daughter," and offered her various prophecies. After Birgitta's death, Joanna joined in with those who sought her canonization. 

Joanna also corresponded with Catherine of Siena, whom she "respected and encouraged," "sympathizing" with her "passionate approach to religion and politics." Unfortunately, however, Catherine of Siena would later denounce the queen for her support of the popes in Avignon over those in Rome. 

I recommend Nancy Goldstone's biography, which I have quoted here, The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily. But if you're not ready for an entire book, Helen Castor's review of Goldstone's biography is, in itself, an excellent introduction and analysis. 

Teresa of Ávila: Nun, Mystic, Theologian

Teresa of Ávila (feast day, 15 October)

Born on 28 March 1515, Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada would become one of the most well-known and revered of early-modern religious figures: she was beatified in 1614, some thirty years after her death, and canonized just a few years later, on 12 March 1622. On 27 September 1970, Pope Paul VI named her as a Doctor of the Church.* 

Teresa of Ávila, age sixty-one,

a copy of a portrait painted from life in 1576

Although she was the pious daughter of pious parents, the young Teresa was also drawn to romantic tales of knightly adventure, the pleasures of spending time with her friends, and caring for her appearance.

But after the death of her mother, when Teresa was fifteen, and then of her eldest sister, she was sent to an Augustinian convent. She spent eighteen months there, but as a result of an illness, she returned home.

She eventually decided to return to a religious life--as the safest kind of life--and joined the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila on 2 November 1535. 

Once again she suffered a severe illness (probably malaria), but she also began experiencing a series of ecstatic visions, the most famous of which she would later describe in her Autobiography:

I saw in [an angel's] hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.

Like many of the religious women we've encountered this year, Teresa found life in the convent not rigorous enough. In addition to her role as a visionary, she became a reformer, founding a new, more rigorous Carmelite rule, one focused on absolute poverty, self-flagellation, and rigid asceticism. The Discalced (or shoeless) Carmelite Nuns of the Primitive Rule of St. Joseph was founded in Ávila in 1562. 

Then the visionary and reformer became a builder: traveling throughout Spain, she established convents in Medina del Campo (1567), Malagon and Valladolid (1568), Toledo and Pastrana (1569), Salamanca (1570), Alba de Tormes (1571), Segovia (1574), Veas and Seville (1575), and Caravaca (1576). She describes this frenetic activity--as well as the opposition she encountered everywhere--in her Book of Foundations.

In addition to her autobiography, El Libro de su vida (Life Written by Herself), completed before 1567, Teresa wrote a series of works for the women who wished to live a religious life. El camino de perfección (The Way of Perfection), written about 1566, was intended to show her readers the way to achieve their spiritual goals.

Her most well-known work, El castillo interior or Las moradas (The Interior Castle or The Mansions) was probably completed between 1577 and 1580--in this work, she instructs her readers in contemplative prayer, leading them through stages of an interior exploration. Libro de las Fundaciones (The Book of Foundations), begun in 1573 and completed in 1582, was written as a history of the order and of its growing number of established institutions. She also composed poems and prayers. More than 400 letters, whole and fragmentary, survive.

Teresa died at the age of sixty-seven on 4 October 1582 in Salamanca.

You can access all of her works online--you might start with what's available at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library by clicking here.

While Teresa does tell the story of her own life in her autobiography, for a good scholarly introduction to the woman and her work, neither a hagiographical view or a romanticized one, I recommend Cathleen Medwick's Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul.

*She was recognized along with Catherine of Siena, the two becoming the first two women to be named as Doctors of the Church. Thérèse of Lisieux, recognized in 1997, and Hildegard of Bingen, in 2012, are the only two other women so identified.

Marie le Jars de Gournay and the Writing Woman

Marie le Jars de Gournay (born 6 October 1565)

Marie le Jars was the first of six children born to Guillaume le Jars, a minor aristocrat living in Paris, and his wife, Jeanne de Hacqueville, whose family included noted jurists and writers. Her father purchased the estate of Gournay-sur-Aronde; after his death in 1578, the family suffered financial difficulties and relocated to the estate, thus adding "de Gournay" to Marie's name.

A frontispiece from Gournay's
collection of her work.

There were two usual possibilities for young women like Marie de Gournay--a religious profession (one of her sisters did become a nun) or marriage. While her mother planned an advantageous marriage for her daughter, Marie resisted and undertook a rigorous--and largely secret--self-education, focused on the classics and French literature.

For most of the centuries since her death in 1645, Marie le Jars de Gournay was known for her association with the famous essayist Michel de Montaigne.

It was Montaigne himself who referred to the young woman as his "fille d'alliance," his adopted daughter. In her novella, Le Proumenoir de M. de Montaigne, par sa fille d'alliance (The Promenade of Monsieur de Montaigne, by His Adopted Daughter (1588), Gournay addresses Montaigne in her dedicatory epistle as "Father."

As Gournay's editors note, the young scholar found in Montaigne "the reincarnation of the ancient sages" and an "impeccable patriarchal authority to sponsor her own interests against those of her mother--even, pretty clearly, a safely inaccessible substitute for the husband her mother would have chosen for her."

Their correspondence began after Marie read Montaigne's Essays in 1584. In 1588, she visited him in Paris, and he returned the visit, staying in at the Château de Gournay for three months. 

Gournay's mother died in 1591, leaving her in a very difficult financial situation, while Montaigne's death in 1592 left her in a difficult intellectual situation. Along with a younger brother and sister, she first moved into the household of the provincial governor of Cambrai before she relocated to Paris where she lived "in genteel poverty."

