Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi: The Making of a Counter-Reformation Saint (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs) [Illustrated] 9780198785385, 0198785380

Table of contents :
Cover
Maria Maddalena de´ Pazzi: The Making of a Counter-Reformation Saint
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Maria Maddalena De´ Pazzi
A COUNTER-REFORMATION SAINT
CANONIZATION
WOMEN AND THE PURSUIT OF HOLINESS
BECOMING SAINTLY
1: The Call of the Convent
Privileged Living and Precocious Holiness
A Jesuit Formation
Religious Vocation
The monastery of S. Maria degli angeli
2: Suor Maria Maddalena de´ Pazzi
A Visionary in the Convent
Discerning the True, Writing the Word
Maria Maddalena´s Religious Vocation
Beyond the Cloister
3: Beata Moderna
Concerns about Unauthorized Devotions
Nurturing Devotion
Sanctity Shared
4: The Life of a Saint
Collaborative Hagiography
A Life Rewritten
Biography Used
Fame Abroad
5: Witnesses to Holiness
Starting the Process
In Testimony to a Holy Life
Miracle Worker
6: Our Beata
The Work of the Congregation of Rites
The Maturing of a Cult
The Apostolic Process: Virtues and Miracles
The Challenge of a Change in Rules
Beatification
7: S. Maria degli Angeli and the Barberini Family
Miraculous Oil
Pope Urban VIII and Canonization
Florentine Saints
Le Barberine
8: Being Carmelite: Naples and the Carmelite Order
Carmelite Reform in Naples
A Merchant Patron
Maria Maddalena the Carmelite
9: Canonization
Enthusiasm for the Miraculous
Assessing Miracles
The Carmelites, The Medici, The Barberini, and The Pope
The Cost of Canonization
Celebrating Sanctity
Afterword
Bibliography
Manuscript sources
Florence
Naples
Rome and Vatican City
Printed primary sources
Early printed sources
Biographies
Other works
Secondary literature
Index

Citation preview

OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS Editorial Committee J. BARTON M. J. EDWARDS G. D. FLOOD D. N. J. MACCULLOCH

M. N. A. BOCKMUEHL P. S. FIDDES S. R. I. FOOT G. WARD

OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS Hindu Theology in Early Modern South Asia The Rise of Devotionalism and the Politics of Genealogy Kiyokazu Okita (2014) Ricoeur on Moral Religion A Hermeneutics of Ethical Life James Carter (2014) Canon Law and Episcopal Authority The Canons of Antioch and Serdica Christopher W. B. Stephens (2015) Time in the Book of Ecclesiastes Mette Bundvad (2015) Bede’s Temple An Image and its Interpretation Conor O’Brien (2015) C. S. Peirce and the Nested Continua Model of Religious Interpretation Gary Slater (2015) Defending the Trinity in the Reformed Palatinate The Elohistae Benjamin R. Merkle (2015) The Vision of Didymus the Blind A Fourth-Century Virtue-Origenism Grant D. Bayliss (2015) Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch Julia T. Meszaros (2016) George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity in Nineteenth-Century England Serenhedd James (2016) Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany Zachary Purvis (2016)

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi The Making of a Counter-Reformation Saint

C L A R E CO P E L A N D

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Clare Copeland 2016 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2016 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2016933489 ISBN 978–0–19–878538–5 Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the help and support of many people and institutions, and it is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to thank them publicly. In Italy, I must thank first and foremost the prioress and nuns of the convent of S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi in Careggi and Chiara Vasciaveo, who opened their precious archive to me. In the Vatican, I was welcomed and helped by the staff of the Archivio della Congregazione per le Cause dei Santi, the Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, and the Bibliotheca Vaticana. My particular thanks to the staff of the Archivio Secreto Vaticano, who not only assisted me in accessing the material I needed but cheered up many a slow morning. Nearby, at the Jesuit Archives (ARSI), Mauro Brunello was a particular help in tracking down Jesuit leads. In Florence, the staff of the Archivio Arcivescovile and the Archivio di Stato similarly helped me to forage for clues. And in Rome my very heartfelt thanks to Edison Tinambunan and Ton van der Gulik at the Bibliotheca Carmelitana, and Kevin Alban and Giovanni Grosso at the Curia Carmelitana who could not have been more generous with their time, support, and encouragement, in addition to the resources they opened up to me. The Institutum Carmelitanum (of which the Bibliotheca is a part) has also been extremely benevolent in allowing me to reproduce images from their collection. Thanks too in this respect to the Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University and to the Harvard Map Collection for providing the maps for this book. Various funding awards over the years have given me the time to think and write, and the ability to travel to the archives. I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which financed four years of graduate study, and to All Souls College and the History Faculty at Oxford, which offered additional help. More recently, I was fortunate to benefit from a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Further thanks to the board of the Oxford Theological Monographs, especially the very patient Diarmaid MacCulloch, and to the attentive staff at OUP. I am indebted to the many colleagues and friends who have helped to nurture my work on Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi. It was Gervase Rosser and Lesley Smith who first set me off thinking about saints whilst still an undergraduate, and Nick Davidson who made me begin to interrogate the canonization process. Nick, who went on to supervise my doctoral research, has been there for the duration of this project, asking questions, making suggestions, and offering me opportunities to develop. Many others have read and

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Acknowledgements

talked with me about various parts of this research over the years, helping me to place my thoughts in a broader context. My thanks go to Sarah Apetrei, Richard Ashdowne, Lee Barrett, Jodi Bilinkoff, David Bradshaw, Euan Cameron, Martin Christ, Johannes Depnering, Gregory DiPippo, Philip Endean, Alan Fellows, Nicky Hallett, Tom Hamilton, Kat Hill, Mary Laven, Charlotte Methuen, Hannah Murphy, Natalia Nowakowska, Miles Pattenden, Leigh Penman, George Southcombe, Katharine Sykes, Stephen Tuck, Edmund Wareham, Joe Waters, and Alison Weber. In Rome, Silvia Gavuzzo, Alexander Stewart, and their delightful family offered me a much-appreciated home away from home. One of the great pleasures of working at the Vatican and in Florence is the community of scholars one joins in the archives, whose wide-ranging interests and lively conversation enriched my research immensely; special thanks are due to Benedetta Albani, Stephen Andes, John Nádas, Tovah Bender, Jennifer Haraguchi, and Sharon Strocchia. Kevin Alban, Jan Machielsen, and Victoria Van Hyning courageously read the whole manuscript several times, a sign of true friendship indeed. I want to offer particular thanks to Simon Ditchfield for examining my thesis and for the critical insights he has offered since. My heartfelt thanks to Lyndal Roper, for her teaching, her incisive questions, and all the encouragement she has given me over the last decade. This book would not have been finished without her, nor without the support of the early modern workshop she founded at Oxford where my poorly formed musings were worked into better shape. This book is dedicated to my mother and father, Valerie and Michael Ashdowne, who oversaw my first foray into hagiographical studies; to Joshua, who has lived with Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi with heroic patience; and to Michael and James.

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 7/7/2016, SPi

Contents List of Figures List of Abbreviations

Introduction

ix xi 1

1. The Call of the Convent

19

2. Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi

42

3. Beata Moderna

66

4. The Life of a Saint

83

5. Witnesses to Holiness

103

6. Our Beata

119

7. S. Maria degli Angeli and the Barberini Family

142

8. Being Carmelite: Naples and the Carmelite Order

165

9. Canonization

188

Afterword

214

Bibliography Index

223 245

List of Figures 0.1. Domenico Cappello, Acta canonizationis S. Petri de Alcantara et S. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis (Rome, 1669)

2

1.1. Detail from Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, Nova pulcherrimaae civitatis Florentiaae topographia accuratissime delineata (Rome, 1690?)

21

1.2. Detail from Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, Nova pulcherrimaae civitatis Florentiaae topographia accuratissime delineata (Rome, 1690?)

34

2.1. Abraham van Diepenbeeck, Vita seraphicae virginis S. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis, Florentinae ordinis B.V.M. de Monte Carmelo iconibus expressa (Antwerp, 1670), image 12

45

7.1. Detail from Giovanni Battista Falda, Nvova pianta et alzata della città di Roma con tvtte le strade, piazze et edificii de tempi, palazzi, giardini et altre fabbriche antiche e moderne come si trovano al presente nel pontificato di N.S. Papa Innocentio XI con le loro dichiarationi nomi et indice copiosissimo (1676)

143

7.2. Detail from Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, Nova pulcherrimaae civitatis Florentiaae topographia accuratissime delineata (Rome, 1690?)

159

7.3. Detail from Giovanni Battista Falda, Nvova pianta et alzata della città di Roma con tvtte le strade, piazze et edificii de tempi, palazzi, giardini et altre fabbriche antiche e moderne come si trovano al presente nel pontificato di N.S. Papa Innocentio XI con le loro dichiarationi nomi et indice copiosissimo (1676)

163

9.1. Domenico Cappello, Acta canonizationis S. Petri de Alcantara et S. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis (Rome, 1669), fold-out insert

205

9.2. Ludovico Adimari, Prose sacre contenenti il compendio della Vita di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, e la relazione delle feste fatte in Firenze per la sua canonizzazione, con un discorso della passione del redentore (Florence, 1706)

209

List of Abbreviations AAF

Archivio Arcivescovile, Firenze

ACCS

Archivio della Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi

ACDF

Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede

ACMN

Archivio del Carmine Maggiore di Napoli

Acta canonizationis

Domenico Cappello, Acta canonizationis (Rome, 1669)

AMC

Archivio del Monastero di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Careggi

APGC

Archivum Postulazione Generale dei Carmelitani

APGSI

Archivio Postulationis Generalis Societatis Iesu

ASF

Archivio di Stato di Firenze

ASN

Archivio di Stato di Napoli

ASV

Archivio Segreto Vaticano

BAV

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

BC

Biblioteca Carmelitana, Rome

Breve

‘Breve ragguaglio’ in I quaranta giorni, pp. 64–93

I colloqui I

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Tutte le opere di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi dai manoscritti originali, edited by Fulvio Nardoni, vol. 2, I colloqui, prima parte, ed. Claudio Catena (Florence: Centro Internazionale del Libro, 1961)

I colloqui II

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Tutte le opere di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi dai manoscritti originali, edited by Fulvio Nardoni, vol. 3, I colloqui, seconda parte, ed. Claudio Catena (Florence: Centro Internazionale del Libro, 1963)

Detti e preghiere

Chiara Vasciaveo, Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: Detti e preghiere nella testimonianza delle prime sorelle (Florence: Nerbini, 2009)

L’epistolario completo

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, ‘Costretta dalla dolce verità, scrivo’: L’epistolario completo, edited by Chiara Vasciaveo (Florence: Nerbini, 2007)

Memoriale

Archivio del Monastero di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Memoriale per la Beata M’re Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi

Memorie

Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese 133, vol. 60, Memorie 1392–1746

xii

List of Abbreviations

P767

Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Cong. Riti, Processi 767

P768

Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Cong. Riti, Processi 768

P769

Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Cong. Riti, Processi 769

P770

Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Cong. Riti, Processi 770

P771

Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Cong. Riti, Processi 771

La probatione I

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Tutte le opere di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi dai manoscritti originali, edited by Fulvio Nardoni, vol. 5, La probatione, prima parte, ed. Giuliano Agresti (Florence: Centro Internazionale del Libro, 1965)

La probatione II

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Tutte le opere di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi dai manoscritti originali, edited by Fulvio Nardoni, vol. 6, La probatione, seconda parte, ed. Giuliano Agresti (Florence: Centro Internazionale del Libro, 1965)

I quaranta giorni

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Tutte le opere di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi dai manoscritti originali, edited by Fulvio Nardoni, vol. 1, I quaranta giorni, ed. Ermanno del SS. Sacramento (Florence: Centro Internazionale del Libro, 1960)

Regola & Costituzioni

Regola del sacro Ordine della Beatissima Vergine del monte Carmelo & Costituzioni delle religiose sorelle e monache di S. Maria degli Angeli in Borgo San Fridiano di Firenze (Florence, 1611)

Regola e statuti

Bibliotheca Carmelitana, Regola e Statuti delle monache de Sancta Maria degli Angeli di Fiorenza (1564)

Relatione

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Archivio Barberini, Archivio del monastero dell’ Incarnazione, Relatione della fondazione del Venerabile Monastero della SS. Incarnatione di Roma… descritta dalla Reverenda Madre S.or Anna Gertruda della SS. Incarnazione. Revista e fatta copiare dal P. Gio. Giacomo Agostiniano Scalzo, visitatore, l’anno 1697, vol. 1

Renovatione

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Tutte le opere di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi dai manoscritti originali, edited by Fulvio Nardoni, vol. 7, La renovatione della Chiesa, ed. Fausto Vallainc (Florence: Centro Internazionale del Libro, 1966)

Revelatione

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Tutte le opere di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi dai manoscritti originali, edited by Fulvio Nardoni, vol. 4, Revelatione e intelligentie, ed. Pelagio Visentin (Florence: Centro Internazionale del Libro, 1964)

RSDI, RSDII

Archivio della Congregazione per le Cause dei Santi, Registri dei decreti dei Servi di Dio, vol. 1, vol. 2

List of Abbreviations

xiii

V1609

Vincenzo Puccini, Vita della Madre Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, fiorentina, monaca dell’Ordine Carmelitano nel Monastero di S. Maria degli Angeli di Borgo S. Fridiano di Firenze (Florence, 1609)

V1611

Puccini, Vincenzo, Vita della Veneranda Madre Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi fiorentina, monaca dell’Ordine Carmelitano nel Monastero di S. Maria degli Angeli di Borgo S. Fridiano di Firenze. Raccolta, e descritta dal molto Rever. M. Vincenzo Puccini governatore, e confessore del detto monastero. Con l’aggiunta della terza, quarta, quinta e sesta parte dal medesimo raccolta, ed ordinata (Florence, 1611)

V1629

Vincenzo Puccini, Vita della B. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, monaca nel munistero di S. Maria degli Angioli in Borgo S. Fridiano, oggi in Cestello, di Firenze, dell’Ordine Carmelitano Osservante (Rome, 1629)

V1669

Virgilio Cepari (and Giuseppe Fozi), Vita della serafica verg. S. Maria Madalena de’ Pazzi fiorentina dell’Ordine Carmelitano della prima Osservanza Regolare. Scritta dal padre Virgilio Cepari della Compagnia di Giesù. Et hora con l’aggiunta cavata da’ Processi formati per la sua Beatificatione, e Canonizatione del Padre Gioseppe Fozi della medesima compagnia (Rome, 1669)

Introduction On 26 May 1607, a crowd began to congregate outside a small church on the south side of the River Arno in Florence. It was the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, a women’s Carmelite monastery where one day earlier one of the nuns, Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566–1607), had died. Maria Maddalena had entered the convent aged just sixteen and spent almost twenty-five years hidden behind the high walls and small grilles of its strict monastic enclosure. Despite this enclosed life, news of her death travelled quickly around the city and a large crowd soon gathered to view her body put on display in the convent church, take some of the flowers that covered it, and touch her clothes. Such was the desire for these items that the crowd competed fiercely to grab them. And, according to contemporary reports, so convinced were those visiting the church that they started to call Maria Maddalena ‘beata and santa’.1 Independent of any official Church adjudication or pronouncements, here was a group of people declaring in both their words and their deeds that this recently deceased nun was a saint. Just over sixty years later, in a setting that could not have been more different, Maria Maddalena’s sanctity was declared once more, when she was canonized by Pope Clement IX in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome on 28 April 1669. Her canonization occurred in a joint ceremony alongside a Spanish Discalced Franciscan friar, Pedro d’Alcántara (1499–1562). Now canonized, the new saints would be celebrated liturgically in every church around the world on their appointed feast days. The canonization festivities were suitably elaborate for such a momentous occasion. A large theatre structure was erected inside the basilica behind Bernini’s famous Baldacchino to provide seating for the many cardinals, archbishops, bishops, religious, and other dignitaries in attendance, and the large columns of St Peter’s were decorated with expensive crimson damask.2 Meanwhile, outside, on the basilica’s facade, a large banner was unfurled depicting Maria Maddalena

1

V1609, p. 195. Relatione delle Pompe Vaticane nella canonizatione de gloriosi santi Pietro d’Alcantara dell’Ordine de Minori di S. Francesco, e Maria Maddalena de Pazzi, dell’Ordine de’ Carmelitani, fatta dalla Santità di N. Sig. Clemente Nono li XXVIII Aprile MDCLXIX: Con diversi miracoli delli sudetti santi. (Venice, 1669). 2

2

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi

Figure 0.1. Domenico Cappello, Acta canonizationis S. Petri de Alcantara et S. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis (Rome, 1669). Reproduced with permission from the Institutum Carmelitanum, Rome

Introduction

3

and Pedro d’Alcántara kneeling at the feet of Christ, who, sitting on his throne, placed halos over each of them (see Figure 0.1).3 In this striking image, it was no longer the faithful impulsively calling Maria Maddalena ‘santa’, but God himself. Both events, although very different in tone, reflected a profound belief in Maria Maddalena’s holiness. Since her death, the nuns of her convent and other supporters had worked hard to develop her devotional cult and to arrange the process that might lead, eventually, to her canonization. They did so during a period of dramatic reform for the process of making saints within the Catholic Church. This book explores who this woman was who attracted such attention, why she came to matter to so many people, and how she became a saint of the Counter-Reformation Church.

MARIA MADDALENA DE ’ P AZZI Maria Maddalena was born in Florence to Maria Buondelmonti and Camillo de’ Pazzi in April 1566, just over two years after the closure of the Council of Trent (1545–63). She was baptized Caterina, although her family soon began calling her Lucrezia in honour of her paternal grandmother.4 Both parents were from elite families, but it is the so-called Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478 and its attempt on the lives of Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici that has ensured Caterina’s father’s family is famous amongst Renaissance scholars.5 In fact he belonged to a separate branch of the Pazzi family and was barely related to those who had been involved. Several decades after that assassination attempt had rocked the city, it was safe within the embrace of a well-positioned family that Caterina grew up and was given ample opportunity to enjoy the fruits of high-society Florentine life. Aged just sixteen, in 1582 Caterina entered the Carmelite convent of S. Maria degli Angeli in Florence and took the religious name Maria Maddalena. There her life was marked out by claims to frequent mystical experiences and attacks from demons. She first publicly appeared to fall into rapture in the convent in May 1584, and by the last incident reported in June 1604 she had claimed to have had almost four hundred raptures, ecstasies, and visions.6 The frequency 3 Domenico Cappello, Acta canonizationis S. Petri de Alcantara et S. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis (Rome, 1669), p. 274. 4 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese, 133 (60), Libro di ricordi del monastero di S. Giovannino de Cavalieri, p. 116. 5 Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri di Italia, 16 vols (Milan: P. E. Giusti, 1819–83), vol. 7 (‘Pazzi di Firenze’), and vol. 2 (‘Buondelmonte di Firenze’). On the Conspiracy, see Lauro Martines, April blood: Florence and the plot against the Medici (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 6 Bruno Secondin, Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: Esperienza e dottrina, 2nd ed. (Rome: Edizioni Carmelitane, 2007), pp. 446–513 identifies 390 separate incidents, sometimes more than one a day. A selection of these has been published in English translation: Armando Maggi, tr., Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: Selected revelations (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 2000)

4

Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi

with which these experiences occurred and the duration of each varied, but they transformed Maria Maddalena from a somewhat typical young postulant nun into the central figure of her community. Amongst her experiences, in June 1585 she spent eight days and nights seemingly in continual ecstasy, during which time she appeared to receive different gifts from the Holy Spirit.7 She was seen re-enacting the Passion three times in rapture, received the stigmata (invisibly), mystically married Christ, and reported that Saint Augustine had written on her heart. Hers were emotional experiences, intense encounters with divine love in which she was able to take on some of Christ’s pain and become part of him. At other times Maria Maddalena appeared to be attacked mercilessly by the devil, in particular during a five-year ‘probation’ period of spiritual desolation and trial (1585–90) when she was challenged by terrible temptations and the nuns of her convent watched her respond physically to blows inflicted by otherwise invisible demons.8 Maria Maddalena’s life was marked by the drama of her mystical experiences, her suffering (much of it self-inflicted), and illness.9 Her mysticism was her direct experience of God, a path away from self and towards union with the divine. She experienced visions, received intelligences, fell into abstractions of the mind, and was able to prophesy. It was a life of physical and spiritual extremes, of actions that might appear to speak of mental illness and derangement rather than sanctity.10 Several times she dashed around the convent whilst in rapture, on one occasion ringing the bells of the monastery and shouting out passionately to demand that the nuns ‘Love, Love!’11 Her eyecatching behaviour in rapture was matched by the curious severity of her mortifications and the extreme to which she took her quest for humility. One time, after having been meditating on the passion of Christ, she went and prostrated herself at the door to the nuns’ choir so that all the nuns had to step on her as they left.12 During her five-year ‘probation’, her prioress responded to her calls for further mortifications with penances that included sending her around the table at mealtimes to beg food from the other nuns which she was to eat sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, and making her wash the feet of each nun, all the time wearing a cord around her neck.13 Between Maria Maddalena’s own behaviour and the way in which

7

Revelatione. Armando Maggi, Uttering the Word: The mystical performances of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, a renaissance visionary (New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 119–38; Armando Maggi, Satan’s rhetoric: A study of renaissance demonology (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 137–79. 9 Claudio Catena, ‘Le malattie di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, Carmelus 16 (1969): pp. 70–141. 10 Rudolph Bell, Holy anorexia (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 171–5. 11 12 13 La probatione II, p. 189. P767, p. 118. P767, pp. 117–18. 8

Introduction

5

her monastic community lived with her, the story of her life makes for fascinating reading. The details emerge from several near-contemporary biographies, from testimonies taken as part of an inquiry into her canonization, and from a remarkable set of five manuscripts containing transcriptions of her ecstasies.14 The transcriptions were written by the sisters of her convent either at the time of each experience or shortly afterwards when Maria Maddalena was questioned. The nuns’ texts record Maria Maddalena’s words, but also her silences, her tone, and her behaviour in a way that helps us to hear her voice and see something of the performance and theatre that characterized her mystical life.15 The first drafts of the transcriptions underwent revision by the nuns and by various clerical readers, but the final texts are still characterized by an intriguing sense of immediacy, of someone in the midst of allconsuming experiences. First published together in the 1960s, they are a unique set of documents, for whilst it was not uncommon for women mystics to dictate or report their words orally, Maria Maddalena’s words and actions (and silences) were recorded largely without her participation, the text written by her sisters looking on and writing what they heard and saw.16 Catherine of Siena, by contrast, dictated much of the Dialogue to her confessor.17 Encountering Maria Maddalena thus involves texts that have been created by or in conjunction with other people, and like any would-be saint, Maria Maddalena’s saintly identity was shaped by the perceptions of others.18 She did much to influence her own convent community and confessors even as they worked hard to shape how she was seen. The story of Maria Maddalena’s life is not merely hers, then, but that of the women with whom she lived, the priests with whom she spoke, and the family and friends she advised.

14

The processi (processes or trials) for Maria Maddalena’s beatification and canonization are conserved in the Vatican Secret Archives: P767–71. 15 Armando Maggi, ‘The voice and silences of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, in Women mystic writers, edited by Dino Cervigni (Chapel Hill, NC: Annali d’Italianistica, 1995), pp. 257–81; Antonio Riccardi, ‘The mystic humanism of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566–1607)’, in Creative women in medieval and early modern Italy: A religious and artistic renaissance, edited by E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), p. 215. 16 Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, ed. Tutte le opere di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi dai manoscritti originali, edited by Fulvio Nardoni, 7 vols (Florence: Centro Internazionale del Libro, 1960–6). See also now L’epistolario completo and Chiara Vasciaveo, Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: Detti e preghiere nella testimonianza delle prime sorelle (Florence: Nerbini, 2009). 17 Jane Tylus, Reclaiming Catherine of Siena: Literacy, literature, and the signs of others (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009). 18 Aviad Kleinberg, Prophets in their own country: Living saints and the making of sainthood in the later Middle Ages (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992).

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Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi

A COUNTER-REFORMATION SAINT Maria Maddalena’s canonization marked her formal ‘making’ as a saint by the pope. As the Catholic faithful of early modern Italy were well aware, this was a highly significant act within the Church. Describing the canonization in 1629 of another Florentine Carmelite, Andrea Corsini, one contemporary writer offered this telling assessment: ‘The canonization of saints is one of the greatest and most important matters that can be done in Christendom, because it is about conceding almost divine honours to a mortal person subject, as also are all of us, to the imperfections of the flesh.’19 Canonization saw Christ’s vicar on earth declare that someone had overcome the challenges of human frailty, lived a worthy life, and was now enjoying the beatific vision in heaven from where they could intercede miraculously for those on earth.20 Canonization recognized the exceptional holiness of an individual; it presented them as a model for imitation and advertised them as someone to be venerated.21 Canonization was particularly significant in the seventeenth century following Protestant criticisms of the cult of saints. The critique issued by reformers was doctrinal (concerning whether anyone could intercede with God on another’s behalf) and also mocked devotions to many dubious saints, the veneration of erroneously identified ‘relics’, and practices that seemed superstitious rather than religious.22 Their attacks represented an unprecedented assault on a core component of Catholic doctrine and culture, on the images, relics, and shrines that made the saints such important figures within the social, political, and economic activities that together defined the lives of Catholic families, neighbourhoods, towns, and cities. On the ground, in areas where iconoclastic furies broke out, such as the Low Countries, Catholic laity and religious alike are known to have made desperate attempts to save their much revered images and relics from destruction.23 In Rome, the absence of any canonizations between 1523 and 1588 hints at some of the

19

Benedetto Buonmattei, Descrizione delle feste fatte in Firenze per la canonizzazione di S.to Andrea Corsini (Florence, 1632), pp. 1–2. 20 As an introduction, see Robert Bartlett, Why can the dead do such great things? Saints and worshippers from the martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 103–6. 21 Richard Kieckhefer, ‘Imitators of Christ: Sainthood in the Christian tradition’, in Sainthood: Its manifestations in world religions, edited by Richard Kieckhefer and George D. Bond (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 1–42; Sofia Boesch Gajano, La santità, 2nd ed. (Rome: Laterza, 2005), pp. 3–18, 37–53. 22 Carol Piper Heming, Protestants and the cult of saints in German-speaking Europe, 1517–1531 (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2003). 23 Craig Harline and Eddy Put, Bishop’s tale: Mathias Hovius among his flock in seventeenthcentury Flanders (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 206–11.

Introduction

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fear these theological and physical attacks also produced amongst the authorities of the Catholic Church.24 The Catholic response to this Protestant challenge was to embrace the saints as part of its self-definition. Whether in terms of liturgical culture or non-liturgical culture, they became ‘perhaps the most visible boundary which marked the confessional divide’ of early modern Europe.25 The final session of the Council of Trent (1545–63) included a decree on the validity of the saints and the importance of relics and images to the practice of the faith. Christ is the one saviour of humanity, the Council Fathers ruled, but ‘the saints, reigning together with Christ, offer their prayers to God for people’ and ‘it is a good and beneficial thing to invoke them, and to have recourse to their prayers’ for help in obtaining benefits from God.26 The decree assured the continuation of many traditional Catholic devotional practices, even as it also called upon bishops to pay greater attention to new relics, images, and cults so that the risk of scandal might be reduced. The initial call for reform found in the Tridentine decree was echoed in various ways over the following century as changes to the canonization process—the formal procedure leading to canonization—were gradually introduced that ultimately amounted to far-reaching reforms. Saints—and particularly the canonization of new saints—represented an area of the Catholic Church responding to the Protestant challenge in an authoritative manner. As the Church sought to put its house in order, regulating who was worthy of veneration and imitation became even more important to the administration in Rome. Living as a nun in the decades after Trent and canonized in a century of piecemeal reform for the canonization process and the regulation of devotional cults, Maria Maddalena deserves to be labelled a ‘Counter-Reformation saint’. This is not, however, to restrict her to the reactive understanding of ‘Counter-Reformation’ as set out in the debate over the reshaping of Catholicism in this period.27 The cult of saints was, if anything, marked by variety. The saints offered opportunities for forming, educating, and disciplining

Peter Burke, ‘How to be a Counter-Reformation saint’, in Peter Burke, The historical anthropology of early modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 48–62. 25 Simon Ditchfield, ‘Sanctity in early modern Italy’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47, 1 (1996): p. 98 [doi: 10.1017/S0022046900018662]. See also Gabriella Zarri, ‘From prophecy to discipline, 1450–1650’, in Women and faith: Catholic religious life in Italy from late Antiquity to the present, edited by Luccetta Scaraffia and Gabriella Zarri (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 99. 26 Norman Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 774–6. 27 See for example, Hubert Jedin, ‘Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation?’ in The Counter-Reformation: The essential readings, edited by David Luebke, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 21–45; John O’Malley, Trent and all that: Renaming Catholicism in the early modern era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 24

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Catholics by means of setting forth particular models of behaviour that supported the priorities of the Church hierarchy.28 But attempts to impose did not always succeed and the saints were also embraced and used in their own ways by devotees: lay, clerical, and those in religious orders. Canonization, meanwhile, continued to depend on impetus from the faithful— the fama sanctitatis (fame of holiness) of a candidate—even as Rome tightened its control over unregulated cults: candidates still needed to be revered for their holiness and have miracles attributed to them before they were given an official title. A saint needs devotees and Maria Maddalena’s ‘making’ as a saint in the Counter-Reformation period was as much about her devotional cult as her official cause for canonization. Of course, it was not just the newly canonized that were venerated within the early modern Catholic Church, but also a great many older figures whose lives collectively spanned several millennia, as the wealth of scholarship on the medieval cult of saints attests.29 Devotions also centred on many who did not achieve official recognition as saints until a later age, and some who have never been recognized.30 Each has much to tell us about how holiness was understood by the Catholic faithful, and yet examining Maria Maddalena’s case presents us with particularly interesting opportunities to see how saints were used and identified precisely because of the official approval she gained alongside the devotional following she attracted. Considering both her cult and cause together (that is, the processes leading first to her beatification and then to her canonization) illuminates the complexity of saint-making in a period of pivotal reform that affected the formal journey to official recognition, the devotional interest a candidate might attract, and the way in which they were celebrated and promoted. At the same time, Maria Maddalena’s life and cult reveal ways in which she and the women with whom she lived were able to forge their own devotional identities and also influence the spiritual lives of others at a time often marked out either for its top-down regulation or a failure to regulate.

28 Burke, ‘How to be a Counter-Reformation saint’; Giulia Barone, Marina Caffiero, and Francesco Scorza Barcellona (eds.), Modelli di santità e modelli di comportamento (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1994). 29 See in particular André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, tr. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1st paperback ed. 2005). 30 This is the basis, for example, for Jean-Michel Sallmann, Santi barocchi: Modelli di santità, pratiche devozionali e comportamenti religiosi nel regno di Napoli dal 1540 al 1750 (Lecce: Argo, 1996), and Stephen Haliczer, Between exaltation and infamy: Female mystics in the golden age of Spain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Introduction

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CA NONIZA TION Canonization itself had long existed within the Church and had been formally reserved to the papacy in the Decretals of Gregory IX in 1234—although this had been the case in practice since the twelfth century.31 By the time Trent issued its affirmation of saints, the canonization process was already a complex one, comprising multiple stages and inquiries.32 A candidate’s ‘cause’ would commence with an ‘ordinary process’ instigated by the local bishop (the ordinary) enquiring into their life, virtues, and miracles and frequently held in more than one city in order to gather as many testimonies as possible. The nature of this first stage meant that a cause required support from the local ecclesiastical hierarchy and from devotees able and willing to testify. The process reflected many aspects of a criminal trial, adapted to the specific aim of identifying saints; crucially, however, the person under inquiry was not still alive and had not been charged with a crime, and the canonization process did not have to reach a verdict.33 The testimonies taken before the tribunal were directed by a set of ‘articles’ (points for discussion) approved in advance, with witnesses responding only to those about which they had knowledge. After the first process had been examined by Curial officials in Rome, a second process was commissioned under ‘apostolic’ (papal) authority, designed to be more specific. Records of this process were again sent to Rome, where both the evidence and legal procedure that had been followed were scrutinized by auditors of the Rota. The auditors produced a report to be assessed by a committee of cardinals, who then reported to the pope. The final stage before canonization was discussion in three different consistories that involved the pope meeting with three sets of high-ranking clergy: a ‘secret’ consistory (the pope and cardinals only); a ‘public’ consistory (the pope, cardinals, 31 On the history of canonization, see, amongst other works, Giovanni Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione nel primo periodo della Congregazione dei Riti (1588–1634) (Vatican City: Urbaniana University Press, 2001); Henryk Misztal, Le cause di canonizzazione: Storia e procedura (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005); Giuseppe dalla Torre, Santità e diritto: Sondaggi nella storia del diritto canonico, 2nd ed. (Turin: Giappichelli Editore, 2008); Simon Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine worship and the cult of saints’, in The Cambridge history of Christianity, volume 6: Reform and expansion 1500–1660, edited by Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 201–24; Fabijan Veraja, La beatificazione: Storia, problemi, prospettive (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983). On the medieval period, see also Vauchez, Sainthood, and Gábor Klaniczay (ed.), Procès de canonisation au moyen âge: Aspects juridiques et religieux/Medieval canonization processes: Legal and religious aspects, (Rome: L’École Française de Rome, 2004). 32 A good summary of the canonization procedure is provided by Ronald Finucane, Contested canonizations: The last medieval saints, 1482–1523 (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), pp. 24–32. 33 Giuseppe dalla Torre, ‘Santità ed economia processuale. L’esperienza giuridica da Urbano VIII a Benedetto XIV’, in Gabriella Zarri (ed.), Finzione e santità tra medioevo ed età moderna (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1991), pp. 231–63, esp. 241–2. On criminal trials, see Trevor Dean, Crime and justice in late medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

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bishops, and others such as auditors of the Rota and apostolic protonotaries); and a ‘semi-public’ consistory (the pope, cardinals, and bishops close to Rome). Set out in several phases, the canonization process saw the theological discussion as to the merits of an individual firmly placed within a legal procedure that, since it depended in part on the interest and commitment of high-ranking clergy and might benefit various secular and religious rulers and groups, could also become a political tool. Reforms introduced during the century after Trent made the canonization process more demanding still in legal and bureaucratic terms and also made Roman approval vital at an earlier stage than previously.34 The first of the major reforms came in 1588 with the creation of the Congregation of Rites (Congregatio pro sacris ritibus et caeremoniis), the fifth of fifteen new dicasteries of the papal Curia established by Pope Sixtus V.35 Five cardinals appointed to the Congregation were charged with overseeing the liturgy of the Church, the veneration of saints, and canonization. Prior to this, several people had been involved in some but not all causes; under the new arrangement, a permanent group would examine causes and make proposals to the pope only after in-depth discussion, helping to create an environment in which the procedure could become more standardized and systematic.36 Even more significant reform followed in the seventeenth century regarding specific elements of the canonization procedure to be followed and affecting when a candidate might first be considered. It was a period in which the goalposts for acquiring approval were narrowing, a product of tension rather than consensus within the Roman Curia for although the Congregation of Rites could claim oversight of canonization, management of the cult of saints more generally also attracted interest from the Holy Office and the Congregation of the Index in their capacities as regulators and censors.37 Of particular concern to some members of the Curia were so-called ‘beati moderni’, those who had died only recently and yet had quickly become the objects of public veneration and devotion in ways 34 Ditchfield, ‘Trindentine worship’ provides an excellent introduction to the reforms of this period. See also Clare Copeland, ‘Sanctity’, in The Ashgate research companion to the CounterReformation, edited by Alexandra Bamji, Geert Janssen, and Mary Laven (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 225–41. 35 Niccolò del Re, La curia romana: Lineamenti storico-giuridici, 4th ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998). ‘Immensa aeterni Dei’ of January 1588 is reproduced in Luigi Tomassetti (ed.), Bullarium Romanum: Bullarum, diplomatum et privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum, vol. 8 (Turin, 1863), pp. 985–99, esp. pp. 989–90 on the duties of the Congregation of Rites. 36 Vincenzo Criscuolo, Daniel Ols, and Robert Sarno (eds.), Le cause dei santi: Sussidio per lo ‘Studium’ (Libreria Editrice Vaticana: Vatican City, 2012), pp. 171–2. 37 On tension within the Curia, see Simon Ditchfield, ‘Thinking with saints: Sanctity and society in the early modern world’, Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): pp. 577–8 [www.jstor.org/stable/ 10.1086/598809]; Miguel Gotor, I beati del papa: Santità, Inquisizione e obbedienza in età moderna (Florence: Olschki, 2002), pp. 285–418.

Introduction

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that seemed to identify them falsely as ‘official’ saints before any investigation and declaration had been made.38 Whilst some, such as Cardinals Robert Bellarmine and Cesare Baronio, were more open to these cults, others, such as Francisco Peña (a judge of the Roman Rota), were highly critical of any demonstration of cult prior to a candidate’s approval. The battle came down to how important perceptions and expressions of sanctity were amongst the faithful when still lacking a Roman imprimatur. In the same period, the papacy also claimed jurisdiction over restricted, non-universal cults by introducing the need for papal beatification.39 After her death in 1607, Maria Maddalena could be labelled as one of these beati moderni who quickly attracted devotees and gave rise to a public cult. The climate of suspicion regarding new devotions influenced how the nun was promoted and her example showcases the types of delays and frustrations that hindered causes in the early seventeenth century amid the uncertainty regarding recent candidates. Delay became an intentional part of the official canonization system, in addition to the incidental delays that had long characterized the process and that became more likely as the bureaucratic demands placed on causes were made more rigorous. Throughout the present book, the reasons why Maria Maddalena’s cause progressed or stalled are placed within the context of both reforms to the canonization process and the fortunes of other candidates also competing for canonization. Canonization was a political process, but it was also a legal one, and taking those necessary legal steps depended on contributions from devotees and on the goodwill of people outside Rome. This study is not merely a narrative of Maria Maddalena’s canonization process, however. Maria Maddalena’s canonization was the result of the myriad of ways in which she had become part of people’s lives. Simon Ditchfield, thinking about the great range of figures who served as objects of devotion in this period, has rightly called upon scholars to step beyond a mere history of canonization to consider a broader landscape of worship in which saints, nearly saints, and would-be saints were used, be that in social, cultural, political, or religious terms.40 In keeping with this, what follows is the story of how Maria Maddalena became and was made a saint in a broad sense: how and why she was venerated by devotees, embraced as a powerful intercessor, and also came to be recognized by Rome as someone worthy of a public cult. It explores how her sanctity was used and promoted, and how her life story was read and altered in various 38 Gotor, I beati del papa; Ruth Noyes, ‘On the fringes of the center: Disputed hagiographic imagery and the crisis over the beati moderni in Rome ca. 1600’, Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2011): pp. 800–46 [www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662850]. See also Jetze Touber, Law, medicine, and engineering in the cult of the saints in Counter-Reformation Rome: The hagiographical works of Antonio Gallonio, 1556–1605 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2014), pp. 119–25. 39 Veraja, La beatificazione, pp. 69–96. 40 Ditchfield, ‘Thinking with saints’; and Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine worship’, p. 207.

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situations. And it examines how she was interpreted, understood, and presented by a range of people: from nuns, friars, and local clergy to archbishops and cardinals; from farm labourers to merchants and elites; from those in Florence to those far beyond the city of her birth. Cult and cause were intimately connected and the various moments of Maria Maddalena’s developing identity provide a window onto interactions between ecclesiastical officials, the members of religious orders, elite patrons, and a varied array of devotees concerning their conceptions of holiness. As the sociologist Pierre Delooz astutely noted, saints are made ‘for other people’, since canonization gains nothing for the saints themselves.41 Maria Maddalena’s life, cult, and canonization process all reveal ways in which her sanctity was ‘created’, promoted, and manipulated by others for their own benefit. We see how others latched onto her as a shining example of holiness and, in studying her, we can study the piety of those she attracted and the communities in which they lived.42 The approval her mystical experiences acquired during her lifetime drew in part on the strong bonds that linked her convent with the Florentine civic elite and influential members of other religious orders. It also reflected her convent’s openness to mystical spirituality that had emerged from the nuns’ interactions with the Dominicans and Jesuits in Florence. After her death, her energetic use as a miraculous intercessor was fuelled by the availability of trustworthy relics that acted as points of contact across various social groups. Alongside the miracle claims came a greater sense of this nun’s reputation for a holy life, with many devotees reading her vita (biography) or hearing from others of her fame for virtuous behaviour and mystical experiences. Put simply, Maria Maddalena’s story is important because it is not simply hers alone.

WOMEN AN D THE P URSUIT OF HOLINESS Maria Maddalena’s cult is of special significance for the insights it offers specifically into how women’s holiness was understood in the CounterReformation period. Her success as one of just five women canonized in the seventeenth century marks her out as an unusual figure alongside Francesca Romana (d. 1440, canonized in 1608), Teresa of Avila (d. 1582, canonized 1622), Elizabeth of Portugal (d. 1336, canonized 1625), and Rose of Lima 41 Pierre Delooz, Sociologie et canonisations (Liège, Faculté de droit, 1969), esp. p. 27. See also Pierre Delooz, ‘Towards a sociological study of canonized sainthood in the Catholic Church’, in Saints and their cults: Studies in religious sociology, folklore and history, edited by Stephen Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 186–216. 42 Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, Saints and society: Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), esp. p. 6.

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(d. 1617, canonized 1671).43 Of these, Teresa is perhaps the best known, and since she was a Carmelite nun and died the same year as Maria Maddalena entered Carmel, it is tempting to ponder the similarities between the two figures. Both, after all, were famed as mystics and perhaps Maria Maddalena’s success might have been as a ‘second’ Teresa of Avila.44 Teresa and Maria Maddalena both claimed to receive mystical gifts and visions at a time when such assertions amongst women were highly likely to attract suspicion from ecclesiastical authorities. But where Teresa of Avila drew concerned interest from the Inquisition in Spain (although she avoided serious involvement), it appears that Maria Maddalena did not.45 In part this reflected a high level of concern in Spain, the keen interest of the Spanish Inquisition, and a changing context in which the definition of orthodoxy shifted during her lifetime.46 Church authorities as a whole had not rejected the notion of women visionaries outright, but they were cautious particularly about women claiming to have direct religious experiences on the basis of which they asserted an authority of their own.47 In Italy from the end of the sixteenth century, those claiming mystical experiences were faced with the increasingly tough challenges of distinguishing true holiness from ‘simulated sanctity’ (simulata santità).48 Maria Maddalena’s claims were not celebrated immediately and were scrutinized to some degree, but they were not subjected to the level of investigation that one might expect. Whereas tertiaries and lay women claiming visions and ecstasies attracted attention, Maria Maddalena had embraced the life of the enclosed nun so drastically demanded by the

43 Christian Renoux, ‘Canonizzazione e santità femminile in età moderna’, in Storia d’Italia 16: Roma, città del papa (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), pp. 738–40. Margaret of Scotland was given an ‘equivalent’ canonization in 1692. 44 Although Teresa’s mysticism also added to the difficulty of her canonization: Gillian Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila and the politics of sanctity (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 145–66. On Teresa’s life, see in particular Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the rhetoric of femininity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Carole Slade, St Teresa of Avila: Author of a heroic life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995). 45 On Teresa and the Spanish Inquisition, see Enrique Llamas Martínez, Santa Teresa de Jesús y la Inquisición española (Madrid: Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1972). 46 Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila; Elizabeth Rhodes, ‘Mysticism and history: The case of Spain’s Golden Age’, in Teresa of Avila and Spanish mysticism, edited by Alison Weber (New York, NY: MLA, 2009), pp. 47–56; Haliczer, Between exaltation and infamy, esp. pp. 48–79, 125–45. 47 Nancy Caciola, Discerning spirits: Divine and demonic possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2003); Zarri (ed.), Finzione e santità. 48 Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: Einaudi, 1996), pp. 431–64; Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring saints: Pretense of holiness, Inquisition, and gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750 (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Jean-Michel Sallmann, ‘Le sainteté mystique féminine à Naples au tournant des XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, in Culto dei santi, istituzioni e classi sociali in età preindustriale, edited by Sofia Boesch-Gajano and Luca Sebastiani (L’Aquila-Rome: L. U. Japadre, 1984), pp. 681–701.

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Council of Trent.49 There, in the cloister, her voice could be contained and her life overseen by her monastic superiors and the convent’s confessors. But Maria Maddalena’s success at avoiding negative attention during her lifetime also owed much to the specific context her convent provided. The community she joined was receptive to mystical spirituality, her superiors kept careful watch over her, and their confessors were supportive. In particular, Maria Maddalena benefited from the written transcriptions of her experiences produced by her fellow nuns as opposed to preparing a self-authored account as Teresa of Avila had in obedience to her confessor.50 Also significant was the convent’s network stretching beyond their enclosure, particularly their links with the Jesuits, who offered them much guidance, and the ruling family of the city, the Medici. Maria Maddalena’s life highlights the appreciative audience that mysticism was still able to find within the convent in late sixteenthcentury Italy, despite heightened concern in other contexts. As this discussion suggests, the role played by Maria Maddalena’s fellow nuns was crucial. The many years that Maria Maddalena spent within the convent enclosure of S. Maria degli Angeli ensured that the nuns of her community were caught up in the events of her life. These nuns shared in her holiness and partook in some sense in her mystical experiences. Far from being shut off from the world, this convent was embedded in the social and religious networks of Florence and functioned as an important point of intersection for a wide range of people. Within this context, the spiritual capital of a mystic nun created new opportunities for the convent, enhanced its social status, and brought financial rewards. Convent culture has attracted considerable scholarly interest in recent years, not least where convent sources have demonstrated female agency during an age when women have frequently seemed less visible.51 The transcriptions produced at S. Maria degli Angeli and the work they did promoting Maria Maddalena’s cult fit into this broader interest in convent life and tell the story of a community of women committed to fashioning their own spiritual identity and influencing the devotions of others. Despite her convent’s network, when she died Maria Maddalena was not nearly as well known outside her own convent as Teresa of Avila had been. Teresa’s 49 On women visionaries and mystics, see in particular Zarri (ed.), Finzione e santità; Schutte, Aspiring saints; Sara Matthews-Grieco, ‘Models of female sanctity in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy’, in Women and faith, edited by Scaraffia and Zarri, pp. 172–3. On enclosure, see Gabriella Zarri, ‘Female sanctity, 1500–1660’, in The Cambridge history of Christianity, volume 6, edited by Hsia, pp. 180–200; Silvia Evangelisti, ‘ “We do not have it and we do not want it”: Women, power, and convent reform in Florence’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 34, 3 (2003): pp. 677–700 [www.jstor.org/stable/20061529]; and Sharon Strocchia, Nuns and nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), pp. 152–90. 50 Weber, Teresa of Avila and the rhetoric of femininity; Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila; and Slade, Teresa of Avila: Author of a heroic life. 51 For an emphasis on cultural aspects, see for example Silvia Evangelisti, Nuns: A history of convent life (Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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programme for monastic reform had led to the foundation of seventeen Discalced Carmelite communities by 1582 and, ultimately, to the separation of the Discalced from the original Carmelite Order. Maria Maddalena may have heard of Teresa of Avila, but the Discalced had still not established a house in Florence by 1607 and S. Maria degli Angeli never joined Teresa’s reform.52 Maria Maddalena was certainly interested in pushing for religious observance and ‘renewal’, but largely amongst her local community and friends, urging them to be more zealous. Her cult, indeed, shines a light on lesser-known Carmelite reform movements within Italy and suggests that we need to think carefully about how united or divided religious orders were in their spiritual interests and endeavours. This is particularly true when considering women’s communities, since they did not necessarily boast strong relations with the order whose rule they followed. In asking how ‘Carmelite’ Maria Maddalena was, this book suggests that even such a basic identifier as a person’s religious order was open to some discussion. Indeed, one aspect of convent culture that recurs throughout the following chapters is the relationship between the community of S. Maria degli Angeli and its governor-confessor, as well as the personal relationships between Maria Maddalena and her confessors. The nuns found willing collaborators in several confessors and spiritual advisers who were not Carmelite and who shared their esteem for Maria Maddalena. These men offered their support during Maria Maddalena’s lifetime and, in conjunction with the nuns, promoted her after her death. In so doing they, like the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli, allowed their relationship with Maria Maddalena to shape their own identities.53

BECOMING SAINTLY Maria Maddalena’s ‘success’ as a saint lay with the individuals and communities who came to believe in her holiness and shared their conviction with 52 A translation of Teresa’s Interior Castle and Way of Perfection was published by the Giunti Press in Florence in 1605: Il cammino di perfezione e il castello interiore. Libri della B.M. Teresa di Giesù fondatrice degli scalzi Carmelitani. Per tutte le persone spirituali, religiose e contemplative, particolarmente per le monache di somma utilità (Florence, 1605). Teresa’s Life was first published in Italian in 1599: Vita della M. Teresa di Giesù, fondatrice delli monasteri delle monache e frati Carmelitani Scalzi della prima regola. Tradotta dalla lingua spagnuola nell’italiana dal reverendiss. Monsig. Gio. Francesco Bordini della congregatione dell’Oratoria (Rome, 1599). See Elisabetta Marchetti, Le prime traduzioni italiane delle opere di Teresa di Gesù nel quadro dell’impegno papale post-tridentino (Bologna: Lo Scarabeo, 2001). 53 On supportive confessors, see, in particular, John Coakley, Women, men, and spiritual power: Female saints and their male collaborators (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006); Jodi Bilinkoff, Related lives: Confessors and their female penitents, 1450–1750 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); Catherine Mooney (ed.), Gendered voices: Medieval saints and their interpreters (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

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others, also sharing relics and news of the miracles they believed she had worked. It was above all in the sharing of Maria Maddalena’s sanctity that she became perceived and used as a saint. Her recognition by the institutional Church and by the faithful both relied on this. We begin this exploration of Maria Maddalena’s sanctity with her early years, her decision to join the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli, and her life within the convent enclosure. Chapter 1 examines the childhood that Maria Buondelmonti and Camillo de’ Pazzi’s only daughter enjoyed and her formation at the hands of Jesuit directors to whom her mother also turned for regular spiritual guidance. Maria Maddalena’s path to the convent was in many ways unexceptional, but her life within it provided the basis for her saintly reputation and so this chapter asks why it was the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli that became this girl’s adult home. The following chapter is devoted to Maria Maddalena’s life as a member of that convent community. It examines her mystical experiences and what her community and their confessors did with their belief that these were signs of divine favour. Her claims to receive mystical experiences might have attracted censure and criticism from the Church authorities. Instead, not only did her convent community and their confessors protect her, but they embraced the opportunity to participate in her experiences with her. We then move to consider the growth in devotion to Maria Maddalena after her death, the start and progress of her cause for official recognition, and her beatification—the papal concession of a local liturgical cult—that came in 1626. How was Maria Maddalena, despite having spent nearly all her life within the convent enclosure, able so quickly to acquire a large and growing number of devotees? Her death came at a time when new public cults were liable to alarm the ecclesiastical authorities, but the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli and their associates were careful in how they promoted Maria Maddalena. The success of their promotional work can be seen in the number of miracles attributed to the nun’s intercession in the months and years following her death. Using accounts of these events, Chapter 3 investigates why people began to turn to her for miraculous help (and not another saint or reputed saint), and how important these claimed miracles were for her holy reputation. Chapter 4 turns to the writing of Maria Maddalena’s Vita (Life), a task immediately undertaken by Vincenzo Puccini, then confessor-governor of her convent. With his eye firmly on achieving Maria Maddalena’s canonization, Puccini rewrote some aspects of his penitent’s life story in order to present her in a favourable light to the authorities and provide the text that would form the basis of the first canonization inquiry. The biography was also used to enlist support from elite devotees, and to spread awareness of Maria Maddalena’s holiness amongst those who might seek her relics and intercession. Already at this early stage, her principal promoters were aware that developing her cult was also linked to developing her cause for canonization.

Introduction

17

As already noted, the canonization process underwent substantial reform in the seventeenth century. Maria Maddalena’s beatification depended on her cause navigating a multistage legal procedure and avoiding the pitfalls created by the many practical demands this procedure imposed. The details of how Maria Maddalena’s beatification process developed, as discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, reveal some of the difficulties facing causes in the early seventeenth century before a series of critical reforms were introduced in 1625. Although the nun’s process stalled, devotion to her still grew and spread in interesting ways, following networks of friends and family, religious advisers, and other associates, powered in part by the sharing of Maria Maddalena’s relics and published biography. The beatification achieved in 1626 was a triumph for the networking skills of the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli and testimony to the social capital that a mystic woman could still produce in the early seventeenth century. We turn, finally, to assessing the significance of Maria Maddalena’s beatification, the ongoing development of her cult, and the push for her canonization. After her relatively swift beatification, Maria Maddalena was not canonized until over forty years later. Chapter 7 places this delay within the context of canonization reform and the experience of other candidates at this time, made all the more compelling because the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli boasted close family connections to Pope Urban VIII and clearly wanted to see their sister canonized. With Maria Maddalena’s case stalled, Pope Urban and his family turned to more typical forms of financial patronage with two projects that ultimately proved extremely useful when pushing for Maria Maddalena’s canonization. Chapter 8 digs deeper into the relationship between Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli, and the Carmelite Order during this period when her cause was in abeyance. It highlights how Maria Maddalena’s identity was flexible enough to be used in different ways by different communities within the Order. In the final chapter we see how the official process for Maria Maddalena’s canonization made progress and the terms according to which her holiness—particularly her miracles—was assessed in Rome. Saints are saints for other people, which is to say that they are identified and celebrated by others, rather than for the good of the saints themselves.54 Maria Maddalena’s journey to sainthood is testimony to this: it was not a journey she undertook alone. Both the devotional cult that developed around her and the success of her cause for canonization reflected the hard work of her convent community, their confessors, and their network of supporters, in life and, even more, after her death. On the surface Maria Maddalena’s beatification and 54 Delooz, Sociologie et canonisations. For a more recent sociological study founded on this assumption and focused on the promotion of new saints by ‘acolytes’, see: Paolo Parigi, The rationalization of miracles (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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canonization appear to be obvious examples of the power of papal patronage in the saint-making process and, with that, the politics inherent in the system. Looking at her example in more detail, however, reveals a much more complex picture of the making of this Counter-Reformation saint. We see, above all, a community of enclosed nuns able not only to determine their own devotional identity but to influence the devotions of others.

1 The Call of the Convent When the first printed biography of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi left the Florentine Giunti press in 1609, its frontispiece portrait of an enraptured woman in habit and veil clearly identified her as a holy nun.1 This was, specifically, the ‘Life of Madre Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, nun of the Carmelite Order at the Monastery of S. Maria degli Angeli’. Written by her confessor, Vincenzo Puccini, the book set out to propose a ‘mirror of goodness’ to the general reader and a model of holiness that the Church authorities would find acceptable, central to which was Maria Maddalena’s monastic vocation.2 Her Vita, however, like those of many saintly nuns, began not with her profession in the convent but with a childhood steeped in holiness and a desire to imitate established saints. Piecing together the true extent of Maria Maddalena’s piety and devotional practices as a mere girl is difficult given the sympathetic nature of the sources available.3 Puccini’s depiction of Maria Maddalena’s early years was heavily dependent on an account written in 1598 by Sr Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia, a childhood friend who had entered the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli just two years before Maria Maddalena. The text, Breve ragguaglio, had been composed at the behest of the convent’s confessor, then Francesco Benvenuti, and was based on Maria Pacifica’s personal knowledge as well as details 1 V1609. On frontispiece portraits, see Helen Hills, ‘The face is a mirror of the soul: Frontispieces and the production of sanctity in post-Tridentine Naples’, Art History 31, 4, (2008): pp. 547–74 [doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8365.2008.00629.x]. And on the importance of attributes as identifiers for saints, see Christian Hecht, Katholische Bildertheologie im Zeitalter von Gegenreformation und Barock: Studien zu Traktaten von Johannes Molanus, Gabriele Paleotti und anderen Autoren (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1997), esp. p. 174. 2 V1609, p. 2. Karen-Edis Barzman, ‘Gender, religious representation and cultural production in early modern Italy’, in Gender and society in Renaissance Italy, edited by Judith Brown and Robert Davis (London: Longman, 1998), pp. 229–30; Karen-Edis Barzman, ‘Devotion and desire: The reliquary chapel of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, Art History 15, 2 (1992): pp. 171–96 [doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8365.1992.tb00480.x]. On confessors turned hagiographers in general, see Coakley, Women, men, and spiritual power; and Bilinkoff, Related lives, esp. pp. 32–45. 3 On using of hagiographical sources, see for instance Karen Scott, ‘Mystical death, bodily death: Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua on the mystics’ encounter with God’, in Gendered voices, edited by Mooney, pp. 136–67.

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various nuns had gleaned from conversations with Maria Maddalena’s mother prior to her death in 1590. The result was an account rooted in the belief that God had chosen Maria Maddalena ‘as his preferred dwelling place’ and had infused her with particular gifts whilst she was still in her mother’s womb.4 Over ten years later, in 1612, several others who had known the girl gave depositions before the informative process into Maria Maddalena’s saintliness in which they revealed that they too had long been convinced of her exceptional holiness.5 These various accounts reveal some of the ways in which others read and interpreted what they had seen of the young Maria Maddalena as a friend or family member. In limited way we can, through their eyes, glimpse the formative experiences that led Maria Maddalena to life within a convent and specifically to the community of S. Maria degli Angeli.

PRIVILEGED LIVING AND P RECOCIOUS HOLINESS When Maria Buondelmonti and Camillo de’ Pazzi welcomed their second child into the world on 2 April 1566 they of course had no idea how famous she would become. She was simply another child born to a well-to-do family, a younger sister to Geri (1561–1618). Taken to the Florentine baptistery of S. Giovanni Battista the following day, the baby was baptized Caterina after her maternal grandmother, Caterina d’Altobianco Giandonati. Caterina’s father Camillo was forging a position for himself as a respected member of the city’s governing elite and went on to hold appointments as commissioner in Cortona (1580), Volterra (1584), Arezzo (1587), and Prato (1590).6 As Camillo de’ Pazzi’s only daughter, Caterina had the prospect of a good marriage and an affluent life ahead of her. In Florence the family employed several servants and lived centrally, on borgo degli Albizi in the parish of S. Maria del Campo, in what is today known as the Palazzo Pazzi-Ammannati) (see Figure 1.1). Like other important Florentine families, they also owned a country villa to which they retreated for refuge from urban life, theirs being in Montemurlo, near Prato.7 Growing up within a wealthy family and amongst the social elite of the city, Caterina herself later said that ‘by [her] nature’ she was predisposed to love grandeur.8 Instead of embracing the lifestyle her family’s status offered her, however, it was said that Caterina rejected ‘all the delights and pleasures of the world’ and Breve, p. 71: ‘Havendosi Iddio eletta questa Anima per sua particolare habitatione’. P767, pp. 94–104, 206–16, 360–3, 560–3, 1368–73, 1396–404, 1421–4. 6 7 Secondin, Esperienza e dottrina, p. 96. V1669, p. 9. 8 La probatione I, p. 68: ‘by nature she loves grandeur and not brutal things, but rather rich and beautiful [things], and she takes after her father and her mother in this’. 4 5

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Figure 1.1. Detail from Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, Nova pulcherrimaae civitatis Florentiaae topographia accuratissime delineata (Rome, 1690?). Held by Harvard Map Collection, Harvard University. 1. S. Giovanni dei Cavalieri (S. Giovannino); 2. SS.ma Annunziata; 3. Jesuit college of S. Giovannino; 4. The archbishop’s palace; 5. Florentine baptistery; 6. Caterina de’ Pazzi’s family home; 7. S. Maria degli Angeli

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focused her desire instead on union with God.9 Rather than playing or socializing with other children, she would retire away to secret places. She embraced an ascetic piety in which she saw hardship, fasting, and suffering as ways of imitating Christ, leading her to self-denial and acts of mortification. At mealtimes, if there were fruits or other more delicate foods on offer, Caterina would avoid them, and supposedly from the age of seven was offering some of her own food to the prisoners she passed on her way to reading classes at the Jesuate convent of S. Girolamo delle Poverine.10 She was said to have eaten only what was necessary, to have helped the servants with their duties, and to have worn a crown of thorns on her head at night that she fashioned from prickly orange tree branches.11 Her mortifications were matched by hours in prayer and a persistent interest in talking to her mother and aunt about spiritual matters, badgering them with questions.12 But at the family’s country villa she would ‘deprive’ herself of time in prayer in order to spend time teaching the workers’ children how to pray—a clear indication, according to Maria Pacifica, of the great love and zeal for the salvation of souls that burned within Caterina.13 ‘She engaged in this work of charity with such fervour (affetto) and patience as to draw the admiration of everybody’, reported a later Vita by Virgilio Cepari.14 Once, when the time came to return to Florence, Caterina would not stop crying in her sorrow at leaving these children and, remarkably, her mother permitted one of the girls, Giovanna, to return with them and continue her religious education under Caterina.15 Together the accounts of Caterina’s childhood paint the portrait of a serious girl committed to a life of prayer, intent on learning more about her faith, and, already, demonstrating a missionary zeal to engage others in conversation. Many testimonies offered in 1612 suggest that Caterina’s interests and abilities as a child were typically interpreted as a demonstration of her exceptional holiness, particularly her ability to speak of spiritual matters beyond the capacity of her years.16 According to Sr Vangelista del Giocondo, Caterina felt herself pulled towards these spiritual discussions: this was a desire that came from God that she could not resist.17 Some of Caterina’s behaviour was, as scholars have noted, very peculiar—her mortifications in particular, but also 9

Breve, pp. 74–5. Breve, pp. 77–8. Documents from the Jesuate archive are conserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese. 11 12 P767, p. 209. Breve, pp. 70–1. 13 Breve, p. 72: ‘questo faceva con tanto affetto che lassava e si privava di star’ da Jesu nell’oratione per insegnare a quelle creaturine ignorante, perché in lei ardeva quell'amore e zelo della salute dell’Anime piani datagli da Dio nell’Anima sua’. 14 V1669, p. 9: ‘con tanto affetto, e patienza s’impiegava in quest’opera di carità, che faceva tutti maravigliare’. 15 V1609, p. 3. Giovanna testified at the process held in 1612: P767, p. 1424. 16 17 P767, pp. 210, 362, 1372, 1401. P767, p. 95. 10

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the many ways in which she seems to have deliberately tried to stand out.18 The reports of Caterina’s childhood stress that her behaviour, if not outright peculiar, did break the mould: this was a girl who was atypical, out of the ordinary, compared with her peers. The most colourful example of this is to be seen in descriptions of how Caterina would avoid her family’s parties in celebration of the palio (horse races held through the streets of Florence) and instead hide away in solitude and silence.19 The image of an extraordinarily pious childhood chimed well with the biographies of other holy women circulating in Florence and elsewhere in the sixteenth century. Hagiographies had commonly embraced the topoi of behaving in the opposite way to other children and exceeding the devotional practices of other people as early markers of holiness, particularly in the case of women.20 Aged five, for example, Catherine of Siena was said to have learned the Hail Mary and would pray it as she climbed up and down the stairs of her home.21 Accounts of Caterina de’ Pazzi’s childhood fit comfortably within this tradition and also suggested several parallels with existing saints. Puccini’s first biography of 1609, for example, observed the appropriateness of Caterina de’ Pazzi’s baptismal name since she was ‘so similar to St Catherine of Siena, her particular saint’—overlooking that Caterina’s family began to call her Lucrezia after her paternal grandmother.22 Catherine of Siena herself had been presented as ‘a second, most happy Catherine’ in reference to Catherine of Alexandria, and later biographers of other women drew similar comparisons.23 The Sienese mystic became a particularly attractive hagiographic model for holy women in Italy after her biography, first published in Italian in 1477, became well known.24 Prime amongst these women was Colomba da Rieti, a

18 Eric Dingwell, Very peculiar people: Portrait studies of the queer, the abnormal and the uncanny (New Hyde Park, NY: Rider & Co., 1962), pp. 119–44. See also Bell, Holy anorexia, pp. 171–4. 19 P767, p. 95. On the palio, see Richard Trexler, Public life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), esp. pp. 262–3; and Heidl Chrétien, The festival of San Giovanni: Imagery and political power in Renaissance Florence (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 1994). 20 Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, Saints and society: The two worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 19–47. 21 Raymund of Capua, ‘Vita S. Catharinae Senensis’, in Acta Sanctorum, April vol. 3 (Antwerp, 1675), cols. 860D–E. (This is Raymund’s Legenda maior.) 22 V1609, p. 2: ‘Fu chiamata Caterina; che poi non si giudicò senza mistero; cosí simile a Santa Caterina da Siena sua particolar divota.’ The nuns of S. Giovannino reported that she was known as Lucrezia: Memorie, p. 116. Interestingly, Catherine of Siena had become known as Euphrosyne by her family, although she had been baptized Catherine. David Herlihy, ‘Tuscan names, 1200–1530’, Renaissance Quarterly 41, 4 (1988), p. 580 [www.jstor.org/stable/2861882]. 23 Raymund of Capua, ‘Vita S. Catharinae Senensis’, col. 882A. See also E. Ann Matter, ‘Mystical marriage’, in Women and faith, edited by Scaraffia and Zarri, p. 38. 24 Silvia Nocentini, ‘ “Pro solatio illicteratorum”: The earliest Italian translations of the Legenda maior’, in Catherine of Siena: The creation of a cult, edited by Jeffrey Hamburger and Gabriela Signori (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 169–83.

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Dominican tertiary living in Perugia in the late fifteenth century who was quickly identified as ‘the second Catherine of Siena’, in part because of her behaviour as a child, which had included making a private vow of virginity and giving food to the poor.25 Catherine’s strong appeal as a model endured and, nearly two centuries later, Leonard Hansen’s biography of Rose of Lima published in Rome in 1664 presented his subject as Catherine’s student, the Catherine of Siena of the New World.26 For hagiographers, forging both implicit and explicit correlations with the lives and deeds of existing saints was a useful means of establishing the credentials of their subject when their holiness might not yet be widely appreciated. These comparisons also offered those beyond the sphere of professional hagiographers a means of expressing the esteem in which they held a person. Some of the nuns of S. Giovanni dei Cavalieri, for instance, with whom Caterina de’ Pazzi had lived for some years as a boarder, told the 1612 inquiry that they believed she would become either ‘another Gertrude [of Helfta] or Catherine of Siena’.27 If the interest in making such saintly comparisons raises difficulties for those looking for the ‘real’ Caterina de’ Pazzi, the nuns of S. Giovanni offer an important reminder of the need to acknowledge the strong hagiographical vein running through early modern Catholic culture. Believers themselves, Caterina de’ Pazzi and the nuns of S. Giovanni amongst them, were strongly encouraged to emulate the saints who, as imitators of Christ, provided a range of examples of how men and women who were the heirs of original sin might embody the holiness to which they were called and, ultimately, manage to reach heaven.28 As scholars have shown, these life stories—life models—found wide representation in biographies, were spoken of in sermons, took a visual form in pictures, and were performed in plays and festivals with a view to encouraging emulation.29 It was famously from reading

25 Gabriella Zarri, Le sante vive: Profezie di corte e devozione femminile tra ’400 e ’500 (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990), pp. 94–5. See also Tamar Herzig, ‘Italian holy women against Bohemian heretics: Catherine of Siena and the “second Catherines” in the Kingdom of Bohemia’, in Catherine of Siena, edited by Hamburger and Signori, pp. 315–38. On Catherine, see also Gillian Ahlgren, ‘Ecstasy, prophecy and reform: Catherine of Siena as a model for holy women of sixteenth-century Spain’, in The mystical gesture: Essays on medieval and early modern spiritual culture in honour of Mary E. Giles, edited by Robert Boenig (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 53–66. 26 Kathleen Ann Myers, Neither saints nor sinners: Writing the lives of women in Spanish America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 26–7. 27 P769, ff. 172r, 173v. 28 Peter Brown, ‘The saint as exemplar in Late Antiquity’, Representations 2 (1983), pp. 1–25 [www.jstor.org/stable/2928382]; Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred biography: Saints and their biographers in the Middle Ages (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 3–6; Aviad Kleinberg, Prophets in their own country: Living saints and the making of sainthood in the later Middle Ages (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 126–48. 29 See for example Gábor Klaniczay, ‘Legends as life strategies for aspirant saints in the later Middle Ages,’ Journal of Folklore Research 26, 2 (1989): p. 151 [www.jstor.org/stable/3814239].

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the lives of saints, for instance, that Ignatius of Loyola, injured after the battle of Pamplona, resolved to imitate them, leading eventually to the foundation of the Society of Jesus and, thereafter, contributing to the ongoing importance of saints’ lives to Jesuit identities.30 Individuals forged their own saintly associations as they sought to follow in the footsteps of one or more specific saints, perhaps a namesake or local figure such as Catherine of Siena in Caterina de’ Pazzi’s case.31 Perhaps it was this devotion that inspired the young Pazzi girl to make a private vow of perpetual virginity that echoed one made by Catherine of Siena, encouraged Caterina in her ascetic practices, and drew her into a life of contemplative prayer.32 Caterina’s childhood was important to the depiction of her sanctity, but we should also acknowledge the culture in which that childhood was immersed. Caterina might not have been in search of the fame of Catherine of Siena for posterity, but in the search of sanctity in its pure sense of being in the presence of God in heaven, Catherine of Siena provided a well-known and highly regarded trail to follow.

A JESUIT F ORMATION Caterina’s spiritual formation was marked above all by her family’s close association with members of the Society of Jesus, who had first come to Florence in the 1540s and, from 1553, had occupied the church of San Giovannino (today known as S. Giovannino degli Scoloperi) not far from Caterina’s home (see Figure 1.1). The church had quickly become more popular than was comfortable for its size and the 210 communicants registered in 1561 had more than doubled by 1581, reaching 500, so that many had to stand outside.33 The family not only attended Mass at the church, but Maria Buondelmonti went to the Jesuits for confession and for frequent spiritual counsel from a member of their community, Andrea Rossi. The family became well known to priests of the community and the laity who attended the church.34 30 Jan Machielsen, ‘Heretical saints and textual discernment: The polemical origins of the Acta sanctorum (1643–1940)’, in Angels of light? Sanctity and the discernment of spirits in the early modern period, edited by Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), pp. 109–10. 31 P767, p. 1424. Mooney (ed.), Gendered voices, esp. pp. 1–15; Bilinkoff, Related lives, pp. 96–110. 32 Caterina’s vow of virginity after her first Communion is reported in V1609, pp. 5–6, and P767, p. 99, p. 211, p. 770, p. 1007. 33 Merlijn Hurx, ‘Bartolomeo Ammannati and the College of San Giovannino in Florence: Adapting architecture to Jesuit needs’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68, 3 (2009): p. 339 [www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jsah.2009.68.3.338]. 34 P767, pp. 1397, 1400.

