Catherine of Bologna: Mystic, Writer, Artist

Catherine Vigri of Bologna (born 8 September 1413)

The daughter of Giovanni Vigri, a Bolognese diplomat, lawyer, and lecturer, and his wife, Benevenuta Mammolini, Caterina Vigri was given every advantage by her aristocratic family connections.

Ms. illustration of Catherine of Bologna,
by Guglielmo Giraldi, c. 1469

She spent her earliest years primarily with her grandparents in Bologna, and we are told that her mother was a very religious woman. 

From the ages of eleven through fourteen, Catherine was educated at the d'Este court of Ferrara, where her father had been an ambassador. There, as a companion for Margherita d'Este, one of Niccolò III d'Este's many illegitimate children, Catherine had an excellent education, studying Latin, literature, music, and art, including the art of illumination. 

When Margherita married Galeotto Roberto Maltesta in 1427, she hoped that Catherine would continue as a lady-in-waiting; instead, Catherine preferred to enter the convent of Corpus Domini in Ferrara. The convent had been established as a lay community in 1400, but at the time that Catherine entered the convent, it was in the process of adopting the Rule of St. Clare. By 1431, the pope had approved a request for the Corpus Domini community to become a Franciscan convent. 

But, as Bernard McGinn notes, this period was a tumultuous one that split the women in the convent, with some resisting the transition from a lay community to one where the women took religious vows, and with some, like Catherine, supporting the strict form of life prescribed by the Rule of St. Clare. The transition to a Franciscan rule was not complete until 1435.

A manuscript illumination
painted by Catherine of Bologna

During the years of turmoil, between her entrance into the community and 1435, Catherine experienced a serious of what she came to regard as "diabolical temptations." She would describe this period in a work she wrote in 1438, Le sette armi spirituali (The Seven Spiritual Weapons), which she kept secret. 

When the community founded a daughter house in Bologna, Catherine left the Ferrara convent to be the abbess of the Bologna convent, which was also called the convent of Corpus Domini. There, in addition to her role as head of the house, she revised her mystical Seven Spiritual Weapons, wrote eleven treatises, and composed twelve hymns. She also illuminated manuscripts and painted miniatures and, it is said, played the viola on her deathbed. 

After her death, one of Catherine's devoted followers, the Venetian nun Illuminata Bembo (c. 1420-1493) wrote a life of Catherine of Bologna, the Specchio di illuminazione (The Mirror of Illumination), which includes a great deal of information about the abbess's life and work. 

Catherine Vigri--Catherine of Bologna--died on 9 March 1463. She was canonized by Pope Clement XI on 22 May 1712

The enthroned body of Catherine of Bologna,
Chiesa della Santa,
Bologna

The most complete account of Catherine of Bologna, with a particular focus on her mystic Seven Spiritual Weapons, is in Bernard McGinns's The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 1350-1550, volume 5 of his The Presence of God, a history of Western Christian mysticism. 

Another good account of Catherine of Bologna is available online: Pope Benedict XVI's address to the General Audience of 29 December 2010 was dedicated to Catherine of Bologna; you can access  his remarks by clicking here.

For a discussion of the art of Caterina Vigri, see Germaine Greer's The Obstacle Race. In addition to surviving manuscripts that Catherine of Bologna illustrated, there is also a large painting, St. Ursula and Her Companions, in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice. As Greer notes, "The chief source of biographical data about the saint [Catherine of Bologna] is, of course, the Holy See, but no interest has ever been evinced by the Church in her artistic activities." Greer adds that there is also a small picture in the Chiesa della Santa, Madonna with Apple, that is said to be by Catherine but dates "to an earlier period." There also may be a St. Ursula by Catherine in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Bologna. 

Clare of Assisi, "Shining in Name, More Shining in Life"

St. Clare of Assisi (died 11 August 1253)

Chiara Offreduccio was born in Assisi on 11 July 1194, the daughter of a wealthy count, Offreduccio di Favarone, and his wife, Ortolana.

