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6. The most important accounts of Guglielma and her followers are Patrizia, Costa, Guglielma la Boema, l'“eretica” di Chiaravalle (Milan: NED, 1985)Google Scholar; Luisa, Muraro, Guglielma e Maifreda: Storia di un'eresia femminista (Milan: Tartaruga, 1985)Google Scholar; and especially Marina, Benedetti, lo non sono Dio: Guglielma di Milano e i Figli dello Spirito santo (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1998).Google Scholar

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8. Giussani, mentions this detail in La Chiesa parrocchiale, 22Google Scholar. The gold, attached to the surface of the painting, must have been stolen sometime after 1909, accounting for the curiously unfinished look of Guglielma's headdress.

9. This iconography recalls a Trinitarian altarpiece the sectarians commissioned for Sister Maifreda's convent at Biassono, featuring two persons (God the Father and his Son) at the right and a third, St. Guglielma as the Holy Spirit, at the left. Also, at a devotional banquet circa 1294, Sister Maifreda dramatically announced Guglielma's identity as the Holy Spirit, after which Carabella Toscano discovered that three knots had suddenly appeared in her girdle—a Trinitarian sign that she and others understood as a “great miracle” in confirmation of Guglielma's divinity. Milano 1300, 80, 226; and page 14 below.

10. According to Giussani, a thorough cleaning of the fresco in 1905 revealed signs of repainting to remove a “third arm” once attached to the figure of the nun. This detail is hard to interpret, but may indicate that Sister Maifreda was originally making some gesture more assertive than the one we now see. La Chiesa parrocchiale, 21.

11. Parts of only three words can now be made out; the last is requiret.

12. Merlo, G. G., “Pietro da Verona–san Pietro martire,” in Culto dei santi, istituzioni e classi sociali in età preindustriale, eds. Gajano, Sofia Boesch and Sebastiani, Lucia (Rome: L'Aquila, 1984), 473–88.Google Scholar

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63. “Accepimus namque, quod nonnullae personae se contra sanctam catholicam Ecclesiam erigentes, etiam sexus feminei, dogmatizant se ligandi et solvendi claves habere, paenitentias audiunt et a peccatis absolvunt, conventicula non solum diurna faciunt, sed nocturna,… et praedicare praesumunt; tonsura clericali contra ritum Ecclesiae abutentes, Spiritum Sanctum se dare per impositionem manuum mentiuntur” (emphasis added). VIII, Boniface, Saepe sanctam Ecclesiam, in Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 33rd ed., eds. Denzinger, Heinrich and Schonmetzer, Adolf (Freiburg: Herder, 1965), 278. The italicized clauses could describe the iconography of the painting at Brunate.Google Scholar

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