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Nurtured and directed by the Florentine Jesuits, Maria Buondelmonti and her sister, Margherita, provided Caterina with role models of piety within the family home. The two adults regularly spent time together discussing spiritual matters and created an environment in which devotion and spiritual discourse were encouraged.35 Like other mothers before her, Maria played an important role in the development of her daughter’s piety.36 Her own devotions gave Caterina opportunities to advance in the spiritual life, most of all through her frequent reception of Communion, something that was still uncommon amongst lay women (and even religious) at the time, but for which the Jesuits became staunch advocates.37 When still too young to receive the Eucharist, Caterina would attach herself to her mother’s body immediately after Maria had taken Communion in order to savour the proximity of the Host inside her.38 Maria and Margherita, meanwhile, became aware of at least some of Caterina’s more extreme devotions, including that she wore thorny orange branches as a crown on her head at night in imitation of Christ’s crown of thorns (this after her aunt discovered the crown hidden under her mattress).39 The effect of the Jesuit-influenced formation Caterina received from her mother and aunt within the walls of her own home was amplified considerably by the spiritual direction she received directly from her mother’s Jesuit director, Andrea Rossi.40 Caterina, it was claimed, had felt herself ‘interiorly attracted to prayer’ even before she had received instruction, but she did not know how to practise it.41 She would kneel for a period simply with ‘the thought and intention of seeking God’.42 Rossi introduced Caterina to the Jesuit practice of meditation and to Jesuit texts including the works of Gaspar Loarte, one a series of meditations on the passion of Christ (Instruttione et avertimenti per meditare la passione di Christo Nostro Redentore), and the other on the mysteries of the rosary (Instruttione et avertimenti per meditar i misteri del rosario della Santissima Vergine Madre).43 Caterina was set a 35

Breve, pp. 70–1. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy feast and holy fast: The religious significance of food to medieval women (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 87–8. 37 Robert A. Maryks, Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The influence of the Liberal Arts on the adoption of moral probabilism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 19–26; Michael Maher, ‘How the Jesuits used their congregations to promote frequent Communion’, in Confraternities and Catholic reform in Italy, France and Spain, edited by John Donnelly and Michael Maher (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), pp. 75–95. See also Bilinkoff, Related Lives, pp. 92–5. 38 39 Breve, p. 76; V1609, p. 5; P767, pp. 98–9, 211. Breve, pp. 65, 78. 40 According to Giuseppe Richa, Rossi was her spiritual director and confessor between 1573 and 1580, when he left Florence. Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine divise ne’ suoi quartieri, vol. 5 (Florence, 1757), p. 152. 41 42 V1669, p. 5. V1669, p. 7. 43 Breve, pp. 72–3. Gaspar Loarte, Instruttione et avertimenti per meditare la passione di Christo Nostro Redentore (Rome, 1570); Gaspar Loarte, Instruttione et avertimenti per meditar i misteri del Rosario della Santissima Vergine Madre (Rome and Venice, 1573). 36

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regimen of reading passages from these works followed by saying the antiphon Veni Sancte Spiritus, praying the Confiteor, and then meditating for half an hour on what she had read.44 Caterina later recalled to Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia how, in these periods of silence, she was occupied by nothing except prayer and how she might enter religious life, and that, unable to limit her meditation to the half hour instructed by Rossi, she would typically spend a whole hour immersed in prayer.45 Caterina’s early path was guided by priests who, as practitioners of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, had been trained to be open to the direct inspiration of God and to acknowledge the direct relationship between the Creator and his creature, their penitent.46 After Rossi left Florence in 1580, Pietro Blanca, rector of the college, continued Caterina’s Jesuit formation and served as confessor to her and her family.47 Such was the value that Caterina placed on Blanca’s direction that she remained in contact with him after she entered the convent and in a letter of 1586 still described herself as ‘your unworthy daughter’.48 The spiritual guidance the Jesuits offered Caterina had a significant impact on her prayer life, directing her towards certain texts and themes, and encouraging her to meditate on the details and drama of biblical events in a way that found echoes in the ecstasies she later claimed in adulthood. The mental prayer she was advised to practise merged the recitation of a traditional vocal prayer with meditation, and under the guidance of Jesuit directors she would have been encouraged to conjure up images in her mind with which to deepen her emotional experience.49 Much of her meditation was focused on Christ’s humanity and Crucifixion, inspired by Loarte’s call to ponder his Passion and to visualize its moments, as well as by her praying the rosary. The attention she paid to Christ’s human suffering amplified her own desire to suffer, which she enacted with penances and mortifications.50 It was a theme that she would return to many times in her later life as she pleaded with God to enhance her afflictions and pain. Nourished in this way as a child, the intensity of Caterina’s prayer life developed alongside her ascetic practices in forms that continued to resonate in her adult life.

44

45 V1669, pp. 10–11. Breve, p. 73. John O’Malley, Saints or devils incarnate? Studies in Jesuit history (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), pp. 123–4. On the implications of this for women, see Silvia Mostaccio, Early modern Jesuits between obedience and conscience during the generalate of Claudio Acquaviva (1581–1615) (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 105–54. 47 48 V1669, p. 18. L’epistolario completo, pp. 87–97. 49 On Jesuit techniques in meditation, see Trent Pomplun, Jesuit on the roof of the world: Ippolito Desideri’s mission to Tibet (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 29–31. On mental prayer, see Giorgio Caravale, Forbidden prayer: Church censorship and devotional literature in Renaissance Italy (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011). 50 P767, p. 208. 46

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RELIGIOUS VOCATIO N In 1575, aged eight, Caterina began a stay at the monastery of S. Giovanni dei Cavalieri on via San Gallo (see Figure 1.1), a convent commonly known as S. Giovannino (confusingly like the Jesuit college).51 She spent the next four years living there ‘in serbanza’, boarding with the community whilst receiving an education at the hands of the nuns, and spent a second period there from 1580–1 when her father held a post in Cortona. The nuns, who belonged to the Order of St John of Jerusalem (the Knights of Malta), recorded Caterina’s time with them within a chronicle of their convent compiled in the eighteenth century from original documents.52 Her stay was not unusual for a daughter of noble parents, who looked to convents to provide an education in the virtues that would be expected of a well-bred wife and to keep them safe from the attentions of unwanted suitors before a marriage was arranged.53 Many girls who boarded at convents went on to marry rather than enter religious life, including Caterina’s own future sister-in-law, Ippolita Nasi, another boarder at S. Giovannino.54 The great attraction of S. Giovannino to Caterina’s parents was that it was home to Caterina’s maternal great aunt, Lessandra, and cousin, Selvaggia Morelli, who could take care of her. The community was an aristocratic one and boasted members of the Medici family amongst its ranks.55 At this time the religious community comprised sixty-six nuns, two novices, and four servants, and from the 1570s was taking up to eighteen girls at any one time.56 In 1575, two girls from noble families joined Caterina and five other girls of similar status who were already at the convent.57 During Caterina’s second stay she overlapped with around sixteen girls, although some were there for only a couple of months.58

51

Giuseppe Richa, Notizie, vol. 8 (Florence: 1759), pp. 328–46. Memorie, p. 136 records that Caterina arrived on 25 February 1574 and left on 21 March 1579 (1578 in the Florentine calendar). It states that her second stay was for around eighteen months. 53 Sharon Strocchia, ‘Learning the virtues: Convent schools and female culture in Renaissance Florence’, in Women’s education in early modern Europe: A history, 1500–1800, edited by Barbara Whitehead (New York, NY and London: Garland, 1999), pp. 3–46. See also Sharon Strocchia, ‘Taken into custody: Girls and convent guardianship in Renaissance Florence’, Renaissance Studies 17, 2 (2003): pp. 177–200 [doi: 10.1111/1477-4658.t01-1-00016]. 54 L’epistolario completo, p. 164. 55 Silvia Evangelisti, ‘Monastic poverty and material culture in early modern Italian convents’, Historical Journal 47, 1 (2004), p. 9 [www.jstor.org/stable/4091543]. 56 Strocchia, ‘Taken into custody’, p. 192. 57 Memorie, pp. 126, 134–5. The two new girls were Cassandra Bindi and Oretenzia Pecori (who had a sister and aunt in the convent). The five girls already at the convent were Ottavia de Ricci, Ginevra Baroncelli, Livia Bartoli, Nannina Gabbuzzi, and Lisabetta Belloti. 58 Memorie, p. 152. 52

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Caterina’s stay was not, then, a sure sign that her parents wanted to encourage a monastic vocation and she did not experience religious life as the professed choir nuns did.59 However, living in close proximity to monastic life encouraged her to continue and even develop her extreme devotional practices, causing some of the community to shun her for her unusual behaviour. She visited the infirmary in order to offer consolation to those nuns who were sick; she embraced extended periods of prayer; and she undertook mortifications that drew attention to her.60 She slept little, ate little, and prayed for hours at a time. When the nuns questioned Caterina about her disciplines, she replied that it was to make herself more fit for prayer and union with God.61 The result, it seems, was the first time Caterina was seen in ecstasy. One morning, during her first stay at S. Giovannino, when her great aunt had returned from the morning office to fetch her for Mass she was found kneeling on her bed ‘with eyes raised to heaven, immobile and ecstatic’.62 During her second period in serbanza Caterina was marked out again by a dispensation she received from Pietro Blanca to receive Communion every Sunday and feast day, much more frequently than the nuns themselves did.63 Some of the women reportedly mocked Caterina’s piety and her close connections with the Jesuits: ‘Behold the Jesuitess (Gesuita), behold the woman Theatine (Teatina) come here to reform us!’, they would declare, using these names because she confessed to Jesuit priests.64 Years later, Caterina would look upon S. Giovannino as a monastery that was still working towards ‘knowledge of regular observance’.65 Some nuns were inevitably agitated by their boarder’s activities, but others embraced her warmly and continued to correspond with her much later in life. Amongst those to respond positively to Caterina was Suor Diamante, who later recalled her great sorrow when Caterina had left their monastery ‘because I recognized her as being a singular creature’.66 For her part, Caterina maintained that she always had a special love for S. Giovannino because of the time she had spent there as a child.67 When Caterina’s parents returned from Cortona in 1581 and collected their daughter from the monastery, they were reportedly shocked to find her ‘sick and exhausted’ from her self-inflicted mortifications.68 They had, perhaps, hoped that Caterina would have moderated some of her penitential exercises whilst at the convent. Only a fine line divided the piety, modesty, and chastity expected of an aristocratic girl before marriage and the cultivation 59 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

60 Strocchia, ‘Learning the Virtues’, p. 23. P767, p. 213. P767, p. 1370. See also V1669, p. 21. Memorie, pp. 117–18: ‘con gli occhi alzati al cielo immobile ed estatica’. V1669, p. 19. Breve, p. 80: ‘Ecco la Gesuita, ecco la Teatina che è venuta qua per riformarci.’ L’epistolario completo, p. 178 (September 1592): ‘conoscenza della regolare osservanzia’. P767, p. 1373. 68 L’epistolario completo, pp. 183–4. Breve, p. 83; P767, p. 101.

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of a monastic vocation, and according to Suor Maria Pacifica, Caterina’s parents firmly hoped that she would marry well.69 When Caterina made clear her intention to enter religious life, her aunt pleaded passionately with her, telling her how much her mother loved her and did not want to lose her to the cloister.70 Caterina seems not to have wavered in her determination and one day boldly told her dismayed father: ‘I am resolved to lose my head before I will not be a nun.’71 Like other aspects of Caterina’s childhood, this conflict appeared to mimic those of earlier women saints, such as Clare of Assisi, whose family had also hoped she would marry, and whose sister, another Catherine, had had to resist physical attempts by her family to prevent her from joining Clare’s religious community.72 Catherine of Siena, too, had had to win her family over to her Dominican vocation, and had cut her hair off in the process.73 Caterina de’ Pazzi’s mother and father were eventually reconciled to their daughter’s monastic vocation, but several references to a conflict suggest that this was a life Caterina had sought for herself. As a nun, Caterina joined a growing set of women in religious life. In Florence, the population of nuns grew significantly in the early modern period, perhaps doubling as a proportion of the city’s population between the early fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.74 But not all of these had entered the convent willingly and the idea that Caterina had specifically chosen religious life and fought to enter the convent therefore had its own resonance. Although the Church authorities demanded that nuns only profess of their own free will, the cloister housed many women who had not felt a spiritual calling and had been coerced into religious life by family or circumstances.75 For some whose families did not want to or could not afford to pay for a marriage dowry, the convent was a useful and typically cheaper home for a daughter; it might also help to maintain a family’s social status if a suitable 69

Breve, pp. 83–5; V1629, pp. 20–3. Breve, p. 83. On the different roles of family members in similar conflicts within medieval hagiographies, see Alessandro Barbero, Un santo in famiglia: Vocazione religiosa e resistenze sociali nell’agiografia latina medievale (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1991). 71 Breve, p. 84: ‘Io vi dico, Padre mio, che io sono deliberata di prima lassarmi tagliar la testa che di no esser’ Religiosa’. 72 Chiara Frugoni, ‘La fuga di Chiara dalla casa paterna’, in Verum, pulchrum et bonum: Miscellanea di studi offerti a Servus Gieben in occasione del suo 80o compleanno, edited by Yoannes Teklemariam (Rome: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2006), pp. 321–36. On Clare, see Joan Mueller, A companion to Clare of Assisi: Life, writings, and spirituality (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2009), pp. 57–8; and on Clare’s cult, see Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, The cult of St Clare of Assisi in early modern Italy (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014). 73 Raymund of Capua, ‘Vita S. Catharinae Senensis’, cols. 865C–D. 74 Judith Brown, ‘Everyday life, longevity, and nuns in early modern Florence’, in Renaissance culture and the everyday, edited by Patricia Fumerton and Simon Hunt (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), p. 116. 75 On forced monachization of both women and men see Anne Jacobson Schutte, By force and fear: Taking and breaking vows in early modern Europe (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2011). 70

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husband had not been found, and to keep a family’s patrimony intact. The impact of monastic life on the mental health of some of these ‘forced’ nuns was devastating.76 But for others the convent could be an attractive home, be that for spiritual or other reasons. As numerous studies on early modern convents have shown, these communities could offer political, social, and cultural opportunities that might otherwise have been closed to the women.77 They could also provide havens from domestic violence, respectable abodes for reformed prostitutes, and homes for widows.78 We know, too, that entering a monastery did not cut women off entirely from their families or the secular world, even as monastic enclosure was better enforced.79 Indeed, many women joined the same convent as relatives or childhood friends and sending a daughter to a convent could prove to be a networking opportunity for a family, helping them to forge close bonds with other families within their social class or higher.80 Having decided on religious life, Caterina was advised by her spiritual director Pietro Blanca to join a reformed and observant community that would provide a ‘secure’ setting for her, rather than one that was large and followed a relaxed rule.81 Caterina was said to have felt torn between the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli and the Dominicans at La Crocetta, near the Florentine shrine of SS.ma Annunziata (see Figure 1.1).82 La Crocetta, which was known for its enclosure and commitment to religious observance, had been founded in 1513 by Suor Domenica da Paradiso (Domenica Narducci), a nun famed as a prophetess, mystic, and stigmatic.83 Domenica’s death in 1553 Sharon Strocchia, ‘Women on the edge: Madness, possession, and suicide in early modern convents’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 45, 1 (2015): pp. 53–77 [doi: 10.1215/ 10829636-2830016]. 77 On monasteries in Italy in this period, see Gabriella Zarri, ‘Monasteri femminili e città (secoli XV–XVIII)’, in Storia d’Italia, annali 9: La chiesa e il potere politico dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, edited by Giorgio Chittolini and G. Miccoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp. 357–429. On the creative arts in convents after Trent, see, for example, Kelley Harness, Echoes of women’s voices: Music, art, and female patronage in early modern Florence (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006); Colleen Reardon, Holy concord within sacred walls: Nuns and music in Siena, 1575–1700 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001); Elissa Weaver, Convent theatre in early modern Italy: Spiritual fun and learning for women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Francesca Trinchieri Camiz, ‘ “Virgo non sterilis . . . ”: Nuns as artists in seventeenthcentury Rome’, in Picturing women in Renaissance and baroque Italy, edited by Geraldine Johnson and Sara Matthews-Grieco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 139–64. 78 Nicholas Terpstra, Lost girls: Sex and death in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). 79 Mary Laven, Virgins of Venice: Enclosed lives and broken vows in the Renaissance convent (London: Viking, 2002), pp. 114–31. 80 See, for example, the Sfondrati dynasty at the convent of San Paolo Converso in Milan, in P. Renée Baernstein, A convent tale: A century of sisterhood in Spanish Milan (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 113–44. 81 82 Breve, p. 85. P767, pp. 102, 214. 83 On Domenica, see Adriano Valerio, Domenica da Paradiso: Profezia e politica in una mistica del rinascimento (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1992); Isabella 76

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had been greeted with an outpouring of public interest and her body, when displayed in the convent’s public church, had drawn a large crowd.84 In December 1580, however, Caterina’s childhood friend Isabella del Tovaglia (who later authored the Breve ragguaglio) entered the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli.85 The two girls knew each other well and shared the same Jesuit confessor, so Isabella’s decision may well have alerted her friend to the convent’s spiritual life and discipline. One aspect that seems to have particularly attracted Caterina was the nuns’ frequent, sometimes daily reception of Communion, something that was rare within other convents.86 Another aspect of the spiritual life of this convent that would have stood out to Caterina was its close ties with the Jesuits in Florence. Ignatius of Loyola had initially been hesitant about forging relations with any convents, but the association with S. Maria degli Angeli was one that Pope Julius III himself was said to have requested from Ignatius at the behest of his doctor, whose two daughters were nuns in the monastery.87 Caterina’s decision to enter S. Maria degli Angeli reflected her spiritual formation at home and amongst the Jesuits, her time in serbanza, as well as her wider social network.

THE MONASTERY OF S. MARIA DEGLI ANGELI The Pazzi’s only daughter entered the cloister on the eve of the first Sunday of Advent 1582 ‘never to leave again’.88 Within the monastery’s walls, the nuns’ lives chimed with a ruling issued at the Council of Trent in 1563 and clarified further in a papal brief of 1566, Circa pastoralis, that all professed women religious should be enclosed.89 The Tridentine ruling claimed to be a simple reconfirmation of an earlier papal decree of 1298, Periculoso, but the truth was that many communities of religious women in the mid-sixteenth century Gagliardi, Sola con Dio: La missione di Domenica da Paradiso nella Firenze del primo Cinquecento (Florence: Sismel, 2007); Giulia Calvi, Histories of a plague year: The social and the imaginary in baroque Florence, trans. Dario Biocca and Bryant T. Ragan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 200–3; Meghan Callahan, ‘Suor Domenica da Paradiso as alter Christus: Portraits of a Renaissance mystic’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 43, 2 (2012): pp. 323–50. 84 Ignazio del Nente, Vita e costumi et intelligenze spirituali della gran Serva di Dio & Veneranda Madre Suor Domenica dal Paradiso, fondatrice del Monastero della Croce di Firenze dell’Ordine di San Domenico (Venice, 1662), pp. 228–9. This biography was originally produced in manuscript in 1625. 85 Detti e preghiere, p. 184. 86 Breve, p. 85. See also Claudio Catena, S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Carmelitana: Orientamenti spirituali e ambiente in cui visse (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1966), pp. 25–7. 87 88 V1669, pp. 36–7. Breve, p. 86: ‘entrò dentro per non uscir più’. 89 Laven, Virgins of Venice, pp. 83–4.

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were not maintaining a strict enclosure and had never done so.90 In Florence, where ‘open reclusion’ had prevailed amongst convents in the period 1300–1450, both ecclesiastical and civic officials had worked to enforce tighter enclosure even before Trent, although progress proved to be neither smooth nor fast.91 Where clausura was imposed, some communities resisted, often because they realized that it would spell absolute poverty if they could not leave the cloister.92 But enclosure was not always seen as a negative development, and indeed some communities had already embraced it as an important part of their spiritual identity before these attempts were made to introduce it more widely.93 S. Maria degli Angeli was amongst those committed to enclosure and Caterina’s decision to join this community reflected her aspirations for a hidden, contemplative life. Tucked away in a working-class area near the western gate (see Figure 1.2), it also reflected a thirst for greater poverty and seclusion than many monasteries in Florence could offer. It was not a wealthy community and attracted girls from relatively modest backgrounds, some of whose families seem to have been unable to fund a proper celebration at their profession.94 Its location also left it vulnerable to severe winds and flooding, as in 1557, when the flood waters had reached almost to the first floor and the nuns had been forced to evacuate for nearly three months whilst repairs were made.95 At S. Maria degli Angeli, then, Caterina entered into a cloistered life of prayer that fitted the enclosed nun model of female holiness to which the Catholic Church wedded itself in the late sixteenth century.96 Her decision to enter this particular community was one that would have far-reaching consequences for her and for the whole convent. S. Maria degli Angeli was one of the oldest Carmelite monasteries for women, its roots tracing back to Innocenza de Bartoli and a group of three other women who took the ‘Carmelite habit’ at the Carmine church in

90 Elizabeth Makowski, Canon law and cloistered women: Periculoso and its commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997). See also Francesca Medioli, ‘An unequal law: The enforcement of clausura before and after the Council of Trent’, in Women in Renaissance and early modern Europe, edited by Christine Meek (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), pp. 136–52. 91 92 Strocchia, Nuns and nunneries, pp. 152–90. Evangelisti, ‘ “We do not have it” ’. 93 Amy Leonard, Nails in the wall: Catholic nuns in Reformation Germany (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 122. 94 Detti e preghiere, p. 162. 95 Paolo Caioli, ‘I primi monasteri di carmelitane e le prime compagnie di terziari carmelitani in Firenze’, Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum 18 (1953), pp. 33–4. 96 Zarri, ‘Female Sanctity’; Matthews-Grieco, ‘Models of female sanctity’, pp. 172–5. On the earlier model of the court-based prophetess, see the groundbreaking work, Zarri, Le sante vive, translated in part as Gabriella Zarri, ‘Living saints: A typology of female sanctity in the early sixteenth century’, in Women and religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, edited by Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 219–303.

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Figure 1.2. Detail from Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, Nova pulcherrimaae civitatis Florentiaae topographia accuratissime delineata (Rome, 1690?). Held by Harvard Map Collection, Harvard University. 1. S. Maria degli Angeli; 2. Il Carmine (Carmelite friars)

Florence on the morning of 15 August 1450.97 Compared with other mendicant orders, women had come late to the Carmelites and in 1450 there had been no formal women’s branch to the Order. The women in Florence began to call themselves the ‘Sisters of the Virgin Mary’ and had the support of the Carmelite friars at the Carmine where they attended Mass and other liturgies. In 1452 the prior in Florence secured the papal bull Cum nulla addressed to the general of the Carmelite Order giving official permission for women to live as Carmelites.98 Two years later the women in Florence began to live together 97 Regola & Costituzioni, pp. 16–17. See also Alberto Martino, ‘Monasteri femminili del Carmelo attraverso i secoli’, Carmelus 10, (1963): pp. 263–83, and Claudio Catena, ‘Le donne nel Carmelo Italiano’, Carmelus 10 (1963): pp. 9–55, esp. pp. 41–51. 98 The bull has been published in Ludovico Saggi, ‘Originale bulla Cum Nulla qua Nicolaus Papa V canonice instituit II et III Ordines Carmelitarum’, Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum 17 (1952): pp. 191–4.

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in community in a house close to the Carmine donated by a widow, and in 1480, under Carmelite prior general Cristoforo Martignoni, they became a cloistered, enclosed community of professed women.99 Finally, in 1521 eleven nuns at S. Maria degli Angeli received the black veil and entered into the obligation of reciting the Divine Office.100 The community was now a full monastery directed towards living a rigorous form of religious life. It joined two other Carmelite convents for women in Florence: La Nunziatina, also located close to the Carmine and founded in 1454 (although they made their first professions only from 1517); and S. Barnaba, founded in 1508.101 As this foundation was gradually taking shape, attempts at reform were developing amongst the friars of the Carmelite Order and the new communities of women. The Carmelites had originated as an eremitical group of men, but had begun to embrace a more mendicant character from the midthirteenth century, when they had first arrived in Europe from the Holy Land.102 Mitigations of the Rule were obtained to match the change of lifestyle, the first in 1247, followed by a second in 1432 which allowed friars to take meat three times a week and gave them greater freedom to walk outside of their individual cells and even the cloister.103 But as the Order became more lax in its religious observance, the question of reform became pressing. John Soreth, the prior general to whom Cum nulla was addressed, proved to be a tenacious reformer who, in addition to his written work revising the Order’s constitutions and producing a commentary on the Carmelite Rule, travelled far and wide visiting communities.104 In Italy, three convents forming the Mantuan Congregation went further in their reform; they secured an exemption from the first mitigation in 1442 and were placed under the authority of a vicar general. The Mantuan reform stressed the importance of the cloister and of having no possessions (money came from a common chest), as well as accepting no relaxation regarding abstinence from meat.105 By the early 99 Claudio Catena, Le Carmelitane: Storia e spiritualità (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1969), pp. 177–8. 100 Catena, Le Carmelitane, pp. 180–3. 101 Stefano Possanzini, ‘Il monastero carmelitano della SS.ma Annunziata detto “della Nunziatina” ’, Carmelus 41 (1994): pp. 179–214. 102 Andrew Jotischky, The Carmelites and antiquity: Mendicants and their pasts in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Frances Andrews, The other friars: Carmelite, Augustinian, Sack and Pied friars in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), pp. 7–21. 103 Joachim Smet, The Carmelites: A history of the brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, vol. 1: Ca. 1200 until the Council of Trent (Darien, IL: Carmelite Spiritual Center, 1975), p. 86; Jotischky, The Carmelites, pp. 41–2. 104 Giovanni Grosso, Il B. Jean Soreth: Priore generale, riformatore e maestro spirituale dell’Ordine Carmelitano (Rome: Edizioni Carmelitane, 2007), esp. pp. 93–152. 105 Ludovico Saggi, La Congregazione Mantovana dei Carmelitani sino alla morte del B. Battista Spagnoli (1516) (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1954). The Congregation was united with the rest of the Order in Italy in 1783.

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sixteenth century, this movement numbered thirty-one friaries and seven communities for women. S. Maria degli Angeli was not formally part of this reform, but the constitutions (adopted in 1512–13) that governed the nuns’ lives (together with the Carmelite Rule) were derived from those of S. Barnaba, a monastery that did belong to the Congregation.106 But whilst the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli vowed to observe the Carmelite Rule, in reality their precise link with the Order became a complicated one. Even before the women had taken the black veil in 1521 a dispute had arisen as to whose jurisdiction they were under after a conflict between the provincial chapter of the Carmelite Order and the Carmelite general had resulted in the convent’s beloved and aged confessor-governor, Giovanni d’Antonio being removed from office in March 1520.107 Faced with his removal—against their wishes—the nuns asked the cardinal archbishop of Florence, Giulio de’ Medici, to intervene. In May 1520 the cardinal claimed jurisdiction over the convent and, supported in this by a papal brief from Pope Leo X (the cardinal’s cousin), he reconfirmed the nuns’ old confessor. With this, the nuns were no longer under direct Carmelite governance. The nuns maintained special devotions to the Virgin Mary and to the Carmelite saints (such as St Albert of Sicily and St Angelus of Jerusalem) and continued to follow the Carmelite Rule, but they moved away from celebrating the Carmelite Rite, as the Discalced Carmelite Order later would.108 Caterina thus joined a community that had proven itself willing to fight for a degree of independence. Indeed, this was a monastery that welcomed spiritual guidance from outside the Carmelite Order and had forged close ties with local Jesuit and Dominican priests. Of particular note is the community’s association with several leading devotees of Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican friar who had preached with great vehemence from the pulpit of Florence’s cathedral in the 1490s and led the city after the overthrow of the Medici in 1494. Savonarola’s excommunication and execution in 1498 had made him an extremely controversial religious figure but despite both civil and ecclesiastical attempts to prevent a posthumous cult from flourishing, he continued to be venerated as both a prophet and a martyr by many followers, so-called piagnoni. In addition to the friars of S. Marco, the women’s community of S. Vincenzo in Prato (home to Caterina de’ Ricci) was also at the centre of those venerating the friar’s memory, and the nuns of La Crocetta in 106 Catena, Le Carmelitane, p. 185; Caioli, ‘I primi monasteri’; Flavia Daniela Zoccatelli, ‘Il Carmine di Firenze nella seconda metà del Quattrocento’ (PhD dissertation, Università degli Studi, Florence, 1979), p. 170; Stefano Possanzini, ‘Il monastero fiorentino delle Carmelitane in San Barnaba’, Carmelus 43 (1996): pp. 123–45. 107 Catena, Le Carmelitane, pp. 186–9; Caioli, ‘I primi monasteri’, pp. 25–9; Grosso, B. Jean Soreth, pp. 211–15. 108 La probatione II, p. 38; Zoccatelli, ‘Il Carmine di Firenze’, pp. 166–7; Catena, Le Carmelitane, pp. 191–2.

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Florence, one of the convents that Caterina de’ Pazzi had originally considered, were known to be sympathetic too.109 By the end of the sixteenth century, what had originally been embraced as a movement for radical religious reform and a republican political system had become more private. A number of people from piagnoni circles became connected with the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli, not least Agostino Campi, a diocesan priest from Pontremoli who served as the convent’s confessor for twenty-eight years, between 1563 and 1591. Amongst other achievements, Campi compiled an anthology of Savonarola’s miracles, contributing to a piagnoni drive to develop a cult of relics around the friar and to promote him as a miracle worker and model of orthodoxy, rather than as someone whose biography might concern the ecclesiastical authorities.110 Campi was in contact with Caterina de’ Ricci in Prato, and also closely connected to two Dominicans in Florence who were committed to promoting Savonarola’s sanctity, the priest Alessandro Capocchi (d. 1581) and a tertiary, Maria Bagnesi (1514–77), who lived close to S. Maria degli Angeli.111 Capocchi was regularly invited to give sermons to the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and also served as confessor to Bagnesi, guiding her in a life of physical suffering and spiritual intensity that included claims to receive many visions.112 Bagnesi and Capocchi both played an important role in keeping Savonarola’s memory alive in sixteenth-century Florence and shared their sympathies with the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli. Indeed, so close was Bagnesi’s connection with the monastery that her body was entombed there after her death in 1577 and the nuns fostered a devotion to her, attributing several miracles to her intercession.113 In a sign of the strong ties between these three figures and the Carmelite nuns, it was Capocchi who encouraged Campi to write a biography of Maria Bagnesi after her death, which he dedicated to the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli, inciting them to imitate her virtues.114 Meanwhile, the nuns conserved a relic of Savonarola and had 109

Tamar Herzig, Savonarola’s women: Visions and reform in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008); and Sharon Strocchia, ‘Savonarolan witnesses: The nuns of San Jacopo and the piagnone movement in sixteenth-century Florence’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 38, 2 (2007): pp. 393–418 [www.jstor.org/stable/20478366]. 110 Stefano Dall’Aglio, Savonarola and Savonarolism (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010), esp. pp. 139–47. 111 Chiara Vasciaveo, Una storia di donne: Il Carmelo Santa Maria degli Angeli e S. M. Maddalena de’ Pazzi di Firenze (Rome: Edizioni Carmelitane, 2013), pp. 95–103. 112 Francesco Marchi, Vita del reverendo padre frate Alessandro Capocchi fiorentino dell’Ordine di San Domenico (Florence, 1583). Capocchi’s ‘Vita della veneranda Suor Maria Bagnesi, fiorentina, dell’habito, e regola del terz’ordine di San Domenico’ was published in Serafino Razzi, Vite de’ santi e beati del sacro ordine de’ Frati Predicatori, così huomini come donne, con aggiunta di molte vite che nella prima impressione non erano (Florence, 1588), part 4, pp. 71–82. 113 Secondin, Esperienza e dottrina, p. 49. 114 Agostino Campi, Vita della Beata Madre Suor Maria di Carlo di Rinieri Bagnesi fiorentina (Florence, 1577).

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also attributed miracles to his intercession.115 Together these connections reflected and further encouraged the interest at S. Maria degli Angeli in prophecy and Church reform, and the nuns’ commitment to religious observance. The nuns seem to have had little interest in Savonarola’s political entanglements with the Medici, who were firmly established as rulers of the city by the time Campi served as the convent confessor. Instead, like others, they found appeal in the friar’s call to a strict moral life and ridding the Church of corruption.116 In addition to these priests, Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi continued to be nurtured by Jesuit directors as she had been in her childhood. In the 1590s, two rectors of the Florentine college, Niccolò Fabbrini and Virgilio Cepari both served as extraordinary confessors—confessors serving in addition to the convent’s appointed confessor-governor.117 Cepari was especially influential in directing the spiritual interests of the community, not least by introducing the nuns to the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola when he guided Maria Maddalena and three others through them in 1599, after which it became customary for nuns of the convent to practise them every year.118 When new constitutions were approved for the convent in 1610, the Exercises were made available to the nuns as a regular practice once or more a year (with the approval of the prioress), and all novices were required to undertake the Exercises before their profession.119 In addition, Cepari inspired a special devotion towards Luigi Gonzaga, a young Jesuit who had died in Rome in 1591. Cepari wrote a biography of Gonzaga and gave it to the nuns to read whilst still in manuscript, years before its publication in Rome in 1606.120 We can see the devotional interest Gonzaga attracted amongst the nuns from a miracle attributed to his intercession which led, in 1600, to an inquiry at the convent overseen by the archbishop of Florence.121 With their interests in Girolamo Savonarola’s heritage and Jesuit spirituality, the community of S. Maria degli Angeli proved receptive to mystical holiness. Indeed, it could identify its own heritage of nuns claiming mystical experiences that predated Caterina’s arrival, amongst them three noted contemplatives: Sr Tommasa Soderini (d. 1583), Sr Maria Margherita Peri

115

Vasciaveo, Una storia di donne, pp. 100–1. Dall’Aglio, Savonarola and Savonarolism. 117 Antonio Maria Pignatelli, ‘Il P. Virgilio Cepari S.I. La formazione e la prima attività: 1582–1601’, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 51 (1982): pp. 3–44. 118 P769, (supplement) f. 2r; Virgilio Cepari, Vita del B. Luigi Gonzaga della Compagnia di Giesu (Rome, 1606), p. 288; V1669, pp. 342–3. See also Anna Scattigno, ‘Un commento alla Regola Carmelitana: Gli Ammaestramenti di Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, in Il monachesimo femminile in Italia dall’alto Medioevo al secolo XVII a confronto con l’oggi, edited by Gabriella Zarri (Verona: Gabrielli Editori, 1997), esp. pp. 285–6. 119 120 Regola & Costituzioni, p. 73. Cepari, Vita del B. Luigi Gonzaga. 121 Cepari, Vita del B. Luigi Gonzaga, pp. 288–91. 116

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(d. 1580), and Sr Maria Grazi Senapi (d. 1571).122 Maria Bagnesi was also locally reputed to be a mystic and her mortal remains were interred in the convent from 1577. This heritage is particularly interesting because Caterina de’ Pazzi had already been linked with three possible mystical experiences (two whilst at S. Giovannino) before deciding on religious life. Given that the Jesuits offered spiritual guidance to both Caterina and the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli, it is likely that the nuns there were aware of these incidents when they accepted the Pazzi girl into their midst. Indeed, some may have been more eager to receive her as a result of her past. Amongst the more enthusiastic was Sr Vangelista del Giocondo (1534–1625), who was herself esteemed for her holiness and by 1582 had spent more than thirty years within the cloister.123 A later biography described Vangelista as a woman thirsting for a chosen soul in whom she could cultivate the desires that blazed in her own heart.124 At S. Maria degli Angeli, Caterina found women who were open to the mystical path, not least Vangelista, who was novice mistress for much of Caterina’s time in the novitiate and also served as prioress for several terms (1572–5, 1579–81, 1586–9, 1592–5, 1598–1601, 1604–7, 1610–13).125 Moreover, this was a community that seemed intent on greater observance, something that featured heavily in Caterina’s spiritual life as a nun. A new set of constitutions based on those of S. Barnaba were approved in 1564, after which followed a series of younger prioresses who seem to have been interested in a more reformed life, as was the community’s confessor, Campi.126 The 1564 constitutions set out the nuns’ commitment to a rigorous and demanding life, calling for severe poverty—one of the hallmarks of the observant religious life—by insisting that the women have no private property under pain of excommunication.127 The constitutions gave instructions on matters as diverse as the ceremony of tonsuring a girl and when nuns were to incline their heads in prayer, details on the process of electing officers, and the punishments due for a range of sins. The document not only set out a way of life but also offered spiritual counsel based on the hope that regimenting the

122 Catena, S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi Carmelitana, p. 13 and Catena, Le Carmelitane, p. 396. All three were mentioned by Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi in ecstasy on 30 April 1585 (I colloqui II, p. 60). Maria Grazia Senapi had been mentioned previously in another ecstasy in reference to her own colloquies with Christ (I Colloqui I, p. 89). 123 Secondin, Esperienza e dottrina, pp. 74–6; Vasciaveo, Una storia di donne, pp. 133–4. Vangelista (baptized Cassandra) was the daughter of Baccio del Giocondo and Maddalena Ricasoli. 124 Charlò Camilleri, Union with God as transformation in beauty: A literary-spiritual analysis of the colloquies of Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566–1607) (Rome: Edizioni Carmelitani, 2008), p. 21, quoting Serafica Orlandini, Breve memorie delle religiose vissute nel Monastero di Santa Maria degli Angeli, e Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, raccolte con ogni fedeltà [ . . . ] dal 1598 sino al 1726 e dopo di lei seguitato sino al 1732, pp. 126–7. 125 Detti e preghiere, pp. 170–84. 126 127 Vasciaveo, Una storia di donne, pp. 63–6. Regola e Statuti, ff. 43v–44r.

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details of each day could lead nuns to a richer spiritual life. When the nuns were instructed to enter the choir for the Divine Office in silence, for instance, they were to do so ‘devoutly considering that they come to speak to the Most High, their bridegroom and God’.128 When they were supervised in their conversations with relatives in the parlour, this was to protect them from talking about weddings, feasts, and such things by which ‘the religious bride of Jesus Christ shows her soul to be adulterous towards her celestial bridegroom’.129 Poverty of self was central, be that in a material form or through moderation of speech and behaviour. The same constitutions of 1564 offer us a glimpse into the prayer that governed the nuns’ daily life, especially the liturgical prayer of the Divine Office.130 The nuns prayed in private, but also prayed together in silent communal meditation. Twenty minutes of contemplation or mental prayer in choir followed Matins, and fifteen minutes followed Compline, extended to thirty minutes after Matins and twenty minutes after Compline on feast days.131 These periods provided opportunities for the nuns to dwell on the words and message of the Divine Office they had just prayed. Work time also became like liturgical periods of prayer, with the nuns processing into the workroom in the same order as they entered the chapel choir for liturgies. ‘All are solicited to work happily for the community’, stated the Constitutions, ‘and with the mind raised up to her Almighty Spouse and to his most sweet mother Mary.’132 To help them achieve this, as the nuns worked, they listened to a spiritual reading, their silence broken only to say psalms together. S. Maria degli Angeli was, then, a community committed to poverty, prayer, and the enclosed monastic life. As she made her profession, Caterina de’ Pazzi followed the words of the convent’s Constitutions to declare that she sought ‘the fellowship (compagnia) of these mothers and sisters’ in addition to the poverty of the Carmelite Order and, above all, the mercy of God.133 Her profession was a pledge to live specifically amongst the women of S. Maria degli Angeli and to make herself part of their community. For Caterina, now known within the convent as Suor Maria Maddalena, enclosure was not an unwanted imprisonment, but a welcome discipline. Segregating herself from the secular world and its vices would allow her to commit to a life of prayer and to develop a more intimate relationship with God, just as she had been trying to do during her childhood. Caterina entered the monastery because of the devotional opportunities it could offer her, her prayer life already having been nurtured and shaped by the devout women of her family and her Jesuit spiritual directors. Caterina does not appear to have selected S. Maria degli 128 129 130 132

Regola e statuti, f. 27r. Regola e statuti, f. 42v; Vasciaveo, Una storia di donne, pp. 124–5. 131 Regola e statuti, ff. 26v–29r. Regola e statuti, f. 27v. 133 Vasciaveo, Una storia di donne, p. 120. Regola e statuti, f. 21v.

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Angeli because it was a Carmelite community per se, but rather because she found a convent that received Communion frequently, was in contact with the Jesuits, and was also in touch with a number of people keen to enhance religious observance. It was also, seemingly, open-minded when it came to nuns claiming mystical experiences—something that would soon prove to be of huge significance to the new Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi.

2 Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi After a month living at S. Maria degli Angeli without wearing the habit, Caterina de’ Pazzi secured the community’s acceptance and on 30 January 1583 was vested as a nun. After being tonsured, Caterina removed her secular clothes and was given a long black tunic to be worn with a plain shirt, white stockings, and simple footwear, with a white veil to cover her head.1 In her right hand she held a crucifix; in her left, a lit candle. Her visual transformation into a nun was marked by an equally dramatic change of name.2 Basing his words on a formula, Agostino Campi, the convent’s confessor, would have told her: ‘It is customary for all those who abandon the world and come to serve God and his most holy mother to change their name; and as they change that name, to change also their life, customs, and works: until now you were called Caterina, and from now instead you will be named Suor Maria Maddalena.’3 We do not know whether she chose the name or was given it, but the community as a whole counted St Mary Magdalen amongst a small group of special devotions.4 The saint had a special place in Carmelite spirituality and was also known to have served as a model to Catherine of Siena.5 No

1 Regola e statuti, ff. 15r–17r. Catena, Le Carmelitane, pp. 189–91 suggests that the use of the black habit (as opposed to the light-grey worn at S. Barnaba) reflected S. Maria degli Angeli’s ongoing sense of attachment to the Carmelite Order. 2 On clothing ceremonies and professions, see Kate Lowe, ‘Secular brides and convent brides: Wedding ceremonies in Italy during the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation’, in Marriage in Italy, 1300–1600, edited by Trevor Dean and Kate Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 41–65; and Colleen Reardon, Holy concord within sacred walls: Nuns and music in Siena, 1575–1700 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 50–74. 3 Regola e statuti, f. 18r: ‘hor figliuola è consuetudine a Tutte quelle, che abbandonano il Mondo, e vamo a servire a Dio, e alla Madre sua Santissima mutare il nome; e come mutano quello, mutar anco Vita, Costumi e Opera: voi adunque sete chiamata H, et da qua inanzi sarete nominata Suor N’. 4 Zoccatelli, ‘Il Carmine di Firenze’, p. 167. Karen-Edis Barzman has suggested she chose the name: see Karen-Edis Barzman, ‘Devotion and desire: The reliquary chapel of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, Art History 15, 2 (1992): p. 173 [doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8365.1992.tb00480.x]. 5 On Mary Magdalen in the Carmelite tradition, see James John Boyce, ‘The medieval Carmelite Office tradition’, Acta Musicologica 62, 2/3 (1990): pp. 128–31 [www.jstor.org/ stable/932630]. On Catherine of Siena, see Bynum, Holy feast, p. 166.

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longer Caterina, Sr Maria Maddalena entered within the enclosure and was consigned to the prioress’s custody. As Maria Maddalena she remained within that enclosure for the next twenty-four years, three months, and twenty-five days, sharing both the spiritual and practical activities of her daily life with this community of women.6 Vested according to the convent’s ritual, the new nun’s entrance to S. Maria degli Angeli was essentially no different from that of any other girl. And yet when her body emerged from the enclosure once again in 1607, now lifeless, she was certainly seen as being different from the other nuns. What happened to Maria Maddalena within the walls of S. Maria degli Angeli and how others responded to her transformed her from just another nun supposedly hidden from the world to an object of devotion. At the heart of that transformation was the large group of women with whom Maria Maddalena lived, nuns who collaborated with their confessors and whose own spiritual lives were influenced by their sister’s extraordinary experiences.

A VISIONARY IN THE CONVEN T The constitutions of S. Maria degli Angeli demanded that girls spend a year in the novitiate before taking their binding religious vows, and it was during this period that the young Maria Maddalena first stood out within the community.7 Novices were under the charge of a novice mistress and at S. Maria degli Angeli they lived largely apart from the fully professed choir nuns with whom they were not to speak without express permission.8 The shared experience of the novitiate could forge particularly strong bonds between the girls and it was amongst this subgroup of young nuns that Maria Maddalena first drew esteem for her prayer and virtue, especially her obedience and humility.9 The convent’s confessor, Agostino Campi, reportedly described her as ‘that little saint of a novice’ (quella novitia Santina).10 In Advent 1583, just a year after entering the convent, Maria Maddalena attracted the attention of the novice mistress (Vangelista del Giocondo), the teacher of the novices, and the prioress herself when she remained in the chapel after the novices left their 6

V1609, p. 192. Regola e statuti, f. 20r. Convent records reveal that in practice girls typically spent at least two years as novices; Catena, S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, p. 19. After their novitiate, nuns spent two years in giovanato under a special mistress and three more in sopra-giovanato under the sub-prioress. 8 Regola e statuti, f. 19v. 9 P767, p. 104. On the ‘cohort effect’ that might be created amongst novices, see Strocchia, Nuns and nunneries, p. 36. 10 V1669, pp. 74–5. 7

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prayers, breathless and anxious, crying and lamenting loudly: ‘O Love, how greatly offended you are! Love, you are neither known nor loved!’.11 It was at the time of her profession in May 1584, however, that an even more dramatic incident left the community astounded. After twelve months in the novitiate, Maria Maddalena’s superiors had told her she would have to wait to make her profession with a group, in response to which she quietly prophesied to her novice mistress that they would be forced to profess her alone.12 On 1 March 1584, she fell ill with a terrible fever, various pains, and vomiting. She was confined to bed in the infirmary and her desperate father sent four doctors to treat her, but to no avail. Fearing she might die, on Trinity Sunday (27 May 1584) her superiors allowed her to make her profession alone.13 Back in the infirmary afterwards, the infirmarian realized that Maria Maddalena had been quiet for an hour and, surprisingly, had not been coughing. She went to check on the newly professed nun only to find her apparently alienated from all her senses and staring fixedly at a crucifix on the wall. Maria Maddalena remained this way for two hours, her face flushed, a far cry from the sick girl who had been rushed to her profession hours earlier. The astonished infirmarian ran to gather the other nuns, who were reportedly equally astounded to see their sister transformed from the verge of death into what looked like ecstasy (see Figure 2.1). Completely taken aback, Maria Maddalena’s fellow nuns tried to make sense of what had taken place. These were women who shared their lives with her and who intuitively placed what they saw now within the framework of what they had seen of her life before. Maria Maddalena’s virtue was already well regarded and she had also successfully prophesied her solo profession. Transformed physically from her sick and suffering self into something of beauty, it seemed that God must be at work.14 As Sr Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia, another novice, noted of that first ecstasy: ‘A majesty and great amount of grace shone in that face so that it seemed as though it could never be she herself, who had become gaunt and pale through sickness.’15 Having been on her deathbed, Maria Maddalena was revitalized; the supernatural brightness of her face echoed that of Christ at his Transfiguration (Mt 17:2) and revealed the ‘inward light of the soul’.16 When the nuns later asked Maria Maddalena what she had experienced, she explained:

11

12 13 P767, pp. 103, 216, 318. Breve, p. 90. Breve, pp. 92–3. On the proof offered by Maria Maddalena’s body, see Anna Scattigno, ‘Una comunità testimone. Il monastero di Santa Maria degli Angeli e la costruzione di un modello di professione religiosa’, in I monasteri femminile come centri di cultura fra Rinascimento e Barocco, edited by Gianna Pomata and Gabriella Zarri (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2005), pp. 175–204. 15 Breve, p. 92. 16 Benedict XIV (Prospero Lambertini), De servorum Dei beatificatione et beatorum canonizatione, 5 vols. (Bologna: 1734–8), Book III, ch. 49, no. 4. 14

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Jesus, sweetly caressing me like a new bride, united me entirely to himself and locked me into his side, where I found a most pleasant repose. Then it seemed to me that God took from me my will and all my desires, so that I cannot will or desire anything except that which the Lord wills . . . Even if he wanted me damned, I would still be content, and I no longer care about dying or getting well, but want only that which is the will of God.17

Figure 2.1. Abraham van Diepenbeeck, Vita seraphicae virginis S. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis, Florentinae ordinis B.V.M. de Monte Carmelo iconibus expressa (Antwerp, 1670), image 12. Reproduced with permission from the Institutum Carmelitanum, Rome 17 I quaranta giorni, pp. 98–9: ‘Jesu dolcemente accarezzandomi come una novella Sposa, mi univa tutta a’ se’, e mi serrò nel’ suo costato, nel’ quale trovavo un’ suavissimo riposo. Poi mi pareva che il’ Signore togliessi da me la mia Volontà e’ tutti e’ mia Desiderii, di modo che nulla posso volere, o’ desiderare, se non quello che vuole esso Signore . . . Benché Dannata egli mi volessi, ancor’ io sarei contenta; e non mi curo più ne’ di Morire, ne’ di Guarire, ma’ solo voglio quello, che e’ la Volontà di Dio.’

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Maria Maddalena’s extraordinary profession-day rapture turned out to be no one-off event. On each of the following forty days her sisters watched her fall into ecstasy for around two hours after receiving Communion. This period became known as ‘the forty days’.18 Whilst still sick, she seemed to recover each day for the duration of her rapture, only to return to her former condition. On 16 June, however, she suddenly found herself cured in a miracle attributed to the intercession of Maria Bagnesi, whose body was conserved within S. Maria degli Angeli and who had been invoked by one of the other nuns.19 During the forty days, Maria Maddalena experienced what she described as union with God and enjoyed special revelations of parts of the divine mystery. She also claimed to receive some remarkable gifts, including mystical kisses (3 June 1584), a ring of espousal from Christ (16 June), and the stigmata invisibly (28 June).20 Some of her raptures were marked by insensibility and she was rooted to the spot, but others were characterized by dramatic movement and she was heard to speak, sometimes to cry out loudly. Three consecutive days (11–13 June) were especially dramatic when Maria Maddalena shouted to the nuns to ‘love, Love’ and was seen dashing about her room with a small crucifix in her hand on several occasions.21 Throughout the forty days Maria Maddalena heard God talking to her, especially in the person of Jesus, who even shouted at her: he ‘began to shout at me very loudly and to say to me that he did not want me to will or be capable of or to do anything except that which he willed, could do, and would do in me’.22 Understandably her fellow nuns found this behaviour startling. On 12 June they noted that ‘so great an impetus of love came to her that she seemed to become mad’.23 Two days later (the twentieth day) Maria Maddalena jumped out of bed with a crucifix in hand and, reportedly, ran around the room shouting so loudly that it seemed as though the whole room was shaking.24 Ordered back into bed by the infirmarian, there she remained for a further sixteen hours, her eyes always on the corpus on the crucifix in her hand as she experienced a vision of the events of Christ’s Passion.25 At times, her eyes roved around the corpus; at other times she was motionless and remained On this period, see Ernest Larkin, ‘The ecstasies of the Forty days of Saint Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi’, Carmelus 1 (1954): pp. 29–71. 19 P767, p. 219. See also Catena, ‘Le malattie di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, pp. 82–5. 20 I quaranta giorni, pp. 109–12, 180–2, 210–12. 21 I quaranta giorni, esp. pp. 140–54. 22 I quaranta giorni, p. 194: ‘voltandosi a me, mi cominciò molto bene a gridare, dicendomi che non voleva che io volessi, potessi, nè operassi nulla se non quello che esso voleva, poteva, e operava in me’. 23 I quaranta giorni, p. 136: ‘In tal dì gli venne un impeto tanto grande d’amore che pareva impazzita.’ 24 I quaranta giorni, p. 157: ‘Seguitando di correre, gridava molto forte di modo che era sentita assai di discosto. Et pareva che tutta quella camera tremassi.’ 25 I quaranta giorni, pp. 178–9. 18

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completely silent. That stillness characterized other experiences too, particularly on 25 June, when Maria Maddalena described being in union with God: Suddenly I found myself totally united with God. And I was transformed in him in such a way that, abstracted from all corporal senses, I felt nothing, as if I were dead. And I believe that if I had then been put in a furnace and burned, I would not have felt anything. I did not know if I was dead or alive, if I was in the body or the soul, if I was on earth or in heaven, but I saw only God all glorious in himself.26

After the daily occurrences of May–June 1584, seemingly little mystical of note happened to Maria Maddalena between August and Christmas of that year. From Christmas to June 1585, however, the ecstasies returned and were recorded as I colloqui (the dialogues), a reference to the way in which the text was initially compiled in conversation with Maria Maddalena.27 Although not occurring daily, as during the forty days, these ecstasies were extremely frequent, some lasting for many hours and even whole days. During this second period of ecstasies—a period of ‘great ecstasies’ according to Bruno Secondin—she was drawn into an even deeper relationship with God that was focused in a special way on Christ’s humanity.28 On 24 March 1585, the vigil of the Annunciation, for example, Maria Maddalena understood that St Augustine was writing words from the start of St John’s gospel on her heart: ‘Verbum caro factum est’ (The Word was made flesh).29 More dramatic still were Maria Maddalena’s intense experiences of Christ’s human suffering. In one especially theatrical twenty-six-hour ecstasy starting on 18 April 1585 she endured a second re-enactment of Christ’s betrayal, condemnation, and crucifixion as if she were experiencing it all with her own senses.30 These re-enactments in particular placed her amongst a set of local revered women that included another contemporary local mystic nun, Caterina de’ Ricci, at the Dominican convent of S. Vincenzo in Prato, who was well known to the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and who, since 1542, had experienced ecstasies re-enacting the Passion each week.31

26 I quaranta giorni, p. 203 (25 June): ‘In un subito mi trovai tutta unita con Dio. Et ero in [tal] modo transformata in lui che, astratta da tutti e’ sentimenti corporali, no’ sentivo nulla, come se fussi una morta. Et credo che se io all’hora fussi stata messa in una fornace e abbruciata, no’ harei sentito cosa nessuna. Non sapevo se ero morta, o viva, se ero in corpo o anima, se ero in terra o in cielo; ma solo vedevo tutto Dio glorioso in se stesso.’ 27 I colloqui I and I colloqui II. 28 29 Secondin, Esperienza e dottrina, pp. 120–7. I colloqui II, pp. 264–78. 30 I colloqui I, pp. 381–416. Maria Maddalena had first re-enacted the Passion in June 1584 as recorded in I quaranta giorni, pp. 156–80. 31 Serafino Razzi and Filippo Guidi, Vita della venerabil madre suor Caterina de’ Ricci vergine nobile fiorentina (Florence, 1641), pp. 40–3; Domenico Maria Sandrini, Vita di Santa Caterina de’ Ricci (Florence, 1747), pp. 44–8.

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That same year, 1585, Maria Maddalena went into ecstasy throughout the octave of Pentecost, 8–16 June and remained in ecstasy continuously with the exception of about two hours each day when she prayed the Divine Office and rested a little.32 During this time she understood she would begin a five-year ‘probation’ when she would not feel God’s grace, though she would still receive it. Her probation lasted from 16 June 1585 until 10 June 1590, Pentecost Sunday.33 It was a period of trial that Maria Maddalena referred to as time in ‘the lion’s den,’ a reference to the Old Testament prophet Daniel (Dan. 6). The first two years of this period are now poorly documented, since Maria Maddalena herself destroyed many of the records that were produced, throwing the pages into a fire after discovering them one day.34 Still just a young nun, she experienced tremendous suffering and spiritual anguish, temptation, and despair, and attacks from the devil, and her mystical experiences diminished. The nuns were surprised, however, by an exceptional degree of activity in July 1586 after more than a year of relative quiet.35 A series of raptures followed that summer comprising a passionate call for renewal (renovatione) of the Church through personal purification.36 For herself, Maria Maddalena now felt called to live even more austerely. In an ecstasy on 5 July 1587, she understood that God wanted her to live in extreme poverty: to walk barefoot, to wear the most threadbare tunic, and to sleep on a straw sack.37 In an attempt to drive this renewal forward, Maria Maddalena, like Catherine of Siena before her, dictated letters whilst in ecstasy, although, as we shall see, few of these appear to have been sent.38 Beyond these calls for reform, Maria Maddalena’s probation was dominated by spiritual dryness and trying temptations that struck at the core of her faith, causing her to doubt the love of God and to desire to leave religious life.39 As the scholar Armando Maggi has shown, it was a period in which the devil (‘the Enemy’) was central.40 Maria Maddalena’s sisters watched in horror as she frequently appeared to be ‘surrounded by a multitude of demons and afflicted by their great and horrible temptations’.41 They saw demons attacking her physically, sometimes pushing her down the stairs, other times wrapping themselves around her like snakes and biting into her flesh.42 Under onslaught one time Maria Maddalena cried out to the nuns: ‘I’m dying, I’m drowning. Help me!’43 In another terrifying moment in the chapel when she saw devils

32

33 Revelatione, pp. 43–295. La probatione I, La probatione II. La probatione I, pp. 32–3. As Armando Maggi has noted, this contrasts with Teresa of Avila, who was ordered to burn her text (Maggi, Uttering the Word, pp. 2–3). 35 36 La probatione I, pp. 35–6. Renovatione, p. 47. 37 38 La probatione I, pp. 66–70. L’epistolario completo, pp. 51–129. 39 40 La probatione I, pp. 119, 124. Maggi, Uttering the Word, pp. 119–37. 41 La probatione I, p. 32. 42 La probatione I, pp. 33–4. 43 La probatione I, p. 72: ‘I’dico chi muoio, i’affogo, aiutatemi voi!’ 34

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rushing towards her, she grabbed a crucifix and swung it around like a sword to try to defeat them.44 Another time, tempted to kill herself, she placed a knife in the hands of a statue of the Virgin Mary to prevent her from using it.45 In the final year of her probation (July 1589–June 1590), Maria Maddalena’s external suffering was relieved, but the interior temptations and torments that had plagued her—doubts and fears put into her mind by the devil— continued.46 As she fought to endure these, her life became more strongly marked by mortifications, penances, and austerity, all of which she understood to be powerful weapons against the temptations of pride and egoism. She ate very little food, and of the worst quality. She also insisted on doing the work of the servant (converse) nuns despite her higher status as a choir nun. Like the Umbrian medieval visionary Clare of Montefalco, she was often in the kitchen washing up or baking bread.47 And she frequently visited the sick in the infirmary, serving them in their needs.48 She even cajoled other nuns into applying mortifications and penances to her, which included, on occasion, tying her up and whipping her, or walking over her as she lay on the floor in the doorway to the refectory.49 She was obedient to her prioress, but she also chose another nun whose permission she would seek even for very small things, such was her desire to demonstrate obedience in everything.50 The other nuns admired her willingness to submit and lower herself in all things, thanking God ‘for the example that he has given us’ in Maria Maddalena, and rejoicing that they had been shown ‘in what way and with what means’ temptations could be overcome.51 Their sister’s remedies (fasts, vigils, disciplines) were, the nuns’ transcriptions explained, those to be found within the lives of the saints and books of devotion.52 Maria Maddalena’s probation ended at Pentecost in 1590 with a vision of her triumphant exit from the ‘lake of lions’ in which she was joined by fourteen major saints, dancing and leaping along with them in celebration of

44

La probatione I, p. 179. La probatione I, p. 126. On suicide within the convent, see Sharon Strocchia, ‘Women on the edge’. 46 47 La probatione I, pp. 116–17, 225–6. Vauchez, Sainthood, p. 350. 48 On Maria Maddalena’s care for the sick—and her desire to heal them—see Molly Morrison, ‘Strange miracles: A study of the peculiar healings of St Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 8, 1 (2005): pp. 129–44 [doi: 10.1353/log.2005.0008]. 49 P767, pp. 117–18. 50 P767, p. 233. Sr Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia performed this role until 1600, when she was replaced by Sr Maria Sommai. 51 La probatione I, p. 263: ‘ringratiamo il’ Signore dell’esemplo che ci ha dato, havendoci dimostro come l’anima che veramente ama Dio e si vuol condurre alla perfetione gli bisogna passare per spine e triboli di molte tentatione e tribulatione, e in che modo e per quali mezzi si vincono e superono, cioè con l’humiltà, obedientia e dispregio di se stesso.’ 52 La probatione I, p. 261. 45

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the victories God had granted during her probation.53 A quieter spiritual period followed during which she fell into rapture much less frequently than before. Between 1590 and 1592 her experiences largely constituted insights into the life and future of the monastery, amongst them a prediction regarding the death of the convent’s confessor, Agostino Campi.54 In March 1592 Maria Maddalena appeared to relive the events and experiences of Christ’s Passion again, moving around the rooms of S. Maria degli Angeli just as she had done in April 1585, when her sisters had watched her appear to be raised up on an invisible cross.55 She also in this period received visions relating to how the Carmelite Order and specifically her own monastery were particularly pleasing to God. In one, Maria Maddalena’s attention was focused on the Carmelite Order in its ‘primitive’ splendour, a reference to reform efforts within the Order.56 In another she saw the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli as a beautiful cottage to which Jesus, the Word, kept the keys.57 By contrast to the frenetic activity witnessed in earlier years, the nuns claimed ‘nothing notable occurred’ to Maria Maddalena between May 1592 and August 1593.58 Her raptures thereafter were only occasional and she experienced her final ecstasy on 24 June 1604.59 In their stead came illness and the extreme physical suffering—the so-called ‘naked’ or bare suffering (nudo patire)—for which Maria Maddalena had longed, alongside continued internal anguish.60 ‘There is no better sign of being dear to God than happily suffering for love of him,’ Maria Maddalena had told her sisters.61 Looking back on these years of torment, Sr Vangelista del Giocondo reflected that ‘the more she suffered, the more she desired to suffer’.62 At the heart of Maria Maddalena’s mystical spirituality lies the image of Christ—God incarnate—

53 La probatione I, pp. 238–42. The saints appeared in seven pairs: Thomas Aquinas and Agnes; John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalen; John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria; Stephen and Catherine of Siena; Francis and Clare; Augustine and Angelo; Michael the Archangel and Maria Maddalena’s own guardian angel. 54 La probatione II, pp. 22–34. 55 La probatione II, pp. 48–86, compared with I colloqui II, pp. 381–420 (April 1585). In June 1584 she had contemplated each moment of Christ’s Passion without participating in the pains of it and without moving around the monastery (I quaranta giorni, pp. 156–80; P767, pp. 106, 219, 318, 705, 1097). 56 57 La probatione II, pp. 244–7. La probatione II, pp. 212–15. 58 59 La probatione II, p. 196. Renovatione, pp. 351–3; P767, pp. 153, 270. 60 Catena, ‘Le malattie di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, pp. 96–8. See also, Maria Berbara, ‘ “Esta pena tan sabrosa”: Teresa of Avila and the figurative arts in early modern Europe’, in The sense of suffering: Constructions of physical pain in early modern culture, edited by Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen and Karl Enenkel (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2009), pp. 292–3. 61 Renovatione, p. 269: ‘non è il maggior segno d’esser caro a Dio che il patire allegramente per amor suo’. 62 P767, p. 187: ‘quanto più pativa, più desiderava di patire’.

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suffering on the Cross, and the sense that Jesus ‘wants us to practise more suffering than love’ so that we can share that with him.63 After nearly three years of acute pain, Maria Maddalena died on 25 May 1607, aged 41, having spent just over twenty-four years in religious life.64 The frequency and duration of her raptures had varied over the years, but they had nevertheless become an important part of her own personal identity and of her convent’s common life. This is what had made her life extraordinary. On occasion she had appeared completely alienated from her senses, but in other moments she had become extremely agitated, moving around the convent, running, crying out, and interacting with other nuns.65 In the course of her life, Maria Maddalena encountered the full spectrum of the Christian mysteries. When contemplating the pain of Christ’s Passion, she was a soul in agony lamenting the injury inflicted by ungrateful humanity. When absorbed in contemplation of more joyful matters, Maria Maddalena’s delight was obvious, and her dance in ecstasy as she left her probation in 1590 was an expression of unspeakable jubilation at the graces she had received. Often dramatic, her experiences were frequently linked to biblical passages or liturgical texts.66 In addition to re-enacting several biblical events (including the Crucifixion), Maria Maddalena claimed to receive recognized mystical gifts, such as mystical marriage to Christ.67 At the centre of Maria Maddalena’s spiritual life was belief in God as love and, at the same time, an anguish that this love (‘Love’ itself) was neither known nor loved.68 That focus drew her into the embrace of Christ’s humanity, of Mary (an almost constant presence in her spiritual life), and of many saints as she tried to journey along a path of love—and of selflessness—towards the ultimate love, pure love.69

DISCERNING THE TRUE, WRITING THE WORD Maria Maddalena’s visionary experience on the day of her profession in 1584 asked urgent questions of her fellow nuns regarding its origin.70 An ecstasy 63

Maggi, Uttering the Word, p. 70. For an example of an echo of this in the late seventeenth century, see Mario Rosa, ‘The nun’, in Baroque personae, edited by Rosario Villari (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 229–31. 64 65 V1609, p. 192. P767, p. 402. 66 Armando Maggi, ‘The voice and silences of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, p. 258. 67 On this experience more broadly, see Matter, ‘Mystical marriage’. 68 Giovanni Grosso, ‘La santa dell’amore non amato . . . ’ in Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: Santa dell’amore non amato, edited by Piero Pacini (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2007), pp. 23–33. 69 Luca di Girolamo, S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: Esistenza e teologia a confronto (Rome: Edizioni Carmelitani, 2010). 70 Clare Copeland, ‘Participating in the divine: Visions and ecstasies in a Florentine convent’, in Angels of light? Sanctity and the discernment of spirits in the early modern period, edited by Clare Copeland and Jan Machielsen (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013), pp. 75–101.

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might be divine, but it also might come from the devil or from natural causes.71 Maria Maddalena’s experiences needed to be evaluated carefully and their origin discerned.72 Was this a nun who was receiving treasures from God? Was she a pawn of the devil, deceived by Satan? If this was a case of demonic possession, then the stability of her whole convent might be at risk, particularly if a group possession developed.73 Perhaps, however, Maria Maddalena was sick, or even fabricating it all. Just as claims to receive visions were not new, neither was the problem of discernment.74 The Paris-trained theologian Jean Gerson (1363–1429) in particular had earlier drawn considerable attention to the importance of discerning spirits in his works looking at how to distinguish true mysticism from false, influenced as he was by the papal schism of his day and the visionary claims of Bridget of Sweden.75 Gerson’s view on the importance of discernment was pegged to the benefits of the divine as well as the dangers of the demonic: ‘If we immediately deny everything,’ he wrote, ‘we will seem to weaken the authority of divine revelation, which is just as powerful now as it once was.’76 In keeping with this, Raymund of Capua’s fourteenth-century biography of Catherine of Siena—which Maria Maddalena knew—set out how carefully he had examined his penitent’s claims: ‘I explored every avenue’, he wrote, ‘and tried in every possible way to find an answer to the question: Are these things from God or not? Are they fact or fiction?’77 He acknowledged the particular danger of women being misled: ‘Within my experience I had come across people, especially women, who had got wild notions and fell easy

71 Aquinas, Summa theologica 2-2, q. 175. Aquinas was cited on this by many authors in the coming centuries, including Benedict XIV, De servorum Dei beatificatione, Book III, ch. 48. 72 On discernment, see in particular Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe not every spirit: Possession, mysticism & discernment in early modern Catholicism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Susan Schreiner, Are you alone wise? The search for certainty in the early modern era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), esp. pp. 261–322; Copeland and Machielsen (eds.), Angels of light?; Caciola, Discerning spirits; Rosalynn Voaden, God’s words, women’s voices: The discernment of spirits in the writing of late-medieval women visionaries (York: York Medieval Press, 1999). 73 Jeffrey Watt, The scourge of demons: Possession, lust, and witchcraft in a seventeenthcentury Italian convent (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009); Sluhovsky, Believe not every spirit, esp. pp. 233–64. 74 Andre Vauchez, ‘La nascita del sospetto’ in Finzione e santità, edited by Zarri, pp. 39–51. 75 Gerson’s three major works on this topic were: De distinctione verarum visionum a falsis (1401–1402), De probatione spirituum (1415), and De examination doctrinarum (1423). On Gerson, see Wendy Love Anderson, The discernment of spirits: Assessing visions and visionaries in the late Middle Ages (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), pp. 190–223. 76 Brian Patrick McGuire (tr.), Jean Gerson: Early works (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1998), p. 337. 77 Quoted in Ann Astell, ‘Heroic virtue in Blessed Raymond of Capua’s Life of Catherine of Siena’, Journal of Medieval and Modern Studies 42, 1 (2012): p. 37 [doi: 10.1215/108296361473091].

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victims to the enemy who beguiles us—as our mother Eve herself did in the beginning.’ What was important for this discussion was that the Church had not dismissed mystical experiences entirely. By Maria Maddalena’s lifetime its ranks of saints boasted several mystics, women amongst them, who were openly celebrated with devotions and images in public sacred spaces, had convents and churches dedicated to them, and whose biographies had been published: Gertrude of Helfta and Clare of Assisi (who was included in the 1568 Roman Breviary), as well as Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena (canonized in 1461). Their mysticism had flourished out of an affective spirituality seen from the twelfth century and although mysticism was not gender-specific, it had more frequently been seen amongst women.78 Besides recognized saints, several other women—so-called sante vive—had become famous in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Italy for their visions, prophecies, and claims to receive the stigmata and had found receptive audiences at princely and ducal courts.79 In this context, mystical spirituality was part of the orthodox practice of religion, but precisely where the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable claims lay was uncertain.80 In the early 1580s, around the time when Maria Maddalena first attracted attention in her convent as a visionary, a tertiary in Naples named Alfonsina Rispola was subjected to a prolonged investigation for claiming similar experiences.81 She was first investigated by local inquisitors in 1581 under the charge of ‘simulating sanctity’, according to which wilful simulation, hypocrisy, and pride were considered possible causes of her behaviour. Rispola was imprisoned for twelve years whilst her experiences were debated and although Roman representatives of the Holy Office appeared to believe that they were not diabolical in origin, they nevertheless recommended that she be kept under house arrest. Rispola’s treatment at the hands of ecclesiastical dignitaries in both Naples and Rome reveal something of the alarm that visionary women might generate in Maria Maddalena’s day.82 But Maria Maddalena differed from her and from the sante vive of early sixteenth-century Italy in one important respect: she had chosen life as a nun in an enclosed convent. Mystical experiences provoked such debate because they were empowering,

78 Querciolo Mazzonis, Spirituality, gender, and the self in Renaissance Italy: Angela Merici and the Company of St. Ursula (1474–1540) (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), pp. 96–8. 79 Zarri, Le sante vive, esp. pp. 96–7, 106–14.; Zarri, ‘Living saints’, pp. 227–8, 238–44. 80 Caravale, Forbidden prayer, pp. 43–4. 81 Giovanni Romeo, ‘Una “simulatrice di santità” a Napoli nel ’500: Alfonsina Rispola’, Campania sacra 8–9 (1977–8): pp. 159–218; and Sallmann, ‘La sainteté mystique féminine à Naples’, pp. 692–7. Tertiaries were (and are) lay people affiliated with a religious order. 82 The identification of true visionaries and prophets is the subject of a number of studies in Zarri (ed.), Finzione e santità.