Then, in 1593, Montaigne's widow,  Françoise de la Cassaigne, asked Gournay to edit a posthumous edition of Monntaigne's works. Gournay spent more than a year working at Montaigne's estate, producing a new edition, prefaced by her own introduction, published in 1595. Subsequent editions enhanced and promoted Montaigne and his reputation.

But, in addition to her editorial work, Gournay produced verse and translations while she was living in Paris, as well as the significant works that have drawn new attention to her more recently: Égalité des hommes et des femmes (The Equality of Men and Women), first published in 1622, Apologie pour celle qui escrit (Apology for the Woman Writing), first published in 1626, and Grief des dames (Complaint of Women or The Ladies' Complaint), also published in 1626. Gournay continued to revise her work throughout her writing career, with final versions published in Les Advis ou les presens de la Demoiselle de Gournay (The Offerings or Presents of Demoiselle de Gournay,1641).

In The Equality of Men and Women, dedicated to Anne of Austria, queen of France (who would become regent for her son Louis XIV in 1643), Gournay argues that women's subordination is not "natural" but based on prejudice. Women have been denied their rightful place in society by men, who have reduced women by denying them an education. 

In arguing against women’s subservience and for their education, an education "of a kind equal to men’s," Gournay includes a history of women, citing a "vast number of . . . intellects, ancient and modern, of illustrious name" to support her view of women's potential and accomplishments. Her citations to support her arguments--drawn from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, Boccaccio, Tasso, and Erasmus--illustrate the depth of her education. (In her history of women, she notes the achievements of Sappho, Hypatia, and Catherine of Siena--but, although she knows the French Roman de la rose, she does not know Christine de Pizan.)

In The Ladies' Complaint, Gournay again addresses misogyny and education. "Blessed are you, Reader," she begins, 

if you are not of the sex to which one forbids all goods, depriving it of freedom. One denies this sex just about everything: all the virtues and all the public offices, titles, and responsibilities. In short, this sex has its own power taken away; with this freedom gone, the possibility of developing virtues through the use of freedom disappears. This sex is left with the sovereign and unique virtues of ignorance, servitude, and the capacity to play the fool, if this game pleases it.

In her Apology for the Woman Writing, Gournay writes to defend herself against the slanders that threaten her--that seek to undermine not only her income but, more importantly, her reputation. It is, her recent editors note, a "profuse autobiographical self-justification."

For an excellent biographical essay from the Encyclopedia of World Biography, click here. For John Conley's careful analysis of Gournay's philosophy, published at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, click here.

As the result of an amazing (and amazingly generous) digitization effort, you can "leaf through" a number of original editions of Gournay's works through the Bibliothèque nationale de France website by clicking here. For an excellent English translation of Gournay's works, see Richard Hillman and Colette Quesnel's Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works.

Thérèse of Lisieux, the "Little Flower of Jesus"

Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin (feast day, 3 October)

On 2 July 1873, Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born in Alençon, France, the daughter of two devout parents. Her father, Louis Martin, was a skilled watchmaker, her mother, Zelie Guerin, a successful lacemaker in a region known for its point d' Alençon. Before they married, both of Marie-Françoise-Thérèse's parents had sought a religious life, but both had been discouraged.

Thérèse of Lisieux, 1896

Married in 1858, Louis and Zelie Martin produced nine children over the course of the next fifteen years, but within three years, between 1867 and 1870, four of their small children had died. A final baby, Marie-Françoise-Thérèse, was born in 1873. Unfortunately, Zelie Martin died just four years later, in August 1877.

In 1882, when Marie-Françoise-Thérèse was eight years old, her sister Pauline (born in 1861) entered the Carmelite convent of Lisieux, followed in 1886 by the eldest sister, Marie (born in 1860); Léonie (born in 1863), joined a community of Poor Clares in the same year (since the rigors of the Poor Clares proved too much for her, in 1887 Léonie joined an order of Visitation sisters at a monastery in Caen; she would leave briefly, but from 1893 she was a permanent member of the Visitation order). In 1894, the fourth Martin sister, Céline joined her sisters at the Carmelite convent of Lisieux.

Although Marie-Françoise-Thérèse had first sought to join the convent in Lisieux when she was only nine, she experienced what she later regarded as a conversion on Christmas in 1886. By 1887, she again approached the sisters at the Carmelite convent, asking for entrance, and again was refused. But later in the year, she traveled with her father to Rome; there, in a general audience with Pope Leo XIII, on 20 November 1887, she approached the pope, kneeled at his feet, and asked him directly for permission to enter the convent at Carmel. Although he blessed Marie-Françoise-Thérèse, his answer was that she had to follow the advice of the convent superiors--but, he added, "You will enter if it is God's will."

On New Year's Day of 1888, having returned to Lisieux, Marie-Françoise-Thérèse was informed by the prioress of the Lisieux convent that she would be allowed to enter. She joined the community on 9 April 1888. She remained in the convent until her death, at the age of twenty-four, on 30 September 1897.

Thérèse of Lisieux's spiritual memoir, L'histoire d'une âme (The Story of a Soul), exists in three parts: the first, written between 1895 and 1896 and dedicated to her sister Pauline, recounts her childhood memories; the second, in the form of a letter written to her elder sister, Marie, was composed in September of 1896 and preserves her spiritual discovery, the "little way of love and trust"; the third, addressed to the prioress of the convent and written in 1897, focuses on her life as a nun. The autobiography was first published on 30 September 1898, on the anniversary of Thérèse of Lisieux's death.

