Eleonora Cappuccilli

The hagiography of the prophet and Dominican tertiary Caterina da Racconigi (1476-1547) is an impressive testimony of the construction of sanctity in sixteenth-century Italy. The hagiographic narrative responds to the often-contrasting needs of the common people disappointed by the corrupt clergy and seeking a path to salvation; to the clergy that strove to revive popular devotion; and to some parts of the humanist circles, looking for an answer to the religious and intellectual doubt that especially originated after the Reformation. Through the analysis of some passages of the two extant hagiographies of Caterina da Racconigi-Vitta et legenda, written by Caterina's confessors, and Compendio delle cose mirabili, written by the philosopher Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola-this article examinates the multi-layered meanings attributed to sanctity during the religious crisis of the sixteenth century. Reform, intellectual and religious doubt and certainty, and human freedom emerge as fundamental pillars of the hagiographic logic that shaped the language of sanctity.

A partire dall’esperienza delle donne, e in particolare delle figure delle profetesse Domenica Narducci da Paradiso (1473-1553) e Paola Antonia Negri (1508-1555), il saggio discute il problema storico della riforma cristiana nell’Italia del primo Cinquecento. Attingendo alla metodologia della storia moderna e della storia dei concetti e facendo riferimento all’analisi del racconto agiografico, del rapporto con il potere politico, delle idee di riforma e della rappresentazione dell’individualità, il saggio intende contribuire al dibattito sul ruolo delle donne nella Riforma protestante/riforma cristiana.

L’introduzione articola alcuni nodi concettuali che affiorano nell’indagare il pensiero politico delle donne nella prima modernità, in Europa e non solo. In particolare, si pone l’accento su quattro aspetti principali: il nesso tra politica e teologia, alla luce della pervasività della religione nella vita quotidiana e nell’elaborazione intellettuale; il rapporto simultaneamente di critica e legittimazione del potere politico; la messa in questione delle autorità patriarcali che pretendono di detenere il monopolio del sacro; l’affacciarsi delle donne sulla sfera pubblica nella sua lunga genesi. Inoltre, l’introduzione mostra le continuità e le discontinuità tra medioevo e prima età moderna per quanto concerne il pensiero politico delle donne, suggerendo la necessità di ripensare la tradizionale periodizzazione più attenta alle cesure che alle diverse facce della transizione.

Nonostante la sua rilevanza per il pensiero politico delle donne e per la
storia costituzionale inglese, sono scarse le notizie biografiche su Mary
Astell (1666-1731), filosofa, teologa e panflettista. Viene “riscoperta”
negli anni Settanta del Novecento, quando l’interesse per la sua opera
aumenta sia nella filosofia e teoria politica, sia nella storiografia femminista, specialmente a causa della sua avanguardistica critica del matrimonio e della sua proposta di educazione per le fanciulle, che anticipano le idee di emancipazione femminile sostenute da pensatrici come Mary Wollstonecraft e Harriet Taylor Mill.

This article reappraises the experience of the visionary Angelic Paola Antonia Negri (1508–1555) in order to reconstruct the missing links of a hidden genealogy of charismatic women. Birgitta of Sweden (1303–1373), celebrated author of eight books of revelations, played a major role in this genealogy, establishing the canon of women’s prophetic history and thus making it possible to talk of a Birgittine prophetic model. This article investigates how Negri, by exercising charismatic authority and developing her authorial voice, revived and ‘reactivated’ Birgitta’s prophetic model in its critique and legitimation of spiritual and temporal powers, its textual agency and its challenge to male hierarchies. Through the analysis of Negri’s Spiritual Letters (published posthumously in 1576), her hagiography, her milieu and the Inquisition’s and the Barnabites’ documents, this article shows how Negri made the Birgittine model available to all Christians, thus intensifying its potential to question the ecclesiastical and male monopoly of truth and spiritual power and the hierarchical nature of the early modern concept of authority.

L'articolo ricostruisce la crisi e la riaffermazione dell'ordine patriarcale nell'Inghilterra del Seicento e primo Settecento a partire dai testi di Sir Robert Filmer, John Locke, Mary Astell e delle predicatrici, profetesse e petitioners.

The article explores the crisis and reaffirmation of patriarchal order in Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth century England starting from the texts of Sir Robert Filmer, John Locke, Mary Astell and female preachers, prophets and petitioners.