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particularly for women. Their claims to receive insights directly from God comprised an extra-institutional channel to the divine and to relay messages that challenged the authorities.83 Although Maria Maddalena did attract attention within her convent, there, within its walls, she was governed by a hierarchy of religious superiors and her voice could be somewhat contained. In 1584 Maria Maddalena’s claims were immediately put to the convent’s confessor-governor (or ‘padre spirituale’), Agostino Campi, who commanded the nun ‘through obedience’ to refer ‘everything in her life and particularly the raptures that occurred and that which she understood from God and was revealed to her’ to Sr Vangelista del Giocondo (the novice mistress) and Sr Maria Maddalena Mori.84 He wanted this to happen daily, he said, so that nothing would be lost, intending ‘to see if she was deceived’.85 Here was the ‘right to write’, the confessor’s commission that, when given directly to Teresa of Avila, had helped to fuel her role as a reformer.86 Campi, however, gave the responsibility of writing not to Maria Maddalena, who was not a talented scribe, but to her sisters. It was these nuns, who had not had the mystical experience themselves, who were charged with translating an oral testimony—a voice—into the written word.87 Vangelista and Maria Maddalena Mori started to interview Maria Maddalena after each of her daily raptures ended and soon enlisted Sisters Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia and Veronica Alessandri to act as scribes.88 Campi planned to use the text to assess Maria Maddalena’s experiences, it seems, but his decision not to involve himself in gathering the material on which he would base that assessment set him apart from many confessors in similar situations who claimed privileged positions as recorders.89 Why precisely Campi commissioned the texts in this way remains unclear. Sr Maria Maddalena Mori’s afterword to the first book of transcriptions (I quaranta giorni) explains it in terms of prudence: he did not care ‘that she should tell him about it [her experience] herself in order not to embarrass her. And, moreover, so as not to have to spend too much time here in [her] room to confess her, since she was still sick and in bed.’90 Campi’s decision was perhaps a pragmatic one, and an attempt not to add to his already considerable workload as confessor to a community of some eighty nuns. Furthermore,

83 Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the other (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Michel de Certeau, The mystic fable: The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992). 84 P767, p. 128. The convent’s confessor-governor not only confessed the nuns but also oversaw their financial operations and other elements of their community life. 85 86 P767, p. 245; I quaranta giorni, p. 241. Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila, pp. 72–7. 87 Maggi, ‘The voice and silences of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’. 88 P767, p. 128. Vangelista admitted that she did not write, since she was not good at writing and was often busy with her other responsibilities. 89 90 Bilinkoff, Related lives, pp. 32–45. I quaranta giorni, p. 241.

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his separation from the process of writing afforded him some distance that might help him appear to be a neutral judge. Regardless of the motive, the mode of production was highly significant, for although Maria Maddalena was called upon to recount her experiences, she was not responsible for writing the text. The gap between memory of the experience and composition of the text afforded some protection to Maria Maddalena in a context where (clerical) readers might question its contents. The first records of I quaranta giorni described Maria Maddalena’s experiences in the first person based on conversation with her after the event. As the young nun’s ecstasies grew more complex, the scribes began to make records as the events unfolded in front of them and incorporated more of their own impressions into the final text. From the sixteenth day (11 June 1584), Maria Maddalena’s first-person account was occasionally punctuated by thirdperson descriptions of what the nuns saw or heard: her shouting, her silences, her movement.91 The result is a rich, multi-temporal, and multi-voiced account of events and impressions, texts that reflect the scribes’ observations and views as well as Maria Maddalena’s own memories. When we read of Maria Maddalena’s experiences today, we do so, then, through the mediating ink of her sisters’ pens. Where Teresa of Avila wrote herself and her first-person narrative allowed her to adopt a ‘rhetoric of humility’ to justify her experiences within the framework expected of her by learned clergy and a Spanish context of hostility towards women visionaries, Maria Maddalena’s sisters’ texts reveal a communal rhetoric of humility.92 Any errors were attributed to the failings and shortcomings of the scribes and not Maria Maddalena. We see this especially in a letter attached by Sr Maria Maddalena Mori to the first manuscript sent to Campi in October 1584: I send this to you so that you might be able to review it and, if there is any defect, correct it, imputing all that you find bad with it to my lack of consideration and ignorance, which, as Your Reverence knows, is considerable. Therefore, please excuse me, praying the Lord for Him to pardon me and give me the grace to bear fruit from this beautiful occasion.93

Recording Maria Maddalena’s experiences was, the nuns acknowledged, an impossible task. Its very difficulty, however, empowered the nuns. On the eighteenth of the forty days, the transcription recorded that she had been in rapture for three hours and the nuns had not been able to note everything. At the same time, it was these women who had been with her who were best able to understand what she had experienced: ‘nor could this that we have I quaranta giorni, p. 133: ‘In questo medesimo dì gli venne dua volte un impeto tanto grande d’amore, che pareva all’hora all’hora havessi a scoppiare’ (‘This same day, an impetus of such great love came to her twice so that it seemed then and there that she would burst’). 92 Weber, Teresa of Avila and the rhetoric of femininity; Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila, pp. 67–84. 93 I quaranta giorni, p. 95. 91

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written be said as well as she said it since she spoke them [the words] in a marvellous way that could not be expressed nor understood unless one had seen and heard her’.94 The nuns were, indeed, living testimonies to Maria Maddalena’s holiness, as Anna Scattigno has argued.95 From their unique position, the nuns’ descriptions wove them into the very fabric of their sister’s mystical story: without them, there might not have been a story. Their involvement was enhanced further during the second period of ecstasies—the so-called colloqui of 1585—when the system for recording Maria Maddalena’s experiences changed. Under the new method, two, three, or sometimes four nuns were designated as scribes on each occasion, each assisted by one or two further nuns who were tasked with memorizing what Maria Maddalena was saying and doing and recounting this to their scribe.96 The scribes took it in turns to write, numbering their sheets so they could be collated afterwards. When in ecstasy, the young mystic was now accompanied by several teams of nuns each taking on the recording responsibility for a period of time. Interestingly, the method separated the task of memorizing and deciding what to record from the actual task of writing, based on the view that both required substantial concentration. Once the nuns’ written sheets were assembled, the account was reconstructed into a fair copy. Where words had been written badly and were difficult to make out, or where it seemed as though they might be incorrect, the prioress questioned Maria Maddalena, who was asked to read through the text to correct any errors, add when she had felt something interiorly, and confirm the sentiments that the nuns had recorded. In April 1585, however, Maria Maddalena was found too tired to question after an ecstasy in which she had re-enacted the Passion of Christ, and the nuns were forced to write ‘what we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears, rather than what we have had from her mouth [afterwards], which will be little, almost nothing’.97 A change followed and the detailed accounts of Maria Maddalena’s words and actions included even more of the other nuns’ observations and feelings. These nuns were no mere secretaries or amanuenses, but translators and interpreters; their text was a community text that reflected the experiences of the many scribes as well as of Maria Maddalena. The transcriptions produced throughout Maria Maddalena’s time at S. Maria degli Angeli ultimately amounted to five thick hand-written volumes. In keeping with Campi’s commission, these were seen by several priests with a

I quaranta giorni, p.153: ‘ne anche queste che habbiamo scritte si sono potute dire in quel modo bene come lei le diceva, però che le proferiva in un modo mirabile, da no’ potersi esprimere e dare ad intendere, se no’ a chi l’ha vista e udita’. 95 Scattigno, ‘Una comunità testimone’, esp. pp. 177–81, 184–5. 96 97 P767, pp. 245–6. I colloqui I, p. 381. 94

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view to assessing their content.98 Agostino Campi received the first text, I quaranta giorni, but it was after his death in 1591 that the texts were examined more thoroughly by others, including his successor Francesco Benvenuti (a canon of Florence cathedral) and the convent’s extraordinary confessor Niccolò Fabbrini (a Jesuit, then rector of the Florentine college). Benvenuti offered a written declaration that he had found nothing contrary to the faith or to good morals in the four books he had read, commenting that they were, in his opinion, very edifying.99 Fabbrini similarly read the texts ‘to his great consolation’ and, like Benvenuti, reassured an anxious Maria Maddalena that her experiences had been ‘the will of God’ and not demonic deception.100 Copies of the manuscripts were also passed to more Jesuits in 1598.101 Unlike other supposed mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Maria Maddalena’s transcriptions do not appear to have fallen under the gaze of a commission of theologians or the Inquisition in her lifetime.102 Within the haven of the convent, Maria Maddalena’s ecstasies were prevented from attracting excessive public attention and were given quiet approval by a number of local clerics. The Jesuit readers of the transcriptions included Virgilio Cepari (1564–1631), extraordinary confessor to S. Maria degli Angeli in the 1590s and Fabbrini’s successor as rector of the Florentine college.103 In a letter sent to the nuns after reading I quaranta giorni, Cepari announced that he had proposed some corrections in order to ‘moderate’ (moderare) some expressions so that they better reflected the Scriptures and the works of theologians.104 Subtle editing has been uncovered in many such texts, but it is interesting here that Cepari stated his intention, because it suggests that he realized the importance of demonstrating Maria Maddalena had submitted to clerical oversight. Cepari’s intervention together with the nuns’ participation as scribes produced texts that began the campaign to present Maria Maddalena’s credentials as a saint. Cepari seems not to have read all the transcriptions in the end—he left summary notes only on I quaranta giorni and La probatione—but he did become a close adviser

98 Ermanno Ancilli, ‘I manoscritti originali di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, Ephemerides carmeliticae 7 (1956), pp. 380–1; Ermanno Ancilli, Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi: Estasi, dottrina, influsso (Rome: Edizioni del Teresianum, 1967), pp. 44–6. 99 Revelatione, p. 300 (dated 28 September 1601). 100 La probatione II, p. 225; P767, p. 150. 101 Gianvittorio Signorotto, ‘Gesuiti, carismatici e beate nella Milano del primo Seicento’, in Finzione e santità, edited by Zarri, pp. 177–201. 102 On these other investigations, see Schutte, Aspiring saints. On the Inquisition in Florence, see Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, pp. 75–83, and Adriano Prosperi, L’Inquisizione romana: Letture e ricerche (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2003), pp. 183–217. 103 On Cepari, see Carlos Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, vol. 2 (Paris: A. Picard, 1891), coll. pp. 957–65; and on his time in Florence, Pignatelli, ‘Il p. Virgilio Cepari’, pp. 3–44. 104 Cepari’s letter appears in I quaranta giorni, p. 263.

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to the nun.105 In him Maria Maddalena found a peer to guide her who was personally persuaded of her holiness.106 Born just two years before her in the central Italian town of Panicale, he joined the Jesuits in 1582, the same year that she entered Carmel. He later penned two spiritual works that reflected his interest in the mystical life, an interest that had been furthered by his relationship with Maria Maddalena. The first was a treatise on the ways in which God reveals himself to the soul (Discorso de i varij modi co’ quali Iddio si dà a conoscere all’anima e de i gradi per li quali la guida, 1611), whilst the second concerned the presence of God (Essercizio della presenza di Dio, del p. Virgilio Cepari della Compagnia di Giesù, 1621).107 By the time Cepari was introduced to Maria Maddalena, the nuns of her convent were persuaded of her sanctity and had even attributed healing miracles to her intercession.108 Several clerics had also already given their verdicts, based not just on what she said and did in rapture, but on how she acted in general. A particularly persuasive test had been made early on, in 1585, when Agostino Campi had ordered Maria Maddalena to keep to the common life of the community and not follow a set of injunctions that she said she had received in rapture and that included keeping a more austere diet.109 When Maria Maddalena tried to obey, it seemed to become impossible for her to swallow and after several days the confessor approved her particular diet. It was an experience that echoed several earlier holy women, including Catherine of Siena and Colomba da Rieti, who had also found themselves unable to eat.110 The physical sign was compelling, as was the underlying Christian virtue seen in her humble submission. The following year the archbishop of Florence, Alessandro Ottaviano de’ Medici, personally conferred his approval when he visited the convent for the election of a new prioress and met Maria Maddalena.111 Despite attempts to avoid the meeting—the nun’s superiors reportedly feared what he might say if he saw her—she fell into ecstasy in front of him and even spoke boldly to him ‘in the person of the eternal Father’, telling him that ‘it was the will of God that he should contribute to the work of renewing the Church (renovatione della Chiesa) and most of all to the reform of religious (riforma de’ religiosi)’.112 105 Ancilli, ‘I manoscritti originali’, pp. 337, 380–1; La probatione I, pp. 267–70, La probatione II, p. 273. 106 Mostaccio, Early modern Jesuits between conscience and obedience, pp. 138–9. 107 Virgilio Cepari, Discorso de i varij modi co’ quali Iddio si dà a conoscere all’anima e de i gradi per li quali la guida (Rome, 1611); this text was also included in the second work, Virgilio Cepari, Essercizio della presenza di Dio, del p. Virgilio Cepari della Compagnia di Giesù (Milan, 1621; Rome, 1621). 108 Amongst accounts of these is the testimony of Vangelista del Giocondo in P767, pp. 191–4. 109 110 I colloqui II, pp. 371–81. Bynum, Holy feast, p. 142. 111 La probatione I, pp. 38–40; V1609, pp. 56–8; P767, pp. 162–3, 178. 112 La probatione I, p. 39.

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The archbishop listened carefully as the nun spoke for about half an hour and he also talked further with her outside rapture later, when she predicted to him that he would briefly become pope. Based on this encounter the archbishop declared that he found ‘great foundation and prudence in her’.113 Although his visit was short, like Campi before him and Fabbrini and Cepari after him, encountering Maria Maddalena in person allowed the archbishop to assess her mystical claims in the context of what he saw of her as a nun. Maria Maddalena’s extraordinary claims ensured that she quickly stood out amongst the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli. Within one year of her profession, she had reportedly received the stigmata and the instruments of Christ’s Passion.114 She received the gift of mystical marriage and reported a number of raptures involving her heart, including the three Persons of the Trinity writing on her heart, an exchange of hearts with the Virgin Mary, and St Augustine writing on her heart.115 Frequently dramatic, her experiences captivated those around her and drew in more and more of her convent community. Looking back later, Maria Pacifica recalled that there were often many nuns watching by the time Maria Maddalena came out of her raptures.116 Some of her raptures positively demanded attention from all the nuns, not least her re-enactments of the Passion in which she went from room to room, or when she dashed around the convent buildings and rang the bells.117 She was even known to talk to other nuns whilst in rapture. Maria Maddalena’s mysticism was not purely an individual matter, but cemented her place at the very heart of her convent community, and it was here, where all aspects of her life were visible to be judged, that the seeds of her future fame for holiness were sown. If Maria Maddalena demanded a great deal of her sisters, they too demanded things of her, confident as they soon were of her holiness and special relationship with God. We see this above all in a number of miracles attributed to Maria Maddalena’s intercession at S. Maria degli Angeli during the course of her lifetime, miracles that confirmed her holy reputation still further. In 1591, Sr Maria Benigna Orlandini’s supposed leprosy appeared to have vanished after Maria Maddalena licked the affected parts of her body.118 It was a miracle that seemed especially to confirm the divine origin of Maria Maddalena’s ecstasies, since it occurred whilst she was in ecstasy. On another occasion, in 1588, Maria Maddalena’s intercession was said to have helped the La probatione I, p. 40: ‘gran fondamento e prudentia’. I quaranta giorni, pp. 211–12. 115 I quaranta giorni, pp. 248–9; I colloqui I, p. 218. St Augustine wrote ‘Verbum caro factum est’ on 24 March 1585 (I colloqui I, p. 265), and ‘Puritas coniunxit Verbum ad Mariam et Sponsum ad Sponsam’ on 28 April 1585 (I colloqui I, pp. 422–50). 116 117 P767, p. 230. La probatione II, p. 189. 118 P767, p. 196; V1609, p. 65. See also Morrison, ‘Strange miracles’, pp. 129–44 [doi: 10.1353/ log.2005.0008]. 113 114

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whole community after some wine that had turned bad was restored, saving the nuns from undrinkable wine.119 In these ways, Maria Maddalena’s sisters did not merely believe in her holiness in a general sense, but lived with it. They had, indeed, been quick to embrace it. They witnessed her favours, participated with her in some of her experiences, and called upon her as an advocate and champion for their community with God.

MARIA MA DDALENA ’S RELIGIO US VOCATION Like Teresa of Avila, Maria Maddalena’s deep immersion into the divine mystery led her to take up a passionate, missionary call for religious reform. For Teresa, that impetus had come as a nun in 1560, when, shocked by a vision of herself in hell, she embarked on a mission to follow the Carmelite Rule she professed as perfectly as she could, leading to foundations of reformed Carmelite monasteries.120 Maria Maddalena did not found a series of monasteries, but she did speak repeatedly about the need to bring ‘renewal’ (renovatione) to the Church, starting with members of the religious orders, and even spoke of this to the archbishop of Florence.121 Focused on the need to enhance observance amongst those in religious life, her message reflected earlier observance movements within the religious orders, including the Carmelites. She wanted in particular to bring her own community to greater observance of the Carmelite Rule and encourage others within the Church to follow lives of virtue. In the summer of 1586 Maria Maddalena experienced a series of particularly powerful raptures relating to religious observance that led her to a new level of zeal regarding reform more widely within the Church. During these months, Maria Maddalena dictated twelve letters whilst in ecstasy that addressed the topic of renewal of the Church with several people, including Pope Sixtus V (a Franciscan), the cardinals of the Roman Curia and Archbishop Alessandro de’ Medici.122 As letters, they drew a parallel with Catherine of Siena, whose prolific letter-writing would have been known to Maria Maddalena, and with Caterina de’ Ricci, with whom Maria Maddalena herself corresponded.123 The letters called for a model of reform that started with

119

P767, p. 192. Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of Saint Teresa: Religious reform in a sixteenth-century city, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2014), pp. 121–2. 121 On Maria Maddalena and reform, see in particular Barzman, ‘Devotion and desire’, pp. 183–5; and Scattigno, ‘Un commento alla Regola Carmelitana’, pp. 283–5. 122 L’epistolario completo, pp. 62–129. 123 Anna Scattigno, ‘Lettere dal convento’, in Per lettera: La scrittura epistolare femminile tra archivio e ipografia secoli XV–XVII, edited by Gabriella Zarri (Rome: Viella, 1999), p. 314. 120

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interior, personal conversion, not least amongst the members of religious orders. As far as we know, almost all of the letters probably remained unsent and were kept at S. Maria degli Angeli by Maria Maddalena’s own superiors.124 In so doing, these nuns temporarily muted her voice for reform beyond their own enclosure. But the letters still show that Maria Maddalena’s experience of mysticism was not solely personal; it caused her, rather, to look out to the bigger stage of her monastery, the Carmelite Order, religious life, and, indeed, the whole Church. After her death, the letters she had dictated in ecstasy remained hidden, but Maria Maddalena’s words of advice and teaching were used to demonstrate her passion for monastic rigour and promote the image of a nun who had inspired greater observance amongst her sisters. It was in terms of those sisters (rather than the whole Church) that Maria Maddalena’s calls for reform continued in 1587. For Maria Maddalena, the monastic vocation was centred on life in community: a call to practise love for others, to live obediently, and to follow a common life.125 In July 1587 Maria Maddalena claimed to have received an injunction to go barefooted and to wear the most tattered habit in the monastery.126 The call to be barefooted was a significant one because it echoed the calls made by the ‘discalced’ (barefoot, or without shoes) reform branches of several religious orders, including Teresa’s Carmelites in Spain. In a further telling moment, after receiving the injunction and also renewing her monastic vows and speaking about poverty, she added, still in ecstasy: ‘If I shall be told that I am founding a new rule, I can answer that this is not a new thing, but to make the rule perfect; all the nuns ought to do the same.’127 The emphasis here was on reform that returned to the primitive rule, the focus too of Teresa’s reform. The confessor and prioress ultimately permitted Maria Maddalena to observe these rules personally, but she nevertheless continued with her message for the whole convent. S. Maria degli Angeli was to be a beacon to other convents: Jesus, she told her sisters, ‘calls us to a more particular perfection’.128 On 21 July 1587 she relayed three things she had understood that the nuns were to do: besides increasing their prayer on feast days and fasting on Saturdays in honour of the Virgin Mary, they were to observe poverty more perfectly in order to be a ‘particular example to all religious of perfect observant living’.129 Less than two months later, Maria Maddalena claimed

124 Vasciaveo postulates that the letters to the pope and the cardinals were not sent, whilst letters addressed to Caterina de’ Ricci and Veronica Laparelli (a nun in Cortona) probably were. The fate of seven of the letters is unknown. L’epistolario completo, p. 48. 125 Scattigno, ‘Un commento alla Regola Carmelitana’, esp. pp. 288–92. 126 La probatione I, pp. 68–9. 127 La probatione I, p. 68: ‘se mi sarà detto che trovi regola nuova, posso rispondere che non è novità, ma fare perfetto la regola, però che tutte arebbono a esser così’. 128 129 La probatione I, pp. 84–5. La probatione I, pp. 75–6.

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to understand from the Virgin Mary that the convent’s written constitutions should be changed to include a note that the nuns should wear wool as in the original Carmelite Rule.130 In the records of her teaching and advice (ammaestramenti) offered throughout her time at S. Maria degli Angeli, Maria Maddalena placed great emphasis on the importance of the Rule and of religious keeping to the common life of their community.131 One of her later ecstasies, on 23 March 1597, brought her a vision of the perfect religious, in which she was shown religious life in the ‘perfection, vigour and beauty of its first founders’.132 Although Maria Maddalena did not found any new monasteries herself, her zeal for greater religious observance influenced her own community and contributed to an ongoing and important discussion within the Carmelite Order about how to live according to their Rule. In 1610, after Maria Maddalena’s death, the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli acquired papal approval for a new set of constitutions that took some of their inspiration from Maria Maddalena’s injunctions and teaching as well as from the convent confessor, Puccini, and the other nuns.133 The Congregation of Rites also approved a formal request from the nuns to observe the liturgical calendar of Carmelite saints, even though they followed the Roman Rite.134 This was something the Discalced had been permitted to do, but it also seemed to draw on Maria Maddalena’s personal injunctions to the nuns to pay more heed to the saints of their ‘own’ Order.135 Maria Maddalena’s message, both in and out of ecstasy, was unambiguous about the need to enhance religious observance and that she wanted the practice of religious life to return to its former splendour. Although the ‘political tenor’ of this nun’s reformer voice was lost in the process of writing her biography (and even, to some extent, in her sisters’ transcriptions), she nevertheless became a champion for observance within her own community— not least whilst holding the role of novice mistress—and her teachings were treasured by the nuns. Maria Maddalena was not presented as an energetic reformer, but her emphasis on observance did shine through and meant that she could be known as more than just a mystic: she could become a model for enhanced religious observance and an inspiration for future reform agendas.

130

La probatione I, p. 111. Renovatione, pp. 215–84; and Detti e preghiere, pp. 13–156. See also Scattigno, ‘Un commento alla Regola Carmelitana’, pp. 288–92. 132 La probatione II, pp. 244–7. 133 Regola & Costituzioni; Vasciaveo, Una storia di donne, pp. 161–70. 134 135 Regola & Costituzioni, p. 149. I colloqui I, p. 166. 131

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BE Y O N D T H E CL O I S T E R Maria Maddalena’s letters of renewal of 1586 are just one example (albeit a particularly charged one) of her sense of belonging to a community of believers that was much bigger than her own convent. Although the cloister offered something of a haven for mystics, it did not prevent their engagement with the world beyond its walls nor did it entirely prevent word of their reputation from spreading out. Thinking of the Protestant challenge in Europe, on the eighteenth day of Maria Maddalena’s forty days (13 June 1584), the mystic saw Queen Elizabeth I plunged into the depths of hell.136 Her zeal for the conversion of infidels made Maria Maddalena want to travel as a missionary overseas and, when letters from Jesuits serving in Asia were read out to the nuns during their meals, she would often be found crying because she wanted to join them and could not.137 Inspired by the lives of the saints, Teresa of Avila as a child had also longed to travel overseas and become a martyr, but like Maria Maddalena was unable to.138 In more devotional terms, too, Maria Maddalena situated herself within the Church universal. Her devotion to Diego de Alcalá, for instance, seems to have developed after his canonization by the pope on 2 July 1588 and found expression within her mystical experiences in the form of several visions of the new saint in the glory of heaven (19 July, 21 July, 22 July 1588, as well as on his first feast, 13 November 1588).139 We know that Diego was also embraced as a saint by other nuns in the convent, because in August 1588 Maria Maddalena used an image of the Franciscan that Vangelista del Giocondo had in her room in order to invoke his intercession for the restoration of some of the convent’s wine that had turned.140 Maria Maddalena’s extant personal letters (twenty-seven that were sent and fourteen she received) also speak to a mystic in touch with the world.141 These letters were clearly treated differently from those dictated in ecstasy in 1586 and they did cross the convent walls. Together, these speak of a nun who remained in close touch with friends and family despite her commitment to enclosure. Amongst those with whom Maria Maddalena corresponded was Maria de’ Medici, the daughter of Grand Duke Francesco I and, from 1600, queen of France.142 The two women had known each other since childhood and continued to see each other after Maria Maddalena entered the monastery. In a sign of their ongoing friendship, Maria de’ Medici wrote in 1596 to ask for her friend’s prayers and for spiritual guidance, since she held her in great

136

137 I quaranta giorni, p. 150. P767, p. 109. John Cohen (tr.), The life of Saint Teresa of Avila by herself (London: Penguin, 1957), pp. 23–4. 139 140 La probatione I, pp. 158–60, 161–4, 192–7. P767, p. 192. 141 142 L’epistolario completo. L’epistolario completo, pp. 200–2, 245–6. 138

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esteem.143 Perhaps this connection with the grand duke’s daughter influenced the local archbishop, Alessandro de’ Medici, when he encountered the young nun in 1586.144 Other letters betray Maria Maddalena’s place in the wider social network of S. Maria degli Angeli connected by people, gifts, and devotions as well as by written correspondence.145 In 1602, Giulia Sommai, a nun at the Dominican convent of S. Caterina da Siena whose niece had entered S. Maria degli Angeli that year, received a letter from Maria Maddalena that not only discussed her niece but also the loan of some of Alessandro Capocchi’s ‘relics’.146 Letters with various nuns at S. Giovannino, meanwhile, reveal Maria Maddalena offering guidance for resolving conflict in another convent and serving as a spiritual counsellor to others.147 Such exchanges as well as shared confessors and encounters at the convent grate worked together to help spread awareness of Maria Maddalena’s reputation for holiness in a limited way to the religious and secular world beyond her cloister. As early as 1588, she was already apparently drawing visits from lay people interested in her as an intercessor because her reputation for holiness had spread. That year, a girl named Caterina Spini came with her parents to see Maria Maddalena at the convent grate. Whilst speaking to them, Maria Maddalena fell into ecstasy and Caterina appeared to fall under attack from a malign spirit possessing her. The story emerged because Maria Maddalena commanded the spirit to leave the girl and those who saw the event claimed that she was liberated of the evil spirit miraculously.148 Maria Maddalena’s holiness, as interpreted by the nuns of her convent, was to be found in her virtue, her visions, her teaching, and her miracles. She was a prophet, a mystic, a spiritual counsellor, and a shining example of religious observance. She was also a member of their convent family on the banks of the River Arno. As much as she appeared blessed by the heights and riches of her spiritual life, she also faced exhausting struggles in which she battled with temptation and despair. Although graced with profound contemplation of the divine, her life was also scarred by encounters with the devil. All the while, Maria Maddalena was sheltered within and by her convent. Had she claimed similar experiences outside the monastery she might well have become better 143

L’epistolario completo, pp. 245–6. Alessandro was the son of Ottaviano de’ Medici and Francesca Salviati. He became archbishop of Florence in 1574, and was made cardinal in 1583. Between 1569 and 1584 he served as the Florentine ambassador to the papal court, but between 1584 and 1596 he was resident in Florence, prior to serving as papal legate in France. Sally Cornelison, Art and the relic cult of St. Antoninus in Renaissance Florence (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), p. 126. 145 Meredith Ray, ‘Letters and lace: Arcangela Tarabotti and convent culture in Seicento Venice’ in Early modern women and transnational communities of letters, edited by Julie Campbell and Anne Larsen (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 45–74. 146 L’epistolario completo, pp. 211–12. 147 148 L’epistolario completo, pp. 164–89, 194–9. P767, p. 191. 144

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known but also seen as more controversial. Moving, even running, around the convent in rapture, she was nevertheless contained by its walls. Here her life could be controlled and supervised by her monastic superiors and confessors. Here she could also be savoured by her fellow nuns, who embraced her as a spiritual teacher as well as a miracle worker. Within the monastery, Maria Maddalena could be championed as the model Tridentine nun with a zeal for religious observance whilst public knowledge of her ecstasies beyond the convent was limited. In these ways, the flourishing of her spiritual life owed a great deal to the convent in which she was protected, and specifically to the women and confessors with whom she shared her spiritual journey. It was they who, after her death, would do so much to promote her sanctity to others.

3 Beata Moderna As Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi passed from her earthly life, just over a mile away another Maria lay in bed wondering if her life was drawing to a close. Maria Rouai, the widow of one Paolo de’ Rossi, had been ill continuously for sixteen months, confined to bed and unable even to turn herself.1 Her sight had begun to weaken and she could only see whiteness. Having been sick for so long, Maria sought the help of two doctors who gave her various medicines and drugs, but her condition did not improve. It was just after sunset on Wednesday 30 May when Maria placed a bunch of small roses on her stomach. The flowers had been given to her by a priest, taken just a few days earlier from Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s dead body, where they had lain as fragrant decoration. Holding the flowers, Maria pleaded to Maria Maddalena to help her, since the various medicines were having no effect. Desperate for help, Maria turned not to a well-known, canonized saint, but to a nun who had only recently died, a nun she herself had not met. Maria fell asleep and awoke a short time later to discover she was well again. The next morning, the woman who had been confined to bed for so many months walked more than a mile on foot to the church of S. Maria degli Angeli and gave thanks at Maria Maddalena’s fresh tomb. Maria Maddalena, she claimed, had worked a miracle. Maria Maddalena’s death days earlier had attracted almost immediate interest. The morning following her passing, her body had been put on display in the church of S. Maria degli Angeli, first in the sacristy and then in the public part of the church, where the many people wishing to see it could access it more easily.2 Clamouring for objects, a large crowd of people ‘competed in holy fashion amongst themselves out of devotion to take those flowers that were spread on that blessed body, then kissing its cloths, and then touching the coffin, and then calling Suor Maria Maddalena beata and santa’.3 According to Maria Maddalena’s biographer, ‘it was necessary to recover the corpse abundantly with flowers so that each person might then leave satisfied’, the flowers

1 2

V1609, pp. 334–5; P767, pp. 6–7, 1363–4, 1366; Memoriale, ff. 2v–3r. 3 P767, p. 3. V1609, p. 195.

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being treated as relics.4 Amongst the ‘great multitude of people’ was Giorgio Ciari, the priest who supplied Maria Rouai with her roses. Indeed, so large was the crowd that another priest visiting, the Jesuit Gian Jacopo Bassi, found that he could not make his way into the church.5 Some visitors such as Ciari and the noblewoman Virginia Rinuccini had known Maria Maddalena personally.6 Others had not, but were instead drawn by the commotion at the convent church, as in the case of Pietro Alli (a Roman nobleman) and his wife Lucrezia, who lived locally in the parish of S. Frediano. Another local resident, Maddalena de Rossi, had not known Maria Maddalena but reported later that she had seen many people running to the church that day with flowers ready to touch the body.7 Within just twenty-four hours of her death, Maria Maddalena had been embraced devotionally as a saint and source of relics. The essentials of a cult were born. Maria Maddalena’s ‘transito’, her death, was a moment of transition for her cult, for only a deceased person was deemed worthy of a public cult.8 With the opportunity to start a campaign for her formal canonization by the pope, a new phase began in the formation of her holy reputation. The nuns of her convent had already expended considerable effort recording Maria Maddalena’s ecstasies and now worked together with their confessor and other clerical advisers to obtain the papal declaration that Maria Maddalena was a saint. The work that had already been done—not least the creation of a written record— suggests that key figures in the convent had long believed Maria Maddalena had an important message for the wider Church. Her canonization would confer obvious prestige on the monastery of S. Maria degli Angeli and attract interest in the community; but the nuns were also, as a group, devoted to their sister, who had appeared to go into rapture before them, had inspired them to seek greater religious observance, and whose intercession had resulted in miraculous healings. A manuscript entitled Memoriale per la Beata M’re Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, in which the nuns recorded the details of Maria Maddalena’s devotional cult and canonization process, notes the ‘pain’ they felt at losing their holy mother and their ‘tears of sorrow’, which mingled, however, with their ‘tears of spiritual sweetness’.9 Her death was a highly emotional event for these nuns, the moment when they lost her live physical presence amongst them. 4 P767, p. 1455; and V1609, p. 195: ‘per sodisfare alle sante voglie del popolo . . . bisognava ricoprire il cataletto di abbondanti fiori, perché ciascuno quindi si partisse sodisfatto’. For an introduction to the importance of relics, see Sallmann, Santi barocchi, pp. 424–37; and Martina Bagnoli (ed.), Treasures of heaven: Saints, relics, and devotion in medieval Europe (London: British Museum Press, 2010). 5 6 7 P767, p. 1396. P767, p. 22. P769, f. 246v. 8 Delooz, Sociologie et canonisations, p. 9; Sallmann, Santi barocchi, pp. 370–5. 9 Memoriale, f. 1r. The introduction notes that the text will record all manifestations of her sanctity following her death and beginning ‘this present year 1607’.

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Even if the nuns personally believed in Maria Maddalena’s saintliness— her body, Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia later said, breathed ‘devotion and holiness’—achieving her canonization must have appeared a daunting task. In the first years, they worked together with their confessor-governor Vincenzo Puccini and their erstwhile extraordinary confessor Virgilio Cepari to nurture devotion to Maria Maddalena and persuade the local bishop to open a canonization inquiry. For both Cepari and Puccini, the prospect of being identified for posterity as the spiritual advisers to a saint must have amplified their interest in making Maria Maddalena better known, as it had for other confessors to holy women.10 From the outset, the work undertaken to advertise Maria Maddalena’s holiness and open the first official inquiry into her sanctity was a broad effort in which the nuns were ably assisted by several enthusiastic clerical supporters, as well as by lay devotees.

CONCERNS ABOUT UNAUTHORIZED DEVO TIONS In many ways the instant outpouring of interest at the time of Maria Maddalena’s death appeared to be a good omen for the progress of her cult and the prospects for her eventual canonization. It reflected a starting level of awareness of the nun, and interest in her holiness and her abilities as a miraculous intercessor. It also provided a growing number of people with relic-like objects of devotion and physical items on which they could concentrate their prayers. In essence, there were signs of the vox populi (voice of the people) and fama sanctitatis (fame of holiness) that canonization had long required.11 However, whilst some clergy, such as Giorgio Ciari, were joining the ranks of devotees seeking these relics and the intercession of a fresh wouldbe saint, others, particularly in the papal Curia, were expressing concern about the risks of uncontrolled cults. For the latter, the unregulated nature of early outbursts of devotion was extremely worrying. Worrying too was the challenge they posed to the Church’s authority to define what and who was holy, for if people were being treated as saints publicly at the time of their death, what role was there for the canonization process? Uncontrolled cults risked getting out of hand and they also threatened to bring the matter of canonization into further disrepute, something that had raised concern at the Council of Trent. Although the Council’s discussion of this particular issue had been hurried, the outcome was significant: new relics and publicized miracles required approval from the local bishop.12 10

11 Bilinkoff, Related lives, pp. 33–41. Misztal, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 249. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, pp. 774–6; Adriano Prosperi, Il Concilio di Trento: Una introduzione storica (Turin: Einaudi, 2001), p. 87. 12

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The level of concern regarding new cults led Pope Clement VIII in 1602 to create a new Curial committee, the Congregazione dei beati (Congregation of Beati) in Rome to investigate so-called ‘beati moderni’, by which was meant those who had died recently but were the objects of public veneration despite having yet to gain papal recognition.13 New and public cults were of particular concern where the figure had belonged to a religious order that was giving powerful support to their cult. Recent figures of this sort prompted fraught discussion, appearing to stand on the boundary between the jurisdictions of the Congregation of Rites and the Holy Office (the Congregation of the Inquisition): were they saints on their way to canonization, or were they the cause of unofficial devotions that the Inquisition was eager to control, censure, and condemn? With the institution of the Congregation of Beati, the year 1602 in some ways had witnessed a ‘crisis’ for new would-be saints and the redefinition of who could be portrayed as holy.14 Amongst the nine theologians and seventeen cardinals of the new Congregation, the eight cardinals from the Holy Office and two from the Congregation of the Index far outnumbered the sole representative from the Congregation of Rites.15 With this, the censoring approach of the Holy Office was able to claim the upper hand. The Congregation of Beati was suspended in 1605, only to resume in 1607—the year of Maria Maddalena’s death—under the new pope, Paul V. Its work continued and, as Miguel Gotor has shown, it was this Congregation that in 1615 issued a decree censuring the public cult of Carlo Bascapè, the Barnabite bishop of Novara who had died that year and whose tomb quickly attracted devotees and votive offerings.16 Thereafter, the Holy Office became more directly active in the field. It was, for example, they who received a direct petition in 1620 from the Ministers of the Sick (a religious order) for permission to hang a portrait of their founder Camillo de Lellis over his otherwise unmarked grave, and who banned such a portrait despite the fact that Rome had already held a process for Camillo’s beatification in 1619 and the portrait would include no identifiers typical for saints (such as a halo).17 Devotion to Maria Maddalena thus developed in a period when there was significant disagreement regarding new cults and unrecognized beati. The degree of public veneration these figures might attract (particularly if they had lived recently) and the idea that their holiness had not been assessed by the institution of the Church lay at the heart of the debate. For someone like 13 See Gotor, I beati del papa, pp. 127–253; Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine Worship’, pp. 209–10; Ditchfield, ‘Thinking with saints’; Simon Ditchfield, ‘Coping with the beati moderni: Canonization procedure in the aftermath of the Council of Trent’ in Ite inflammate omnia: Selected historical papers from conferences held at Loyola and Rome in 2006, edited by Thomas McCoog (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2010), pp. 413–40; Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 57–8. 14 15 Noyes, ‘On the fringes’, esp. pp. 812–8. Ditchfield, ‘Thinking with saints’, p. 577. 16 17 Gotor, I beati del papa, p. 217. Gotor, I beati del papa, pp. 243–5.

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the Oratorian Antonio Gallonio, the devotion of the laity was important in demonstrating a would-be saint’s sanctity, with the success of a cult serving as its own legitimation.18 Within this view, the local bishop should monitor new devotions locally, and at the centre the Congregation of Rites (not the Inquisition) should discuss canonization. For others, such as Francisco Peña, an auditor of the Rota (the most important Church tribunal), spontaneous public devotion to someone before they had been judged worthy by a formal tribunal was entirely inappropriate and only private veneration should be allowed. The significance of this debate for a new would-be saint can be seen in some of the highly regarded and well-connected figures who attracted the early interest of the Congregation of Beati. In May 1602, for example, the translation of Philip Neri’s relics by Roman Oratorians to a splendid transept chapel in the Chiesa Nuova provoked fierce debate.19 The paperwork for Neri’s canonization was under discussion by the Congregation of Rites but no official statement had yet been issued and the event looked like the procession of a saint’s relics. Similarly audacious celebrations beyond Rome also attracted papal criticism and concern amongst various cardinals. This was particularly true when reports reached the Eternal City from Spain that some Jesuits had started erecting altars in honour of Ignatius of Loyola and had even falsely claimed that the pope had beatified their founder.20 The inclusion of these figures within the papers of the Congregation of Beati is an indicator of how unpredictable the situation was for would-be saints at the turn of the century. Canonization could not be assumed even for those much more famous than Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, so what prospects were there for this Carmelite nun? Amid concerns about new cults, seeking the canonization of a recently deceased figure must have appeared even more challenging than it had in earlier times. The nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli were perhaps better aware of these concerns than other religious women might have been because of their link with Virgilio Cepari, the Jesuit who had served as their extraordinary confessor whilst rector of the local college (1598–1601) and working on the campaign for Luigi Gonzaga’s canonization. In 1602 Cepari had moved to Rome where he had taken on the role of postulator for a number of Jesuit canonization causes, including that of Ignatius of Loyola.21 In a work on canonization penned at the turn of the seventeenth century, Cepari had expressed his concern regarding the censure of cults, stressing instead the need to avoid rules that were so rigid

18

On Gallonio, see in particular Touber, Law, medicine, and engineering in the cult of the saints, pp. 119–25; and Noyes, ‘On the fringes’, pp. 818–21, 833–7. 19 Ditchfield, ‘Thinking with saints’, p. 576. 20 Gotor, I beati del papa, pp. 63–4; Noyes ‘On the fringes’, pp. 821–2 and appendices. 21 Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, vol. 2, coll. 957–65.

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as to prevent the formation of new devotions.22 Taking an active interest in Maria Maddalena’s cult and cause, Cepari was able to guide and advise the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli as they promoted their sister relatively quietly and with the approval of their local bishop. Indeed, Cepari’s connection with the convent had already caused several of the nuns (including Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi) to gain practical experience of the canonization process from testifying before an inquiry into Luigi Gonzaga’s holiness led by the archbishop of Florence in 1600.23 The nuns were questioned regarding a healing attributed to Luigi’s intercession by Sr Angela Caterina Carlini after application of a small bone relic. She, together with three other nuns and two medical experts (Girolamo Mercuriale, doctor to the grand duke, and Andrea Torsi), were asked to offer testimonies as to what had happened. The nuns’ participation gave them a glimpse into the canonization process and, moreover, meant that they were aware of the important role that miracles played within it. Indeed, in 1607 Cepari, as a Jesuit involved in the Society of Jesus’ ongoing canonization projects, might have indicated to the nuns that Ignatius of Loyola’s cause had recently encountered difficulties precisely because it seemed to lack evidence of miracles.24 The canonization process itself specifically inquired into the fame of a candidate’s sanctity and proof of their miracles, both of which might reasonably inspire public veneration. Concerns voiced in Rome had created a difficult atmosphere for new cults such as Maria Maddalena’s; public manifestations of cult were not as yet entirely prohibited, but they did need to be fostered carefully and with episcopal assent, as the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and their advisers were well aware.

NURTURING DEVOTION The nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli lay at the heart of Maria Maddalena’s early cult. It is impossible to identify how far each worked as an activist for Maria Maddalena’s devotional cult, but the convent’s superiors in principle committed the whole community to the task of promoting their sister’s saintly reputation. From the beginning, these women were joined in the campaign by their confessor, Vincenzo Puccini. Building on their joint work, a network 22 Virgilio Cepari, Tractatus sanctorum or Directorium canonizationis sanctorum, cited by Benedict XIV, De servorum Dei beatificatione, Bk II, ch. 2 and ch. 48. See Gotor, I beati del papa, pp. 208–10. The original text has been lost. 23 Cepari, Vita del B. Luigi Gonzaga, pp. 288–91. 24 Gotor, I beati del papa, p. 237. On Ribadeneira’s attempts to do without miracles in his life of Ignatius, see Jodi Bilinkoff, ‘The many “Lives” of Pedro Ribadeneyra’, Renaissance Quarterly 52, 1 (1999): pp. 180–96 [www.jstor.org/stable/2902019].

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developed based on sharing Maria Maddalena’s relics ever further and, in addition, spreading news of her supposed miracles. The immediate commitment of the nuns and their confessor is best seen in some early elements of Maria Maddalena’s cult that, although looking spontaneous, on closer inspection indicate some forethought. A prime example is the large crowd (concorso) that was reported as waiting to view the nun’s body in the church of S. Maria degli Angeli in May 1607. In 1609 Puccini described it as ‘a very great marvel’, and the convent’s own chronicle, the Memoriale, reported it was a ‘marvellous thing’ because Maria Maddalena had been so retired from the world that ‘the fame of her sanctity had not spread far whilst she had lived’ and the nuns had only reported her death to some ‘intrinsic’ to the monastery.25 The emphasis was on a crowd that had not been cultivated, but had appeared spontaneously, its size and wonder reflecting divine will.26 Uncovering the names of at least some of those who went to see the corpse, however, suggests that the nuns had informed more than just a few people, who in turn had shared news of the exposition. Giorgio Ciari visited the body whilst it was still in the sacristy, but he had no formal role with the community and was parish priest at a church over a mile away; he had simply said mass at the convent several times. Another visitor to the sacristy, the Jesuit Claudio Seripando, appears to have heard of the death from his Jesuit community rather than the nuns.27 In the public church outside some visitors had family connections with other nuns, including Virginia Rinuccini (sister of Sr Maria Vittoria Ridolfi) and Paolo Ricasoli (cousin of Sr Vangelista del Giocondo). Also in the crowd was Antonio Pirovani, an employee of the Orlandini family, which had two nuns in the convent. One senses that the nuns knew how quickly the news of their sister’s death would spread. Even attempts to control the crowd—the very epitome of working to limit a cult— seem to have furthered interest in the nun rather than diminished it. According to the records, access to Maria Maddalena’s body was only stopped after enough flowers had been taken from the body that it required redecorating, and we know that people continued to wait outside because a miracle was claimed there by a woman who had prayed to be healed ‘by the merits of Maria Maddalena’.28 25 V1609, p. 195; and Memoriale, f. 1v: ‘fu cosa mirabile, che essendo ella vissuta occulta al mondo, e poco sparsa la fama della sua santità mentre che visse per la sua ritiratezza, ne essendosi fatto intender la sua morte a altri che a suoi parenti, a Padri del Giesù e a poche altre persone intrinseche al munistero ci concorse tanta gran’ moltitudine di gente’. 26 On the significance of a crowd (‘concorso’), see Sallmann, Santi barocchi, pp. 376–9. 27 Memoriale, f. 2r; V1609, pp. 333–4; P767, p. 4. 28 Memoriale, f. 2r: ‘Una donna travagliata da mal caduco essendo venuta per visitare quel corpo sperando ne meriti di quell’ anima Beata, ne potendo altrimenti entrare in chiesa si pose ginocchioni alla porta di chiese sopra la quale è dipinta una Madonna, e con gran fede pregò la vergine che per i meriti della M’re Suor Maria Madd.a gli rendessi la sanità, e subito si senti libera da quel male.’

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Displaying the body was a useful means of inviting public devotional interest with a practice that the Memoriale identified as ‘customary in this monastery’.29 Another useful custom was that of decorating the corpse with flowers, which devotees were able to remove and share. Without belief in Maria Maddalena’s holiness, these items were simply mementos of an event, but when taken and used as relics their designation changed. Since they were neither part of Maria Maddalena’s body nor items she had owned, they were not objects that required the approval of the archbishop in order to be made available as ‘relics’, nor were they formally distributed at this stage.30 If the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and Puccini sound extremely calculating in their behaviour, it is worth noting that many details of the first days after Maria Maddalena’s death were already to be found in the chapters of known biographies of other would-be saints and existing saints. Amongst the examples was Luigi Gonzaga, to whom the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli were particularly devoted, and it was surely no coincidence that the flowers covering his body after his death in Rome in 1591 had been treated as relics and taken enthusiastically in a similar way.31 From the outset, Maria Maddalena’s relics were in demand. ‘Continual requests’ were made to her monastery and many people asked where she was buried so they might seek her intercession.32 Within just a few days, the convent began to receive letters from nuns in other enclosed monasteries in Florence and beyond, some bestowing on Maria Maddalena ‘titles of holiness’ (titoli di santità), others revealing ‘holy jealousy’ that the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli had shared their lives with this woman.33 All asked for something belonging to her, ‘or at least some flowers that had touched her body’.34 Vincenzo Puccini swiftly applied to Alessandro Marzi Medici (1557–1630), the archbishop of Florence since 1605, for a formal licence to distribute relics.35 He did this, the convent chronicle knowingly commented, since the nuns ‘did not dare to give them out without his [the archbishop’s] word, she not having the title of Beata from the Church, even if she did amongst the people’.36 With this licence in hand, the nuns met the demand for their sister’s relics with an array of objects that suggested they had been Memoriale, f. 1v: ‘come è solito in questo munistero’. Episcopal approval was required by Trent: Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, pp. 774–6. 31 32 Cepari, Vita del B. Luigi Gonzaga, pp. 265–71. Memoriale, f. 2v. 33 34 Memoriale, ff. 3v–4r. Memoriale, f. 4r. 35 The archbishop’s family was not part of the Medici family but rather had been allowed to add the Medici name after serving Duke Alessandro de’ Medici and then Cosimo I. See Gilberto Aranci, Formazione religiosa e santità laicale a Firenze tra Cinque e Seicento: Ippolito Galantini fondatore della Congregazione di San Francesco della Dottrina Cristiana di Firenze, 1565–1620 (Florence: Giampiero Pagnini Editore, 1997), pp. 75–85. 36 Memoriale, f. 2v: ‘(perché non ardivamo senza sua parola darne non avendo ella titolo di Beata dalla chiesa, se bene l’aveva da popoli)’. 29 30

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preparing for this project for some time. Maria Maddalena had been buried in a fresh (silk) habit and her old habit kept to be cut into small pieces for devotees, each piece, no matter how small, serving as a relic.37 Other items she had used (secondary relics) were kept as they were, including her books, pictures she had drawn, and the bedding from her bed. The nuns even distributed a small amount of bread made by Maria Maddalena, which, since it must have been made before she had become bedridden, suggests the community had been actively conserving their sister’s items for several years.38 Already the nuns were in a position to share a varied collection of relics of their sister, but their ability to do so improved dramatically when Maria Maddalena’s body was exhumed in May 1608 and privately moved from its original burial place in the public church to within the nuns’ enclosure and above ground.39 The more accessible bodily remains could now be redressed, the pillow replaced, accessories added and removed again, all with a view to putting new items in physical contact with the corpse to create new tertiary relics. The burial places of holy people had become centres for piety for many centuries, so moving Maria Maddalena’s body within the enclosure involved some risk.40 In the preceding twelve months her burial place had become the principal focus point for devotees seeking her intercession and leaving votive and thanksgiving offerings of objects and money.41 In a sign of how important this site had become for Maria Maddalena’s devotees, both spiritually and emotionally, the convent chronicle recorded that ‘many people came to us distraught that we had taken [her] from the church and deprived the people of being able to visit that holy body’.42 The nuns too wanted to ‘savour her presence’, but to do so in greater tranquillity ‘and without impediment from the people’. For both groups, it was a question of being able to be in a space sanctified by Maria Maddalena’s body, the nuns impeded by their commitment to the enclosed life. And yet statements taken in 1612 suggest that the original burial site continued to serve as a devotional shrine, a place for offerings and gifts to be left, even after the body had been moved.43

37 Harline and Put, Bishop’s tale, p. 209, for example, comments on the relics of St Rombout being broken into ever smaller pieces. 38 P767, p. 23. 39 Piero Pacini, ‘I “depositi” di Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi e la diffusione delle sue immagini (1607–1668)’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 32, 1/2 (1988): pp. 174–5 [www.jstor.org/stable/27653221]. 40 Peter Brown, The cult of the saints: Its rise and function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1981). 41 Pierre Delooz, Les miracles: Un défi pour la science (Brussels: Duculot, 1997), pp. 42–3. On votive offerings left at shrines, see Angelo Turchini (ed.), Lo straordinario e il quotidiano: Ex voto, santuario, religione popolare nel Bresciano (Brescia: Grafo, 1980). 42 Memoriale, f. 5r, ‘Ci vennero molte persone si condolsono ed esso noi che avvesimo cavato di chiesa, e privio i popoli di poter visitare quel santo corpo’. 43 P767, p. 1427.

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Embellishing this space as they did and confirming it as a shrine, these offerings created a powerful visual advertisement for Maria Maddalena’s holiness.44 Maria Maddalena’s body, placed in a new ‘more seemly’ (più decente) wooden coffin paid for by the offerings of devotees, was now housed in her former cell, which had been transformed into an oratory just four months after her death complete with a wooden altar, a life-size crucifix and a picture of Maria Maddalena donated by Puccini.45 It was an intimate space where the nuns could encounter their sister in a room already imbued with significance as the place where Maria Maddalena had died. The oratory cemented her tight bond with the enclosed community and allowed the nuns to pray to their sister privately. The significance of their prayers in this restricted space was not lost on others. In February 1611 the duchess of Mantua sent ten scudi to the nuns to ask that ‘we offer prayers at the tomb of our mother’.46 Likewise, in 1612 Sr Maria Benigna Lamberti, a Dominican nun in Lucca with family in Florence, sent alms to the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli specifically to request their prayers at Maria Maddalena’s tomb.47 The nuns had guaranteed their status as sole custodians of their sister’s body. The exhumation of 1608 was significant for another reason: the startling discovery that, despite a year in an extremely humid location, Maria Maddalena’s body remained incorrupt. The clothes in which it was dressed had been damaged by damp, but there was still skin on the bones and of the whole body only small sections of the nun’s nose and her lower lip were found to have decayed.48 The discovery added Maria Maddalena to a group of people revered, in part, for their incorrupt bodies, amongst them Caterina Vigri in Bologna.49 Virtually unchanged, the body retained a powerful vitality, its marvellous preservation challenging anxieties about death and decay and instead offering a statement of profound hope concerning the Resurrection.50 Not only was the body intact, but a sweet-smelling liquid was found emanating from around Maria Maddalena’s knees.51 Here was holiness entrancing through both sight and smell. The liquid seemed to validate the authenticity 44 Angelo Turchini, La fabbrica di un santo: Il processo di canonizzazione di Carlo Borromeo e la Controriforma, (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1984), pp. 60–3; Alberto Vecchi, ‘Reliquia e tradizione orale nelle leggende di fondazione’, in Memoria del sacro e tradizione orale, edited by Pietro Scapin (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani, 1984), p. 47. 45 V1629, p. 440; Memoriale, f. 3r, f. 4r. Domenica da Paradiso’s body was also conserved in her former cell-cum-oratory; Calvi, Histories of a plague year, pp. 213–15. 46 47 48 Memoriale, f. 14r. Memoriale, f. 22v. P767, pp. 189–90. 49 Gianna Pomata, ‘Malpighi and the holy body: Medical experts and miraculous evidence in seventeenth-century Italy’, Renaissance Studies 21, 4 (2007): pp. 568–86 [doi: 10.1111/j.14774658.2007.00463.x]. 50 On incorrupt bodies, see Michael Carroll, Veiled threats: The logic of popular Catholicism in Italy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 208–25; Ulrike Strasser, ‘Bones of contention: Cloistered nuns, decorated relics, and the contest over women’s place in the public sphere of Counter-Reformation Munich’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 90 (1999): p. 274. 51 P767, p. 1455.

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of the body as a whole and, as it continued to flow over the following twelve years, provided a relic from the body itself without disfiguring it.52 Whilst Maria Maddalena’s body remained unfragmented and protected within the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli, her other relics—now including the liquid, testimony to the wonder of that body—were dispersed widely. Pieces of Maria Maddalena’s clothing drew their power from contact with her physical remains and in this way, even though they were not part of the body itself, they nevertheless contributed to the process of sharing out this nun’s physical presence. The whole habit of silk in which the body had been buried in 1607 was replaced in 1608 and again in 1610, when Cardinal Gonzaga visited the monastery to view the remains. Changing the veil alone was a much quicker operation and conducted more often, with a higher status attributed to pieces depending on their size, how long they had been on the corpse, and when they had been placed there (the anniversary of Maria Maddalena’s death was particularly prized).53 The accoutrements of the coffin were also changed, including the pillow on which Maria Maddalena’s head rested.54 This process—something that amounted to relic production—was facilitated by the relative ease with which the nuns were able to handle their sister’s dead body. When the father general of the Discalced Carmelites visited in 1618, it was reported that the corpse was so firm and secure that two nuns alone were able to carry it ‘easily’ from the oratory to the chapter room, one supporting the head and the other the feet.55 The relics produced were distributed widely, first by the nuns and then farther afield and through ever more complex networks by other devotees. The care taken in the first days after Maria Maddalena’s death and the subsequent activity of the nuns in producing and dispersing an array of relics were both a good reflection of their passionate commitment to promoting their sister’s sanctity.

SANCTITY SHARED It was the non-corporeal nature of the vast majority of Maria Maddalena’s relics that made them so producible and, with that, widely available. Their rapid distribution helped to make her present beyond the convent, allowing her holiness to enter into people’s lives and relationships in tangible, material forms and, in this way, gave fuel to her devotional cult.56 Active though the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli were in the initial distribution of these, it was the Piero Pacini, ‘I “depositi” ’, p. 174. 54 55 Memoriale, f. 22v. P769, f. 192v. Memoriale, f. 29r. Howard Louthan, ‘Tongues, toes, and bones: Remembering saints in early modern Bohemia’, Past and Present 206, suppl. 5 (2010), p. 174 [doi: 10.1093/pastj/gtq017]. 52 53 56

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enthusiasm of devotees to share them farther afield that saw Maria Maddalena’s cult travel far beyond the immediate reach of her convent and become more than a mere Florentine interest.57 As her relics and holy reputation were shared, so the numbers of miracles attributed to her intercession grew and word of these also spread. Miracles are inevitably social events, either when someone chooses to invoke the would-be saint or when the miracle is recognized by others.58 The miracles attributed to Maria Maddalena were no exception: the desperation of another’s situation drew people to share their belief in Maria Maddalena’s holiness and intercessory power, whilst the joy of a seemingly supernatural outcome also prompted shared celebration. Examining the details of sixteen ‘miracles’ already attributed to the nun in 1607 quickly reveals the impact of sharing both Maria Maddalena’s relics and belief in her sanctity.59 The supplicants of 1607 were largely encouraged to turn to Maria Maddalena by their family, friends, or spiritual advisers, prompted by a testimony of belief and the provision of one or more of the nun’s relics. Personally sharing relics and a sense of reputation both played a major role in persuading these people that appealing to Maria Maddalena would be fruitful. The stories of Maria Maddalena’s early miracles speak to the importance of friendship and kinship to her nascent devotional cult. They offer a glimpse too of the role that relics and devotions could play in forging or maintaining personal relationships. Sharing relics—which meant sharing a belief in someone’s sanctity—was not merely a religious exercise but contributed to a person’s social network. The value given to relics and prayers allowed them to serve as gifts or services, and sharing them could be more than a simple demonstration of support for a devotional cult but an act of friendship or part of a wider set of social exchanges. As Maria Maddalena’s cult benefited from interest in her relics, so these objects also contributed to the social relations of those who valued them. The example of the Florentine priest Giorgio Ciari illustrates how one individual was able to become a persuasive advocate for Maria Maddalena amongst a diverse group of people, ultimately convincing several to identify the nun as a saint. We first encountered Ciari at the start of this chapter having encouraged his penitent Maria Rouai to seek Maria Maddalena’s intercession and providing her with flower relics taken from the nun’s body immediately after her death. Ciari seems to have supplied the relics involved in several other miracles attributed to the nun in 1607. Camilla Rustici, who frequently found herself unable to breathe, was encouraged to turn to Maria Maddalena with flowers provided by Ciari, who himself made the sign of the cross with them 57

David Gentilcore, From bishop to witch: The system of the sacred in early modern Terra d’Otranto (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 188–9. 58 Gentilcore, From bishop to witch, p. 168. 59 Memoriale, ff. 2v–4r; V1609, pp. 333–43; P767, pp. 6–7, 10–11, 19–20, 29, 32, 35–6, 39, 44, 90–1.

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over the unfortunate woman.60 Tommaso Grifoni, a doctor of law from the parish of S. Pier Maggiore (not Ciari’s parish), likewise received flowers from Ciari that he passed onto his neighbour Tommaso Fiaschi in June 1607 after discovering he was unwell.61 Shared and shared again, the reach of these relics exploded. So effectively did Ciari share the relics he had that he seems to have become known as a reliable source. At least, when Simone Cisti, a Franciscan friar at S. Croce, decided to turn to Maria Maddalena after ingesting some poisonous mushrooms, it was Ciari to whom he sent for relics, not the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli.62 Although Cisti had already chosen to invoke Maria Maddalena before her relics were made available to him, these objects still proved indispensable to his act of supplication: he sent specially for them and only invoked the nun once her relics were in his hand. Ciari essentially became a patron to Maria Maddalena’s devotional cult. He was not the only local priest to play this role: confessor–penitent and priest– parishioner relationships seem to have made a major contribution to introducing the nun to more potential devotees than the network of S. Maria degli Angeli alone could achieve, particularly where the priests took on roles as relic distributors. This work proved central to the spread of Maria Maddalena’s cult in Florence and, ultimately, far beyond. Amongst the priests to contribute in this way was Andrea Bindi, based at the parish church of S. Frediano close to S. Maria degli Angeli. Bindi’s collection of Maria Maddalena’s relics included a veil and several flowers that he kept carefully but also shared with others. One recipient was his penitent Pietro Alli, a Roman nobleman living in Florence who attributed a miracle cure to Maria Maddalena’s intercession after making use of Bindi’s veil relic.63 As he passed his relics out, Bindi shared his personal belief in Maria Maddalena as a saintly intercessor, just as Giorgio Ciari had. Bindi’s commitment to Maria Maddalena and his interest in sharing his belief in her saintliness can be seen in his decision to take several of his flower relics with him when he went one summer to stay in Sambuca and, encountering a girl at the neighbouring villa who was sick, gave her some relics.64 Because of Bindi, a girl who had previously not heard of Maria Maddalena now attributed her recovery to her. Clergy, of course, were not the only facilitators and on many occasions it was family members who intervened directly to seek Maria Maddalena’s intercession on behalf of a relative. Amongst the miracle cures claimed in 1607, for instance, was that of Alessandro Arrighi, whose terrible shoulder pains, which he had endured for three continuous days, ceased after his wife placed some flower relics on him.65 And in October that year Antonio Valderama, a Spanish nobleman who had been racked by fever and pains in his legs seemed to recover his health after his wife, María Suárez, applied a 60 63

Memoriale, f. 3r. P767, pp. 52, 55, 77.

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P767, p. 90. 64 P767, p. 77.

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P767, p. 49; V1609, pp. 342–3. 65 Memoriale, f. 3r.

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relic she already had and encouraged Valderama to join her in seeking the nun’s assistance.66 Valderama had heard of Maria Maddalena from his Jesuit confessor, Michele Girolamo, but it was his wife, the daughter of the Spanish consul in Florence, who had known Maria Maddalena personally and appears to have been the main factor behind their supplication.67 Other examples demonstrate that even more distant family members could act as effective agents for Maria Maddalena’s holy reputation and sell her as an intercessor worthy of approach in a time of need. Such was the case in September 1607, when Sr Maria Lessandra persuaded her sister and brother-in-law to seek Maria Maddalena’s help when their young son Orazio fell sick.68 Maria Lessandra was a nun at the monastery of S. Michele in Prato from where she wrote to Orazio’s parents in Florence advising them that it was well known in her monastery and throughout Prato that Maria Maddalena’s relics had worked ‘great miracles’. Meanwhile a friend of Orazio’s father also encouraged the troubled parents to seek the nun’s relics because they were known to have cured many sick people. Although living in Florence, Orazio’s parents apparently did not know the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli but diligently sought a relic and turned to Maria Maddalena for help based on these recommendations. Maria Maddalena’s devotees belonged to networks of family and religious that boasted a powerful ability to fuel a new devotional cult and establish a new figure in the saintly landscape. In Maria Maddalena’s case we need only turn to the early success of her cult in the city of Lucca to see how influential these networks were. The Lamberti family provide a well-documented link with Florence along which belief in Maria Maddalena’s holiness was transmitted. Alessandro Lamberti resided in Florence between 1609 and 1624 whilst serving as Lucca’s ambassador to the Medici grand duke, and in July 1610 attributed a miracle to Maria Maddalena’s intercession after discovering himself cured of an acute pain in his right arm.69 Lamberti’s wife had applied a relic (part of Maria Maddalena’s bed sheet) to his arm whilst he was sleeping and when he awoke the pain had vanished. Describing his healing as miraculous and attributing it to Maria Maddalena, the ambassador developed a regular devotion to the nun that included reading her biography and keeping her picture in his room. Within months, Lamberti’s experience not only influenced his own devotional life and prompted him to gather fresh relics, but inspired him to introduce Maria Maddalena to others, particularly members of his family in Lucca, with whom he shared relics and information about the nun. By the time Lamberti’s eighty-year-old mother Lucrezia fell ill with breathing difficulties during the carnival of 1611, she had already received a small bunch of flower relics from her son which she took hold of devotedly before finding herself well again. Lamberti’s sister, Sr Maria Benigna 66 68

67 P767, pp. 39, 1444. P767, p. 38. P767, pp. 18–19; also V1609, pp. 541–2.

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P767, p. 1377–9.

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Lamberti of the convent of S. Domenico in Lucca, also received flowers and other relics of Maria Maddalena from her brother, which she and another nun of her convent, Sr Anna Lippi, used to seek Maria Maddalena’s intercession in the autumn of 1611. Both claimed miraculous cures following their use.70 We have no specific evidence that Lamberti was the first to introduce Maria Maddalena to Lucca as a whole, but we can clearly trace a link between the ambassador’s devotion in Florence and a growing interest in Lucca amongst his relatives and their associates. Those associates were particularly numerous because through S. Domenico Sr Maria Benigna Lamberti belonged to a network of women religious and priests in Lucca who shared their devotional interests and relics between them. After Maria Benigna made her claim, some of her fellow nuns wrote to their relatives at the local convent of S. Chiara with news of the miracle and, since the letters were read aloud, the whole community there quickly learned of what had taken place.71 Even before this, the nuns of S. Domenico had heard of miracles attributed to Maria Maddalena in other convents, including S. Giustina, where a miracle had been attributed to the nun in May 1611. News of that miracle was also shared with the nuns of S. Chiara through their doctor Giuseppe de’ Nobili, who ordinarily attended all three of the convents and presumably also shared the news with S. Domenico. The prior of SS. Giovanni e Reparato, Cesare Turrettini, also regularly visited several convents in the city and it was he who passed the veil relic that had cured the nun at S. Giustina to the convent of S. Chiara in June 1611 and to S. Giuseppe that autumn.72 Doctors and priests in particular made a major contribution to the porous nature of convent walls; they shared sometimes daily news with nuns, but also shared devotions and devotional objects in both directions across the divide. It is worth noting, too, that none of these convents was Carmelite. Indeed, they belonged to various orders: Dominican (S. Domenico), Benedictine (S. Giustina), and Gesuate (S. Giuseppe). Despite the different religious rules that each community followed, these women nevertheless took an interest in Maria Maddalena and we know, for instance, that her biography was read in the refectory during meals at S. Chiara as part of the community’s practice of communal spiritual reading.73 Maria Maddalena’s appeal successfully spread between a range of convents, not just Carmelite or Florentine convents. Like the nuns in Lucca, devotees more broadly belonged to extensive networks. These might incorporate family and friends, parishes and workplaces, religious associations, and spiritual advisers. Sharing Maria Maddalena’s material relics through networks such as these did much to extend her appeal as an intercessor by also sharing news of Maria Maddalena’s miracles 70 72

P767, pp. 1509–12. P767, p. 1578.

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P767, p. 1529. P767, p. 1527.

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and belief in the power of her relics. Physical object and personal testimony worked together to cement Maria Maddalena’s reputation as a miracle worker. Unsurprisingly, miracle claims were typically first shared with members of the household or convent in which the event had taken place. Maria Rouai, for example, having found herself healed in May 1607 following the application of some of Maria Maddalena’s flowers, said that she felt a great desire to go all around her home and tell her brother and family that she had been cured through the nun’s intercession.74 Besides the excitement of something extraordinary happening, theologically speaking the purpose of miracles was to demonstrate the glory of God through his saints and so there was an impetus for those involved in any possible miracles, like Maria Rouai, not to remain silent but to advertise what had taken place. Such events were social events, and although personal experiences, they could be made public in a variety of ways, particularly through an offering at a shrine or inclusion within a published biography. Between 25 May 1607 and 29 December 1611, some 210 votive offerings were left at the church of S. Maria degli Angeli.75 In the same period, 350lb of wax and 10lb of oil were offered. Ex-voto offerings of wax or metal body parts, painted images or other objects brought even more colourful public testimony to miracles worked and the vitality of Maria Maddalena’s cult.76 They were an advertisement of holiness to anyone who entered the church. They also, importantly, opened up the personal experience of a miracle to a new, wider audience of people who might not know anyone involved. It was here, by providing the principal physical space for seeking and celebrating Maria Maddalena’s miracles, that S. Maria degli Angeli assured its central place in a devotional cult that had already, by 1611, begun to expand far beyond the convent’s own immediate reach as a community. The tremendous success of Maria Maddalena’s early cult depended on collaboration between the nuns, their confessor, and their clerical friends. This was, above all, a team effort. The ceremonies surrounding Maria Maddalena’s death and the creative production of relics speak particularly to the well-informed enthusiasm of the nuns and their hope to establish a devotional cult in such a way as to open up the possibility of canonization. As the principal source of relics and the place where people best offered their thanks for graces and miracles received, S. Maria degli Angeli was destined to remain the centre of the cult they established. But from the earliest moments of that cult, it was the further sharing of relics and Maria Maddalena’s reputation for holiness by followers beyond the convent that helped the nun to be embraced more widely as a miracle worker and saint. Relics—objects that could be 74

75 P767, p. 7. P768, p. 232. On ex-voto offerings, see in particular Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser, Spectacular miracles: Transforming images in Italy from the Renaissance to the present (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), pp. 142–56. 76

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touched and held—helped to persuade new people to seek Maria Maddalena’s intercession and, with the claims of miracles growing, added to the stories of wonders that were being shared. Establishing Maria Maddalena as a possible saint succeeded not just because people wanted to receive her relics and tell their story of a miracle, but because they wanted to share her relics with others and hear of miracles she had worked.

4 The Life of a Saint When Vincenzo Puccini published his biography of Maria Maddalena in 1609, he offered it as a public gift to the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli whom he served as confessor: ‘Behold, reverend sisters and daughters in Christ,’ he wrote, ‘for I represent to you in these pages that clear example of sanctity that dwelling amongst you on earth gave you a clear demonstration of the angelic life.’1 Despite the large-scale textual production undertaken within S. Maria degli Angeli during Maria Maddalena’s lifetime, this was the first public written attempt at presenting Maria Maddalena’s life as that of a saint. The book was designed to form the basis for an official cause for beatification but it also marked a major milestone for Maria Maddalena’s cult because of its role in promoting the nun to a large audience. The life stories of the saints had been at the centre of Catholic devotional practices and literature for centuries.2 They were to be found in written biographies and miracle collections, as well as in liturgies and religious pictures. They also peppered sermons, were represented in plays, and found expression in the oral culture of religious and laity alike, including amongst the many confraternities in existence.3 In the early modern period, these biographies took on a new significance as part of a mission of instructing the Catholic faithful more effectively and as a wider demonstration of the value and legitimacy of the saints in the face of Protestant criticisms.4 In their various forms, these lives were central to Catholic culture, enabling the faithful on earth from across the social spectrum to build their sense of communion

1 V1609, ‘Alle venerande madri’: ‘Ecco, Reverende Sorrelle, e figliuole in Christo, ch’io vi rappresento in queste carte quell chiaro esemplo di santità, che frà voi dimorando in terra vi diede sì chiari saggi d’Angelica vita’. The letter was dated 1 May 1609. 2 Sofia Boesch Gajano, Agiografia altomedioevale (Bologna: il Mulino, 1976). For a recent introduction, see Bartlett, Why can the dead, pp. 504–86. 3 Alison Knowles Frazier, Possible lives: Authors and saints in Renaissance Italy (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2005), esp. pp. 8–9. 4 On Tridentine hagiography, see Simon Ditchfield, Liturgy, sanctity and history in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and the preservation of the particular (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 117–34.

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with those now believed to be in heaven. They also provided examples to imitate, set within the understanding that all should seek to be saints. Written biographies had proliferated with the advent of printing and proven able to reach a wide audience.5 Many of these texts published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries discussed subjects who had already been canonized; many were also revisions, translations, or anthologies of existing texts.6 Puccini’s challenge was rather different, however, for he needed to write a new life for a recent would-be saint, the content of which would be suitable for public consumption and also form the basis of an appeal to Rome for her canonization, setting out a version of her life and miracles against which a future official inquiry might judge her.7 Happily, Puccini had a large number of sources to help him in his project, not least the transcriptions of Maria Maddalena’s experiences as well as Maria Pacifica’s account of her childhood. The result was a biography that diligently presented Maria Maddalena as an historical reality, an exemplar, and an intercessor. Puccini drew substantially on existing hagiographic motifs and claimed parallels with other holy figures in order to insert his nun into the established landscape of saints. He also carefully set out that her intercession had already worked many spectacular miracles, in life as well as after her death. The fact that Maria Maddalena’s biography was shaped by her confessor was, in itself, unremarkable. What is interesting is precisely how Puccini’s biography was written, the way that it was written with a canonization process in mind, and what was rewritten in order to present Maria Maddalena in saintly terms. As we shall see, this careful presentation played a major role in the official inquiry into Maria Maddalena’s sanctity and also contributed to the ongoing development of her devotional cult.

