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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 June 2016
The Franciscan Antonio Daza, a native of Valladolid, published his Historia de las llagas de nuestro seráfico padre San Francesco in 1617. He intended to demonstrate that the stigmata of Francis of Assisi were miraculous and unique. Daza referred to Juana de la Cruz (d. 1534), a Poor Clare, whom he identified as providing evidence of the veracity of Francis's stigmata in her sermons, which had been collected by one of the nuns in her convent in a manuscript known as El Conhorte. Juana's sermons were defended as divinely inspired and thus her defence of the miracle of Francis's stigmata was regarded as based on information received directly from God. Yet Juana herself had, according to another work by Daza, the Historia, vida y milagros, éxtasis y revelaciones de la bienaventurada virgen Santa Iuana de la Cruz (first published in 1610) received painful marks on her hands and feet in 1524. This paper will consider the tensions evidenced in Daza's work and his tactics in attempting to demonstrate the unique nature of the stigmata of Francis of Assisi whilst at the same time apparently acknowledging a similar miracle experienced by Juana de la Cruz.
1 On early reactions to Francis's stigmata, see Dalarun, Jacques, Cusato, Michael F. and Salvati, Carla, The Stigmata of Francis of Assisi: New Studies: New Perspectives (Saint Bonaventure, NY, 2006)Google Scholar; Warr, Cordelia, ‘Visualizing Stigmata: Stigmatic Saints and Crises of Representation in Early Modern Italy’, in Clarke, Peter and Claydon, Tony, eds, Saints and Sanctity, SCH 47 (Woodbridge, 2011), 228Google Scholar–47. On those who doubted the stigmata, see Vauchez, André, ‘Les Stigmates de Saint François et leurs détracteurs dans les derniers siècles du moyen âge’, Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'École française de Rome: Moyen âge et temps modernes 80 (1968), 595–625Google Scholar.
2 Raymond of Capua, The Life of Catherine of Siena, 2.6.195 (transl. and intro. Conleth Kearns [Washington DC, 1994], 186).
3 Davidson, Arnold I., ‘Miracles of Bodily Transformation: Or how Saint Francis received the Stigmata’, Critical Inquiry 35 (2009), 451–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 455–6.
4 Daza, Antonio, Historia de las llagas de nuestro seráfico padre San Francisco, colegida del Martirologio y Breviario Romano y treynta bulas y dozientos autores y santos (Valladolid, 1617)Google Scholar.
5 For an introduction to Daza's life, see Mertens, Benedict, ‘Antonio Daza's “Esercitii Spirituali”’, Studies in Spirituality 11 (2000), 212–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 213–19.
6 I shall refer to Daza, Antonio, Historia, vida y milagros, éxtasis y revelaciones de la bienaventurada virgen Santa Juana de la Cruz (Madrid, 1614)Google Scholar throughout this essay. Daza originally published the vida in 1610 but later had to revise the work after it was reviewed by the Inquisition. For a brief discussion of the publication of Daza's life of Juana, and the changes required by the Inquisition, which centred not on Juana's stigmata but on the beads which Christ was said to have blessed for Juana, see Haliczer, Stephen, Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain (Oxford, 2002), 69–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The different versions of the vida are also discussed by Inocente de Andrés, García, El Conhorte: Sermones de una mujer. La Santa Juana, 1481–1534, 2 vols (Madrid, 1999)Google Scholar, 1: 28–41.
7 Frugoni, Chiara, Francesco e l'invenzione delle stimmate (Turin, 1993), 51–104Google Scholar.
8 For a discussion of the typology of miracles, see Vauchez, André, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, transl. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, 1997), 466Google Scholar–75.
9 For a discussion of these types of sanctity, see Kleinberg, Aviad, ‘Proving Sanctity: Selection and Authentication of Saints in the Later Middle Ages’, Viator 20 (1989), 183–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 187.
10 de Ribera, Michele Llot, Vita della venerabile sor Maria Raggi da Scio, tradotta della latina alla volgare lingua italiana dal padre F. Paolo Minerva da Bari (Naples, 1609), 65Google Scholar–7. On Llot de Ribera, see Dandelet, Thomas James, Spanish Rome, 1500–1700 (New Haven, CT, and London, 2001), 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar–80.
11 For Caffarini's discussion of different types of stigmata, see ‘Tommaso Caffarini’ [Thomas Antonii de Senis], Libellus de Supplemento. Legende prolixe virginis beate Catherine de Senis, ed. Iuliana Cavalli and Imelda Foralosso (Rome, 1974), 121–211.
12 Lombardelli, Gregorio, Sommario della disputa a difesa delle sacre stimate di Santa Caterina da Siena (Siena, 1601), 63Google Scholar–4.
