Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EUROPROP (Female Prophecy in Early Modern European Religion)
Reporting period: 2023-11-01 to 2025-10-31
Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project
During the 16th century secular and temporal powers fought to gain monopoly on the future, striving to gradually eliminate religious expectations from the domain of political decision-making. This project looks at this struggle, that peaked in this era, from the standpoint of female prophets, and from a transnational perspective. These women, sometime persecuted and often highly considered by religious and political leaders, explicitly advocated church reform, defended the Protestant Reformation and welcomed a more radical realization of it, or acted for the triumph of the Catholic Reformation, thus blurring the lines between orthodoxy and heresy and Protestantism and Catholicism. Through their cases, it will be possible to uncover the period’s religious complexity and fluidity and identify overlaps, intersections and conflicts within and at the borders of Christianity, making it possible to use the encompassing category of early modern religion.
The project aims to create a theoretical account of female prophecy in 16th century Italy, Spain and England as a key to understanding early modern religion. It expands and deepens Weber’s theory by demonstrating women’s ambition and capacity to appropriate prophecy as a creative revolutionary force of history. The project identifies Italian ‘living saints’ and humanists; Spanish beatas and conversas; and English visionaries as privileged actors of prophetic charisma and challenges assumptions that prophecy responds just to national or local interests and debates. A transnational approach is needed to demonstrate the transfers of knowledge and exchanges in Italy, England and Spain in this era of extensive religious mobility and before the Universal Church was completely divided.
The case studies include the Italian mystic Lucia da Narni, and the humanists Camilla Battista da Varano and Cassandra Fedele; the Spanish beata Maria de Santo Domingo and the conversas Teresa of Ávila and Francisca de los Apóstoles; the English Catholics Elizabeth Barton and Jane Wentworth, and the advocate of the Reformation Anne Askew. By including conversas and women from the tradition of the radical Reformation, the project will demonstrate, on the one hand, how female prophets moved outside confining ecclesiastical frameworks and, on the other hand, their departure from tradition. The analysis of the cases of humanists will illuminate the encounter between religious and secular cultures. By looking at the material and literary exchanges between prophets and prelates across the borders, both in well documented cases like the one of Lucia da Narni and Maria de Santo Domingo, and in less researched cases, the project redefines the idea of confessional mobility.
The analysis will concentrate on the texts written by female prophets and their male counterparts (confessors, hagiographers and devotees), as well as by secular women. The corpus includes sermons, visions, spiritual letters and poems, hagiographies and inquisitorial trials, transcending the opposition between hagiography and history, and between religious and literary production.
There are three main research questions: 1. What was the relationship between female prophets, the ecclesiastical authorities and secular powers that were involved in the early modern religious conflicts? 2. What were the processes of communication and exchange across borders and beliefs ignited by female prophets women that demonstrate the instability of the emerging confessional divisions? 3. What is their neglected contribution to, and inner critique of, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations?
The methodology intertwines history of ideas, the history of concepts, early modern history and feminist political theory. It defines some core concepts forming the prophetic discourse – authority/authorship; spiritual/political/pastoral power; sacred/secular/individual/collective history; interior/exterior discipline; and religious/civic community – and aims to understand their semantic transformation. Several strategies will be adopted: case studies; comparative studies; cross-border influences and transnational legacies; mobility and pilgrimage patterns; and the penetration and innovation of prophetic models (e.g. Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena), both built and perceived.
The project aims to create a theoretical account of female prophecy in 16th century Italy, Spain and England as a key to understanding early modern religion. It expands and deepens Weber’s theory by demonstrating women’s ambition and capacity to appropriate prophecy as a creative revolutionary force of history. The project identifies Italian ‘living saints’ and humanists; Spanish beatas and conversas; and English visionaries as privileged actors of prophetic charisma and challenges assumptions that prophecy responds just to national or local interests and debates. A transnational approach is needed to demonstrate the transfers of knowledge and exchanges in Italy, England and Spain in this era of extensive religious mobility and before the Universal Church was completely divided.
The case studies include the Italian mystic Lucia da Narni, and the humanists Camilla Battista da Varano and Cassandra Fedele; the Spanish beata Maria de Santo Domingo and the conversas Teresa of Ávila and Francisca de los Apóstoles; the English Catholics Elizabeth Barton and Jane Wentworth, and the advocate of the Reformation Anne Askew. By including conversas and women from the tradition of the radical Reformation, the project will demonstrate, on the one hand, how female prophets moved outside confining ecclesiastical frameworks and, on the other hand, their departure from tradition. The analysis of the cases of humanists will illuminate the encounter between religious and secular cultures. By looking at the material and literary exchanges between prophets and prelates across the borders, both in well documented cases like the one of Lucia da Narni and Maria de Santo Domingo, and in less researched cases, the project redefines the idea of confessional mobility.