COLLABORATIVE HAGIOGRAPHY Although the frontispiece of the 1609 Vita hailed Puccini as its author, the book had been a collaborative venture involving the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli who had known Maria Maddalena far longer than their confessor had. In a letter to the reader, Puccini keenly stressed that his text had come from their transcriptions that had been ‘commissioned’ by their superiors; ‘her whole life has become known,’ he explained, ‘since all that she did or said in 5

Bilinkoff, Related lives, p. 4. Simon Ditchfield, ‘What was sacred history? (Mostly Roman) Catholic uses of the Christian past after Trent’, in Sacred history: Uses of the Christian past in the Renaissance world, edited by Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 72–98. 7 On proposing saints, see Aviad Kleinberg, ‘Proving sanctity: Selection and authentication of saints in the later Middle Ages’, Viator 20, 1 (1989): pp. 183–205 [doi: 10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301354]. 6

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her raptures or referred to two mothers . . . was noted down minutely by the nuns . . . , whereby they fill four volumes of very large books, from which have been taken the most worthy things contained in this storia’.8 Puccini’s letter also detailed that in April 1609, just before publication, the vicar general in Florence had overseen a ceremony at S. Maria degli Angeli during which a group of sixty nuns who had witnessed Maria Maddalena’s actions and experiences offered attestations regarding the accuracy of Puccini’s work chapter by chapter. Although officially written by a cleric, this first biography was very much a group project that depended on the nuns’ transcriptions and their approval. It was this collaboration, indeed, that lay at the heart of the text’s success. Puccini did not merely consult the nuns’ transcriptions, but included ‘excerpts’ taken from them, essentially providing an anthology in which edited selections were woven into the narrative or appended to it. The final text included a great deal of the transcriptions: excerpts formed the majority of the second part of the first edition of the Vita in 1609 and of four further parts added to the second edition of 1611.9 As Puccini explained, the original texts were often long, muddled, and difficult for the reader to follow, and his editorial work did indeed make them more manageable.10 Placing excerpts within the context of a biography with a narrative arc and a discussion of the everyday could make them more accessible to a bigger audience.11 It also meant that sections could be omitted or moved and events rearranged; the excerpts as a whole were read within a framework determined by Puccini. Yet the attestations offered by the nuns were convincing enough that once the Vita was published, it was this work rather than the transcriptions that was mined as the primary text for Maria Maddalena’s life and ecstasies. Prior to her beatification Puccini’s was the only biography to be published in Italian or in translation, and later texts continued to rely heavily on it. A new Vita published in 1629 to include details from the beatification process was a version of Puccini’s put into ‘better order’, and the publication of Maria Maddalena’s Opere in 1643 by Lorenzo Maria Brancaccio was simply a rearranged compilation of extracts taken from Puccini’s Vita.12 Even in 1669, Puccini’s text served as the main source for a selection of fifty of Maria Maddalena’s ecstasies published in celebration of her canonization.13 V1609, ‘Al devoto lettore’. V1609, pp. 199–332; V1611, (second numbering) pp. 1–203, 209–358, 366–476, 479–572. 10 V1609, ‘Al devoto lettore’. 11 Chiara Frugoni, ‘Female mystics, visions, and iconography’, in Women and religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, edited by Daniel Ethan Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 152. 12 V1629; Lorenzo Maria Brancaccio, Opere della B. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi carmelitana, raccolte dal M. R. padre maestro fra Lorenzo Maria Brancaccio carmelitano dell’Osservanza di Santa Maria della Vita in Napoli (Naples, 1643). 13 Carlo Tomasi, Cento estasi de’ Santi Pietro d’Alcantara e M. Maddalena de’ Pazzi, cinquanta dell’uno, e cinquanta dell’altra (Rome, 1669), pp. 33–99. 8 9

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The sources are quiet about why and how Puccini’s biography successfully dominated the printed record of Maria Maddalena’s life in this way. By 1626, another biography by Virgilio Cepari seems to have existed in manuscript form, but it remained unpublished until 1669, when fifteen chapters (drawing on the canonization processes) were added to Cepari’s fifty-seven by another Jesuit, Giuseppe Fozi.14 In many ways Virgilio Cepari was the obvious choice as Maria Maddalena’s first biographer. He had known the nun for longer than Puccini, having served as extraordinary confessor to her convent in the late 1590s, when he had become a cherished spiritual guide to Maria Maddalena and introduced her to the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises.15 Although he had moved to Rome in 1602, he had remained in touch with Maria Maddalena and her sisters.16 Whereas Puccini had not previously had a biography published, Cepari had already penned a well-regarded biography of Luigi Gonzaga that the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli had read.17 Moreover, after moving to Rome Cepari had taken up the role as postulator for a number of Jesuit causes for canonization, making him something of a saint-making professional. In 1607, however, he was not in a position to easily consult the nuns’ manuscripts of Maria Maddalena’s experiences and might not, therefore, have produced the sort of source-based biography that Puccini created. Nor was he free to devote himself to the quick production of a text, encumbered as he was by the Jesuit causes that included Luigi Gonzaga and Ignatius of Loyola. Puccini’s role in Florence, and his formal appointment to S. Maria degli Angeli, put him in a unique position to prepare the biography that might be most useful to Maria Maddalena’s cause. Cepari worked on his biography after Maria Maddalena’s beatification process was already under way, possibly with a view to publication at the time of her beatification. He used details from the inquiry held in Florence, quoting from it at length for one of the chapters on Maria Maddalena’s period in serbanza at S. Giovannino.18 In another chapter in which he offered a short history and description of the monastery of S. Maria degli Angeli he noted that ‘at present’ it was home to two of Pope Urban VIII’s nieces, placing either its composition or part of its revision to after 1613, when Camilla Barberini had vested as a nun.19 Giuseppe Fozi later explained that publication had been delayed in 1626 for an unknown reason, but perhaps because another biography had just been published.20 We know that at this time Anton Maria V1669, ‘Lettore’. Mostaccio, Early modern Jesuits between obedience and conscience, pp. 138–9. 16 L’epistolario completo, pp. 253–65, 275–81. 17 18 19 Cepari, Vita del B. Luigi Gonzaga. V1669, pp. 20–5. V1669, pp. 35–6. 20 V1669, ‘Lettore’: ‘Questa vita la quale fin dall’ Anno 1626 era stata destinata alle stampe, e à godere della publica luce, rimase non sò per qual cagione imperfetta e forse, perche nel medesimo tempo erasi publicata in Firenze, la scritta dal Signor Puccini, ò per altro, no’l saprei ridirvelo.’ 14 15

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Riconesi, then confessor to S. Maria degli Angeli, was preparing a new version of Puccini’s biography to include details from the beatification process, but this was not published until 1629. The Carmelite scholar Pedro Brava has instead suggested that it was Cardinal Francesco Barberini who stopped the publication of Cepari’s biography so as not to delay Maria Maddalena’s beatification by raising discrepancies with Puccini’s text.21 Knowing the process of canonization as he did, Cepari himself may have hesitated about publishing at this point in order to avoid muddying the waters with a second account. And yet it seems that there were enough potential benefits to having a second publication that Cepari put pen to paper in the first place, even if it was several decades before the product appeared in print. Writing to Puccini in January 1626, Cepari explained that his aim was to present ‘all the virtues and imitable deeds (atti imitabili)’ of Maria Maddalena’s life that might be ‘useful’ to readers, noting that they would not be able to imitate her in terms of ecstasies, visions, and revelations.22 The questions that still remain regarding Cepari’s biography should not detract from the significance of one biography alone determining Maria Maddalena’s published public image for so many years. At the first beatification inquiry held in 1612, with Puccini appointed as promoter, it was his Vita of 1611 that was used as the basis for all the articles on which witnesses were asked to speak, and was the text held up as the source for the whole of Maria Maddalena’s life, her ecstasies included.23 Even the nuns who witnessed their sister’s experiences were again asked to testify to the accuracy of Puccini’s Vita. In so doing, they—as eyewitnesses—confirmed the authority of this hagiographical text as though it were a direct account of Maria Maddalena’s experiences. Puccini’s text, first confirmed by the nuns in the presence of the vicar general of Florence, became the equivalent of the original transcriptions themselves.

A L IFE REWRITTEN The nuns may have insisted that Maria Maddalena’s Vita was accurate, but discrepancies with the transcriptions on which it was based suggest ways in which this was, like so many other hagiographies, an altered version of its 21 Pedro Bravo, ‘Presentazione e introduzione ai testi’, www.ocarm.org/books/content/ s-maria-maddalena-de-pazzi, accessed 8 Dec. 2015. 22 AMC, Libro nero, fasc. 24, f. 7 (Letter to Puccini, 3 January 1626), cited in Pedro Brava, ‘Presentazione’. The Libro nero (so-called after its binding) is a miscellany of documents that includes an account of Maria Maddalena’s final illness. 23 P768, p. 103.

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subject’s life. The Maria Maddalena that Puccini presented in the 1609 Vita was a model of virtue and an acknowledged miracle worker. The mystical experiences that had brought such drama to her life were certainly present too, but they were introduced to the reader gradually and interspersed with reminders of her virtue and the spiritual direction she received. Written with her canonization process in mind, this was not just a story of spiritual progress, but the careful presentation of a saint that involved reassuring the reader that her extraordinary experiences had been accompanied by signs of their divine origin.24 It is worth noting that Teresa of Avila’s texts had been examined closely by the Spanish Inquisition even after her death in 1582 precisely because of debate about their content and whether she, as a woman, could have been their author.25 Puccini’s concern about the reception of Maria Maddalena’s mystical claims can be seen in part in his repeated and firm statements that the original transcriptions had been examined and approved by many clerics during the nun’s lifetime, and neither a canon of Florence cathedral nor any (of many) Jesuits had found them wanting.26 Maria Maddalena’s identity as a model of monastic virtue was crucial to supporting the view that her ecstasies had indeed come from God, for it was her practice of the virtues (charity, humility, and purity) as well as the content of what was supposedly revealed that was seen as compelling proof of God’s favour.27 Conversely, diabolical illusions or hypocrisy might be identified by a person’s disorderly life, unbecoming behaviour, or lack of modesty. But even if raptures were deemed divine in origin, they were graces freely given by God and therefore not themselves accepted as proof of sanctity. Virtues (and miracles), by contrast, were accepted and demonstrating these would be vital if canonization was to be achieved. To see Puccini’s response to this challenge, we need only consider the care with which Maria Maddalena’s mystical experiences were first introduced within the Vita.28 His account of her childhood, covering the first four chapters, discussed her behaviour and demeanour, her rejection of material pleasures, how the nuns of S. Giovannino had already seen ‘true goodness’ 24

On the danger of including mystical claims, see Zarri, Le sante vive, pp. 114–7. And on spiritual progress providing the structure for biographies of nuns, see Nicky Hallett, Lives of spirit: English Carmelite self-writing of the early modern period (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 10. 25 Enrique Llamas Martínez, ‘Santa Teresa de Jesús y la Inquisición española’, Ephemerides Carmeliticae 13 (1962): pp. 518–65, expanded as Enrique Llamas Martínez, Santa Teresa de Jesús y la Inquisición española (Madrid: Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1972). 26 V1609, ‘Al devoto lettore’. 27 Stuart Clark, Vanities of the eye: Vision in early modern European culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 204–35. 28 On arranging mystical experiences within a hagiography, see Karen Scott, ‘Mystical death, bodily death: Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua on the mystic’s encounter with God’, in Gendered voices: Medieval saints and their interpreters, edited by Catherine Mooney (Philadelphia, PA: University Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 136–67.

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(vera bontà) in her, and that her prayer life had been directed closely from an early age by Jesuit priests.29 But it made no mention of the childhood visions and raptures to which Maria Maddalena’s own friends and family had attested: once on the feast of St Andrew (when she had felt herself pierced by an arrow of divine love), others whilst at S. Giovannino, and one more on the day of her vesting at S. Maria degli Angeli. All of these were noted by Cepari in his later biography, but were omitted from Puccini’s, which first described her in rapture on her profession day.30 Within the 1609 Vita Maria Maddalena’s mysticism resided within the cloister where she had, even before her profession, been identified as a ‘particular example of holiness’ (santità).31 Here her forty days of ecstasies in 1584 were shown to have graced an orderly and prayerful life, each following the reception of Communion and a great wonder to all who saw her.32 Nevertheless, Puccini’s discussion of the forty days at this point in the Vita was extremely limited. Besides some general comments, the text presented just one rapture from the period, a vision of the Dominican tertiary Maria Bagnesi in heaven.33 Rather than follow the chronology of Maria Maddalena’s life and immediately detail more of her experiences (which were instead included within a chapter in the second part of the book), Puccini chose to focus on the nun’s virtues.34 Whenever a rapture ended, he noted, ‘she returned immediately to her [fellow] novices and she behaved with them with such humility and sweetness that it never seemed that it had been she who shortly before had been seen participating in such high things of heaven, like one who has not been honoured with such gifts, but attends only to the true virtues and contempt of self ’.35 Such was her hatred of being singled out that when her superiors, seeing that ‘she was guided by God in a particular way (in modo particolare)’, wanted to take her from the novice community, Puccini noted that Maria Maddalena became extremely agitated.36 Introducing the nuns’ record-making at this point, Puccini stressed that although Maria Maddalena wanted to remain ‘vile in the sight of others’, she nevertheless dutifully reported her experiences.37 She did this, Puccini explained, through obedience, which she preferred ‘before any inclination of her own’, and because of a humble need she had ‘to be better assured whether or not there was any mixture of diabolical fraud’ involved. This need for reassurance brought her on several occasions to relate her experiences to her confessor and several 29

30 31 V1609, pp. 1–11. V1669, pp. 15–16, 20–1; V1609, p. 15. V1609, p. 17. 33 34 V1609, p. 15. V1609, pp. 19–20. V1609, pp. 199–207. 35 V1609, p. 17: ‘Quando poi piaceva a Dio Benedetto di restituirla a sensi, subito ritornava dalle sue Novizie, e con tanta umiltà, e dolcezza procedeva con quelle, che non pareva mai, che fusse colei, che poco dianzi havean veduta participare si altamente delle cose del Cielo; come quella, che non si pregiava punto di somiglianti doni, ma nelle vere virtù, e nel dispregio di se stessa solo si fermava’. 36 37 V1609, p. 16. V1609, p. 18. 32

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Jesuits, all of whom, Puccini stressed, found nothing ‘contrary to the Catholic faith’.38 In this way the concept of Maria Maddalena as a mystic was introduced long before her many visions and raptures were discussed in any detail. Puccini’s first move, instead, was to paint the portrait of a woman committed to the religious life and humble towards her superiors, who were convinced by what they saw. So important was the element of clerical approval that Puccini’s Vita moved immediately from Maria Maddalena’s vision of Maria Bagnesi in 1584 to an incident nearly a year later in May 1585, when the convent confessor had put the young nun’s claims to a practical test.39 The Vita acknowledged the dates of these two experiences, but the leap is nevertheless noteworthy because we know that during the intervening period Maria Maddalena had claimed to receive the stigmata, relived the Passion, and experienced St Augustine writing on her heart. These events were so significant that they appeared in detail later in the Vita, and yet they received not even a passing mention at their actual moment in the chronology. The next incident, from May 1585, instead displayed Maria Maddalena’s remarkable obedience and argued for the divine origin of her raptures. Maria Maddalena, it was said, had claimed to receive a divine instruction that she should consume only bread and water except on Sundays. Her superiors, ‘out of the great fear they had lest there might be some devil-craft in this’, ordered her rather to follow the common diet of the community but when she obeyed and tried to eat this food, she found herself unable to stop vomiting and her superiors conceded. Here, essentially, was physical evidence of both the veracity of Maria Maddalena’s claims and the strength of her commitment to obedience. Puccini had initially pledged to follow the simple chronology of Maria Maddalena’s life, but the arrangement of these two incidents demonstrates that he was willing to put chronological fidelity to one side in the service of presenting Maria Maddalena’s saintly credentials. If virtues were deemed essential to that project of presenting Maria Maddalena as a saint, then so too were her miracles. Puccini proved similarly willing to move accounts of these in order to maximize their links with Maria Maddalena’s mystical experiences. Dated to 1586 by Puccini, Maria Maddalena’s supposedly ‘miraculous’ liberation of a possessed woman, Caterina Spini, was reported immediately before detailing her encounter with the archbishop of Florence in July 1586, when he had given her his approval and she had (correctly) predicted he would later become pope.40 Here the proof of the archbishop’s election seemed to support the claim of a miracle, and yet in all the other sources Caterina Spini had been liberated in 1588, long after the 38

39 V1609, p. 19. V1609, pp. 19–24. V1609, pp. 55–8; La probatione I, p. 248. The articles for the beatification inquiry of 1612 did not state a date; P768, p. 39. 40

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archbishop’s visit. Interestingly, the next miracle Puccini detailed was a physical healing of a sick conversa nun that occurred whilst Maria Maddalena was in rapture, the implication being that the healing provided proof of the rapture.41 Puccini was in no doubt as to the significance of Maria Maddalena’s miracles to her saintly identity. Introducing the story of Caterina Spini’s liberation, he noted that God not only ‘enriched her [Maria Maddalena] with many celestial gifts’ but also worked many miracles through her—‘things that were impossible for humans’—as ‘great signs of her sanctity’.42 The 1609 Vita included twelve miracles attributed to Maria Maddalena in life and fourteen in less than two years since her death.43 The second edition of 1611, meanwhile, saw the addition of twenty-five new post-mortem miracles.44 The inclusion of miracles was a requirement of a hagiography, particularly if the text was in anticipation of a canonization inquiry. As Ribadeneira’s biography of Ignatius of Loyola had acknowledged in 1586, readers would be surprised if, all the things claimed being true, there were not then miracles by which God would ‘manifest the sanctity of this servant’ as with other saints.45 Some of Maria Maddalena’s miracle claims were detailed more than others in Puccini’s biography, but what is interesting is that many of them lack details of time or specific place even though their inclusion in the articles of the inquiry of 1611 would suggest Puccini was aware of them. By reducing the specifics, Puccini creates a more general sense of Maria Maddalena’s miracle-working, helping readers to imagine the nun too might intercede for them.46 And whilst the first part of the Vita is focused on providing the detail required for a canonization inquiry, the sections on miracles (which end the second and sixth parts) strike a different tone and instead look towards how Maria Maddalena might be seen as an intercessor approachable by all.47 Important though Maria Maddalena’s virtues and miracles were, any impression that Puccini somehow overlooked his subject’s mysticism is a false one. The priest made substantial use of the nuns’ transcriptions throughout the first part of the Vita by reporting Maria Maddalena’s words within his narrative, and he used longer excerpts in the second part, although he also put his editorial skills to use in order to make these more readable. Many of the changes made to the texts he used seem to have been stylistic, designed to weave the different texts together or abridge them in a sensible and 41

42 43 V1609, p. 66. V1609, p. 55. V1609, pp. 333–43. V1611, (second numbering) pp. 572–80. 45 Massimo Leone, Saints and signs: A semiotic reading of conversion in early modern Catholicism (Berlin and New York, NY: De Gruyter, 2010), pp. 106–7. 46 One example of the omission of details relates to a miracle claimed by Pietro Alli; V1611, p. 579; P768, p. 42. 47 Jodi Bilinkoff makes a similar observation about Ignatius of Loyola’s biography: Bilinkoff, ‘The many “Lives” of Pedro Ribadeneyra’, p. 184 [www.jstor.org/stable/2902019]. 44

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legible fashion.48 But this was not true of all the changes. An important example of a more interventionist style is to be found in Puccini’s account of one of Maria Maddalena’s key mystical experiences, her reception of the stigmata on 15 April 1585. This event is recounted at length in a chapter of its own in the second part of the Vita.49 Whilst the original transcription produced by the nuns presented this as a moment of dramatic comparison for their sister with Catherine of Siena, Puccini’s chapter made no mention of the Sienese mystic and drew parallels instead with Francis of Assisi. According to Raymund of Capua’s biography of Catherine—a book known to the nuns— Catherine had seen rays of blood coming from the crucifix transform into rays of light that had hit her body but left no visible wounds.50 The nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli described Maria Maddalena’s experience thus: She remained with her hands open and her eyes fixed on a Jesus she had over her bed, so that she seemed like St Catherine of Siena. Whereby we [the nuns watching] thought that Jesus at that point had impressed his holy stigmata. And so it was, albeit not exactly like St Catherine, as she later conferred to us in the colloquy we had with her on Tuesday, 16 April 1585, in which she told us how Jesus at that point had impressed the stigmata on her soul by way of infusion, and we heard that she said: ‘Not by insertion, no, but by infusion’ (‘Non immissione, no, ma infusione’). By which she wanted to say that they were not impressed on her body as for St Catherine of Siena, but had been infused in her soul. And that she saw with her eyes certain rays come towards her, but that the Lord quickly withdrew them to himself in that exterior form, but left her interiorly with that infusion in her soul.51

In Puccini’s account, by contrast, Maria Maddalena was described as kneeling ‘positioned in that way in which St Francis received the sacred stigmata’ and the rays that she received from Christ ‘seemed to be of fire’, even though they left no imprint.52 Perhaps Puccini’s most significant intervention of all, however, was in not mentioning the letters of renewal that Maria Maddalena had dictated in the summer of 1586. As Karen-Edis Barzman has argued, this coupled with Puccini’s presentation of other ecstasies in which the reform element was 48

Ancilli, Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, pp. 55–8. V1609, pp. 217–23. 50 Raymond of Capua, The life of St Catherine of Siena, tr. George Lamb (London: Harvill Press, 1960) pp. 175–6. 51 I colloqui I, pp. 331–2. 52 V1609, pp. 217, 222. Interestingly, Sarah Matthews-Grieco notes a painting of this incident in which only the habit distinguishes Maria Maddalena from contemporary representations of Catherine receiving the stigmata: Matthews-Grieco, ‘Models of female sanctity’, pp. 173–4. On depictions of Catherine’s stigmata, see Cordelia Warr, ‘Visualizing stigmata: Stigmatic saints and crises of representation in late medieval and early modern Italy’, in Saints and society, edited by Peter Clarke and Tony Claydon (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2011), pp. 228–47. 49

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omitted served to neutralize the nun’s otherwise powerful political voice.53 The Maria Maddalena of the 1609 Vita was a product of collaboration between her confessor and her fellow nuns, who were intent on achieving canonization, and it is telling that in that context Maria Maddalena’s calls for institutional reform were deemed unhelpful. Her saintliness lay instead in her personal religious observance, her other virtues, her miracles, and, once carefully presented, her extraordinary ecstasies.

BIOGRAPHY U SED Records of Maria Maddalena’s cult and her cause for canonization reveal some of the ways in which Puccini’s Vita of 1609 successfully extended awareness of her life and made a crucial contribution to the campaign to see her holiness officially recognized. Dedicated to the queen of France and with two prefatory odes by Ottavio Rinuccini (a celebrated poet and librettist who had written several texts for entertainments at the Medici court) and Alessandro Puccini (a Florentine studying in Pisa), it played a particular role in advertising Maria Maddalena to the learned and elite.54 Promoting the support of educated men and presenting the book as intended for a learned audience helped to paint Maria Maddalena as a serious figure, someone whose raptures and visions needed to be studied and appreciated even by theologians rather than overlooked or dismissed as the spiritual enthusiasm of an ignorant woman. Acquiring the interest of high-ranking members of society would not only provide a firm basis for Maria Maddalena’s new devotional cult, but these people might also make use of their power to supplicate influential cardinals within the Congregation of Rites and perhaps the pope himself.55 Furthermore, postulatory letters from distinguished churchmen, kings, and queens would be required for any process of canonization.56 Maria Maddalena would have to appeal, at least in part, to an elite audience if she was to be canonized.

Barzman, ‘Devotion and desire’, pp. 187–9. On Rinuccini’s court entertainments, see Francesca Chiarelli, ‘Before and after: Ottavio Rinuccini’s mascherate and their relationship to the operatic libretto’, Journal of Seventeenth– Century Music 9, (2003) [http://www.sscm-jscm.org/v9/no1/chiarelli.html]. On Alessandro Puccini, see Giulio Negri, Istoria degli scrittori fiorentini (Ferrara, 1722), p. 23. 55 Zarri, Le sante vive, pp. 100–1 stresses the significance of elite support. Ditchfield, Liturgy, sanctity and history, pp. 223–6 discusses a similar campaign on behalf of Gregory X in 1623–4. 56 Michael Goodich, Miracles and wonders: The development of the concept of miracle, 1150–1350, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 73 notes these letters were sent to the pope from the twelfth century. 53 54

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Within months of the Vita’s publication in May 1609 all one thousand copies had been distributed.57 We are told that many requests had come prior to publication from people in Rome, Naples, and Venice, as well as other cities, and the nuns and Puccini sent further copies unsolicited in the hope of securing support.58 Amongst those influenced by the Vita was the new wife of Grand Duke Cosimo II, Maria Maddalena d’Austria, who, not long after its publication, attributed a miraculous healing to Maria Maddalena’s intercession. The grand duchess, who had only arrived in Florence in 1608, had been sick for eight months with a fever and severe pains, during which time she had reportedly ‘used very many remedies and said many prayers and applied various relics of saints’ (of which the grand duchess had a large and growing number).59 On 8 July 1609, a scapular and habit belonging to Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi were taken to the grand duchess by a priest following a request from the court, and the grand duchess subsequently claimed to be healed.60 On 19 July she visited the tomb at S. Maria degli Angeli in thanksgiving, donated 100 scudi to fund a more elaborate coffin, and talked with the nuns about their sister’s life and miracles. The nuns, for their part, gave her a special relic, an image of Christ during his Passion that Maria Maddalena had drawn on card. The grand duchess was known to be especially devoted to her biblical namesake Mary Magdalen, but no account suggests that the shared name particularly influenced her interest in Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi.61 Prior to her recovery, the Medici women had not participated in Maria Maddalena’s nascent cult, but after the summer of 1609 they became repeat visitors to the convent, particularly on 25 May for the annual celebration of the nun’s ‘feast’. The grand duchess visited ‘unexpectedly’ on this day in 1610, together with her daughters and their matrons, and they were often seen visiting thereafter, as were the Medici princes.62 The women of the Medici court in particular ultimately proved to be staunch supporters, both as advocates for Maria Maddalena’s canonization and as public ambassadors whose visible devotion attracted the attention of further potential devotees. They had not been immediate supporters, but the combination of Puccini’s Vita, Maria 57 Memoriale, f. 10r: ‘essendosene stampate mille e stato tanto il concorso delle persone che hanno mandato per esse che in pochi mesi si sono tutte spaciate e non se ne trova più per danari’. 58 Memoriale, f. 10r; Ludovico Saggi, Summarium actionum, virtutum et miraculorum servae Dei Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis, Ordinis Carmelitarum ex processu remissoriali desumptorum (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1965), pp. 11–12. 59 Memoriale, f. 6r: ‘usato moltissimi rimedii e fatto fare molte orazione e applicato diverse reliquie di santi’. On Maria Maddalena as an enthusiastic collector of relics (albeit without reference to Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi), see Alice Sanger, Art, gender and religious devotion in grand ducal Tuscany (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 71–91. 60 Memoriale, ff. 5v–6r. 61 On Mary Magdalen, see Sanger, Art, gender and religious devotion, pp. 71–2. 62 P769, f. 213r.

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Maddalena’s relics, and the grand duchess’s recovery seems to have drawn their interest and commitment. Another recipient of Puccini’s Vita of 1609 was Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga (1587–1626) in Mantua, the son of Eleonora de’ Medici, a cousin (once removed) of the new grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II, and nephew of Maria de’ Medici.63 The intellectually gifted Gonzaga had been educated by the Jesuits, had made his first Communion after practising the Spiritual Exercises, and had even made a vow as a child to join the Jesuits (for release from which his father wrote to the Sacred Penitentiary in Rome).64 Gonzaga’s interest in Maria Maddalena might well have been influenced by his Jesuit upbringing and the summers he had spent with his Medici relatives from Florence.65 But it was after reading the Vita and having heard of the fame of the nun’s miracles that he sent to Florence requesting a portrait based on the nun’s natural likeness as well as a piece of her habit.66 As the cardinal’s interest developed—consolidated by a gift of relics—he attributed a number of graces to Maria Maddalena’s intercession. One major outcome of Gonzaga’s growing devotion was his request to visit Maria Maddalena’s body during a stay in Florence in January 1610 as he travelled to Rome to receive his red hat as a cardinal.67 Puccini procured a special licence from the archbishop of Florence to allow the visit to take place, and the body, in a beautiful coffin adorned with wood, was placed in the church for the cardinal to view privately.68 ‘With great signs of reverence and devotion, he adored it and honoured it as a holy body, and donated a silver lamp of five pounds to be put immediately in front of her tomb.’69 Gonzaga spent time speaking to the nuns who had lived with Maria Maddalena and told them of her fame in Mantua. The cardinal also requested that the nun’s body remain out so he could visit again the next day, which he did accompanied by a group of illustrious visitors that included Grand Duke Cosimo II and his brother Francesco and many

63

Gonzaga was created cardinal in December 1607 but did not receive his red hat until 1610. David Chambers, ‘The bellissimo ingegno of Ferdinando Gonzaga (1587–1626), cardinal and duke of Mantua’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987): pp. 116–18, pp. 126–7 [www.jstor.org/stable/751320]; Paul Grendler, The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga, and the Jesuits, 1584–1630 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), pp. 59–65. 65 Chambers, ‘Ferdinando Gonzaga’, pp. 122–3. 66 V1611, p. 581; Memoriale, f. 9r. 67 A letter from his mother reveals that she intended him to be in Florence with his Medici relatives during the carnival season in order to keep him from inappropriate behaviour in Mantua. ASF, Mediceo del Principato 2946, f. 6 (Eleonora Gonzaga to Belisario Vinta, 26 January 1610). 68 Pacini, ‘I “depositi” ’, pp. 178–9. 69 Memoriale, f. 9r: ‘con gran segni di devoz.e e reverenza l’ha adorato e onorato come corpo santo, e ha donato una lampada d’argento di lb 5 che si tenga appesa avanti al suo sepolcro’. 64

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other noblemen and courtiers, amongst them Alessandro Orsini (who was created cardinal in 1615) and his brothers.70 Gonzaga’s achievement in visiting Maria Maddalena’s body was not simply to invigorate elite interest in the nun and her community, but to spur on devotion within Florentine society more generally. It was the first time Maria Maddalena’s body had left the convent enclosure since it had been discovered incorrupt in 1608. Despite covering the coffin as it was put out in preparation for the visit, word escaped that the nun’s body was once more in the public church and a crowd quickly gathered. As in May 1607, guards were summoned to maintain order and protect the body, and again decorative flowers were replenished in the hope this would satisfy the desire of devotees for relics.71 The convent chronicle noted that the community of nuns once again feared that people’s ‘greediness’ (avvidità) for Maria Maddalena’s relics would see them strip the body bare.72 From statements taken in 1612 for the beatification inquiry, we know that a cross section of Florentine society made its way to S. Maria degli Angeli at this time, including some who had not been to see the body before its burial in 1607. Amongst those visiting was a group of canons from the cathedral, some of whom had only heard of Maria Maddalena in the intervening years. Like other visitors, these clerics took flowers and later testified to having been astonished at seeing the body intact.73 Indeed, the event was hugely significant because it was the first time that Maria Maddalena’s incorrupt body had been displayed for public recognition and celebration. Bernardino Spinetti, a Jesuit, also took the opportunity to visit the body but found that the crowd was too large for him to enter the church.74 Amongst the visitors who had not seen the body in 1607 was the lawyer Tommaso Grifoni, and Lucrezia Pazzini, a working woman who had claimed a miracle through Maria Maddalena’s intercession in 1607 and considered the nun to be ‘Beata and Santa’.75 Even after the cardinal had left and Maria Maddalena’s body was removed to the enclosure, large numbers of people continued to make their way to the church. Gonzaga’s visit was even more significant, however, because of his final destination, Rome, the city of the popes. There, fresh from his experiences in Florence, he began to take steps to assist in opening the cause for Maria Maddalena’s canonization. Gonzaga was well placed to promote the nun because he was in Rome to receive his cardinalate, in the course of which he spent much time with other cardinals and ecclesiastical high-flyers and met with the pope. On 20 February he wrote to the archbishop of Florence to report that he had spoken personally with the pope, who he claimed had heard 70 Alessandro Orsini (1592–1626) had grown up at the Medici court as the great-nephew of Grand Duke Ferdinand. 71 72 73 V1611, pp. 580–4. Memoriale, f. 9v. P767, p. 1435. 74 75 P767, p. 61. P767, p. 31.

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him willingly and had confirmed that the archbishop should put together a local process inquiring into Maria Maddalena’s holiness.76 His letter was followed before long by one from his associate, Alessandro Orsini, who wrote to the archbishop from Pisa in March 1610 to plead for an inquiry.77 In November of 1610, another important viewing of Maria Maddalena’s body took place, this time in the privacy of the convent enclosure for Eleonora Orsini Sforza, duchess of Segni. Eleonora, who resided in Rome, may have heard about the nun in any number of ways—from her cousin, Grand Duke Cosimo II, or other members of the Medici family, from her nephew Alessandro Orsini, or perhaps from Gonzaga or other cardinals in Rome. But Puccini’s biography also seems to have played an important role, and it was this book she mentioned having read when she sent a request to S. Maria degli Angeli for a portrait of their sister.78 Eleonora passed through Florence in November 1610 and visited the body within the enclosure. Compared with Gonzaga’s visit several months earlier, it was a relatively quiet event. She was, however, accompanied by one of her daughters and two noblewomen, Costanza Guicciardini and Cammilla de Bracci and, like Ferdinando Gonzaga, found that her interest led others to encounter Maria Maddalena’s holiness as well. Similarly, she also pledged to take the matter of the beatification to the pope and to do all she could to assist the cause. Although the circumstances of the two visits were very different, in both cases Puccini’s Vita could claim an important role as a stimulus to devotional acts that themselves bore wider fruit for Maria Maddalena’s cult and cause. The book itself, meanwhile, penetrated more modest households and circles. We know, for instance, of two miracles claimed whilst reading the 1609 Vita, although there might well have been many more. One, claimed by a Florentine woman living in Rome, concerned an interior grace that she had been seeking for nine years and about which she had prayed to many saints to no avail; it was whilst reading the Vita that she was inspired to seek Maria Maddalena’s intercession.79 The second we know of was claimed by Lisabetta Buonvisi in Lucca in March 1610 after she had been suffering from bad fevers for many months.80 She had begun reading the Vita and taken great comfort from it in her considerable pain, but it was one day when she had read some of the miracles the nun had worked that she began crying with contrition and immediately had a great desire for one of her relics. Just a few hours after she had obtained one, she appeared much improved. The second edition of the Vita published in 1611 was a product of the success of the first, not least in the decision to dedicate the four additional parts to Cardinal Gonzaga (the first two parts with their opening dedication to Maria de’ Medici remained the same as the 1609 edition). The convent 76 79

77 78 P768, p. 6. P768, p. 227. Memoriale, f. 13rv. 80 V1611, pp. 575–6. V1611, pp. 576–7.

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chronicle reported that no sooner had the 1609 Vita been published than devotees were asking to be able to read more about the ecstasies, and Puccini seems to have set to work quickly.81 Although the whole work was published in early 1611, already in March 1610 the archbishop of Florence had approved Part III for publication, and indeed final approval for all four of the new parts had been obtained from the archbishop and the Holy Office by the end of September 1610.82 The additional sections comprised excerpts from the transcriptions of Maria Maddalena’s ecstasies, with the exception of just thirteen of the 584 new pages that described some new miracles, her incorrupt body, and Cardinal Gonzaga’s visit.83 The result was a more embellished portrait of Maria Maddalena as a mystic than the 1609 Vita had provided. The short series of excerpts released in 1609 had been well received and perhaps gave Maria Maddalena’s supporters—Puccini in particular—the confidence to publish more of the material. In his dedication to Gonzaga placed before Part III, Puccini stated that he sought both to arouse devotion in his readers and to stir their intellects with noble doctrine.84 What is interesting is that this extra material was appended to the existing Vita and not prepared as a stand-alone spiritual work. Although it was not woven into the narrative of Maria Maddalena’s life, her ecstasies were nevertheless still being presented within the overall structure of a Vita. The 1611 edition would ultimately furnish the first inquiry into Maria Maddalena’s holiness with its questions, but before it did that, it was put to use, as the first edition had, to secure influential support for opening Maria Maddalena’s cause. Amongst the recipients was Cardinal Barberini, who replied to Puccini that he was pleased to receive the book and would read it carefully to see ‘the singular actions and holy life that this venerable mother led, so as to be able to display them to the glory of God and the beatification of her’.85 Like the three other Florentine cardinals to receive copies of the Vita (Bandini, Capponi, and Deti), Barberini also wrote to the archbishop of Florence to recommend an informative process be opened.86 For all the interest of various cardinals in Rome, at this early stage it was the local archbishop whose commitment was required most.

81

Memoriale, f. 14v. V1611, ‘Aggiunta alla Vita’ (unpaginated, introducing Part III), and pp. 207, 364–5. 83 V1611, pp. 572–80, 580–4. 84 V1611, ‘All’illustriss. e reverendiss. sig.e padrone mio colendiss. il Sig. Cardinal Gonzaga’. 85 AMC, Lettere, Filza A, 6.2 (15 April 1611): ‘Con molto piacere ho ricevuto il nuovo volume stampato della vita di Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi; et l’andrò rividendo, con particolare attentione a tutte quelle cose che dimostrano l’attioni signalate, e santa vita, che meno cotesta Veneranda Madre, per poterle rappresentare à gloria d’Iddio, e beatificatione di lei.’ 86 Memoriale, f. 14v. 82

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FAME ABROAD Some of the work undertaken by Puccini’s Vita of 1609 and 1611 in spreading word of Maria Maddalena’s holiness far and wide can perhaps best be seen through the example of English Catholics and specifically the English Benedictine convent of Our Lady of the Assumption, founded in Brussels in 1597/8, the first of the English convents founded in exile after the Reformation.87 A number of these nuns became particularly interested in Maria Maddalena based in part on the personal testimonies of others and partly on reading the biography. Other English Catholics, particularly priests travelling between Rome and their homeland, introduced the Benedictines to the Florentine nun. Amongst these was the prominent convert, Tobie Matthew (1577–1655), who had been received into the Catholic Church in Florence in March 1607 by a Jesuit priest, Lelio Tolomei, at the church of SS. Annunziata.88 It was probably his time in Florence and connection with the Jesuits that first sparked Matthew’s interest in Maria Maddalena. Matthew returned to England as a Catholic, and was imprisoned for a period before travelling to Rome to study for the priesthood. In March 1614, just a few months before Matthew’s ordination, the chronicle of S. Maria degli Angeli recorded that they had received him and several other English gentlemen ‘many times’, and that the men were already speaking of Maria Maddalena’s reputation amongst Catholics in England.89 Passing through Florence as they journeyed between Italy, the convents in exile on the Continent, and their homeland, English visitors such as these helped Maria Maddalena’s reputation and relics to spread far beyond the Italian peninsula. For priests, especially, on their way to minister in England where they faced the possibility of a painful execution, Maria Maddalena’s relics seem to have appealed as those of a powerful intercessor. In 1620, for example, two Englishmen, one a priest, visited Maria Maddalena’s body as they travelled back to their homeland because ‘they wanted to return to England prepared for martyrdom’ and hoped that they could obtain the holy nun’s help, taking some of her relics with them.90 Known from her association with the Jesuits and with her tomb situated on this important route north, Maria Maddalena’s reputation spread through the English Catholic missionary network. It was as part of this network that nuns

87 Caroline Bowden et al., ‘Who were the nuns? Project database, “Convent Notes” ’, http:// wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/about/convent-notes/index.html, accessed 29 Sept. 2015. 88 Tobie Matthew, A true historical relation of the conversion of Sir Tobie Matthew to the holy Catholic faith, with the antecedents and consequences thereof, edited by A. H. Matthew (London: Burns and Oates, 1904); and A. J. Loomie, ‘Matthew, Sir Toby (1577–1655)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/18343, accessed 29 Sept. 2015; [doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/18343]. 89 90 Memoriale, f. 23r. Memoriale, f. 32v.

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of the English Benedictine convent in Brussels came to know Maria Maddalena and, in turn, shared their belief in her sanctity with others. According to Tobie Matthew’s report to the Florentine nuns, the Benedictine nuns of Our Lady of the Assumption first read either the 1609 or 1611 edition of Puccini’s Vita in its original Italian, assisted by one of their number who understood the language. Matthew himself then provided them with a written translation.91 Having become better acquainted with Maria Maddalena, several of the Brussels nuns developed a devotion to her, and even more, some turned to her as a miraculous intercessor. In one case, some members of the community vowed to erect an altar in her honour—although she had yet to be beatified—if her intercession helped to resolve a conflict within the community.92 The dispute is not specified in the sources linked to Maria Maddalena, but it was almost certainly related to a tussle within the convent at this time regarding Ignatian spiritual practices and convent governance. It is worth recalling that this was still a relatively young community, founded only in 1598. A pro-Jesuit faction amongst the nuns had sought to secure a Jesuit confessor, and a small group (probably inspired by Jesuit confessors) had left the community in 1609 to try to establish a new foundation under Jesuit direction.93 Their commitment to Ignatian spirituality alarmed other members of the community who opposed what they considered to be its excesses and its commitment to the active life that seemed to be at odds with the simplicity and contemplation encouraged by the Benedictine Rule. The nuns who left in 1609 failed in their attempt to make a new foundation and returned to the convent in Brussels in 1611, leaving the community to try to avoid further division and overcome their reputation for scandal.94 Some of their attempts to do this were literary: in 1612, for example, Lady Mary Percy, then abbess, produced An abridgement of Christian perfection, a translation of a French translation of a work by Isabella Berinzaga and Achille Gagliardi that represented an attempt to bridge the gap between Benedictine and Jesuit spiritual practices and present an image of community solidarity to the outside world. An English translation of Puccini’s 1609 Vita was published anonymously in 1619, with a dedication to the Brussels nuns from ‘G. B’.95 The nuns of 91 Memoriale, f. 27r. Matthew had spent time in Siena in 1605 away from any English people in order to improve his Italian; Matthew, A true historical relation, p. 11. 92 V1621, p. 600. 93 Claire Walker, Gender and politics in early modern Europe: English convents in France and the Low Countries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 136–42; and Jamie Goodrich, Early modern Englishwomen as translators of religious and political literature, 1500–1641 (PhD dissertation, Boston College, 2008), pp. 398–417. 94 Goodrich, Early modern Englishwomen as translators, pp. 409–17. 95 Vincenzo Puccini, The life of the holy and venerable Mother Suor Maria Maddalena de Patsi, a Florentine lady & religious of the Order of Carmelites. Written in Italian by the Reverend Priest Sig.r Vincentio Puccini, who was sometimes her ghostly father. And now translated into

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S. Maria degli Angeli received a copy in December that year, under the firm impression that, despite the initials, it had been sent to the press by Tobie Matthew.96 The book was passed to them by an English Catholic living in Florence with the request that it be put in Maria Maddalena’s coffin next to her body. In the case of Maria Maddalena’s cult amongst English Catholics, Puccini’s Vita had played an important role along with personal contacts to expand the devotion in northern Europe, and now the product of that very cult was itself sent back to Florence and to Maria Maddalena herself. Once published, the translation provided a wider body of English Catholics with the opportunity to encounter Maria Maddalena and her holiness in depth, just as Puccini’s Italian Vita had for those able to read it. On 18 June 1621 an English Jesuit priest visited S. Maria degli Angeli, having come from England and testified specifically to how Matthew’s translation of Maria Maddalena’s biography had ‘borne great fruit’ in England.97 The priest came to say mass in the convent church and also requested relics from the nuns. Two decades later, in 1643, Capuchin priests working in England asked for relics from the nuns because they had been requested by some of the country’s great nobles, who had probably read Maria Maddalena’s biography.98 In a period when so many English Catholics had recently been martyred for their faith, it is interesting that Maria Maddalena developed such a devotional following amongst them when she had spent most of her life within an enclosed Florentine convent. For the Brussels Benedictines, a community struggling to decide on the spiritual identity of their convent and the extent of Jesuit influence over them, Maria Maddalena may have offered a middle ground as someone who had been formed by Ignatian directors, but had developed a view of religious observance that was in keeping with the contemplative life expected of the Brussels Benedictines—and indeed English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh nuns in various convents in exile—and a spirituality that emphasized death to self.99 In Brussels, trust in Puccini’s portrayal of Maria Maddalena and belief in her sanctity led to the translation of his work into English, requests for relics, and claims of miracles. Elsewhere, faith in this written portrait led some to use English (Cologne?, 1619), sig. *5r. See A. F. Allison and D. M. Rogers (eds.), The contemporary printed literature of the English Counter-Reformation between 1558 and 1640: An annotated catalogue (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994), vol. 2, p. 107. 96 Memoriale, f. 31r. 97 Memoriale, f. 34r: ‘ci ha detto come la vita della n’ra B.ta tradotta in Inghilese dal Sig.re Tobbia Mattei faceva gran frutto in quelle parti’. Matthew later also translated Teresa of Avila’s Life in 1623: Tobie Matthew, The flaming hart, or, the life of the glorious S. Teresa foundresse of the reformation of the order of the all-immaculate Virgin-Mother, our B. Lady, of Mount Carmel (London, 1623). On this see Peter Tyler, Teresa of Avila: Doctor of the soul (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 74–6. 98 Memoriale, f. 56r. 99 See Goodrich, Early modern Englishwomen as translators, pp. 412–13.

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copies of the book as relics. One example of this behaviour comes from Pian di Scò, just twenty miles south-east of Florence, where a man made the sign of the cross over a barrel of bad wine with a copy of Maria Maddalena’s Vita, using it to call upon the nun’s intercession.100 Images of saints and would-be saints were seen as effective tools for making contact with the person they depicted.101 Here, then, was the ultimate acceptance—at least by some of Puccini’s readers—that Maria Maddalena’s biography offered the ‘true likeness’ it claimed, either by word or by illustrated frontispiece.102 Maria Maddalena’s biography had, in a sense, come full circle, for now it not only shared news of the nun’s supposed miracles but had itself become a ‘relic’ and means of seeking her miraculous intercession. Puccini’s biography was written with the specific intention of developing Maria Maddalena’s cult and also stimulating a canonization process. The priest presented Maria Maddalena’s mystical experiences carefully, laid out clear examples of her virtue, and showed her to be a marvellous miracle worker. Arranged in this way, Puccini’s text provided a solid basis for the questions that would comprise the first inquiry into Maria Maddalena’s life and holiness, and diverted attention from the original transcriptions that the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli had produced even as it also made substantial use of those very texts.

100

P769, f. 253v. Erik Thunø and Gerhard Wolf (eds.), The miraculous image in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance (Rome: Erma di Bretschneider, 2004). 102 On the power of reproduced images, see Garnett and Rosser, Spectacular miracles, pp. 191–219. 101

5 Witnesses to Holiness On Thursday 10 January 1612, the Jesuit priest Claudio Seripando stepped into the audience room at the archbishop’s palace in Florence (see Figure 1.1).1 He had been summoned to testify before the first tribunal to examine ‘the life, death, holy virtues and miracles of the servant of God, Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’.2 After answering eleven introductory questions to establish his trustworthiness as a witness, Seripando was asked nothing about Maria Maddalena’s life; instead he gave an in-depth account of a miracle he claimed could be attributed to her saintly intercession, adamant that he had found no ‘natural causes’ for what had happened to him. For a woman who had been so heavily influenced in her spiritual life by the Jesuits, it was telling that the first witness to testify at this her informative (or ‘ordinary’) process was a Jesuit priest. At the archbishop’s behest in 1609 Seripando had examined the third part of Puccini’s Vita and approved it, but it was not for this reason that he was questioned. Seripando was summoned as a witness to Maria Maddalena’s miracles; a witness to her holiness and worthiness for beatification and, ultimately, canonization. In the month that followed, twenty-seven people—men and women, clergy and laity—made their way to the archbishop’s palace to share their knowledge of Maria Maddaldena’s fame for holiness and supposed miracles.3 But if Maria Maddalena’s miracles were persuasive and important to the process, so too were her virtues. Canonization required both and had done for many centuries.4 The 1 P767, pp. 1–4. On the palace, see Emanuele Barletti, Il Palazzo Arcivescovile di Firenze: Vicende Architettoniche dal 1533 al 1895 (Florence: Il Torchio, 1989). 2 P767, frontispiece: ‘Haec sunt depositiones et dicta testium in causa florentina de et super vita, Moribus, Virtutibus, sanctitate, et miraculis Servae Dei Sororis Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis Florentinae, Monialis Professae, dum vixit, in Monasterio Monialium Stae Mariae Angelorum Burgi Sti Fridiani florentiae ordinis Carmelitarum observantium examinatorum.’ 3 P767, pp. 1–93. 4 Ronald Finucane, Contested canonizations: The last medieval saints, 1482–1523 (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), pp. 15–24; Vauchez, Sainthood, pp. 499–505; Simon Ditchfield, ‘How not to be a Counter-Reformation saint: The attempted canonization of Pope Gregory X, 1622–45’, Papers of the British School at Rome 60 (1992): pp. 382–3 [www.jstor.org/stable/40311153].

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witnesses to Maria Maddalena’s life—and especially her virtues—were the nuns of S. Giovannino and those of S. Maria degli Angeli, fifty of whom offered depositions to the tribunal within the confines of their convent.5 After gathering these depositions, further lay and clerical witnesses testified at the archbishop’s palace, almost all of them questioned entirely about Maria Maddalena’s miracles.6 In total, 108 depositions were taken in the city between January 1612 and June 1613. One month after the inquiry had started it was extended from Florence to Lucca and Parma, where seemingly convincing evidence had emerged of miracles attributed to Maria Maddalena’s intercession. Thirtythree depositions were taken in Lucca between April and July 1612, and five more were gathered in Parma between July and October 1612. Spread over three cities in seventeen months with 146 witnesses, Maria Maddalena’s informative process was a considerable and costly undertaking. The product was a manuscript of nearly 1,700 pages in which the image of Maria Maddalena as presented in Puccini’s biography was explored in person by some of those who had known her or had claimed to have witnessed the power of her intercession. The testimonies gathered in these months offer us a chance to encounter people as they articulated their devotion to a would-be saint. Like other informative processes, Maria Maddalena’s was focused on collecting a large mass of information in order to persuade the authorities in Rome that this was a candidate worthy of further investigation. The person driving the inquiry forward was the promoter of the cause, responsible for presenting the arguments in favour. Typically appointed by the candidate’s religious order or family and usually a cleric, he was responsible for finding and summoning witnesses, setting the articles, and monitoring progress. In Maria Maddalena’s case, her convent and her family both appointed Vincenzo Puccini to this important role.7 Every witness, like Seripando, was sworn in before first being asked a set of introductory questions or interrogatories (interrogationes) prepared by the promotor fiscalis, who was responsible for a neutral application of the law and process. These questions started by seeking confirmation that the witness understood the gravity of committing perjury before outlining personal details, their trustworthiness as a witness (based, for example, on their standing with the Church), and their knowledge of general matters relating to the candidate’s cult.8 After the questions came the meat of the process, the articles (articuli) that together proposed specific aspects of the candidate’s life, virtues, death, and miracles for approval.9 Each was only posed to those witnesses believed to have the knowledge to discuss it.

5 7

P767, pp. 93–1361, 1367–75. P768, pp. 7–10, 13–14.

6

8

P767, pp. 1362–7, 1376–471. 9 P768, pp. 54–7. P768, pp. 17–43.

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Taking testimonies was a process of gathering and also filtering the voices of devotees.10 These voices had already been heard in the relics and miracle stories shared between friends, in the votive offerings left at S. Maria degli Angeli, and in the devotional reading and prayers that Maria Maddalena inspired. Now select individuals, chosen by Maria Maddalena’s promoter, contributed to a written record to be read in Rome. Although their responses were shaped by the articles Puccini had written, their words nevertheless shine a light on how Maria Maddalena’s cult had developed. Most importantly they provide examples of how people might explain their belief in the saintliness of someone who had yet to be canonized, how they defined the miraculous, and what brought them to identifying this would-be saint as a miracle worker. Those testifying provided primary evidence of Maria Maddalena’s virtues, her fame for holiness, and her miracles; their voices were the proof of this nun’s sanctity. Once the testimonies of an informative process had been gathered, the written records of what had taken place were sent to Rome, together with postulatory letters from prominent supporters petitioning for an ‘apostolic’ process. Largely a repeat of the first process, the apostolic process was commissioned by remissorial letters sent under the pope’s authority with the aim of verifying the reputation to which the first process had borne witness in more specific terms. Based on another set of interrogatories and articles, the process typically examined many of the same witnesses (where possible) and investigated further miracles. The crucial difference was one of authority: witnesses at the second inquiry, held under papal authority, were questioned in chapels and consecrated spaces rather than non-consecrated rooms. A copy of Maria Maddalena’s apostolic process, once it was finished, would be sent to Rome to be examined by auditors of the Rota, who would use the evidence to assess her virtues, fame, and miracles and present a report to the cardinals of the Congregation of Rites. The Congregation, in turn, would advise the pope. The pope had long been the ultimate person to decide whether to canonize; with the development of beatification (approval for a restricted cult) as a specific step, he was also the person to decide whether to beatify.11 This drive to enhance the central assessment of sanctity in this period has contributed to a view of post-Tridentine reform in which the pope and papal Curia looked to curtail and control popular practices. Whilst the early stages of Maria Maddalena’s process ask us to acknowledge the importance that central powers were given, they also point beyond this to the support her cause 10 Gentilcore, From bishop to witch, pp. 164–5; Frederika Jacobs, Votive panels and popular piety in early modern Italy (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 107–14. 11 Veraja, La beatificazione, pp. 69–96; Gaetano Stano, ‘Il rito della beatificazione da Alessandro VII ai nostri giorni’, in Miscellanea in occasione del IV centenario della Congregazione per le Cause dei Santi (1588–1988) (Vatican City: Congregazione per le Cause dei Santi, 1988); Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine worship’, esp. pp. 211–13, 217; Gotor, I beati del papa, pp. 679–722.

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required in her patria, Florence: the leadership of a local bishop, the work of local clergy and promoters, and the testimonies of local people.

STARTING THE P ROCESS The archbishop of Florence, Alessandro Marzi Medici, had supported Maria Maddalena’s devotional cult from the beginning with his licence to distribute relics. Despite this implicit approval, Maria Maddalena’s informative process took over four years to begin.12 Besides waiting for miracles and the publication of Puccini’s Vita, one reason for the delay was that the nun’s advocates and the archbishop of Florence alike appear to have been unsure of how to proceed, leading, as we saw in Chapter 4, to the supportive Cardinal Gonzaga consulting in Rome about how best to initiate the cause for canonization. If Gonzaga’s letters from Rome are a fair indication, the sense of uncertainty concerned both the authority required to act and the procedure that should be followed. When the cardinal wrote to Marzi Medici from Rome, he advised that Pope Paul V himself had said the archbishop could start the process under his own authority. Meanwhile Gonzaga, now appointed to the Congregation of Rites, advised that the archbishop follow the example of ‘Beato Carlo Borromeo’ by which ‘you will ensure against any errors and invalidity, this process containing within it the entire basis for such a matter (negozio)’.13 Even Maria Maddalena’s local process was to be based on a precedent that the authorities in Rome had approved. The exchange of letters is interesting because it presents a pope adamant that a cause should begin under a local bishop at the same time as revealing supporters who clearly wanted confirmation from Rome as to how the process should be run. Perhaps it was because the aim was canonization and all concerned knew that the Roman authorities would quickly become involved that advice from Rome had such appeal, but it is telling that the archbishop wanted approval for something he was already empowered to do. To place this interest in Roman opinion in some context, it is worth considering some of the other causes under consideration at this time, the concerns that had been raised about unauthorized devotions, and different ways in which the canonization procedure itself was then being reformed. Maria Maddalena’s supporters sought to open her cause in a period when

12

By comparison, Rose of Lima’s informative process started in 1617, the year that she died; Frank Graziano, Wounds of love: The mystical marriage of Saint Rose of Lima (Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 117. 13 P768, pp. 5, 6: ‘così si assicurerà delli errori et dalla nullita, consistendo in questo processo tutto il negozio del fondamento dil negozio’.

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several different canonization procedures were in use at the same time.14 In particular, whilst some candidates for sainthood had been canonized directly, an increasing number were being beatified first—that is, Roman permission was sought and granted for a devotional cult limited to a religious order or geographical area. This was, in many respects, another facet of the concerns about unauthorized public devotions and important because it touched on the Church’s authority to define holiness. It also had an impact on how the course of a candidate’s process would run. For a century, the title ‘beato’ (blessed) had been conferred by the pope on some in order to denote approval that was different from canonization, as in the case of Corrado Confalonieri of Piacenza in 1515, when he was approved for veneration like ‘other beati not yet canonized’.15 Hints that beatification might be required prior to canonization only came later: first in 1594 with the canonization of Hyacinth Odrowąż (d. 1257) based on inquiries held after a limited cult had been conceded; and then with the beatification brief of Juan de Sahagún in 1603 that specified for the first time that permission for his limited veneration was temporary pending a canonization process.16 We might recall, however, that it was lack of approval that distinguished the beati (and their public cults) examined by the Congregation of Beati established by Pope Clement VIII in 1602. Virgilio Cepari, meanwhile, one of Maria Maddalena’s principal supporters, had first-hand experience as promoter of Luigi Gonzaga’s cult of a papal concession granted in 1605 allowing use of the title beato that was not accompanied by a liturgical concession.17 Formal change to the canonization procedure came slowly, with beatification only made a prerequisite for canonization in a Congregation of Rites decree of 1630 that was not confirmed in papal legislation until 1652.18 Until the beatification of Francis of Sales in 1662, The moment of beatification was not even marked by a separate liturgy until the beatification of Francis of Sales in 1662; instead the first feast was celebrated.19 Between 1607 and 1610, then,

14 Christian Renoux, ‘Une source de l’histoire de la mystique modern revisitée: Les procès de canonization’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 105, 1 (1993), p. 184 [doi: 10.3406/ mefr.1993.4254]. 15 Veraja, La beatificazione, pp. 33–4. 16 Gotor, I beati del papa, pp. 213–14; Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 170–214. 17 Archivio Postulationis Generalis Societatis Iesu (APGSI), Santi e beati 11 (Luigi Gonzaga), 92, int. 7; Cepari, Vita del B. Luigi Gonzaga. 18 Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 209–14. A decree from the Congregation of Rites was issued on 5 October 1652 and approved by the pope on 16 December that year: Decreta authentica Congregationis Sacrorum Rituum ex Actis eiusdem collecta eiusque auctoritate promulgata sub auspiciis SS. Domini Nostri Leonis Papae XIII, vol. 1 (Rome: 1898), p. 203. See also Pietro Palazzini, ‘Beatificazioni e canonizzazioni nella prima metà del secolo XVII e loro incidenza nella vita della Chiesa’, L’assolutismo, protezione e strumentalizzazione della vita religiosa (Fonte Avellana: Centro di Studi Avellaniti, 1985), p. 161. 19 Stano, ‘Il rito della beatificazione’. The liturgical celebration included, in the morning, the reading of the brief of beatification and the celebration of Mass, and in the afternoon, the pope venerating the new beato and receiving the plenary indulgence he himself had issued. Beatification festivities continued in this form until 1968. See also Veraja, La beatificazione, pp. 97–8.

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as Maria Maddalena’s promoters looked to pursue her canonization, beatification was not as yet a firm requirement. Indeed, there were examples to be found of contemporary causes that had followed a variety of paths. In 1609, for instance, Ignatius of Loyola was beatified and papal permission given for his designation as beato and a local cult with the clear understanding that this conferred lesser privileges than canonization and should be celebrated in a less ostentatious way.20 Just one year later, in 1610, Charles Borromeo was canonized without having been beatified first: no papal permission had earlier been given for a local cult.21 In the light of this, Cardinal Gonzaga’s suggestion to the archbishop of Florence that he should follow the precedent set by Borromeo is a particularly interesting one. Gonzaga must have been aware of the different way Borromeo’s cause had progressed compared with that of Ignatius, but following a precedent had great appeal and since Borromeo was on the cusp of canonization in early 1610, his cause was the most recent success story. What Borromeo’s cause offered was an example of how to run a tribunal and ensure that the legal procedure of drawing up articles and gathering testimonies was followed correctly. Ultimately, it could also suggest what questions to ask about Maria Maddalena’s life and miracles and how the Congregation of Rites might assess her saintliness. At the same time, since it was clear that the canonization procedure might yet undergo further reform, the informal papal approval that Gonzaga obtained for Maria Maddalena’s informative process had the potential to be extremely useful. Starting Maria Maddalena’s informative process was partly an exercise in Roman information-gathering, a product of concerns about doing things correctly. But in other ways it was a more obviously local project, not least because of pressures exerted by local elites. Prime amongst these was Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena d’Austria, whose personal devotion to the nun led her to take an interest in the cause.22 Letters exchanged between the grand duchess and the archbishop of Florence reveal a woman happy to meddle in this ecclesiastical affair. And her interest in how the process should be run was matched by the archbishop’s desire to satisfy (or at least placate) her. In a letter of early March 1610, the archbishop wrote to the grand duchess to inform her that he had taken advice from Cardinal Gonzaga on how to proceed but, conscious that ‘this will be a long affair’ that ‘needs much thought’, he also wanted to consult her.23 Further correspondence saw the archbishop and grand duchess agree that deputies appointed by the archbishop to assist him would also keep her informed throughout.24 Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi may not quite have been embraced as a key Medici project, but there can be no

20 21 23

Gotor, I beati del papa, p. 254. Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 127–44. ASF, Mediceo del Principato 6081, f. 1209.

22

24

Memoriale, f. 11v. P768, p. 6. (23 March 1610).

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denying the personal interest of the grand duchess and her willingness to exert influence on the local archbishop. Maria Maddalena’s process was local in another sense: the striking absence of the Carmelite Order from the preparations for the tribunal and its running. When Vincenzo Puccini was appointed promoter of the nun’s cause in August 1611 he was employed only by the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and the Pazzi family; the Carmelite Order was not represented within the process and, indeed, no Carmelite friars testified before the tribunal. The situation reflected the complicated relationship that Maria Maddalena’s convent had with the Order and, knowing the details of this, their absence is perhaps unsurprising. But the friars also had other interests to distract them at this time, not least those in Florence who were busy promoting the canonization of their compatriot, Andrea Corsini (1301–74). Having served as prior of the Florentine Carmine before being appointed bishop of Fiesole, Corsini was a true local figurehead for these friars.25 Venerated since the time of his death, Corsini had been permitted a limited cult in 1440 but the cause had then stalled for many decades. Although the Carmelites had continued to seek his canonization, for a long time Andrea’s reputation was confined largely to the Order, Florence, and Fiesole. This changed with the inclusion of his life within Laurentius Surius’ six-volume publication of saints’ lives (1570–75) and Silvano Razzi’s collection of Tuscan saints and beati (1593), both of which helped his fame for holiness to spread.26 A big push in Rome from 1604 resulted in an apostolic process being held in Florence in early 1606. Thus, when Maria Maddalena died in 1607, the Carmelites—particularly those in Florence—had committed their energies to Corsini, whose cause had finally advanced to a point where canonization seemed possible. Indeed, his prospects seemed particularly good, because that year the cardinal protector of the Ancient Observance and Discalced Carmelites, Domenico Pinelli, was appointed prefect of the Congregation of Rites. As a formal mark of Carmelite commitment to Corsini’s cause, a postulatory letter was sent from the Carmelite General Chapter to the Congregation of Rites in 1609. The absence of the Carmelites from the early stages of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s cause provides an unusual example of a candidate making progress without the support of their religious order. Members of religious orders dominated the processes being held in this period as well as the canonizations; in Naples they even amounted to all of the processes held in the seventeenth 25 The following is based on Giovanni Ciappelli, Un santo alla battaglia di Anghiari: La ‘Vita’ e il culto di Andrea Corsini nella Firenze del Rinascimento (Florence: SISMEL, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007), pp. 40–68; Veraja, La beatificazione, pp. 22–3; Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 341–3. 26 Ciappelli, Un santo alla battaglia di Anghiari, pp. 46–7. Laurentius Surius, De probatis sanctorum historiis, vol. 1 (Cologne, 1570), pp. 143–8; Silvano Razzi, Vite dei santi e beati Toscani de’ quali infino a hoggi comunemente si ha cognizione (Florence, 1593), pp. 557–67.

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century.27 Religious orders, it has been argued, proved so powerful because they comprised influential lobby groups.28 Maria Maddalena’s cause made headway initially, however, because of support from secular elites and diocesan clergy, individuals belonging to other religious orders (especially the Jesuits), and above all her specific convent working independently of the Carmelite friars. At its outset, her cause did not have the wholehearted and powerful support of her religious order and relied, instead, on local figures including the archbishop.

I N T E S T I M O N Y T O A HO L Y L I F E Within the informative process, the story of Maria Maddalena’s life and ecstasies was told almost entirely by nuns of her convent, S. Maria degli Angeli. Numbering fifty of the 108 people to appear before the Florentine tribunal, these nuns dominated the whole Florentine component of the process, their testimonies covering some 108 days (spread between 28 February and 27 November 1612) and producing around 1,250 pages of handwritten text.29 Even the location of the inquiry was affected by these women, whose cloistered life required it to move temporarily from the archbishop’s palace to the very buildings where they had shared their lives with Maria Maddalena and where her body was now conserved. Maria Maddalena’s holy life was, in every sense, linked to the physical space of her convent and the women with whom she had lived. As a community, the prioress and nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli had appointed Puccini as their representative for the cause and it was in response to the forty-five articles he wrote for the tribunal that they bore witness to their sister’s sanctity.30 The articles presented her virtuous life, her mystical experiences, and her miracles, and rather than asking open questions, witnesses were asked to corroborate and confirm a vision of sainthood, a clear ‘party line’.31 27 Giulio Sodano, Modelli e selezione del santo moderno: Periferia napoletana e centro romano (Naples: Liguori 2002), esp. pp. 41–3. 28 Burke, ‘How to be a Counter-Reformation saint’, p. 58; Sodano, Modelli e selezione del santo moderno, pp. 67–135. 29 P767. On the nuns within the beatification process, see Anna Scattigno, ‘Una comunità testimone. Il monastero di Santa Maria degli Angeli e la costruzione di un modello di professione religiosa’, in I monasteri femminile come centri di cultura fra Rinascimento e Barocco, edited by Gianna Pomata and Gabriella Zarri (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2005), pp. 175–204; and Anna Scattigno, ‘I processi di canonizzazione nella prima metà del XVII secolo’, in Memoria e comunità femminili: Spagna e Italia, secc. XV–XVII (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2011), pp. 131–51. 30 P768, pp. 17–43. 31 Graziano, Wounds of love, pp. 36–7. The articles for Maria Maddalena’s informative process are recorded in P768, pp. 17–43, 100–3.

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An article examining Maria Maddalena’s childhood, for example, did not ask in general terms about her apparent holiness as a child, but instead sought confirmation of specific ways in which she had behaved that were taken from Puccini’s Vita: that she avoided games and delighted in spiritual conversation; that she found comfort in teaching prayers to children in the country; that she delighted in mental prayer; that she afflicted her body; and that she desired to suffer completely for Christ. This was holiness proposed for validation. Puccini’s forty-five articles were based on the Vita he had already published and, like that book, set out an image of a saint whose holy childhood had been followed by an adult life of virtue, mystical experiences, and miracles, and whose death had produced a growing devotional cult and further wondrous miracles. The first six articles covered her baptism, her childhood modes of prayer, her period in serbanza, and her profession at S. Maria degli Angeli, including her rapture that day. Eight articles followed discussing elements of her virtues in turn, as well as her observance of her monastic vows: her zeal for the salvation of souls; her charity towards others; her humility; her love of the Eucharist; her religious observance; her perfect obedience; her poverty; and her chastity. Maria Maddalena’s charity towards others was raised by one specific article, but the other theological virtues—her faith and hope—were more subtly explored within discussions of her love of the Eucharist and her trust in God amid both physical and spiritual difficulties. Meanwhile, the cardinal virtues—prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude—were found in articles under headings that identified expressions of these: her obedience, poverty, chastity, and endurance of tremendous suffering. If candidates for sainthood were not martyrs, then they had to demonstrate excellence of life through virtuous living that had exceeded common practice, and it was to cover this requirement that the informative process discussed all of the virtues, doing so relatively clearly, if not quite dedicating an article to each specific one.32 Maria Maddalena’s visions and raptures were central to Puccini’s articles, several of which focused on specific mystical incidents from her life, including her participation in the Passion in April 1585 (Article 20), receiving the stigmata (21), marriage to Jesus (22), being crowned with the crown of thorns (22), remaining in ecstasy for forty hours (22), receiving the body of Jesus from the Cross (22), and St Augustine writing on her heart (22). An extremely long article (25) proposed eleven further incidents taken from the additions made to the second edition of Puccini’s biography. The same article also noted that she suffered ‘innumerable’ ecstasies as well as excesses and illustrations of the mind communicated to her by God at different times and in different places, to the extent that it was difficult to mention all of them.33 As in the

32

Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 165–70.

33

P768, p. 32.

