A Female Apostle in Medieval Italy
THE MIDDLE AGES SER IES
Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor
Edward Peters, Founding Editor
A complete list of books in the series is available from
the publisher.
A FEMALE APOSTLE IN
MEDIEVAL ITALY
The Life of Clare of Rimini
Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field,
and Valerio Cappozzo
universit y of pennsylvania press
phi l adelphia
Copyright © 2023 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved.
Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or
scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in
any form by any means without written permission from
the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5128-2303-5
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5128-2304-2
eBook ISBN: 978-1-5128-2305-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CONTENTS
Timeline
vii
Introduction
1
Chapter 1. Space, Time, Social Setting
9
Chapter 2. From Human Desire to Divine Love
15
Chapter 3. Doing Penance
21
Chapter 4. Far from Home
31
Chapter 5. A Room of One’s Own
39
Chapter 6. The Shadow of Heresy
49
Chapter 7. The Word of God
63
Chapter 8. Visions of Community
69
Chapter 9. From Intuition to Institution
79
Chapter 10. An Apostle on the Road
91
Chapter 11. The Power of Images
109
Chapter 12. Through a Glass Darkly
123
vi
Contents
Epilogue. Death, Life, Afterlife
137
Appendix. The Manuscript of The Life of the Blessed Clare of Rimini
151
Notes
155
Bibliography and Suggestions for Further Reading
165
Index
000
Acknowledgments
173
INTRODUCTION
The book you are about to read centers on a fascinating woman whose story
is preserved in a fascinating text. The woman, Clare, was born in the Italian
city of Rimini around 1260 and died there between 1324 and 1329. The Italian text, La vita della beata Chiara da Rimino la quale fo exemplo a tucte le
donne vane, or The Life of the Blessed Clare of Rimini Who Was an Example
for All Vain Ladies, was probably composed by a friar from the Franciscan
house in Rimini, working closely with a group of Clare’s spiritual daughters.
What is so remarkable about Clare and her Life? Just about every thing.
The Life of the Blessed Clare of Rimini is probably the earliest work of hagiography (saint’s life) written directly in Italian, in an era when most such lives
were still composed in Latin, the sacred language of the church. The first decades of the fourteenth century were exactly the period in which Italian
emerged as a literary language. The most famous figure in this emergence,
the Florentine Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), was a nearly exact contemporary
of Clare’s. When Dante died in Ravenna, only fifty-five kilometers (thirtyfive miles) up the Adriatic coast from Rimini, he had just finished The Divine Comedy, his brilliant tour through the medieval cosmos and the Christian
afterlife. If The Life of the Blessed Clare of Rimini is today considerably less
well-known than Dante’s masterwork, it nevertheless contributed to the same
process of establishing Italian as a vehicle for exalted expression.
Our text is also one of the very few works of medieval hagiography to have
been written before its subject’s death (or, at least, so we will argue). Most
saints’ lives include elaborate scenes of the saint’s last illness, followed by an
all-important recounting of posthumous miracles that prove her or his sanctity. They are generally based on retrospective testimony, sometimes given
many decades later. Clare’s Life, by contrast, seems to have been begun during her last illness, while those who knew her best gathered around her in
her last days. The result is a vivid work that tells the story of a controversial,
2
Introduction
uncompromising woman, set against the background of her roiling city, her
star-crossed family, and the tumultuous political and religious landscape of
her age.
Saints’ lives are usually crafted as “success stories,” often describing a perfect child who becomes a perfect adult, or a youthful sinner who converts to
impeccable penitence. Clare’s story does loosely fit the “sinner to saint” model.
But rather than representing Clare as an edifying image of a docile holy
woman, her hagiographer reveals all her scandals, her controversies, and her
frustrations. Twice married, twice widowed, and twice exiled from her city,
Clare eventually established herself as a penitent living in a little roofless cell
in the ruins of the Roman walls of Rimini. She sought, at first, a life of solitary asceticism (self-denial) and holiness, praying and doing penance for her
perceived sins. Her reception in Rimini, however, was not entirely welcoming. Her words and actions in the streets and squares of the city drew such
vehement anger from local churchmen that she was denounced from the pulpit as a demonic danger to her neighbors. Yet she also gained the support of
a Dominican bishop, a Franciscan-leaning cardinal, and some important inhabitants of Rimini, allowing her to establish a fledgling community of likeminded sisters. She traveled to Assisi and Venice, spoke out as a teacher and
preacher (even if her hagiographer is careful never to use that word), but also
suffered a revolt by her spiritual daughters.
As a rhetorical case for Clare’s sanctity, The Life of the Blessed Clare of Rimini might be considered something perilously close to a failure; it presents
a number of reasons not to canonize her! But as a historical document, it offers richly compelling testimony to the day-to-day details—the political
conflicts, the social expectations, the trials and tribulations, and the exuberant joys—of life in a medieval Italian city.
