The Rise and Fall of a Savonarolan Visionary:
Lucia Brocadelli’s Contribution
to the Piagnone Movement*
By Tamar Herzig|
The reform movement inspired by the charismatic preacher fra Girolamo Savonarola of Ferrara (1452–1498) came into existence in the last decade of the
fifteenth century. Between 1494 and 1498, Savonarola and his followers, the
Piagnoni (“Weepers,” a derogatory term coined by their adversaries), at-
* I thank my advisors, Michael Heyd and Moshe Sluhovsky, and the members of
my dissertation committee, Esther Cohen, Rivka Feldhai, Aviad Kleinberg, and E.
Ann Matter. I am grateful to Ann Matter and Gabriella Zarri for sharing their recent
work on Lucia with me, and to Father Ramon Hernández of the AGOP, Don Enrico
Peverada of the ASDF, Stefania Pastore and John Tedeschi for their kind assistance.
Support from the Newberry Library, Memorial Library (University of Wisconsin), and
Lafer Center for Women’s Studies made the research for this essay possible. An earlier
version was presented at the workshop “New Approaches for Studying Women’s History” (Shfayim, Israel, May 2002). – Abbreviations: – AISP|: Archivio italiano per la
storia della pieta`. – AGOP: Archivio Generalizio dell’Ordine dei Predicatori, Convento
di Santa Sabina, Rome. – ASDF/SCS: Archivio Storico Diocesano, Ferrara, fondo
Santa Caterina da Siena. – BCR: Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome. – Benavent, “El Tratado|”: Júlia Benavent, “El Tratado de milagros| de Fra Girolamo Savonarola: El códice de
Valencia y la tradición manuscrita,” in: MD| n.s. 28 (1997), pp.|5–146. – BNCF: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence. – DBI|: Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Rome
1960- . – Lettere|: Roberto Ridolfi (ed.), Le lettere di Girolamo Savonarola, Florence
1933. – Ginori Conti: La vita del beato Ieronimo Savonarola scritta da un anonimo del
sec. XVI e gia` attribuita a fra Pacifico Burlamacchi, ed. Piero Ginori Conti and Roberto
Ridolfi, Florence 1937. – Misc. sav.| 1: BNCF, Ms. Magl. XXXV, 205, Miscellanea savonaroliana.| – Misc. sav.| 2: Archivio Beato Angelico, Convento di Santa Maria sopra
Minerva, Rome, Ms. Rep. III, 280, Miscellanea savonaroliana. – Narratione|: Giacomo
Marcianese, Narratione della nascita`, vita e morte della B. Lucia da Narni dell’ordine di
San Domenico, fondatrice del monastero di Santa Caterina da Siena di Ferrara, Ferrara
1640. – MD|: Memorie Domenicane. – Polizzotto, Elect Nation|: Lorenzo Polizzotto,
The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence 1494–1545, Oxford 1994. –
Polizzotto, “When Saints Fall Out”: Lorenzo Polizzotto, “When Saints Fall Out: Women and the Savonarolan Reform in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence,” in: Renaissance Quarterly| 46:|3 (Autumn 1993), pp.|486–525. – Ridolfi, Vita|: Roberto Ridolfi,
‘Vita|’ di Girolamo Savonarola, rpt. of 6th edition, Florence 1997. – RIS|: L. A. Muratori
(ed.): Rerum italicarum scriptores, 25 vols. in 28, Milan 1723–1751. – Zarri, Sante vive|:
Gabriella Zarri, Le sante vive: Profezie di corte e devozione femminile tra ’400 e ’500,
Turin 1990.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
35
tempted to eradicate sodomy, prostitution, gambling, immodest art, astrology, and other kinds of “immorality” in Florence. Fra Girolamo preached
against tyranny and social injustice, supported the implementation of the Observant rule in Dominican monasteries and convents, and fiercely opposed ecclesiastical corruption. Basing his call for the reform of Church and society
on divine revelations, he urged both the clergy and the laity to do penance.
Savonarola’s zealous reform, and especially his uncompromising criticism
of papal corruption, soon brought an end to his prophetic mission in Florence. When he did not comply with Pope Alexander VI’s orders, Savonarola
was arrested, convicted of heresy, hanged, and then burned at the stake in
Piazza Signoria on 23 May 1498. From then on, the Piagnoni underwent severe persecution. No longer constituting an organized movement, small underground Savonarolan circles continued to operate throughout central and
northern Italy. They cultivated devotion to Savonarola as a martyr and a prophet, published his writings, composed works advocating his religious
thought, and allied themselves with visionaries who called for Church reform
and predicted the approaching renovation of Christendom. Savonarola’s legacy thus exercised a significant influence throughout the Cinquecento.1
The question of women’s participation in the Savonarolan reform has engaged scholars for some decades.2 Recent studies have analyzed women’s
contributions to the Piagnone camp in Florence: Lorenzo Polizzotto and
others have shown that the reform of women constituted an important element of Savonarola’s campaign in Florence and have investigated Tuscan Savonarolans’ attempts to mobilize female mystics for the Savonarolan cause
after their leader’s execution. Savonarola’s female followers in other regions
of Italy, however, have received almost no scholarly attention.3 This essay fo1. See two excellent surveys of recent work on Savonarola and his movement: Donald Weinstein, “Hagiography, Demonology, Biography: Savonarola Studies Today,”
in: Journal of Modern History| 63 (September 1991), pp.|483–503; and Konrad Eisenbichler, “Savonarola Studies in Italy on the 500th Anniversary of the Friar’s Death,”
in: Renaissance Quarterly| 52:|2 (Summer 1999), pp.|487–495.
2. Domenico Di Agresti, Sviluppi della riforma monastica savonaroliana, Florence
1980; F. W. Kent, “A Proposal by Savonarola for the Self-Reform of Florentine Women (March 1496),” in: MD| n.s. 14 (1983), pp.|335–341; Adriana Valerio, Domenica
da Paradiso. Profezia e politica in una mistica del Rinascimento, Spoleto 1992; Polizzotto, “When Saints Fall Out”; id., “Savonarola, Savonaroliani e la riforma della donna,”
in Gian Carlo Garfagnini (ed.): Studi savonaroliani verso il quinto centenario, Florence
1996, pp.|229–244.
3. Gabriella Zarri’s important studies of women’s religiosity in northern and central
Italy constitute the main contribution to the study of the female Savonarolan move-
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
36
Lucia Brocadelli
cuses on one Savonarolan visionary, Lucia Brocadelli, who was active first in
Viterbo and then in Ferrara. By examining her role in the Savonarolan reform
in the late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento, I hope to deepen our understanding of charismatic female mystics’ problematic position in the Piagnone
movement.
I.