Thérèse of Lisieux was beatified on 29 April 1923 and canonized on 17 May 1925. On 19 October 1997, Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church, one of only four women (the others are Teresa of Ávila, founder of the Discalced Carmelites, the order to which Thérèse belonged and Catherine of Siena, both made Doctors of the Church in 1970, and Hildegard of Bingen, named as Doctor of the Church in 2012).  

Her feast day was established as 3 October (it was later moved, in 1969, to 1 October.)

Thérèse of Lisieux's parents were beatified in 1994, and there is some effort now underway to canonize them. 

For an excellent introduction to Thérèse of Lisieux's life and thought, the Society of the Little Flower website offers ample information. 

Lucrezia Marinella, "A Woman of Wondrous Eloquence and Learning"

Lucrezia Marinella Vacca (9 August 1600)

Despite her literary fame among her contemporaries, we know very little about Lucrezia Marinella's life. She was born in Venice in 1571. She married Girolamo Vacca, but just when is not clear. We know that she had two children, Antonio and Paulina, only because they are named in her will, dated to 1645, and in a codicil, added in 1648, she mentions a granddaughter. She died on 9 October 1653 and was buried in the church of San Pantaleone, in Dorsoduro, one of the six sestiere, or districts, of Venice.

About Marinella's life, Letizia Panizza notes, "Despite the fame bestowed on her by her publications, her own life was lived in seclusion--the norm, it must be said, for a Venetian woman of her social rank, regardless of intellectual status."*

Marinella "did not travel," and "there is no evidence" that she was included in any of the intellectual and literary academies in the city. Nor is there any "record of her corresponding with her admirer Arcangela Tarabotti," her contemporary, living in the convent of Sant'Anna, whose own work, protesting “paternal tyranny,” addressed themes similar to those treated by Marinella.

Marinella does not seem to have known about another Venetian contemporary, the Jewish writer Sarra Copia Sulam, who was able to form a salon and engage in intellectual discussion with a variety of men of letters. Nor does Marinella mention the Venetian poet Veronica Franco, who died in 1591, just before Marinella begins her literary career.

But Marinella's work survives. Between 1595 and 1606, she published  ten books--including a sacred epic, The Holy Dove (La colomba sacra); an epic on the life of St. Francis; a life of the Virgin Mary, La vita di Maria Vergine imperatrice dell'universo; an anthology of sacred verses; a pastoral drama, Happy Arcadia (Arcadia felice); a life of the virgin-martyr St. Justine; a major prose life of St. Catherine of Siena; and a heroic epic, Enrico; or Byzantium Gained (L'Enrico overo Bisantio acquistato). 

I am posting about Lucrezia Marinella today, 9 August, because a dedicatory letter prefacing her most well known work, The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, is dated 9 August 1600.

When I first ordered a copy of Marinella's book for my university's library, the collection specialist laughed uneasily at its title, so it's important to say something about that before we go any further. Marinella's title may seem odd, if not funny--or perhaps even offensive--today, but the title is carefully crafted and demonstrates that Marinella's work is a direct response to a vicious attack on women that was published in Venice in 1599, Giuseppi Passi’s The Defects of Women (I donneschi difetti). 

Passi’s Defects is a scathing attack on women, and it is voluminous in its treatment of women’s defects, running to nearly four hundred printed pages. It is also a work that proved exceedingly popular, running through at least three editions between 1599 and 1618. (Marinella’s book seems to have been republished at the same pace as Passi’s: the first edition of The Nobility and Excellence of Women was published in 1600, a second edition in 1601, and a third in 1621.)

To be sure, Passi does not present his work as an attack on women but, rather, as a book with an entirely worthy purpose, that of warning young men about women’s faults: “young men, in reading this book and learning of the deceits of women,” will be kept out of harm’s way, and to this end, Passi says that he will “consider carefully and discuss the infinite events that have befallen men on account of women.” In support of his “warning” Pass cites nearly two hundred and fifty authorities listed alphabetically, from Accurso and Augustine to Virgil and Xenarchus, at the beginning of his book.

Having marshaled his authorities for the reader’s immediate consumption, Passi then follows with a table of contents designed to illustrate his assertion that women are “defective”--and, if unchecked, a danger to men. This table summarizes the contents of the thirty-five chapters that follow. He begins with a chapter devoted to defining “woman,” then proceeds to a series of chapters, each devoted to a particular “defect”: “proud women,” “avaricious and traitorous women,” “lustful women” (with their inordinate appetites), “irascible women,” “gluttonous and drunken women,” “envious women,” “boastful women,” “ambitious women,” “ungrateful women”--all in the first ten chapters.

Women are pitiless, adulterous and “roving”; women prey on men, selling their own sexuality--as prostitutes and whores--or selling other women, as bawds. Women dabble in magic, they color their hair, they love to adorn their bodies with beautiful clothing and jewelry, and they are entirely untrustworthy, their beauty and their advice equally dangerous to men. Chapter 21 is devoted, simply enough, to jealous women, while Chapter 22 bristles with synonyms, devoted to women who are fickle, inconstant, unstable, frivolous, credulous, foolish, and stupid. Further chapters focus on women who are nosy, litigious, hypocritical, vain, and, in another chapter filled with excess, “faint-hearted, cowardly, timid, and fearful”; women are “worthless, incompetent, and useless.” Women are obstinate, indolent, thieving, tyrannical, fraudulent, and, in yet another bit of overkill, “slanderous, talkative, feigning, biting, and lying.” And, finally, they are unable to bear any of life’s adversities.