13 Ibid. 64. For a discussion of the representation of these stigmatics, see Warr, ‘Visualizing Stigmata’; Carolyn Musessig, ‘The Stigmata Debate in Theology and Art in the Late Middle Ages’, in Celeste Brusati, Karl E. E. Enenkel, and Walter S. Melion, eds, The Authority of the Word: Reflecting on Image and Text in Northern Europe, 1400–1700 (Leiden, 2012), 481–504, at 487–501.
14 On Cassini, see DBI 21, 487–90.
15 Romeo de Maio, Rinascimento senza toga (Naples, 1999), 108.
16 Giustinani's work was published as an addition to Nider, Johannes, De Reformatione religiosorum libri tres, ed. Boucquet, Joannes (Antwerp, 1611), 403Google Scholar–65, at 452–3. On Giustiniani, see Romagnoli, Alessandra Bartolomei, ‘Un trattatello cinquecentesco in difesa delle stimmate di Caterina da Siena’, Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 26 (2013), 177–226Google Scholar, at 179–80. Bible quotations are taken from the New International Version.
17 Daza, Historia de las llagas, fols 1r–14v.
18 ‘[Q]ue fue merced tan singular la que Dios hizo al Serafico Padre san Francisco en darle sus sacratissimas llagas, que no tiene semejante’: ibid., fol. 1v.
19 ‘[U]n milagre estupendo’ (St Bonaventure), ‘singular y grade milagro’ (Pope Alexander IV), ‘milagro immenso’ (Cardinal Baronio), ‘singular maravilla, y casi el mayor de todos los prodigios de Dios’ (Cardinal Bellarmino), ‘entre los milagros grandes de nuestra Fè, tiene el principal lugar la impression de las llagas de nuestro Padre S. Francisco’ (Roberto Caracciolo): ibid., fols 1v–2r. For more information on Caracciolo and the stigmata of St Francis, see Muessig, Carolyn, ‘Roberto Caracciolo's Sermon on the Miracle of the Stigmatization of Saint Francis of Assisi’, Anuario de estudios medievales 42 (2012), 77–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 On the history of the Feast of the Stigmata of St Francis, see Armstrong, Regis J., Hellmann, J. A. Wayne and Short, William J., eds, Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, 3 vols (New York, 1999–2001)Google Scholar, 3: 661–4; see also Calendarium Romanum ex Decreto Sacrosancti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II Instauratum (Rome, 1969), 139.
21 Daza gives a long list of those who dealt with Francis's stigmata: Historia de las llagas, fols 16v–24r.
22 Warr, Cordelia, ‘Changing Stigmata’, in Kirkham, Anne and Warr, Cordelia, eds, Wounds in the Middle Ages (Aldershot, 2014)Google Scholar, 43–62, at 46.
23 For brief details on the life of Juana de la Cruz, see Jessica A. Boon, ‘Mother Juana de la Cruz’, in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Renaissance and Reformation, <http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195399301/obo-9780195399301-0197.xml>, accessed 12 January 2015; Surtz, Ronald E., The Guitar of God: Gender, Power and Authority in the Visionary World of Mother Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534) (Philadelphia, PA, 1990), 3–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lehfeldt, Elizabeth A., Religious Women in Golden Age Spain (Aldershot, 2005), 169Google Scholar–72.
24 Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy, 292–3.
25 Daza, Historia, vida y milagros, fols 70v–76r.
26 Ibid., fol. 74v. See also García de Andrés, El Conhorte, 1: 69–80; Boon, Jessica A., ‘Mother Juana de la Cruz: Marian Visions and Female Preaching’, in Kallendorf, Hilaire, ed., A New Companion to Hispanic Mysticism (Leiden and Boston, MA, 2010), 127Google Scholar–48, at 133–6.
27 Boon, Jessica A., ‘Christ in Heavenly Play: Christology through Mary's Eyes in the Sermones of Juana de la Cruz’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 102 (2011), 243Google Scholar–66, at 245.
28 Ibid. 243–4.
29 On the debates about women and preaching between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Blamires, Alcuin, ‘Women and Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Saints’ Lives’, Viator 26 (1995), 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar–52. For female Franciscan preaching, see Roest, Bert, ‘Female Preaching in the Late Medieval Franciscan Tradition’, FS 62 (2004), 119Google Scholar–54, especially 150–3 for Juana de la Cruz.
30 Blamires, ‘Women and Preaching’, 148.
31 Ahlgren, Gillian T. W., ‘Negotiating Sanctity: Holy Women in Sixteenth-Century Spain’, ChH 64 (1995), 373Google Scholar–88, at 386.
32 Daza, Historia, vida y milagros, fol. 71v.
33 Daza, Historia de las llagas, fol. 37r–47v.
34 García de Andrés, El Conhorte, 1: 78–80, notes that El Conhorte was written towards the end of the period of thirteen years from 1508 during which Juana preached. Precise dates for the individual sermons cannot be ascertained.