Lucia Brocadelli was one of the famous “living saints” of the early modern
period.4 Born in Narni in 1476, she desired from childhood to emulate Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), the most famous woman mystic affiliated with the Dominican order. Known for her political prophecies and attempts to secure the
pope’s return to Rome, Catherine was the first female saint, and the first Dominican, to exhibit the signs of the stigmata. Though Lucia was forced to
marry in 1490, she insisted on a chaste relationship with her husband, and in
1494 she became a Dominican penitent. In 1495, she was accepted into the
tertiaries’ house in Rome in which Saint Catherine herself had lived. In 1496
the Master General of the Dominican order, Gioacchino Torriani, sent her to
reform a house of Dominican tertiaries in Viterbo. Shortly after arriving
there, Lucia miraculously received the stigmata. Her wounds, invisible at
first, began to bleed during Passion Week of the same year. Lucia claimed
that Saint Catherine had made these wounds visible so that they could serve
as a testimony for the authenticity of Catherine’s own stigmata, which was
contested by Franciscan theologians in the Quattrocento. In the next
few years, the wounds of Lucia’s stigmata were inspected by renowned inquisitors – such as the Dominican Giovanni Cagnazzo of Tabia, inquisitor of
Bologna – and physicians, who attested to their authenticity. Accounts of this
miracle as well as of Lucia’s divine revelations, which spread throughout
ment in these regions to date. See especially Zarri, “Il Carteggio tra don Leone Bartolini e un gruppo di gentildonne bolognesi negli anni del Concilio di Trento (1545–1563):
Alla ricerca di una vita spirituale,” in: AISP| 7 (1986), pp.|1–550; ead., “Colomba da
Rieti e i movimenti religiosi femminili del suo tempo,” in Giovanna Casagrande and
Enrico Menestò (ed.): Una santa, una citta`. Atti del Convegno storico nel quinto centenario della venuta a Perugia di Colomba da Rieti, Spoleto 1991, pp.|89–108; ead., “Lucia
da Narni e il movimento femminile savonaroliano,” in Gigliola Fragnito and Mario
Miegge (ed.): Girolamo Savonarola da Ferrara all’Europe, Florence 2001, pp.|99–116.
4. Zarri coined the term “living saints.” See Zarri, Sante vive, in which she delineates the important position of living holy women in Renaissance Italy.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
37
Italy, soon came to the attention of Ercole I d’Este (1431–1505), Duke of Ferrara.
Lucia’s stigmata, ecstasies, and visions fascinated Ercole, who went out of
his way to bring the holy woman to his duchy despite the reluctance of the Viterbensi to let go of her. Ercole pled his case in the papal court, bribed the podestà of Viterbo, and in April 1499 succeeded in smuggling Lucia to Ferrara
in a basket of linen on the back of a mule. In Ferrara, she became the prioress
of a community of tertiaries entitled Santa Caterina da Siena after her patron
saint. Ercole built a new edifice for Lucia’s convent, to which he donated precious relics and lavish religious works of art. When, in 1501, she encountered
problems in recruiting novices for her community, he turned to Pope Alexander VI and his daughter, Lucrezia Borgia (future wife of Ercole’s son Alfonso), to ensure that all the tertiaries that Lucia wished to have in her convent
entered it.5
As long as Ercole lived, Lucia enjoyed a privileged status in Ferrara and
was venerated throughout Italy and beyond. The stained bandages of her
stigmata were cherished as relics at the French court.6 When Ercole died in
1505, her position changed dramatically. Word began to spread that her stigmata had disappeared, whereupon her Dominican superiors accused her of
having fabricated them. The women of her community turned against her;
one of them actually tried to stab her. Stripped of her privileges, she became a
virtual prisoner in her own convent until her death almost forty years later.
When Lucia died in 1544, she left behind a book of her divine revelations,
called Le rivelazioni, which she wrote down, in her own hand, during the last
year of her life. The book attests to her familiarity with the Christian visionary tradition and discloses her anticipation of divine recognition in the midst
of her lengthy tribulations. It may have been because of Le rivelazioni| that
the women in her community changed their minds about her.7 In any case,
after her death Lucia gradually regained her former reputation as a holy wo5. For Lucia’s biography, see Adriano Prosperi, “Brocadelli (Broccadelli), Lucia,”
in: DBI| 14, pp.|381–383; E. Ann Matter, “Prophetic Patronage as Repression: Lucia
Brocadelli da Narni and Ercole d’Este,” in Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (ed.):
Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion 1000–1500,
Cambridge 1995, p.|169.
6. Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole D’Este, 1471–1505, and the Invention
of a Ducal Capital, Cambridge 1996, p.|176.
7. E. Ann Matter, Armando Maggi, and Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner, “Le rivelazioni|
of Lucia Brocadelli da Narni,” in: Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum| 71 (2001), pp.|311–
344.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
38
Lucia Brocadelli
man, and Dominican friars began gathering testimonies of her saintly life.
This was part of the Dominican order’s systematic attempts to compile hagiographies of its holy men and women, and of her community’s efforts to initiate a process of beatification for Lucia. The first printed hagiographical account of her appeared in 1577 in Serafino Razzi’s compilation of Dominican
saints’ lives, and two full Vitae| were published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1710, a little more than two hundred years after she was
accused of feigning sanctity, Lucia was beatified – an honor denied to most
other living saints of the early Cinquecento.8
Lucia’s first hagiographers do not allude to her association with Savonarolan circles, or to her possible participation in their reform. Both the late sixteenth-century manuscripts compiled by Italian Piagnoni and more recent
editions of Savonarola’s biography are silent on the matter. The voluminous
modern studies of the Savonarolan movement do not mention Lucia at all. In
their recent studies of Lucia, however, Gabriella Zarri, E. Ann Matter, and
others have pointed to the impact of Savonarola’s ideas on Le rivelazioni| and
have suggested that Ferrarese Savonarolans played a role in promoting Lucia’s saintly reputation after 1498.9 Following Zarri’s and Matter’s lead, I
draw in the first part of this essay on additional documentary evidence,
hitherto overlooked by scholars of the Savonarolan movement, to establish
Lucia’s central position in the Piagnone movement. I propose that she was already affiliated with the movement while she resided in Viterbo. Moreover, I
argue that she was not only attracted to Savonarola’s spirituality and backed
by his followers but beyond doubt actively involved in the propagation of his
cult in Ferrara. In the second part of the essay, I trace the ways in which Lucia’s contribution was eventually omitted from documents written by lateCinquecento Piagnoni, which became the standard sources for the study of
the Savonarolan movement – and as a consequence, ignored by modern scholars.
8. Matter, “Prophetic Patronage,” p.|173.
9. Matter, Maggi, Lehmijoki-Gardner, and Zarri, “Lucia Brocadelli da Narni: Riscoperta di un manoscritto pavese,” in: Bollettino della societa` pavese di storia patria|
(2000), esp. pp.|177, 189–199; Zarri, “Lucia,” pp.|99–116.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
39
II.
It was probably during her early years in Viterbo that Lucia first expressed
her sympathies for Savonarola’s reform and used her newly-acquired status as
a live holy woman to support his reformatory campaign. Indeed, as Giuseppe
Signorelli argues, Lucia can probably be identified with the woman of Viterbo
mentioned in Luca Landucci’s diary as declaring in April 1496, alluding to Savonarola, that the true prophet was currently in Florence.10 Edmund Gardner
suggests that Lucia may have been the nun of Viterbo who, according to a
Ferrarese chronicler, reported her vision of Savonarola being summoned to
Paradise by singing angels at the hour of his execution.11
Further support for the contention that Lucia was related to the Savonarolan movement in those years derives from the fact that prominent followers of
fra Girolamo visited her in Viterbo. As early as 1497, only a few months after
her arrival, fra Jacopo da Sicilia (c. 1462–1530), then serving as the Vicar
General of the Tusco-Roman Province of the Dominican order, came to see
her. Fra Jacopo, Savonarola’s friend and admirer, was one of the key figures
of the Piagnone reform in central Italy. Lucia’s seventeenth-century hagiographer, Giacomo Marcianese, does not mention his important role in the Savonarolan movement. But he does describe at length fra Jacopo’s encounter with
Lucia, in which he witnessed one of her raptures. When she unmasked an impostor pretending to be a bishop, he was astonished by her divine gift of revealing people’s hidden secrets. As we shall see, fra Jacopo, who continued to
keep track of Lucia’s spiritual experiences after she left Viterbo, had ties with
other female visionaries who supported the Savonarolan reform.12
10. Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 di Luca Landucci continuato da un anonimo
fino al 1542, ed. I. Del Badia, Florence 1883, pp.|128–129; Giuseppe Signorelli, Viterbo
nella storia della Chiesa, 5 vols., Viterbo 1986, 2:|1, pp.|213–214.