Italy during Clare’s lifetime experienced profound political strife and
rapid religious change. There was no unified state of Italy in the Middle Ages.
The southern kingdom of Naples (or just The Regno, “the kingdom”) was
ruled by a branch of the French royal family from the 1260s to 1282, and then
fought over between French and Aragonese claimants through the rest of
Clare’s life. The rising power of the papacy dominated Rome and extended
its influence across much of the central Italian peninsula. The popes’ immediate presence had diminished, however, by 1309, when Pope Clement V
moved to Avignon, on the Rhone north of the Alps, where the papal court
Introduction
3
remained until 1377, long after Clare’s death. Northern Italy formed a patchwork of city-states, the most important of which were Milan, Florence, Venice, and Genoa. Each had its own internal factions, and each plotted to gain
the upper hand over its neighbors.
Medieval cities, especially Italian cities, with their rapid economic and
cultural development, served as stages for civic performance and religious
ritual. The city, its main square (piazza) and its streets, became the scene on
which the hopes, protests, conflicts, and celebrations of an explosive society
played out. A medieval Italian city such as Rimini in Clare’s lifetime was a
theater, a laboratory, and an incubator for change.
The dynamic new religious element in this landscape was the rise of the
mendicant orders—most importantly, the Franciscans and Dominicans. The
Italian Francis of Assisi (1181–1226) and the Castilian Dominic of Caleruega
(1170–1221) founded new brotherhoods modeled on the lives of the apostles.
These friars (or brothers) lived in poverty, traveled from town to town, and
preached the Gospel in an effort to win souls for Christ. The Dominicans, or
Preaching Brothers, were a highly educated clerical order dedicated to combating heresy. This background let Dominicans slip easily into the new office of inquisitor of heretical depravity, created to suppress religious dissidence
in the 1230s and increasingly organized in Italy from the 1250s onward. The
Franciscans, or Lesser Brothers, were at first a group of less educated laymen,
like their founder Francis, the son of a merchant from the Umbrian town of
Assisi. But the Lesser Brothers, too, moved in the direction of clericalization
and education, creating a long-simmering internal rift that had broken into
open conflict between more moderate and more zealous (“spiritual”) wings
of the order by the end of the thirteenth century. Both orders eventually assumed impor tant places in the nascent universities of Eu rope, producing
some of the most important scholastic theologians of the age.
Women were drawn to the same apostolic ideals that animated Francis
and Dominic. In this context, as was usually the case, the Franciscan scene
produced the fiercest battles and the most controversial outcomes. The most
famous woman associated with Francis and his movement was Clare of Assisi
(1194–1253). She may first have hoped to live side by side with the friars, but
quickly became the abbess of a settled group of “Poor Ladies” living outside
Assisi. The papacy worked to turn a network of similar communities into a
more traditional order, while Clare’s tried to preserve her preferred life of
4
Introduction
radical poverty. After Clare of Assisi’s death in 1253 and her canonization in
1255, the papacy created the Order of St. Clare in 1263 as the approved
model for Franciscan nuns willing to live a monastic existence enclosed
behind sturdy walls. But other women, in Italy and elsewhere, sought other
ways of living out a mendicant life, inspired by Francis but uninterested in
enclosure. As we encounter the world of Clare of Rimini, we will meet the
examples of many of these women, such as Umiliana de’ Cerchi (d. 1246),
Rose of Viterbo (d. 1251), Margherita Colonna (d. 1280), Margherita of Cortona (d. 1297), Clare of Montefalco (d. 1308), Angela of Foligno (d. 1309), Umiltà
of Faenza (d. 1310), and Michelina of Pesaro (d. 1356). The Italian cities of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were alive with possibilities for
women’s voices to be heard, but hardly devoid of danger for those who spoke
too boldly.
* * *
The goal of this book is to let twenty-first-century readers enter Clare of Rimini’s world, in all its excitement and with all its complexity. With this goal
in mind, we have taken an unorthodox approach. A volume like this—
centered on a medieval primary source translated into English for modern
readers—usually begins with a thirty- or forty-page introduction and then
moves on to the translated primary source itself. But The Life of the Blessed
Clare is such an innovative text that we think it deserves an equally innovative treatment. So, rather than start with lengthy context and commentary,
we dive right into Chapter 1 of the Life in English translation, adhering as
closely as possible to the wording and flavor of the Italian, and then use the
chapter as a springboard to address the issues that it raises. We repeat this
pattern for the twelve chapters and an epilogue that make up the Life, exploring
aspects of medieval society from political power to marriage and sexuality,
from gender roles to religious change, from pilgrimage to urban structures, and
from sanctity to heresy. In other words, rather than front-loading scholarly
context and commentary, we allow the text itself to guide us (authors and
readers alike) into a gradually deepening understanding of life in an Italian
city around 1300. We give our hagiographer and his female informants
room to explain the Italy of Dante and Giotto (the most famous painter of
the age) at their own pace and with their own rhythms. Our job is to follow
Introduction
5
this lead and to proceed down the paths that the text pioneers. Let’s start with
a road map, to lay out in advance the Life’s basic structure and the most
important questions it raises:
Chapter 1. Clare’s family, her first exile, and her two marriages.