The analysis will concentrate on the texts written by female prophets and their male counterparts (confessors, hagiographers and devotees), as well as by secular women. The corpus includes sermons, visions, spiritual letters and poems, hagiographies and inquisitorial trials, transcending the opposition between hagiography and history, and between religious and literary production.
There are three main research questions: 1. What was the relationship between female prophets, the ecclesiastical authorities and secular powers that were involved in the early modern religious conflicts? 2. What were the processes of communication and exchange across borders and beliefs ignited by female prophets women that demonstrate the instability of the emerging confessional divisions? 3. What is their neglected contribution to, and inner critique of, the Protestant and Catholic Reformations?
The methodology intertwines history of ideas, the history of concepts, early modern history and feminist political theory. It defines some core concepts forming the prophetic discourse – authority/authorship; spiritual/political/pastoral power; sacred/secular/individual/collective history; interior/exterior discipline; and religious/civic community – and aims to understand their semantic transformation. Several strategies will be adopted: case studies; comparative studies; cross-border influences and transnational legacies; mobility and pilgrimage patterns; and the penetration and innovation of prophetic models (e.g. Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena), both built and perceived.
Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far
The analysis of secondary literature has reconstructed the historical context and the corpus of female prophets. As a result, a wide array of prophetic discourses has been traced, linking the experiences of male and female prophets with those of humanists, nuns, mystics who used prophecy as a mode of authority. Going well beyond the European dimension, prophecy circulated also in the American colonies, Latin America, Japan, and New France.
Regarding the three European countries I have taken as case studies, I have traced connections between Spanish and Italian women prophets, i.e. Maria de Santo Domingo and Lucia da Narni, or Teresa of Avila and her inspirer Catherine of Siena. However what emerged as the driving force of the connections between the prophets was a mode of authority, a discursive practice that enabled the speaker to utter their voice as heterology (to use Simon Critchley’s phrase), that is, as something belonging to the uncreated, i.e. God.
The analysis of the interaction between female prophets and institutions, hagiographers, supporters and opponents showed that prophecy conveyed a rationalization of the prophetic discourse, pushed by the need to ascertain its divine origin. Therefore, as I have shown in the chapter on Mysticism and Discernment of the Spirits in the Counter-Reformation, testing the spirits, discerning their source was a testbed of rationalistic thought, as this operation required a somehow scientific method to proof one’s holiness, and, subsequently, the authenticity and godly inspiration of their revelations.
Interactions have been traced both from below, i.e. among women, and from above, i.e. via institutions. Women engaged in relationships with their fellow prophets thanks to the shared reference to a genealogy of women prophets, such as Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, to the model of Virgin Mary, and to the interpersonal dynamics between women and their communities. For instance, Teresa of Avila developed an original and innovative conception of friendship borrowing both from the Augustinian tradition, the Humanistic one of Cicero and Aristotle, the monastic one, and, notably, from her own experience in the convent, challenging the rising model of civil friendship. Regarding the interactions ‘from above’, for example, the contacts between Maria de Santo Domingo and Lucia da Narni were possible thanks to the work of Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, who patronaged the translation of much of the Italian hagiographic literature into Castilian, of Ercole d’Este, duke of Ferrara who promoted the cause of Lucia da Narni and spread her fame at the European level, and of the Dominicans, which favoured the rise of women prophets within their spiritual family as legitimation of their order vis a vis the papacy, civil powers and the people.
The secondary objective of the project is conceptual innovation on female prophecy from a gender perspective. What has emerged is the presence of processes of women’s subjectivation, to which contributed male confessors, scribes, martyrologists and political and ecclesiastical authorities. The construction of women’s authority as God’s spokespersons was enhanced by a complex interplay between Biblical references, original visions, apocalyptic expectations, scriptural reinterpretations and miraculous gestures.
Another secondary objective of this project, methodological opening in religious history, that is, to break with methodological nationalism and methodological confessionalism in the study of female prophecy, opening avenues for transnational and trans-confessional research in this field. The analysis shows the influence of the alumbrado movement in Spain on the Dominican prophetic experiences, or at least on its narrative, and of the converso background shaping the life and visions of Teresa of Avila. The impact of the Anglican reformation on Mary Ward’s attempt to recatholicize England intertwines with her profound connection with God in a personal and unmediated sense, unveiling the continuities with the Lutheran conception of the relationship between the believer and the divinity.