11. Diario ferrarese dall’anno 1409 sino al 1502 di autori incerti, in: RIS 24, p.|353;
Edmund G. Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara: A Study in the Poetry, Religion and
Politics of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries, New York 1968, p.|368, n.|1.
12. Narratione, pp.|127–128. Jacopo (or Giacomo) da Sicilia probably met Savonarola in Lombardy before the latter settled in Florence. When his superiors appointed
him Vicar General of the Tusco-Roman Province in 1496 as part of their effort to reduce Savonarola’s influence, fra Jacopo, without disobeying them, remained loyal to
Savonarola. Benavent, “El Tratado,” pp. 21–22, n.|11; ead., “Las reliquias de fra Girolamo Savonarola,” in: MD| n.s. 29 (1998), p.|164; Polizzotto, Elect Nation, pp.|173,
184, 190–191, 326–329. On fra Jacopo’s interest in Savonarolan visionaries, see below.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
40
Lucia Brocadelli
Another Dominican, Sebastiano Bontempi da Perugia (d. 1521), visited Lucia in Viterbo in 1499, and inspected the wounds of her stigmata.13 By the
time this friar visited Viterbo, Ercole d’Este’s machinations to bring Lucia to
Ferrara had already aroused opposition from the Viterbensi, and Bontempi
was personally involved in their attempts to prevent Lucia’s departure. Like
fra Jacopo, Bontempi was also interested in other female mystics sympathetic
to the Savonarolan cause. He served as the confessor of Colomba da Rieti
(1467–1501), who was active in Perugia in the last decade of the fifteenth century. In his hagiography of Colomba, composed shortly after her demise,
Bontempi relates that he was accused of Savonarolism and consequently
barred from administering confession to the holy woman.14 In addition to describing his acquaintance with Lucia, Bontempi underscores her friendship
with Colomba, the most famous living saint before the Council of Trent affiliated with the Savonarolan movement. Colomba was known for her support
of Church reform of the type envisioned by fra Girolamo. She exhorted the
citizens of Perugia to pursue the ideal of “good [Christian] living” (ben vivere|), which was a central theme in Savonarola’s preaching and constituted
an important element of the Piagnone reform.15 According to Savonarolan
sources, fra Girolamo appeared to her while she was in rapture at the hour of
his execution, and Bontempi later propagated this apparition in Piagnone cir-
13. Sebastiano Bontempi, Vita Beatae Columbae latino idiomate composita a` R. F.
Sebastiano confessario ipsius, AGOP, Ms. Sez. X, 873, fol.|85v.
14. Ibid., fols.|95r–96v. Savonarola’s influence is evident in Bontempi’s use of the
theme of the Flood and the mystical Ark (ibid., fol.|1r and passim; noted in Zarri, Sante
vive, pp.|158–159, n.|264), which appears in the writings of other Savonarolans in the
early Cinquecento. See Sermones Reveren. P. Fratris Hieronymi Savonarole, in adventu
Domini super archam Noe, Venice 1536, passim; Ridolfi, Vita, p.|295; Polizzotto, Elect
Nation, p.|124. On Bontempi, see V. I. Comparato, “Bontempi, Sebastiano,” in: DBI|
12, pp.|437–438.
15. One Perugian chronicler mentions Colomba’s call for ben vivere. See Ariodante
Fabretti (ed.): Cronaca della citta` di Perugia dal 1492 al 1503 di Francesco Matarazzo della Maturanzo, in: Archivio storico italiano| 16:|2 (1851), p.|5; cf. Savonarola, “Regola del
ben vivere,” in his Operette spirituali, ed. Mario Ferrara, Rome 1976, pp.|189–194; id.,
Verita` della profezia, ed. Claudio Leonardi, Florence 1997, p.|166; Lettere, passim. On
the evolution of the ideal of ben vivere| in Savonarola’s thought and its medieval roots,
see Maria Pia Paoli, “Sant’Antonino ‘Vere pastor et bonus pastor’: Storia e mito di un
modello”; and Claudio Leonardi, “La crisi della cristianità medievale. Il ruolo della
profezia e Girolamo Savonarola,” in Gian Carlo Garfagnini and Giuseppe Picone
(ed.): Verso Savonarola. Misticismo, profezie, ambiti riformistici fra medioevo ed eta` moderna, Florence 1999, esp. pp.|20–23, 110–111, 132.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
41
cles.16 After her demise, the convent Colomba had founded in Perugia remained an important center of Savonarolan devotion. In the late Cinquecento, some of the prominent male Savonarolans in that city were involved in Colomba’s beatification process.17
Colomba’s admiration of Lucia is an important theme in Bontempi’s Vita.
In chapter forty-two, he recounts that Carletto della Corbara of Viterbo came
to question Colomba about Lucia’s stigmata. Colomba affirmed that Lucia’s
visible wounds were a true manifestation of godly caritas. When asked to send
Lucia edifying letters, Colomba humbly replied that she felt unworthy of
writing this kind of missive to such a saintly bride of Christ.18 In 1499, Bontempi transmitted Colomba’s message to Lucia, advising her not to leave Viterbo, where she had first received the divine gift of the stigmata.19 When another person asked Colomba to receive him as her spiritual son, she advised
him to turn to Lucia, who was far more worthy of her religious status than
Colomba herself.20
Unquestionably, the most famous person who revered both Lucia and Colomba was Ercole d’Este. In a 1501 pamphlet he composed, dedicated mainly
to affirming the authenticity of Lucia’s stigmata, Ercole also lauded Colomba’s miraculous abstinence from food and subsistence on the Eucharist alone.
16. Benavent, “El Tratado,” pp.|23–24, 72.
17. Baleoneus Astur, Colomba da Rieti. ‘La seconda Caterina da Siena’ 1467–1501,
Rome 1967, p.|233, n.|77; Paolo Monacchia, “La Beata Colomba nella documentazione perugina,” in: Una santa| (n. 3), pp.|226–228; cf. Paolo Simoncelli, “Momenti e
figure del savonarolismo romano,” in: Critica storica| n.s. 11 (1974), pp.|47–82.
18. Bontempi, fols.|84r–85v: “.|.|. Lucia de Narnea .|.|. que destimavit ei litteras proscriptas propria manu duobus versibus residuum vero manu presidentis per quas commendabat probum virum dominum Carlectum d’ Corbara, oraturum ex fide coram .|.|.
quod videlicet novissime contigerat Viterbii, religiosam .|.|. recepisse evidentius insignia
passionis Christi (stigmata vocant) .|.|.|. Huc igitur venisse, ut cautius sciscitaretur beatam Columbam an in veritate adeo fuerit .|.|.|. Denique [Columba] dixit: ‘Laetor de profecto sororis mea, hec quidem sunt signa caritatis Dei .|.|.|.’ Rogabat postremo responsivas litteras reddi exortatorie seu admonitionis .|.|. ‘Absit,’ inquit, ‘a me ancillas Christi
refertas donis optimis meis insipid verbulis commonefacere.’” In this and all subsequent
quotations, I have modernized the spelling and punctuation.
19. Ibid, fol.|85v: “.|.|. unum de confessoribus illuc transmisit, qui verbo suaderet,
dummodo voluntati divine non obsisteret, Civitatem ipsam sua praesentia letificasse,
ubi tam evidens donum et excellens sortita fuerat .|.|.|.”