As if this comprehensive enumeration of women’s weaknesses isn’t enough, Passi provides yet another extensive list, this one a detailed, eight-page table of all the “notable things contained in the work,” a more-or-less alphabetical hodge-podge of women’s faults (from their appetite for wine, for example, to their venery), of infamous women (from Agrippina the lustful, for example, to Xantippe, the quarrelsome wife of Socrates), and of praise for assorted worthy men (Alexander the Great, for example, noted for his continence) and their revelation of women’s failings (Virgil, for example, who is said to have given evidence of women’s rapacity). If you're inclined, you can take a look at Passi's diatribe by clicking here.

In her discussion of Lucrezia Marinella's literary response to The Defects of Women, Panizza calls her work “dazzling” and “blistering”—a veritable “fireworks display” of Marinella's “stunning” mastery of philosophical, medical, historical, and literary authorities and arguments. Panizza notes that it was composed “at a furious rate” as a direct reply to the misogyny of Passi.

To that end, Marinella’s response to The Defects of Women is two-fold, as indicated by the title my friend and colleague found so funny: first, Marinella will defend women’s “nobility and excellence” against attacks like Passi’s, and then she will herself go on the attack, enumerating the “defects and vices” of men.

In countering Passi’s attacks, Marinella throws male authorities back at Passi—Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Petrarch, and Dante, to name only a few, are all used to defend woman’s nature, her “essence,” and even the very name, “woman,” by which she is known. As Marinella reaches her fifth chapter, “Of Women’s Noble Actions and Virtues, Which Greatly Surpass Men’s, As Will Be Proved by Reasoning and Example,” Marinella is ready to move from defending women to cataloguing their abilities. She has already shown that women possess nobility of soul; now she is ready to show “that their actions are more esteemed than men’s.”

Marinella relates the stories of “learned women and those who are illustrious in many arts,” of “temperate and continent women,” and of “prudent women and those expert at giving advice.” “It is a fact known to everyone,” Marinella asserts, that “we never see or read about [women] getting drunk or spending all day in taverns, as dissolute men do, nor do they give themselves unrestrainedly to other pleasure.” Women are “moderate and frugal in everything.” 

After completing her argument that women are “far nobler and more excellent than men,” Marinella then undertakes what none of her predecessors since Christine de Pizan has dared: she not only “corrects” men’s judgments about women, but she challenges specifically, and by name, a number of her male contemporaries, specifically those who have, motivated by the “arrogance” and “envy” of Aristotle, revived his “shameful and dishonorable” denigration of women.

One final aspect of Marinella’s writing back to Passi is the way she has constructed her work. She is not only responding to them, she is mirroring them. She responds to each argument with a corresponding argument, each quotation with a countering quotation, each example with an example of her own. 

Lucrezia Marinella’s Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, first published in 1600, was expanded and republished in 1601. A third edition appeared in 1621. 

But, like so many women intellectuals and writers who preceded her, Lucrezia Marinella, renowned for her “eloquence and learning,” was rather quickly forgotten. As Panizza indicates, “after her own century, Marinella’s name and The Nobility and Excellence of Women become items in catalogues,” and her “works all but disappeared from sight.” 

Lucrezia Marinella is mentioned twice in the eighteenth century and once in the nineteenth; her works were not republished. Even as the twentieth century drew to an end, only one of Marinella’s many and varied works, her 1605 Arcadia felice, finally appeared in a critical edition in Italian in 1998. 

Anne Dunhill’s 1999 translation of Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women, with its excellent introduction by Letizia Panizza, which I've quoted here, was the first time any of her work was made available in English. Marinella's epic, Enrico, is now also available in a new English translation, as is her life of Mary and her Exhortations to Women.

These new editions all contain excellent introductory materials, but if you are wanting an easily accessible biography, with a particular analysis of Marinella's arguments in The Nobility and Excellence of Women, the entry on Marinella at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is particularly good, and it contains an excellent bibliography.

*Parts of this post have been adapted from Debating Women, Politics, and Power in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).

Birgitta of Sweden: Celestial Revelations

Birgitta of Sweden (died 23 July 1373)

The life of Birgitta Birgersdotter changed radically in 1344. Before that date, she lived a pious but conventional life as daughter, wife, and mother. After 1344, her life was utterly unconventional.

A late fifteenth-century depiction of
St. Birgitta of Sweden

Born about the year 1303, Birgitta was the daughter of Birger Persson, a wealthy landowner and member of a prominent family, who was also a governor and provincial judge in Uppland, a province on the eastern coast of Sweden. Her mother was Birger Perssons's second wife, Ingeborg Bengtsdotter, who had equally illustrious connections, both to the Swedish monarchy, and to Birger Magnusson of Bjälbo, the founder of the city of Stockholm.

Birgitta would later claim that she had begun experiencing mystical visions when she was seven and that she had wished to join a religious order. But her father did not want his daughter to enter a convent, and after the death of Ingeborg Bengtsdotter, about the year 1314, Birger Persson decided to arrange a politically advantageous marriage for his daughter. So in 1316, Birgitta was married to Ulf Gudmarsson, lord of Närke, and she would spend much, though not all, of their twenty-eight-year marriage at his castle at Ulvâsa in Östergötland.