Women’s prophecies dealt with historical situations local to those women but also aimed to reach and convert people at the level of the whole church. Thus, for instance, the case of Lucia da Narni could resonate far from home, as in Spain, where the miracle performed by Savonarola brought together two women prophets. The universal design of salvation propagated by
Prophecy is not only the transfer of divine knowledge to the people but also a transfer of knowledge among human beings. Cross-border legacies, mobility, religious, political and intellectual networks, exchanges between women prophets and their milieu are testified, for example, by the wanderings of Mary Ward, by the letter writing of Cassandra Fedele, a humanist with a deep theological elaboration and prophetic inspiration, and by the foundation of convents throughout Spain by Teresa of Avila, whose action became the model of female sanctity in the seventeenth century.
Regarding the three European countries I have taken as case studies, I have traced connections between Spanish and Italian women prophets, i.e. Maria de Santo Domingo and Lucia da Narni, or Teresa of Avila and her inspirer Catherine of Siena. However what emerged as the driving force of the connections between the prophets was a mode of authority, a discursive practice that enabled the speaker to utter their voice as heterology (to use Simon Critchley’s phrase), that is, as something belonging to the uncreated, i.e. God.
The analysis of the interaction between female prophets and institutions, hagiographers, supporters and opponents showed that prophecy conveyed a rationalization of the prophetic discourse, pushed by the need to ascertain its divine origin. Therefore, as I have shown in the chapter on Mysticism and Discernment of the Spirits in the Counter-Reformation, testing the spirits, discerning their source was a testbed of rationalistic thought, as this operation required a somehow scientific method to proof one’s holiness, and, subsequently, the authenticity and godly inspiration of their revelations.
Interactions have been traced both from below, i.e. among women, and from above, i.e. via institutions. Women engaged in relationships with their fellow prophets thanks to the shared reference to a genealogy of women prophets, such as Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, to the model of Virgin Mary, and to the interpersonal dynamics between women and their communities. For instance, Teresa of Avila developed an original and innovative conception of friendship borrowing both from the Augustinian tradition, the Humanistic one of Cicero and Aristotle, the monastic one, and, notably, from her own experience in the convent, challenging the rising model of civil friendship. Regarding the interactions ‘from above’, for example, the contacts between Maria de Santo Domingo and Lucia da Narni were possible thanks to the work of Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, who patronaged the translation of much of the Italian hagiographic literature into Castilian, of Ercole d’Este, duke of Ferrara who promoted the cause of Lucia da Narni and spread her fame at the European level, and of the Dominicans, which favoured the rise of women prophets within their spiritual family as legitimation of their order vis a vis the papacy, civil powers and the people.
The secondary objective of the project is conceptual innovation on female prophecy from a gender perspective. What has emerged is the presence of processes of women’s subjectivation, to which contributed male confessors, scribes, martyrologists and political and ecclesiastical authorities. The construction of women’s authority as God’s spokespersons was enhanced by a complex interplay between Biblical references, original visions, apocalyptic expectations, scriptural reinterpretations and miraculous gestures.
Another secondary objective of this project, methodological opening in religious history, that is, to break with methodological nationalism and methodological confessionalism in the study of female prophecy, opening avenues for transnational and trans-confessional research in this field. The analysis shows the influence of the alumbrado movement in Spain on the Dominican prophetic experiences, or at least on its narrative, and of the converso background shaping the life and visions of Teresa of Avila. The impact of the Anglican reformation on Mary Ward’s attempt to recatholicize England intertwines with her profound connection with God in a personal and unmediated sense, unveiling the continuities with the Lutheran conception of the relationship between the believer and the divinity.
Women’s prophecies dealt with historical situations local to those women but also aimed to reach and convert people at the level of the whole church. Thus, for instance, the case of Lucia da Narni could resonate far from home, as in Spain, where the miracle performed by Savonarola brought together two women prophets. The universal design of salvation propagated by
Prophecy is not only the transfer of divine knowledge to the people but also a transfer of knowledge among human beings. Cross-border legacies, mobility, religious, political and intellectual networks, exchanges between women prophets and their milieu are testified, for example, by the wanderings of Mary Ward, by the letter writing of Cassandra Fedele, a humanist with a deep theological elaboration and prophetic inspiration, and by the foundation of convents throughout Spain by Teresa of Avila, whose action became the model of female sanctity in the seventeenth century.
Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)
Context analysis and literary review have resulted in a thorough literary review and reconstruction of the historical, religious and political context, detecting the impact of female prophetic voices in early modern religion and their contribution to/critique of processes of reform. Cappuccilli has reconstructed the role of the religious orders in fostering or challenging the prophetic ambitions of Fps. The outcome has been a full framing of the historical context in which the Spanish, Italian and English prophets acted: the Spanish Golden Age, and the Counter-Reformation scenario under Philip II; the Italian wars, the ferments of reform before the Lutheran schism, the Tridentine paradigm and the heretical movements; the Anglican reformation and the English civil war. Contemporary accounts and modern secondary literature has been scrutinized, related to both the religious and the political aspects of these historical conjunctures, including the role of women and their contribution to shaping early modern reformations.