20. Ibid: “Aliquis quidam humiliter precabatur beatam Columbam ut eum in spiritualem filium adoptasset .|.|., dixit: ‘Sorori Lucie adhereas que securiora Christi vestigia
tenet.’” Bontempi also hints that people in the same circles criticized Colomba’s and
Lucia’s spirituality (ibid., fols.|88r–88v).
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
42
Lucia Brocadelli
He described it as one of the miracles with which God strengthened the faith
of the pious.21 Shortly after Colomba’s death, according to Bontempi, Ercole
reported Lucia’s vision of Colomba’s soul ascending to heaven. This report
enhanced the saintly reputations of both the recently-deceased Umbrian mystic and Lucia.22
We do not know whether Ercole ever met Colomba, but he certainly came
to know Lucia – and after two years of persistent efforts, succeeded in bringing her to Ferrara. Though he was partly motivated by the desire to have his
own court prophetess,23 Ercole’s endeavors to secure Lucia’s presence in Ferrara should also be viewed in the light of his pronounced Savonarolan sympathies. The duke and other members of his household had been in contact with
fra Girolamo, a native of Ferrara, since 1495. Their correspondence with
him, as well as the role of the Este court in the dissemination of Savonarola’s
works in northern Italy, are well known.24 On more than one occasion Ercole
sought Savonarola’s political advice. The friar’s influence accounts for the
duke’s patronage of religious projects and his attempts to institute moral reforms in Ferrara in the late 1490s. In a letter of 27 April 1496, fra Girolamo
praised the duke for his success in purging Ferrara from sin.25 Although Ercole prudently avoided a conflict with Alexander VI once the conflict between
the pope and Savonarola became inevitable, in the spring of 1498 he wrote repeatedly to the Florentine Signoria asking that the friar be released from prison. His letters had no effect. The Ferrarese diarist Bernardino Zambotti describes Ercole’s distress over fra Girolamo’s tragic end.26
21. The first edition of this pamphlet appeared in German and Latin in Nuremberg
in 1501. I consulted the second edition, Wunderbarliche geschichten, die do geschehen
synt von goystlichen wybs personen in disen Joren, Strasburg 1502 (unpaginated). The
pamphlet was also translated into Spanish. Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, Historia de la
reforma de la provincia de España 1450 -1550, Rome 1939, p.|130.
22. Bontempi, fol.|122r.
23. See the documents in: Luigi Alberto Gandini, Sulla venuta in Ferrara della Beata
Suor Lucia da Narni del terzo ordine di S. Domenico. Sue lettere ed altri documenti inediti
1497–98-99, Modena 1901. Zarri sets Ercole’s desire to bring Lucia to Ferrara in the
broader context of Renaissance rulers’ patronage of court prophetesses. Sante vive,
pp.|51–85. See also Matter, “Prophetic Patronage,” pp.|169–170; Marco Folin, “Finte
stigmate, monache e ossa di morti. Sul ‘buon uso della religione’ in alcune lettere di Ercole I d’Este e Felino Sandei,” in: AISP| 11 (1998), pp.|185–194.
24. Luciano Chiappini, “Girolamo Savonarola ed Ercole I d’Este,” in: Atti e Memoria della Deputazione Ferrarese di storia patria| n.s. 7, 3 (1952), pp.|45–53.
25. Lettere, pp.|228–231, 235–238 and passim; Tuohy (n. 6), pp.|172–185.
26. Bernardino Zambotti, Diario ferrarese dall’anno 1476 sino al 1504, in: RIS| 24,
p.|281.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
43
Once the publication of Savonarola’s works was banned in Florence in
1498, Ercole’s Savonarolan sympathies enabled the friar’s followers to publish
them in Ferrara. As Patrick Macey has recently shown, in 1503 Ercole commissioned a setting of a motet in veneration of Savonarola, which echoed the
friar’s famous meditation on the psalm Miserere mei Deus. In the first years of
the Cinquecento, Ercole also commissioned works of art influenced by Savonarola’s religious ideals.27 Thus Ercole was involved in ongoing efforts to turn
his city into a center of Savonarolan spirituality. His investment in bringing
Lucia to Ferrara was clearly part of these efforts. Since Lucia’s reputation as a
Savonarolan visionary had been solidly established while she resided in Viterbo, Ercole’s commitment to Savonarola’s legacy was probably the main reason for his extraordinary efforts to assure her transfer to Ferrara, which he
accomplished a year after fra Girolamo’s death.
From the spring of 1498 on, some of the ardent Piagnoni exiled from Florence found refuge in Ferrara, where Ercole’s sympathetic attitude made it
possible for them to cultivate Savonarolan devotion. These exiled Piagnoni
reported the aftermath of Savonarola’s execution to his Ferrarese followers.
They were probably also the ones who brought fra Girolamo’s first relic to
Ferrara. According to Savonarolan sources, this was a piece of fra Girolamo’s
heart which miraculously was not consumed by the fire when he had been
burned at the stake. Two days after his ashes had been thrown into the Arno,
a Florentine child fished Savonarola’s heart out of the river and brought it to
his Piagnone mother. The precious relic was then divided into three pieces,
and one of them found its way to Ferrara shortly afterwards.28
While maintaining their ties with fra Girolamo’s followers in Florence, the
exiled Piagnoni also collaborated with Ferrarese Savonarolans. Thus they
formed an information channel connecting Savonarolans in central and northern Italy. Among other activities, they enthusiastically propagated the mira-
27. Patrick Macey, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy, Oxford 1998, pp.|4,
184–192; Anna Maria Fioravanti Baraldi, “Ludovico Pittorio e la cultura figurativa a
Ferrara nel primo Cinquecento,” in Marco Bertozzi (ed.): Alla corte degli Estensi. Filosofia, arte e cultura a Ferrara nei secoli XV e XVI, Ferrara 1994, pp.|223–224. For Savonarola’s impact on Giovanfrancesco de Maineri, from whom Ercole commissioned a
painting for Lucia’s convent, see ibid., pp.|220–224; Gandini, “Lucrezia Borgia nell’imminenza delle sue nozze con Alfonso d’Este,” in: Atti e memorie della Deputazione di
storia patria per le provincie di Romagna| ser. 3, 20, (1902), p.|288.
28. Vita del Padre Fra Girolamo Savonarola, AGOP, Ms. Sez. X, 1320b, fols.|125r–
125v.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
44
Lucia Brocadelli
cles that reportedly had taken place thanks to Savonarola’s intercession in
Ferrara in the few years following his execution.29
III.
Two reports on Lucia’s Savonarolan activities in Ferrara reached Florence in
the first months of 1500. There they were copied into a manuscript now in the
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence, codex Magliabechiano XXXV,
205. The Florentine Piagnone fra Jacopo da Sicilia – who in 1497 was among
the first Savonarolans to visit Lucia – compiled this codex in the early Cinquecento. It is the earliest surviving collection of Savonarolan miracles and apparitions known to us.30 The two reports disclose invaluable information about
Lucia’s reception by Savonarolan activists in Ferrara and the role she assumed
in the Ferrarese Savonarolan circle. Unlike other documents in fra Jacopo’s
compilation, however, they were not subsequently integrated into any known
version of the miracles tract (Trattato dei miracoli|) that accompanies Savonarola’s anonymous sixteenth-century Vita, commonly known as the PseudoBurlamacchi.31 For reasons that we shall discuss below, later Savonarolan
writers, Lucia’s biographers, and virtually all modern scholars of the Savonarolan movement have ignored these documents.32
29. The exiled Florentine Tommaso Caiani reported Savonarola’s posthumous
miracles in Ferrara to Florentine Piagnoni (see below). While in Ferrara, he also transmitted news of the miracles that reportedly took place in Tuscany after Savonarola’s
execution to the friar’s northern Italian devotees. Giovanfrancesco Pico, Vita di Hieronymi Savonarolae (volgarizzamento anonimo), ed. Raffaella Castagnola, Florence 1998,
pp.|87–88. The Piagnone Mariano Ughi, who also fled from Florence to Ferrara, cultivated Savonarolan devotion there and collaborated with the local Savonarolan Bernardino da Ferrara. Benavent, “El Tratado,” p.|87, n.|3; Ridolfi, Vita, pp.|192, 199, 234.