The essay attempts to problematize Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction looking at Seventeenth century England. During the conflict between dissent and orthodoxy in the revolutionary period (1640-1700 ca.), women play a significant role by irrupting in the newly born public sphere as preachers, prophets, pamphleteers. Even if they are considered non-subjects, women appropriate shares of power by leading the religious sects and often abandoning their families in order to embrace the common life of their conventicle. While challenging the supremacy of the Anglican Church, women’s voice subverts sexual hierarchies. The contestation of power relationships based on sexual difference ends up combining non-conformist and conservative women, thus contributing to the creation of a complex image of the female enemy of patriarchy. Therefore, women represent the first, powerful incarnation of the “internal enemy” that will constitute a fundamental element in the future construction of society intended as political, social and sexual order.


*****

Il saggio intende problematizzare la distinzione schmittiana amico/nemico nel Seicento inglese. Durante il periodo rivoluzionario (1640-1700 ca.), le donne giocano un ruolo importante all’interno del conflitto tra dissenso e ortodossia, irrompendo nella sfera pubblica in via di costituzione come predicatrici, profetesse, panflettiste. Sebbene vengano considerate non-subjects, le donne si appropriano di quote di potere ponendosi a capo delle sette e spesso abbandonando le loro famiglie al fine di abbracciare la vita in comune della conventicola. La loro presa di parola, mettendo in discussione la supremazia della Chiesa Anglicana, finisce per sovvertire le gerarchie sessuali. Tuttavia, la contestazione delle relazioni sessuali di potere non proviene solo dalle nonconformiste ma anche dalle conservatrici, contribuendo così a creare un’immagine complessa del nemico femminile del patriarcato. Le donne rappresentano la prima, potente incarnazione del “nemico interno” che costituirà un elemento fondamentale della futura costruzione della società come ordine politico, sociale e sessuale.

A B S T R A C T Il pensiero femminista è parte costitutiva del pensiero politico e della sua storia. Esso è sia metodo di indagine, presa di parola e di parte sul mondo e rivendicazione della centralità politica delle donne, sia critica paradossale del pen-siero politico e filosofico moderno. In quanto obiezione imprevista, il discorso femminista tende costantemente i con-fini del canone della politica e produce teoria politica, imponendo la ridefinizione delle categorie usate per interpre-tare il presente e il passato. Attraversando sei secoli di storia, dalla riappropriazione della tradizione nel XV secolo fino alla tensione con il neoliberalismo nel XX secolo, il discorso protofemminista e femminista costituisce nel tempo una costante interruzione del monologo della civiltà patriarcale occidentale, mostrando la sua centralità nella produ-zione, nella crisi e nella ridefinizione dell'ordine politico e sociale e dimostrando pertanto di essere una fonte impre-scindibile per la storia delle dottrine politiche.

Feminist thought is a constitutive part of political thought and its history. It is both a method of inquiry, a voice and a stance on the world, a claim of women's political centrality, and a paradoxical critique of modern political and philosophical thought. As unexpected objection, feminist discourse constantly stretches the borders of the political canon and produces critical political theory, imposing the redefinition of the categories used to interpret the present and the past. Going through six centuries of history, from the reappropriation of tradition in XV century to the tension with neoliberalism in XX century, protofeminist and feminist discourse constitutes in time a constant interruption of the monologue of Western patriarchal civilization, showing its centrality in the production, crisis and redefinition of political and social order. Thus, feminist discourse is an essential source of the history of political thought.

During the era of the English Revolutions and shortly after that, some spaces, albeit limited, of female visibility open up. Thanks to the window of opportunity caused by the collapse of censorship, the participation in the radical sects and in the Civil war, some remarkable women succeed in introducing themselves in the public sphere, shaping it since its very genesis. Moreover, analysing law institutions as jointure and feoffment, the attempt is to reconstruct some fragments of juridical female autonomy, which belie the total pervasiveness of coverture in the XVII century. As in private law, in public law women, in the role of queens, gain centrality: the principle of female authority, while safeguards the holding of the monarchical regime, destabilizes its patriarchal structure. Going through the works of Katherine Chidley, Margaret Cavendish, Damaris Masham and Mary Astell, the essay aims at reconstructing women's public voice, a voice which upsets the consolidated frames and subverts the established positions, questioning the same social hierarchies.

