Guglielmites

This article discusses an image that is, to date, the sole surviving artwork that can directly be connected to the Guglielmites, a group repressed for heresy in 1300 in Milan. They are named for the object of their devotion, a woman called Guglielma, whom they regarded as the Holy Spirit incarnate. Though Guglielma was dead by 1300, her devotees believed she would resurrect to initiate a new age of history, at which time the Church would be led by a female pope. The artwork, a sinopia, was left unfinished and then hidden for centuries before being revealed in a recent renovation of the Abbey where it is located.

In the profound link that united Bible-heretics-inquisitors, the Sacred Text stood at the apex of a pyramid onto which the other two terms converged: both the heretics (women and men) and the inquisitors were familiar with the Holy Scripture, indeed, individuals (women and men) found themselves in front of the inquisitors due to an autonomous reflection and a personal commitment that the judges of the faith believed to be divergent from the orthodox vulgata. The sequence Bible-heretics-inquisitors makes reference to an image of great emotional and visual, as well as legal, impact: the oath super sancta Dei Evangelia. At that moment, the contact (with the Bible) and the encounter (with the inquisitors) exalted the sanctity of the oath and the centrality of the text on which the oath was made, transforming its meaning and value. We can only imagine the emotional intensity of a moment in which that book was touched when taking an oath – tactis corporaliter Scripturis - becoming the visual and tangible concrete realization of choices, of the past and the present, which in front of the courts became destiny. It is opportune to ask oneself how much awareness there was about the sanctity of that oath, rejected by many heretics based on Matt 5:33-37. Above all, it is reasonable to think that in some cases it was the first opportunity to see up close and to touch with one’s hand the source of verses repeated by heart, rethought in solitude, discussed with others. Swearing ad sancta Dei Evangelia  meant solemnizing a judicial rite through an object that was usually far away - heard but not touched – resounding in the nave of a church and inside oneself, but never concretely present. On the one hand were the heretics, on the other, the inquisitors and in the center the Bible. The discovery of the Bible and the oath on the Bible, with symbolic power, in a marvelous way converged in a solemn moment, judicially transforming believers into heretics.

Il volume intende indagare luci e ombre sulle eretiche medievali che quanto più diventano protagoniste di un’avventura di libertà religiosa tanto più risultano assenti, nonostante una ricca presenza qualitativa e quantitativa nella documentazione. Il percorso parte dal “silenzio” delle eretiche del XII secolo per giungere al rovesciamento del “silenzio” che caratterizza l’attenzione intorno alla creazione del fenomeno della stregoneria.

Resumen Avanzando desde la constatación de que los historiadores han descuidado hasta ahora concentrar sus investigaciones sobre los libros de los inquisidores, el ensayo aborda la especialmente rica y variada documentación que ha sobrevivido, sobre todo, acerca de la Lombardia medieval. Tras el asesinato de fray Pedro de Verona, se activó la reacción de los inquisidores, los cuales escriben manuales y summae para proporcionar herramientas jurídico-doctrinales, redactan libros contables para asentar su accionar financiero, mostrando así la gestión diaria de la Inquisición. De un análisis más profundo, emergen verdaderos bestseller -como la summa de fray monje Raniero de Piacenza actualmente conocido por alrededor de cincuenta copias-o el uso anómalo de registros inquisitoriales en el caso del obispo e inqui-sidor Jacques Fournier, más tarde papa Benedicto XII, que muestra espacios en blanco a la espera de ser embellecido con miniaturas, una práctica bastante inusual para los manuscritos judiciales.

La scoperta di un documento di ambito inquisitoriale
del 1303 relativo alla comunità di Losone consente
di sistematizzare le informazioni relative alla presenza
di seguaci di Dolcino da Novara nei territori del Ticino
medievale nei primissimi anni del XIV secolo, integrando
documentazione diversa, ticinese e non, fino ad
ora indagata separatamente.
Su queste basi l’articolo si propone di determinare i
rapporti che legano i documenti – vecchi e nuovi – tra
loro e le ragioni per le quali è possibile leggerli come
un unico dossier documentario coerente. Questo per
osservare da un lato le modalità di azione degli eterodossi,
i loro spostamenti nelle terre ticinesi, le loro
strategie di predicazione-evangelizzazione e il loro
possibile radicamento locale.
Dall’altro le contromisure prese dagli inquisitori milanesi,
la loro capacità di controllo del territorio, le sinergie
tra le diverse sedi dell’officium della Lombardia
superiore e l’eventuale esistenza di un coordinamento
con la più vasta azione repressiva condotta contro i seguaci
di Dolcino in Italia settentrionale.

In the last quarter of the 13th century, a group was formed in Milan around memories of Guglielma, considered as a holy woman. Besides mainstream forms of cult, esoteric beliefs about Guglielma came into being, and a small network of people began to claim that Guglielma was a female incarnation of the Holy Spirit. Her followers had the project of establishing a new order in the Catholic church with new gospels, new apostles, a new hierarchy and a female pope. This article aims at a reconstruction of the group in the process of its emergence, reconsiders the source basis of various statements in existing literature, and arrives at the following conclusions: (1) by her way of life, Guglielma stimulated the birth of a congregation venerating her memory, but she was not the author of teachings associating her with the Holy Spirit; (2) in spite of the obvious importance of Andrea Saramita and Mayfreda da Pirovano, there are also other devotees of Guglielma who creatively contributed to the group’s conversations and activities, but were overshadowed by the inquisitors’ search for heresiarchs and by subsequent historiography; (3) there is no other evidence for the Bohemian and royal origin of Guglielma besides the trial records, and this alleged origin is likely to be a pious legend of her followers; (4) contrary to the suggestions of several historians, the devotees of Guglielma did not intend to establish a purely female hierarchy in the Church; and (5) in their conversations, Guglielma’s followers discussed the question of why the Holy Spirit could not incarnate in a man, and for the most part, they saw the female incarnation of the Holy Spirit as a logical outcome of the process of human salvation. In addition to our assessments of these issues, we use the records to draw some conclusions about the precarious process of group formation.