35 Ibid., fols 39v–40r.
36 Ibid., fols 57r–64r.
37 Ibid., fol. 62v.
38 Eire, Carlos M. N., From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain, rev. edn (Cambridge, 2002), 105Google Scholar–7.
39 Daza, Historia de las llagas, fol. 63v.
40 On the Liber de conformitate, see Erickson, Carolly, ‘Bartholomew of Pisa, Francis exalted: De Conformitate’, MedS 34 (1972), 253Google Scholar–74.
41 Labrousse, Élisabeth, ‘Bayle et Saint François’, Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France 70 (1984), 149–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 150–3.
42 On early Protestant views concerning purgatory, see Walls, Jerry L., Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (Oxford, 2012), 35–42Google Scholar.
43 Heath, Michael J., ‘Islamic Themes in Religious Polemic’, Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 50 (1988), 289–315Google Scholar, at 291. Luther's short preface is contained in most editions of the Alcoranus.
44 Erasmus Albers, Alcoranus Franciscanorum (Frankfurt, 1542), unpaginated.
45 Daza, Historia de las llagas, fol. 64r, provides a considerably abbreviated version of the material provided in the Libro del Conhorte; for the full text, see García de Andrés, El Conhorte, 2: 1248–9 (§14).
46 Ibid. 1244 (§5).
47 Ibid. 1245–6 (§8).
48 Surtz, Guitar of God, 45–6; García de Andrés, El Conhorte, 2: 1245 (§7).
49 Boon, ‘Mother Juana de la Cruz’, 127–8.
50 Daza, Historia, vida y milagros, fol. 72. Umiltà of Faenza (d. 1310) was also credited with being able to speak in Latin despite never having studied the language: see Musessig, Carolyn, ‘Prophecy and Song: Teaching and Preaching by Medieval Women’, in Mayne Kienzle, Beverly and Walker, Pamela J., eds, Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley, CA, 1998), 146CrossRefGoogle Scholar–58, at 148.
51 Daza, Historia, vida y milagros, fols 22r–23r.
52 Ibid., fol. 24r.
53 Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy, 133. On painful penitential practices carried out by male and female Spanish mystics, see Flynn, Maureen, ‘The Spiritual Uses of Pain in Spanish Mysticism’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64 (1996), 257CrossRefGoogle Scholar–78.
54 Bilinkoff, Jodi, ‘Confession, Gender, Life-writing: Some Cases (mainly) from Spain’, in Lualdi, Katharine Jackson and Thayer, Anne T., eds, Penitence in the Age of Reformations (Aldershot, 2000), 169–183Google Scholar, at 171–2.
55 ‘[D]el tamaño de un real de plata, de color de rosas muy frescas, y coloradas; y de la propria figura y color correspondian igualmente en los empyenes y plantas de los pies, y de las manos’: Daza, Historia, vida y milagros, fol. 77v.
56 Ibid., fols 77r–78v.
57 Ibid., fols 76v–77r.
58 On María de la Visitación, see Ian MacInnes, ‘Stigmata on Trial: The Nun of Portugal and the Politics of the Body’, Viator 31 (2000), 391–8.
59 de Granada, Luis, Historia de Sor María de la Visitación (Barcelona, 2011)Google Scholar, 11.
60 Silvestri, Francesco, La vita e stupea di miraculi della gloriosa vergine Osanna Mantovano del Terzo ordine de'Frati Predicatori (Milan, 1507)Google Scholar, bk 3, ch. 6.
61 Marcianese, Giacomo, Vita della B. Lucia da Narni dell'Ordine di San Domenico (Viterbo, 1663), 12–113Google Scholar.
62 Cadderi, Attilio, Beata Margherita da Colonna (1255–1280). Le due vite scritte dal fratello Giovanni, senatore di Roma e da Stefania, monaca di San Silvestro in Capite (Palestrina, 2010)Google Scholar, 8, 169. Margherita received a wound in her side which bled and which she bore until her death. It is mentioned in both her early vitae.
63 ‘Un'altra singolarissima grazia volle concederle il Signore, e fu imprimerle i segni delle sue sagratissime Piaghe, non però nel modo, che l'ebbe il Padre S. Francesco’: Benedetto Mazzara and Pietro Antonio di Venezia, Leggendario Francescano, 12 vols (Venice, 1721–2), 2: 138–43 (8 February), at 142.
64 On Maria Magdalena de la Cruz, see Imirizaldu, Jesús, Monjas y beatas embaucadoras (Madrid, 1977), 41–62Google Scholar.
65 Haliczer, Between Exaltation and Infamy, 216, 267.
66 Ibid. 216.