How was a medieval Italian city governed, and what were the
risks and rewards of elite political battles?
Chapter 2. Clare’s conversion from luxurious marriage to penitent
celibacy. How did earthly and spiritual loves relate to each other
in medieval mentalities?
Chapter 3. Clare’s penitent practices. How did harsh asceticism take
on meaning in the medieval worldview?
Chapter 4. Clare’s new exile from Rimini and her first steps toward
an independent religious life. How did medieval women’s bodily
actions mark out spiritual relationships?
Chapter 5. Clare’s return to Rimini and her move to a cell within
the city walls. How could the speech of an urban recluse be heard
at the center of the spiritual and charitable networks that animate
a medieval city?
Chapter 6. Clare’s brush with heresy. How did inquisitors construct
heresy and orthodoxy as mirror images of each other?
Chapter 7. Clare’s apostolic mission to convert those around her.
How could a medieval woman teach publicly amid controversies
over poverty and obedience?
Chapter 8. Clare’s growing community. How could a woman
dedicated to poverty and penance make the practical moves
necessary to purchase a dwelling and impose her will?
Chapter 9. Clare’s public performances and interaction with a
powerful cardinal of the church. How could local politicians and
princes of the church envision holy women as political assets?
Chapter 10. Clare’s pilgrimage to Assisi. How were medieval
women able to travel and form networks across the roads of Italy?
Chapter 11. Clare’s visions. How did art and visions construct and
reflect each other in medieval visual culture?
Chapter 12. Clare’s battles with demons and her last days. How
could a language of sexuality express medieval spirituality?
6
Introduction
Epilogue. Clare’s death, the composition of her Life, and the
construction of her cult. How does a medieval text reach the
modern world?
Each chapter, in fact, does more than just raise a question: it poses a challenge—
a challenge in Clare’s life and a challenge for anyone eager to understand the
complexity of such an experience.
The reader may, of course, choose to focus on the translated Life first, and
to return to the modern commentary later. Or the reader might focus only
on chapters and commentary that address issues of particular interest. But
careful attention to the entire text will allow patterns of meaning to emerge, as
connections build chapter by chapter and paragraph by paragraph. For certain
crucial questions, answers slowly take shape only as the reader progresses:
Who wrote the Life? When and why? Where did the information come from?
Why is the text written in the vernacular? What was the relationship of the
author(s) to Clare? How did the text survive through the centuries? And to
all of these: How do we know? In addressing these questions, we rarely have
much to go on, beyond what the text tells us, so they can be answered only
by very careful scrutiny of the Life. Reading closely with these questions in
mind opens the same process of discovery that makes medieval scholarship
so exciting for specialists.
In sum, this book offers the progressive unearthing of a society, its hierarchies, its codes, its beliefs, its tensions, and its conflicts, as seen through
Clare of Rimini’s life and the Life. In one sense, our less-than-linear approach
is akin to the way medieval scholars liked to work. In the universities that
had developed by 1200 in cities like Bologna (115 kilometers [seventy miles]
northwest of Rimini), scholars would copy in the center of the page an authoritative text, such as a biblical passage or an edict of canon law, and then
compose their commentary around it. Like these early scholars, we think it
essential to place the source text in front of readers’ eyes as we offer interpretations or expositions. Yet from another angle, our approach reflects the
twenty-first-century reading habits of the digital universe, where we so often
find ourselves with multiple browser windows open on a laptop or scrolling
through one thread of comments after another on our phones. Reading is
not always left to right and top to bottom; discovery is not always along a
Introduction
7
straight path. Perhaps, in certain ways, the medieval and modern worlds are
not so far apart after all.
Without further delay, let us turn to the text as it takes Clare through the
crowded streets of Rimini, on her journeys to Urbino, Assisi, and Venice, and
back to her battles for an uncompromising life in the heart of her city.
In la bella, fertile et, in mare et terra, notissima cità de Arimino de
la magnifica italica provincia de Romagnia, de nobile et generosa famiglia de mesere Chiarello de Piero de Zacheo, patre, et madonna Gaudiana, matre, in li anni del Signore M°CCC° o circa, una figliola nacque
per nome Chiara . . .