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Vita, the ‘forty days’ of May to June 1584 were summarized without consideration of their content. By contrast—also based on the biography—the twenty rules that Maria Maddalena claimed to have received from God in August 1593 were detailed in their entirety. And Maria Maddalena’s 1586 prediction that the Medici archbishop of Florence would become pope was mentioned twice in the process articles, once as demonstration of the nun’s physical state in rapture and again as proof of her prophetic gifts.34 Although Puccini was selective about which raptures were specified in the articles, many were noted to suggest that these experiences demonstrated Maria Maddalena’s favour with God, not any form of delusion. Since Maria Maddalena had spent so much of her life within the enclosure of S. Maria degli Angeli, it was the nuns of this convent who were best positioned to discuss the details of her life that comprised twenty-eight of Puccini’s articles. Not all of the nuns were called to testify but the fifty that were spanned the full social spectrum of the monastery, including choir nuns and converse (servant) sisters, novices, and older madri.35 Each had different amounts of information to offer regarding what they had seen of Maria Maddalena’s life and miracles, and the length of their depositions varied considerably. For twenty-one of the nuns the process took just one session, but others were called back over several days, and Vangelista del Giocondo and Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia occupied nine sessions each, both responding to every article bar one (the second, on Maria Maddalena’s baptism). In a sign of the extent of the cross-referencing between these two leading figures within the monastery, Maria Pacifica had referred to Vangelista so frequently by the time she answered article five that the scribe for the process noted he would no longer use her full name but refer simply to ‘Suor Vangelista’.36 The detailed responses that both offered seem to reflect a sense of shared responsibility as Maria Maddalena’s principal companions and witnesses to provide the evidence that her canonization would require. One striking absentee from this group was Maria Maddalena’s niece, Maria Grazia de’ Pazzi, who had entered the convent in 1600 but been deprived of her status as a choir nun after her aunt’s death. Her absence, in combination with the decision not to call any of the secular members of the Pazzi family, meant that none of the nun’s relatives spoke before the tribunal.37 Indeed, just eight witnesses from outside the monastery discussed any aspects of Maria Maddalena’s life, ensuring that control over what was said about almost all of these aspects rested with the women of S. Maria degli Angeli.38 35 P768, pp. 30, 34. Scattigno, ‘Una comunità testimone’, pp. 198–9. P767, p. 215. 37 Detti e preghiere, pp. 217–18; Scattigno, ‘Una comunità testimone’, p. 193. 38 Three were nuns at S. Giovannino, who spoke about her period in serbanza; and two were priests (not Carmelites), Vincenzo Puccini and an elderly priest from the Florentine Jesuit college who had confessed Maria Maddalena’s parents and brothers ‘many times’; P767, pp. 1369–75, 34 36

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These witnesses were always going to stress her religious vows and life within the enclosure. Their testimonies were also likely to give strong support to the articles of the process, given that the nuns had helped to write the Vita on which they were based, were under the governance of the man who had compiled them, and had commissioned him to represent them in the cause.39 Many of the nuns’ answers to the articles were brief and predictable, based in large part on the wording of the proposition to which they were responding. On occasion in some cases this meant overlooking—or perhaps having forgotten—the original perception of how Maria Maddalena had behaved as recorded in the transcriptions. This emerges in accounts of Maria Maddalena’s reception of the stigmata, for instance, the subject of article 21. As we saw in Chapter 4, the account published in the Vita had removed the comparison with Catherine of Siena found in the transcription and instead introduced Francis of Assisi as a point of reference. The article composed later for the process made no mention of any saints, but interestingly Vangelista del Giocondo and Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia, who had been heavily involved in producing the transcription, nevertheless volunteered that Maria Maddalena had been in the posture of St Francis when she had received the stigmata.40 In response to some articles, however, the nuns did reclaim ownership of the sister with whom they had shared their lives. Within a religious community, Maria Maddalena’s life had necessarily been social, and again and again the sisters emphasized their role not just as eyewitnesses but as women who had shared their daily lives with her and been enriched by her example. They were themselves evidence of their sister’s sanctity, a living testimony to her holiness.41 In an article on obedience, for example, Vangelista and others confirmed the article’s proposition that Maria Maddalena had been very obedient, but then took their testimony further to note that she had exhorted all the nuns to be obedient too, teaching them with her word and example.42 Likewise, the nuns proved keen to stress their place in Maria Maddalena’s story, as in their accounts of her miraculous recovery during the ‘forty days’ of 1584. Based on Puccini’s Vita, article six proposed somewhat vaguely that Maria Maddalena had been cured miraculously without any medical assistance.43 The article was too sparse in detail for the nuns to contradict it 1446–60, 1396–8. Three others were local secular women: Camilla Cardi and Giovanna Zanobetti who had both known her as a child; and Lisabetta Migliori, who had seen Maria Maddalena in rapture and also gone to Agostino Campi for confession; P767, pp. 1400–4, pp. 1421–4, pp. 1462–7. 39 On the difficulties of canonization testimonies like these, see Fernando Vidal, ‘Miracles, science, and testimony in post-Tridentine saint-making’, Science in Context 20, 3 (2007), p. 489. 40 P767, pp. 158, 275. 41 42 Scattigno, ‘Una comunità testimone’. P767, pp. 135, 252. 43 Article 6: ‘quo transacto tempore absq ulla medicare ope, vel medicamine integram perfectamqm valetudinem mirabiliter recuperavit’; P768, p. 20, based on V1609, p. 15.

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per se, but Vangelista del Giocondo, Maria Pacifica, and Costanza Morelli each offered amplified accounts that placed the agency for Maria Maddalena’s healing specifically with Maria Bagnesi, and Dorotea dei Nocenti, a conversa, claimed the credit for making the vow to Bagnesi on Maria Maddalena’s behalf.44 Compared with the brevity of the article, these nuns’ accounts of what had taken place clearly situated Maria Maddalena within their community of praying women. It was as one body that the community had appointed Vincenzo Puccini as promoter but it was individual nuns who gave testimonies. Uniform though their responses largely were, there are moments that suggest some of the personal memories of their sister that the nuns conserved.

MIRACLE WORKER Whilst the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli dominated the testimonies relating to Maria Maddalena’s life, a substantial amount of the inquiry was focused rather on the miracles that had been attributed to her since her death. We can see how important these were to the cause in the fact that the first twenty-seven people called to be questioned in Florence were summoned solely to discuss post-mortem miracles and were interviewed before the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli. Their contributions covered all but four of sixteen post-mortem miracles detailed in Article 29 (fourteen healings, the liberation of a possessed girl, and Maria Maddalena’s corpse having been seen to move). An article before this outlined sixteen miracles claimed in life on which the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli offered crucial depositions. In addition, one of the interrogatory questions required every deponent to raise any other miracles of which they knew that had not been included in the articles, leading to a much wider discussion of the miraculous where those speaking offered their information rather than responding to a proposition. In case this were not enough, it was with a view to enhancing the evidence of Maria Maddalena’s miracle-working fame that Puccini applied in February 1612—after the tribunal had opened in Florence—for fifteen articles to be added largely relating to post-mortem miracles claimed in Lucca, Parma, Pisa, and Cortona.45 Only the tribunals in Lucca and Parma were actually held, but their discussion of nine and four possible miracles respectively not only added to the account of Maria Maddalena as a miracle worker but also demonstrated her reputation had spread beyond her own patria.46 At the same time, two further articles were added that would be relevant for Florentine witnesses too: one proposing the reliability of Puccini’s Vita, and the other proposing that Maria Maddalena 44 46

45 P767, pp. 107, 219, 318, 430. P768, pp. 100–3. P767, pp. 1473–632 (Lucca), 1633–78 (Parma).

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had worked many miracles. The latter (Article 43) was an invitation for witnesses to recount additional miracles in detail. Based on these articles, the testimonies that were gathered matched Maria Maddalena’s image as a virtuous visionary with her presentation as a powerful miraculous intercessor. Proving the motivation that lay behind seemingly virtuous behaviour was difficult, but miracles—namely, a transition from one state to another—were more easily verifiable.47 Maria Maddalena’s process reflected how important miracles were to the formal identification of sainthood. In Florence, nearly half the witnesses testified solely regarding Maria Maddalena’s post-mortem cult and miracles.48 The aim was to find incidents that would withstand critical examination by canonization experts looking not only for reliable testimony and a suitable number of testimonies but also for accounts that would demonstrate that a natural explanation could not be found. It is important to note that the systematic investigation of miracles had a long history before this point. The process for Thomas of Hereford in the fourteenth century had broken his miracles down into over thirty elements by which to assess the reliability as well as the credibility of what was being said, looking, for instance, at who had been invoked, why and how, when and where.49 Consultation with doctors was also an established practice: already in the late thirteenth century witnesses had been asked to rule out natural causes and medical experts had testified concerning cases where they had personal knowledge.50 Maria Maddalena’s process drew on both of these aspects, but was also influenced by the growing role that medical witnesses had begun to claim in the sixteenth century that helped to transform miracles into an inquiry of their own within the process.51 In the cause for Charles Borromeo’s canonization (which came in 1610), physicians were summoned in Rome to serve as experts.52 Miracles remained crucial to the canonization process, and their examination became more rigorous still.53 In the discussion leading to Kleinberg, ‘Proving sanctity’, pp. 199–200. On the dominance of miracles in canonization processes, see David Gentilcore, ‘Contesting illness in early modern Naples: Miracolati, physicians and the Congregation of Rites,’ Past and Present 148 (1995), pp. 118–19. 49 Goodich, Miracles and wonders, pp. 87–8. 50 Joseph Ziegler, ‘Practitioners and saints: Medical men in the canonization processes in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries’, Social History of Medicine 12, 2 (1999), pp. 191–225 [doi: 10.1093/shm/12.2.191]; Vauchez, Sainthood, pp. 481–97; Laura Smoller, ‘Defining boundaries of the natural in fifteenth-century Brittany: The inquest into the miracles of Saint Vincent Ferrer (d. 1419)’, Viator 28 (1997), pp. 333–60 [doi: 10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301082]. 51 Gentilcore, ‘Contesting illness’, esp. pp. 142–4. 52 Finucane, Contested canonizations, p. 23. 53 Vidal, ‘Miracles, science, and testimony’, pp. 481–508; Ditchfield, Liturgy, sanctity and history, pp. 256–64; Fernando Vidal, ‘Prospero Lambertini’s “On the imagination and its powers” ’, in Storia, medicina e diritto nei trattati di Prospero Lambertini-Benedetto XIV, edited by Maria Teresa Fattori (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2013), pp. 297–318. 47 48

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Raymund of Peñafort’s canonization of 1601, for example, three auditors of the Rota offered a detailed examination of eight posthumous miracles in which they referenced about seventy authorities concerning the validity of the process and the characteristics of the miracles claimed, citing other canonization records too.54 Also in 1601, Angelo Rocca’s treatise on canonization included a tellingly detailed discussion of the different types of miracle and how to identify true miracles from false alongside his guide to the steps of the canonization process.55 Discerning true miracles required a more thorough analysis than simply whether something supernatural had occurred.56 At the same time, an increasing interest in distinguishing ‘miracles’ from ‘graces’ (events of lesser significance) was gradually taking hold, a further component in the need to detail and define the miraculous.57 Miracles, so central to both a candidate’s devotional cult and their canonization process, played somewhat different roles in each. We see something of this in the choice of miracles that Puccini presented within the articles of Maria Maddalena’s informative process. As promoter of the cause, part of his role was to research possible miracles and identify witnesses that would present enough supporting evidence for them to be deemed miraculous by examiners in Rome: who had been involved, how Maria Maddalena had been invoked, what the situation had truly been, who had witnessed it.58 Puccini was, in essence, the point of contact between the concept of the miraculous for canonization (as it was perceived to be) and the concept of the miraculous for lay devotees, local religious, priests, and physicians. Like all promoters, he was faced with filtering the miracles claimed and reducing them to those that might be approved. In practice this meant that whereas Puccini’s Vita of 1611 contained accounts of thirty-nine miracles (some including very few details), only twelve of these were included in the sixteen posthumous miracles set out in Article 29 of the informative process. At the same time, the interrogatory question on miracles invited deponents to share word of events outside those that Puccini had specifically proposed. Being summoned to give evidence had marked these people out for their special experience and knowledge and had given them a status within an ecclesiastical inquiry. Here, offered a new and enhanced way of publicizing what had happened to them or to people they knew, they keenly described ‘their’ miracles. The Curradi family offers a good example of this enthusiasm for the miraculous amongst those testifying. Called to testify to the spread of Maria Maddalena’s devotional images, the painter Francesco Curradi (the first to 54 Finucane, Contested canonizations, p. 23. See also Pomata, ‘Malpighi and the holy body’, pp. 569–70. 55 Angelo Rocca, De canonizatione sanctorum commentarius (Rome, 1601; Rome 1610). 56 Gentilcore, ‘Contesting illness’, p. 132. 57 Vidal, ‘Miracles, science, and testimony’, pp. 489–90. 58 Gentilcore, ‘Contesting illness’, pp. 144–5.

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paint Maria Maddalena’s image after her death), his brother, sister, and mother each responded to Article 43 by detailing what they believed had been the mother Stella Curradi’s miraculous cure from terrible pains in her hips in May 1611.59 She had been visited by a doctor and had received viaticum, we are told. The situation was evidently considered grave and Stella was in tremendous pain. Remembering that Maria Maddalena had worked many miracles, Francesco sent to Puccini for a relic and received a small pillow that Maria Maddalena had used to hold against her stomach when in pain. Stella prayed an ‘Our Father’ and an ‘Ave Maria’ and placing the pillow on her hip she was, so the family claimed, immediately healed. In the context of the many miraculous healings examined within Maria Maddalena’s process the story is somewhat unremarkable. And yet for the Curradi family in May 1611 it was an extraordinarily important event. For those like Stella who believed she had received a miracle, or for those who watched what happened, these were highly charged personal moments that they would not forget. Maria Maddalena had touched people that they knew, sometimes within their own home. Maria Maddalena’s early devotees were fascinated by her miracles, and so too was her official process. The fact that the process was keen to gather evidence of these gave a distinct voice to those called to testify, offering them the opportunity to recount personal events within the impressive setting of an ecclesiastical inquiry held, in the main, in the archbishop’s palace. This was an inquiry into Maria Maddalena’s whole reputation for holiness, both her virtues and her miracles. It heard not only from nuns who had lived in the same convent as her for many years, but also from people who had never met her in person and yet had attributed a remarkable event to her intercession. Their testimonies confirmed the important role miracles had played in the spread of Maria Maddalena’s cult immediately after her death and the contribution made by devotees sharing the nun’s relics. Maria Maddalena’s cause points to just how important local people were to the initiation of a process and, also, how much say local figures could have over what was known of a person’s life and how their holiness was presented. It was in the contexts of Florence, Lucca, and Parma that an image of Maria Maddalena’s holiness was crafted for the Congregation of Rites, first by Puccini in the articles that carefully set out the ideal, and then in the testimonies that worked to support this construction. For the nuns who testified regarding Maria Maddalena’s life, it was important that they supported their confessor, even if on a few occasions they inserted themselves into the story or gently corrected the record. Maria Maddalena’s process necessarily explored

59

P767, pp. 1407, 1410, 1413, 1415–16.

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her life and carefully established her status as a mystic, but it also welcomed a range of witnesses to testify to her miracle-working prowess. Called upon to state their own view, these people were happy to revel in their own knowledge that, through Maria Maddalena’s intercession, they too had been touched by God and experienced something extraordinary.

6 Our Beata In February 1614, Signor Andrea Morelli in Rome received a precious package. It contained the records of the informative process held in Florence, Lucca, and Parma as well as supporting evidence for Maria Maddalena’s cause, including a copy of Maria Maddalena’s baptismal record and postulatory letters promoting the cause from the grand duke, Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena, Duchess Eleonora of Mantua, and Cardinal Orsini.1 Andrea Morelli was the nephew of two of the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and had taken on the task of promoting the cause in the papal city. Maria Maddalena’s holiness was already widely appreciated in Florence where her convent attracted devotees and the archbishop had backed her canonization; her reputation had grown in Lucca and Parma, where inquiries had been held; and devotees from various towns had become interested in the nun. The question now was whether Rome would identify her as holy. It was the moment of transition away from the local and out to a group of external—central—assessors, the Congregation of Rites, which would henceforth play the determining role in how Maria Maddalena’s cause progressed.2 Maria Maddalena’s cause was still several steps away from securing the Congregation’s approval. A cardinal relator had to examine the informative process and establish whether the nun’s life and miracles were worthy of further investigation. If the cardinal determined there was a case to answer, the next step depended on him persuading a meeting of the cardinals of the Congregation of Rites to commission an apostolic process to gather further testimonies. This second tribunal would probe Maria Maddalena’s life, death, and miracles using questions and articles composed in Rome and stipulated by remissorial letters commissioning the process. Ultimately, three nominated auditors of the Rota would examine a copy of the process and present a report to the Congregation on whether or not the nun was worthy of approval by setting out the progress the legal cause had made, clear evidence of her virtues and miracles, and her fame for holiness.

1

Memoriale, f. 23r.

2

Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 156.

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Maria Maddalena’s prospects were affected by the general concerns regarding recent cults then circulating in Rome, but her approval also depended on the contents of the documents that were sent, the workload of the Congregation, and the commitment of the cardinals involved. As Ronald Finucane astutely observed of saint-making in the early sixteenth century, ‘holiness, in and of itself, was never enough’, and there were several different ‘sets of complicating factors’ that could interfere with a candidate’s cause.3 Like these earlier causes, Maria Maddalena’s encountered a range of different problems and its success remained far from assured for many years after that first local process arrived in Rome.

TH E WORK OF THE CONGREGATION OF RITES Remissorial letters for Maria Maddalena’s apostolic process were issued some ten years after her informative process arrived in Rome. The heavy workload facing the personnel of the Congregation of Rites in the intervening period had made discussion of any cause a competitive business. Much of their work related to many other possible new saints and between 1592 and 1654, at least 189 candidates for sainthood were discussed in meetings of the Congregation.4 But the committee was further occupied by decisions on moving or venerating bodies, extending existing cults, and conceding an office in commemoration of someone: sixty-one individuals were discussed by the Congregation under these headings between 1592 and 1654. This was the challenge Maria Maddalena’s cause faced. In the ten-year period before the apostolic process was finally commissioned in 1624, fifty-one people were discussed by the Congregation in relation to their canonization, liturgy, or relics. Candidates for canonization in particular could take up many meetings, and in this period the five canonized together in March 1622 (Isidore of Madrid, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri, and Teresa of Avila) demanded a great deal from the Congregation. In the light of these demands placed on the personnel of the Congregation, the support of influential cardinals and the pope himself might help a cause to rise further up the list of priorities. It was surely in this vein that the English devotee Tobie Matthew wrote to the Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a prominent figure in the Holy Office, to request his support for the cause a month before the cardinal ordained him in Rome in May 1614.5 The formal promoter, Morelli, meanwhile, sought papal support and quickly turned to Grand Duke Cosimo’s ambassador in Rome, Piero di Agnolo 3 5

Finucane, Contested canonizations, p. 256. Memoriale, f. 23v.

4

Recorded in RSDI.

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Guicciardini, to approach Pope Paul V. Morelli was able to report to Puccini on 2 May 1614 that Guicciardini had spoken with the pope about the ‘beatification’—an indication, perhaps, that they expected a limited cult to be conceded prior to her canonization—and the pope had asked the Congregation of Rites to consign the cause to a cardinal.6 The pope himself confirmed his position with a letter sent to Maria Maddalena d’Austria in which he stated his desire to see the cause make progress.7 Despite such support, however, Maria Maddalena’s cause was still vulnerable within a bigger political climate in which recent cults were approached with hesitation and even scepticism by some. A meeting of the Congregation of Rites in May 1614 acknowledged receipt of the informative process documents but rejected a call to open them, arguing that Maria Maddalena had died too recently. Over the following months, Andrea Morelli was replaced as promoter for the cause by Ludovico Ridolfi (the son of a Florentine senator, Gianfrancesco Ridolfi) and several pleas were made to the Congregation to no avail. Ridolfi lobbied repeatedly for the cause to be consigned to a cardinal relator at meetings of the Congregation in August, September, and December 1614, and made clear the growing impatience of the grand duke of Tuscany.8 Maria Maddalena d’Austria also personally lobbied various cardinals to supplicate the pope, including the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who wrote in April 1615 that his uncle was favourable towards the idea of having the documents opened.9 Despite this level of activity and papal support, Maria Maddalena’s process documents remained unopened. At exactly this time, the cult of Francesca Vacchini, a Dominican tertiary who had died in Viterbo in only 1609 and, like Maria Maddalena, had already been the subject of an inquiry at diocesan level, encountered difficulties because of her recent death.10 After a biography of Francesca by the bishop of Tricario had appeared in print in 1613 without the necessary licences, in 1614 the Inquisition resolutely banned the cult and demanded that all copies of the Vita be surrendered.11 Thereafter Vacchini’s cause was prevented from progressing. Although Puccini’s Vita had been published with the correct licences, Vacchini’s case nevertheless suggested the need to be particularly careful regarding new devotions. Moreover, her fate reflected the way in which

6

Memoriale, f. 23v. This letter was reported by the nuns in the Memoriale, ff. 23v–24r: ‘mostra inclinazione a far vedere il processo a tirare avanti questa causa’. 8 Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 238–9. 9 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 6077, f. 25. 10 Gotor, I beati del papa, pp. 255–84. 11 Roberto de Roberti, Vita con le apparitioni, e miracoli della veneranda serva di Dio Suor Francesca Vacchini di Viterbo, monaca del Terzo Ordine di San Domenico (Tricarico, 1613). For a brief account, see Thomas Mayer, The Roman Inquisition: Trying Galileo (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), pp. 102–3. 7

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jurisdiction over such devotions was not limited to the Congregation of Rites but was contested with the Inquisition. By contrast, Andrea Corsini, a candidate whose cause was attracting considerable support amongst Florentines and from the Carmelite friars at this time, had died over two hundred years before Maria Maddalena and was, therefore, by no means recent.12 In the end it was the activism of the Medici family and their ability to secure the interest of the cardinal prefect of the Congregation of Rites that helped to establish a cardinal relator for Maria Maddalena’s cause. The key figure here was Maria Maddalena d’Austria. In 1615, Carlo de’ Medici, the grand duchess’s twenty-year-old brother-in-law, was made a cardinal and the following year he travelled to Rome with Archbishop Alessandro Marzi Medici to receive his red hat, at which point the grand duchess encouraged him to supplicate high-ranking clerics to support the cause. Responding to a letter from Carlo asking for a written account of her wishes, the grand duchess wrote to recommend that the archbishop speak personally with Cardinal Francesco Maria Bourbon del Monte Santa Maria (1549–1626) and, presumably, inform him of her personal interest.13 The letters between the cardinal and grand duchess shine a light on a woman using her political power and network of influence to promote a candidate to whom she had a special devotion at the very beginning of their canonization process. Cardinal del Monte, who hailed from a Tuscan family, had been a member of Ferdinando de’ Medici’s household before he became grand duke, and in 1589 had taken possession of S. Maria in Domnica, the same church linked to Ferdinando’s cardinalate and now Carlo’s.14 Del Monte had recently been appointed prefect of the Congregation of Rites and it was after the archbishop had met with him that the Congregation formally approved the opening of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s informative process in May 1616, appointing Cardinal Antonio Mario Gallo, dean of the college of cardinals, as its cardinal relator.15 Despite this success, Maria Maddalena’s recent death remained a problem. In 1617 Cardinal Gallo, who had proved too busy to work on the cause, was replaced as cardinal relator by Alessandro Orsini (1592–1626). Orsini was undoubtedly committed to advancing Maria Maddalena’s cause. He had grown up in the court of his great-uncle, Ferdinand I, had visited the nun’s body in 1610, and had written at least twice to the grand duchess in 1616 to pledge his support.16 Orsini worked hard to promote Maria Maddalena but 12

Ciappelli, Un santo alla battaglia di Anghiari, pp. 40–68. ASF, Mediceo del principato 6077, ff. 197, 213 (29 April 1616). 14 On del Monte and the grand duke, see Franca Trinchieri Camiz, ‘Music and painting in Cardinal del Monte’s household’, Metropolitan Museum Journal 26 (1991): pp. 213–26 [www. jstor.org/stable/1512913]. S. Maria in Domnica (otherwise known as S. Maria alla Navicella) is one of the minor basilicas in Rome. It is located on the Caelian hill, not far from the Colosseum. 15 Memoriale, f. 25v. 16 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 6077 f. 216 (July 1616) and f. 250 (October 1616). 13

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discovered that many cardinals thought her cause should be postponed since it was ‘too fresh a thing’.17 The only other candidate under serious consideration at this time whose ‘freshness’ could compare with that of Maria Maddalena was Julián de San Agustín de Alcalá, a lay Franciscan who had died in 1606.18 Like Maria Maddalena, Julián had been venerated by a large crowd upon his death and his cult had spread quickly. Such was the spread that in 1610 a short, four-page pamphlet relating his life and miracles was published in Spanish in Lima.19 Amongst those who called for his swift canonization was Philip III of Spain, and a mere four years after his death the Congregation of Rites unusually commissioned his apostolic process, held in various locations between 1610 and 1621. Julián’s case demonstrates that it was not impossible for the cause of someone who had died recently to move quickly to an apostolic process, no doubt giving heart to Maria Maddalena’s promoters. But his was an exceptional achievement, and although his apostolic process was opened quickly, it did not reach a successful conclusion until much later, with beatification coming only in 1825.20 For Cardinal Orsini, meanwhile, examination of the contents of Maria Maddalena’s process raised some questions regarding two ecstasies in which she had relived the Passion (Holy Week 1585 and 1592). Her ecstasies suggested Christ had spent time in a cistern whilst at Pilate’s house the night before he was presented to the Jews for possible release, but this had no obvious scriptural basis.21 Both incidents had first been noted in the original transcriptions of her ecstasies, from where they had passed into Puccini’s Vita and then appeared within testimonies for the informative process.22 In 1618 Orsini called upon Puccini to clarify what had happened and appeared to be satisfied, but in May 1622 the nuns noted that he had raised the ‘difficulty’ afresh.23 Orsini sent his questions from Ravenna, where he had been serving as papal legate since 1621. His questions were particularly interesting because since his move to Ravenna Maria Maddalena’s supporters had been looking for the process documents in Rome so that another cardinal actually resident in the Saggi, Summarium actionum, virtutum et miraculorum, p. 13: ‘per esser cosa tanto fresca’. Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 112. On Julián de San Agustín, see the biography published at the time of his beatification and based on his beatification processes: Giuseppe Vidal e Galiana, Vita del Beato Giuliano di S. Agostino (Rome: Salviucci, 1825). 19 Fiel y verdadero treslado de vn breve memorial de la vida y milagros del sancto padre fray Julián de Alcalá (Lima, 1610). 20 Vidal e Galiana, Vita del Beato Giuliano di S. Agostino, pp. 100–4. 21 Memoriale, f. 28r. The ecstasies were recounted in I colloqui I, pp. 381–420 (18 to 19 April 1585); and La probatione II, pp. 47–86 (26 March 1592). 22 The 1585 incident was reported in the first edition, V1609, p. 230. The 1592 incident first appeared in the second edition, V1611, p. 531. They featured in testimonies in P767, pp. 156, 273–4, and 334–5. 23 Memoriale, f. 36r (1 May 1622): ‘ci propose di nuovo la difficoltà fatta alla vita della Beata circa un’ ratto della Pass[ion]e di N[ost]ro Sig[no]re dove ella disse che n[ost]ro Sig[no]re la notte della Pass[ion]e fu posto in una cisterna secca, e luogho sotterraneo’. 17 18

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city might take over the role of cardinal relator.24 Many letters were sent to Orsini asking where the documents were, to which he finally responded with questions again about the cistern, four years after his first query. It was an odd response that perhaps was an attempt to persuade others that he truly was working on the cause. At the same time, the fact that the cistern issue had been raised in the first place is a telling indicator of the careful examination of Maria Maddalena’s life story and a reminder that canonization was a theological endeavour aimed at identifying models of holiness, even if it was also a legal procedure influenced by due process and politics. Orsini accepted Puccini’s reply in 1662, in which he cited Bonaventure, Lanspergius’ Pharetra divini amoris, and Cristoforo Verucchino’s Compendio di cento meditazioni sacre, in addition to ‘two other more recent writers’ and argued that they ‘approved’ Maria Maddalena’s experience and demonstrated that it was not at odds with what the Gospel narratives contained.25 In the meantime, the search for the documents continued and they were located in Rome in December 1622. If Orsini had no idea where they were, then it was a lucky find, because missing documents could stall a candidate’s progress whilst the originals were located and copied, something that had delayed the cause of Giacomo della Marca just a few years earlier.26 Orsini was replaced as cardinal relator by Stefano Pignatelli in March 1623, but he was soon reinstated after Pignatelli’s death during the papal conclave of August 1623, and returned to Rome.27 The conclave proved momentous for Maria Maddalena’s cause for a further reason: the election of Maffeo Barberini as supreme pontiff. Taking the name Urban VIII, Maffeo’s election was a turning point for Maria Maddalena’s cause, since he had already taken an interest in the campaign after receiving a copy of Puccini’s Vita, and two of his nieces were nuns at S. Maria degli Angeli.28 Indeed, those nieces, Camilla (Sr Innocenza, entered 1613) and Clarice (Sr Maria Grazia, entered 1622) Barberini, had specifically joined the monastery because of their devotion to Maria Maddalena, the younger after claiming a miraculous healing through her intercession.29 Support from the Medici had obtained some progress for the cause, but Maria Maddalena’s supporters now hoped that direct papal support would quickly bring a happy conclusion and lobbied the new pontiff to prioritize the

24

25 Memoriale, f. 36r. Memoriale, f. 36r. Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 238, citing ACCS, Fondo Antico 4394. 27 Memoriale, f. 36r; RSDI, p. 214, 221. 28 Barberini had written in support of the cause after receiving the Vita; AMC, Lettere, Filze A 6.2 (15 April 1611), sent from Rome. 29 P769, f. 116r: ‘perché in esso [il monastero] era stata questa gran Serva di Dio Suor M[ari]a Mad[dalen]a’. Relatione, p. 77 offers a later account of Camilla’s journey to the monastery and Clarice’s healing from various ailments. My sincere thanks to Luigi Cacciaglia for sharing his knowledge of the monastery’s archive at the Vatican Library and introducing me to this chronicle. 26

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nun’s beatification on account of her very manifest (pubblichissima) and notable sanctity and miracles.30 Urban responded with encouragement, but was also clear that he would not beatify Maria Maddalena simply as a favour to his nieces: ‘all the terms of beatification should be observed and everything should be done with rigour according to the orders and rites of Holy Mother Church in similar causes’.31 Hopes that Urban would grant Maria Maddalena a privileged status were dashed, it seemed, and yet Maria Maddalena’s process did make dramatic and swift progress immediately after Urban’s election. Less than a year later, in May 1624, Maria Maddalena’s apostolic process was under way, overseen by three auditors of the Rota, Giovan Battista Coccini, Alfonso Manzanede de Quiñones, and Filippo Pirovano.32 What had started as the project of one convent and their clerical associates had initially made headway due to Medici support, but it was as a Barberini cause that it would now make its most significant progress to date.

T H E MA TU R I N G OF A C U L T The years between Maria Maddalena’s informative process and the apostolic process of 1624 may have seen her official cause stall, but devotion to her nevertheless grew, not least because the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and Puccini continued to promote her image as a saint. The anniversary of Maria Maddalena’s death was celebrated as an increasingly elaborate ‘festa’ at S. Maria degli Angeli, and in 1617, ‘to satisfy the devotion of those devoted to this mother’, a portrait was placed in the public church for the duration of the festivities, lit by two lamps and surrounded by vases of flowers.33 The following month, a chapel funded by Puccini in Maria Maddalena’s honour was completed in the church. The chapel was to include a ‘tavola’ painting by Francesco Curradi showing the Virgin Mary, St John the Evangelist, and St Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Cross together with Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi.34 According to the nuns’ chronicle, Puccini’s intention was to have the chapel ready to dedicate at the time of Maria Maddalena’s beatification 30 Memoriale, f. 37v: ‘SS si degnassi Beatificarla priviligiatamente per la pubblichissima e notissima sua santità, e miracoli’. 31 Memoriale, f. 37v: ‘si dichiarò volere che si osservassi tutti li termini delle beatificazioni, e che il tutto passassi con rigore secondo gl’ordini e riti della S[an]ta M[ad]re Chiesa in simili cause’. 32 Memoriale, f. 37v. Orsini presented his favourable report to the Congregation of Rites in February 1624 (RSDI, p. 225). 33 Memoriale, f. 26r. 34 On ‘tavola’ paintings, see Michelle O’Malley, The business of art: Contracts and the commissioning process in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 27–8.

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(‘quando che sia Beatificata’), but since the apostolic process had yet to be commissioned, Puccini must have known that her beatification was neither imminent nor assured.35 The convent chronicle noted in early March 1618 that Puccini had encountered some criticism over putting the portrait of the nun together with some votive offerings in the church, ‘she not yet having been beatified by the Holy Apostolic See’.36 And although Puccini’s chapel had been finished, it was not clear whether it should be opened with the tavola in place. Both matters were significant because they pertained to a much larger debate about what commemoration was appropriate for the non-beatified, a debate that had been particularly marked in relation to images placed publicly in churches or in which the person was shown surrounded by miracles.37 The Council of Trent’s decree on images had ruled that no new images could be placed in churches without episcopal approval, but the debate had continued beyond the Council.38 Andrea del Giocondo, then promoter for Maria Maddalena’s cause in Rome, was clearly somewhat concerned that introducing a ‘public cult’ that was only permitted for ‘saints approved by the Church’ might attract unwanted attention.39 He wrote to S. Maria degli Angeli from Rome in February 1618 stating that he knew of several examples in Roman churches of ‘beati not beatified’ who had effigies and votive offerings at their tomb.40 But concern about these encouraged Andrea del Giocondo to suggest to the nuns that a slightly different picture might prove less controversial. His proposal included showing Maria Maddalena kneeling either at the foot of the Cross or below the Virgin Mary with her hands joined in prayer in a votive position, the manner in which patrons were often included in the altarpieces they had funded. And he suggested not including any rays or ‘splendour’ around Maria Maddalena’s head but instead depicting light and rays coming from the crucifix or the Virgin Mary, using these to illuminate the nun’s face. These clever ideas would allow Maria Maddalena’s holiness to be suggested whilst avoiding the visual attributes typically used to denote saints. About two weeks later Puccini received a letter from a Servite friar in Rome, Bernardino of Montesenario, who reported that Cardinal Orsini, the cardinal relator for the cause, and Cardinal Bellarmine had both considered the matter and concluded that there was no reason why Maria Maddalena’s picture and votive offerings could not be placed in the church, since there were many examples of the practice in Rome (as Andrea del Giocondo had said).41 35

Memoriale, f. 26r. Memoriale, f. 28r: ‘per non esser ancora Beatificata dalla S.ta Sedia Apostolica’. 37 Noyes, ‘On the fringes’. 38 39 Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, p. 776. Memoriale, f. 28r. 40 Andrea del Giocondo’s letter of 28 February 1618 is transcribed in full in Pacini, ‘I “depositi” ’, p. 237. 41 Pacini, ‘I “depositi” ’, pp. 237–8; Memoriale, f. 28r. 36

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Amongst the examples was the tomb of Felice da Cantalice at the Capuchin church in Rome, San Bonaventura (today known as S. Croce e S. Bonaventura dei Lucchesi, near the Trevi fountain), where there was both a portrait and a large number of silver votive offerings and tavolette.42 Puccini was also informed that images of Ignatius of Loyola, Luigi Gonzaga, Teresa of Avila, and Philip Neri had all appeared in various Roman churches, together with votive offerings, before they had been beatified. It was a point that Maria Maddalena d’Austria made separately in a letter to an unidentified bishop that must have been sent at this time in which she spoke of the nuns’ desire to display their sister’s portrait and votive offerings, since ‘this grace has been conceded to others such as to the Jesuits for Beato Ignatius and to the Carmelites for Beato Alberto’.43 Cardinal Bellarmine’s advice was in keeping with his earlier pronouncements on the question of images and votive offerings more generally. Compared with others, the Jesuit cardinal had proved to be liberal when it came to what should be permissible for someone of Maria Maddalena’s status.44 After Pope Clement VIII had issued a document in December 1602 banning pictures of the non-canonized being placed in churches, Bellarmine had worked together with the Oratorian Antonio Gallonio to produce a memo arguing that affixing votive offerings to these tombs was a manifestation of private cult that should be permitted and not a public cult to be censored. Despite such high-level advice, Puccini applied to the archbishop of Florence for a licence to display Maria Maddalena’s portrait and to collect votive offerings at the altar, and the archbishop established a commission of theologians and canon lawyers to consider the matter. On 18 May 1618 the convent heard that a portrait with votive offerings had been approved unanimously, but the matter of a tavola (in which she was kneeling at the foot of the Cross) at an altar needed further consideration, because it seemed that it would introduce a public cult.45 With the approval of a second commission, the tavola was installed on 11 June 1618.46 The commissions established by the archbishop provide a useful indicator of the important role that the local bishop could still claim within the discussion of what veneration was proper to those still awaiting beatification. What is most interesting about the incident, 42 On the Capuchins in Rome, see Edoardo d’Alençon, Il terzo convento dei Cappuccini in Roma: La chiesa di S. Nicola de Portiis, San Bonaventura, Santa Croce dei Lucchesi (Rome: Befani, 1908). Today Felice’s remains are conserved in Rome in the Capuchin church of S. Maria della Concezione on the via Veneto. Work on this church began in 1626 under Pope Urban VIII, whose brother was a Capuchin. 43 ASF, Mediceo del Principato, 6100 (unfoliated): ‘questa dicon che è grazia stata concessa ad altri come a gesuiti del Beato Ignazio e a Carmelitani del Beato Alberto’. The letter is undated but the discussion suggests it dates from 1618. 44 Noyes, ‘On the fringes’, pp. 817–18; Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 58–9; Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine worship’, p. 211; and Ditchfield, ‘Thinking with saints’, p. 578. 45 46 Memoriale, f. 28r. Memoriale, f. 29r.

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however, is that despite all the concerns about inappropriate public cults, Maria Maddalena’s portrait and her votive offerings were allowed in the church and were able to provide the faithful with a portrait with which to focus their prayer. Maria Maddalena had not yet been beatified, but still had what looked, in many ways, to be the shrine of a saint. Away from the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli and its church, relics continued to be shared far and wide, and the number of miracles attributed to Maria Maddalena’s intercession grew. Records of forty-one miracles claimed in the period between Maria Maddalena’s informative process in 1612 and her apostolic process in 1624 provide us with further suggestions of how Maria Maddalena’s devotional cult was maturing despite the delays and difficulties her official cause encountered.47 More miracles were undoubtedly attributed to the nun in these years (some of which prompted offerings to be left at her tomb), but not all had their details noted in a written record. The nun’s relics remained important and were referenced in twenty-seven of these forty-one miracle stories. The case of Dianora Falconi, the wife of a Florentine weaver who, in 1623, found herself suffering an extremely difficult pregnancy, speaks powerfully of the enduring appeal that these objects had.48 She was plagued by pains and inflammations throughout her pregnancy, but medical experts had found nothing that worked. As she went into labour, her family were overtaken by panic that she was going to die. In the midst of a highly emotional situation, Dianora’s mother, Maria Galli, did not seek Maria Maddalena’s intercession merely with a prayer but instructed her son-in-law to leave the house and go to S. Maria degli Angeli for one of Maria Maddalena’s relics, something tangible that would put her daughter in physical contact with the holy nun. The end result was a happy one: a mantle was sent from the convent and as soon as it was applied, Dianora gave birth, the pains she had suffered for so long ceased, and mother and child survived. The relic used in this case was a traditional contact relic, but the details of other miracle stories from this period point to a growing range of items being put to use as relics, including some wine that had come from the convent of S. Domenico in Lucca. The wine had turned bad but was found to be restored after some flower relics had been added and by 1621, when the third edition of the Vita was published, four incidents had been reported in Lucca where supplicants had bathed in this restored wine mixed with water and been restored to health.49 These included a woman who claimed to have been healed on two separate occasions, a blind girl, and a man suffering from gout. Here was a ‘relic’ whose supposed power sprang not from contact with Maria Maddalena’s physical remains but from being the product of an earlier ‘miracle’. 47 These claims are recorded in V1621, pp. 598–602 (second numbering); in the convent Memoriale, ff. 22v–37r; and in various depositions in P769. 48 P769, ff. 245v–6v, 247v–8r. 49 V1621, p. 599.

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Embracing items as relics that had not made contact with Maria Maddalena’s body found something of a parallel in the growing number of claimed miracles that made use of vows in the supplication process as a means of forging a less tangible contractual link with the nun. Vows, of course, fitted within the culture of venerating the saints more broadly: a solemn vow was a tried and trusted method of seeking any intercessor’s help, creating a firm bond between them and the supplicant.50 Sixteen of the miracle accounts dating from Maria Maddalena’s cult between 1612 and 1624 involved the use of a vow, typically a promise to send a votive offering in thanksgiving to S. Maria degli Angeli.51 Some pledges, however, were more spiritual, such as one man’s vow in November 1613 to offer daily devotions in Maria Maddalena’s honour if he was cured of his heart pains.52 In some cases vows were used in addition to relics to enhance the plea, as in the case of a man who made a vow whilst holding Maria Maddalena’s breviary.53 But so powerful were vows thought to be that some people, although having access to one or more of the nun’s relics, instead used prayer and a vow alone to invoke her. One example of this involved Maria Galli once again, and her son, Francesco Piero, a Franciscan priest. In the case of her daughter’s difficult pregnancy Maria Galli had not just turned to prayer but had insisted on obtaining a relic; in the case of her son, who had been sick for fifteen days, she simply made a vow on his behalf.54 The difference in approach may have been influenced by the less severe state Francesco was in, or the fact that he was a priest, since the vow made was that the first Mass he said on his recovery would be in Maria Maddalena’s honour; or perhaps she felt a bond with the nun that transcended any need for relics on account of the miracle her daughter had already claimed. Another case in this period involved Ferdinando Gonzaga, the erstwhile cardinal who had visited the body in 1610 and assisted with starting the informative process. In 1617 he claimed to have been miraculously healed of heart palpitations and a fever after making a vow to send a votive offering of a gold heart to Maria Maddalena’s tomb.55 In both cases the sense of forging a

50

William Christian, Local religion in sixteenth-century Spain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 31–3; Gentilcore, From bishop to witch, p. 120; Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian materiality: An essay on religion in late medieval Europe (New York, NY: Zone Books, 2011), p. 112 on the tendency towards healings through vows. 51 For other examples, see Enrico Menestò, ‘The apostolic canonization proceedings of Clare of Monteflaco, 1318–1319’, in Women and religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, edited by Daniel Bornstein and Robert Rusconi (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 113–14. On votive panels produced in fulfilment of vows and in thanksgiving, see Jacobs, Votive panels and popular piety, esp. pp. 7–9, and 88–98. 52 P769, ff. 218r, 239v, 243v; V1629, p. 459. 53 54 V1621, p. 598. V769, ff. 247v–248r. 55 V1621, p. 600; V1629, pp. 450–1. Ferdinando had renounced his cardinalate in 1612 in order to succeed his brother to the duchy of Mantua.

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connection to Maria Maddalena came by means of a pledge rather than a physical object. That sense of a connection through people rather than through matter became evident in a particularly interesting way in Palermo around 1619, when a nun who had apparently benefited from Maria Maddalena’s intercession after making a vow was herself embraced almost as a type of relic. The nun in question was Sr Lisabetta Crispo, a Benedictine at the abbey of S. Maria la Martorana, who in 1619, finding herself suffering from oedema and reduced to a critical state, had vowed to send a silver votive offering to Maria Maddalena’s tomb.56 On making the vow, Lisabetta had immediately felt cured. She later thought of commuting the vow, but her malady returned and she was cured permanently only after she reconfirmed and then fulfilled the original vow. After obtaining this positive outcome, Lisabetta made the same vow twice more: for her sister suffering from cancer, and for her convent’s confessor to be cured of his frequent headaches. In a similar vein to how the wine restored at S. Domenico in Lucca had been used elsewhere as a relic, Lisabetta was used again by other people as a channel to the Florentine nun. A nun at S. Maria di Pietà in Palermo asked her, for instance, to pray to Maria Maddalena and make a vow on her behalf. The nun had been blind for some time and had made various vows to many saints to no avail. She was clearly able to make a vow to Maria Maddalena herself, but there was a strong appeal to repeating the combination of Lisabetta’s supplication and vow when they had already proved successful. Votive offerings abounded from the miracles attributed to Maria Maddalena in these years, regardless of whether vows were specifically involved. Collected together, this typical mode of thanksgiving enhanced the public witness to Maria Maddalena’s holiness at the church of S. Maria degli Angeli.57 But there were also spiritual, devotional results that might have long-term and more hidden consequences for the individuals involved. Fabio Serragli, for instance, visited the church of S. Maria degli Angeli every day for a year in fulfilment of a vow he had made to Maria Maddalena when suffering from mal di pondi (dysentery).58 Maria Rouai, who had first turned to Maria Maddalena in May 1607 at the suggestion of her confessor, also developed a long-term devotional interest in the nun after claiming a miracle. From a testimony she offered in 1624 we know that she became a regular visitor to S. Maria degli Angeli.59 She herself explained her visits out of devotion and to recommend herself continually to the nun. Indeed, she called upon the nun’s intercession several times, and by 1624 had claimed five separate cures as a result of her assistance. Spaced over several years, each cure had involved use of a different 56 57 58

V1621, pp. 601–2; Memoriale, f. 30r. Jacobs, Votive panels and popular piety, p. 6, pp. 74–9. 59 V1621, p. 598. P769, ff. 220r–223r.

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relic, suggesting these incidents were not the simple repetition of a previously successful formula but reflected a lively interest in the cult and a long-standing commitment to Maria Maddalena as a miraculous intercessor. Maria Maddalena’s growing reputation helped admit her to an elite tier of beings, a devotional family of saints. Committed as Maria Rouai and others may have become to the nun, devotion to her did not rule out devotion to others. The very vitality and power of the cult of saints lay in its size and the idea that the Catholic faithful might boast ‘special’ relationships with any number of these, not just one.60 It is worth recalling that alongside their personal devotional interests, the various communities and groups to which people belonged—their parish, their city, their work—were likely to have different patrons, before we even consider special personal devotional interests. Indeed, we know that Maria Maddalena herself had been somewhat flexible in her devotions and had taken part in a practice at S. Maria degli Angeli of adopting a different special patron each year at Epiphany.61 Maria Maddalena’s devotees were no exception. Embracing her as a possible saint did not necessarily mean substituting her for an existing devotion but perhaps adding her to a (growing) personal community of saints. Tommaso Grifoni provides a well-documented example of this: how a would-be saint could be embraced as one of a number of particular intercessors and devotions. In 1607 Grifoni was responsible for encouraging his friend and neighbour, Tommaso Fiaschi, to use some of Maria Maddalena’s flower relics in order to seek her intercession for his wounded knee.62 Fifteen months later, Grifoni found himself in Rome suffering from a bad fever that he thought might kill him. In this grave situation, he turned to Philip Neri in conjunction with the Virgin Mary, making use of some grain relics he had been given by one of the Oratorian priests.63 Grifoni was aware that many graces had been attributed to Neri’s intercession, having recently read Neri’s biography and seen the votive offerings left at Chiesa Nuova. News of Grifoni’s supposed miraculous healing spread, and just a few weeks later, on 28 September 1608, he was called to offer his testimony for Philip Neri’s first canonization process, the 267th witness to appear before the tribunal in Rome. But Grifoni’s interest in Maria Maddalena clearly continued, because, back in Florence in 1612, he was to be found testifying at her informative process and not only this, but helping to identify other witnesses.64 Grifoni may not quite have been 60 See, for example, Sara Tilghman Nalle, God in La Mancha: Religious reform and the people of Cuenca, 1500–1650 (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), esp. 174–6. 61 L’epistolario completo, pp. 200–2 (letter to Maria de’ Medici, 12 January 1601). 62 P767, p. 90. 63 Giovanni Incisa della Rocchetta and Nello Vian (eds.), Il primo processo per San Filippo Neri nel Codice Vaticano Latino 3798 e in altri esemplari dell’Archivio dell’Oratorio di Roma, 4 vols. (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1957–63), vol. 2, pp. 314–15. 64 P767, pp. 88–93.

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a serial saint-maker, but he was a repeat witness, and his testimonies provide useful evidence of the openness that the faithful had to new, would-be saints. Embracing Maria Maddalena as a saint was not only possible but appealing, because she could easily be added to an existing group of patrons and devotions.

THE APOSTOLIC PROCESS: VIRTUES AND MIRACLES Maria Maddalena’s apostolic inquiry was finally held in Florence in 1624. Its purpose was to corroborate the informative process of 1612 under the higher authority of a commission from the pope and executed by auditors of the Rota. Whereas the informative process looked to compile a large quantity of material and so commonly involved a high number of participants, speed was more of a priority for the apostolic process, where the aim was simply to produce sufficient evidence for the auditors to produce a summary document (known as a relatio) arguing for beatification, now the typical first form of recognition for a figure.65 No longer was this about detailing the story of Maria Maddalena’s life, but about arguing a case based on her virtues and her miracles that would benefit from the process taking a more direct and thematic approach. With streamlined articles and no tribunals held in Lucca or Parma, the apostolic process was swiftly completed in under six months. The articles for Maria Maddalena’s process approached her execution of the virtues systematically: her faith, hope, love of God, charity to others, religious observance, humility, and the moral virtues (those acquired by human effort). Such a clear inquiry was important in the light of the greater emphasis that had been placed on candidates’ virtues during recent meetings of the Congregation of Rites. Just three years earlier, for instance, the discussion of Pedro d’Alcántara and Philip Neri’s virtues had been divided over two meetings, one for the theological (faith, hope, and charity) and one for the cardinal (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance).66 At the same time, use of the term ‘heroic virtue’ to describe a candidate’s virtue had also begun to feature prominently in the Congregation’s discussions, calling for a clearer sense not just that they had practised the virtues but that they had done so to an extraordinary degree, beyond what was normally expected.67 The term had been used already in the fourteenth century, but its use and importance grew

65

Sodano, Modelli e selezione del santo moderno, p. 44. Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 168. Romeo de Maio, Riforme e miti nella Chiesa del Cinquecento (Naples: Guida Editori, 1973), pp. 257–78. 66 67

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markedly in the seventeenth century.68 Less than two months after Maria Maddalena’s apostolic inquiry opened in Florence in June 1624, the Congregation of Rites specifically discussed the ‘sanctity and heroicity of virtues’ of Francis Borgia.69 For Maria Maddalena, the attention now paid to her mystical experiences was much reduced beyond their demonstration of her virtue. Only one article touched on her raptures and visions, and it merely stated broadly that she had gone into rapture many times and the nuns had kept written records.70 Whereas fifty nuns from S. Maria degli Angeli had testified in 1612, only sixteen appeared in 1624, and they offered little detail regarding the content of Maria Maddalena’s mystical experiences: their focus fell on the number of ecstasies (‘almost innumerable’) and their connection with a life of prayer and devotion to God.71 These testimonies stressed how Maria Maddalena had been first to all community devotions, had recited the divine office with great devotion, and had clearly been given ‘the gift of prayer and contemplation’.72 So occupied was Maria Maddalena with God, Sr Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia explained, that it seemed ‘her life was a continuous prayer’.73 Her virtue, so evident for all to see, sprang from her monastic life of prayer. Yet even though the virtues of candidates began to assume greater significance in the canonization processes of the early seventeenth century, miracles remained crucial to the institutional assessment of sanctity and also fuelled devotional cults.74 As we have seen, the success of Maria Maddalena’s early cult was rooted in people ascribing miracles to her and identifying her ability to intercede as her most compelling and obvious mark of sanctity.75 But officials in Rome also looked to miracles to prove sanctity by demonstrating that the candidate was in heaven, and the canonization process had long taken what might be described as a sceptical attitude towards miracle claims, interrogating them in detail.76 Like other apostolic processes, Maria Maddalena’s reflected this interest in the miraculous, and these stories soon dominated the testimonies, with eighteen new miracle claims emerging. Over a third of the sixty-six people 68

Dalla Torre, Santità e diritto, pp. 47–8; and Vauchez, Sainthood, pp. 519–21. Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 169. 70 P769, f. 6r: ‘et raptus passa est et multa in raptu coquebatur quae a monialibus fuirunt scripta’. 71 72 P769, ff. 43r–166r. P769, ff. 74v, 93v, 124r. 73 P769, f. 75r: ‘mi pare di poter dire che il suo vivere fussi una continua oratione, perchè sempre stava occupata in Dio e con la mente e con l’affetto’. 74 Ditchfield, Liturgy, sanctity and history, pp. 120–6. On the ongoing importance of miracles, see in particular Giulio Sodano, Il miracolo nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia dell’età moderna: tra santi, madonne, guaritrici e medici (Naples: Guida, 2010). 75 On early cults, see David Gentilcore, Healers and healing in early modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 165; and Sallmann, Santi barocchi, pp. 437–67. 76 Vauchez, Sainthood, pp. 481–98. 69

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who gave depositions had not contributed to the inquiry of 1612 and were summoned solely to discuss Maria Maddalena’s post-mortem miracles, death, and cult (the final seven of twenty articles). Witnesses appearing for a second time discussed these miracles too, of course, amongst them three medical experts: Antonio Pellicini, the ordinary physician to S. Maria degli Angeli; Giovanni Battista Nardi, the ordinary physician to the abandoned girls of S. Maria e S. Niccolò (‘del Ceppo’); and Bastiano Manieri, the physician who had tended an injured servant at the Lucchese ambassador’s house in Florence. Their close questioning, which included asking them to confirm or clarify their earlier testimony, reflected the sceptical checking attitude of a process commissioned from Rome.77 Manieri in particular responded by correcting several key details relating to the ambassador’s servant’s injury he had seen in May 1611. He clarified the nature of the injury (it not only affected his ribs, but damaged his lungs and caused him to spit blood) and the speed of recovery (Manieri only returned the next day but the servant had said it was instant); he also stated clearly that it had been a miracle, because the servant should have died.78 The apostolic process took general depositions from the same number of physicians as in 1612, but the men were questioned to obtain clearer answers regarding what had happened, what precisely they had been eyewitnesses to, and how they judged the situation based on their medical opinion. These questions, together with a careful examination of Maria Maddalena’s body, placed the nun’s process within a long history of canonization proceedings dating back to the thirteenth century, when physicians had first been called upon to perform autopsies or examine parts of a would-be saint’s body.79 The claims that Maria Maddalena’s body was incorrupt and exuded a beautiful aroma were somewhat clichéd within the realm of saints, but their very lack of novelty opened Maria Maddalena up to comparison with other holy people that added to her power, whilst remaining exceptional when compared with the typical human experience.80 The corpse had first been examined in December 1612 but was examined again on 15 October 1624 as part of the apostolic process with a view to providing evidence that its 77 Jacalyn Duffin, Medical miracles: Doctors, saints and healing in the modern world (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 17–33, 113–19; and Vidal, ‘Miracles, science and testimony’. 78 P769, ff. 231v–232r. 79 Nancy Siraisi, ‘Signs and evidence: Autopsy and sanctity in late sixteenth-century Italy’, in Medicine and the Italian universities, 1250–1600, edited by Nancy Siraisi (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 356–80; Katherine Park, ‘Holy autopsies: Saintly bodies and medical expertise, 1300–1600’ in The body in early modern Italy, edited by Julia Hairston and Walter Stephens (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp. 61–73. One of the most famous physician-led discussions of a body concerned Chiara da Montefalco, an Umbrian visionary, whose body was found in 1308 to have objects within its organs. 80 On incorrupt and sweet-smelling bodies, see Vauchez, Sainthood, pp. 427–30; Carroll, Veiled threats, esp. pp. 208–14.

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condition was miraculous, that is beyond nature. The three tribunal judges (Archbishop Alessandro Marzi Medici, Canon Andrea del Tovaglia, and Canon Alessandro Strozzi) and the promoters of the cause (Puccini and Antonmaria Riconesi) attended the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli. There they made a report of where the body was kept and what it looked like, and also took four testimonies, two from Florentine physicians (Angelo Bonelli and the convent’s doctor, Antonio Pellicini, mentioned above) regarding the condition of the body, and two from nuns of the convent (Maria Francesca del Giocondo, prioress, and Maria Scarlatti, one of the oldest nuns) regarding how the body had been kept.81 The nuns testified that the body had not had any balsam or perfume applied; they also stated who had had access to the body and how it had been kept for many years.82 The physicians, meanwhile, were asked to view the body in person and offer their expert opinion on how miraculous its preservation was. Both were adamant this was a miracle, explaining that the corpse should have putrefied as others do and become fetid and foul-smelling (puzzolente).83 They were clear that it could only be in its current state through divine means. With this, the Florentine section of the process concluded. In the meantime, reflecting the new level of Barberini commitment to the cause, additional depositions had been gathered that autumn from the pope’s sister-in-law, Costanza, and her sister, Lucrezia Magalotti Vaini, within the oratory of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome.84 Two further depositions had also been gathered in the city from two Jesuit priests who had served as Maria Maddalena’s confessor at various times, Michele Geronimo and Virgilio Cepari, who had been much involved in the cult and process. That these testimonies were gathered at all attests to the strength of Barberini family interest in the beatification and to the ongoing involvement of Cepari, who was based in Rome. Merely by contributing, Costanza and Lucrezia—in addition to the Barberini nuns Innocenza and Maria Grazia, who testified in Florence—spoke of the interest of the papal family. Despite the important role they had played as patrons of Maria Maddalena’s early cult and cause, the Medici family did not contribute depositions to either the informative or apostolic processes, making the Barberini contribution of 1624 all the more eye-catching. In Rome the documents from both inquiries were passed to three auditors of the Rota. After gathering many hundreds of pages of testimonies, the outcome of the cause now depended on a summary relatio produced by the auditors to explain that Maria Maddalena’s life, virtues, and miracles made her

81

P769, ff. 34v–41v. On the near-contemporary examination of the supposedly incorrupt Florentine corpse of Domenica da Paradiso, see Calvi, Histories of a plague year, pp. 212–26. 82 83 P769, f. 38v. P769, ff. 39v–40r. 84 P769, additional section, ‘Florentinae Canonizationis Servae Dei Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis Ordinis Carmelitarum’, ff. 3r–6r.

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worthy of beatification. The nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli had provided strong evidence of Maria Maddalena’s virtues, not least because the articles of the process had given clear direction to their answers and because their life in community meant that several nuns had been able to testify to each point. But whilst virtue required only a subjective judgement, miracles demanded a more objective assessment of evidence.85 In November 1625, the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli received a letter from Virgilio Cepari in Rome informing them that although the cause had made good progress—the auditors had approved evidence of Maria Maddalena’s virtues and many miracles—it had encountered a problem with evidence of three possible miracles relating to the incorrupt body, its sweet odour, and the liquid emanating from it. The body had been examined twice already, but the auditors now commissioned a third examination for their ‘greater security and justification of the truth’, since none of these miracles had, in their opinion, been proven ‘with that abundance of testimonies that they desired’.86 The question was one of how much medical testimony had been provided: this time six medical experts were consulted in order to secure supporting opinions for the miracles.87 Just one part of the changing nature of the canonization process in the seventeenth century was a quest for more expert testimony to support miracle claims. When Maria Maddalena’s apostolic process had been compiled, two physicians had been thought sufficient for proving the condition of her corpse. Little more than a year after that examination had been made, the evidence level the auditors wanted had shifted from two to six. The great convenience of Maria Maddalena’s body being used as the source of three miracles was that, unlike in the case of a healing, there were no obvious time restraints on gathering the medical evidence: experts could go back multiple times and assess the corpse. In 1625 the doctors were specifically asked to consider whether, in their opinion, any of Maria Maddalena’s internal organs had been removed or if any attempt at embalming or conservation had been made.88 The third report on Maria Maddalena’s body was sent to Rome on 2 December 1625, and satisfied with what they read, the auditors used the evidence of the physicians to give pride of place to Maria Maddalena’s incorrupt body as the first of her proposed post-mortem miracles.89

85

86 P769, additional section, ff. 1r–3r. Memoriale, ff. 39r–39v. AAF, Atti relativi a santi e beati, Processus originalis remissoriae pro beata Maria Magdalena de Pazzis, ‘Originalia visitationis specialis corporis beatae Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis’. 88 Calvi, Histories of a plague year, pp. 221–2 notes a similar interest in setting out that no artificial means of preservation had been attempted concerning the body of Domenica da Paradiso, examined in Florence in 1630. 89 Giovanni Battista Coccini, Alfonso Manzanedo de Quiñones, and Filippo Pirovano, De sanctitate et miraculis quibus in vita et post obitum claruit ancilla Dei et virgo Soror Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Ordinis Carmelitarum Observantium religiosa ad S.D.N. Urbanum VIII Pont. Opt. Max. (1626), BC, Rome, Carmel III.874. 87

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THE CHALLENGE O F A CHANGE IN RULES In 1625, just as Maria Maddalena’s cause finally appeared to be making substantial progress towards beatification under a supportive pope, reforms to the canonization process introduced fresh obstacles that affected a large number of candidate saints, Maria Maddalena amongst them. Once more these reforms reflected concern that figures should not be honoured or celebrated as saints too soon after their deaths. A decree issued by the Congregation of Rites the previous year, on 18 September 1624, had set down an official position on recent candidates by requiring all causes to observe a ten-year interval between the informative and apostolic processes.90 The aim was to enforce a period of reflection during which the candidate’s fame and miracle-working might either develop or diminish. Since Maria Maddalena’s informative process had arrived in Rome some ten years earlier, this decree did not affect her cause, but more decisive and unavoidable reforms the following year did. First a decree issued by the Holy Office on 13 March 1625 banned cults that lacked approval in sweeping terms, effectively removing any need for the earlier Congregation of Beati.91 Depicting ‘unauthorized’ people with attributes that were traditional to the saints (such as halos, rays, and clouds) was prohibited, as was placing votives or burning wax tapers at a tomb. In addition, biographies for these people detailing miracles or visions were not to be published without approval from the local ordinary. A second decree of 2 October 1625 moderated the prohibitions in order to allow for private collections of votive offerings and accounts of graces that had been claimed so that evidence of a reputation for holiness, required for canonization, would not be lost.92 Although such accommodation was important, it remained that the idea of a public cult for a would-be saint had been removed. Beatification, which had already become decisive in procedural terms as an expected step en route to canonization, now became a major landmark in devotional terms too.93 The effect on Maria Maddalena’s cult was instant. In March 1625, in compliance with the new orders from the Holy Office, the nuns removed the whole collection of images, lamps, and voti gathered in Maria Maddalena’s honour in their public church: We, in order to obey the said decree, have removed from the church the images of our beata as much fixed to the wall as also the tavola of the altar where she

90 RSDI, pp. 237–8. Ditchfield, Liturgy, sanctity, and history, p. 232 observes the impact of this new rule on the cause of Gregory X. 91 92 ACDF, S.O., Decreta 1625 (13 March). ACDF, S.O., Decreta 1625 (2 October). 93 Veraja, La beatificazione, pp. 115–21.

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was shown, together with all the voti, and likewise we have stripped the oratory where her body is of voti and ornaments, and lamps, and have only left the lamp to the crucifix that is in the said oratory, until it will please our lord pope to declare this spouse of Christ beata. And therefore in this year there will also not be any feast on the anniversary of her death, neither within the monastery nor in the church, and on account of this same order we have stopped giving and sending out her relics.94

The nuns themselves continued to refer to Maria Maddalena as ‘our beata’, but they recognized that until the pope officially declared her beata, they had to change the way she was venerated and celebrated. The degree to which the nuns had to remove the physical instances of their devotion and moderate their devotional practice reveals the extent to which they had, until this point, already been treating Maria Maddalena as a saint. Almost every means they had been using to extend devotion to Maria Maddalena now ceased in observance of the new rules. It may perhaps have been precisely because Maria Maddalena’s cause appeared to be on the verge of success—and because the pope himself had insisted that it follow the rules—that the nuns were so cautious about behaving correctly and being seen to comply. The change of circumstances now made Maria Maddalena’s beatification even more significant, for this was the only way that the nuns would be allowed to restore the cult they had started nearly twenty years earlier and that had, for many years, not only been tolerated but given public approval by its clerical and elite visitors. Maria Maddalena’s very success had come from expressions of cult that, for the moment, were no longer open to her.

BEATIFIC ATION In the end, the impact of the Holy Office’s decree of 1625 did not last long for Maria Maddalena, because beatification followed swiftly. The three auditors presented their relatio of Maria Maddalena’s sanctity and miracles (De sanctitate et miraculis quibus in vita et post obitum claruit Ancilla Dei et virgo soror Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Ordinis Carmelitarum observantium religiosa) to the Congregation of Rites in March 1626, arguing that she should indeed be beatified.95 The relatio confirmed the validity of Maria Maddalena’s process and showed her holy virtues and miracles operating in tandem. An account of her birth was followed by each of the theological and cardinal virtues and, specific to Maria Maddalena, a section on her gift of prophecy, noting that the information came from eyewitness testimonies. The document then discussed 94 95

Memoriale, f. 38v. RSD1, p. 270. Coccini, Quiñones, and Pirovano, De sanctitate et miraculis.

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Maria Maddalena’s death and fame, and a bank of potential miracles—nine in life and nine after death—again repeatedly referencing evidence taken from the apostolic process.96 Interestingly, despite the fact that the Carmelites had played no formal part in the process to date, the relatio took care to mimic the apostolic process by describing Maria Maddalena as a nun ‘of the Order of Carmelites’ (Ordinis Carmelitarum).97 If her obedience and observance were to be included as evidence of her virtue, then the rule she had vowed to live by had to be acknowledged. The decision to present only a limited number of miracles was particularly important as a reflection of the need only for sufficient evidence. The postmortem miracles included in the relatio were those that boasted a number of witnesses from the apostolic process and were the most convincing: Maria Maddalena’s incorrupt body and the liquid it emitted, as well as seven healings, including four claimed by Maria Rouai.98 For each miracle, in addition to the supporting testimonies, the case was made with reference to theological and legal authorities, including Aquinas and Bonaventure, but also more contemporary authors such as Luca Castellino. In a system in which precedents were important, the auditors also referred to similar recent examples taken from successful causes, such as those of Felice da Cantalice, Giacomo delle Marche, Louis Bertran, Pascal Baylon, and Andrea Avellino.99 Maria Maddalena’s cause was one among many, in terms of competing with others for success, and because the success of others was used to bolster her case. In recognition of the link between beatification and canonization, the relatio concluded that if the pope wished, then Maria Maddalena could proceed to beatification ‘and solemn canonization’.100 Progress now was fast: Maria Maddalena’s apostolic process was approved as valid on 4 April 1626, her virtues were formally approved on 24 April 1626, and finally the eighteen miracles presented in the relatio (both in life and after death) were approved as evidence of Maria Maddalena’s saintly intercession.101 At this point the Congregation of Rites itself declared that if it pleased the pope, then Maria Maddalena could be declared beata and proceed to canonization.102 A copy of Urban VIII’s brief beatifiying their much-loved and revered sister arrived at

96 On the form of such relatio texts, see Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 264–72, and p. 299 on Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi. 97 P769, f. 6r. 98 Coccini, Quiñones, and Pirovano, De sanctitate et miraculis, ff. 52v–58r. Maria Rouai had personally claimed five healing miracles, but the auditors presented only four of these as miracles within the final discussion. The other proposed healings were claimed by Caterina Rossi, Maddalena Rondoni, and Pietro Alli. 99 Coccini, Quiñones, and Pirovano, De sanctitate et miraculis, f. 56v. 100 Coccini, Quiñones, and Pirovano, De sanctitate et miraculis, f. 59r: ‘et solemnem canonizzazionem’. 101 102 RSDI, pp. 279, 281, 284–6. RSDI, p. 285.

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S. Maria degli Angeli on 12 May. The nuns were understandably thrilled.103 ‘When the brief was brought to us, we all felt a commotion of great delight, [and] we began to ring the bells, and, all gathered in choir, we sang the Te Deum accompanied by the organ.’104 The nuns had waited a long time for this moment and they immediately began to plan ‘a very beautiful and devout festa’ to celebrate their new beata on her feast day.105 The papal brief gave the nuns further cause to celebrate, for it made no mention of the (Ancient Observance) Carmelite Order.106 As Maria Maddalena’s beatification had seemed more likely, the Carmelite friars had become more interested in her cause. Before the brief was issued, the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli had received word from three sources in Rome that the Carmelites had secured the right to celebrate Maria Maddalena’s beatification at their Roman church, S. Maria in Traspontina, rather than the church for Florentines, S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini.107 Locating the festivities here would turn them into a Carmelite celebration, which the nuns were against, their chronicle recorded, since their monastery ‘had nothing to do with the Order’.108 The friars had solicited the pope, various cardinals, and the Barberini in order to insert themselves into the celebration. In response, the nuns lobbied too, begging the pope not to refer to Maria Maddalena as a Carmelite in the beatification document, nor to allow her Mass and Office to be celebrated by the Order. In the battle to claim ownership of Maria Maddalena, it was S. Maria degli Angeli—a single convent of nuns—that won against a prior general and his religious order. One notable figure was missing from the celebrations at S. Maria degli Angeli: Vangelista del Giocondo, who had played a major role in the assessment of Maria Maddalena’s raptures and in nurturing her spiritual life, had died in July 1625.109 As prioress at the time of Maria Maddalena’s death, she had been tireless in promoting her sister and was perhaps the one most responsible for how her cult flourished. Aged over 70, she had opened the nuns’ testimonies at the 1612 inquiry with a lengthy deposition and had also contributed to the apostolic process, although she was then aged 91. Of the old guard, Maria Maddalena’s ‘secretary’, Maria Pacifica del Tovaglia, did remain. 103 The brief was issued on 8 May 1626; Tomassetti, Bullarium Romanum, vol. 13 (Turin: 1868), pp. 456–7. 104 Memoriale, f. 40r: ‘Quando ci fu portato il sudd.o Breve si sentì da tutte una commozione di grand.ma Allegrezza, cominciamo a sonare le campane, e tutte adunate in coro cantamo il Te Deum, con suono d’organo, e il simile feciono.’ 105 Memoriale, f. 40r. 106 Maria Maddalena was described first as a nun of the ‘said’ convent, in reference to S. Maria degli Angeli, and three subsequent times as ‘ancilla Dei’ (handmaid of God); Tomassetti, Bullarium Romanum, vol. 13 (1868), pp. 456–7. 107 The nuns received letters with the news from Virgilio Cepari, Costanza Magalotti Barberini, and Giovanbattista Scannaroli; Memoriale, f. 40r. 108 109 Memoriale, f. 40r. Vasciaveo, Una storia di donne, pp. 133–5.

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She died the following year, but in 1626 was able to celebrate the Roman confirmation that her lifelong friend had acquired.110 The clerics Virgilio Cepari and Vincenzo Puccini too were amongst those celebrating, both having worked hard to achieve the beatification. Whilst Cepari enjoyed the celebrations in Rome, Puccini, still confessor and governor of S. Maria degli Angeli, took a lead role in the convent’s festivities in Florence that marked Maria Maddalena’s first feast as a beata. Puccini died just a few months after the beatification, in October 1626.111 It was from these nuns, their confessor, and their excellent connections that the success of Maria Maddalena’s cause had sprung. The community had been able to enlist the support of the Medici grand duchess and her family, the archbishop of Florence, and various cardinals. Most important of all, however, had been the change of pontiff in 1623, after which the nuns could also make claim to the personal attention and interest of the pope himself. The success of such a well-connected cause may seem unremarkable. However, it is worth bearing two things in mind. The first, that many of these connections were fostered carefully over many years in large part thanks to a wider devotional interest in Maria Maddalena. And secondly, that even with such connections, Maria Maddalena’s process still had to abide by the procedures for beatification and still encountered delays and difficulties, some because of demands for better evidence. Given the obstacles in place, not least for recent cults, Maria Maddalena’s success was indeed remarkable. Her cause had weathered any number of storms, from the difficulties of setting up the first informative process and uncertainty regarding how to proceed, to the misplacing of documents, the lack of interest of those charged with working on it, and even questions of theological orthodoxy. As Maria Maddalena’s cause had stalled and progressed, the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli had carefully continued to promote her devotional cult, aided dramatically by those who developed their own devotion to Maria Maddalena and shared their belief with others. The result was the beatification of someone who boasted a loyal family of devotees, in Florence and beyond. Maria Maddalena’s beatification was, of course, a Roman decision and the product in large part of the politics and procedure of the Congregation of Rites, but it emerged from a local scene that had done much to shape Maria Maddalena’s public image and imbed her into the personal devotional lives of many.

110

Vasciaveo, Una storia di donne, pp. 136–8.

111

Memoriale, f. 43r.

