Dominican Penitent Women presents a fascinating overview of the spirituality, religious practices, and ways of life of medieval Italian women who belonged to the Dominican Order as lay members or penitents. Through selected texts, readers gain a fresh perspective on the institutional and spiritual foundations of Dominican lay life, but also an understanding of how these women refashioned Dominican ideals into practices that best responded to their individual and social means. Their way of life created an important alternative for women who sought religious perfection in the world. The first section consists of two penitent rules: the Ordinationes of Munio from the late 13th century and the formal penitent rule of the early 15th century, which show how penitents were to organize and live their lives. The second section is dedicated to hagiographic sources. The third section is made up of penitent women's religious writing. The texts translated here present an overview of Dominican women's literary production that complements the writings of Catherine of Siena, already available in English. While Dominican penitent women held an important position in medieval piety, aside from Catherine of Siena, their spirituality has not attracted much scholarly attention. As the first comprehensive introduction to medieval Dominican laywomen and Dominican penitent spirituality in English, this book makes a significant scholarly and spiritual contribution. +

This book examines how the Dominican penitents were actually situated in the world, and what were their techniques for saintly living in that world. These lay women did not withdraw from the world into a specifically defined religious space. Instead they created spiritual fulfillment within their ordinary lives by following specific religious practices, exercising pious customs, and by drawing a mental, rather than physical, boundary between themselves and the world. The vita activa, which was principally manifested in penitents' manual labour, charity, and teaching, complemented their mystical and contemplative piety. In fact, the hagiographies stressed the importance of concrete acts of neighbourly service. This book examines the various forms of active service work available to the Dominican penitent saints and their role in these women's spiritual perfection.

Dominican Penitent Women is the first comprehensive introduction in English to Dominican penitent spirituality. The volume examines Italian lay-women's ways of life through religious rules, hagiographical texts, and their own writings spanning the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. The first section contains translations of two versions of their rules, which open a window to the religious practices and institutions that structured their lives. The second section introduces hagiographical texts, including the Miracoli of Catherine of Siena and an extract from Thomas of Siena's Supplement, which includes accounts not discussed in Raymond of Capua's Legenda maior. A final section consists of Osanna of Mantua's letters to Francesco Gonzaga and Lucia Brocadelli's Seven Revelations, in which these two women wove mundane details and cunning practical insights into their Christ-centered devotion. Book jacket.

Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498), the religious reformer, preacher, and Florentine civic leader, was burned at the stake as a false prophet by the order of Pope Alexander VI. Tamar Herzig here explores the networks of Savonarola’s female followers that proliferated in the two generations following his death. Drawing on sources from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many never before studied, transcribed, or contextualized in Savonarolan scholarship and religious history, Herzig shows how powerful public figures and clerics continued to ally themselves with these holy women long after the prophet’s death. In their quest to stay true to their leader’s teachings, Savonarola’s female followers faced hostile superiors within their orders, local political pressures, and the deep-rooted misogynistic assumptions of the Church establishment. This unprecedented volume demonstrates how reform circles throughout the Italian peninsula each tailored Savonarola’s life and works to their particular communities’ regionally specific needs. Savonarola’s Women is an important reconstruction of women’s influence on one of the most important and controversial religious movements in premodern Europe.

Publisher description

Assembled on the occasion of Gary Dickson's retirement from the University of Edinburgh following a distinguished career as an internationally acclaimed scholar of medieval social and religious history, this volume contains contributions by both established and newer scholars inspired by Dickson’s particular interests in medieval popular religion, including ‘religious enthusiasm’. Together, the essays comprise a comprehensive and rich investigation of the idea of sanctity and its many medieval manifestations across time (fifth through fifteenth centuries) and in different geographical locations (England, Scotland, France, Italy, the Low Countries). By approaching the theme of sanctity from multiple disciplinary perspectives, this highly original collection pushes forward current academic thinking about medieval hagiography, iconography, social history, women's studies, and architectural history.

This book examines the audiences and languages of Dominican sermons in late medieval Italy. It is a thorough analysis of how Latinate theological culture interacted with popular religious devotion. In particular it assesses the role of vernacular theology. Eliana Corbari defines vernacular theology as a form of theology that is based neither on a Latin scholastic model nor a monastic one. It is a “third dimension” of theology which was accessible to the laity, and in particular women, through their attendance at sermons and the reading of vernacular devotional works (in this case, medieval Italian treatises and sermons). Through painstaking manuscript work, Corbari makes an excellent contribution to sermon studies, gender studies, medieval theology, and codicology. She demonstrates that Dominican friars preached to an active contingent of laywomen, usually members of confraternities, who not only attended these sermons but re-read them and also disseminated them through book production to the wider Florentine community.