Birgitta happily discovered her husband was as dedicated to his faith as she was. Over the course of the next three decades, Birgitta would live the life of a wife and mother--although one who was also devout and dedicated to performing works of charity. Despite some accounts of her life that focus on her avoidance of "marital pleasure," Birgitta gave birth to eight children, four sons and four daughters. She was also called to court of King Magnus Eriksson after his 1335 marriage to Blanche of Namur. 

Birgitta would enter the second phase of her life in 1344, after her husband's death. Now in her forties, a widow, and freed from childbearing and childrearing, she could devote herself to the religious life that had been denied her earlier. 

She became a practicing ascetic, like many of the religious women we have already seen, denying herself food and subjecting herself to a variety of penitential acts. Her visionary experiences returned; after her death, her confessor recorded some six hundred of her revelations in Latin as Revelationes coelestes ("celestial revelations").  

Not content to join an established religious order, Birgitta founded her own religious community, probably in the year 1346. Originally known as the Order of St. Saviour, it later became known as the the Brigittines, an order that included joint communities of both monks and nuns. Its chief monastery was at Vadstena, in Östergötland, a gift from Magnus of Sweden. 

A detail from a prayer book, c. 1500,
St. Birgitta of Sweden

In 1349, seeking approval for her new order, Birgitta traveled to Rome, accompanied by one of her sons and her daughter, Catherine, about whom I posted earlier this year. Although the order would not receive papal approval until August 1370, Birgitta decided to remain in Rome (though she did undertake occasional pilgrimages, including one to the Holy Land in 1372). She died in Rome on 23 July 1373.

After Birgitta's death, her daughter Catherine returned to Sweden with her mother's body. Birgitta was buried in the monastery she had founded in Vadstena. Catherine continued her mother's work in the monastery and with the Briggitine order, though she ultimately returned to Rome to work for Birgitta's canonization, which took place on 7 October 1391. (While in Rome, Catherine developed a close relationship with a woman we have met before, Catherine of Siena.) 

And as a further note: St. Birgitta of Sweden's daughter, Catherine, was herself canonized, in 1484, as St. Catherine of Sweden. Like her mother, Catherine had been married, but her husband died while she was in Rome with her mother. Birgitta's granddaughter Ingegerd, the child of Birgitta's daughter Margareta, became the first official abbess of Vadstena Abbey in 1388. (Unfortunately, she was accused of forgery, embezzlement, and breaking her vows of chastity and removed as abbess in 1403. Oops. But she remained a member of the community until her death in 1412, and in the end her sins were forgiven.)

For a short biography, I'll link you here to the online Encyclopedia Britannica entry. A longer biography, available here, via the Encyclopedia of World Biograhy, is also quite good. There are many editions of her Revelations and prayers available, but I like Classics of Western Spirituality text, Birgitta of Sweden: Life and Selected Writings.

Catherine of Genoa: Saint and Mystic

Catherine of Genoa (canonized 16 June 1737)

St. Catherine of Genoa,
eighteenth-century painting by
Giovanni Agostino Ratti

Caterina Fieschi was born in Genoa in 1447, the fifth and last child of Jacopo Fieschi and Francesca di Negro, both members of aristocratic and politically active families.

An account of Caterina's life, later recorded by her confessor, indicates that by the age of thirteen the young Caterina had professed a desire to enter the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a house of Augustinian Canonesses of the Lateran, where her sister was a nun. Although she was ardent, the nuns thought she was too young, and to take her into the convent at such an age was against their customary practice.

Instead, after her father's death, her brother used her marriage as a way of settling some family disputes. Not yet sixteen, Caterina Fieschi was married in 1463--although she was recognized for her holiness, Caterina was also noted for her "dutiful obedience." 

Her marriage to Giuliano Adorno was unhappy in the extreme--she endured his abuse for ten years and then, on 22 March 1473, after she experienced a mystical, transformative vision of God, the already religiously inclined young woman underwent a "conversion."

What followed was a "life of purification," one devoted to prayer and penance. She averted her eyes from all "sights of the world," spoke as few words as possible, slept as little as possible, and ate as little as possible, only enough to sustain life. (According to the account of her life made by her confessor, she fasted completely during Advent and Lent, sustained only by water "flavored" with salt and vinegar.)

As part of her devotional practice, she wore a hair shirt, and when she did sleep, it was on a bed filled with briars and thistles. She made her husband promise to live with her as if he were her brother--a promise that he kept, chastened by his own financial ruin. She was instructed directly by the holy spirit in a series of visions, and, aside from the six hours a day she devoted to prayer, she dedicated her life to ministering to the poor and the sick. She eventually converted her husband, who died in 1497. Catherine herself died on 15 September 1510.

In addition to writing his account of her "miraculous life," her confessor, a "Father Marabotti," preserved the two works attributed to her, a treatise on purgatory, Purgation and Purgatory, and The Spiritual Dialogue.

Catherine of Genoa was beatified in 1675 by Pope Clement X and canonized by Pope Clement XII on 16 June 1737.

For his account of the "most important late medieval Italian woman mystic after Catherine of Siena," I recommend Bernard McGinn's The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 1350-1550, volume 5 of his mammoth history of western Christian mysticism. McGinn is excellent on the "problem" of "Catherine's" writings--since she knew how to write "but she chose not to leave anything of her own to posterity."

The texts attributed to her represent her "teachings" in "texts put together by her followers and not published until 1551." The works are available in a number of editions, but I like the version that is published as part of the Classics of Western Civilization series, Catherine of Genoa: Purgation and Purgatory, The Spiritual Dialogue.