7 S. Maria degli Angeli and the Barberini Family In the church of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, close to the River Tiber in Rome, a crowd had gathered. It was 25 May 1626 and for the first time Beata Maria Maddalena’s feast was being celebrated in the Eternal City.1 The church, located at the end of the via Giulia (see Figure 7.1), was the religious centre for the local Florentine community and the only church outside Florence to be given the right to celebrate this new feast.2 Situated here, this was a Florentine celebration and not a Carmelite one. Inside, over the high altar was a large canvas showing the new beata kneeling with a breviary at her feet, on which lay a white lily, a symbol of purity and an emblem of her patria. Kneeling with her arms open to receive a white veil from the Virgin Mary, this was Maria Maddalena the mystic bestowed with remarkable divine gifts. Around the church, depictions of the eighteen miracles approved by the Congregation of Rites reminded everyone that she was also a renowned miracle worker. There was the visible imprimatur offered by the many bishops and high-ranking clerics at the various liturgies, culminating in a solemn pontifical mass celebrated by Ulisse Gherardini della Rosa, bishop of Sessa, with music provided by the papal chapel and with seventeen cardinals, auditors of the Rota, and many prelates in the choir.3 And there was, above all, a celebration of papal association, with the arms of the Barberini pontiff adorning the frontal of the 1 Antonio Gerardi, Breve relatione del solenne apparato fatto in S. Giovanni de’ Fiorentini nel giorno che si celebrava la beatificatione della venerabil madre suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi carmelitana osservante (Rome, 1626), pp. 7–8: ‘Vi era sù l’Altare maggiore un quadro grande di bellissima pittura, nel qual’era dipinta la Beata Maria Madalena de’ Pazzi ginocchioni con le mani allargate, con le quali riceveva un bianco velo, che le veniva sporto dalla Beatissima Vergine, che stava in alto in una nuvola circondata da Angioli, e Cherubini; a piedi poi della Beata vi era un Breviario, sopra del quale era un bianco giglio in segno della purità, e verginità sua.’ 2 On S. Giovanni, see: Lilian Zirpolo, Ave papa/ave papabile: The Sacchetti family, their art partronage, and political aspirations (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 27–54. 3 Gerardi, Breve relatione, pp. 13–14.

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Figure 7.1. Detail from Giovanni Battista Falda, Nvova pianta et alzata della città di Roma con tvtte le strade, piazze et edificii de tempi, palazzi, giardini et altre fabbriche antiche e moderne come si trovano al presente nel pontificato di N.S. Papa Innocentio XI con le loro dichiarationi nomi et indice copiosissimo (1676). Reproduced with permission from Marquand Library of Art and Architecture, Princeton University. 1. St Peter’s basilica; 2. S. Maria in Traspontina (Carmelite friars); 3. S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini

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high altar and the Barberini household in attendance (including the pope’s brother Carlo). Within twenty years, Maria Maddalena had been transformed from a nun within a Florentine convent enclosure to the focal point of an elaborate celebration in Rome dominated by the papal family. Back in Florence, crowds descended on S. Maria degli Angeli throughout a festive octave that commenced with her feast day on 25 May. Other churches in the city observed the new beata’s feast on 27 May (after those of St Zenobius, the first bishop of Florence, and St Philip Neri), thus allowing S. Maria degli Angeli to claim a unique place within a three-day celebration of Florentine holiness.4 Maria Maddalena’s body was displayed in the convent’s public church for the duration of the celebrations, the first time since Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga’s visit in 1610.5 First vespers for the feast, Mass, and second vespers were all sung to mark out the event, and the Mass was celebrated by the bishop of Fiesole, Tommaso Ximenes. Letters of congratulation sent from women in other convents who were unable to attend these celebrations testify to the fame and celebrity that Maria Maddalena’s beatification bestowed on her convent.6 That fame was made all the greater by the attention of the Medici family: the grand duke himself visited the church on 25 May, and other members of the family visited many times during the octave. As in Rome, the Carmelite friars were absent. The celebrations rang out: this was a Florentine beata whose holiness had been approved by Rome. Here the spotlight fell quite literally on Maria Maddalena’s whole body. It was displayed in a transparent crystal coffin elevated above the high altar at S. Maria degli Angeli and surrounded by a dramatic ‘apparato’.7 Sixty lamps were placed behind an array of angels suspended on clouds encircling a wooden depiction of an enraptured beata kneeling on a cloud. The shimmering display was akin to some of the more dramatic displays constructed for Forty Hours’ Devotions before the Blessed Sacrament.8 Here the focal point was not Christ’s body under the appearance of bread, however, but the visible and astonishingly incorrupt body of a woman who had lived and died in that very convent. It was a true spectacle for the crowds coming to the church, whilst for the nuns the display was a ‘paradiso’, a portrayal of paradise itself.9 The elements of the celebrations captivated the senses and, most powerfully of all, brought people once more into the presence of Maria Maddalena’s body.

4 On the cult of Zenobius (Zenobi/Zanobi) in Florence, see Marica Tacconi, Cathedral and civic ritual in late medieval and Renaissance Florence: The service books of Santa Maria del Fiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 220–41. 5 6 Memoriale, f. 40v. Memoriale, f. 40v. 7 Pacini, ‘I “depositi” ’, pp. 189–200. 8 On apparati for Forty Hours’ Devotions and their theatrical effects, see in particular Mark Weil, ‘The devotion of the Forty Hours and Roman baroque illusions’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 37 (1974): pp. 218–48 [www.jstor.org/stable/750841]. 9 P771, ff. 498r, 511r, 503r.

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Maria Maddalena’s beatification in 1626 was momentous in terms of her prospects for canonization, not just because of how it fitted within the legal steps leading to the ultimate declaration, but because of what it allowed her cult to be and do in the light of the Holy Office decrees of 1625. Beatification permitted a return to the earlier devotional practices—including the distribution of relics—that had given such fuel to Maria Maddalena’s fame for holiness. It also, however, extended Maria Maddalena’s veneration further to include ‘each and every’ church in Florence, and (with a further concession of 1628) the whole grand duchy of Tuscany.10 Since papal favour had helped Maria Maddalena reach this milestone, the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and their supporters (including members of the Barberini family) now hoped that papal favour would see her canonized.

MIRA CULOUS OIL The nuns’ hopes for a swift canonization were quickly stoked as claims emerged that the oil used for the sixty lamps of the paradiso had been multiplied miraculously through Maria Maddalena’s intercession.11 The nuns reacted with considerable excitement, sharing the oil and looking to get approval of the event as a miracle in the hope of advertising it in print and securing the canonization. The claim itself came first from the two converse nuns who had been deputed to keep the lamps burning throughout the celebrations. When these nuns had gone to prepare the lamps on 23 May, they had expected to find around seven or eight flasks of oil in a jar; much to their astonishment they instead discovered the vessel was full to the brim. There was another jar in the room containing oil for food, but this was as full as it had been before and they knew there was no other oil in the convent, nor had new supplies arrived. Unable to comprehend where the oil had come from, the converse declared that ‘the beata must have worked this miracle’.12 On the first day they took seven or eight flasks of oil from the jar, taking a further three flasks each day of the octave for the apparato and about twentyfive flasks over fifteen days for lights in the convent. Despite taking so much oil, the level at first did not fall at all and then only began to fall minimally compared with what was being taken. The other nuns initially seem to have struggled to believe what their sisters were claiming. Sr Maria Arcangela, one of the converse, reported that the prioress first made fun of her for suggesting 10

Tomassetti, Bullarium Romanum, vol. 13, pp. 456–7, 622–3. The events are reported in: Memoriale, ff. 41r–41v; V1629, pp. 474–5; P771, ff. 144r–163r, 498r–502r, 503r–504v, 511r–512v, 518v–520r; V1669, pp. 392–3. 12 P771, ff. 498v–499v. 11

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that the beata had worked this miracle.13 But as the days passed, scepticism turned into widespread belief in a miracle. Indeed, not only was the quantity of oil impressive, but its quality too. Sr Maria Arcangela recalled that she had originally been worried about using this oil, because she expected the low supply to be full of dregs that would create a bad smell in the church as it burned, but instead the oil was clear and produced no smell at all.14 The oil had not simply been multiplied, it seemed, but changed. The convent chronicle recorded that the nuns conserved the oil on account of it being ‘miraculous oil’.15 But their own belief in the miracle was not sufficient: they wanted public and official recognition. As the chronicle records, the nuns wrote to Costanza Barberini and Virgilio Cepari (described as the ‘advocate of the cause for the canonization of Maria Maddalena in Rome’) looking for advice as to how the oil might be authenticated as a relic.16 Authentication was required if the oil was to be distributed and the event published as a miracle. Cepari advised the nuns that ‘to approve miracles (miracoli) after the beatification’ they should approach the archbishop of Florence to take testimonies and commission a congregation of theologians to review the evidence.17 Over the course of a week in early August 1626, testimonies were taken at S. Maria degli Angeli from Maria Umiltà Ardinghelli, the sacristan; Maria Benedetta Carlini, the secretary; Maria Fedele Orlandini, the dispensor; and Maria Arcangela and Eugenia, the two converse charged with refilling the lamps.18 Nine theologians met at the archbishop’s palace on 11 August and approved the miracle, after which the archbishop sent a copy of the process and his decree of confirmation to Rome so that the miracle could be included in a new edition of Maria Maddalena’s biography that was then being prepared in Rome.19 We have here a clear sign that already within just a few weeks of Maria Maddalena’s long-awaited beatification her sisters were looking to develop her cult further and pursue her canonization: beatification alone was not sufficient. Cepari’s enthusiasm for an episcopal inquiry might have been prompted in part by questions that had been raised by the Holy Office in the months before Maria Maddalena’s beatification regarding the publication of several ‘miracles’ that had not been approved as miracles by the auditors of the Rota.20 Interestingly, despite Maria Maddalena’s beatification, these particular concerns

13

P771, f. 153v. P771, ff. 153r, 158r. Sr Eugenio Andrea del Puccio also commented on this (f. 156v). On Maria Arcangela, see Detti e Preghiere, pp. 191–3. 15 Memoriale, f. 41v: ‘per essere olio miracoloso’. 16 Memoriale, f. 42r for the description of Cepari. 17 18 Memoriale, f. 42r. P771, ff. 144r–163r. 19 Memoriale, 42v: ‘acciò si stampassi questo miracolo con li altri nella nuova impressione della vita della nostra Beata, quale si fa in Roma’. 20 ACDF, S.O., St. St., B 4 c (int. 2), f. 1r. 14

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had remained unresolved at the time when the oil miracle was claimed. The problem was discussed by the Holy Office on 20 June 1626, in the period between the nuns informing Cepari of what had happened and hearing his response. In that meeting, officials agreed to let the case drop, reasoning that more miracles undoubtedly happened than were approved, since the Rota approved so few. They also acknowledged that the beatified should be treated differently from mere ‘servants of God’, noting that the restriction on publishing accounts of miracles applied to those who were neither canonized nor beatified. Cepari was subsequently able to advise that the Rota did not need to investigate the oil miracle at this stage: a local episcopal inquiry was sufficient. The discussion at the Holy Office was confirmation, if more was needed, of the decisive nature of Maria Maddalena’s beatification for her devotional cult. As a beata, she had earned a higher level of trust from the censors, which a mere servant of God did not warrant. By the time the oil miracle was included in a new biography published in Rome in 1629, word of mouth and distribution of the oil as a relic had ensured the event was already known beyond the convent enclosure. In print, however, it was propelled out still further. The Vita, prepared by Antonmaria Riconesi, drew heavily on Puccini’s existing narrative, but added components that clearly looked towards Maria Maddalena’s canonization. Substantial effort was put into recounting the due process that had culminated in the nun’s beatification, and, of course, the story of the oil miracle was told in detail as evidence of the nun’s ongoing miraculous intercession.21 The nuns’ work in distributing the multiplied oil, together with the advertisement it received in the Vita, saw it used in 24 of 105 miracles noted as being attributed to Maria Maddalena between 1626 and 1669, making it the most popular of the nun’s non-contact relics in the records.22 The new Vita of 1629 worked generally to promote Maria Maddalena’s fame, but, dedicated to Pope Urban VIII by Sisters Innocenza and Maria Grazia Barberini, it also made a specific attempt to enlist Barberini support for the canonization by forging a direct link between the cause and the papal nieces. As they thanked the pope profusely for having beatified Maria Maddalena, Innocenza and Maria Grazia also pleaded that he might ‘deign to promote her to the greatest honours of canonization’, reminding the pope that she had already been found worthy of these, for the Congregation of Rites had originally agreed Maria Maddalena might proceed to beatification and canonization.23 The nuns might come across as overambitious, but they had good reason to think that the Barberini were both particularly interested in 21

V1629, pp. 473–5. Details of these miracles are provided by several testimonies from the canonization processes held in Florence (P771) and Naples (P770), and are reported in V1669, pp. 395–407. 23 V1629, ‘Al beatissimo padre’, sig. A3. 22

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Maria Maddalena’s cause and able to bring the canonization about swiftly. These women had, after all, seen Maria Maddalena’s beatification process accelerate markedly in the wake of Urban’s election, and other Florentine causes had also benefited after his election, including those of the Carmelite Andrea Corsini (canonized in April 1629) and, to a lesser extent, Caterina de’ Ricci (beatified only in 1732).24 As the dedication of the 1629 Vita made clear, the Barberini had a strong family connection to the monastery; Maria Maddalena was not just any nun but the leading light of the papal nieces’ community. Moreover, Urban himself had indicated the he personally held Maria Maddalena in high regard. It was those family connections that had brought Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the pope’s nephew, to S. Maria degli Angeli in September 1626 and allowed the community to plead personally for his support for the canonization. The cardinal was there to visit his sisters Innocenza and Maria Grazia, but the visit gave him the chance to see the beata’s body (now back in the oratory) and marvel at its incorrupt state and sweet odour.25 Cardinal Francesco also viewed some of the penitential devices that Maria Maddalena had used to mortify herself and was given some hairs that had carefully been extracted from her body. By the time the cardinal left Florence on 4 October 1626, he had said Mass in the convent church three times and dispensed Communion to the nuns once. The nuns had had ample opportunity to make their case. At around the same time, relations between the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and the male leadership of the Carmelite Order started to improve. Following their omission from the beatification, the interest of the Carmelite friars seems to have grown in the months after May 1626 and the nuns, for their part, appear to have adopted a more conciliatory attitude than before. The prior general of the Ancient Observance Carmelites, Gregorio Canal, visited S. Maria degli Angeli in September 1626 in what may have been an attempt to win the nuns over.26 He said Mass in the nuns’ church and exhorted the women to imitate their beata, clearly recognizing that they had a special status as her heirs. The warmth of the nuns’ reaction can be seen in their gift of several prized relics, including items that Maria Maddalena herself had used during her lifetime. The Carmelite Order began a fresh appeal to be able to celebrate the beata’s feast, arguing that she had indeed been ‘of their order’.27 On 23 April 1627 a papal brief extended Maria Maddalena’s cult to the whole Order.28 As the nuns and their supporters turned to the matter of canonization, demonstrating the breadth and scope of her cult became extremely important and in this context the global reach of the Carmelite Order—when liturgical veneration of the new beata was otherwise limited to 24 25 28

Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 341–3 (Corsini), 347–8 (Caterina). 26 27 Memoriale, f. 42v. Memoriale, f. 43r. Memoriale, f. 43v. Tomassetti, Bullarium Romanum, vol. 13, pp. 538–40.

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Florence and (later) Tuscany—could dramatically enhance Maria Maddalena’s appeal as a saint for the universal Church.

PO PE URBAN VIII AND CAN ONIZATION If the support of the Carmelite Order was newly enticing for Maria Maddalena’s promoters, it was the ongoing patronage of the Barberini family and the pope that was thought to hold the key to canonization. But although the Barberini continued to assist the convent, a formal canonization process was not started. In a fate shared by many, Maria Maddalena’s progress stalled due to a series of reforms to the canonization process instituted in the first decade of Urban VIII’s pontificate.29 In 1625, the nuns had swiftly removed evidence of an unauthorized cult from their church in line with the decrees issued by the Inquisition. Maria Maddalena’s beatification offered a reprieve the following year and public celebrations were once again allowed, but more changes followed to enhance the distinction between the canonized and noncanonized, and to slow down the process of canonization. From 1628 the sources fell dramatically silent about advancing Maria Maddalena’s cause. Her prospects had been struck an instant blow on 20 November 1627, when the Congregation of Rites issued a decree insisting that henceforth it was prohibited to discuss a cause in terms of the candidate’s virtues or martyrdom before fifty years had passed since their death.30 A local process regarding fama sanctitatis could be held, but even in these cases a wait was required before the documents could be formally opened. The ruling amplified still further the official position of hesitation towards recent would-be saints of precisely Maria Maddalena’s vintage. Further reforms drew a sharper distinction still between these recent figures and those who had died many years previously and been venerated (locally) for a long period without official approval. A ruling in November 1628 demanded that these older candidates—those claiming a ‘cult immemorial’—needed to demonstrate their long-standing devotion specifically with evidence of the celebration of Mass and an Office in their honour for the duration of the required period.31 Approval of those who could provide evidence of liturgical commemoration was referred to as ‘equivalent canonization’ and now involved a decree from the Congregation of Rites. Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine worship’, pp. 213–15; Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 321–3. The reforms were contained in the brief Caelestis Hierusalem cives in 1634, and in a decree of March 1642 reprinted in Benedict XIV, De servorum Dei beatificatione, Book II, appendix 1. 30 RSDI, pp. 371–3; also Benedict XIV, De servorum Dei beatificatione, Book I, ch. 22, no. 9. 31 RSDI, pp. 400–1. 29

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A set of Considerationes issued in May 1631 laid out the working of the Congregation of Rites and the procedure to be followed in full.32 It considered the formulation of causes, the role of remissorial letters, and the interrogatory questions to be used. This attempt to clarify so many points of procedure reflected the lively discussion surrounding complex legal queries. The papal brief that followed in 1634, Coelestis Hierusalem cives, confirmed the norms issued in the preceding years and responded to reports that the decrees of 1625 were not being observed by demanding confirmation of compliance before a candidate’s cause could proceed with the Congregation (this was discussed as observance of the decrees ‘de non cultu’).33 There were now two different paths to canonization: one for recent causes, which had to prove there had been no public cult since the candidate’s death over fifty years earlier; and another for those who, having died before 1534, were deemed to be exceptions (‘casus excepti’) and were therefore specifically required to demonstrate a liturgical cult.34 At the same time, practical changes also affected how swiftly a cause for canonization might proceed. Chief amongst them was a reduction in the number of meetings that the Congregation had with the pope for the discussion of causes. From January 1631, these were limited to three per year, in January, May, and September.35 It was also at this time, in 1631, that Antonio Cerri was appointed as the first promotor fidei (promoter of the faith), a more specialized form of the promotor fiscalis, whose role it was to uphold the law and prevent abuses in cult.36 Although the most important reforms had been introduced by 1634, Urban VIII’s brief was nevertheless followed by further review by a commission of cardinals leading to the Decreta servanda in canonizatione et beatificatione sanctorum issued in 1642.37 This text reproduced the decrees of 1625 and the brief of 1634 with some additions and followed them with a discussion of the canonization procedure.38 Of the additions, an important one was the requirement for books on the lives and miracles of mere servants of God to include a ‘Protestatio auctoris’ note declaring that the work observed Urban’s decrees of 1625 (namely that a bishop must approve of any miracles being published, having also consulted Rome). 32

33 RSDI, pp. 514–45. Gotor, I beati del papa, p. 308. Renoux, ‘Canonizzazione e santità femminile’, pp. 735–6; Dalla Torre, Santità e diritto, pp. 67–9; Veraja, La beatificazione, pp. 115–21. 35 Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 327. 36 Giovanni Papa, ‘La Sacra Congregazione dei Riti nel primo periodo di attività (1588–1634)’, in Miscellanea in occasione del IV centenario della Congregazione per le Cause dei Santi (1588–1988), (Vatican City: Congregazione per le Cause dei Santi, 1988), pp. 39–42; Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 75. 37 On Caelestis Hierusalem cives, the 1642 decrees, and their application, see Veraja, La beatificazione, pp. 69–79, 83–9. 38 The combination of theory and practice resembled Felice Contelori’s Tractatus et praxis de canonizatione sanctorum (Lyons, 1634). 34

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Together the new rules delayed the recognition of new saints and strengthened central regulation of long-standing local devotions. The most considerable—and predictable—result was another long period in which no canonizations occurred, between Andrea Corsini’s in 1629 and Thomas of Villanova’s in 1658.39 After 1629, Urban VIII canonized nobody; nor did his successor Innocent X. Records of the meetings held by the Congregation of Rites concerning new candidates reveal a high level of activity in the 1620s that fell markedly in the 1630s.40 Between 1624 and 1630, the Congregation issued letters commissioning seventy new apostolic processes; amongst them one for Maria Maddalena’s beatification. In the years between 1631 and 1637, just seven were commissioned, and none were undertaken between 1638 and 1644. Not only were fewer new declarations of sanctity made in this period, but the number of causes discussed at any stage was curtailed. In the years 1635–40 twenty-five causes were already in discussion with the Congregation, only to stall.41 Such a stark fall in activity demands an explanation. As Simon Ditchfield has shown from discussion of the cause for Pope Gregory X at this time, the feeling was that Urban VIII might have refrained from all canonizations simply in order to avoid having to submit to Spanish demands for the canonization of Spanish candidates.42 But as Ditchfield has also argued, Urban’s far-reaching reforms and, moreover, his decision to appoint the energetic Cesare Facchinetti as secretary to the Congregation in 1635 imply that he attached great importance to canonization; it seems reasonable, then, to think that his decision not to canonize reflected deliberate (and positive) papal policy. The repercussions of these reforms for many candidates for canonization is well known, but it is worth exploring what happened to some of these causes in more detail in order to see just how far-ranging the impact was and how typical the treatment that Maria Maddalena’s cult and cause received—despite the atypical link that the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli boasted with the pope himself. Amongst those affected by the heightened demands of the new requirements was Bernardo de Monroy, a Spanish Trinitarian who had been martyred in Algeria with two others in 1622.43 In 1626 the Congregation of Rites met and raised the problem that images of Bernardo appearing with votive offerings and tavole contradicted the Holy Office decrees of the previous year, and on 7 November the decision was taken to drop the cause, after which it made no further progress. When an appeal was made in 1630 for remissorial letters to commission an apostolic process, the petition was 39 On the canonization of Thomas of Villanova, see Sigismondo Tamagnini, Relatione della canonizatione di S. Tomaso da Villanova dell’Ordine Agostiniano & arcivescovo di Valenza. Dedicata al Reverendiss. P. Generale il P. Maestro Paolo Lucchini da Pesaro (Rome, 1659). 40 41 RSDI. Ditchfield, Liturgy, sanctity and history, pp. 249–53. 42 Ditchfield, Liturgy, sanctity and history, pp. 252–3. 43 Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 333.

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denied.44 Bernardo’s fate was an early indication to all promoters of causes that failure to abide by the new regulations might have drastic consequences. Another handicap affecting Bernardo’s cause was his recent death. The prohibition against proceeding within fifty years of a candidate’s death struck down his, and several other causes, almost overnight.45 Bernardino Realino’s cause, for example, had already been remitted to auditors of the Rota in the 1620s but had advanced no further by the time of the new legislation; the fact that he had died only in 1616 made progress impossible for the time being. His cause was only resumed finally in 1673, when it was proven (with another process) that no unauthorized cult had existed. Robert Bellarmine’s cause suffered similarly. He had been the subject of both an ordinary process and an apostolic process when the cause came to a stop in 1629. Bellarmine had died in 1621, and his cause was only resumed over fifty years later, in 1675. The cause of Francis of Sales (who had died only in 1622) likewise came to an abrupt halt, despite Urban VIII having approved its introduction to the Congregation of Rites in 1626. Apostolic processes were held in three French dioceses in the following years, but Francis was too recent under the new laws to make further progress. Progress only came in 1648 during the pontificate of Innocent X, when his promoters obtained an exemption from the rules.46 Unsurprisingly, the new requirement for either a process demonstrating a lack of cult or the cause being recognized as a ‘casus excepti’ added considerably to the Congregation’s workload. Causes that had made substantial progress regarding the candidate’s virtues, fame, and miracles had to endure another process—one that had to be commissioned and conducted, and its contents examined and approved. The effect of this was both dramatic and enduring, with the extra work now facing the Congregation serving to delay many causes and not just those of recently deceased candidates. Amongst those to suffer was the cause of Margherita da Cortona who had died in 1297.47 Remissorial letters were issued for Margherita in 1627 and renewed again in 1628, but the cause had to wait until 1641 before the Congregation considered it in terms of observance of the 1634 decree, and it was only in 1653 that Margherita, who clearly boasted devotion dating back several centuries, was finally approved as an exception.48 Another victim was the cause for Beatrice de Silva, who had died in Toledo in 1492. A process for 44

RSDI, pp. 466–7. Gotor, I beati del papa, 373–96. See also, Miguel Gotor, Santi stravaganti: Agiografia, ordini religiosi e censura ecclesiastica nella prima età moderna (Rome: Aracne, 2012). 46 Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 308–9. 47 RSDI, pp. 341–2, 393–4, 656–7, 948–54, 954–5. 48 Joanna Cannon and André Vauchez, Margherita of Cortona and the Lorenzetti: Sienese art and the cult of a holy woman in medieval Tuscany (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1999). 45

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her had been started in 1636, but was interrupted. In 1660 the Franciscan Pietro Quintanilla, working on her cause, had reason to write that all the causes with the Congregation were being held up by the matter of cult.49 Beatrice was finally beatified only in 1926. For some, the damage inflicted by Urban’s reforms was irreparable. The Neapolitan Dominican Marco Maffei da Marcianise was one such candidate to suffer. Marco had been the subject of an ordinary process immediately after his death in 1616, which his promoters lobbied many times for the Congregation to open. Since the Dominican lacked approval, the decrees of 1625 demanded that his tomb be stripped of ex-votos and tavole.50 The decrees that followed forced a delay for a candidate who had only recently died, and this delay became permanent when it was obvious that the decree ‘de non cultu’ had been flouted.51 Observing the rules had become more important than ever and breaking them could stop a cause in its tracks. Initially, the reforms seem to have inspired a sense of urgency amongst some promoters, eager to push their candidate through before further changes hampered it. Rose of Lima’s cause, for example, accelerated in the 1620s seemingly in an attempt to have her beatified before any new sanctions were introduced that might delay it, Rose only having died in 1617.52 With enthusiasm from King Philip IV of Spain, Rose of Lima’s ordinary process (held 1617–19) was sent to the Spanish ambassador in Rome in 1624 and, despite some delay, an apostolic process was commissioned in 1630.53 The process was presented to the Congregation of Rites in 1634, but already too many obstacles had been erected. Only in 1656 did Rose’s cause resume, with an exemption granted by Pope Alexander VII. Later popes proved it was possible for the supreme pontiff to dispense a recent cause from the need to wait fifty years, as in the case of Francis of Sales in 1659.54 For Pope Urban VIII, however, the man who had overseen the introduction of so many new regulations, it appears to have been unthinkable. A letter dated February 1630 sent from Cardinal Barberini to the nuncio in Austria, Cardinal Pallotto, referred tellingly to Pope Urban’s concern

49 ‘Tutte le cause dei servi di Dio si fermano a causa dello argomento del culto’ (i.e. the decree ‘de non cultu’); cited in Veraja, La beatificazione, p. 83. 50 ACDF, S.O., St. St. B 4 b, int. 8. See Vittoria Fiorelli, I sentieri dell’inquisitore: Sant’ Uffizio, periferie ecclesiastiche e disciplinamento devozionale (1615–1678) (Naples: Guida Editori, 2009), pp. 105–6. 51 Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 304. 52 Graziano, Wounds of love, pp. 117–19. On Rose’s cause, see Teodoro Martínez Hampe, Santidad e identidad criolla: Estudio del proceso de canonización de Santa Rosa (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Ardinos ‘Bartolomé de las Casas’, 1998). 53 Myers, Neither saints nor sinners, pp. 28–42. The processes are conserved at the Vatican: ASV, Cong. Riti, Processus 1570 (ordinary process), and 1573 and 1574 (apostolic process). 54 RSDII, pp. 189–92.

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regarding his recent regulations. The cardinals were discussing Luigi Gonzaga, the young Jesuit who had died in 1591 and whose cause had been delayed in compliance with the fifty-year rule introduced in November 1627. Barberini wrote to lament with the nuncio that Luigi’s cause could not proceed, explaining that since these decrees had been introduced by Pope Urban himself, the pope did not want to depart from them.55 Aware of the enthusiasm of Emperor Ferdinand and his wife Eleonora Gonzaga for the cause, Barberini asked Pallotto to block the process with the emperor or at least prevent their displeasure with the pope. Barberini noted that since the Congregation of Rites was already dealing with many processes for beati who had worked miracles and had died more than fifty years earlier, it seemed fitting to assess these first and not to examine another which did not meet the official requirements. The emperor challenged the nuncio about the issue, to which Pallotto reiterated that Urban could hardly expect his successors to abide by his rules if he himself did not.56 In the 1620s and 1630s, the reforms were simply too novel, and Urban himself too committed to them, for any cause to sidestep the tight requirements. That was true even for Maria Maddalena’s cause, despite Urban’s own devotion to the nun and the support it had from the Medici and Barberini families. In a pontificate spanning over twenty years, Urban canonized just two people, both in the 1620s: Elizabeth of Portugal (d. 1336) and Andrea Corsini (d. 1373), two figures who had been venerated for centuries.57 In 1634, the very year that the papal brief Coelestis Hierusalem cives confirmed so many of the rules that had already hampered Maria Maddalena’s progress towards canonization, Urban’s secretary, Angelo Giori, wrote to Sr Innocenza Barberini to ask for a relic of Maria Maddalena for the pope.58 Urban’s devotional interest in Maria Maddalena had endured, even as his drive to reform the canonization procedure had placed her cause in a holding pattern. Giori’s request left the nuns in a quandary, torn between their desire to keep their sister’s body whole and to offer the pope a substantial gift. The secretary subsequently stated that the pope did not want to ‘damage’ the body and that a finger would suffice.59 A careful and complicated amputation APGSI, Santi e beati 11 (Luigi Gonzaga), 92, 6a: ‘Ai quali decreti, fatti in tempo del suo pontificato non vuole derogare, e non è dovere, che Sua Santità stessa gli rompa . . . Tutto ciò, che ha fatto, e che farà Vostra Signoria Illustrissima, e il Padre Fra’ Domenico per sbarrare questo negotio, o almanco per prevenirne i dispiaceri, è accettissimo alla Santità Sua. Vi sono presentemente processi di molti beati, a quali non osta il sudetto decreto, che per li continui miracoli, e grazie, che si compiace la Divina Maestà di operare per mezo delle loro intercessioni, non devono essere proposti a qualsivoglia altro.’ 56 APGSI, Santi e Beati 11 (Luigi Gonzaga), 92, 7, f. 33v (Cardinal Pallotto to Cardinal Barberini, Vienna, 6 April 1630): ‘Nostro Signore non può derogare al decreto medesimo, se pretende, che sia osservato da successori’. 57 58 Palazzini, ‘Beatificazioni’, pp. 165–7. Memoriale, f. 48r. 59 Memoriale, f. 48r: ‘ci fece intend[er]e per lo stesso Mons[igno]re che essendo il corpo intero non voleva che si guastassi, e che si contentava di un ditto’. 55

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procedure followed. The archbishop of Florence, his chancellor, and six others watched as the convent’s confessor, Ludovico Arrighetti, cut the ring finger from the beata’s right hand. Maria Maddalena’s ‘incorrupt’ body had been noticeably violated. The finger was put it in a specially prepared box, which was locked and given to the nuncio Giorgio Bolognetti to take to Rome, whilst one of the other witnesses gathered up the dust to be kept as relics. Although papal reform had had a dramatic effect on Maria Maddalena’s prospects for canonization, this did not prevent her from being a recipient of papal veneration. The incident seems to embody much of the complexity surrounding Maria Maddalena’s cult and cause at this time: on the one hand she was simply one of many being assessed according to an increasingly narrow and centralized definition of holiness; on the other, she was an individual revered by her convent community, the object of veneration by a growing body of devotees, and a person of particular interest to the man at the head of the Church and its central administration. The stalling of her cause suggests that Urban’s famed nepotism did indeed have limits: those imposed by his own canonization reform programme.60

FLORENTINE SAINTS As the immediate prospects for Maria Maddalena’s canonization seemed to dim, interest in Florence instead turned primarily to the causes of two other celebrated locals, Andrea Corsini (d. 1373), a Carmelite who enjoyed the support of his Order, and Sr Domenica da Paradiso (d. 1553), both older figures. In the years immediately surrounding Maria Maddalena’s beatification, Corsini’s canonization appeared imminent: his process, virtues, and miracles were approved by the Congregation of Rites in 1625, and by December 1628 his canonization had been set for 22 April 1629.61 But it is Domenica da Paradiso who provides a more interesting comparison with Maria Maddalena.62 The two women never knew each other (Domenica died just over a decade before Maria Maddalena’s birth), but Maria Maddalena knew some of her associates and as a girl had considered entering the convent Domenica had founded, La Crocetta (see Figure 1.1).

60 On Barberini nepotism, see John Scott, Images of nepotism: The painted ceilings of Palazzo Barberini (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); compared with the more positive cultural perspective of Peter Rietbergen, Power and religion in baroque Rome: Barberini cultural policies (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2006). 61 RSDI, pp. 244, 245, 246, 249; Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 341–2. 62 Calvi, Histories of a plague year, pp. 199–233; Harness, Echoes of women’s voices, pp. 209–50.

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There were many similarities between the two nuns, both of whom became famed as mystics who had enjoyed visions and made prophecies. Also like Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Domenica’s body had been preserved whole and, seemingly miraculously, had remained incorrupt, helping to produce an array of contact relics that forged Domenica’s reputation as a miracle-working saint. Amongst Domenica’s relics still being produced at La Crocetta in the seventeenth century were pieces of bread kept with her dead body; some devotees ate the bread as it was, others added it to a broth for the sick to consume, much as some of Maria Maddalena’s flowers were dissolved in water and drunk.63 Domenica’s bread and the small red crosses kept with her body seem to have been the relics that were most in demand. The women of the Medici court developed a particular devotion to Domenica around the same time that they began to take an interest in Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, but it was the older Cristina of Lorraine rather than Maria Maddalena d’Austria who took the lead, together with her confessor, the Dominican prior of S. Marco, Ignazio del Nente. In 1611, Cristina ordered improvements to Domenica’s tomb and in 1622 she commissioned a Vita from del Nente.64 Like the Carmelite nun, Domenica had potential as a manifestation of divine support for the Medici regime, particularly from having predicted the two occasions when the Medici had returned to power a century earlier and having played the role of protector of Florence during the plague of 1527.65 Association with Domenica appeared to offer validation to the Medici, whilst their posthumous association with her raised the prospects of validation for Domenica in the form of canonization. Cristina instructed the archbishop of Florence to begin gathering information for Domenica’s cause in 1624, the same year that the apostolic process for Maria Maddalena’s beatification had been held in the city. The tribunal for Domenica’s canonization opened in Florence in 1630, seventy-seven years after her death. That same year a plague epidemic struck Florence, and Domenica’s appeal to the Medici and to the city’s populace grew.66 The Medici took charge of the cause, and both Maria Maddalena d’Austria and Cristina of Lorraine personally testified before the inquiry at the church of La Crocetta on 3 December 1630. The Medici women did not lose their devotional interest in Maria

63 Calvi, Histories of a plague year, pp. 228–9, pp. 234–5. A miracle claimed in Lucca in December 1611 referred to one of Maria Maddalena’s flowers being used in this way: P767, p. 1510. 64 Ignazio del Nente, Vita e costumi et intelligenze spirituali della gran Serva di Dio & Veneranda Madre Suor Domenica dal Paradiso, fondatrice del Monasterio della Croce di Firenze dell’Ordine di San Domenico (Venice, 1662). 65 Calvi, Histories of a plague year, pp. 205–9; Del Nente, Vita e costumi (Florence, 1662), pp. 169–70. 66 On the plague, see Giulia Calvi, ‘A metaphor for social exchange: The Florentine plague of 1630’, Representations 13 (1986): pp. 139–63 [www.jstor.org/stable/2928497].

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Maddalena de’ Pazzi, but they began to throw much more weight behind Domenica’s cause. In terms of achieving a Florentine canonization, Domenica, as an older candidate, was more likely to succeed first. And given the input of the Barberini to Maria Maddalena’s beatification, it would also have been reasonable to imagine that the Barberini would want to claim a major role in any celebrations of her canonization that might come at the expense of the Medici. In terms of causes for canonization, Medici and Florentine interest was at least temporarily diverted towards more immediately promising candidates.

LE BARBERINE The Barberini too turned their gaze elsewhere, and since they found themselves unable to push Maria Maddalena forward for canonization, their patronage of her convent took other forms: a new home in the centre of Florence in a much larger and more impressive convent; and a new daughterhouse in Rome located just behind the Palazzo Barberini. Neither project was directly related to Maria Maddalena’s canonization, but both facilitated the expansion of her devotional cult and consolidated her public profile (including outside Florence) while waiting for her to become eligible for canonization. The impetus for the new home in Florence came when Cardinal Francesco Barberini visited his sisters at S. Maria degli Angeli in September 1626 and observed first-hand the unhealthy and humid location of the convent on the banks of the Arno.67 Until this point, the Barberini had shown an interest in expanding the existing monastery complex in S. Frediano to provide much needed additional space. In 1623 Francesco Barberini had lobbied to avoid a new monastery being established in the vicinity of S. Maria degli Angeli precisely because it might impede future expansion, and just a year later Taddeo Barberini had donated funds to purchase two houses nearby.68 After Francesco Barberini’s visit in 1626, however, plans instead began to be made, together with the pope, to move the whole community to a new location by exchanging their property for a complex on Borgo Pinti that was then home to a community of Cistercian monks (see Figure 7.2).69 The Cistercians, surprised by the proposal, were understandably unwilling to lose their superior location and the buildings they had adapted to their 67

Memoriale, f. 42v. AAF, Cancelleria, Sacre Congregazioni di Roma, Lettere di Roma 1, f. 55 (letter to the archbishop of Florence, 19 September 1623). 69 Richa, Notizie istoriche, vol. 1, pp. 307–11; Stefano Possanzini, Le Barberine: Monastero carmelitano dell’Incarnazione del Verbo Divino in Roma (1639–1907) (Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1990), pp. 18–21. 68

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needs over the three hundred years they had been on the site. After acrimonious discussion, agreement was reached in April 1627 and a contract exchanged on 22 June. Francesco Barberini’s financial commitment to the convent was evident in the compensation he provided the monks: Borgo Pinti, valued at 52,000 scudi was exchanged for a package of the S. Frediano convent (estimated at 15,000 scudi), the badia of Spineto (worth 20,000), and 32,000 scudi in cash. In addition Francesco, together with Urban VIII and Costanza Barberini, paid for the Borgo Pinti monastery to be enlarged still further. For the nuns, it was a huge improvement in location and the facilities available to them; for the Barberini it was a highly visible means of advertising their link to the convent. The complicated move took place in December 1628, nearly a year and a half after the contract was signed. Maria Maddalena’s body was transferred ‘privately and secretly’ and with great care.70 In order to keep the body safe, the plan was to try to avoid attention—the exact opposite of the formal translation of relics, such as the procession that had taken St Antoninus’ relics to a new chapel at S. Marco in 1589 and additional processions in 1622 and the plague year of 1630.71 On the night of 6–7 December, the glass coffin in which Maria Maddalena’s body was kept was placed within a secure wooden case so that it could not be seen. With a full cohort of ecclesiastics in attendance, it was moved in reverent silence to the new convent on Borgo Pinti, where it was locked in an oratory with a guard posted outside until the nuns arrived on 8 December. As the nuns travelled to their new home, everything possible was done to keep them out of sight and maintain their ‘enclosure’, but their elaborate procession nevertheless attracted considerable interest. The women travelled in pairs, accompanied by noblewomen and with their faces double-veiled in carriages donated by the Florentine nobility whose windows had been blackened. The Barberini nuns rode in the carriage at the head of the procession, accompanied by Cristina of Lorraine, then acting as co-regent of Tuscany. In a further sign of the links between the Medici and the beata’s convent, the entire procession stopped to visit the shrine of Santissima Annunziata, a place that was closely associated with the Medici family and to which Cristina was a frequent visitor (see Figure 7.2).72 Such was the shrine’s appeal to the Medici that when Cristina of Lorraine’s daughter Maria Maddalena took up residence

70

ASF, Carte Strozziane, I, 106, f. 11rv provides an account of the move. Cornelison, Art and the relic cult of St. Antoninus, pp. 262–98. 72 Marcello Fantoni, ‘Il culto dell’Annunziata e la sacralità del potere mediceo’, Archivio Storico Italiano 147 (1987): pp. 771–93; Marcello Fantoni, La corte del granduca: Forme e simboli del potere mediceo fra Cinque e Seicento (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1994), pp. 171–99. On devotion to the miraculous image at SS.ma Annunziata, see Sara Matthews-Grieco, ‘Media, memory and the miracoli della SS. Annunziata’, Word & Image 25, 3 (2009): pp. 272–92 [doi: 10.1080/ 02666280802489970]; and Steven Stowell, The spiritual language of art: Medieval Christian themes in writings on art of the Italian Renaissance (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2014), pp. 34–45. 71

Figure 7.2. Detail from Giovanni Giacomo de Rossi, Nova pulcherrimaae civitatis Florentiaae topographia accuratissime delineata (Rome, 1690?). Held by Harvard Map Collection, Harvard University. 1. SS.ma Anunziata; 2. La Crocetta (Dominican nuns); 3. S. Maria degli Angeli in Borgo Pinti; 4. S. Maria di Candeli (Augustinian nuns)

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in the neighbouring convent of La Crocetta (as a laywoman but living within the cloister), the family paid for a passageway to link the convent with the shrine and lobbied the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars to allow Maria Maddalena access to the shrine.73 When the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli visited, the streets were cleared to allow the women to process into the shrine, where the miraculous image that was normally concealed was unveiled ‘for their consolation’.74 Spiritually, the visit to such a well-known Marian shrine on the feast of Mary’s conception was of particular significance to nuns of a convent dedicated to the Virgin Mary.75 And for strictly enclosed nuns it was a very special privilege, one that must have had a strong impact on those in the convent who had not left the bounds of their enclosure in several decades. The nuns’ new home on Borgo Pinti placed the beata’s body and her community within the centre of Florence, closer to both SS. Annunziata and the cathedral, the religious ceremonial hub of the city. But the move also created difficulties, not least because it took the nuns away from the actual space in which their beata had lived. The complex at S. Frediano may have been cramped and humid, but it had been sanctified by Maria Maddalena’s presence. Leaving these buildings was traumatic for some of the nuns, who tried to mitigate the pain somewhat by taking some of Maria Maddalena’s home with them, including the pavement tiles that had decorated the nun’s former cell and then oratory, the resting place of her incorrupt body.76 But the move also confirmed the nuns as custodians of that body: it belonged to the nuns and not to a place.77 Her body—and her legacy—had sanctified them and would sanctify their new abode. That sanctification of the Borgo Pinti convent came ritually in May 1629 with the first celebration of the beata’s feast since the nuns had moved. Maria Maddalena’s body was taken from the oratory within the enclosure where it had been kept since arriving from S. Frediano, 73

Sanger, Art, gender and religious devotion, pp. 96–8. ASF, Manoscritti, 134 (Memorie fiorentine del Cav. Francesco Settimani), ff. 557v–558r. 75 The feast of Mary’s conception had been approved in 1476, but her ‘immaculate’ nature was still under debate in the seventeenth century. See Susan Haskins (ed. and tr.), Who is Mary? Three early modern women on the idea of the Virgin Mary (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 15–16; Bridget Heal, The cult of the Virgin Mary in early modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic piety, 1500–1648 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 25–6; Donna Ellington, From sacred body to angelic soul: Understanding Mary in late medieval and early modern Europe (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), pp. 54–60; Archdale King, Liturgies of the religious orders (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1955), pp. 276–7. 76 Moving the floor tiles recalls a similar project at the Roman Oratory in the seventeenth century after Philip Neri’s room and private chapel were damaged by fire. The rooms were rebuilt in their entirety (including the salvaged flooring) in another part of the house. 77 Ludovico Adimari, Prose sacre contenenti il compendio della Vita di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, e la relazione delle feste fatte in Firenze per la sua canonizazione, con un discorso della Passione del Redentore (Florence, 1706), pp. 86–7. 74

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and was carried in procession around all of the most important places within the monastery complex. The nuns solemnized the procession by singing hymns, psalms, antiphons, and verses in honour of God and their blessed sister. The body was finally brought to the foot of a chapel altar that was visible from both the enclosure and the public church, and ‘a tumult of people from every part of the city ran to see it [the body]’.78 The archbishop visited to say Mass, and the ladies of the Medici court also came to see the body. Ten years later, in 1639, a much smaller group of nuns from S. Maria degli Angeli once again left their enclosure. They travelled to Rome at the behest of Pope Urban VIII to found a new community. Impressive as the Borgo Pinti move had been as a gesture of Barberini patronage, that of 1639 was still more notable. The principal aim seems to have been to bring the Barberini nieces to Rome, to which end only they and the prioress (Maria Grazia de’ Pazzi) were named in the summons; Sr Innocenza Barberini could choose a further five choir nuns to accompany them.79 The pope may have been hoping to protect his nieces as tensions mounted between him and the duke of Parma, but according to the chronicle of the new convent written later, it was a spiritual endeavour to which the nuns were called, namely to ‘introduce their holy institute under the Carmelite Rule and in imitation of the holy mother Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’ to the city of Rome.80 When Lorenzo della Robbia, bishop of Fiesole, related the news of the move to the nuns on 2 March 1639, there was surprise—the women had received no suggestion that the pope was considering a new foundation— and tears at the thought of losing many of the community’s leading lights, not least their prioress, Maria Grazia de’ Pazzi, Maria Maddalena’s niece.81 In stark contrast to their slow move to Borgo Pinti, it was just two days later when the nine nuns (Innocenza added the prioress’s niece, a novice) left their monastery for Rome, lingering first to pray before Maria Maddalena’s body.82 Travelling in three carriages, the journey took them ten days. When they arrived in Rome they first spent the day at the Palazzo Barberini with members of the family that included the Barberini nuns’ mother, Costanza Magalotti, and brother, Cardinal Antonio Barberini. That evening they moved into a small house nearby belonging to Cardinal Francesco Barberini that had been converted into a suitable monastic space at the pope’s expense whilst their new monastery was built. Such was the speed of the move that their permanent home was not yet ready. The next

78 Memoriale, f. 45v. The altar was in a chapel next to the high altar that pertained to the family of Maria Maddalena’s sister-in-law, the Nasi family. On the new chapel, see Pacini, ‘I “depositi” ’, pp. 206–8, 209–20. 79 Possanzini, Le Barberine, pp. 31–3; Relatione, p. 1. 80 Relatione, p. 1: Urban built the monastery so that ‘ivi introducessero il loro santo istituto sotto la regola carmelitana et immitatione della S.ta M.re Maria Maddalena de Pazzi già monaca in detto monastero di Firenze, ove si venera il suo santo et incorrotto Corpo’. 81 Possanzini, Le Barberine, pp. 32–3. 82 Possanzini, Le Barberine, pp. 35–7.

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day the nuns took advantage of their temporary dispensation from enclosure to pay homage to the pope at the Vatican palace. The link between this new monastic foundation and the papal family was made abundantly clear. The new monastery of SS. Incarnazione was soon commonly known as ‘Le Barberine’. In June 1640, Taddeo Barberini gave 20,000 scudi to support ten nuns and secure the community’s future. Two months later, in August, the pope gave word to start building the nuns’ new complex (see Figure 7.3).83 The pope also visited the community himself, first in September 1640 and twice a year thereafter.84 Cardinal Francesco Barberini purchased additional land for the monastery in 1641, and the pope gave instructions concerning the buildings, the architect of which, Luigi Arigucci, was a Florentine who had worked on a number of Barberini projects before.85 The pope made what would be his last visit to the monastery in September 1643, when he blessed a new complex of buildings occupying a large site alongside the Palazzo Barberini and just a stone’s throw from the apostolic palace on the Quirinale hill.86 Location alone made the patronage provided by the Barberini crystal clear. In addition to fulfilling Barberini family plans, the new convent also provided opportunities to develop devotion to Maria Maddalena in Rome, the epicentre of the canonization procedure. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi was at the heart of the community’s devotional life, and when the first girl joined Le Barberine as a choir nun in 1640, she took the name Maria Maddalena di Gesù.87 The new foundation brought a collection of Maria Maddalena’s relics to the city, where their authenticity was assured by members of the beata’s own convent. The nuns took several important relics with them in 1639, and friends brought further relics later that year. Some were precious objects, such as a silver crucifix that had lain on Maria Maddalena’s body since 1610; but others, including forty fabric flowers that had decorated her body simply for a ‘long time’, were intended to be shared, much as flower ‘relics’ had been shared before in Florence.88 The new foundation brought many more of Maria Maddalena’s relics to Rome, but it also provided a bridge between the city and the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli that allowed objects to be sent to Florence. The most renowned gift was a finger fashioned from gold, sent to Florence by Sr Maria Grazia Barberini in December 1640 to replace the real finger that had been removed and given to the pope in 1634.89 Just two days 83

Relatione, p. 3. Giacinto Gigli, Diario romano, 1608–1670, edited by Giuseppe Ricciotti (Rome: Tumminelli, 1958), p. 191. 85 Relatione, p. 9. 86 The convent was suppressed after Italian unification and destroyed in 1875. Today the site is occupied by the Italian ministry of defence. 87 Anna Maria Fani, daughter of Sig. Fabio Fani and Vittoria della Riccia, first entered in July 1640; Relatione, p. 7. 88 89 Memoriale, f. 52r. Memoriale, f. 52v. 84

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Figure 7.3. Detail from Giovanni Battista Falda, Nvova pianta et alzata della città di Roma con tvtte le strade, piazze et edificii de tempi, palazzi, giardini et altre fabbriche antiche e moderne come si trovano al presente nel pontificato di N.S. Papa Innocentio XI con le loro dichiarationi nomi et indice copiosissimo (1676). Reproduced with permission from Marquand Library of Art and Architecture, Princeton University. 1. Palazzo Barberini; 2. SS. Incarnazione (‘Le Barberine’); 3. Palazzo Quirinale (papal palace)

later the bishop of Fiesole delivered a new silver crucifix to S. Maria degli Angeli from Sr Innocenza Barberini to replace one sent to Rome a year earlier. That same year, five of the founding nuns (not the Barberini) returned permanently to Florence, where they could give first-hand testimony of the Roman community.90 Not only objects and people were exchanged, but favours too. Convent records suggest that Le Barberine became an access point to Maria Maddalena’s body in Florence, as in May 1660, when it was 90

Relatione, p. 5.

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displayed to a group of visiting Roman nobles following a request from Sr Maria Grazia Barberini.91 Exchanges of this sort in both directions helped to publicly cement the ties between the two communities. When Pope Urban VIII died in 1644, Maria Maddalena’s canonization process had yet to be started. The impact of his reforms on the progress of all types of causes, but particularly those who had recently died, had been sudden and dramatic. Over what was a long pontificate, there were very few beatifications and even fewer canonizations. Maria Maddalena, however, was no normal figure: Urban had a personal devotion to her and demonstrated his goodwill in beatifying her quickly, and he also had close family pressuring him to take her cause further. The fact that he did not canonize her did not reflect a loss of interest in her or her convent; rather, he was clearly not happy to canonize any figure so soon after their death. Despite the exceptional links that the convent could boast, then, Maria Maddalena’s cause, like many others, suffered the unexceptional fate of stalling because it was too recent. What the nuns received from the Barberini family instead of a canonization was nevertheless extraordinary: a splendid new complex in the heart of Florence and a new monastery in Rome, next to the Barberini palace. The latter in particular was an unexpected surprise, and not something the nuns themselves seem to have sought. The new locations both improved the visibility of Maria Maddalena’s cult, but it was the foundation in Rome that most enhanced Maria Maddalena’s prospects for canonization, because it gave the nuns their own foothold into Roman society, placing a core group within the direct orbit of the ecclesiastical and secular elites of the papal city and introducing new opportunities to develop Roman devotional interest in Maria Maddalena in the years before her canonization might even be considered. Indeed, the nun’s cult remained extremely lively in these years: new miracles were claimed, offerings left in her honour, and paintings and altars installed. Beatification proved to be a major turning point for Maria Maddalena, not so much because it opened the path to canonization (although it did do that eventually), but because it allowed her public cult to flourish by means that the decrees of 1625 would otherwise have prevented.

91

Memoriale, f. 71r.

8 Being Carmelite: Naples and the Carmelite Order Maria Maddalena’s beatification had initially limited the celebration of her Office and Mass to the geographical area of Florence, but in April 1627 Pope Urban VIII responded to a plea from the Carmelites and extended the cult to ‘each monastery, place and church’ of the Carmelite Order.1 In the months after May 1626 the interest of the Ancient Observance Carmelite friars in the new beata had grown and had led them to appeal to the pope that Maria Maddalena had indeed been ‘of their order’.2 The nuns, for their part, appear to have adopted a more conciliatory attitude than they had displayed immediately prior to the beatification, perhaps aware that Carmelite veneration would greatly assist them in demonstrating the breadth and scope of Maria Maddalena’s cult and dramatically enhance her appeal as a saint for the universal Church. The quickest and easiest way of extending the cult would be to make use of her religious order. The concession of 1627 allowed Carmelite friars and nuns to commemorate the beata’s feast wherever they were in the world, transforming the beatification into what amounted to canonization within the Carmelite Order. Although the reach of the Carmelites was not fully global at this point, the Order was expanding and Carmelite friars had taken their missionary work to Central America and Brazil.3 Inclusion in their liturgical calendar gave Maria Maddalena the potential to become renowned for her holiness far beyond Europe. In the light of this concession, more individual Carmelites and Carmelite communities began to serve as active promoters for the cult. They did this by celebrating her liturgical feast visibly, sharing her relics, dedicating altars, and installing images, as well as by sharing news of miracles and their own belief in her sanctity with penitents, parishioners, family, friends, acquaintances,

1

Tomassetti, Bullarium Romanum, vol. 13, pp. 538–40 (23 April 1627). Memoriale, f. 43v. Ludovico Saggi, ‘Storia del Carmelo: Storia dell’Ordine OCarm’, in Dizionario Carmelitano edited by Emanuele Boaga and Luigi Borriello (Rome: Città Nuova, 2008), pp. 848–9. 2 3

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and members of other religious communities. In a case from 1654 recorded in the chronicle of S. Maria degli Angeli, a friar at the Carmine in Florence took some nine veils to the convent so that each could be placed on Maria Maddalena’s body for a few hours to be transformed into ‘relics’ to send to Turin and various cities in France and Spain.4 Two years earlier, in 1652, no less than the prior general of the Ancient Observance Carmelites had taken a veil relic with him to leave with a men’s Carmelite friary in Antwerp.5 Some of the Carmelite friars travelled extensively and proved to be well-connected supporters for the cause who were also in a position to transport relics far and wide. Furnished with relics, Carmelite communities dedicated a growing number of altars in Maria Maddalena’s honour, each endowed with a special resonance because they linked the beata with Christ’s sacrifice offered at every Mass celebrated there. According to records at S. Maria degli Angeli, the first altar to be dedicated to the nun outside Florence was in Parma in 1626 at a convent of Carmelite nuns named after the biblical St Mary Magdalen and part of the Mantuan Congregation.6 Offered in thanksgiving for several healings that had taken place within the convent, the altar created a long-lasting devotional prompt at public liturgies and also for individuals in private prayer. At another Carmelite church in Forlì it was an image that from 1634 became the centre of a local annual celebration of Maria Maddalena’s feast and, later, as the votive offerings left there increased, part of a whole chapel.7 Statues too had the power to attract devotions—even more so if they contained relics—and Carmelites were responsible for installing these, as in Rome in the 1640s, when a Carmelite friar had a statue made to display a relic in one of the city’s Carmelite churches.8 But even non-reliquary statues, like images, helped to make Maria Maddalena present, something that was especially powerful in the liturgical space of a church in terms of amplifying the new beata’s place within the formal sacred landscape of a community. This was no less true than in Namur, in present-day Belgium, where a group of Carmelite nuns introduced Maria Maddalena to the town in the 1640s, when they acquired some relics.9 A veil relic had arrived after the nuns had sent a request to Florence in June 1646, telling them of the ‘great veneration’ in which they held Maria Maddalena. The relic, when it arrived, was taken in procession around Namur on the feast of Corpus Christi (alongside the Blessed Sacrament) by ecclesiastical dignitaries, gentlemen of the city, and groups from

4

5 Memoriale, ff. 63r–v. Memoriale, f. 62v. 7 Memoriale, f. 43r. V1669, pp. 424–5. 8 Memoriale, f. 57v. The record does not state which church this was, but possibly S. Maria in Traspontina. 9 Memoriale, f. 58r; P771, f. 200r. 6

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the town.10 With the relic put on public display in a church for an octave, and an indulgence of seventy days attached by the bishop for those who visited, Maria Maddalena’s holiness was introduced to the townspeople in impressive style. With the help of a tangible object, a devotion that had originally been located within a cloister now spread into the wider civic and devotional community in which that convent was embedded.11 When the ultimate honour of canonization was finally bestowed on Maria Maddalena in 1669, it came after the Carmelite Order had become heavily involved in the process, petitioning to set up the inquiry and funding much of the work. By contrast to her beatification, Maria Maddalena’s canonization thus sits comfortably alongside the canonizations of many other members of religious orders: of fourteen people canonized in the period 1588 to 1665, twelve were ‘professional’ religious.12 And yet the development of Maria Maddalena’s Carmelite identity was far from straightforward, not least because part of her appeal arose from divisions within the Order and her ability to serve as a figurehead to one group in competition with another.

CARMELITE REFORM IN NAPLES Maria Maddalena’s cult flourished in a special way in Naples, where her inclusion amongst the Carmelite beati was welcomed enthusiastically by the Carmelite friars. So successful was her cult that in the 1660s Naples became the only city other than Florence to establish a tribunal as part of the nun’s canonization process.13 One of the first notable celebrations of Maria Maddalena’s beatification following the 1627 papal concession to the Carmelite Order was held at the Carmine Maggiore, the city’s principal Carmelite friary and an important local Marian shrine. The festivities were given a material devotional focus by a black veil the friars’ had received from S. Maria degli Angeli in August 1627.14 Rather than delay the festivities until the following feast (May), the friars arranged an octave of celebration that October. The events drew large crowds, especially on the first day, when a statue of Maria 10 On Corpus Christi processions, see Edward Muir, Ritual in early modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 75–6. 11 For a discussion of the urban context, see Helen Hills, Invisible city: The architecture of devotion in seventeenth-century Neapolitan convents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 12 Ditchfield, ‘Tridentine worship’, pp. 215–16. On the monopoly of the religious orders in Naples, see Giulio Sodano, ‘Santi, beati e venerabili ai tempi di Maria Francesca delle Cinque Piaghe’, Campania Sacra 22 (1991): pp. 441–60. 13 The two canonization processes are conserved at the Vatican: ASV, Cong. Riti, Processus 770 (Naples), 771 (Florence). 14 The veil had been placed on Maria Maddalena’s head for ‘a long time’ (molto tempo): Memoriale, f. 44r.

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Maddalena was paraded through the city accompanied by a standard borne by Florentine gentlemen living in Naples.15 There were apparati decorating the church, liturgies were adorned with selections of music, and during the octave three celebrated preachers offered panegyrics in praise of the new beata. The friars of the Carmine put on a splendid display and presented Maria Maddalena in compelling fashion as someone worthy of Neapolitan veneration. Within a few years, however, it was division amongst the Carmelite friars of Naples and the devotion of a group of friars that had split from the Carmine Maggiore that gave fresh impetus to Maria Maddalena’s cult in the city. The Carmine Maggiore had been the subject of numerous visitations aimed particularly at instilling better observation of the vow of poverty, and it was in search of a stricter way of life that some of the friars left to establish a new observant community, S. Maria della Vita.16 The foundation was made in 1631, but its origins went back to 1577, when the cappella (S. Vito) had been acquired specifically for friars living ‘in strict observance’—although as a grancia (dependency) of the Carmine. The community did not belong to the Discalced Carmelite reform that had separated from the Ancient Observance, but instead was part of a push for greater austerity within the Ancient Observance.17 In 1632, Prior General Theodore Straccio added the convent of S. Maria della Concordia (another grancia of the Carmine) as a second observant community. The significance of these communities and their demarcation as a reform movement is to be seen in the careful oversight provided by Straccio and his decision to appoint a commissary general to govern these friars. At the same time, this group had clear historical roots with the Neapolitan Carmine from which it had been founded, and it was telling that the first general, Cirillo Candido, was erstwhile prior of the Carmine. The reform spread and by 1636 communities had been added in Aversa (just north of Naples) and Sorrento. Just a year after the convent of S. Maria della Vita was founded, the friars celebrated Maria Maddalena’s feast with notable splendour.18 It was a tradition they continued, and within a few years the first chapel to be erected in Maria Maddalena’s honour in Naples was installed on the gospel side of their high altar.19 The chapel included a large altarpiece depicting the beata ‘like

15

ACMN, Moscarella, Cronistoria del Carmine Maggiore di Napoli, p. 363. ASN, Monasteri soppressi 252, Platea di tutte le heredità, donationi e legati pervenuti al nostro monastero di Santa Maria della Vita sin dalla sua fondatione, ff. 1–5r. See also Cesare d’Engenio Caracciolo, Napoli sacra di d. Cesare d’Engenio Caracciolo, napolitano: ove oltre le vere origini, e fundationi di tutte le chiese, monasterij, spedali, & altri luoghi sacri della città di Napoli, e suoi borghi (Naples, 1624), pp. 623–4. 17 Smet, The Carmelites, vol. 3, pp. 196–217. 18 Andrea Mastelloni, La prima chiesa dedicata a S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi carmelitana (Naples, 1675), p. 4. 19 P770, ff. 52r, 68r, 86v, 111r, 137v, 151r. 16

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other saints’ (that is, with rays around her head), as well as a wooden statue on an altar fronted by candles. The walls, meanwhile, were frescoed with scenes from Maria Maddalena’s life.20 The altar provided a new space tied to Maria Maddalena’s holiness, where both supplication and thanksgiving could be addressed directly to the beata, present there in her images and in relics procured from Florence. Whereas the main promoters of Maria Maddalena’s cult in Florence had been the women of her convent, in Naples the men of S. Maria della Vita took centre stage, and their church became her principal local ‘shrine’, where a great number of votive offerings were left. The friars were attracted to Maria Maddalena’s credentials as an observant Carmelite whose calls for reform and injunctions to her sisters to live in austerity made her appealing to a community that had set itself apart precisely in order to follow a stricter religious life. At the same time, Maria Maddalena’s relative obscurity brought the benefit of there being no existing altars, allowing the community at S. Maria della Vita to claim a distinct identity for their church. This was particularly significant for friars who had originated from the Carmine Maggiore, home to one of the most beloved devotional images in Naples, the Madonna bruna.21 People went to the Carmine for regular liturgies as well as to make individual supplications before the Madonna, and the shrine was decorated with an abundance of votive offerings. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 1631, the same year in which the reform of S. Maria della Vita was founded, it was to this Madonna’s protection that Archbishop Buoncompagno recommended the whole city, such was the perceived power of the image.22 S. Maria della Vita could not surpass the Carmine as a pilgrimage destination for invoking Mary, but a link with Maria Maddalena could at least help the new community of friars to claim their own position within the city’s sacred landscape.23 One reason why the chapel at S. Maria della Vita became so important for Maria Maddalena’s cult was that the community became renowned as a source of the beata’s relics. They conserved an impressive array, all originally from S. Maria degli Angeli: two veils (one black, one white); a cincture; a piece 20

P770, f. 253r. On this image, see Genoveffa Palumbo, ‘Fede napoletana. Gli oggetti della devozione a Napoli: Uno sguardo di genere’ in Donne e religione a Napoli: Secoli XVI–XVIII, edited by Giuseppe Galasso and Adriana Valerio (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2001), pp. 296–8; and Smet, The Carmelites, vol. 3, pp. 407–8. On the Carmine today, see Nanà Corsicato, Santuari, luoghi di culto, religiosità popolare: Il culto mariano nella Napoli d’oggi (Naples; Liguori Editore, 2006), pp. 22–7. 22 ACMN, Moscarella, Cronistoria del Carmine maggiore Napoli, pp. 368–9. 23 The situation has echoes of the attempts of three different Franciscan groups to claim St Francis of Assisi as their own. See, for example, Martin Elbel, ‘On the side of the angels: Franciscan communication strategies in early modern Bohemia’, in Religion and cultural exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, edited by Heinz Schilling and István György Tóth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 341–5. 21

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of Maria Maddalena’s cilice; a small piece of a bed sheet; and some corporal relics of two hairs and a tooth.24 In addition to these, in 1643 the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli sent a piece of habit that had been on the beata’s body and some multiplied oil to one of the friars, Alberto Colaccio.25 Whilst the chapel provided a devotional site at S. Maria della Vita, the friars’ decision to share these relics carefully with those hoping for Maria Maddalena’s intercession sent the nun’s holiness out from the friary, into the hustle and bustle of the city and into people’s homes. The friars apparently kept a tight rein on how their precious relics were shared, taking them to the sick and applying them in person rather than distributing them freely. This approach helped to forge a tight bond between the relics, the friary, and the friars themselves. Amongst those to make use of a relic from S. Maria della Vita was Pietro Caravita, a local gentleman and member of the Sacro Regio Consiglio. In 1643, Colaccio went to the sick man (whose wife he confessed) and anointed him in person with the multiplied oil he had received.26 After claiming a miraculous healing, Caravita sent a silver lamp to the beata’s chapel at S. Maria della Vita and also offered donations to fund more elaborate celebrations of Maria Maddalena’s feast, for which the altar provided an obvious focal point and enduring reminder. Maria Maddalena’s voice for reform had been softened when making the case for her beatification, but it was this aspect of her identity and the possibility of promoting her as an observant nun associated with S. Maria della Vita that appealed to the friars in Naples. One attempt at doing this came in 1643 with the publication of the Opere di B. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi by Lorenzo Maria Brancaccio, a ‘Carmelite of the observance of S. Maria della Vita in Naples’, as the book’s frontispiece noted.27 Brancaccio was something of a local heavyweight, serving as one of the theological advisers to the Neapolitan archiepiscopal Curia and as regent and master of sacred theology at the friary. Whereas Puccini had claimed his biography would follow a simple chronology, Brancaccio eschewed any narrative and instead compiled a collection of spiritual readings, an anthology of excerpts taken from Puccini’s Vita of 1611 (which had themselves been edited from the nuns’ transcriptions, of course). The book was not designed for readers to learn about Maria Maddalena’s life story but to encounter her as a spiritual guide and the recipient of divine insights. His aim, by avoiding any narrative, was to present Maria Maddalena’s ‘doctrine’ in a less confusing way than Puccini had.28 References explaining how or when Maria Maddalena had fallen into her ecstasies were omitted, for

24

25 Mastelloni, La prima chiesa, p. 8. Memoriale, f. 59v. P770, ff. 260v–261r; Mastelloni, La prima chiesa, pp. 260–2. 27 On Brancaccio, see Cosme de Villiers, Bibliotheca carmelitana, notis criticis et dissertationibus illustrata (Orleans, 1752) vol. 2, pp. 227–8. 28 Brancaccio, Opere, ‘A chi lege’. 26

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instance, with the result that some of the performance of Maria Maddalena’s mysticism was lost and her ‘doctrine’ instead shaped into the style of a more considered theological treatise. Brancaccio’s work tried to identify her specifically as a spiritual guide to the observant Carmelite community to which he belonged. The dedication of the Opere contributed to that project of tying Maria Maddalena to S. Maria della Vita. The man chosen, Gasparo Roomer, was a wealthy local merchant whose ‘singular devotion’ and ‘great desire’ that Maria Maddalena become better known had, so Brancaccio suggested, provided some of the inspiration behind the publication.29 Roomer had first encountered Maria Maddalena through his confessor, Alberto Colaccio at S. Maria della Vita, as well as through his friend, Pietro Caravita.30 He originally hailed from Antwerp, but had arrived in Naples aged fifteen, where he made his fortune through lucrative trading with Scandinavia and northern Europe.31 Roomer’s financial success fuelled his role as a major patron of the arts, and he also became the principal patron of the community at S. Maria della Vita.32 He was also known for his devotion to Maria Maddalena and helped finance her altar at the friary. This was the man to whom the Opere was dedicated: not a high-ranking churchman or a territorial ruler, but a ‘very observant’ (osservandissimo) merchant whose reputation was predominantly Neapolitan and who was known locally as a patron of S. Maria della Vita. Whilst Brancaccio’s literary endeavour, the Opere, focused on an elite intellectual devotional audience, the annual public festivities arranged by the friars at S. Maria della Vita touched a wider body of Neapolitans. We know that the friars worked hard to attract larger crowds particularly from around 1650, because they moved their celebrations of Maria Maddalena’s feast from the day nominated in the liturgical calendar (25 May) to the weekend (and octave) of Pentecost. Maria Maddalena’s feast was likely to fall in the weeks surrounding Pentecost (a movable feast) and might even fall within the octave of Pentecost (as it did in 1651, 1653, and 1659), which was one of the most important occasions in the Church’s calendar. The Pentecost octave, culminating in the celebration of Trinity Sunday and, four days later, Corpus Christi, 29 Brancaccio, Opere, ‘Al molto illustre Signore padrone osservandissimo il Signor Gasparo Roomer’. 30 P770, f. 99r. 31 P770, f. 99r. Roomer stated he had arrived in Naples fifty-two years earlier and, with the exception of a trip to Rome in 1625 for the holy year, had not travelled elsewhere. 32 Francis Haskell, ‘The patronage of painting in Seicento Naples’, in Painting in Naples, 1606–1705: From Caravaggio to Giordano, edited by Clovis Whitfield and Jane Martineau (London: Royal Academy of Arts in association with Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1982), p. 60. See also Francis Haskell, Patrons and painters: A study in the relations between art and society in the age of the Baroque, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 205–8.

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with its Eucharistic processions, comprised a major moment in the Church’s year that overruled any conflicting liturgical commemorations. In 1627, just a year after the beatification, Maria Maddalena’s own convent in Florence had been forced to translate her feast to 31 May, the Monday after the octave of Pentecost, because of a clash.33 The friars of S. Maria della Vita could not, then, choose to celebrate Maria Maddalena’s feast liturgically over the Pentecost weekend and refrain from observing Pentecost itself. Instead, however, they celebrated the liturgies and Offices proper to Pentecost whilst embellishing them with music and sermons in honour of Maria Maddalena. They also exposed their collection of her relics at this time, and decorated their church as if for her feast.34 Amongst the decorations were some fourteen large canvases depicting stories from Maria Maddalena’s life that were loaned annually by the Caravita family.35 Although these liturgies technically were those of Pentecost, they were clearly marked out as being celebrations of Maria Maddalena. Moving the celebrations challenged the spirit of the liturgy and caused a local Oratorian priest, Vincenzo Avenati, to remark that it ‘seemed improper’ (pareva cosa impropria).36 Maria Maddalena’s feast on 25 May was not a general holiday since it was not an obligatory feast in Naples (indeed, it was still confined to the Carmelites), and so moving the celebrations to coincide with Pentecost made them accessible to a much larger group of people. Besides the work done by the friars, local residents helped to amplify the celebration and create a visual effect beyond the friary by illuminating their windows.37 Moving the ‘feast’ also helped to set up a unique celebration, since no other churches in the city were engaged in this particular form of liturgical piggybacking. The result was that the friars effectively celebrated ‘two solemnities’ in Maria Maddalena’s honour—one at Pentecost and one on 25 May— although it was the celebration at Pentecost that locals remembered as the more solemn.38 When, in 1662, the prior general of the Carmelites visited Naples and ordered the friars to put an end to their Pentecost practice, he did so by arguing that ‘the cult had increased substantially’ and a celebration on 25 May would attract devotees.39 By this point—as we shall see later—the Carmelite prior general was interested in pursuing Maria Maddalena’s canonization and anxious to remove any suggestion of improper practice. Also by this time the Carmelite landscape in Naples had changed significantly. The number of convents linked to S. Maria della Vita had grown, and in 1660 this collection had been confirmed as a province in its own right and removed from the jurisdiction of the Carmine Maggiore (which itself was directly under the prior general and not part of the Neapolitan province). Whilst tensions between various communities within the Ancient Observance 33 35 38

Memoriale, f. 43v. P770, ff. 74v–75r, 281r. P770, ff. 98v, 175r, 254r.

