Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:07:53.827Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Between Court and Cloister: The Life and Lives of Margherita Colonna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2013

Bianca Lopez
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article considers the social and cultural contexts of the two lives of Margherita Colonna (c.1254–1280) to reveal her traditional, monastic Franciscan piety that originated with her baronial Roman background. To her family, Margherita Colonna represented a moderate type of Franciscan piety that did not conflict with elite patriarchal expectations of women, and one that differed from the radical penitence of Clare of Montefalco, Angela of Foligno, and Margherita of Cortona. Her hagiographers structured their respective renditions of her life to promote their own agendas, choosing and omitting saintly virtues as they saw fit. Margherita's first life, written by her brother Giovanni Colonna, extolled her humility, nobility, and almsgiving. Her second life, written by Stefania, her relative and the successor of her spiritual community, focused on Margherita's mysticism and concern for her cloistered community. Both of these works diverge from the lives of radical female Franciscans who practiced contempt for the world and rigorous poverty. For this reason, this article argues that Margherita's pious type broke from that of Clare of Assisi, and more closely resembled the traditional monastic religiosity practiced by her family before the arrival of St. Francis. Such an approach to hagiography reveals the social context from which it arose, as well as gendered notions of holiness, thereby contributing to the fields of medieval sanctity, gender, and society.

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 554 - 575
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Oliger, Livario, B. Margherita Colonna: Le due vite scritte dal fratello Giovanni Colonna senatore di Roma e da Stefania monaca di S. Silvestro in Capite, Lateranum 1:2 (Rome: Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenei Seminarii Romani, 1935), 127.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 111.

3 Knox, Lezlie, Creating Clare of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2008), 111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Brentano, Robert, Rome Before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth-Century Rome, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 179.Google Scholar

4 Barone, Giulia, “Margherita Colonna e le Clarisse di S. Silvestro in Capite,” in Roma: Anno 1300. Atti della IV Settimana di studi di storia dell'arte medievale dell'Università di Roma “la Sapienza.” Roma, 19–24 Maggio 1980, ed. Ronanini, Angiola Maria (Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1983), 799–805.Google Scholar

5 Coakley, John, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 3–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 For other thirteenth-century women hagiographers similarly compelled to legitimize the female founders of their institutions, see Field, Sean L., “Agnes of Harcourt, Felipa of Porcelet, and Marguerite of Oingt: Women Writing about Women at the End of the Thirteenth Century,” Church History 76 (2007): 298–329.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 In this way, Stefania's life also contrasts with masculine misrepresentations of feminine sanctity, as described by Mooney, Catherine M. in “Imitatio Christi or Imitatio Mariae?: Clare of Assisi and Her Interpreters,” in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. Mooney, Catherine M. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 52–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See Thompson, Augustine, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

9 I use the term “radical Franciscans” to refer to members of the Order who adhered to strict voluntary poverty after the death of Francis. See Burr, David, The Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

10 For information on the Colonna of Palestrina, see Carocci, Sandro, Baroni di Roma: dominazioni signorili e lignaggi aristocratici nel duecento e nel primo trecento (Rome: École française de Rome, 1993), 53–55, 361–363.Google Scholar

11 Carocci, Baroni di Roma, 52n86.

12 Brentano, Rome Before Avignon, 181.

13 David Waley, “Collonna, Giovanni,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 27, L'Enciclopedia Italiana, accessed May 15, 2012, http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-colonna_res-071038c7-87eb-11dc-8e9d-0016357eee51_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/.

14 Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 111: “Margherita itaque ex nobili Romanorum progenie orta, dum paternis manis in laribus, nondum relicto seculo, altero et digniori orbata parente, matri et fratribus subdita fuit.”

15 Papi, Anna Benvenuti, In castro poenitentiae: Santità e società femminile nell'Italia medievale (Rome: Herder, 1990), 115–117.Google Scholar

16 Field, Sean L., Isabelle of France: Capetian Sanctity and Franciscan Identity in the Thirteenth Century (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 20, 114.Google Scholar

17 Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 101. For instance, Margherita's mother was likely devoted to the Franciscans.

18 Ibid., 114: “Audit libenter virgo verbum et iam horas quibus audiendo vacare posit clandestine exquirit; perfigitur anima eius penetrabili gladio verbo Dei et inde primum concipit unde postea virginitatem suam Deo obsecrans in omni humilitate servavit.”

19 Ibid., 113–114.

20 Ibid., 132: “De domo sua in cordis magnificentia cunctas excellerat. Nam alie barones et comites sibi previderant, sed ipsa solius regis Filio se statuerat desponsandam.”

21 Brentano, Rome Before Avignon, 176–177.

22 Mollat, Michel, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History, trans. Goldhammer, Alexander (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), 156–157.Google Scholar

23 Barone, “Margherita Colonna,” 802.

24 Allegrezza, Franca, Organizzazione del potere e dinamiche familiari: Gli Orsini dal duecento agli inizi del Quattrocento (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1998), 181–182.Google Scholar

25 For examples of what elite laypeople in the preceding century expected to receive by giving pious gifts to ecclesiastical institutions, see Bouchard, Constance Brittain, Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights, and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press), 75–79.Google Scholar

26 Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 145–146.