30. Giuseppe Schnitzer, Savonarola, trans. E. Rutili, Milan 1931, 2, pp.|485–486,
nn. 109–110; Ridolfi, Vita, p.|384, n.|30.
31. The Pseudo-Burlamacchi text, which incorporated the Trattato dei miracoli, was
based on earlier Savonarolan sources. Its numerous versions were revised by several
second- and third-generation Savonarolans throughout the second half of the Cinquecento. Roberto Ridolfi, Opuscoli di storia letteraria e di erudizione. Savonarola-Machiavelli-Guicciardini-Giannotti, Florence 1942, pp.|3–27; cf. Benavent, “Le biografie antiche di Savonarola,” in: Studi Savonaroliani| (n. 2), pp. 15–21; ead., “El Tratado,” pp.
24–33; Polizzotto, Elect Nation, pp.|324–328; id., “Codici savonaroliani e anti-savonaroliani inediti,” in: MD| n.s. 25 (1994), p.|300.
32. Benavent, the only scholar that I know of who has noticed these documents,
mentions them in a note to the episode of the Spanish priest’s healing. “El Tratado,”
pp.|88–89, n.|4.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
45
The first document is based on an undated letter that a certain Bernardino
da Tosignano sent to the Florentine Piagnone Antonio Corsini, son of Bartolomeo.33 Including general background about Lucia, it focuses on Savonarola’s apparition to this famous mystic. The writer describes Lucia as a visionary
bearing the stigmata, whom Ercole d’Este venerates as a “most holy woman.”
Ercole abducted her from Viterbo and brought her to Ferrara, where he is
currently building a convent for her at great expense. According to this report, Savonarola has appeared to Lucia in her visions “many times”; he has
predicted future events to her, and she is convinced of his sanctity. Once, Savonarola appeared to Lucia and informed her that his niece would visit her on
the following day. Savonarola then commended his niece to Lucia, asking that
she receive her in her convent. On the following day, Savonarola’s niece indeed came to visit Lucia, who recognized her immediately as “the niece of fra
Girolamo the saint” (nipote di fra Girolamo santo|). When the niece expressed
her wish to enter the community, Lucia agreed, telling her that Savonarola
had predicted that she would do so. At the end of their conversation, Lucia
assured the niece that Savonarola was a glorious saint in heaven, as had been
revealed to her in numerous divine apparitions.34
Another report in the Magliabechiano codex, based on a letter that Giovanni da Firenze sent to Bartolomeo Corsini, Antonio’s father, on 13 March
1500, authenticates Savonarola’s apparition to Lucia.35 Giovanni describes
how Ognibene Savonarola, fra Girolamo’s older brother and the father of the
girl who joined Lucia’s convent, confirmed the story reported to him and Sa33. The Florentine Piagnoni Antonio Corsini and his father, Bartolomeo son of
Bertoldo Corsini, were both involved in transmitting the report concerning Lucia’s apparition. Their correspondence with other Savonarolans served as a basis for various
reports that appear in the Magliabechiano codex: Misc. sav. 1, cc.|135v–137r.
34. Ibid., cc.|137r–137v: “[Fra Ieronimo è apparso] a una monaca, laquale ha le
stimmate e fu da Viterbo rapita e condutta per quello duca a Ferrara, e gli disse: ‘Suora,
domani verrà da te una mia nipote .|.|.|.’ L’altro dı̀ vennero alcune donne .|.|. [e] con
questa putta andrano ad visitare detta suora, laquale .|.|. disse: ‘Sei nipote di fra Girolamo santo.’ Lei disse di sı̀ .|.|.|. Allora la detta priora l’accettò, e allora disse questa a
quella putta, che ‘ier mattina quello Santo Ieronimo mi [pre]disse.’ La detta suora disse
‘Figliuola mia, .|.|. fra Girolamo .|.|. è s[an]to’ .|.|. E la suora dice .|.|. che molte volte il
detto santo gli è apparso. Alla quale suora è data grandissima fede dal signore de Ferrara, e tenuta santissima donna .|.|. e a questa già ha fatto un monastero di valuta di più
di £ ventimila.”
35. Giovanni da Firenze may have been Giovanni Carnesecchi, an active Florentine
Savonarolan who had ties with many Dominican Piagnoni and collected some of the
miracles reported in the Magliabechiano codex. On Carnesecchi, see Benavent, “El
Tratado,” pp.|21–22, n.|11.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
46
Lucia Brocadelli
vonarola’s younger brother, fra Maurelio, by Bernardino da Tosignano. He
assured them that Ercole d’Este was convinced that Savonarola had indeed
appeared to Lucia and predicted the profession of Ognibene’s daughter in her
community. According to Ognibene, Lucia wanted all the nuns in Santa Caterina da Siena to call Savonarola “Saint Girolamo”; and that when his own
daughter Veronica joined the community, she received her monastic name,
Sister Girolama, in commemoration of her martyred uncle.36
Composed less than a year after Lucia’s arrival in Ferrara, when her fame
was at its peak, the Magliabechiano documents reveal her authoritative status
within the Savonarolan reform movement. This is most evident in Lucia’s insistence that fra Girolamo be called “Saint Girolamo,” affirming the Piagnoni’s claim that he was indeed a holy martyr. The reliance on the authority of a
female visionary in this context is particularly striking if we compare the Magliabechiano documents with another contemporary account of fra Girolamo’s apparition to a Savonarolan mystic. In the Vita| of the Milanese Augustinian nun Arcangela Panigarola (1468–1525) by Gian Antonio Belloti, Saint
Gregory the Great, and the Blessed Amadeo Menezes da Silva accompany
Savonarola when he appears to Arcangela in a vision. Saint Gregory then introduces Arcangela to Savonarola, instructing her not to refer to him as “fra
Girolamo” but to call him “Blessed Girolamo” (Beato Hieronimo|), even
though the Church authorities have not recognized his saintly status.
Although he has not yet been placed on the official calendar of saints, Saint
Gregory argues, Savonarola is glorified in heaven and is a saint in the Triumphant Church.37
In Salviati’s account of Arcangela’s vision, it is not her authority but that of
an important Doctor of the Church, Saint Gregory the Great, that supports
the Savonarolans’ call for fra Girolamo’s canonization. In the Magliabechiano
documents, on the other hand, a female visionary’s authority is used for the
36. Misc. sav.| 1, c. 138r: “Io .|.|. fui con fra Maurelio, fratello di fra Ieronimo .|.|. e
.|.|. dal fratello maggiore del fra Ieronimo il quale si domanda Ognibene .|.|. narra quello
medesimo che scrisse colui a Ant[oni]o e .|.|. il duca di Ferrara .|.|. di quella visione di
Suora Lucia, e come la figliuola [si] è fatta monaca e come al secolo aveva nome Veronica e suor Lucia gli ha posto nome ‘Ieronima’ e .|.|. vuole che nel convento suo si chiami
San Girolamo .|.|.|.”