34

P770, ff. 100v–101r, 147r, 158v, 282v. 36 37 P770, f. 226v. P770, f. 189r. 39 P770, f. 147r.

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Carmelites had eased, those between the Ancient Observance and Discalced had heightened. It was a tussle that extended far beyond Naples, but found a particular, local expression in this city in the 1660s. At its base lay the question of reform and specifically how far the Discalced Carmelites were part of the original order or a separate creation. It had not been until 1593 that Pope Clement VIII had confirmed a decree of the Carmelite General Chapter formally separating the Carmelites into two orders with a prior general for each.40 As such, Teresa of Avila, although the founder of Discalced convents, had herself always remained within the Ancient Observance. The cult of saints, and Teresa’s sainthood in particular, provided a flashpoint for the tussle between the two branches. Her beatification in 1614 caused considerable disquiet when her feast was conceded only to the Discalced, and her canonization in 1622 caused further conflict when only Discalced churches received a special plenary indulgence in celebration.41 Maria Maddalena, after her beatification, also became part of this bigger struggle, requiring a Florentine friar, Cristiano Ughelli, to pen a memo in which he detailed that the Florentine nun had never been part of the Discalced reform.42 The question of whose saint Teresa was found fresh expression in Naples in 1637 with the foundation of a new convent for women dedicated to S. Teresa del Santissimo Sacramento. Teresa was the only Carmelite woman to have been canonized, and despite her association with the Discalced reform, this new foundation belonged to the Ancient Observance Carmelite family. The convent buildings had been bought in 1632, just one year after S. Maria della Vita’s foundation, and like the friars there, the nuns were committed to rigorous observance.43 Whereas the origins of S. Maria della Vita had predated Maria Maddalena, at least part of the inspiration behind the monastery of S. Teresa lay directly with the Florentine nun. Camilla Antinori, a Neapolitan lady, had already felt a drive to found a new observant monastery in Naples when she had the chance to meet with Maria Maddalena whilst staying in Florence in 1600 on her way to Loreto. Camilla had made her confession to Virgilio Cepari, who then made the introduction. At the meeting, Camilla told Maria Maddalena about her calling, and the nun confirmed that she should

40

Smet, The Carmelites, vol. 2, pp. 130–1. ASDN, Monasteri soppressi, 340, Controversia per l’accompagnamento della Statua di Santa Teresa, int. 4. 42 APGC, IV.80, Summaria gemini processus pro beatificatione et canonizatione S. M. Magdalenae de Pazzis, epistolae et expensae eiusdem: Codex secundus miscellaneus. On Ughelli, see Luca Giuseppe Cerracchini, Fasti teologali, ovvero notizie istoriche dell Collegio de’ Teologi della sacra Università Fiorentina dalla sua fondazione sino all’ anno 1738 (Florence: Moücke, 1738), pp. 413–14. 43 The community was founded in conjunction with another convent, the Croce di Lucca, because it already had a licence from Rome to found a new community of rigorous Carmelite observance. On the Croce di Lucca, see Hills, Invisible city, pp. 81–8. 41

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make this foundation.44 Although the work was much delayed, the convent of S. Teresa was the result. Camilla herself joined the community as Sr. Paola Maria and, until her death in 1641, encouraged the nuns in their devotion to Maria Maddalena. Partly inspired by Maria Maddalena it may have been, but this foundation could not be dedicated to her whilst she was still a mere beata. That honour went to Teresa of Avila, even though the community itself was not Discalced. It was around thirty years later, in 1664, when Teresa was elected a copatron of Naples that questions regarding the Spanish nun’s Carmelite identity surfaced in an especially tempestuous fashion.45 Public processions of the full cohort of patrons included processing a reliquary bust of each around the city.46 These processions were important religious and civic occasions and allowed different religious groups to associate themselves with the saints. Both the Discalced and Ancient Observance Carmelites of Naples vied for prime position carrying Teresa’s relics in the solemn processions, the Ancient Observance claiming ownership of the Discalced when referring to them as ‘our Discalced’ (i nostri scalzi).47 The conflict, which at times even involved physical scuffles, lasted nearly five years, as letters were exchanged between the Ancient Observance, the Discalced, and the Sacred Congregation for Bishops and Religious in Rome.48 A compromise was finally brokered in 1668, when both sets of friars were allowed to participate in a procession of the patrons, each bearing one side of Teresa’s statue, under the close supervision of two apostolic notaries. Teresa of Avila’s election as a co-patron of the city had raised fraught questions of identity amongst the two types of Carmelites, who, in different ways, were both able to claim her as their own, and were both desperate to do so. The viciousness of the conflict over Teresa may have added to the enthusiasm of the Ancient Observance Carmelites in Naples for a new saint of their order. Maria Maddalena had not, of course, been involved with the Discalced reform—which had only spread to Italy from Spain towards the end of her

44

Mastelloni, La prima chiesa, pp. 37–40. Clare Copeland, ‘Spanish saints in Counter-Reformation Italy’, in The Spanish presence in sixteenth-century Italy: Images of Iberia, edited by Piers Baker-Bates and Miles Pattenden (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 103–23. 46 Helen Hills, ‘The Neapolitan seggi as patrons of religious architecture: Urban holiness and the Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro’, in Ordnungen des sozialen Raumes: Die Quartieri, Sestieri und Seggi in den frühneuzeitlichen Städten Italiens, edited by Grit Heidemann and Tanja Michalsky (Berlin: Reimer, 2012), pp. 159–87; Helen Hills, ‘Nuns and relics: Spiritual authority in post-Tridentine Naples’, in Female monasticism in early modern Europe: An interdisciplinary view, edited by Cordula van Wyhe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 11–38; and Hills, Invisible city, pp. 13–40, esp. pp. 28–38. 47 ACMN, Moscarella, Cronistoria del Carmine Maggiore Napoli, pp. 414–19. 48 ASN, Monasteri soppressi, 340, Controversia per l’accompagnamento della statua di Santa Teresa, int. 4; and ACMN, Moscarella, Cronistoria, pp. 416–19. 45

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life—and so her cult offered the ideal opportunity for a clear distinction between the two types of Carmelites where the Discalced could make no claim. Her story, moreover, was rooted not in Spain but in the Italian peninsula, even if that was in the distant city of Florence. In Naples, Maria Maddalena was able to morph from being the champion of the local Carmelite reform wing separating itself from the old established order to being the prize of both of these in their joint attempt as Ancient Observance Carmelites to distinguish themselves from the new Discalced Carmelite reform. With beatification now established as a prerequisite to canonization, Maria Maddalena’s devotional cult in Naples and its development from the late 1620s offer a useful window onto how candidates who had belonged to religious orders were at an advantage when it came to the reach that the limited concession of their cult could have. More interesting, however, is the light that her cult shines upon the divisions between the various Neapolitan Carmelites, be they different groups within the same Ancient Observance at odds over how to interpret the Carmelite Rule, or be they the Discalced and the Ancient Observance that had only recently split. In Naples at least, the precise nature of Maria Maddalena’s Carmelite identity was contested. That contest is significant because it reflects how saints were more than mere objects of devotion: they also served as identifiers, providing bonds for cohesion and, at times, focus points for conflict.

A MERCHA NT P ATRON The great strength of the cult of saints was that the identities of these holy people—be they saints or would-be saints—were not set in stone. Maria Maddalena’s cult in Naples flourished because of its ability to be different things to different people, to be used in different ways.49 The many aspects to Maria Maddalena’s complex identity—her miracle-working, her Carmelite reform interest, her status as a nun, her Florentine origins, her spiritual alignment with S. Maria della Vita—helped her to appeal beyond one group or set of individuals. The availability of her relics, the existence of her chapel, and the jubilant celebrations of her feast combined with the personal relationships the friars of S. Maria della Vita enjoyed with penitents and local people to encourage and nurture Maria Maddalena’s cult amongst individuals as much as within institutions and communities. Amongst those to become especially devoted to Maria Maddalena was Gasparo Roomer, to whom Brancaccio dedicated the Opere. Roomer offered Ditchfield, ‘Thinking with saints’, esp. pp. 580–3; Moshe Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris: Rituals of devotion in early modern France (New York, NY: Brill, 1998). 49

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financial support to many of the activities at S. Maria della Vita and ultimately became the most important patron not only of Maria Maddalena’s Neapolitan cult but of her entire cause for canonization. As we have seen, although the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli in Florence had been pushing for their sister’s canonization even before she had been beatified, their endeavours had not had the formal support of the Carmelite Order. It was Roomer who managed to translate the growing Carmelite devotion outside Florence in the years after the beatification into a formal commitment from the Order as a whole to promote her cause. Uncovering Roomer’s role provides a further reason why Maria Maddalena’s cult in Naples is worthy of special consideration: he offers an example of how important the laity could be in promoting a cause for canonization, even for a member of a religious order. Roomer’s introduction to Maria Maddalena had come through his confessor at S. Maria della Vita, although his personal devotion to Maria Maddalena was not wholly dependent on the Carmelites. Roomer himself took on the task of developing his devotion further, reading the nun’s life and collecting copies not just in Italian, but also in English, Spanish, and Flemish.50 He collected images of the nun: two large canvases (one depicting her alive, the other a likeness of her dead body), and one small canvas of the nun in ecstasy.51 He also amassed relics of the beata that, by the 1660s, included a piece of her cilice, a fingernail or toenail (he was not sure which), many pieces of linen and wool cloth, some hairs, and a small printed image of the crucifixion that Maria Maddalena had coloured whilst in ecstasy.52 All the while, Roomer maintained a personal correspondence with the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli in Florence, to whom he also sent donations. In 1647 and again in 1656, Roomer attributed miracles to Maria Maddalena’s intercession, having made use of some of the relics he had. The events that led Roomer to seek her miraculous help tell us something of the faith that he had in her saintliness in two moments of special need. The first occurred in the midst of a period of terrifying unrest in Naples that broke out in July 1647, initially in the piazza in front of the Carmine Maggiore.53 Under the leadership of Masaniello, a charismatic fisherman’s son, a large number of people (including artisans, intellectuals, shopkeepers, and officials) took to the streets seeking political reform for the Spanish-ruled city. Masaniello was assassinated in the sacristy of the Carmine Maggiore on 16 July, and the 50

51 52 P770, ff. 91r, 94r–v. P770, ff. 92r–v. P770, f. 92v. On the Neapolitan revolt, see Rosario Villari, La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli: Le origini (1585–1647) (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 1967), translated as The revolt of Naples (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993); Rosario Villari, Un sogno di libertà: Napoli nel declino di un impero, 1585–1648 (Milan: Mondadori, 2012). See also Peter Burke, ‘The Virgin of the Carmine and the revolt of Massaniello’, Past and Present 99 (1983): pp. 3–21 [www.jstor.org./stable/650582]; John Elliott, ‘Reform and revolution in the early modern Mezzogiorno’, Past and Present 224, 1 (2014): pp. 283–96 [doi: 10.1093/pastj/gtu005]. 53

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unrest continued for eight more months, becoming more radical and spreading out to the countryside. In July, the wealthy became a target for the rebels and many palaces were looted; hence Roomer’s fear. Roomer initially found safety at the Castel Nuovo, but he then decided to try to escape the city completely on one of his merchant ships.54 This required taking a tender over the rough sea and in poor weather. Those manning the boat warned Roomer several times that they should turn back, as the conditions were too bad and the vessel might be destroyed, but Roomer had placed the venture under the protection of Maria Maddalena, whose relics he had with him, and insisted that they keep going. Roomer dramatically managed to leap from the small boat to his bigger merchant ship, invoking Maria Maddalena as he did. He lost consciousness, but coming to his senses later, he considered it miraculous that he had survived the whole dangerous escapade and was even more grateful for Maria Maddalena’s intercession when he discovered, later still, that some people had been shot dead near where he had been in the Castel Nuovo, and that he had probably narrowly avoided the same fate. Roomer’s trust in the power of Maria Maddalena’s intercession was seen again in July 1656, when, at his villa in Posillipo, he developed a fever and symptoms of the plague that had reached Naples at the start of the year.55 Roomer, by his own admission, was terrified. He had every reason to be, since by June deaths had already reached around 1,000 to 1,500 a day, and death often came fast, sometimes within a few hours.56 So high was the death toll, that corpses increasingly intruded into the public spaces of the city as they awaited burial.57 Roomer, fearing the worst, knelt before a crucifixion picture that had touched Maria Maddalena’s body—the scene depicted was, of course, the ultimate manifestation of Christ’s suffering. At the foot of the cross was a small image of the beata, which he touched against an abscess on his skin. The fever left him and the abscess disappeared, all without any recourse to other remedies. Once again, in the midst of a terrifying situation, it was to Maria Maddalena that Roomer had turned. Roomer’s devotion to Maria Maddalena—especially after 1647, when he believed he had personally benefited from her intercession—led him to promote the nun’s cult. His own daughter developed a special devotion to the

54

55 P770, ff. 104v–106r; V1669, pp. 419–21. P770, ff. 106v–107r; V1669, pp. 421–2. David Gentilcore, ‘Epidemic disease and public health,’ in A companion to early modern Naples, edited by Tommaso Astarita (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 281–306, esp. p. 294. See also Idamaria Fusco, Peste, demografia e fiscalità nel Regno di Napoli del XVII secolo (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2007), who estimates that around half of the population of Naples (about 400,000) may have perished in the plague between 1656 and 1658. 57 Rose Marie San Juan, ‘Contaminating bodies: Print and the 1656 plague in Naples’, in New approaches to Naples c.1500–c.1800: The power of place, edited by Melissa Calaresu and Helen Hills (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 63–78. 56

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beata that she pursued as a nun in the Ancient Observant Carmelite convent of S. Teresa, where she took the name Maria Maddalena.58 In 1652, it was she who dedicated a new edition of Puccini’s Vita to the archbishop of Naples, Filomarino Ascanio, the work having been published in Naples at her father’s behest.59 Roomer’s support took on further, highly visible forms in Florence too. In 1659, he sent a donation of 800 scudi to S. Maria degli Angeli to fund an elaborate ‘paramento’ (hanging) in the beata’s chapel, and hinted that he might offer more money if it would help with Maria Maddalena’s canonization.60 It was to that cause for canonization that Roomer made the most significant contribution. The Carmelite Order as a whole had not automatically backed the project of obtaining Maria Maddalena’s canonization, even if individual members had taken an interest—including a Sardinian Carmelite, Simone Cattania, who was confessor to Emperor Leopold and visited Maria Maddalena’s body in 1658.61 Helped, no doubt, by the enthusiasm of Carmelites such as Cattania and using his influence with the Neapolitan Carmelites, Roomer was able to lobby the Order, through their General Chapter, to take the leading role in Maria Maddalena’s cause. Roomer’s bargaining chip was a gift of 2,700 scudi, for which the General Chapter of 1660 officially thanked him.62 Their response was to offer the Order’s resources to push the cause forward, not least in pledging that the Order’s postulator, Paolo di Sant’ Ignazio, would do all he could to achieve the canonization.63 The October following the General Chapter, Girolamo Ari, the prior general, visited S. Maria degli Angeli and reiterated the promise that the Carmelites would pursue the canonization. Ari, interestingly, specifically noted that this would be done with the support of Roomer’s donation.64 Priors general had visited Maria Maddalena’s body before, but these visits appear to have been few and far between: after a visit recorded by the convent in 1651, the next record was not until October 1660, after the General Chapter.65 Roomer certainly did not conjure Carmelite devotion from nothing, but he seems to have provided the principal impulse for translating the devotion of Carmelite individuals and communities into an institutional push for her canonization.

58

When Roomer spoke of this in 1663, his daughter had not yet made her profession. Vincenzo Puccini, Vita della beata suor’ Maria Maddalena dell’Ordine Carmelitano Osservante nel Monastero di S. Maria degli Angioli di Borgo S. Frediano di Firenze. Raccolta, e descritta dal Molto Rever. D. Vincenzo Puccini governatore e confessore del detto Monasterio, e di nuovo ristampata in Napoli a divotione del Signor Gasparo Romer (Naples, 1652). 60 61 Memoriale, f. 70r. Memoriale, f. 68r. 62 Gabriel Wessels (ed.), Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Fratrum B.V. Mariae de Monte Carmelo, 2 vols (Rome: General Curia, 1934), vol. 2, pp. 111, 114; Memoriale, f. 73v. 63 Paolo di Sant’Ignazio would later be prior general of the whole order, 1686–92. 64 65 Memoriale, f. 72r. Memoriale, f. 61r. 59

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The year following the 1660 General Chapter, Roomer offered a further 3,000 ducats towards the costs of the process.66 In the meantime, he also continued his correspondence with the nuns in Florence and kept them abreast of proceedings in Naples.67 For Gasparo Roomer, Maria Maddalena’s Carmelite connection seems to have been crucial. His public displays of devotion, at least, were focused on Carmelite communities in Naples, most of all in her chapel in S. Maria della Vita. It was there that he went to celebrate Maria Maddalena’s feast day and where he paid for a silver lamp to be maintained day and night. Roomer even loaned his carriage to the friars on several occasions so that they could take Maria Maddalena’s relics to people who requested them, including the son of the Viceroy, the Count of Peñaranda.68 Roomer’s connection with the friars of S. Maria della Vita introduced him to the Florentine nun; in turn, his devotion inspired first his sponsorship of their efforts to cultivate a notable shrine in Naples, and then his drive to secure the support of the Carmelite Order as a whole. Roomer’s role in pushing the Carmelites to seek Maria Maddalena’s canonization is a reminder that sanctity and the identification of saints involved a wide spectrum of society. Members of the laity who lacked formal positions of power, such as Roomer, could still wield tremendous influence as wealthy devotees, if they were willing to offer the financial support that any cause for canonization inevitably needed. Maria Maddalena, of course, did not emerge from nowhere as a canonization hopeful; she was already a beata and could count on a sizeable devotional following. But until 1660, the Carmelites had not offered their formal support for her canonization. By this point, her cause had met the legal requirement that candidates have died more than fifty years prior, and the Carmelites had shown more interest in recent years, meaning that Roomer’s financial contribution came at an auspicious time. For his part, Roomer’s desire to enlist the full support of the Carmelite General Chapter indicates the power he believed religious orders could wield with the Congregation of Rites in Rome, and that Carmelite endorsement and action would alter Maria Maddalena’s prospects.

MARIA M ADDALENA THE CARMELITE Obtaining the support of the Carmelite Order was indeed a pivotal moment for Maria Maddalena’s cause for canonization. It made further financial support easier to gather, and brought personnel and logistical resources that could make a difference to how quickly and effectively the case could be put 66 68

Memoriale, f. 73v. P770, f. 101v.

67

Memoriale, f. 90v; P770, f. 100v.

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together and presented. The expertise and time of a procurator based in Rome could now be called upon, but perhaps even more important was that the Carmelites were seen to be involved, with endorsements from the General Chapter and the prior general.69 The significance of this should not be underestimated and can clearly be seen in the appeals made to the Congregation of Rites to open the canonization inquiry. Each time Cardinal Giulio Sacchetti (the cardinale ponente appointed to represent the cause in July 1661) outlined the state of Maria Maddalena’s cause to the Congregation and the pope, he specifically mentioned the support offered by the Carmelites.70 In a summary pitch presented to the Congregation in September 1661, in which Sacchetti asked that the cause be ‘resumed’ and remissorial letters issued, he even included excerpts from the 1660 Carmelite General Chapter and noted the Carmelites’ supplication since then.71 Despite what the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli had argued in 1626, Maria Maddalena had lived her life under the Carmelite Rule and had belonged to the Carmelite Order. The expectation was that her order would promote her cause. In a sign of the Carmelites’ new commitment, the prior general, Girolamo Ari, had himself already set to work in 1661 gathering information ready for an inquiry. Amongst the information he sought were written accounts of miracles that had been claimed and attributed to Maria Maddalena since her beatification and records of offerings of thanksgiving.72 Ari also instructed the nuns to collect postulatory letters addressed to the pope from the chapter of the cathedral in Florence as well as from the diocesan vicar general.73 This work was in addition to that undertaken by the Order’s postulator, Paolo di S. Ignazio, who became promoter of the cause. Maria Maddalena’s canonization had, finally, become a Carmelite concern. Less than two years after the Carmelite General Chapter had pledged its support, in April 1662 the Congregation of Rites approved Maria Maddalena’s cause as an ‘exceptional’ one (‘casus exceptus’).74 The decree was an interesting result of the prohibitions against public veneration of the non-beatified and non-canonized that were issued under Urban VIII in 1625 and consolidated during the rest of his pontificate. All causes had to demonstrate their compliance with these decrees but Urban’s reforms (as discussed in Chapter 7) had created two means by which to do this and, indeed, two pathways to canonization. One was for those candidates who had died prior to 1534 and 69

Wessels, Acta Capitulorum Generalium, vol. 2, p. 111, p. 114. RSDII, pp. 293, 294–7, 306. APGC, IV.80, ‘Summarium’; ASV, Cong. Riti, Processus 770, ff. 4r–5v. On Giulio Sacchetti, see Zirpolo, Ave papa/ave papabile, pp. 97–125. Sacchetti was a Florentine and on his death in 1663 was buried in the church S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome. 71 P770, ff. 4r–6r; APGC, III.114, ff. 109r–115r: ‘Informatio super statu et omnibus hactenus gestis in causa pro illius reassumptione’. 72 Memoriale, f. 73v. Ari was prior general from 1660 to 1666. 73 74 Memoriale, ff. 73v–74v. RSDII, pp. 330–1. 70

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were required to demonstrate a long-standing cult by means of a process ‘super casu excepto’. The other was for those who had died after 1534 and whose causes had to confirm the absence of any (unauthorized) public cult with a process ‘super non cultu’. However, someone like Maria Maddalena, who had died after 1534 but had been beatified and clearly had been publicly venerated, questioned this neat division.75 In 1645, in the wake of a set of directives issued in 1642, the Congregation of Rites discussed whether proof of no cult should require a separate process in such cases, but pragmatism won out and throughout the seventeenth century those who had been beatified prior to 1630 were approved as ‘exceptional cases’ based purely on their brief of beatification. This occurred even though, as Fabian Veraja noted some decades ago, the decrees of 1625 and 1634 had very clearly defined that only someone who had been neither beatified nor canonized could qualify as a ‘casus exceptus’. In Maria Maddalena’s case, the cardinals specifically noted that her beatification in 1626 had supplied apostolic approval for a public cult without need for a separate process.76 In this way, Maria Maddalena—and beati such as Felice da Cantalice and Pascal Baylon, who were the first to receive similar approval in 1645—trod something of a third pathway to canonization by which the cardinals of the Congregation of Rites gave particular recognition to those who had been formally beatified. Two tribunals were set up to investigate Maria Maddalena’s canonization, one in Florence and the other in Naples. The fact that Naples was the only location outside Maria Maddalena’s patria to host a canonization inquiry reflected its importance for her cult as well as Roomer’s influence. Remissorial letters commissioning these tribunals were sent in Septepmber 1662, granting apostolic authority to three judges in each city.77 The judges were appointed for one year, and the letters detailed the questions and eighteen articles that would direct the depositions gathered by both tribunals. These questions and articles had been agreed in discussion between the cardinale ponente of the cause, its Carmelite promoter, and the promoter of the faith, Pietro Francesco de Rossi.78 Rossi’s task was to ensure that due process was followed and that For what follows, see Veraja, ‘La beatificazione’, pp. 83–9. Also Misztal, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 148–50. 76 RSDII, pp. 330–1: ‘nempe cultum eidem Beatae exhibitum fuisse, et exhiberi auctoritate apostolica’. 77 RSDII, pp. 334–5. AAF, Atti relativi a santi e beati, Processus remissorialis et compulsorialis in causa canonizationis B. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis (unfoliated) includes the letters. The three bishops came to Florence and met in the house of the bishop of Fiesole in the city; the first session, on 16 September 1662, saw them open the remissorial letters dated 3 June 1662. 78 Rossi was promoter of the faith from 1642 to 1673; Giovanni Papa, ‘Cardinali prefetti, segretari, promotori generali della fede e relatori generali della Congregazione’, in Miscellanea in occasione del IV centenario della Congregazione per le Cause dei Santi, p. 426. The left transept of S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome houses a bust of him. 75

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the case for Maria Maddalena’s canonization was questioned and examined thoroughly—a role that had been played by the promotor fiscalis in conjunction with three auditors of the Rota at the time of the apostolic inquiry for Maria Maddalena’s beatification in 1624–6.79 In Naples, the archbishop of Sorrento and the bishops of Calvi and Vico Equense were appointed as judges, and the Carmelite prior general named Onofrio Sorrentino (of the S. Maria della Vita reform) to serve as the local Carmelite procurator for the cause.80 In Florence, meanwhile, the bishops of Fiesole, Collenso, and Pistoia were appointed as judges and the prior of the Carmine (the men’s community), Cirillo Grillanti, was named as the local procurator.81 The nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli were still major players within the process—they, at the procurator general’s behest, suggested the Florentine judges—but they were now following a lead set by the central leadership of the Carmelite Order as a whole and the local procurators that had been appointed.82 For their part, the Carmelite promoters needed the nuns: for their local expertise but also, more importantly, for the records they had kept of their sister’s fame for holiness, the miracles attributed to her, and the gifts they had received in her honour. It was as a Carmelite, then, that Maria Maddalena’s canonization process proper finally got under way in 1663. But the support of a religious order did not make the process immune to the sorts of delays to which Maria Maddalena’s beatification process, without that support, had earlier fallen victim. Thirty-three testimonies were taken in Florence between February and September 1663 and a further three taken by May 1664.83 In Naples, fifteen witnesses were heard between September and November 1663, but progress then stalled after one judge left the city. New remissorial letters appointing a replacement judge were not issued until May 1665, after which six further testimonies were taken.84 In the meantime, the task of cardinale ponente in Rome also went through several pairs of hands after the death of Cardinal Sacchetti in June 1663: first Marzio Ginnetti as an interim solution, then Cardinal Barberini from August 1663, and finally Volumnio Bandinelli from June 1664, since Barberini was absent from Rome.85 These delays, coupled with the costs of holding two processes, demanded a substantial financial 80 81 Palazzini, ‘Beatificazioni’, p. 162. P770, ff. 1v–3r. P771, f. 1v. On 15 February 1662 Paolo di S. Ignazio wrote from Rome to ask the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli to find three bishops to judge the Florentine process, noting that the three for Naples had already been chosen; Memoriale, f. 75r. 83 P771, ff. 198r–519r. 84 Vincenzo Carafa, the bishop of Calvi, was replaced by Giovanni Mastelloni, bishop of Vieste, in July 1663, but Mastelloni then left Naples in November; P770, ff. 117r–117v, 120r–122r. The Congregation approved replacing the bishop of Vieste in principle on 24 January 1665 (ratified by the pope on 23 February), but the letters appointing Placido Carafa, bishop of Acerra, were not issued until May 1665; RSDII, p. 461. 85 Memoriale, f. 86r; RSDII, p. 386, p. 426. 79 82

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investment from the Carmelites. In Naples alone, the time and travel costs of the judges as well as notary expenses, gifts, and entertainment costs totalled 1,197 ducats.86 Besides these, there were the fees for professional services as well as a multitude of other costs, including Christmas gifts for the judges, the provision of refreshments when the inquiry visited S. Maria della Vita to examine its altar, and the cost of a portrait of the beata as a gift for the nuncio in Naples.87 The formal support of the Carmelite Order came into its own as the expense of the process grew. Indeed, such were the financial demands of the entire undertaking (including the celebrations when the canonization did occur) that after paying 22,000 scudi, the Carmelites received permission not to hold their General Chapter in 1672 in order to save money.88 Yet amongst those actually testifying before the Florentine tribunal, the Carmelites were notably absent, beyond, that is, the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli. Besides twelve depositions from these nuns, no other Carmelites contributed, even though three-quarters of the thirty-six people who testified in Florence were either ordained as diocesan priests or were members of religious orders. Of the religious, these numbered three Dominican nuns of S. Maria di Candeli and three Benedictines from Le Murate, as well as an Oratorian priest, a Cistercian abbot, and a Servite prior. It was a similar story of Carmelite absence in Naples, where twenty-one testimonies were gathered, but in an almost exact inverse of the religious–lay composition of the Florentine tribunal, just four of these were priests or religious (none of them Carmelite). In both Florence and Naples, the emphasis was on finding evidence in support of claimed miracles, and this led the tribunals towards the people who had been involved in the chosen events—which, particularly in Naples, comprised members of the laity—as well as to expert witnesses. The lack of Carmelites amongst the witnesses and, in Florence, the range of other religious involved in the process are striking. Devotionally Maria Maddalena had long enjoyed tremendous appeal beyond the Carmelite Order, and this had continued after the Carmelites had become more involved in her cult. In the 1640s, it was a Capuchin friar who sent for relics to share with English Catholics, and among the visitors to Maria Maddalena’s body in these years were the rector of the Florentine Jesuit college, the father general of the Discalced Augustinians, and some Theatine priests, as well as some Discalced Carmelites and Capuchins who visited before leaving on mission to the 86 APGC, IV.79, Processus Neapolitanus in causa canonizationis B. Magdalenae de Pazzis, ff. 1r–4r: ‘Nota del denaro ricevuto, e delle spese fatte nella fabrica del processo della nostra beata Maria Magdalena de Pazzis’. 87 On uses of portraits as gifts in the causes of Gregory X and Philip Neri in the seventeenth century, see Ditchfield, Liturgy, sanctity and history, pp. 237–8. 88 Eliseo Monsignano (ed.), Bullarium Carmelitanum plures complectens Summorum Pontificum constitutiones (Rome, 1718), pp. 568–9. Pope Clement X confirmed the existing prior general, Orlandi, in post.

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Indies.89 Meanwhile, across the decades those offering the lode (a sermon in praise of Maria Maddalena) at the annual celebration of her feast at S. Maria degli Angeli, were largely either Jesuits or secular priests, although a Discalced Carmelite gave it in 1650 and 1660, and a Servite in 1654.90 We can see something of the strength of Maria Maddalena’s appeal in the testimony of Ferrante Vai, an Oratorian originally from Prato who had moved to Florence, and who ranked Maria Maddalena second only in his devotions to the founder of his order (and a Florentine), Philip Neri.91 In Naples, another Oratorian priest, Vincenzo Avenati, kept some veil relics of Maria Maddalena in his room and shared these relics with ‘many people’ (più persone), rather like the friars of S. Maria della Vita.92 Indeed it was an Oratorian, Francesco Gizzio, who composed a three-act rappresentatione sacra (sacred play) of Maria Maddalena’s life that was performed many times in the cloister of S. Agnello and also at S. Maria della Vita before its publication in 1668 as L’amor trionfante.93 Published in Naples that year, it was dedicated to none other than Philip Neri. Amongst the play’s dramatic moments were scenes with Sr Barbara Bassi, a nun of S. Maria degli Angeli, dramatizing her miraculous healing after Maria Maddalena had licked her sores. ‘Miracolo, miracolo’, the character cries, ‘gran santa è Suor Maria Maddalena de Pazzi.’94 Maria Maddalena had earlier been cited in a number of written works by non-Carmelite authors, including (according to a testimony given in Naples) the Jesuit Lovro Grisogono, the Roman Oratorian Francesco Marchese, and Ippolito Marraccio of the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God.95 As with other saints and would-be saints in this period, Maria Maddalena’s Carmelite identity—such as it was—did not prevent members of other religious orders and secular priests from embracing her as one of their particular devotions. The relative lack of Carmelite involvement in the deposition stage of the canonization process ultimately proved extremely useful. These testimonies presented the cross-order pollination that Maria Maddalena’s cult had enjoyed and, in so doing, made a strong case that this was not a devotion that had sprung solely from interested parties such as Maria Maddalena’s family or religious order (this itself was one of the preliminary questions posed to every 89

90 Memoriale, ff. 56r, 60r. Memoriale, ff. 60r, 71r, 63v. 92 P771, f. 206v. P770, f. 221r. 93 Francesco Gizzio, L’Amor trionfante. Rappresentatione sacra della vita, e morte della B. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi Carmelitana (Naples, 1668). 94 Gizzio, L’Amor trionfante, p. 25. 95 Lovro Grisogono, Mundus Marianus. Hoc est Maria speculum mundi caelestis (Padua, 1651), p. 39; Francesco Marchese, Diario sacro dove s’insegnano varie pratiche di divotione per honorare ogni giorno la beatissima Vergine raccolte dall’historie de’ santi, e beati correnti in ciascun giorno dell’anno, e dalle vite d’altri servi di Dio, 6 vols. (Rome, 1656–8); Ippolito Marraccio, Lilia mariana seu De candidissimis sacrarum Virginum in Mariam Deiparam Virginem & Virginitatis Principem studiis (Rome, 1651), pp. 268–73. 91

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person testifying). Lay witnesses also contributed to the image of a cult embraced beyond the Carmelites. The Neapolitan lawyer Fabrizio Guardato, for instance, named preachers from various orders when asked how he had heard of Maria Maddalena, particularly noting his Oratorian confessor, a Theatine at the church of S. Paolo, as well as Franciscan nuns in Naples and Benedictine nuns in Sorrento, in addition to many secular priests and lay men and women.96 Written evidence that was included with the Florentine process also bolstered this view of Maria Maddalena’s broad appeal, not least with the inclusion of a letter sent to the nuns by a Theatine priest asking for their prayers to the beata for the Theatine mission to the Indies.97 Demonstrating Maria Maddalena’s reputation amongst members of many different religious orders helped demonstrate that her fame for holiness had not been cultivated entirely by the Carmelites. It also made a compelling argument for her recognition by the universal Church by indicating that this was a devotion that would be embraced widely. In Florence, the inquiry’s questions as well as individual testimonies ensured that the examination of Maria Maddalena’s cult—her fama sanctitatis and miracles—centred on the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli, now in Borgo Pinti. This interest in S. Maria degli Angeli was, of course, understandable as the home of Maria Maddalena’s body. The tribunal gathered not only oral testimonies regarding the shrine at S. Maria degli Angeli and their celebration of Maria Maddalena’s feast, but also written documents that effectively provided a running commentary on the progress of Maria Maddalena’s cult. These demonstrated its expansion, but always pegged that back to S. Maria degli Angeli, where the record had been kept. Thirty-five documents related to the years 1607–25 and a further seventy-nine covered the years since her beatification.98 These touched on matters such as letters of support for the cause from significant personalities. They also included requests for relics and reports of supposed miracles sent from Parma, Venice, Milan, Rome, Genoa, Turin, Ancona, Norcia, Gubbio, Cascia, Oneglia, Urbino, Forlì, Imola, Cesena, as well as Antwerp, Madrid, and England and, of course, Naples. In addition, extracts were copied from the convent Memoriale concerning Maria Maddalena’s cult.99 The authority of these documents rested with the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli, three of whom were questioned regarding their authenticity as part of the process.100 Some of the nuns were questioned further as part of the inquiry relating to Maria Maddalena’s body and shrine. As in 1624 and 1625, the body was examined once again by officials of the Florentine tribunal, and a notary, 97 P770, ff. 198r–198v. P771, second filza, document 64. P771, ff. 85r–98r lists the letters and documents about the cult exhibited to Roberto Strozzi and Giuseppe Bonaccorsi on 31 August 1663 at the grate of S. Maria degli Angeli. 99 100 P771, ff. 98v–133r. P771, ff. 95v–98v. 96 98

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Giovanni Antonio di Cosimo Vignali, recorded a careful description in Latin.101 They went to ascertain that this was indeed Maria Maddalena’s body, to take testimonies regarding its miraculous preservation as claimed, and to offer a full description of the place where it was kept and revered. Amongst the items described were some of the twenty-five tavole that had been left in thanksgiving for graces received, including one of a father and mother praying to the beata with their many children; another showing the beata assisting a ship from above; and another with a Servite priest kneeling in prayer before the beata. Also recorded were the many votive offerings made of card, particularly one showing a Theatine priest, Vincenzo Maccanti, surviving the plague in Modena in 1630, in addition to his habit, which he had vowed to leave in thanksgiving at Maria Maddalena’s tomb. Once again, the interest of members of religious orders other than the Carmelites was apparent. In Naples, questions regarding the public veneration of pictures and altars in Maria Maddalena’s honour gave centre stage to S. Maria della Vita. The judges in Naples, of course, had no body to examine, but they nevertheless made a formal visit to the church of S. Maria della Vita in order to prepare an official description of Maria Maddalena’s chapel there.102 In the search for evidence of Maria Maddalena’s cult in Naples, it was to the friars of S. Maria della Vita that the inquiry principally turned. As in Florence, the chapel decorations were described in detail, including the torches and lamps that were kept burning, as well as various images of the beata and votive offerings decorating a wall (although the report noted that many had been moved when stucco work had been done). Even without this visit, the Carmelite aspect to Maria Maddalena’s cult and the importance of S. Maria della Vita were inescapable among the testimonies the inquiry gathered. It was the friars of this observant reform that were clearly identified as the cornerstone of Neapolitan devotion, even if they themselves did not testify before the tribunal. Most of all, it was here that a ‘cassettina’ of relics was kept and exposed for veneration on her feast day, as several witnesses noted.103 If the wider Carmelite contribution was somewhat limited whilst the testimonies were gathered, it was not once the tribunals were concluded. The Florentine tribunal sent its documents to Rome in May 1664, and the Neapolitan tribunal sent its documents in July 1665.104 The recipient of both packages was Paolo di S. Ignazio, the Carmelite procurator general who took on the task of promoting the cause with the Congregation of Rites. Maria Maddalena’s canonization depended on confirming the validity of the process (that the evidence gathered was admissible because the tribunals had been run correctly), and establishing proof of two further miracles. Once the cardinals 101

102 103 P771, ff. 172r–175r. P770, ff. 305v–307r. P770, ff. 42r, 57v. P771, ff. 533v–534r; APGC, III.14 (unfoliated), letter from Cirillo Grillanti (31 May 1664); Memoriale, f. 95v. 104

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of the Congregation of Rites were satisfied at least two miracles had taken place, and Maria Maddalena was suitable for canonization, the final say would be given to the pope himself, who would make his decision at the conclusion of three papal consistories. There was a substantial workload still to follow to which Carmelite expertise and funding would make a significant contribution.

9 Canonization The year was 1648. It was October, the feast of SS. Simon and Jude. Francesco Coppa, a Roman painter, was staying in a villa in Settimo, not far from Florence, where he was painting a portrait.1 He had been suffering from kidney stones for many years, he told the local curate, and had never managed to pass more than even the smallest grain without fainting. He had spent hundreds of scudi on many medications in various places, but nothing had worked. The priest, a Cistercian monk connected to the community then living in Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s old convent in S. Frediano, encouraged the man to drink some water taken from the beata’s well. Drinking the water, Coppa immediately passed three large stones without the least bit of pain. Shocked, he was said to exclaim: ‘This is a miracle! Like transferring the Pitti Palace to Fiesole!’ And at Mass the next day the Cistercian told his congregation about the wondrous thing that had happened. The account we have of Francesco Coppa’s healing comes from Maria Maddalena’s canonization inquiry in Florence.2 The testimonies gathered in the course of the whole canonization process—in Florence and in Naples— reveal how significant Maria Maddalena’s miracles and graces were seen to be for her saintly reputation and how enthusiastically they were embraced by devotees.3 But once these testimonies had been recorded and the tribunals in Florence and Naples closed, it was in Rome that the miracles attributed to Maria Maddalena would come under the greatest scrutiny to determine whether they could prove her saintliness according to the legal procedure of canonization. Coppa and the local priest were clear that the painter had received a miracle, but the Congregation of Rites might not agree. On another day and in another place, it was the advocates and cardinals of this Congregation that would assess this and other claims, and determine whether the nun might finally be canonized. 1

P771, ff. 220v–221r. P771; AAF, Atti relativi a santi e beati, Processus remissorialis et compulsorialis in causa canonizationis B. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis. 3 Regarding enthusiasm for miracles in this period, see, Sodano, Il miracolo nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia. 2

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ENTHUSIASM FOR THE MIRACULOUS None of the fifty-eight people testifying at either the Florentine or Neapolitan tribunal had known Maria Maddalena personally. The inquiry had come too late for that and, besides, Maria Maddalena’s life and virtues had already been discussed and approved as part of her beatification process. What the questions and articles of both tribunals asked for was claims of miracles and demonstrations of devotion that could show that the nun’s fame had grown. The enthusiastic tone of the answers received suggests that these were aspects that fitted well with the devotional interests of the deponents themselves. These people told their audience stories of their own experiences and about miracles and graces they knew had been claimed by others; they also spoke in detail about how Maria Maddalena’s feasts had been celebrated and about their personal devotions towards her. In addition to the twelve miracles proposed by the process articles, details of some seventy putative miracles emerged from these testimonies as people spoke of the extraordinary consequences of invoking Maria Maddalena’s intercession, of healings and incidents that seemed to go against or beyond the natural course of events.4 This enthusiasm for the miraculous is clearly evident amongst the deponents in their discussion of ‘miracles’ that they had not personally witnessed. First-hand testimony was necessary to approve a miracle and so these testimonies were of little value to the cause itself. What they do indicate, in compelling terms, is the willingness amongst devotees to claim knowledge of the miracles of others. Antonio Serristori, for instance, a Florentine senator, put forward several miracles and graces to the tribunal in Florence about which he knew very little.5 He mentioned, for instance, having heard from a friend of a man, Vincenzo del Sera, who had been cured of a grave illness but knew no more about it; and he reported that an Oratorian priest had told him of a nun at S. Matteo in Arcetri who had enjoyed daily visions of Maria Maddalena, but again he knew no more. Speaking of his own devotion to the nun, he explained that he frequently went to see her body specifically to recommend himself to her intercession. At the heart of Serristori’s devotion—as he recounted it–was Maria Maddalena as a miracle worker, an interest that saw him pay attention to the votive offerings people had left at her altar. Carlo Strozzi too felt happy to describe in some detail the story of his brother’s miraculous cure, which had taken place whilst Carlo was in another city and which he had

4

For an introduction to defitions of the miraculous, see Jacobs, Votive panels and popular piety, p. 107; and in more detail relating to the fifteenth-century canonization process for Vincent Ferrer, see Smoller, ‘Defining the boundaries of the natural’. 5 P771, ff. 313v–322r. Serristori’s sister had been a nun at S. Maria degli Angeli and had claimed to have received a vision of Maria Maddalena.

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heard second-hand from family members.6 The claim was that in 1654 Roberto Strozzi had been cured of a considerable fever and headaches that had been so severe that doctors had believed his life was in danger. Roberto’s daughter was a nun at S. Maria degli Angeli (Sr Maria Minima di San Filippo), and so the family sent to the nuns to beg their prayers and to send a veil relic.7 Carlo’s account to the Florentine tribunal included setting out how the veil had been placed on Roberto and that he had immediately felt better, even though Carlo had not himself been there. Antonio Serristori’s fascination with the offerings left at Maria Maddalena’s shrine and altars was matched by other devotees. In remarking on some of these miracle stories, their testimonies confirmed the power of these objects to bear public witness to miracle claims. Such was the case, for instance, with the Neapolitan lawyer Geronimo Pisacane, who mentioned Domenico Caravita’s remarkable survival after falling from a carriage based on having heard about it from a friend and having seen a votive image left in thanksgiving at Maria Maddalena’s chapel in S. Maria della Vita.8 Another witness, Giovanni Battista Lottieri, recalled having heard the Caravita story many times from various people but could not remember from whom; what he could remember was seeing a picture of the incident publicly exposed in the church of S. Maria.9 Such images depicted and represented a host of astonishing stories; they were no mere demonstrations of piety but a means of connecting a community of devotees and an invitation to petition Maria Maddalena through personal prayer as well as corporate liturgy.10

A SS E S S I N G M I R A C L E S In 1664, with the Florentine part of Maria Maddalena’s process in Rome, the Florentine promoter and prior of the Carmine, Cirillo Grillanti, wrote regarding the considerable difficulties he had encountered gathering funds to pay for the process.11 He was acutely aware that generous financial support was

6

P771, f. 284v. Sr Maria Minima (1617–72) was elected prioress of S. Maria degli Angeli in 1668 and was herself renowned for her holiness, leading to the publication of a biography: Luigi Strozzi, Vita di Suor Maria Minima Strozzi detta di S. Filippo dell’Ordine Carmelitano della Regola mitigata osservante (Florence, 1701). 8 9 P770, f. 81v. P770, f. 160r. 10 Jacobs, Votive panels and popular piety, p. 6. 11 APCG, III.114: ‘Circa dell’ elemosine difficilmente se ne potrà ottenere fin tanto che non si sà la determinatione certa della Canonizatione, perché quà molti sono stati scottati per il Processo fatto d’Ipolito Galantini, e non vedendo effetto temano anco di questo, all’hora però che sarà certa la Canonizatione come spero sicuramente sarà facile il trovar’ buona somma.’ 7

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required for such an expensive project.12 The problem, as Grillanti saw it, was that people were not convinced that the canonization would happen. Many in Florence had recently been ‘burned’ (scottati), he noted, by making contributions to the process for another of their compatriots, Ippolito Galantini (1565–1619), who had still not been canonized, and they feared the same might happen to Maria Maddalena.13 It was an interesting comment, because it recognized the importance of the Roman authorities to the saint-making process whilst also acknowledging the vital role played by donors. Grillanti’s concern was not that people did not believe Maria Maddalena should be a saint, but that she might not be canonized; the process and the reality of being a saint were clearly seen as two (albeit related) things. Grillanti’s great hope was that, now Maria Maddalena’s documents were in Rome and her case was, as he hoped, ‘certain’ (certo), donations would be forthcoming. But Maria Maddalena’s case was far from certain, since the difficult and detailed work of analysing and assessing her holiness—particularly her miracles—had yet to begin. For Maria Maddalena’s beatification, three auditors of the Rota had examined her possible miracles and then presented a selection in support of her holiness within their relatio. The cardinals of the Congregation of Rites had voted on the selection of miracles proposed to them and, in 1626, approved eighteen, nine in life and nine after death.14 Miracles had always been scrutinized for a purpose within the canonization process, but by the 1660s they had to stand up to a new standard that reflected both scientific knowledge and the enhanced expectations of Church law and procedure. Proving and classifying miracles had become more demanding. The heightened demands of the process were what lay behind Felice Contelori’s treatise on the canonization process published in 1634, which included a commentary on the practice of canonization and the implementation of Caelestis Hierusalem cives, the papal brief issued that year.15 The treatise set out that two experts (periti), such as doctors, were required to vouch for the supernatural nature of any cures based on the evidence of witness depositions and not on their personal examination of the (former) patient.16 A further development came with the institution of the promoter of the faith as an office in 1631; thereafter it was he and his deputies that played the lead role in interrogating the miraculous nature of claims being made.17 Separated from

12 On the expense of proceeding with a cause for canonization in this period, see Ditchfield, Liturgy, sanctity and history, pp. 237–8. 13 Galantini had founded the Congregation of Christian Doctrine in Florence to offer religious education to children. 14 RSDI, pp. 284–6. 15 Contelori, Tractatus et praxis de canonizatione sanctorum. On its significance, see Ditchfield, ‘What was sacred history?’, p. 91. 16 Contelori, Tractatus et praxis de canonizatione sanctorum, pp. 197, 209. 17 Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, pp. 75, 324.

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the witnesses themselves, the postulator of the cause first presented to the promoter of the faith, through an advocate, a document identifying possible miracles taken from the canonization process and his arguments as to why they should be accepted as genuine miracles.18 The promoter of the faith then responded with a set of animaadversiones, which were his criticisms of what he had read and any reasons why these events should not be accepted as miracles, such as natural explanations for what had happened. His job was also to point out where the legal procedure had not been followed properly and thus where the validity of some testimonies might be in doubt. A consistorial advocate—an advocate highly trained in Curial procedure and canon law— wrote a final reply in which he offered his legal assessment of the situation. These documents were printed and circulated amongst the cardinals of the Congregation of Rites before they voted on the miracles, leaving us with several records of these fascinating tussles over the miraculous. It was here that the contentious nature of a canonization process was best seen, with opposing arguments exchanged between two parties before a judge (first, the Congregation and, ultimately, the pope). So detailed were the printed debates, for instance, that tables were typically included setting out the names of each witness with the dates of when they had been sworn in and examined along with folio references to find their testimonies.19 And as each voice entered the debate, they made careful reference to published works in the field of canonization as well as to similar miracles that had been approved in earlier cases and could be identified as precedents. With this, the comparative and selfreferential nature of the canonization process was assured. The medical examination of miracles at this time owed much to the work of the prominent physician Paolo Zacchia, an advisor to the Roman Rota whose Quaestiones medico-legales was published in nine volumes from 1621, and from 1651 included consilia (sample consultations).20 Book IV on miracles was first published in 1628, after Maria Maddalena’s beatification. It drew on medical knowledge, but also biblical precedents and examples of miracles taken from canonization processes to offer a detailed assessment of how miracles might be identified. A long answer to Question VIII concerned healing miracles, dividing them into categories including paralysis and demonic possession, blindness and deafness, fevers and dysentery, leprosy and oedema, conception and wounds. Further questions (IX–XI) dealt with miraculous death, incorrupt corpses, and resurrection. Most important was the detailed definition of what constituted a miraculous healing: the condition had Pomata, ‘Malpighi and the holy body’, p. 574 explains the procedure. APGC, IV.80. 20 On Zacchia, see in particular Jacalyn Duffin, ‘Questioning medicine in seventeenth-century Rome: The consultations of Paolo Zacchia’, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 28, 1 (2011): pp. 149–70; and Silvia De Renzi, ‘La natura in tribunale: Conoscenze e pratiche medico-legali a Roma nel XVII secolo’, Quaderni Storici 108, 3 (2001): pp. 799–822 [doi: 10.1408/10334]. 18 19

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to be deemed incurable, the recovery must be instantaneous and full, and it must be thought impossible for nature or medical treatment to have brought about the cure. The importance of Zacchia’s work led to editions in which all the books were collated, ultimately including eighty-six consilia (reasoned discussions of specific cases that could be used for teaching) and one hundred decisions of the Roman Rota dated (1569–1657). Several consilia concerned miracles, one of which referenced the auditors’ report on Maria Maddalena’s miracles for her beatification.21 Zacchia’s purpose in writing was both medical and legal: to shine a light on the medical knowledge of his day as found in legal proceedings. His detailed discussion of miracles raised precisely the sorts of questions that should be asked in order to interrogate miracle claims fully. His work armed both the promoters of causes and the officials of the Congregation of Rites with a complex scholarly and experience-based manual on how to examine whether something could only have occurred miraculously. Zacchia’s work was important because of the legal context in which the proof of miracles was sought within the canonization process. To count for a canonization, miracles needed, first and foremost, eyewitness testimonies, and it was these that might then be supplemented by the expert opinion of professionals such as physicians. There was also the matter of using eyewitnesses to demonstrate that the candidate in question—and only that candidate—had been invoked. A canonization inquiry not only needed to determine that a miracle had happened but that the candidate’s intercession had wrought it. Assessing miracles was not merely a discussion of the supernatural, then, and what was humanly or naturally possible, but part of a wide-ranging legal process whose whole focus was on determining whether a particular person should be canonized.22 These changes to the demands of the process and the terms of discussion regarding miracles in the years since Maria Maddalena’s beatification had noticeable repercussions for the types of miracles approved for her canonization. In 1626, nine post-mortem miracles had been approved in support of the beatification, all either traditional healings (such as from bad fevers or bodily pains), or related to Maria Maddalena’s incorrupt corpse.23 The interest at this time was in ‘medical miracles’.24 By 1665, when Claude Bouillaud presented a dossier of thirteen possible miracles for discussion by the promoter of the faith, the balance had shifted somewhat: only five of the events were traditional healings from illness and two related to the corpse. Six of the thirteen were claims where no medical opinion was sought, namely two instances of

21

Paolo Zacchia, Quaestiones medico-legales (Avignon, 1657), pp. 666–8. Vidal, ‘Miracles, science and testimony’, esp. pp. 485–7. 23 These were in addition to nine miracles worked during her lifetime. All were presented in Coccini et al, De sanctitate. 24 Duffin, Medical miracles, esp. pp. 72–3. 22

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multiplied oil in 1626 and 1654; the restoration of some bad wine; Caravita’s fall from a carriage in Naples; and Gasparo Roomer’s escape from Naples in 1647.25 The change in balance is interesting because it seems to sit somewhat uncomfortably with the dominance of healing miracles within the nun’s devotional cult and with other candidate saints at this time. Giulio Sodano, for example, has noted that around 70–80 per cent of miracles recorded in sources from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Naples were traditional cures.26 Maria Maddalena’s promoters seem to have thought non-medical events stood a better chance of gaining official recognition as miracles. Seeking approval for these miracles required some creativity when it came to calling expert witnesses; it also provided opportunities. Physicians were still summoned—as they had been increasingly within canonization processes since the mid-thirteenth century—and they were questioned with interest in relation to Maria Maddalena’s incorrupt corpse.27 But other experts were summoned too. In Naples they included three carriage drivers who were questioned regarding Domenico Caravita’s carriage fall (the miracle was technically his survival from the fall rather than recovering from his injuries).28 The carriage drivers were experienced men, one having been a driver for twentytwo years, another for thirteen, and the other for twelve. None had witnessed the incident and had to be given details of what had been claimed. Each verified that it would have been easy for Domenico to fall as he had and impossible to survive. In Florence, meanwhile, the claim that bad wine had been restored at S. Maria degli Angeli in 1660 due to Maria Maddalena’s intercession led to the convent’s steward, Antonio Fornai, being summoned to testify. He was asked as an expert whether the wine had indeed turned bad, whether it had been restored, and whether this transformation could have occurred naturally; he was also asked whether other barrels of wine from the same area had turned bad and been restored naturally (the answer was there was other wine, but it had not been restored).29 After discussion by the promoter of the faith, the Congregation of Rites in September 1668 approved only five of the miracles Claude Bouillaud proposed. Just one of these was a traditional healing miracle: the restoration of sight in Sr Maddalena Angela Gorini’s right eye, dating back to 1640. Despite the passing of time, this miracle could boast three testimonies from fellow nuns and a fourth from one of the treating physicians, Bernardino Gaci. Gaci 25

APGC, IV.80. Giulio Sodano, ‘Miracolo e canonizzazione: Processi napoletani tra XVI e XVIII secolo,’ in Miracoli: Dai segni alla storia, edited by Sofia Boesch Gajano and Marilena Modica (Rome: Viella, 1999), pp. 188–9. 27 Ziegler, ‘Practitioners and saints’, pp. 191–225. The role of physicians in the examination of another possibly incorrupt corpse in the seventeenth century is discussed in detail in Pomata, ‘Malpighi and the holy body’. 28 29 P770, ff. 290v–300r, 301r–303v. P771, ff. 484r–485v. 26

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had confirmed that he had given up rescuing any vision in her right eye on account of the sores that plagued it for two years, and that he had seen her both before she had made her plea to Maria Maddalena, and after, when she had indeed had her sight back.30 Medications, he said, could not have healed her instantly but would only have been able to have a gradual effect. Other healing miracles ‘failed’, by contrast, due to poor evidence or dubious testimony in ways that reveal the demands of the canonization process as a legal procedure.31 Pietro Caravita’s cure from fever in 1643, for example, was rejected when his wife and son testified to different times for the miracle and disagreed about where the relic used had come from. The case of a nun at S. Maria degli Angeli cured of sores on her knees in 1663 was rejected because she was said to have recovered after invoking Maria Maddalena for a second time when the first invocation had achieved nothing. Although seven nuns and two doctors testified, the miracle was also refused because there was only one witness (the nun herself) to the precise moment of invocation and cure. In the context of the canonization process, a miracle had to have sufficient and reliable testimony that set out that the candidate had responded to an invocation. The ‘medical miracles’ of Maria Maddalena’s cause were to be found, rather, in the preservation of her body and the sweet liquid emanating from it. Whilst healings concerned moments of dramatic transformation for which it could be hard to find eyewitness testimonies that covered before, during, and after the invocation had been made, by contrast, Maria Maddalena’s body could be examined by physicians at any time. It could also be compared directly with other cases of incorrupt bodies, and the nuns were willing witnesses to nothing artificial having been done. Physicians examined the corpse in person in 1663 and offered their expert opinion.32 The discussion that followed compared the corpse with what one of that age was known to be like and also with a number of incorrupt saintly bodies that had recently been declared miraculous, including Pascal Baylon, Isidore, and Francis Xavier.33 For the sweet odour, too, there was a relatively recent comparison to be found in Francesca Romana.34 Indeed, Maria Maddalena served as her own precedent, since the body had already provided two of the miracles for her beatification. Canonization miracles were not simply events deemed miraculous, but events linked specifically to the candidate saint’s intercession and proven, within existing knowledge and with the support of adequate and reliable testimony, not to have been possible naturally. The boundary between the natural and the supernatural was highly significant, but it was just one part of a comprehensive

30

31 32 33 P771, f. 479r. APGC, IV.80. P771, 177r–85r. APGC, IV.80. On scents and holiness, see Constance Classen, The color of angels: Cosmology, gender and the aesthetic imagination (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1998), 44–7; Graziano, Wounds of Love, 80–4; Sallmann, Santi barocchi, pp. 387–90. 34

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analysis. Set within this wide discussion, incorrupt bodies and non-medical miracles had the scope to succeed where traditional healings might fail.

T H E CA R M E L I T E S , T H E ME D I C I , THE BARBERINI, AND THE P OPE Whilst discussion of Maria Maddalena’s miracles continued in Rome, her supporters embarked on a new campaign to maintain high-level interest in her cause. The Carmelite Order took the lead, but other interested parties did important work too, chief amongst them the Medici and the Barberini families. The Medici had long demonstrated a devotional commitment to the nun but now she was much closer to canonization, her obvious Florentine heritage and her shrine at the heart of the ducal city made her more politically attractive. In July 1664, after the Florentine process had reached Rome, Grand Duke Ferdinand II and his wife both sent new supplications to Pope Alexander VII, who was reported as saying that it would give him heart to satisfy their devotion and petitions.35 Whilst the nuns of Le Barberine further developed the cult in Rome by distributing relics and celebrating the beata’s feast, the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli approached the archbishop of Florence, Francesco Nerli, and continued to show Maria Maddalena’s body and offer relics to important visitors, including Cardinal Colonna in October 1664.36 They also turned to their cardinal protector, Antonio Barberini, who, in a sign of community with the nuns, promised in July 1664 ‘to embrace each occasion of promoting the canonization of this our beata’.37 In January 1667, after the Neapolitan documentation had reached Rome, the grand duke sent a flurry of letters in an attempt to reinvigorate the nun’s cause. The recipients included the promoter of the faith (Rossi) and the secretary of the Congregation of Rites (Bernardo Casale)—two of the people whose goodwill was most important to pushing the cause through the bureaucratic procedure of canonization—as well as the pope’s nephew (Cardinal Flavio Chigi) and brother (Mario Chigi).38 The pope also received a letter in which the grand duke pleaded with him to review the Florentine and Neapolitan processes.39 Medici commitment to the canonization could no longer be in doubt. Another recipient of one of Ferdinand’s letters of 1667 was Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi, whom the grand duke begged to promote the ‘spedizione’ of

35

36 Memoriale, f. 93r. Memoriale, f. 94r. Memoriale, f. 93r: ‘d’abbracciare ogni occasione di promuovere la canonizzazione di questa nostra beata’. 38 39 APGC, IV.80. Memoriale, ff. 98v–99r. 37

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the cause.40 Rospigliosi, whose family hailed from nearby Pistoia, had enjoyed a long and distinguished Curial career and it was he who ultimately emerged as the most important supporter for Maria Maddalena’s cause. Born in 1600, Rospigliosi had studied with the Jesuits at the Collegio Romano at a time when there was a particular interest in Maria Maddalena owing to her link with the Jesuits Luigi Gonzaga and Virgilio Cepari. After the election of Pope Urban VIII, Rospigliosi (not then a cardinal) had entered into the service of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the pope’s nephew and brother of the two Barberini nuns at S. Maria degli Angeli. Rospigliosi had accompanied Barberini to France and then Spain in 1625–6, and it was on return from that trip in September 1626 that Barberini visited his two sisters at the Florentine convent.41 Rospigliosi, then, would have known about Maria Maddalena for many decades. But it was in the 1660s, when serving as Cardinal Secretary of State, that Rospigliosi’s interest in her canonization was amplified by an extraordinary personal experience: a healing miracle that he attributed to Maria Maddalena’s intercession. Finding himself suffering from an infirmity, the cardinal sent to the nuns of Le Barberine for a relic of the beata; they supplied him with a small vase of oil (probably oil from the beatification festivities), and he discovered he was cured.42 His story was recounted to the nuns, who in turn informed their Florentine sisters in a letter of July 1667, one month after Rospigliosi had been elected pope. As Clement IX, Rospigliosi was in an unrivalled position to put pressure on the staff of the Congregation of Rites to advance a candidate to whom he was devoted and whose cause, being close to completion, offered the prospect of a quick canonization for a new pontiff to make his mark. What is perhaps most interesting of all is that Clement’s commitment as pope was the product, in part, of a combination of his Tuscan roots, his experiences with the Barberini family, the impact of high-level lobbying, the availability of Maria Maddalena’s relics in Rome, and his early education at the hands of the Jesuits. Clement represents the power of papal patronage for a cause, but underpinning that action was a man with a devotion that had grown under the influence of several different individuals and groups of people. As pope, Clement was certainly quick to commit to the cause. At the end of August 1667, after the conclave, Cardinal Decio Azzolino, Rospigliosi’s successor as Secretary of State and a close ally of the pope, was appointed cardinale ponente to replace Volumnio Bandinelli after his death during the 40

APGC, IV.80, unfoliated (letter, 27 January 1667). On Barberini’s visit to Spain, see J. Simón Diaz, ‘La estancia del cardinal legado Francesco Barberini en Madrid en el año 1626’, Anales del Instituto de Estudios Madrileños 17 (1980): pp. 159–213; Alessandra Anselmi (ed.), Il diario del viaggio in Spagna del cardinale Francesco Barberini scritto da Cassiano dal Pozzo (Madrid: Doce Calles, 2005). 42 Memoriale, f. 100r: The cardinal, ‘ritrovandosi una volta infermo gli fu da loro mandato un vasettino dell’Olio della B[ea]ta e gli lo gradì molto, e riconobbe aver ricevuto la sanità per mezzo di essa B[ea]ta alla quale porta gran devozione’. 41

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sede vacante.43 At this stage the pope himself ‘of his own initiative’ (di suo proprio moto) ordered that the process be brought before him at his next meeting with the Congregation of Rites in October 1667, where the process documents were declared valid.44 Two months later Cardinal Rasponi reported that ‘the cause of the beata has progressed well’ and his sister, Teresa Rasponi, the prioress of Le Barberine, wrote to say that the pope wanted Maria Maddalena to be one of the first saints he canonized.45 Even with this support, however, Maria Maddalena’s miracles still needed approval, and this relied on the promoter of the faith and the advocates. As their discussions dragged on, Maria Maddalena’s supporters tried to maintain the pope’s interest with gifts. In May 1668, the nuns of Le Barberine, S. Maria degli Angeli, and the convent of Monte Tabor in Monte Rotondo (a new foundation), together with the whole Carmelite Order, sent a joint plea for the canonization to Pope Clement IX.46 In addition to a copy of the records of Maria Maddalena’s cult that had been kept by the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli, their appeal was accompanied by devotional gifts that included several relics, the most important of which was a rare primary relic, a small piece of the beata’s skin.47 Another reliquary housed some cloth soaked in the liquid coming from the nun’s body, a piece of woollen bed sheet, and a piece of her habit; and the pope also received two small vases, one continuing multiplied oil and the other ‘her’ water from the old convent well. So precious was the package that before sending it the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli prayed before Maria Maddalena’s body for an hour for its safekeeping, followed by prayers in the chapel to the Virgin Mary and before the Blessed Sacrament.48 With this, the nuns framed the practical and political aspects of the canonization procedure within the mission of prayer that defined their monastic vocation. As they did, they drew tighter spiritual bonds between them and their beata and asked Maria Maddalena to intercede almost for her own canonization. The gifts seem to have been successful in encouraging the pontiff regarding the cause. Sr Teresa Rasponi and the Carmelite procurator in Rome both immediately wrote to the nuns in Florence to tell them how well the gifts had been received and that the pope had ordered the promoter of the faith to ‘attend tirelessly and bring the cause of canonization

43 RSDII, p. 561 (27 August 1667). On Azzolino, see Marie-Louise Rodén, Church politics in seventeenth-century Rome: Cardinal Decio Azzolino, Queen Christina of Sweden, and the squadrone volante (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2000); and Gianvittorio Signorotto, ‘The squadrone volante: “Independent” cardinals and European politics in the second half of the seventeenth century’, in Court and politics in papal Rome, 1492–1700, edited by Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonia Visceglia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): pp. 177–211. 44 45 Memoriale, f. 100v. Memoriale, ff. 101v, 102r. 46 47 48 Memoriale, f. 102v. Memoriale, f. 103v. Memoriale, f. 103r.

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of the beata forward and leave the other causes in order to pursue this one’.49 The discussion of Maria Maddalena’s miracles was published in June 1668, nearly a year after Clement IX’s election, and five were approved in September.50 In mid-June the prior general of the Carmelite Order had already presented the pope with a copy of Maria Maddalena’s biography and a large portrait of the nun in the act of praying that, as the procurator of the Order noted, was typical of those displayed during canonization festivities.51 Maria Maddalena seemed set to be included amongst the saints of the Church universal. The success of Maria Maddalena’s cause for canonization was the product of her ability to appeal to influential patrons amongst the Medici and Barberini families and, above all, the fortune of having secured the interest of a cardinal who became pope. Each sponsor was able to derive different political and social benefits from glorifying the nun, even as they also demonstrated their personal devotion. Beati could do many things, including serve as intercessors; unlike existing saints, they also offered the prospect of glorious canonization festivities. For the Medici there was the appeal of celebrating the canonization of a daughter of their territory whose body was embedded in the heart of their city. For the Barberini their named link with the daughter house of S. Maria degli Angeli in Rome drew them into the fold of those most visibly associated with the new saint. And for Clement IX there was the prospect of celebrating a canonization early in his pontificate and, in so doing, supporting the Barberini family, which had provided him with essential patronage at the start of his ecclesiastical career. Each of these was able to sit comfortably alongside the interest of the Carmelite Order in promoting another embodiment of holiness emerging from their ranks. In a sign of how useful Maria Maddalena’s perceived saintliness (and possibly imminent canonization) might be to various groups of people, it was at this time, as her cause was drawing close to its conclusion, that perhaps the most telling expression of her Florentine identity emerged, not in Florence but in Poland-Lithuania. Maria Maddalena’s cult first spread to the area shortly after her beatification by means of the Pac family, although the first mention of this family in the chronicle of S. Maria degli Angeli dates from December 1667.52 The chronicle noted that the Carmelite provincial in Poland had contacted Krzysztof Zygmunt Pac, the grand chancellor of Lithuania, and his brother, Michal Kazimierz Pac, the grand hetman of Lithuania, two of the most influential people in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The provincial had written begging them to contribute ‘copious alms’ (elemosina copiosa) for the canonization. Just two weeks later the nuns of S. Maria degli 49 Memoriale, f. 103v: ‘Sua santità a ordinato al fiscale promotore della Fede, che attenda indeffessamente, e tiri innanzi la causa della canonizzazione della B[eata] e lasci infrento l’altre cause, per sollecitar questa’. 50 51 52 Memoriale, f. 104r. Memoriale, f. 103v. Memoriale, f. 101v.

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Angeli sent their own letters to the two Pac brothers, reiterating the appeal for alms and asking for help in persuading the king of Poland to supplicate the pope for the canonization.53 The grand chancellor apparently rejoiced at the news of Maria Maddalena’s imminent canonization and was happy to contribute towards the costs, asking the provincial how much they were expected to come to.54 But whilst it was a Carmelite who seems to have taken the lead with the Pac brothers, their interest in Maria Maddalena was also partly dynastic, based on their claim to be directly related to the Pazzi family in Florence.55 Their kinship claims propelled Pac interest in Maria Maddalena at the same time as her imminent canonization inspired them to make more of their claim with the Pazzi. Being able to associate the family directly with a new saint of the universal Church had obvious appeal. It was no surprise, then, that the Carmelite provincials approached them for money. As a shared devotion, Maria Maddalena also helped to augment Pac family ties with Grand Duke Cosimo III, who had a commercial interest in the area and recognized their link with the Florentine Pazzi.56 In the 1680s, this led Cosimo III to send special relics of the new saint to the Pac family, who employed a Florentine artist from the Medici court to adorn a chapel in Maria Maddalena’s honour at Pažaislis. Maria Maddalena was not just an object of devotion for the Pac family but a means of enhancing their family’s reputation and forging closer ties with Florence that stretched beyond the spiritual realm.

THE COST OF CANONIZATION The news that the Congregation of Rites had approved five of Maria Maddalena’s miracles in September 1668 was met with great jubilation by the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli.57 Their chronicle described this approval as the ‘decree

53 Memoriale, f. 101v. The nuns wrote ‘per supplicare il Serenissimo Re di Polonia perche si compiacessi, domandare al Papa la Canonizazione della B[ea]ta et in esse lettere si pregava li d[et]ti Sig[no]ri dar aiuto anco loro alla Canonizazione, con limosina, per la spesa da farsi in essa funzione della Canonizazione’. 54 Memoriale, f. 102rv. 55 Various explanations for this link have been put forward, on which see Aušra Baniulytė, ‘Pacai ar Pazzi? Nauja Palemono legendos versija LDK raštijoje’, Senoji Lietuvos literatūra 18 (2005): pp. 140–66; Aušra Baniulytė, ‘I “Pazzi” di Lituania nella corrispondenza italiana del XVII secolo: Storia e onomastica’, Res Balticae: Miscellanea Italiana di Studi Baltistici 11 (2007): pp. 127–44. 56 Aušra Baniulytė, ‘Italian intrigue in the Baltic: Myth, faith, and politics in the age of Baroque’, Journal of Early Modern History 16, 1 (2012), pp. 50–2 [doi: 10.1163/ 157006512X622058]. 57 RSDII, pp. 620–2.