27 Robert Brentano, Rome Before Avignon, 179.

28 For information regarding the prophetic and mystical social milieu at Palestrina, see Vian, Paolo, “Bonfiacio VIII e i Colonna: una riconsiderazione,” in Bonifacio VIII. Atti del XXXIX Convegno storico internazionale. Todi, 13–16 ottobre 2002 (Spoleto: Centro Italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, 2003), 253–268.Google Scholar

29 Oliger, B. Margerita Colonna, 100.

30 Federici, Vincenzo, “Regesto del monastero di S. Silvestro de Capite,” Archivio della Societa romana di storia patria 23 (1900): 427.Google Scholar

31 Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 156: “ipsa ad extremas non declinans vias, viam mediam et regiam, quam Christus tenuit, tocius sui cursus tempore calcavit.”

32 Vito of Cortona, Vita beatae Humilianae de Cerchis, in Acta Sanctorum, Maii IV (Antwerp: Victor Palmé, 1685), 387.

33 Menestò, Enrico, ed., Il Processo di Canonizzazione di Chiara da Montefalco (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1984), 125.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., 200.

35 Ibid., 226–227.

36 di Donadio, Berengario, Vita di Chiara da Montefalco, ed. Sala, Rosario, O.S.A. (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1991), 121–122.Google Scholar

37 Vian, “Bonfiacio VIII e i Colonna:” 259–261.

38 Angela of Foligno, Il “Liber” della beata Angela da Foligno: edizione in fac simile e trascrizione del ms. 342 della Biblioteca comunale di Assisi, con quattro studi, ed. Menestò, Enrico (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, 2009), 8.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., 13.

40 Bevegnati, Giunta, Antica leggenda della vita e de' miracoli di S. Margherita di Cortona scritta dal di lei confessore Fr. Giunta Bevegnati, ed. da Pelago, Lodoviso (Lucca: F. Bonsignori, 1793), 40–41.Google Scholar

41 Foligno, Angela of, Complete Works, trans. Lachance, Paul, O.F.M. (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1993), 156–157Google Scholar. Translation from Angela of Foligno, Il “Liber,” 37–38: “Ita quod quibuscumque dederitis de eis tanta est virtus benedicentis quam in se iam receperunt et quod quicumque de eis acceperint, proderit eis secundum quod magis vel minus fuerint dispositi, et etiam si esset in peccato mortali ille qui acciperit, proderit ei quod habebit desiderium citius convertendi se ad penitentiam.”

42 Bevegnati, Antica leggenda, 33: “Hec est illa Margarita, que capsam donans, et vasa pauperibus tribuens, panem pro suo victu in olla fracta et lapide tecta, paupertatis amore recondidit.”

43 Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 195–196: “Scio, inquid, carissima Soror, te nobis suadere optima atque vera, sed quia inter virtutum cristmata sola caritas obtinet primatum, sine cuius perfectione nec martirium, nec seculi contemptus, nec maceratio carnis, nec largitio helemosinarum Deo placere non possunt.”

44 1 Cor. 13:13. The entire verse reads: “Nunc autem manet fides spes caritas, tria haec maior autem his est caritas.”

45 Vito of Cortona, Vita beatae Humilianae, 394; Bevagnati, Antica leggenda, 53–54; Abate, Giuseppe, “S. Rosa da Viterbo, terziaria francescana, 1233–1251: Fonti storiche della vita e loro revisione critica,” Miscellanea francescana 52 (1952): 230.Google Scholar

46 Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 194, 194n8.

47 Ibid., 197–198.

48 Ibid., 212–213: Scio, Soror, scio nondum aquam esse calidam de qua liscivium fieri debet.

49 Brentano, Rome Before Avignon, 178–179. Translation from Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 214: “Infirmus vero in casum expectans reditum medici tota die, adveniente iam crepusculo, videns se medici frustratum auxilio, ira et passionibus quassatus, dixit: Videte ludibrium et funestum quod domini de Columpna violenter Sanctorum choris germanam ipsorum satagunt aggregare.”

50 Mueller, The Privilege of Poverty, 44.

51 Klaniczay, Gábor, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, trans. Pálmai, Éva (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 285Google Scholar. For examples of the textual tradition that continued after St. Elizabeth's death, see Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, ed., The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary: Testimony from her Canonization Hearings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).Google Scholar

52 Field, Isabelle of France, 91.

53 Brentano, “Filippa Mareri, la santa baronessa, la santa del Cicolano,” in Bishops, Saints, and Historians: Studies in the Ecclesiastical History of Medieval Britain and Italy (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2008), 289, 294Google Scholar. Brentano argues that Margherita and Filippa belonged to a specific Franciscan saintly type, one that existed within dynastic territorial holdings.

54 Chiappini, Aniceto, O. F. M., “S. Filippa Mareri e il suo monastero di Bordo S. Pietro de Molito nel Cicolano,” Miscellanea Francescana 22 (1921): 85.Google Scholar

55 Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 206–8; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 108.

56 Chiappini, Aniceto, “La beata Floresenda da Palena e il suo monastero di S. Chiara in Sulmona,” Studi Francescani 8 (1922): 117–161, 325–346Google Scholar; Knox, Creating Clare of Assisi, 115.

57 Makowski, Elizabeth, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997).Google Scholar

58 Brentano, Rome Before Avignon, 181–182.