37. Gian Antonio Bellotti, Legenda de la ven.da Vergine Suor Archangela Panigarola,
Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Milan), Ms. O 165 sup., fol.|175, cited in Carlo Marcora, “Il
Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, Arcivescovo di Milano (1497–1519),” in: Memorie storiche
della diocesi di Milano| 5 (1958), pp.|442–443, n.|160. On the Savonarolan tendencies of
Arcangela and her confessor see Zarri, Sante vive, pp.|132 nn. 53–55, 159 n.|226.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
47
same purpose. The reports emphasize that a renowned stigmatic, whom the
duke of Ferrara venerated, instructed Suor Girolama and the other nuns in
her community to call Savonarola “Saint Girolamo,” affirming his glorious
state in heaven. They thus reveal Lucia’s unique position in the Savonarolan
movement – much more important than that of other female mystics sympathetic to the Piagnone reform.
The Magliabechiano documents indicate that Lucia used her authoritative
status to turn Santa Caterina da Siena into a center of female Savonarolan devotion, ordering her tertiaries to call Savonarola a saint and giving Veronica
the monastic name Girolama in his memory. The practice of choosing religious names commemorating recently deceased persons reputed for sanctity,
even when they had not received official Church recognition, was quite common in the early Cinquecento, and other religious women in convents that
were sympathetic to the Savonarolan reform assumed the monastic name Girolama.38 In addition to the veneration of Savonarola in Lucia’s community,
the convent was known for its adherence to the ideals of the Dominican Observance, and especially for its emphasis on strict enclosure, which fra Girolamo had striven to implement in female religious houses.39 All these features
made Santa Caterina da Siena an ideal convent – one to which families with
Savonarolan tendencies sent their daughters, and which girls with Savonarolan sympathies wanted to enter.
Some documents from Santa Caterina da Siena, which I have found at the
Archivio Storico Diocesano in Ferrara, corroborate the claim in the Magliabechiano report that Veronica Savonarola joined Lucia’s community in early
1500. According to these documents, Veronica received the habit of a Dominican tertiary and the religious name Suor Girolama on 6 January 1500, at the
38. For instance, the Savonarolan sympathizer and abbess of the Benedictine convent of San Michele in Milan, who corresponded with the Ferrarese Savonarolan Ludovico Pittorio. One of his letters to her appeared in an edition of Savonarola’s works .
See the letter “Alla reverenda mia in Christo madre, donna Ieronima abatessa nel sacro
monasterio di S. Michaele in Milano,” in: Molti devotissimi trattati del reverendo padre
frate Hieronimo Savonarola .|.|. et alcuni sermoni devoti di Ludovico Pittorio da Ferrara,
Venice 1547, fol.|260r; Fioravanti Baraldi, “Testo e immagini. Le edizioni cinquecentesche dell’Omiliario quadragesimale| di Ludovico Pittorio,” in: Girolamo Savonarola da
Ferrara all’Europe| (n. 3), p.|146.
39. Narratione, pp.|137–144. As Polizzotto has shown (“When Saints Fall Out,”
p.|488), after Savonarola withdrew his suggestion for women’s self-reform in March
1496, he and his followers invested the term “reform,” when applied to female religious
houses, with the narrow meaning of “the need .|.|. to adopt a more severe monastic rule
and to turn their convents .|.|. into closed communities observing strict enclosure.”
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
48
Lucia Brocadelli
age of thirteen. She remained in Santa Caterina da Siena for more than fifty
years, serving as its prioress in 1541–1542 and 1547–1548. She died in 1553.40
Veronica Savonarola’s father, Ognibene, was one of the key Savonarolan
figures in Ferrara. He corresponded with his brother Girolamo in the 1490s
and contributed to the dissemination of his writings and reformatory ideals in
northern Italy.41 After Girolamo’s execution, he collaborated with his brothers Maurilio and Alberto in efforts to promote the veneration of their martyred brother. Fra Maurilio, one of Girolamo’s faithful devotees, received the
Dominican habit from his brother’s hands, and was exiled from Florence after
his execution.42 It is not clear whether Maurilio was personally acquainted
with Lucia, but he collaborated with Ognibene in the transmission of reports
about her visions.
Ognibene and Maurilio Savonarola obviously valued the contributions of a
charismatic mystic like Lucia to the Savonarolan cause. The Magliabechiano
documents disclose their support of her reputation as a holy woman whose affirmation of their brother’s saintliness derived from divine revelation. It is
therefore not surprising that shortly after Lucia’s arrival in Ferrara in May
1499, Ognibene’s daughter was one of the first novices to enter her religious
community. According to the Magliabechiano documents, which underscore
Veronica’s agency, the decision to join Lucia’s tertiaries’ house was hers. We
have no way of knowing whether the thirteen-year-old Veronica indeed
decided to enter Santa Caterina da Siena on her own initiative. Her profession
in a small, recently-established religious house may have been motivated at
least partly by her father’s financial difficulties and consequent inability to
marry her off well, or even to pay the monastic dowry required by older,
more prestigious Ferrarese convents.43 In any case, whether or not her family
pressured her to enter Lucia’s convent, Ognibene and Maurilio Savonarola
were certainly happy with Veronica’s decision and willingly informed other
Piagnoni about the circumstances surrounding her religious profession.
40. Benedetto da Mantova, Cronaca, ASDF/SCS, Ms. 3/22, fol.|3v; Repertorio
generalissimo .|.|. di S[anta] Cattarina di Siena della Citta` di Ferrara, ASDF/SCS, Ms. 6/
2, under “Priore”.
41. Savonarola, Scritti vari, ed. Armando F. Verde, Rome 1992, pp.|416–417; Lettere, pp.|74–75, 225; Ireneo Farneti, “Giovanni Manardo e gli ambienti savonaroliano
a Mirandola e pichiano a Ferrara,” in: Ferrara viva| 5 (1965), pp.|264–267.
42. Ridolfi, Vita, pp.|3, 5, 234.
43. In a letter Savonarola sent to his brother Alberto in October 1495, he expressed
his concern with Ognibene’s difficulty in supporting his numerous children and urged
Alberto to help him out (Lettere, pp.|74–75).
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
49
In 1501 or early 1502 Tommasina, daughter of the Savonarolan Dominican
tertiary Bernardino da Ferrara, also entered Lucia’s community. Bernardino –
like Ognibene Savonarola, a prominent Savonarolan activist in Ferrara – was
involved in reporting at least six Savonarolan miracles.44 He noted his daughter’s profession at Santa Caterina da Siena at the end of a report in which he
described his wife’s miraculous healing thanks to Savonarola’s intercession in
1501. Thus we see that during the first years of its existence, undoubtedly because of Lucia’s Savonarolan tendencies, Santa Caterina da Siena attracted
recruits from the families of important Savonarolan activists.45
IV.
One other report about Savonarola’s posthumous miracles reveals Lucia’s active engagement in the propagation of Savonarolan devotion. This report was
eventually incorporated into all the known manuscripts of the Trattato dei
miracoli| attached to the Pseudo-Burlamacchi Vita| of Savonarola, but there
are significant differences between them. In some versions, we read only that
while Savonarola was alive, his fame had reached a certain priest in Spain,
who decided to visit Florence, where he was greatly impressed by Savonarola’s preaching. A few years later, after his return to Spain, the priest became
gravely ill. Having heard of Savonarola’s martyrdom, he prayed to him for
succor. Fra Girolamo then appeared to the priest in a vision and stated that,
thanks to his faith in him, God would restore his health. Within minutes, he
was indeed cured.46 One version of the Trattato, in the so-called Ginori Conti
codex, provides information about an unnamed female tertiary who left Spain
to make a pilgrimage to Italy. She made her way to Ferrara in order to meet
Suor Lucia of Viterbo (as Lucia was known after her transfer from Viterbo).