Spaces of Interiority, Spaces of Devotion, Gendered Spaces: Contesting Boundaries in the Early Modern Reformations

This panel seeks papers that discuss how religious women, prophets and mystics reckoned with, negotiated, challenged or reflected upon boundaries and spaces intended as physical, political, gendered, interior ones – such as the convent, the city, the community, a specific confession or rule – in the age of religious reform (1450-1650). Possible contributions will deal with the discernment of spirits as a relationship between external rules dictated by confessors and male authorities and internal criteria established by women; melancholy and its transition from being considered a sinful state of hopelessness and despair, to a space of subjectivation; obedience as a dialogue between interiority, social constraints and God; discipline and the legitimation or contestation of political and ecclesiastical powers; prophecy as a battlefield in and between different religious confessions during the division of Christianity.
Particular attention will be given to interdisciplinary, comparative and transnational approaches, models and legacies that demonstrate possible continuities and separations between different religious traditions and confessions.

Please submit an abstract of max. 250 words or less and a bio of max. 150 words (including affiliation, city and phone number) to me at eleonora.cappuccilli@utoronto.ca by April 17. Please indicate if you need audiovisual equipment. Notification of acceptance will be sent by April 20.

Dominare tempi inquieti di Isabella Consolati – la prima monografia su Otto Brunner mai data alle stampe – restituisce al grande storico austriaco un posto centrale non solo nella ridefinizione della metodologia della ricerca storica, ma anche nella storia complessiva del pensiero politico. Brunner emerge qui come teorico del sociale inteso come ordine pienamente storico, animato da soggetti concreti – «uomini e gruppi umani» – e caratterizzato dal permanere del dominio nella società oltre l’autonarrazione della sua fine.

Global Marx is a collective research on Marx's account of capital's domination through his critique of disciplinary languages, investigation of political structures and analysis of specific political spaces within the world market. His discourse appears here as global not only because global is the geography of the world market but also because Marx redefined the relationships between the spaces on which capital exerts its command. Global Marx proves that Marx's texts do not identify any global working class, nor a centre of power to be conquered, but show that, within and against the world market, there is a social movement that is irreducible to any identity or to a single space from whose perspective one can write a universal history of class struggle.

Nella crisi dell’ordine politico tra Medioevo ed Età moderna, la vita e l’azione profetica della “santa viva” Caterina da Racconigi (1486–1547) consentono di rileggere il nesso tra politica e teologia, mostrandone aspetti spesso trascurati. Il carisma profetico di Caterina è politico perché consiste nel coraggio di dire la verità davanti al popolo e ai potenti. Mentre critica le gerarchie, la sua ansia di rinnovamento religioso è il segno di una indisciplinata razionalità profetica.

This workshop will explore the activities of female prophets active in sixteenth century Italy and Spain. At the beginning of the century Maria de Santo Domingo, a Dominican tertiary from Spain, reported having visions of a prophetess, Lucia da Narni, who was active in Italy in the same years. Eleonora Cappuccilli will explore how the two women fashioned their
prophetic persona on a model of sanctity and religious reform that challenged traditionally male political and ecclesiastical hierarchies. She will discuss the impact of religious and political networks, of female role models – such as Catherine of Siena – and of Savonarola’s influence in creating the visionary connection between the two women. In Florence the
Dominican nun Fiammetta Frescobaldi engaged as a historian with the social and cultural debates of her time. Born to a prestigious Florentine family, Frescobaldi entered a Dominican convent at age 12 and remained there for fifty years until her death. Becoming disabled in her early twenties, Frescobaldi began to write voluminously: histories,  hagiographies, chronicles, scientific texts, and translations from Latin to the Italian vernacular. Lorena Sodano Flores will address Fiammetta’s engagement in Renaissance Florentine historiography from inside the convent and the ways she expressed her opinions about cultural and social life in Florence.

Although some assumptions changed by the end of the Renaissance, women’s sex-ual difference was understood as deeply rooted in their bodies, particularly intheir lower body heat, and was usually seen as indicating a natural inferiority. The idea that materiality has a history helps to frame the long-standing identification between women and their bodies, which isfound as far back as Aristotle and Aquinas. Women’s capacity to procreate was interpreted as a sign of weakness, making the body not only an anatomical fact, but also a symbolic construction. The case of the sixteenth-century woman prophet Domenica da Paradiso can shed new light on the subjective movements that made so many women think of their own body, and women's bodies in general, not as a mark of inferiority, but rather as an instrument of spiritual and intellectual advancement. Moreover, her writings allow us to deepen our understanding of Renaissance women's ideas on and practices of the dialectic between body and intellect that continues to be key to reconstructing the experiences of late medieval and early modern women.