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of canonization’.58 But even as these excited nuns rejoiced in Maria Maddalena’s apparent canonization, they also worried about how they could pay for the festivities in the coming months. The morning after hearing of the decree, the whole community at S. Maria degli Angeli gathered to pray in the chapel of the Virgin Mary, where they thanked her for the grace of this canonization and begged her to ‘complete’ it by inspiring devotees to contribute the necessary alms.59 The nuns kept vigil before their beata’s body for the next three days, praying to her for the substantial funds required to pay for her own canonization. So expensive was canonization known to be that over the centuries some religious orders and local churches had decided not even to start canonization processes because they would cost more than they could afford.60 Decorating and lighting the Basilica of St Peter’s in Rome would demand large sums, but the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli would also want to embellish their own church in Florence in order to celebrate the highest of honours being bestowed on one of their sisters, and the Carmelite Order would certainly want to celebrate in their churches in Rome, Italy, and beyond. Even with the support of the Carmelite Order as a whole and having been able to rely on the lobbying power of the Medici at several important points, the costs of a canonization were still daunting. Papal support, however, appears to have made a difference. In December 1668 the papal nuncio confirmed that the pope wanted to canonize Maria Maddalena on the first Sunday after Easter, and such was his interest that he would do so regardless of the financial situation: ‘the pope, without seeking any money (knowing that there was none) had in any case resolved to canonize her’.61 Even if the canonization was not in question, however, there was an obvious desire to mark the occasion in splendid terms in both Rome and Florence. In Rome plans began to be made for a joint canonization ceremony with Pedro d’Alcántara, which would allow many of the costs (especially that of decorating St Peter’s Basilica) to be shared. Pedro had led a Discalced reform of the Franciscans in Spain in the sixteenth century. From 1560, Pedro had also provided spiritual direction to Teresa of Avila and after his death in 1562, Teresa had described having visions of him and speaking with him.62 Pedro had lived an impressive ascetic life and, like Teresa, also claimed to have mystical experiences. His Tratado de la oración y meditación (Book of Prayer

58

Memoriale, f. 105v. Memoriale, f. 105v: ‘Si andò unitamente tutte alla Cappella della Ssm’a V a ringraziarla, d’averci ottenuto tal gr’a, pregandola a compierla, con ispirare i devoti a contribuire elemosine per poter fare la solenne funzione della Canonizazione.’ 60 Vauchez, Sainthood, p. 64–7. 61 Memoriale, f. 107v: ‘il Pontefice senza cercar danaro (sapendo che non c’era) in ogni modo a risoluto canonizarla’. 62 Cohen, tr., The life of St Teresa of Avila, pp. 193–5. On Pedro and Teresa, see Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of St Teresa, pp. 124–6. 59

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and Meditation) had become a popular devotional work and was recommended by Teresa to her sisters in her book of constitutions. Although Pedro had died some twenty years before Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s birth, these two figures had much in common, from their claims to mystical experiences to their interest in observant religious life. And despite having been a Franciscan, Pedro’s involvement with Teresa meant that the two even shared a Carmelite heritage, albeit involving two now distinct parts of the Carmelite family. Pedro had first seemed set for canonization in early 1622, when it was reported that Pope Gregory XV had expressed a desire to canonize him together with another Spanish Franciscan of the same reform, Pascal Baylon. But the five canonizations of March 1622 (Teresa amongst them) encouraged a flood of new candidate saints to be proposed, and Pedro’s cause was put on hold.63 He was beatified only on 18 April 1622, despite the fact that the Congregation of Rites had specifically agreed that he might advance to canonization (‘ad canonizationem’).64 Just a few months later, in July 1622, the prefect of the Congregation, Cardinal Dal Monte, declared that the pope wanted all canonizations to be postponed (‘iussit diferri omnes canonizationes’).65 As Pedro’s cause lay dormant, Pope Urban VIII’s new regulations ensured that, if it were to be resurrected, more demands would be placed upon it. Only in 1645, over twenty years after his canonization had seemed imminent, was Pedro awarded the now necessary status of ‘casus exceptus’, and an apostolic inquiry into his fame and miracles was opened. A flurry of activity followed. Pedro’s apostolic canonization process was completed much more swiftly than Maria Maddalena’s would later be, and the documents reached Rome in 1648. By March 1650, the process had been approved as valid, and the Congregtion of Rites had approved Pedro’s fame for holiness and five miracles.66 Once more Pedro seemed set for canonization, but his cause then fell silent for the best part of two decades. At first financial difficulties seemed to be the problem. In 1651, 20,000 ducats that had been collected towards expenses were reappropriated, and the years 1652–6 saw King Philip IV (who had been an enthusiastic supporter), his ambassador in Rome, and his extraordinary ambassador trying to establish where the money had gone.67 Letters between these three reveal that they blamed both this lost money and bureaucratic confusion for delaying Pedro’s canonization. The situation changed again in 1655 with the election of a new pope, Alexander VII, who, although apparently encouraging of the cause, seemed keen not to show excessive favour to the Spanish over the French. 63

RSDI, 207 (May 1622). Cappello, Acta canonizationis, p. 4; Tomassetti, Bullarium Romanum, vol. 12, p. 685. 65 RSDI, 209 (16 July 1622). See Papa, Le cause di canonizzazione, p. 291. 66 RSDI, pp. 782–3, 824, 827–9, 858, 861, 863. 67 Arcángel Barrado Manzano, ‘Tercer centenario de la canonización de San Pedro de Alcántara (28 abril 1669–1969)’, Archivo ibero-americano 29 (1969): pp. 21–7. 64

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Pedro d’Alcántara, then, had been a saint in waiting for a long time, when, in March 1669, he was introduced alongside Maria Maddalena in the first of three papal consistories—meetings held in the presence of the pope—that would lead up to the final papal decision to canonize both of them. The decision to bring Pedro and Maria Maddalena together for these consistories appears to have been made relatively late, and although not all the costs could be shared, a joint canonization would substantially reduce the burden for each. The first of the joint consistories, a secret consistory involving the pope and his cardinals only, was held on 18 March. Cardinal Ginetti, the cardinal prefect of the Congregation of Rites, gave brief summaries of the lives and miracles of both candidates. For Maria Maddalena, he outlined her progress to beatification and the five miracles that had been approved in 1668.68 Maria Maddalena’s cause received a unanimous placet (vote of assent) from all those present, as did Pedro d’Alcántara’s. The second consistory, a public one, followed just three days later in the Sala Regia of the apostolic palace at the Vatican, the space where princes and ambassadors visiting the pope were received. The meeting comprised cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, and prelates, as well as protonotaries, auditors of the Rota, consistorial advocates, ambassadors, clergy, and religious. Letters of supplication were read out and, again, the virtues and the miracles of each candidate were presented, this time by a consistorial advocate (Abbot Marcello Severoli in Maria Maddalena’s case).69 A process that had begun with the prayers of the faithful now ended with their prayers as the pope, at the end of the public consistory, promulgated a set of indulgences designed to encourage prayers over the coming days for a correct decision to be made.70 At the final consistory, a semi-public one, held just over two weeks later, each prelate in attendance was asked for an account of why they might favour the canonizations before casting their vote.71 Following a ballot giving approval, the pope issued the ultimate placet and both Pedro and Maria Maddalena were formally scheduled to be canonized within weeks, on 28 April 1669, the Sunday after Easter. The date given was the same date that the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli had first been told in December 1668, long before any of the consistories had been held. The timing suggests that the elaborate ceremony of the three consistories was in some ways merely a show. The meetings were required for canonization, and yet preparations for the festivities were already well under way in Florence and Rome, and Cepari’s Vita had already been completed by April 1669.72 68

Cappello, Acta canonizationis, pp. 85–9. Cappello, Acta canonizationis, pp. 116–31. 70 Cappello, Acta canonizationis, pp. 132–3, 134–5. 71 Cappello, Acta canonizationis, pp. 137–260. 72 On the preparations in Florence, see Piero Pacini, ‘Firenze 1669: Un “teatro sacro” per Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 36 1/2 (1992): p. 129 [www.jstor.org/stable/27653326]. 69

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It was quite evident that a worthy celebration of a canonization could not be arranged within two weeks and Maria Maddalena’s canonization had been expected for some months. The only threat to the event seemed to be if the pope were to die—something the nuns feared greatly.73 And yet, the consistories were more than just public announcements; they were an opportunity to involve the broader body of the Church in the process of canonization. Not only cardinals and bishops, in fact, but the general population of the faithful were called upon to participate with their prayers. Legal and political though the path to canonization was, it was also a theological and spiritual process intent on discerning the will of God. Come the decision itself, this was a moment in which to invoke the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When Gregory XV had canonized five saints in one ceremony in 1622, supporters of some had expressed disquiet that their saint had to share the spotlight, particularly when most light appeared to fall on Isidore of Madrid.74 But the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli expressed no such concerns in 1669. A joint canonization offered the chance of sharing the costs, and a bill of some 64,000 scudi was halved.75 Maria Maddalena’s cause had now attained the highest of all accolades and her devotees were looking forward to celebrating.

CELEBRATING SANCTITY St Peter’s Basilica was decorated in spectacular style for the canonizations of 28 April 1669 (see Figure 9.1).76 Concerns about expense did not have to mean the result was any less dramatic than other canonizations had been, not least when items such as some of the crimson damasks decorating the basilica’s enormous columns were recycled from earlier events (the canonization of

73 Memoriale, f. 107v. After hearing about the canonization, the nuns prayed for the pope’s health. Wendy Wright and Joseph Power (eds.), Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal: Letters of spiritual direction, tr. Péronne Marie Thibert (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1988), p. 140 records a letter sent on 14 October 1604 in which Francis of Sales mentioned that Charles Borromeo’s canonization would be ‘in a few days’ in 1605; Pope Clement VIII died, quickly followed by Leo XI, and Borromeo was not canonized until 1610. 74 Copeland, ‘Spanish saints’, pp. 109–12. 75 Cappello, Acta canonizationis, pp. 322–8. 76 On the festivities, see Cappello, Acta canonizationis, pp. 293–320; Bartolomeo Lupardi, Relatione delle cerimonie, & apparato della basilica di San Pietro nella canonizatione de’ gloriosi santi Pietro d’Alcantara dell’Ordine de’ Minori di S. Francesco, e Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, dell’Ordine Carmelitani, fatte dalla santità di N. Sig. Clemente Nono (Rome, 1669); and Relatione delle Pompe Vaticane nella canonizatione de gloriosi santi Pietro d’Alcantara dell’Ordine de Minori di S. Francesco, e Maria Maddalena de Pazzi, dell’Ordine de’ Carmelitani, fatta dalla santità di N. Sig. Clemente Nono li XXVIII Aprile MDCLXIX (Venice, 1669).

Figure 9.1. Domenico Cappello, Acta canonizationis S. Petri de Alcantara et S. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis (Rome, 1669), fold-out insert. Reproduced with permission from the Institutum Carmelitanum, Rome

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Francis of Sales in 1665 and the coronation of Clement IX in 1667).77 Images from Cappello’s 1669 Acta canonizationis give some sense of how the interior of St Peter’s was transformed.78 Most important for any canonization was the construction of a teatro that dominated the space behind the baldacchino in front of the papal throne. Within this enclosure, Christina of Sweden sat on the epistle side as a guest of honour, and Spain and Tuscany were represented by statues bearing coats of arms.79 Banners for each saint were hung from the piers, Maria Maddalena being shown on a cloud surrounded by angels. The spectacle was visually impressive, and loud: timpani and trumpets sounded out, cannons were set off, and every bell of every church and monastery in the city was to ring at a signal from the Capitol and Castel Sant’Angelo.80 Once again, there was a Florentine celebration at S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, where the facade was decorated with images of the new saint and the papal and grand-ducal coats of arms.81 Not only this, but Maria Maddalena was surrounded by images of older Florentine saints, placing her as part of a lineage of Florentine holiness that included Antonino, Andrea Corsini, and Philip Neri (as well as Miniato, Giovanni Gualberto, Eugenio, and Crescenzio). After the canonization in St Peter’s, Maria Maddalena’s standard was processed to S. Giovanni to serve as the centrepiece of the celebration. But the canonization was also a celebration for the Carmelite Order, and the friars were given a prominence that stood in stark contrast to their place at Maria Maddalena’s beatification festivities. The arms of the Order were displayed on the facade of St Peter’s (along with those of the Franciscan Order), and it was a group of Carmelites who processed into the basilica carrying Maria Maddalena’s canonization standard.82 Just a stone’s throw away from the basilica, the Carmelite church of S. Maria in Traspontina was decked out for a grand celebration of the Order’s newest saint, the entire facade decorated with a large vine bearing fruit, which was used to present Maria Maddalena as part of a

Alessandra Anselmi, ‘Theaters for the canonization of saints’, in St. Peter’s in the Vatican, edited by William Tronzo (Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 259. 78 Although such engravings are often unreliable, not least because they had to be produced in advance of the event in order to market them; Anselmi, ‘Theaters for the canonization of saints’, pp. 260–1. 79 A contemporary account by Carlo Cartari noted that Christina raised some eyebrows at the canonization ceremony by remaining seated to be incensed rather than standing; see Camilla Kandare, ‘CorpoReality: Queen Christina of Sweden and the embodiment of sovereignty’, in Performativity and performance in baroque Rome, edited by Peter Gillgren and Mårten Snickare, (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 3–63. 80 Cappello, Acta canonizationis, pp. 263–4, 269–70. 81 Biagio Maria Landi, Relatione della festa solenne fatta in S. Giovanni dalla natione fiorentina in Roma per la canonizatione di S. Maria Maddalena de Pazzi, con l’oratione panegirica detta dal m.r.p.d. Biagio Maria Landi (Rome, 1670). 82 Relatione delle Pompe Vaticane; and Lupardi, Relatione delle cerimonie, & apparato. 77

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long history of magnificent gifts bestowed on the Order by the Virgin Mary.83 Even beyond Rome, the Order was marked out in a special way by a plenary indulgence issued by the pope for anyone who, meeting the usual conditions, visited a Carmelite church or monastery on the day of canonization or the week thereafter.84 Far from the events in Rome and contained within their cloister, the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli marked the canonization day in their own way. Their ceremonies took a solemn tone and included a vigil they maintained before the body of their holy sister during the exact hours when the canonization would be celebrated at St Peter’s.85 They held a procession within their enclosure, going in pairs to prostrate themselves before her body and petition that they would follow in her ‘holy footsteps’ by practising the virtues and religious perfection as she had done; they also pledged themselves to perfect observance of their rule and constitutions with the help of her intercession. Maria Maddalena’s canonization was another moment when they linked their present-day community with her personal holiness. But special as this day was for the nuns, they clearly felt detached from the events of the canonization itself. Writing in the convent Memoriale, a nun noted their anxiety when, some days later, they still had not heard of what had transpired in Rome. Although they felt certain that the canonization must have taken place, each moment of waiting ‘seemed a long time to us, and we took every opportunity possible to understand when [the news] might arrive’.86 When word did finally come on 3 May, in a letter from the Jesuit Giuseppe Fozi, the nuns erupted with jubilation, ringing all their bells and going once more to their sister’s body to sing a Te Deum and give thanks. Sending the sound of bells out from the confines of their monastery, the nuns quite literally could not contain their excitement. They immediately also sent word to the grand duke. The following day every church sounded its bells at an appointed hour, and the grand duke, together with the whole Medici court, took part in a sung Mass at the cathedral in thanksgiving. Not having been at the canonization in Rome, the grand duke was present in Florence to celebrate this new saint in her 83

Fernando Tartaglia, Dichiaratione della mistica vigna esposta nella facciata di Santa Maria Traspontina ove dipinti si rappresentano dodici speciali favori fatti dalla gran Madre di Dio all’Ordine Carmelitano. In occasione di celebrarsi l’ottavario per la Canonizatione di Santa Maria Maddalena de Pazzi del medemo Ordine l’anno 1669 (Rome, 1669). 84 APGC, III.13, no. 113. All Carmelite and Franciscan friars and nuns also received a plenary indulgence on the occasion of the joint canonization (APGC, III.113, no. 17). 85 Memoriale, f. 111r. 86 Memoriale, f. 111v: ‘Stavamo con speranza certa, che fussi seguita in Roma il giorno 28 secorso la canonizazione della n’ra Santa M’re, ma non avendone ancora la nuova si stava grandemente desiderandola, parendoci ogni momento un’ lungo tempo; si fece tutte le diligenze possibile per intendere quando potessi arrivare, e da tutta la citta era desiderata con affettuosa impazienza, e spesso venivano m.to al monastero per intendere se c’era avviso della fatta canonizazione.’

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patria, his own city. The celebrations continued for three days, with people crowding to S. Maria degli Angeli on Borgo Pinti to see the new saint’s body— amongst them the grand duchess and Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici. Further Florentine celebrations later saw Maria Maddalena extolled as a local heroine fresh from her success in Rome. The link with Rome was made through the standard that had been processed into St Peter’s Basilica at the canonization and was subsequently taken to Florence to serve as a ceremonial centrepiece. So important was this ‘relic’ of the Roman declaration that when the standard’s arrival was delayed by several days, the celebrations were postponed from Maria Maddalena’s feast day (25 May) to 2 June 1669.87 When they did commence, the public were invited to view a spectacular teatro designed by Volteranno inside the church on Borgo Pinti (see Figure 9.2).88 The apparato showed off Maria Maddalena’s body encased in a glass coffin and placed on display on the high altar for eight days. The coffin was held up by three statues representing the three religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The entire church meanwhile was turned into an exuberant celebration of Maria Maddalena’s life and miracles, which were to be seen in ten large canvases depicting certain episodes.89 In one particularly dramatic image filled with baroque motion, Maria Maddalena appeared to shower down flowers from heaven on the sick below: a woman and baby, a man on crutches, a person hidden away in bed, a man lying seemingly lifeless. The canvases were interspersed with depictions of figures representing contemplation, prayer, penitence, purity, wisdom, fortitude, prophecy, obedience, chastity, and poverty. The scheme for the decorations had been approved by the Congregation of Rites and in October 1668 the apostolic nuncio, Opizzo Pallavicini, had set out detailed instructions for the artists even down to the gestures of the figures depicted. This was sanctity founded on virtue and miracles, and represented as it had been approved in Rome. 87 Ludovico Adimari, Prose sacre, pp. 83–172 (‘Relazione delle feste fatte in Firenze per la canonizazione di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’). 88 Memoriale, f. 114v. The festivities have been studied in detail by Piero Pacini; see Pacini, ‘Firenze 1669’. Pacini’s article includes a transcription of an account of the festivities by Filippo Soldani, Breve e semplice narrazione dell’Apparato e Festa solennissima fatta per la Canonizzazione della Gloriosa Vergine Santa Maria Maddalena de Pazzi Carmelitana, nella Chiesa del Monastero di Santa Maria degli Angeli in via Pinti dove riposa il suo Santo e Venerabil Corpo (pp. 182–6). 89 Pacini, ‘Firenze 1669’, pp. 146–56. The artists were Francesco Boschi, Cosimo Ulivelli, Agostino Melissi, Francesco Bettini, and Giovanni Paolo Roffi. The scenes were: Maria Maddalena contemplating the Trinity; Maria Maddalena married to Christ in the presence of St Augustine and St Catherine of Siena; Maria Maddalena predicts that Alessandro de’ Medici will become pope; St Augustine writes on Maria Maddalena’s heart; Maria Maddalena’s corpse turns its head from a licentious youth; Maria Maddalena’s prayers heal the sick; Maria Maddalena liberates a possessed girl; Maria Maddalena’s relics heal the sick. At the back of the church were: Maria Maddalena paints a picture of Jesus whilst blindfolded, and the multiplication of oil at the time of Maria Maddalena’s beatification.

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Figure 9.2. Ludovico Adimari, Prose sacre contenenti il compendio della Vita di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, e la relazione delle feste fatte in Firenze per la sua canonizzazione, con un discorso della passione del redentore (Florence, 1706). Reproduced with permission from the Institutum Carmelitanum, Rome

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Outside the church, the arms of the Pazzi family, the Medici grand duke, and the Carmelites claimed Maria Maddalena for her family, her patria, and her order. As in Rome, the Carmelites played a highly visible role, especially when compared with the beatification celebrations in 1626. On 2 June, the morning after Maria Maddalena’s body was placed in the church, a procession went from the church of the Carmine with an effigy of the saint and the standard from her canonization, the latter carried by the provincial, Cirillo Grillanti, who had played such an important role in her canonization process. The procession wound its way through Florence to S. Maria degli Angeli, where the whole Medici court gathered, including the grand duke and his brother, a cardinal. Inside the church, the grand duke took his place on the gospel side by the high altar and heard Mass celebrated by the apostolic nuncio, a Mass ornamented with musical settings for eight voices. Over the whole octave, several people returned to the church multiple times, including Grand Duke Ferdinand and his brother. But this was a more general Florentine celebration too. Maria Maddalena’s standard had been processed through the city, much more visibly than her body had been forty years earlier when the nuns had moved to Borgo Pinti. And at S. Maria degli Angeli, the city in some way claimed back their saint as her body emerged from the enclosure to their public embrace. Such was this embrace, indeed, that eight leading noblemen of the city arranged to keep vigil before it night and day for the duration of the octave. The celebrations recognized Maria Maddalena’s important identity beyond her convent: she was a saint for the whole city of Florence. To get some sense of the excitement the canonization generated in Florence, we need only turn to the nuns of S. Maria di Candeli, whose monastery abutted S. Maria degli Angeli (see Figure 7.2). Some of the Candeli nuns had given testimonies within Maria Maddalena’s Florentine canonization process and had donated money to support the festivities.90 They evidently felt distraught that the new saint’s body, although on public display and in close proximity to them, was beyond their enclosure. In response, the confessor of S. Maria di Candeli applied for a licence for the nuns to be able to visit the church of S. Maria degli Angeli and see Maria Maddalena’s body, since, because the nuns shared a wall, they could do this without venturing out into unprotected public space. The chronicler of S. Maria di Candeli recorded that on 6 June 1669 a hole was made in the shared garden wall and the whole community processed through behind a cross, each carrying a lit candle which they left at the altar.91 As the nuns processed through the gardens, four of their

Pacini, ‘Firenze 1669’, pp. 192–3 records alms received from the nuns in April 1669. ASF, Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese 128, vol. 4, Giornale 1639–71, ff. 244rv. 90 91

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best singers sent disembodied voices floating through the summer night.92 Inside the monastery, the nuns prayed, heard Mass and took communion, staying there for some five hours. They processed back to their own monastery, and the builder came immediately to rebuild the wall. Even if no one saw the nuns make their secret night-time visit, and few heard them, their communal offering of candles left a visible sign the next day. This extraordinary monastic escapade was the ultimate testimony of how important the home of Maria Maddalena’s body had become in the light of her canonization. In Rome, meanwhile, the daughter house of S. Maria degli Angeli, Le Barberine, combined their first celebration of the new saint’s feast with the opening of their magnificent new church funded by Cardinal Francesco Barberini.93 The greatest possible solemnity was observed to the extent that the nuns were granted a special licence for the whole octave so that they could contravene their usual ban on elaborate decorations of silk drapes and silver vases in the church, as well as on polyphonic music.94 Mass and vespers were sung each day, and there was, according to the convent chronicle, a continuous stream of people coming, including cardinals, princes, princesses, and nobles. On Sunday 26 May, Pope Clement IX himself came to reverence the relics exposed on the altar, also entering the convent to meet with the nuns. With his visit, the assessment of Maria Maddalena’s sanctity had come full circle: where once the convents of S. Maria degli Angeli and Le Barberine had approached the pope, now it was the pope approaching the convent. Clement, the ultimate earthly adjudicator of holiness, who had made the declaration of Maria Maddalena’s sanctity in St Peter’s, was now at one of the new saint’s communities to recognize these nuns as custodians of her holiness. Elsewhere in Italy, Carmelite communities were also at the centre of celebrations and processions. In Milan, a festive octave commenced on 22 July with a procession from the cathedral to the Carmelite church decorated with various apparati.95 The facade of the church was the background for three further impressive apparati, each with moving parts and showing Maria Maddalena in three distinct places (in a chapel, rising to receive the child Jesus; at the door of the monastery and shown liberating a possessed girl; and in a

92 On the ‘disembodied voices’ of enclosed nuns, see Craig Monson, Disembodied voices: Music and culture in an early modern Italian convent (London and Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995). 93 Relatione, pp. 113–14. 94 Carmelite nuns (including those in the Ancient Observance) elsewhere also banned polyphony as a measure in austerity; Colleen Baade, ‘Music and misgiving: Attitudes towards nuns’ music in early modern Spain’, in Female monasticism in early modern Europe: An interdisciplinary view, edited by Cordula van Wyhe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 84. 95 Giuseppe Maria Fornari, Relatione delle feste fatte da RR Padri del Carmine di Milano nel solennizare la nuovamente santificata Maria Maddalena de Pazzi Fiorentina Carmelitana Calzata, nel mese di luglio l’anno 1669 (Milan, 1669), pp. 25–6.

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monastic cell, beating demons with a crucifix).96 The first apparato was particularly noteworthy and showed Maria Maddalena rising up and climbing an altar; moving her head and asking the Virgin Mary for the child Jesus in her arms; Mary gesturing in response; Maria Maddalena descending to the foot of the altar with Jesus and then raising him up as an offering to God the Father before finally returning the child to Mary. In Venice a similar octave celebration started at the Carmelite church on 1 September 1669 and included a three-hour long procession of a statue of the saint paraded under a canopy.97 According to a contemporary account by a Venetian Carmelite, crowds of people packed the squares and filled the canals with gondolas in order to see the procession.98 In Naples—which had, of course, hosted one of the canonization tribunals— the occasion provided an opportunity for the communities at the Carmine Maggiore and S. Maria della Vita to work together.99 On 22 September a reliquary statue of Maria Maddalena containing a tooth was processed from the Carmine on the last day of their observation of an octave to S. Maria della Vita for the first day of their solemn octave. The procession, the start of which was heralded by musket shots in the piazza and artillery fired at the viceroy’s command, wound its way through the streets of Naples out to the somewhat distant church of S. Maria della Vita. On its way, the statue stopped at sixteen altars that had been erected along the route. It was reverenced at each, including by members of other religious orders, amongst them the Jesuits, Dominicans, Theatines, and Oratorians, all orders that had contributed to Maria Maddalena’s Neapolitan cult.100 In addition to these ornate stopping points, the entire route of the procession was decorated, and despite the intemperate conditions, an extremely large crowd still gathered. 96

Fornari, Relatione, pp. 27–8. The procession led from the Campo S. Margherita past the Frari, S. Stin, S. Giovanni Evangelista, and S. Simeon Grande, to S. Andrea, where the statue was displayed above an altar. From here it was taken across the Ponte Rosso to the monastery of S. Teresa and back to the Carmini. Giuseppe Tomada, Delle sacre pompe carmelitane, solennizate in Venezia per la santificazione della Beata Maria Maddalena de Pazzi Carmelitana (Venice, 1669), pp. 23–4. On the Venetian celebrations, see Joseph Hammond, ‘An old altarpiece for a new saint: The canonization of Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi and the decoration of Santa Maria dei Carmini in Venice,’ Explorations in Renaissance Culture 38 (2012): pp. 149–69 [doi: 10.1163/2352696390000431]. 98 Tomada, Sacre pompe, p. 24. 99 See Mastelloni, La prima chiesa, pp. 9–16, pp. 219–58 for an account of the festivities. 100 Mastelloni, La prima chiesa, pp. 14–15 details the altars: 1. the Jesuit college of S. Ignazio; 2. S. Giovanni a mare; 3. close to the Augustinian church; 4. Piazza de Mannesi (‘delle Crocelle’); 5. Piazza di San Domenico Maggiore; 6. the entrance to the church of S. Chiara; 7. in front of the Jesuit casa professa; 8. Piazza di S. Domenico Soriano; 9. in front of the church of the mothers of the Croce di Lucca; 10. S. Maria Maggiore of the Clerks Regular Minor; 11. the Theatine church of S. Paolo; 12. close to the small entrance to the Franciscan church of S. Lorenzo; 13. the main entrance to the Oratorian church; 14. Borgo de’ Vergini; 15. the conservatorio of Sant’ Antoniello; and 16. the facade of the church of S. Maria della Sanità. 97

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The procession element is important, because Maria Maddalena’s very self (embodied in her reliquary statue) was paraded along the city’s streets. In Naples this had particular significance because it mimicked various processions of the city’s patron saints that played an important role within Neapolitan life and thus seemed to elevate the new saint to a higher rank.101 Indeed, the cardinal archbishop was said to have declared that the celebration could not have been bigger if Maria Maddalena had been elected a patron.102 This was, in short, the presentation of a new saint to be embraced by the whole city. The nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and their friends and supporters had waited a long time for Maria Maddalena’s canonization. It came at the end of a painstaking process, after many feasts had been celebrated, numerous relics shared, and hundreds of miracles claimed. It is tempting to read Maria Maddalena’s canonization merely as another example of successful papal intervention and to identify Pope Clement IX as her saint-maker. The personal interest of the pope proved to be key—ironically, given that the pope with the greatest personal interest in canonizing Maria Maddalena that century, Urban VIII, had sidestepped her canonization forty years earlier. But we are in danger of a vast oversimplification if we see all the power as lying in Clement’s hands. Her cause was, for all its papal patronage, testimony in the end to the detailed system and procedure for making saints. Maria Maddalena’s official process owed its success to the enduring appeal of her cult in the years since her beatification, to the promotion work that the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and their supporters undertook, to the support of the Carmelite Order and a few highly influential patrons; but also to the robustness of the evidence it presented. Maria Maddalena’s process needed her devotional cult to furnish it with miracle claims and indications of the nun’s growing fame; in short, it needed evidence, and for that it needed people. The decision to open Maria Maddalena’s inquiry predated Clement IX’s election, but even with a supportive pope and the backing of the Medici, the demands of the process were still able to impose on finding miracles to approve. Maria Maddalena’s canonization was aided by the pope’s personal interest, but her success depended on a well-run process that could meet the bureaucratic and legal demands now asking more of causes than ever before. And that, in turn, had depended on a substantial devotional cult.

101 102

On these processions in Naples, see Hills, ‘Nuns and relics’, pp. 25–32. Mastelloni, La prima chiesa, p. 16.

Afterword Despite fears about uncontrolled claims to mystical experiences, Maria Maddalena’s canonization was the celebration of a mystic. Her bull of canonization (published finally in 1670 owing to the death of Pope Clement IX) embraced her as someone who had received exceptional gifts. She had once been in rapture for the entire octave of Pentecost and received messages from the Holy Spirit; she had mystically experienced the sufferings of Christ’s passion; and she had received the stigmata. She was able to see souls who had died and had the gift of prophecy. But it was the inclusion of some of her more emotional declarations and raptures that was most striking. So keenly had the ‘flame of divine love’ burned within her, it reported, for example, ‘that she was compelled when in a trance and otherwise insensible to call aloud through the cloister, “O Love! Love unknown!” . . . while all the time being observed to hurl her body around the cloister, tearing her clothes to pieces, and striking whosoever came near her with her hands and driving them away. Just as rapidly, she regained control of her senses, and returned to her right mind and was her normal self again, proving that she had not suffered demonic possession, since she was not terrified, being convinced by a power so much the greater.’1 The bull contained only a short biography, but it nevertheless did not shy away from the drama of Maria Maddalena’s experiences. She was, even in official terms, a fascinating figure, who had displayed extreme emotional responses to the love of God. Her extraordinary behaviour had become a marker of her sanctity, its appropriateness in no doubt. But present too was Maria Maddalena the miracle worker: in the references to approved miracles that were typical of these documents and also in the presentation of her mysticism. In an interesting reflection on the importance of her cult to her cause, the bull included mention of Maria Maddalena’s use of the well in

Monsignano, Bullarium Carmelitanum, p. 563: ‘Tantus enim in illius animo flagrabat aestus amoris divini, ut per claustra transiliens exclamare cogeretur. O amor. O amor non bene notus. . . . Interim mira corporis agilitate per claustra serebatur, dilacerabat vestes, & procul abigebat quidquid illius in manus incurrisset; a felicissimo deinde mentis exilio regressa dicere solebat, quod si blasphemiis immunis esset Infernus, illum non exhorruisset, ut combureretur magis.’ (§12). 1

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her convent when in rapture: she was once so inflamed with love of God, it said, that she thrust her hands and arms into the ice-cold water of the well and threw the water over her breast. This story, it will be remembered, which had been included in Puccini’s Vita, had led devotees very soon after her death to request vials of the water, which they treated as relics. The bull of canonization created an official identity for the new saint, but this was neither fixed nor final in terms of how Maria Maddalena would be used as a saint thereafter. Her place in the cult of saints and her portrayal by writers and artists depended on how people interacted with her, how they used her as a saint, be that as a model to imitate or as an intercessor. The true import of her canonization depended on the individuals and communities who embraced her, and her identity, like that of other saints, could be manipulated and adapted to fit particular circumstances or environments. In Florence, Maria Maddalena was a much-celebrated trophy for the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli, who were keen to set out all of the ways in which she had lived a remarkable life within their midst and done miraculous deeds; how they were her spiritual daughters and the guardians of her body. Maria Maddalena had already functioned as a saint for her convent for many decades, but her canonization publicly elevated her—and, by extension, them—to a new level. In Rome today, Maria Maddalena’s most visible inclusion in the religious landscape is perhaps to be found not in the Florentine church of S. Giovanni nor even the Carmelite churches of the city, but in the right transept of the grand Jesuit church of Sant’ Ignazio. Here we see, in striking visual terms, Maria Maddalena’s identity as a saint turned Jesuit saint-maker. An altar in honour of Luigi Gonzaga, completed by Andrea del Pozzo (a Jesuit famed for his skill in trompe l’œil), included a ceiling decoration with Maria Maddalena seeing a vision of Luigi in the glory of heaven.2 The nun leans back in her habit, arms open in wonder, light streaming onto her from above. Although the eye is drawn to Luigi, high above in the centre, Maria Maddalena’s much larger figure, itself decorated with a halo, is impossible to ignore, her eyes locked on the Jesuit. That she had claimed to have had a vision of Luigi at all reflected the influence that the Jesuits—particularly Virgilio Cepari—had exerted on the Carmelite community of S. Maria degli Angeli during Maria Maddalena’s lifetime. It was a link that endured after her death, and as her vision helped to support Luigi’s cause for canonization, so Luigi’s promoter, Cepari, helped to push on Maria Maddalena’s cause; as Luigi’s sanctity was celebrated, so too was Maria Maddalena’s. Furnished with the biographies produced by Vincenzo Puccini and Virgilio Cepari, Maria Maddalena’s devotees had a wealth of stories from the nun’s life 2

Pozzo also published on his work in the church: Andrea Pozzo, Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum Andreae Putei e Societate Jesu, 2 vols. (Rome, 1693–1700), vol. 2.

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and afterlife to attract their interest and create their own ‘version’ of Maria Maddalena. Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, for example, crafted Maria Maddalena as an example of a girl resisting her parents in order to pursue her religious vocation.3 In an oratorio libretto he composed to be performed at his Roman palace, he told the story of Maria Maddalena’s life as a tussle with her parents followed by encounters with ‘divine love’ embodied by one of the singers. What comprised just a small part of Cepari’s Vita here provided the main action of Pamphili’s piece, a musical biography of sorts (the music was composed by Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier). The premiere in the Palazzo Pamphili on 9 June 1687 was an opulent occasion with a large orchestra hidden from view so that the music seemed to come from nowhere.4 The room was decorated with elaborate cloth hangings and lit by crystal chandeliers and large wax candles. This particular telling of Maria Maddalena’s life story brought her sanctity within the beating heart of the cultural life of the Roman elite, and although this was a theatre in which religion and entertainment regularly mixed, it was also a very different way of celebrating Maria Maddalena’s holiness from that of reading her published biography or enjoying the liturgical celebration of her feast. The various written biographies, together with images of the saint and the manifestations of her cult, all provided resources from which her flexible and fluid identity could be refashioned. Maria Maddalena’s statue amongst the 139 others adorning the two majestic arms of Bernini’s colonnade defining St Peter’s Square left her identity particularly open. There, in the square at the very heart of papal power and the principal Roman ceremonial space of the Church, Maria Maddalena became simply one of many. Her statue shows a woman, dressed in a habit, gesturing towards her heart with her right hand and holding a lily in her left.5 The figure was executed by Giulio Coscio just over thirty years after the canonization in 1669. Placed over the Constantinian wing of the colonnade, Maria Maddalena stands between the virgin martyr Susanna and St George. The inclusion of her statue marks the full recognition her canonization had given her. And yet, it is an unremarkable statue, barely distinguishable from many of the other women, and too far aloft to be clearly identifiable as her. It is clearly a mystic nun, but lacking any obvious attribute, this could be any mystic nun. Maria Maddalena was being used here as yet another example of a holy woman religious the specifics of whose life were relatively unimportant. 3 A facsimile score of the oratorio, Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, can be found in Howard Smither (ed.), Santa Dimna, figlia del re d’Irlanda (New York, NY: Garland, 1986). 4 The orchestra comprised 29 violins, 8 violette, 11 violas, 5 double basses, 1 trombone, 3 lutes, and 2 trumpets. See Duccio Pieri, ‘ “Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi”: Origine e diffusione di un oratorio musicale’ in Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, edited by Pacini, pp. 154–63. 5 Valentino Martinelli (ed.), Le statue berniniane del Colonnato di San Pietro (Rome: De Luca Editore, 1987).

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Canonization, then, was by no means the end of Maria Maddalena’s journey, and her saintly identity remained open to reinterpretation. In Naples that change included being added to the city’s patron saints, despite having spent her life in Florence. Basing the decision on the number of miracles that Maria Maddalena seemed to have worked in the city, Neapolitans embraced her as though she were a local daughter.6 More quietly, as Maria Maddalena continued to be called upon by individuals as an intercessor, each of these had ‘encounters’ with the nun as they supplicated her for help. Offerings added to the decoration of her shrine at S. Maria degli Angeli and elsewhere, as grateful miracolati gave thanks for the graces they believed they had received through her intercession. Nevertheless, canonization was an extremely significant step, not least for a mystic nun in the seventeenth century. Maria Maddalena’s recognition in this way, in conjunction with the development of her cult, has much to teach us about the ways in which sanctity was identified by devotees and by the Church authorities. With that, her case fits well into the bigger discussion of where agency lay within the Counter-Reformation Church. Her story is not simply that of another woman whose history has been hidden, but rather one that allows us to access the devotional lives of a whole host of people from different walks of life and to balance the beliefs and actions of these individuals and communities with the working of the Catholic Church as an institution. It is also the story of a convent of nuns who were able to exert considerable influence on the devotional interests of others and create a wide set of lay, clerical, and religious promoters who shared their belief in Maria Maddalena’s holiness. Canonization was a legal and bureaucratic process and, therefore, also a political one, with many stages requiring the attention of any number of people and the favour of high-ranking Church officials. Those who were canonized did, inevitably, reflect something of the Church’s interests in which types of models of holy living to promote. But to reach the point at which cardinals of the Congregation of Rites and the pope were considering a cause demanded interest in the candidate amongst the faithful (resulting in miracles claimed and a reputation for holiness) and the goodwill and work of a large number of people, from local advocates to witnesses and notaries. A cause could easily be derailed before its process documents even reached Rome. Alongside the beatification of Rose of Lima in 1667 (and her canonization in 1671), Maria Maddalena’s canonization demonstrates that the model of the woman mystic had not fallen entirely out of favour in the late seventeenth century. Indeed the two women, who had lived almost contemporaneous lives on different continents nearly a century earlier, were both

6

Mastelloni, La prima chiesa dedicata a S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, pp. 16–25.

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celebrated as extraordinary women who had conversed with the divine. Maria Maddalena’s beatification and canonization speak to long-term forces at work in the Church and its institutional interest in extolling certain virtues and models. They also illuminate the roles devotees played, the ability of individuals to influence progress, and the impact of external events such as the death of a cardinal or the election of a new pope. Maria Maddalena was not canonized solely because she was a mystic, but because she was thought to have lived a virtuous life and to have worked miracles. Her beatification process focused on both her virtue and her miracles, but her canonization process focused entirely on her miracles and fame. Her mystical experiences certainly contributed to her holy reputation, but they did so alongside the miracles she was thought to have worked. It was these miracles that increasingly determined the spread of her devotional cult and ultimately provided the evidence to support her canonization. It was during Maria Maddalena’s own lifetime that her mystical claims were most likely to derail any possible holy reputation, but once they had received the approval of her community and her confessors as well as the local archbishop, her extreme behaviour and subsequent experiences were all read as further confirmation of the divine and signs of her sanctity, rather than points of concern. When it came to the cause for her beatification, only one incident in Maria Maddalena’s life was queried by those considering her suitability. In a sense, the true ‘trial’ for Maria Maddalena’s mystical holiness came whilst she was alive and not after her death, when Vincenzo Puccini took care to present her visions and raptures so that they were unlikely to provide a theological stumbling block to her canonization. Indeed, in the context of her beatification and canonization, Maria Maddalena’s experiences helped her to stand out as an extreme example of holiness who had been blessed with extraordinary encounters with the divine. Her beatification was initially hampered more by the ‘freshness’ of her cult than by the features of her life story. There were, however, plenty of moments when Maria Maddalena’s cause for canonization might have faltered. The progress it made—and failed to make—demonstrates some of the impact that canonization reform in this same period had. This reform, of course, came long after the Council of Trent had first indicated that the Church should set its house in order when it came to identifying saints and their relics. Maria Maddalena’s beatification was the product of how well her principal supporters were able to piece together her cause and the personal favour of Pope Urban VIII. Even during her lifetime, Maria Maddalena’s fellow nuns and confessor had begun the foundation work for a future canonization campaign and had been made aware of some of the procedure because of their connections with the Jesuit cause for Luigi Gonzaga. The first steps towards a local inquiry to be held as soon as possible after Maria Maddalena’s death came quickly but were marked by hesitation and uncertainty regarding what would be expected of a cause in the light of changing

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circumstances and wariness towards modern cults. Getting Maria Maddalena’s local inquiry started, completed, and in Rome was an extremely significant step. It involved the careful preparation of questions—and before that, the publication of Maria Maddalena’s biography—and the commitment of local notaries, judges, and witnesses. But it was in Rome that the cause had to make most progress, with examination of that inquiry and then the commissioning and examination of a second inquiry. And it was in Rome that it ultimately suffered most delay without the full attention of its requisite cardinal promoter. Once the personal favour of Pope Urban VIII was secured, those delays were minimized, even if the new pontiff did insist that normal procedure be followed. Rather than growing, the nun’s canonization prospects diminished in the wake of her beatification, as reforms pushed for a longer wait between the death of a candidate and the recognition of their sanctity by Rome. The fact that Maria Maddalena was not canonized under Urban VIII is testimony to the impact that this pope’s reforms had regarding modern cults. It also indicates the significance of Maria Maddalena’s beatification occurring when it did and giving sanction to her devotional cult. In this new environment, it became more important still for Maria Maddalena’s devotional cult to endure. Her beatification functioned as an important halfway house, a place to gather in more devotees whilst awaiting the opportunity to launch the final assault for canonization. It was, as such, already a triumph. Before the legal wrangling and high-level politicking that lay behind the examination of canonization trial documents and the decision to canonize, a cult needed to attract support for a cause and provide the miracles to be examined. The nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli continued to play a major part in promoting their sister’s holy reputation for this reason, but as her cult spread, it rather outgrew them. After the central role they had played in achieving her beatification, it was only once her cult had stretched largely beyond their reach—most importantly amongst the Carmelite Order as a whole and, particularly, in Naples—that their hopes for her canonization were finally realized. It was above all the enthusiasm of a layman in Naples, Gasparo Roomer, that led to the Carmelite General Chapter formally pledging the support of the whole order for the cause—an important development in terms of personnel and resources. Maria Maddalena’s beatification was achieved by the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli and their associates, but her canonization saw the Carmelite Order take the lead role with the continued support of the Florentine nuns. And it was from the nuns, in Florence and, even more, in Rome, that Pope Clement IX’s support came: papal patronage it may have been, but it was at least in part the result of the devotional cult that these women had worked so hard to develop. It was on these women and their confessors that the identification of Maria Maddalena’s holiness had depended during her lifetime, long before canonization was an option. At the same time, the written records that the nuns

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produced and the ‘relics’ they had kept suggest that the canonization campaign had already begun before Maria Maddalena died. There is a sense that Maria Maddalena’s holiness might not have been recognized as it was within another community, because of the nuns and because of their confessors and clerical friends. The speed with which all of these people identified Maria Maddalena’s experiences as divine in origin led them to protect her and to produce the documents that would help to give her reputation longevity. Maria Maddalena’s is not a story of conflict between the nuns and clergy, but of collaboration. This was a joint project in which the nuns and their clerical associates worked together and ultimately produced a version of Maria Maddalena’s life where, if an incident or recorded phrase was challenged, it could be explained away as the error of other members of the convent rather than Maria Maddalena herself. And of course their influential connections— with the Medici, the Jesuits, the Barberini—allowed them to become informed promoters and also attracted attention to the cause. Indeed, Maria Maddalena’s case points to ways in which women might be better incorporated into the history of canonization, not just as candidates or as ‘mere’ devotees, but as active promoters of holiness. We see that with the nuns of S. Maria degli Angeli; we see it too in many of the first miracles attributed to Maria Maddalena, where relics were called for and shared by wives and mothers, who also reported many of the miracles claimed. The question of agency within the saint-making process runs deeper still. Maria Maddalena’s devotional cult itself depended on neither beatification nor canonization. It necessarily predated both and grew easily long before any official declaration was offered. The canonization procedure was something that Maria Maddalena’s supporters chose to engage with. Looking for her cause to succeed, they were predisposed to seek approval from the authorities and play by the rules in order to avoid censure, even as some of the rules seemed to be changing. We see this tellingly in 1607, when Puccini first requested a licence from the archbishop of Florence to be able to distribute relics, and in the time spent making sure that Maria Maddalena’s first inquiry was established correctly. We see it again in 1618, when Puccini applied for permission to display an image of Maria Maddalena in the church at S. Maria degli Angeli. And in 1625, when the Holy Office banned public cults for the non-beatified, the nuns were swift to clean up Maria Maddalena’s shrine so it was not found to be contravening a ruling just as beatification seemed within reach. The actions of Puccini and the nuns together warn us against the temptation of seeing restrictions on the cult of saints as arbitrary impositions by Rome and instead consider them part of a system with which promoters of saints were choosing to engage. Even where rules were imposed, promoters might have been looking to conform. In the case of Maria Maddalena’s picture in 1618, Puccini demonstrated great sensitivity to the possibility that what he sought was not permissible, and his eagerness not to jeopardize

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Maria Maddalena’s cause gave him the impetus to open the matter to official scrutiny. If Maria Maddalena’s supporters had made a deliberate move to engage with the Roman process of approval at the time of her death, this was even more true after her beatification, when a local cult had been conceded. Beatification had brought the authorization that allowed the nuns themselves to celebrate Maria Maddalena. Their immediate interest in achieving their sister’s canonization even before her cult had been extended to the Carmelite Order represented a quest to have her imposed as a saint on the universal Church. As reforms to the canonization process placed local devotions under tighter central control, so local groups might also turn to the centre in order to have their devotions imposed on all the other groups and localities that comprised the universal Church. At this point, Maria Maddalena already boasted an impressive devotional following. The strength of this prior to her beatification demonstrates how open people from a wide range of backgrounds were to new saints independent of their official status. Indeed, Maria Maddalena’s beatification and canonization inquiries both specifically questioned the breadth of the devotional following she had. Many of the nun’s devotees acknowledged her saintliness because they knew of wonders she had worked, be that from their own experience, written sources (particularly biographies), or the testimony of personal acquaintances. And they were not content to keep their belief in Maria Maddalena’s holiness to themselves, but shared it with others, even more so when there were physical relics to pass on. Like other cults, Maria Maddalena’s demonstrates that clergy and laity, nobles and the poor, city-dwellers and country folk could all take a passionate interest in acquiring the relics of a would-be saint and sharing them with others. This exchange involved neighbours and friends, priests and their parishioners, nuns and their families. Such was the spread of interest in Maria Maddalena’s relics that amongst those involved in their exchange were Urban VIII and, later, Clement IX, who attributed a healing miracle to the beata’s intercession after he had applied one of her relics. And, from the beginning, not only Carmelites but members of many other religious orders—women and men alike—treasured and shared her relics. Maria Maddalena’s body remains seemingly incorrupt today. It is kept in great veneration by her heirs, the nuns of the convent of S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, now located just outside Florence in Careggi. She is dressed in a habit, and the gold finger sent to replace the relic given to Urban VIII is still visible. Although it is in a different coffin, you can well imagine how the nuns of four centuries ago might have changed her clothes and veil. This is the body that, when alive, had so captivated nuns and confessors alike with its transformations in ecstasy. This is the body that lay at the heart of Maria Maddalena’s devotional cult. And this is the body that had been pivotal to her canonization too by providing proof of the miraculous. What had been the elaborate

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centrepiece of the Florentine festivities of 1626 and 1669 now enjoys a relatively humble abode in a tranquil spot overlooking Florence. Here in the quiet of the convent enclosure, surrounded by the prayer of her modern sisters, seems to be the best expression of Maria Maddalena’s fluid and flexible saintly identity; less celebrated, on the one hand, but sitting more comfortably within the monastic life for which she was such an advocate.

Bibliography Manuscript sources Florence Archivio Arcivescovile, Firenze (AAF) Atti relativi a santi e beati Processus et acta originalia, dicta et depositiones testium examinatorum super vita et miraculis servae Dei sororis Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis coram Ordinario Processus originalis remissoriae pro beata Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Processus remissorialis et compulsorialis in causa canonizationis B. Mariae Magdalenae de Pazzis Cancelleria Arcivescovile Sacre Congregazioni di Roma, Lettere di Roma 1 Archivio del Monastero di S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, Careggi (AMC) Memoriale per la Beata M.re Suor Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi Lettere Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF) Carte Strozziane I, 106 Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese, 117, 128, 133 Manoscritti, 134 (Memorie fiorentine del Cav. Francesco Settimani) Mediceo del Principato, 6077, 6081 Naples Archivio di Stato di Napoli (ASN) Monasteri soppressi, 224, 252, 257, 285, 340 Archivio del Carmine Maggiore di Napoli (ACMN) Moscarella, Cronistoria del Real Convento del Carmine Maggiore di Napoli Rome and Vatican City Archivio della Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi (ACCS) Registri dei decreti dei Servi di Dio I, vols. I (1592–1654), 2 (1655–75) Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, (ACDF) S.O. Decreta, 1625 St. St. B 4 b–e Archivio Postulazione Generale dei Carmelitani (APGC) Vols. III.113; III.114; IV.79; IV.80 Archivum Postulationis Generalis Societatis Iesu (APGSI) Santi e beati 11 (Luigi Gonzaga), 92

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Index Albert (of Sicily) 127 Alexander VII, Pope (Fabio Chigi) 153, 196, 202 Andrea Avellino 139 Andrea Corsini 6, 109, 122, 148, 151, 154, 206 Antoninus of Florence 158 Antwerp 166, 171, 185 Ari, Girolamo 172, 178, 180, 182, 199 ascetic piety 4–5, 20–3, 26–7, 29, 88–9, 111 auditors of the Rota 9, 105, 115, 119, 125, 135–6, 138–9, 146–7, 182, 191 Augustine of Hippo 4, 47, 50, 59, 90, 111, 208 Augustinians 183, 212 Azzolino, Decio 197–8 Bagnesi, Maria 37, 39, 46, 89 Bandinelli, Volumnio 182, 197–8 Barberini family 142–4, 157, 164, 196, 199 Barberini, Antonio (Jr., cardinal) 161, 196 Barberini, Costanza 135, 146, 161 Barberini, Francesco (Sr., cardinal) 87, 148, 157–8, 162, 197, 211 Barberini, Sr Innocenza (Camilla) 86, 124–5, 135, 147–8, 154, 161–3, 197 Barberini, Sr Maria Grazia (Clarice) 86, 124–5, 135, 147–8, 161–4, 197 Barberini, Taddeo 157, 162 barefoot 48, 61 Baronio, Cesare 11 Bascapé, Carlo 69 beati moderni 10–11, 68–71, 106–7, 121–2, 126–7, 137 beatification of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi 139–41, 149, 219 as part of canonization reforms 105–8 significance of 126–8, 137–8, 145, 147, 149, 219 beatification process miracles in 103–4, 114–17, 119, 132–5, 138–9, 193 mysticism 110–14 physicians 115–17, 134–5 procedure 9, 103–7, 108, 119–20 use of biography 104, 106, 110–14, 116 Beatrice de Silva 152–3 Bellarmine, Robert 11, 120, 126–7, 152 Benedictines 80, 99–102, 130, 183, 185

Benvenuti, Francesco 19, 57 Bernardino of Montesenario 126–7 Bernardino Realino 152 Bernardo de Monroy 151–2 Bindi, Andrea 78 Blanca, Pietro 27, 29, 31 body, public display of 1, 32, 66–8, 72–3, 95–6, 98, 122, 144, 160–1, 207–11, 221–2 Bouillaud, Claude 193–6 Brancaccio, Lorenzo Maria 85, 170–1, 175 Bridget of Sweden 52–3 Brussels, Our Lady of the Assumption 99–102 Buondelmonti, Maria 3, 15–16, 20, 29–30 Camillo de Lellis 69 Campi, Agostino 37–8, 39, 42, 43, 50, 54–5, 57–9, 113 Canal, Gregorio 148 canonization process equivalent canonization 149 expense 182, 190–1, 200–1, 204 of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi 1, 200–1, 203–6 miracles in 133–5, 138–9, 188–96 mysticism in 134 physicians 134, 136, 190–6 procedure 119–20, 132, 191–2, 203–4 reforms 6–7, 9–11, 17, 105–7, 137, 149–53, 180–1, 191–2, 218–19 Capocchi, Alessandro 37–64 Caravita, Domenico 190, 194 Caravita, Pietro 170–1, 172, 195 Carmelite reform 14–15, 35–6, 50, 60–2, 167–75 Mantuan Congregation 35–6, 39 Carmelites Ancient Observance Carmelite Order (O.Carm.) 19, 22–6, 40, 42, 50, 109–10, 122, 127, 139–40, 142, 144, 148, 155, 161, 165–7, 167–80, 182–5, 196, 198–201, 206–7, 210–13, 219, 221 Discalced Carmelite Order (OCD) 14–15, 36, 61, 62, 76, 109, 173–5, 183–4, 201 relations between 168–9, 172–5 Caterina de’ Ricci 36–7, 47, 61, 148 Caterina Vigri of Bologna 75 Catherine of Alexandria 23, 50 Catherine of Siena 5, 23–5, 30, 42, 48, 50, 52–3, 58, 60–1, 88, 92, 113, 208

246

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Cepari, Virgilio 38, 57–8, 68, 70–1, 86–7, 89, 107, 135, 141, 146, 173, 197, 203, 215–16 Charles Borromeo 106, 108, 115, 204 Christina of Sweden 206 Ciari, Giorgio 66–7, 77–8 Clare of Assisi 30, 53 Clare of Montefalco 49 Clement VIII, Pope (Ippolito Aldobrandini) 69, 107, 127, 173, 204 Clement IX, Pope (Giulio Rospigliosi) 1, 196–9, 203–4, 206, 211, 213, 214, 219, 221 Clement X, Pope (Emilio Bonaventura Altieri) 183, 214 collaborative hagiography 84–7 Colomba da Rieti 23–4, 58 confessors as collaborators for canonization 15–16, 19, 67–8, 70–1, 71–6, 81, 83–7, 87–93, 93–4, 97–8, 117, 135, 141, 155 conflict over in convents 36, 100–1 to Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s devotees 78–9, 130, 171, 176, 185, 210 to S. Maria degli Angeli 36–9, 42–3, 50, 56–7, 59, 60–2, 67–8, 71–2, 83, 86–7, 89–90, 117, 135, 141, 218–20 Congregation of Beati 69–71, 107 Congregation of the Index 10, 69 Congregation of the Inquisition, see Holy Office Congregation of Rites 10–11, 62, 93, 105, 106, 109, 117, 119–23, 132–3, 138–9, 142, 147, 150–4, 179–81, 186–7, 188, 191–3, 193–4, 196–8, 202–3, 208 competition with the Holy Office 10–11, 69–70, 121–2 decrees 107, 137, 149–50, 180–1 consistorial advocate 192 consistories, papal 9–10, 187, 203–4 Contelori, Felice 190–1 convents boarding for girls 28–9 ceremony for entry 42–3 enclosure 32–3, 40, 158–9 networks 14, 63–4, 71–3, 79–80 as spiritual havens 13–14, 54, 64–5 converse nuns (servant nuns) 49, 91, 112, 114, 145–6 Corrado Confalonieri of Piacenza 107 Cortona 20, 28–9, 61, 113 Curradi family 116–17 Curradi, Francesco 116–17 del Monte, Francesco Maria Bourbon 122, 202 devil and demonic attacks 4, 48–9, 52, 64 Diego de Alcalá 63 discernment of spirits 13, 52–4

Domenica da Paradiso 31–2, 75, 136, 155–6 Dominicans 31–2, 36–8, 64, 79–80, 212–13 Elizabeth I of England 63 Elizabeth of Portugal 12, 154 England, devotion amongst English Catholics 99–102, 183, 185 Eucharist, reception of 26, 29, 32, 89 Fabbrini, Niccolò 38, 57 fame of holiness (fama sanctitatis) 8, 68, 71–2, 77–81, 95, 103, 105, 109, 119, 137, 138–9, 145, 147, 149, 152–3, 182, 185, 189, 202, 213, 218 fasting and abstinence 22, 61, 90 Felice da Cantalice 127, 139, 181 Florence beatification process in 86, 103–4, 108–18, 132–6 canonization process in 181–91 Cistercians of Borgo Pinti and S. Frediano 157–8, 188 il Carmine 33–6, 109, 166, 182, 190, 210 La Crocetta 31–2, 36–7, 155–6, 160 La Nunziatina 35 Le Murate 183 liturgical veneration of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi 140, 144–5, 184, 207–11 S. Barnaba 35–6, 39, 42 S. Giovanni dei Cavalieri 23–4, 28–9, 39, 64, 86, 88–9, 104, 112 S. Giovannino degli Scoloperi 25–6 S. Maria degli Angeli, see S. Maria degli Angeli S. Maria di Candeli 183, 210–11 SSma Annunziata 99, 158–60 flowers as relics 1, 66–7, 72–3, 77–81, 96, 128, 131, 156, 162, 208 Forlì 166, 185 Fozi, Giuseppe 86, 207 Francesca Romana 12, 195 Francis Borgia 134 Francis of Assisi 53, 92, 113 Francis of Sales 107, 152, 206 Francis Xavier 120, 195 Franciscans 1, 60, 63, 78, 101, 123, 127, 129, 153, 169, 183, 185, 201–2, 206, 207, 212 Gaci, Bernardino 194–5 Galantini, Ippolito 191 Gallo, Antonio Mario 122 Gallonio, Antonio 70, 127 Genoa 185 Geronimo, Michele 135 Gerson, Jean 52 Gertrude of Helfta 24, 53

Index Giacomo della Marca 124, 139 Ginnetti, Marzio 128, 203 Giocondo, Andrea del 126 Giocondo, Sr Vangelista del 22–3, 39, 43–4, 50–1, 54, 58, 63, 72, 110–14, 140 Gizzio, Francesco 184 Gonzaga, Eleonora (archduchess of Austria) 154 Gonzaga, Eleonora de’ Medici (of Mantua) 95, 119 Gonzaga, Ferdinando 76, 95–8, 106, 108, 119, 129 Gregory X, Pope (Teobaldo Visconti) 151 Gregory XV, Pope (Alessandro Ludovisi) 202, 204 Grifoni, Tommaso 78, 96 Grillanti, Cirillo 182, 190–1 hagiography 23–5, 37, 38, 83–4, 91, 156 Holy Office (Congregation of the Inquisition) 10, 57, 69–70, 98, 120, 121–2, 146–7 decrees regarding cults 137, 145, 149, 151, 220 Hyacinth Odrowąż 107 Ignatius of Loyola 24–5, 32, 70, 86, 91, 108, 120, 127 The Spiritual Exercises 27, 38, 86, 95 incorrupt body 75–6, 96, 98, 134–6, 139, 144, 148, 154–5, 156, 160–1, 185–6, 193–6 Innocent X, Pope (Giovanni Battista Pamphili) 151–2 Isidore of Madrid 120, 195, 204 Juan de Sahagún 107 Julián de San Agustín de Alcala 123 Julius III, Pope (Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte) 32 Lamberti family 75, 79–80 Leo X, Pope (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici) 36 Leo XI, Pope, see Medici, Alessandro Ottaviano de’ (Pope Leo XI) liberation from possession as a miracle 64, 90–1, 114, 208, 211 Louis Bertran 139 Lucca 75, 79–80, 97, 104, 114, 119 Luigi Gonzaga 38, 70–1, 73, 86, 107, 127, 153–4, 197, 215 Lulier, Giovanni Lorenzo 216 Madonna bruna, Naples 169 Madrid 185

247

Mantuan Congregation, see Carmelite reform, Mantuan Congregation Marco Maffei da Marcianise 153 Margherita da Cortona 152 Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi altars in honour 100, 127–8, 160–1, 166, 168–70, 171, 183, 189, 200 biographies 19–20, 83–93, 94–5, 96–8, 100–1, 103, 110–14, 116, 146–7, 170–1, 176, 178, 184, 214–16 canonization bull 214–15 Carmelite involvement in canonization 109–10, 178–85, 219 Carmelite veneration 165–7, 206–7, 211–13, 219 celebration of feast day 94, 125, 138, 140–1, 142–5, 148–9, 160–1, 165–6, 167–8, 170–2, 184, 185, 186, 196, 207–8, 211–13 commitment to religious observance and reform 48, 51, 58–9, 60–2, 89, 92–3 Congregation of Rites 119–22, 132–3, 138–9, 142, 147, 180, 186–7, 188, 197–8 devotional images 75, 95, 102, 125–8, 166, 172, 176, 208 incorrupt body 75–6, 95–7, 134–6, 185–6, 193–6, 207–10, 221–2 miracles approved 138–9, 142, 191, 193, 194–5, 199, 200 miracles claimed 64, 66, 72, 77–82, 90–1, 94–7, 103, 114, 116–17, 128–32, 147, 170, 176–7, 180, 185, 188–9, 193–5 mystical experiences 3–5, 29, 39, 43–51, 58–9, 63, 64, 123–4, 214–15 non–Carmelite devotion amongst religious 66–7, 72–3, 78–80, 95–6, 99–101, 103, 130, 133–4, 183–5, 189, 212–13 papal devotion 154–5, 197–8 re–enactment of Passion 47, 123–4 shrine 74–6, 81, 94–6, 105, 125–8, 130, 160–1, 185, 189–90 spirituality of God as Love 4, 43–4, 51, 214 transcriptions (incl. mode of composition) 5–6, 49, 54–7, 89–90 virtue, discussion of her 19–23, 43–4, 58, 60, 64, 88–91, 102, 111, 133, 139, 189, 203, 208, 218 visits to the shrine 74–5, 94–7, 99, 101, 130–1, 148, 163–4, 178, 183, 189, 196 votive offerings 74–5, 81, 94, 130, 170, 178, 186, 189–90, 217 vows seeking intercession 129–30 see also relics of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi Mary, Blessed Virgin 49, 51, 59, 61–2, 160 Mary Magdalen (saint) 42, 50, 94, 166

248

Index

Marzi Medici, Alessandro 73, 95–7, 98, 106, 108–9, 122, 135, 146, 155 Matthew, Tobie 99–101, 120 Medici, Alessandro Ottaviano de’ (Pope Leo XI) 58–9, 60, 64, 90, 112, 204, 208 Medici, Carlo de’ 122 Medici, Cosimo II de’ 95, 97, 119–21 Medici, Cosimo III de’ 200 Medici, Cristina of Lorraine 156–7, 158–60 Medici, Ferdinando I de’ 122 Medici, Ferdinando II de’ 144, 196, 207–8, 210 Medici, Giulio de’ 36 Medici, Maria de’ 63–4, 97, 131 Medici, Maria Maddalena of Austria 94, 108, 119, 121, 122, 127, 144, 156–7 Medici interest in Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi 94–6, 108–9, 122, 124–5, 135, 144, 154, 156–7, 158, 161, 196, 199, 207–10 Milan 185, 211–12 miracles assessment of 114–16, 136, 138–9, 146–7, 188, 191–6 liberation from possession 64, 90–1, 114, 208, 211 multiplication miracles 145–6, 193–4, 208 place of medical miracles 115, 192–4 see also Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, miracles claimed; incorrupt body missionary zeal 22, 60, 63, 111 Modena 186 Monte, Francesco Maria Bourbon del 122, 202 Morelli, Andrea 119, 120, 121 Morelli, Costanza 114 Mori, Sr Maria Maddalena 54–5 mystical experiences in biographies 88–9, 91–2, 98, 123–4, 170–1 clerical assessment of 5, 13–14, 54–5, 57, 84–5, 88, 103 physical transformation as a result of 43–4, 48–50 and women 12–15, 52–4, 217–18 mystical marriage 4, 46, 51, 208

Naples, Revolt of (Masaniello) 176–7 Nerli, Francesco 196

Namur 166–7 Naples 53–4, 109–10 Carmine Maggiore 167–9, 172, 176, 212–13 devotion to Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi in 94, 168–79, 184–6, 212–13, 217 patron saints 174, 213, 217 process in 181–3, 186–90, 193–5 S. Maria della Vita 168–72, 175–6, 179, 186, 190, 212–13 S. Paolo 185, 212–13 S. Teresa del Santissimo Sacramento 173–4, 178

Rasponi, Sr Teresa 198–9 Raymund of Capua 5, 52–3, 92 Raymund of Peñafort 115–16 relics 6–7, 37–8, 64, 68, 70, 106, 120, 137–8, 156, 158, 174 relics of Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi bodily relics 148, 154–5, 176, 198 licence for 73–4, 106, 137–8, 146–7, 220 non–contact/other relics 101–2, 145–7, 170, 177, 188, 197, 198 secondary and contact relics 66–7, 68, 71–4, 76–81, 94–6, 116–17, 128, 162, 165–7, 169–70, 176–7, 184, 190, 198

obedience 14, 43, 49, 54, 58, 89–90, 111, 113, 139, 208 Oratorians 70, 183–4, 212–13 Orsini, Alessandro 96, 97, 119, 122–4, 126 Orsini, Eleonora Sforza 97 Pac family 199–200 Pamphili, Benedetto 216 Paolo di S. Ignazio 178, 180, 186 Parma 104, 114, 117, 119, 132, 166, 185 Pascal Baylon 139, 181, 195, 202 Passion of Christ 4, 26–7, 47, 50–1, 56, 59, 90, 94, 111, 123–4, 214 Paul V, Pope (Camillo Borghese) 69, 106, 121 Pazzi family 3 Pazzi, Camillo de’ 3, 16, 20, 29–30 Pazzi, Geri de’ 20 Pazzi, Sr Maria Grazi de’ 112, 161 see also Buondelmonti, Maria Pedro d’Alcántara 1–3, 132, 201–3 Peña, Francisco 11, 69 Pentecost 49–50, 171–2 Percy, Lady Mary 100 Philip III of Spain 123 Philip IV of Spain 153, 202 Philip Neri 70, 120, 127, 131, 132, 144, 184, 206 Pignatelli, Stefano 124 Poland–Lithuania 199–200 Pozzo, Andrea del 215 Prato 20, 36–7, 47, 79, 184 prayer, mental 22, 26–7, 29, 40, 63–4, 111, 133 promoter of the faith 150, 181–2, 191–2, 193–6, 198–9 Puccini, Alessandro 93 Puccini, Vincenzo 62, 141 as hagiographer 16, 19, 83–93, 97–8 promoting the cause 68, 71–3, 75–6, 87, 93–5, 98, 104–5, 109–14, 116–17, 121, 123–4, 125–8, 135, 219–21

Index sharing and demand for 12, 15–17, 66–8, 71–82, 94–5, 96, 97, 99, 101–2, 128–31, 147, 148, 154–5, 162–4, 165–7, 169–70, 172, 175–7, 179, 183–6, 190, 196, 197–8, 200, 211, 213, 215, 221 religious observance 15, 29, 31–2, 35–41, 48, 60–2, 64–5, 100–1, 111, 139, 168–71, 173–4, 201–2, 207 religious vocation 19, 28–9, 30–1, 60–2 Riconesi, Antonmaria 86, 147 Ridolfi, Ludovico 121 Rinuccini, Ottavio 93 Rispola, Alfonsina 53–4 Rocca, Angelo 115 Rome beatification process in (tribunal) 135 devotion to Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi in 94, 142–4, 162–4, 166, 185, 196, 211 Le Barberine 161–4, 196–8, 211 S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini 140, 142–4, 180, 181, 206, 215 S. Maria in Traspontina 140, 206–7 Sant’Ignazio 215 St Peter’s Basilica and square 1–3, 204–6, 216 Roomer, Gasparo 171, 175–9, 194, 219 Rose of Lima 12, 24, 106, 153, 217–18 Rossi, Andrea 26–7 Rossi, Pietro Francesco de 181–2, 193–6, 198–9 Rouai, Maria 66–7, 77, 81, 130, 131, 139 Sacchetti, Giulio 180 saints devotions to many 131–2 imitation of 6–7, 19, 23–5, 37, 83–4, 87, 161, 215 sante vive 53–4 Savonarola, Girolamo 36–8 Scipione, Borghese 121 Seripando, Claudio 72, 103 Serristori, Antonio 189 Servites 126, 183–4, 186 Sforza, Eleonora Orsini, duchess of segni 97 Sixtus V, Pope (Felice Peretti di Montalto) 10, 60 S. Maria degli Angeli beatification festivities 144–6 canonization festivities 207–10 foundation of 33–6 Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi’s decision to enter 31–2 move to Borgo Pinti 157–61 promoting Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi 66–8, 71–6, 81–2, 83–5, 93–101, 109–14, 119, 125, 128–32, 133–6, 137–8, 141, 144–8, 154–5, 160–1, 176, 179, 182,

249

183, 185, 189–90, 194–5, 196–200, 201, 206–11, 219–21 reform and religious observance 35–6, 39–41, 60–2 relations with Carmelite Order 33–6, 140, 144, 148–9 relations with Jesuits 32, 38, 70–1 relations with piagnoni 36–8 spiritual life of 32, 36–41 testimonies of nuns 110–14, 132–6, 183, 185–6 transcriptions produced within 54–7 Society of Jesus 14, 16, 25–7, 29, 57–8, 70, 72, 79, 86, 88–90, 95, 96, 99–101, 103, 183–4, 197, 212–13 Sorrentino, Onofrio 182 Spini, Caterina 64, 90–1 spiritual direction 16, 25–7, 88–90, 100–1 stigmata 4, 46, 90, 92, 111, 113 Strozzi, Carlo 189–90 Strozzi, Sr Maria Minimia di S. Filippo 190 suffering 4, 27, 44, 48–51, 111 Teresa of Avila 12–15, 54–5, 60, 63, 88, 120, 127, 173–5, 201–2 Theatines 183–4, 186, 212–13 teatina 29 Thomas of Hereford 115 Thomas of Villanova 151 Tovaglia, Sr Maria Pacifica del (Isabella) 19–20, 22, 27, 29–30, 32, 44, 49, 54, 68, 84, 110–14, 140–1 Trent, Council of 3, 7, 9, 13, 32–3, 68, 73, 126, 218 Turin 166, 185 Urban VIII, Pope (Maffeo Barberini) 17, 124–5, 139–40, 147–8, 154–5, 161–2, 219 reforms to canonization process 149–54, 164, 180–1, 202, 219 Vachini, Francesca 121–2 Venice 94, 185 virginity, childhood vow of 25 virtue 43–4, 58, 60, 64, 87–90 in beatification process 103–4, 110–11, 132–3, 135–6, 138–9 in canonization process 132–3, 135–6, 138, 149, 203, 218 votive offerings 74, 81, 94, 126–8, 129–30, 153, 169, 180, 186, 189–90, 211 wine, restoration of as a miracle 59–60, 194 Zacchia, Paolo 192–3