This Spanish tertiary, a pious woman and a great penitent, subsisted on bread
44. Ginori Conti, pp. 204–210.
45. Tommasina’s profession at Santa Caterina da Siena was related to the vow that
her father made to Savonarola when he prayed to him for succor. Ginori Conti,
pp.|204–205. Bernardino does not mention his daughter’s name in his report, but she
can probably be identified as “Suor Tommasina, daughter of Bernardino da Ferrara,”
who is listed as a nun in Santa Caterina da Siena in Ercole d’Este’s Atto di donazione| of
July 2 1502, ASDF/SCS, Ms. 3/30, c. 10v.
46. See the miracle entitled “Come sanò un sacerdote spagnuolo” in: Vita del Beato
Girolamo Savonarola .|.|. dottore martire et anche profeta, AGOP, Ms. Sez. X, 1319,
fols.|69r–69v; Vita del B. Girolamo Savonarola da Ferrara .|.|., AGOP, Ms. Sez. XIV,
CC, fol.|402v; Benavent, “El Tratado,” pp.|88–89.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
50
Lucia Brocadelli
and water alone, walked barefoot, and would not sleep either on a bed or on
a mattress. While she was in Ferrara, the tertiary recounted the miraculous
healing of the Spanish priest. Fra Niccolò dal Finale (or del Finare, d. 1525),
Lucia’s confessor, reported the Spanish woman’s statement to the Ferrarese
tertiary Bernardino (Suor Tommasina’s father), who shared it with fra Tommaso Caiani (d. 1528). Caiani later passed it on to Jacopo da Sicilia.47
The Trattato| in the Ginori Conti codex, which probably derived directly
from the original anonymous Vita italiana| of Savonarola, is one of the most
reliable and detailed surviving transcriptions of this early Vita.48 Another version of the episode appears in several sixteenth-century manuscripts of the
Trattato, which were probably based on later copies of the Vita. These manuscripts do not mention the role of fra Niccolò, Bernardino, Caiani, or fra Jacopo in the propagation of this miracle, or the Spanish tertiary’s ascetic practices. They also erroneously refer to Lucia as “Sister Lucia in| Viterbo” instead
of “Sister Lucia of| Viterbo,” currently residing in Ferrara.49
Although the story of the Spanish priest’s miraculous healing, eventually
incorporated into the Trattato, appears in the twentieth-century edition of the
Ginori Conti codex, it has never received the scholarly attention it merits. In
fact, the detailed version of this report in the Ginori Conti codex further supports the Magliabechiano documents’ evidence of Lucia’s authoritative position in the Savonarolan movement at the turn of the fifteenth century. The
fact that a Spanish devotee of Savonarola wished to visit her in Ferrara indicates that by 1500 Lucia’s reputation as an acclaimed Savonarolan visionary
had reached fra Girolamo’s devotees outside the Italian peninsula. Moreover,
the report exposes the broad network of Savonarolans with whom Lucia collaborated in propagating Savonarola’s saintly reputation. It shows us how –
thanks to Lucia – this miracle, transmitted from Spanish Savonarolan circles
to Savonarolan activists in Ferrara, finally reached the Florentine Piagnoni.
We do not know the name of the Spanish pilgrim, but as Júlia Benavent has
recently suggested in her critical edition of the Valencia codex of the Trattato,
it was probably the mystic Sor Marı́a de Santo Domingo, known as the Beata
de Piedrahita (d. 1525).50 Savonarola’s rigorous reform of religious houses in47. Ginori Conti, pp.|209–210. Fra Niccolò is not identified as Lucia’s confessor
here, but see Narratione, pp.|149–153.
48. Ginori Conti, pp. xvi-xviii.
49. Misc. sav.| 2, c. 59A; Vita del Padre Fra Girolamo Savonarola, AGOP, Ms. Sez
X, 1320b, fol.|129v; Vita del glorioso P. Savonarola .|.|. scritto dal P. F. Vincenzo di Bernardo .|.|.|, BCR, Ms. 1224, pp.|138–139.
50. Benavent, “El Tratado,” p.|88, n.|4.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
51
fluenced Sor Marı́a and her supporters, who strove to follow the austere regimen that he had implemented in the monastery of San Marco in Florence.
Cardinal Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros (1435–1517), Sor Marı́a’s powerful
protector, commissioned the translation of Savonarola’s meditation on the
Psalm Miserere mei Deus| into Spanish. She herself venerated the Ferrarese reformer and reported her vision of him glorified in heaven; her opponents accused her of saying that Savonarola should be canonized.51
Sor Marı́a is known to have gone on a pilgrimage to shrines in several Italian cities. During her travels, she probably met some of Savonarola’s followers, who naturally shared her vision of Church reform. Very likely Sor
Marı́a was the Spanish pilgrim mentioned in the Ferrarese report. The allusion to the pilgrim’s ascetic practices, and especially to her refusal to sleep on
a bed or a mattress, further supports her identification with Sor Marı́a, who
was known for her extreme mortifications and always slept on a bare board.
That Sor Marı́a made no secret of her reverence for Lucia, whom she regarded as a model of holy life, makes this hypothesis all the more plausible.52
Sor Marı́a would certainly have been interested in Lucia’s religious community, which was inspired by the same reformatory ideals that influenced the
Spanish beata| and her supporters. A future stigmatic and living saint, Sor
Marı́a had compelling personal reasons to meet Lucia, perhaps the most celebrated holy woman in Europe in those years.
Whether or not the anonymous pilgrim was indeed Sor Marı́a, the story of
the Spanish priest’s healing reveals impressive evidence of female collaboration in the reinforcement of Savonarola’s saintly reputation. Lucia’s involvement in it did not end with her meeting the Spanish tertiary. After receiving
the news from her, she probably shared it with her confessor. Fra Niccolò,
who revered Lucia and disseminated accounts of her supernatural experiences, passed it on, thereby achieving a twofold goal: providing other Savonarolans with further reassurance about their martyred leader’s saintliness
and enhancing Lucia’s reputation in Savonarolan circles.53
51. L. Sastre, “Processo de la Beata de Piedrahita (II),” in: Archivo domenicano:
Anuario| 12 (1991), p.|341; Mary E. Giles, The Book of Prayer of Sor Marı´a of Santo
Domingo: A Study and Translation, New York 1990, pp.|40–61.
52. Jodi Bilinkoff, “A Spanish Prophetess and Her Patrons: The Case of Marı́a de
Santo Domingo,” in: Sixteenth Century Journal| 23:|1 (1992), pp.|21–34; Beltrán de
Heredia (n. 21), pp.|83–133; Giles, p.|11.
53. On fra Niccolò, see Jacobus Quétif and Jacobus Échard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, 2 vols., Paris 1719–1721, 2, p.|62; Narratione, pp.|149–153.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
52
Lucia Brocadelli
Suor Tommasina’s father also participated in transmitting the story of the
Spanish priest’s recovery. Bernardino, who undoubtedly knew his daughter’s
prioress and her confessor in person, and probably heard about the miraculous healing from them, reported it later to Tommaso Caiani, one of Savonarola’s radical followers. Caiani, a friar in the Savonarolan stronghold of San
Marco, supported a rigorous reform of the Church and believed in the imminent renovation of Christendom. Along with other Piagnoni like Maurilio
Savonarola, he was banished from Florence after fra Girolamo’s execution.