The research has shown the need to abandon the categories of center and periphery in the reconstruction of the trajectories of the reform of the early modern age, especially in its Catholic translation, to grasp its European dimension, that is, the fact that it is a reform that sees a limit in the mobility of women in addition to the opportunity of the mission. It is also the way to give shape to an oblique and at the same time internal look at the debates around some founding concepts of modernity, which travel across borders also thanks to the voice of women prophets, unruly in the eyes of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Another outcome is the definition of early modern individuality through the voice of women prophets. A process of formation of individuality progresses under the shape of a contested subject: not only no linear process was in place, but neither a one-sided individuality was its outcome. Neither fully open, porous and relational, but often secluded and wilfully isolated selves, never identical to themselves. No identities were under constructions, but precarious manifestations of incomplete individuality, ready to promote their authority and dismiss it at the very same time.
Women’s prophetic speech is a peculiar mode of expression that from a marginal perspective can pierce the heart – using an image dear to many mystics – of the issue at stake. It is then a practice that questions the mediation of the pastor with God and established a direct communication – and here can emerge a subject, claiming this communication as a unique prerogative but also as something that is achievable by anyone – and not just by the ordained clergy. When mystics received prophetic gifts, the received revelation demanded that they break the barriers of the private for it to be uttered publicly. Prophecy contributes to the formation of an individuality both unique and identifiable in others. Prophecy implies hereby an affirmation of the self, but was also erasure of it, ultimate expropriation of the speech from its source and attribution to a higher auctor. It is not only an example of the deeply fractured, cracked nature of femininity intended as “an internalization of inscribed inferiority”, or as the construction of women as social opposite of men, that is of a sex, as Joan Kelly argued, but also a demonstration of the use of that topos of inferiority as a representation, as something that did not necessarily question women’s authority, but definitely established a special relationship with the divine grace.
As a way to assert power by representing oneself as ‘powerless’, channels, chosen vessels of God, members of the fragile sex but heads of religious communities and intermediaries with the civil courts and ecclesiastical institutions, caught in a repeated negotiation with male authorities, confessors, hagiographers and other women, prophets provide a partial gaze on the internal tension that developed within the idea of woman and the crooked and even blocked paths of her identity-formation.
The research has shown the need to abandon the categories of center and periphery in the reconstruction of the trajectories of the reform of the early modern age, especially in its Catholic translation, to grasp its European dimension, that is, the fact that it is a reform that sees a limit in the mobility of women in addition to the opportunity of the mission. It is also the way to give shape to an oblique and at the same time internal look at the debates around some founding concepts of modernity, which travel across borders also thanks to the voice of women prophets, unruly in the eyes of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Another outcome is the definition of early modern individuality through the voice of women prophets. A process of formation of individuality progresses under the shape of a contested subject: not only no linear process was in place, but neither a one-sided individuality was its outcome. Neither fully open, porous and relational, but often secluded and wilfully isolated selves, never identical to themselves. No identities were under constructions, but precarious manifestations of incomplete individuality, ready to promote their authority and dismiss it at the very same time.
Women’s prophetic speech is a peculiar mode of expression that from a marginal perspective can pierce the heart – using an image dear to many mystics – of the issue at stake. It is then a practice that questions the mediation of the pastor with God and established a direct communication – and here can emerge a subject, claiming this communication as a unique prerogative but also as something that is achievable by anyone – and not just by the ordained clergy. When mystics received prophetic gifts, the received revelation demanded that they break the barriers of the private for it to be uttered publicly. Prophecy contributes to the formation of an individuality both unique and identifiable in others. Prophecy implies hereby an affirmation of the self, but was also erasure of it, ultimate expropriation of the speech from its source and attribution to a higher auctor. It is not only an example of the deeply fractured, cracked nature of femininity intended as “an internalization of inscribed inferiority”, or as the construction of women as social opposite of men, that is of a sex, as Joan Kelly argued, but also a demonstration of the use of that topos of inferiority as a representation, as something that did not necessarily question women’s authority, but definitely established a special relationship with the divine grace.
As a way to assert power by representing oneself as ‘powerless’, channels, chosen vessels of God, members of the fragile sex but heads of religious communities and intermediaries with the civil courts and ecclesiastical institutions, caught in a repeated negotiation with male authorities, confessors, hagiographers and other women, prophets provide a partial gaze on the internal tension that developed within the idea of woman and the crooked and even blocked paths of her identity-formation.