Simone Martini's fourteenth-century
fresco of Clare of Assisi,
Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi

Although there is no reliable information about her childhood, traditional accounts, such as the one found in the Catholic Encyclopedia, stress the miraculous signs her mother received before her birth (the baby would be "a bright light of God in the world"), her childhood piety, her extreme penitential acts, even as a child, and her "distaste for the world." 

Whatever she was like as a child, Clare must have received some form of education, because she is literate--as a woman, she writes letters and composes devotional literature. 

What we know of her life begins when she was eighteen and heard Francis of Assisi preach during a Lenten service at the church of San Giorgio. She arranged to meet him secretly after the service and asked for his help so that she could, like Francis and his followers, live a life "after the manner of the Holy Gospel."

She attended church the next day, Palm Sunday. That evening, 20 March 1212, she secretly left her father's home "by the door used to take a corpse on its way to burial" (at least according to legend), accompanied by her aunt and another companion, and made her way to the chapel of the Portiuncula, where Francis was then living with his small community. 

Francis immediately consecrated her, exchanging her luxurious clothing for a rough tunic tied with a cord and cutting her hair. Then, since a woman could not exactly live the public and itinerant "apostolic life" of Francis and his male followers, he took Clare to the Benedictine convent of San Paolo delle Abbadesse.

Although her father tried to force her to return home, she resisted, and she was disowned by her family. But still not finding the rigorous penitential life she was searching for--the kind of poverty to which Francis was devoted--she left the Benedictine convent and joined the Franciscan community of Sant'Angelo di Panzo, where she was joined by her fourteen-year-old sister Caterina, whom Francis renamed Agnes. 

The result was more conflict with "her infuriated relatives," but by the end of 1212 Clare and her sister were resettled in a small building for them next to the church of San Damiano, the first of the churches Francis had rebuilt after his conversion. She was eventually joined, after her father's death, by her mother, Ortolana, her other sister, Beatrice, and a niece, Balbina.

Fresco of Clare of Assisi and her sisters,
Church of San Damiano, Assisi

Like Clare, Francis seems originally to have imagined that "the Poor Ladies of San Damiano" would live the same mendicant life as his friars, and, like them, devote themselves to caring for the sick and the poor. By 1215 he had provided them with a brief formula vita, or way of life. 

But in 1219, Rome issued the first of a series of Rules for Clare and her sisters, each based on the Rule of St. Benedict and each subsequent Rule insisting on enclosure for the women. Aside from the issue of enclosure, these papal rules imposed on the women took away their Franciscan dedication to absolute poverty and insisted that they would have to accept endowments. Clare objected and resisted.

The conflict persisted even after Francis's death in 1226. But on 17 September 1228, Clare and her sisters were finally granted the Privilegium paupertatis, the "privilege of poverty." Pope Gregory IX announced his decision to Clare "and the other handmaids of Christ dwelling together at the church of San Damiano":

It is evident that the desire of consecrating yourselves to God alone has led you to abandon every wish for temporal things. Wherefore, after having sold all your goods and having distributed them among the poor, you propose to have absolutely no possessions, in order to follow in all things the example of Him Who became poor and Who is the way, the truth, and the life. Neither does the want of necessary things deter you from such a proposal, for the left arm of your Celestial Spouse is beneath your head to sustain the infirmity of your body, which, according to the order of charity, you have subjected to the law of the spirit. Finally, He who feeds the birds of the air and who gives the lilies of the field their raiment and their nourishment, will not leave you in want of clothing or of food until He shall come Himself to minister to you in eternity when, namely, the right hand of His consolations shall embrace you in the plenitude of the Beatific Vision. Since, therefore, you have asked for it, we confirm by Apostolic favour your resolution of the loftiest poverty and by the authority of these present letters grant that you may not be constrained by anyone to receive possessions. To no one, therefore, be it allowed to infringe upon this page of our concession or to oppose it with rash temerity. But if anyone shall presume to attempt this, be it known to him that he shall incur the wrath of Almighty God and his Blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul. Given at Perugia on the fifteenth of the Kalends of October in the second year of our Pontificate.