Sigrid Undset, Nobel Prize Winner

Sigrid Undset (born 20 May 1822)

Today is the birth day of Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset, who won the 1928 Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Sigrid Undset, 1928

The most well-known of Undset's novels comprise the trilogy known as Kristin Lavransdatter, published between 1920 and 1922. This epic historical series focuses on the life experiences of a fourteenth-century woman, the title character Kristin. The series generated controversy--and Nobel attention--for its frank descriptions of female sexuality. (Undset's work also illustrated her engagement with literary modernism.)

Her next series, known collectively in English as The Master of Hestviken, was published in two volumes (1925-7), but it appeared as a tetralogy in its English edition. Like Kristin Lavransdatter, it is set in medieval Norway, and it connects up with the earlier books by incorporating Kristin's parents at the end of the final volume of this later work.

To access a great deal of information about Undset, the first place to start might be the Nobel website; there you will find information about the 1928 prize, the award-ceremony speech, Undset's autobiographical account of her life, the entire text of Undset's speech at the Nobel banquet, a bibliography, and "other resources."

But maybe the best thing to do is get a copy of the three-volume Kristin Lavransdatter, available in Tina Nunnally's excellent new English translation for Penguin (you can buy all three novels in one volume or separately, The Wreath, The Wife, and The Cross--I've linked to the one-volume version here. Be cautious--you should make sure you're getting Nunnally's translation rather than the first English translation by Charles Archer in 1927.)

And, just in case you're interested, after Undset's "scandalous" conversion to Catholicism in 1924, she wrote a biography of the fourteenth-century mystic and theologian Catherine of Siena, about whom I posted last month. Undset's life of the Catholic saint is also available in an affordable paperback edition. (Like Catherine of Siena, Undset lived as a third-order Dominican.)

One further note: during the last semester I taught, I was fortunate to have in class two young women from Norway, studying abroad in the U.S. Their project on Kristin Lavransdatter inspired several class members to buy the book for their summer reading. Thank you, Cornelia and Hilde!

Hildegard of Bingen: "A Feather on the Breath of God"

Hildegard of Bingen (canonized 10 May 2012)

More than 800 years after her death, on 10 May 2012, the incomparable Hildegard of Bingen was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI. Five months later, on 7 October 2012, she was named as a Doctor of the Church, one of thirty-five to have been awarded that title, but only the fourth woman to have gained that recognition.*

Hildegard receiving one of her visions,
from a manuscript of Scivias

Hildegard of Bingen was a remarkable woman in one of the most remarkable periods of western European history, a period of social and political change and of the flourishing of art and architecture, science, theology, philosophy, and education. 

Born in 1098 to a wealthy family of minor nobility, Hildegard was placed under the care of Jutta von Sponheim at the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg.

The circumstances of her placement with Jutta are widely discussed--Hildegard may have been the tenth child, and thus offered as a kind of "tithe" by her parents; she may have been placed with Jutta, the daughter of an influential count, as a political maneuver by her parents; she may have been placed in the convent because of the visions that had begun to manifest themselves when she was very young.

The age at which she joined Jutta is also unclear--Hildegard would later say that she was placed with Jutta when she was eight, though she may have been older, perhaps twelve or fourteen. 

As her spiritual director, Jutta provided Hildegard with a rudimentary education--she taught her how to read and write, play music, pray and meditate. (Jutta was, like her young charge, a visionary.)

But Hildegard would later say that she had been instructed by an "unlearned woman" (indocta mulier)--whatever the extent of her theological and philosophical insights, her intellectual achievements, and her artistic and political accomplishments, they came to Hildegard directly from God. Or so she claimed.

And whatever their source, her theological insights, intellectual achievements, and artistic and political accomplishments were manifold. 

Her theology was conveyed in three comprehensive visionary works: Scivias (Know the Ways), composed between 1142 and 1151; the Liber vitae meritorum (The Book of Life's Merits), composed between 1158 and 1163; and the Liber divinorum operum (The Book of the Divine Works), composed between 1163 and 1173. About the revelations in her visions, Hildegard asserts that she was commanded to write them by God--she describes herself as being a mere "feather on the breath of God." Manuscripts of these visionary works are vividly illustrated, and their programs of illustration may well have been designed by Hildegard herself. 

Shorter theological treatises include her Solutiones triginta octo quaestionum (Answers to Thirty-Eight Questions), Explanatio regulae Sancti Benedicti (Explanation of the Rule of St. Benedict), and Explanatio symboli sancti Anthanasii (Explanation of the Symbol of St. Athanasius)

Centuries before Leonardo's Vetruvian Man
is Hildegard's "universal man,"
from The Book of  Divine Works

In addition to her theological books and treatises, she wrote two scientific works, probably between 1151 and 1158, the Liber simplicis medicinae (Book of Simple Medicine), and the Causae et Curae (Causes and Cures).

She also composed two saints lives, the Vita Sancti Disibodi (Life of Saint Disibod), written about 1170, and the Vita Sancti Ruperti (Life of Saint Rupert), probably written between about 1173.

She invented an alphabet and a language, recorded in her Litterae ignotae (Unknown Writing) and Lingua ignota (Unknown Language).

In addition, she composed a cycle of liturgical songs, Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations), for which she wrote both the music and the lyrics, and the Ordo virtutum (Order of the virtues), an allegorical drama filled with more musical compositions. Both were written in the 1150s. 