In negotiating this "privilege of poverty," Clare of Assisi worked with a woman we have met before, Agnes of Bohemia. 

By the time of Clare's death in 1253, there were fifty sisters living at S. Damiano and over twenty more monasteries of the Poor Ladies. On 9 August 1253, Pope Urban IV issued the Solet annuere, a papal bull confirmed that the rule Clare had composed for her community would be the governing rule for the order. 

Two days later, on 11 August, Clare died at the age of 59. On 15 August 1255 Clare of Assisi was canonized by Pope Alexander VI. In 1263, Pope Urban IV officially changed the name of the Poor Ladies of San Damiano to the Order of St. Clare.

For the Rule composed by Clare of Assisi, click here.

Clare's letters, including those sent to Agnes of Bohemia, are available at the Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters website.

Basilica di Santa Chiara,
Assisi

Agnes of Bohemia, a Pious Princess Gets Her Way

Agnes of Bohemia (died 2 March 1282)

Born in 1211 in Prague, Agnes was the youngest daughter of Ottokar, the king of Bohemia, and Constance of Hungary--making Agnes a descendant of Saint Ludmila of Bohemia (c. 860-921) and a first cousin of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231). As a child, she was educated in a convent founded by her aunt, yet another woman destined to become a saint, St. Hedwig of Silesia (1174-1273).

It should not be surprising, then, that although politically important marriages were planned for her, Agnes resisted. She had another kind of life in mind for herself. After early plans to marry her, first, to the son of the Holy Roman Emperor and, then, to the king of England, fell through, a third marriage was suggested for her, in 1231. 

At this point, Agnes appealed to the pope, Gregory IX, asking for his help. Here is one account of his response: 

And in order that she might more surely persevere in her resolution, which she conceived through God's inspiration, putting her hand to strong things, through trustworthy and discreet messengers, she made known her intention to the noble vicar of Christ, the Lord Pope Gregory IX. This felicitous pope rejoiced at the most generous devotion of the virgin, encouraged her by his gracious letter which he sent back by the same messengers, commended and confirmed her holy resolution, and with many spiritual gifts invited her to be his adopted daughter and accorded her his devoted paternal affection all the rest of his days.

The daughter of Christ was filled with spiritual consolation by these things that she received by way of reply from the High Pontiff. . . . 

Inspired by the model of Francis of Assisi and of his associate and disciple, Clare of Assisi, Agnes founded the Hospital of St. Francis. With the assistance of Clare, who sent five nuns to Prague, Agnes established a convent for a community of Poor Clares.

Agnes entered the Monastery of the Most Holy Redeemer on 11 June 1234, when she was twenty-three years old, serving as its first abbess. She found herself in conflict with the pope who had earlier helped her dedicate herself to a religious life--Gregory IX endowed her establishment with revenues that Agnes felt violated the Franciscan ideal of absolute poverty. She eventually prevailed.

Agnes's letters to Clare of Assisi and to Pope Gregory IX do not survive, but their letters to her do, allowing us insight into this remarkable woman. To read the letters to Agnes, click here.

The convent founded by St. Agnes in 1231,
the "oldest Gothic building in Prague,"
now the National Gallery

Although Agnes's cousin, Elizabeth of Hungary, was canonized in 1235, just four years after her death, Agnes of Bohemia had to wait a bit longer. She was beatified some six hundred years after her death, in 1854, by Pope Pius IX. She was finally canonized, becoming Saint Agnes, in 1989, by Pope John Paul II. 

For Walter Seton's edition of a medieval life of St. Agnes, click here. The texts are in Latin and German, which you may not read, but this volume is still worth checking out for its great introduction, which includes a long biographical section. 

You might also enjoy Joan Mueller's The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women. Mueller has also published an edition of Clare's letters to Agnes, Clare of Assisi: The Letters to Agnes--each letter is introduced and followed by a discussion of its context and an analysis of its "contemporary relevance."