Her political accomplishments are equally impressive. She negotiated with religious authorities as she became, first, the head of her convent and, then, as she broke away from the community at Disibodenberg and built monasteries at Rupertsberg and then Eibingen. Hildegard wrote to Pope Eugene III and Pope Anastasius IV, she wrote to the French Abbot Suger and to the influential theologian and reformer Bernard of Clairvaux, she wrote to the Emperor Frederick I, to Henry II of England, to Eleanor of Aquitaine. She argued, she heckled, she offered unsolicited advice. She also wrote to relatives, and she wrote to strangers who addressed her, offering them prayers, encouragement, and consolation. More than three hundred of her letters survive

She undertook four separate preaching tours of Germany between 1158 and 1173, speaking publicly to clerical audiences as well as to groups of lay men and women.

Hildegard of Bingen died at the age of eighty-one on 17 September 1179. 

There is so much out there about Hildegard that it is difficult to know where to begin--I suggest just browsing at your favorite online book site. I will also provide a link to the International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies--where you'll find many resources. You can read some of her letters at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters. Here's a link to Hildegard's place setting in Judy Chicago's multi-media installation, The Dinner Party. And you may want to listen to an excellent podcast on Hildegard of Bingen, from the BBC's In Our Time.

Finally, a couple of personal notes. Several years ago, in a course on medieval women writers, a student just about hopped out of her seat one day when we turned our attention to Hildegard of Bingen. As I passed out a big, fat handout, filled with various selections of Hildegard's texts, my student grew more and more excited. When she finally stuck her hand up in the air, she said that a long-forgotten memory had just emerged--she recalled being a kid, the daughter of a G.I. stationed in Germany, and her mom had dragged her along on some kind of pilgrimage. My student had just realized that her mom had taken her to Eibingen Abbey. She made a quick trip home that weekend, after our class discussion, and returned the next week with all the brochures her mom had picked up and the photos she had taken on that trip. Her mom was thrilled.

And now, another note: back when Borders was still a place you could go to buy books and music, I had a sudden craving for some music by Big Mama Thornton, so I found myself one day on the second-floor music department at my local Borders. Sure, there was a section for Big Mama Thornton, but it was absolutely empty. However, when I looked a little further, I found three entire rows full of different CDs of Hildegard's music . . . So there you go. Nothing from an American rhythm-and-blues singer born in 1926, but dozens of recordings of music composed by a woman born in 1098. Go figure. (By the way, here's a link to Big Mama Thornton's 1952 recording of "Hound Dog." Entirely inappropriate here, of course, but . . . Think of it as a bonus for reading this long post.) 

Update, 19 July 2025: For a wonderful piece on Hildegard of Bingen's music, here is Jennifer Lucy Allan's "'The Perfect Accompaniment to Life': Why is a 12h-Century Nun the Hottest Name in Experimental Music?" (from The Guardian). 

*The other three are Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Ávila, both named Doctors of the Church in 1970, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, in 1997. 

The Blessed Marie of Oignies

Marie of Oignies (1 May 1240)

First, a word about why Marie of Oignies is the topic of today's post. Most of what we know about this remarkable religious woman comes to us from a biography written by the theologian Jacques de Vitry--whose death occurred on 1 May 1240. And so today, on the anniversary of Jacques de Vitry's death, I'm writing about Marie of Oignies.

To write about Marie of Oignies on the anniversary of the death of Jacque de Vitry is fitting, I think, because despite her undoubted influence on many religious women who followed, we don't have any information about Marie's family, or about her life, or about her religious experiences, except the details and interpretations that come to us from him. And his biographical work, Vita Mariae Oignacensis, was not written for the many laywomen who found inspiration in her life or who would seek to follow her model. In fact, I've preserved its Latin title here because the work was directed to (and written for) educated religious men so that they could use the details of her life in their own teaching.  

A bust representing Marie of Oignies

According to Jacques de Vitry's account of her life, Marie was probably born in 1176 or 1177, the daughter of a wealthy family from Nivelles, Belgium. Although she rejected the luxuries of life that her parents provided her and desired a life of poverty, expressing her wish to become a nun, her parents arranged for her marriage when she was fourteen (if she was born in 1176/77, that would date her marriage to 1190/91).

But, at least according to Jacques de Vitry's version of Marie's life, the new bride managed to persuade her new husband to take vows of chastity and poverty with her, and the two moved to a leper hospital in Willambroux, where they devoted themselves to lives of service, used their own money to support the work of the hospital, and earned the criticism of their respective families.

By 1207, Marie de Oignies left her husband and Willambroux, with his approval and consent, for a cell at the Augustinian priory of St. Nicholas at Oignies. There, although not having taken the vows of a nun belonging to any religious order, she lived a life of prayer and poverty. Nevertheless, despite her withdrawal from the world, she earned a reputation in the world for her powers of healing and her extraordinary visionary experiences. 

Perhaps drawn by Marie's reputation, Jacques de Vitry became a canon at the priory in 1209. He was ordained in 1210, probably as a result of Marie's influence, and, more important, became her confessor. He remained with her until her death in 1213, and he composed his Life of Marie Oignies two years later. 

Jacques de Vitry's account of Marie of Oignies was part of a larger project, his Liber de mulieribus Leodiensibus, (Book of the Women of Liège), which Annette Esser describes as "a propaganda effort to gain official ecclesiastical recognition for . . . the Flemish Beguines."*

Marie's religious dedication, as described by Jacques de Vitry, is witnessed by two key elements: her extreme asceticism (her early death is almost certainly due to her extended periods of self-starvation) and her extraordinary visionary experiences.

In her discussion of Marie of Oignies, Esser notes four key visions: "the vision of fiery excess," which occurs right after Marie's marriage; her vision of the life of Christ, which is accompanied by what Jacques de Vitry describes as a "flood of tears"; her "ecstatic vision" of "self-stigmatization," a vision that results in her using a knife to cut out a chunk of her own flesh; and her "vision of hands from purgatory," the result of fasting and endless work, in which she sees and experiences the suffering of souls in Purgatory.

Marie's life--and, in particular, her visionary experiences and her extremes of self-deprivation--would offer inspiration to and become a model for many women who did not have the social status, wealth, or education that would allow them to take up a religious life in a convent.

The interior courtyard of the abbey of St. Nicholas, Oignies,
where relics of Marie of Oignies are preserved

Marie of Oignies died in 1213 and was beatified by the Catholic Church, her feast day celebrated on 23 June. Some sources list 23 June as the day of her death, but I can find no documentation for that information.

There are several affordable paperback editions of the Life of Marie de Oignies. For an introduction to a range of medieval women mystics, I recommend Elizabeth Petroff's Medieval Women's Visionary Literature and her Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism. Annette Esser's essay on Marie of Oignies is in Women Christian Mystics Speak to Our Time, ed. David Brian Perrin.

In her extreme fasting, Marie of Oignies precedes Catherine of Siena, whom we discussed two days ago, by more than a century. Two works I suggested there, Rudolph Bell's 1985 Holy Anorexia and Caroline Walker Bynum's 1988 classic, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, are equally relevant here.

*Although there is a great deal of uncertainty about the origins of the word beguine, this lay religious movement was important through the sixteenth century, especially, though not exclusively, in northern Europe. Beguines were not members of an established religious order (like the Benedictines or Franciscans, for example), but, following the model of a woman like Marie of Oignies, they lived individual or communal lives in imitation of Christ's, lives of poverty, chastity, self-denial, and service to the poor and the ill. (It is sometimes said the Marie of Oignies is the first beguine. In her 1986 women's history classic, A Small Sound of the Trumpet: Women in Medieval Life, Margaret Wade Labarge calls Marie of Oignies "the mother of the beguine movement." )

Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church

Catherine of Siena (died 29 April 1380)

Catherine of Siena,
Chapel of Catherine of Siena,
Basilica San Domenico

One of the most active and acclaimed women in Christianity, Catherine di Benincasa was born in the Tuscan city of Siena in 1347, during the midst of the plague. Her father was a tradesman, a cloth dyer, while her mother, Lapa Piagenti, may have been the daughter of a local poet.

As one of twenty-five children, Catherine was described by her first biographer as both a delightful, merry child and one who experienced visions that would transform her life. By the age of five, six, or seven (accounts vary), she had decided to devote herself to a life of perpetual virginity and to give her life to God.

Although her parents wished her to live a more "normal" life for a girl of her class--they wanted her to marry--by age sixteen Catherine was allowed to join the third order of the Dominicans (for a discussion of tertiary orders, click here).

Throughout her short life (she died at the age of thirty-three), Catherine of Siena continued to experience visions, including a "mystical espousal" (the infant Jesus offers her a wedding band) and a vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven.

She left the cell in which she had, at first, isolated herself in order to devote herself to caring for the sick and the poor; she eventually undertook a more public role, advocating clerical reform, urging the return of the papacy to Rome, and taking up her pen to write a series of letters to a wide range of men and women, from kings to poor, troubled souls who wrote to her with their questions and requests for help. 

Catherine of Siena is a complex, sometimes off-putting character. Despite pleas for peace in Europe, she called for a new crusade to the Holy Land. She practiced extremes of self-denial and penance--her refusal to eat led to her early death, for example, and she was disappointed that she escaped assassination during the Ciompi riots in Florence in 1377 because she was denied martyrdom. She "received" the stigmata, and she is said to have levitated. She practiced flagellation, endured extended periods of ecstatic rigidity, put sticks in her throat to make herself throw up, and drank the puss of her patients' sores.

She also wrote: over 400 letters, a treatise, The Dialogue of Divine Providence, and a group of prayers composed during the final year of her life. 

The sarcophagus of Catherine of Siena,
Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome

Catherine of Siena was buried in Rome, where she died--today you can see her remains in a remarkable tomb in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Her head and thumb, however, were removed to Siena, to the Basilica San Domenico. She was canonized on 19 June 1461.

In 1970, Catherine of Siena was declared one of the Doctors of the Church--by that date, some thirty men had been recognized as significant theologians by the Catholic Church, but in 1970, two women were added to that number, Catherine of Siena and Theresa of Ávila, (Saint Thérèse of Lisieux was named a Doctor of the Church in 1997, Hildegard of Bingen in 2012.)

Relics of Catherine of Siena,
Basilica San Domenico, Siena

All of her letters are available online in an English translation (you can access them by clicking here or here). They are also available in print, of course, in numerous editions, as is her Dialogue. Editions of the first biography of Catherine of Siena, written by Raymond of Capua, are also widely available. (Capua was her spiritual director--he completed his life of Catherine in the mid-1380s.)

Some of the most interesting work on Catherine of Siena analyzes the meaning of her extreme physical deprivation. Jennifer Egan's 1999 essay, "Power Suffering," is a good place to start. I also recommend Rudolph Bell's 1985 Holy Anorexia and Caroline Walker Bynum's 1988 classic, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women.