Traveling in central and northern Italy during the next few years, he was informed while preaching in Ferrara about the Spanish priest and other Savonarolan miracles.54 Caiani, who was known for his interest in female visionaries with Savonarolan tendencies, probably met Lucia while he was in
Ferrara. He soon returned to Tuscany and became the main protector of the
Savonarolan prophetess Dorotea da Lanciuole. Then he moved to Ferrara
and became the spiritual director of Lucrezia Borgia. After his return to in
Tuscany in the 1520s, his militant Savonarolism may have brought about his
assassination in 1528, allegedly carried out on orders of the Medici Pope
Clement VII.55
An itinerant preacher active in Tuscany and Emilia, Caiani formed an important link between Savonarolan circles in these two regions. It was he who
transmitted the account of Lucia’s encounter with the Spanish pilgrim to Jacopo da Sicilia, the transcriber of two other reports concerning Lucia, in
Florence. Fra Jacopo’s role in the documentation of three reports concerning
Lucia attests to his continuing fascination with Lucia’s spirituality. Like
Caiani, fra Jacopo attempted to mobilize other female mystics for the Savonarolan cause. In the first decade of the Cinquecento, he backed Domenica
da Paradiso, a Tuscan visionary who supported the Savonarolan reform.56
Fra Jacopo’s holding the position of the vicar general of the Tusco-Roman
Province of the Dominican order made him one of the most influential protagonists of the Savonarolan movement in Tuscany. The interest of this prom-
54. Ridolfi, Vita, p.|234; Armando F. Verde and Elettra Giaconi (ed.): Epistolario di
fra Vincenzo Mainardi da San Gimignano Domenicano (1481–1527), 2 vols., in: MD|
n.s. 23 (1992), 1, pp.|253–254; Benavent, “El Tratado,” p.|24.
55. Polizzotto, “When Saints Fall Out,” pp.|498–508; Zarri, “Lucia,” p.|115. Caiani
was also known for his spiritual direction of pro-Savonarolan female religious houses
in Tuscany. Di Agresti, “Fra Silvestro di Evangelista da Marradi. Fondatore-riformatore-predicatore,” in: MD| n.s. 31 (2000), pp.|344 n.|23, 350.
56. Valerio (n. 2), esp. pp.|46–47.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
53
inent Piagnone in Lucia provides additional evidence of her important position within the Italian Savonarolan movement.
V.
Lucia’s privileged position as an acclaimed holy woman came to an end
shortly after the demise of her patron, Duke Ercole, in January 1505. According to modern scholars, this dramatic change probably resulted at least partly
from Lucia’s failure to meet the high expectations that Ercole had for her. An
inexperienced prioress, she had a problematic relationship with the women of
her community.57 Nonetheless, the decline in Lucia’s status needs to be reconsidered in the light of the documents concerning her Savonarolan activities.
Ercole obviously approved of Lucia’s veneration of Savonarola, of her attempts to turn her community into a center of Savonarolan spirituality, and of
her international reputation as a Savonarolan visionary. After his death, her
central role in the Savonarolan movement became more problematic.
In February 1505, Lucia’s Dominican superiors repealed the privileges that
Alexander VI had granted her and removed her from the office of prioress.
Fra Niccolò was no longer allowed to serve as her confessor, and she was given a new one, fra Benedetto da Mantova, who was hostile toward her mystical experiences. Lucia was not allowed to speak with fra Niccolò, or with anyone else, in private.58 Considering Lucia’s collaboration with fra Niccolò in
57. Documentary evidence indicates that dissatisfaction and jealousy pervaded Santa Caterina da Siena in the first years of its existence. Many of the Ferrarese girls who
had joined the community shortly after Lucia’s arrival stayed only briefly because they
were disillusioned with the prioress. In 1502, a few days after Ercole had succeeded in
transferring fourteen Umbrian tertiaries to Lucia’s community, five of them escaped
and returned to their old religious houses. Some of the nuns who remained with Lucia
were unhappy with her conduct: they complained that she was distributing among her
relatives the alms given to the convent. When ten nuns from the older Ferrarese Dominican convent of Santa Caterina Martire were ordered to transfer to Lucia’s community in 1503, things became worse. These nuns, clearly jealous of the vast privileges
and official respect that Lucia enjoyed, sided with her adversaries. One of the nuns
from Santa Caterina Martire, Suor Maria da Parma, was eventually appointed to replace Lucia as prioress of Santa Caterina da Siena. See Narratione, pp.|202–209; Serafino Razzi, Seconda parte delle Vite dei santi e beati dell’Ordine de’ Frati Predicatori, nella
quale si raccontano la vita, e opere, di molte Sante e Beate Donne del medesimo ordine,
Florence 1577, p.|153; Zarri, Sante vive, pp.|57–60; Matter, “Prophetic Patronage,”
p.|173.
58. Narratione, p.|207; Tommaso M. Granello, La Beata Lucia da Narni Vergine del
terz’ordine di San Domenico, Ferrara 1879, Documento I, pp.|210–211.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
54
Lucia Brocadelli
the propagation of Savonarola’s miracles, discussed above, these steps are not
surprising. Probably because they disapproved of her role in the cultivation of
Savonarolan devotion, Lucia’s superiors wished to sever her ties with fra Niccolò. As we recall, other confessors of female Savonarolan mystics – such as
Bontempi, Colomba da Rieti’s confessor – were relieved of their charge for similar reasons.59 The Dominican Savonarolan Stepano da Saluzo, who had
hitherto served as confessor to the other tertiaries in Santa Caterina da Siena,
was also removed from office in February 1505. He was then sent to administer the confession to the nuns of San Rocco, a convent located at the other
part of Ferrara, in a clear attempt to distance him from Lucia.60
It is noteworthy that at the same moment in which Lucia’s Dominican
superiors were employing harsh measures against her, they were trying to
fend off their Franciscan opponents’ accusations that the Dominican order
knowingly supported simulated saints. These accusations were first voiced
when the Tuscan prophetess Dorotea da Lanciuole was accused of feigning
sanctity in 1504. Dorotea’s collaboration with Caiani, the radical Piagnone
involved in propagating the report of the Spanish pilgrim’s encounter with Lucia, put the entire Dominican order in a delicate position. In the following
years, the Dorotea affair was to cause a serious crisis within the order. In
early 1505, Dominican officials were already aware of the danger to their order’s reputation that ties between male Savonarolans and female mystics
might entail. Once it became known that Lucia’s visible stigmata had disappeared, her superiors decided not to risk a second scandal involving a female
Savonarolan visionary. From then on, Lucia was kept under close supervision
within the confines of her convent.61
Although she was cut off from other followers of Savonarola, Lucia remained faithful to his spiritual legacy until her death. As Matter and others
have shown, Savonarola’s Compendio di Rivelazione| had a profound influence on the book of revelations she wrote during the last year of her life.62
59. Bontempi, fols.|95r–96v.
60. Benedetto da Mantova (n. 40), fol.|17r. In the first years of the Cinquecento, fra
Stepano collaborated with Bernardino da Ferrara in reinforcing Savonarola’s cult.
Misc. sav.| 2, cc.|58A–58B; Ginori Conti, p.|205.
61. Polizzotto, “When Saints Fall Out,” pp.|501–508; Zarri, “Lucia,” p.|112. The
Dorotea affair became more complicated when Domenica da Paradiso, who was
backed by prominent Savonarolans like Jacopo da Sicilia, began to voice her conviction
of Dorotea’s guilt. Domenica’s accusations resulted in conflict between her supporters
and Dorotea’s that almost tore the Florentine Piagnone movement apart.
62. Matter et al. (n. 9), p.|177.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
55
Long after the end of her public career as a living saint, furthermore, some
Savonarolans remained convinced of Lucia’s genuine holiness. In Castile, Sor
Marı́a de Santo Domingo was heard saying that Lucia was a great servant of
God, who would prove her saintliness in due time.63 In Ferrara, the Dominican Arcangelo Marcheselli da Viadana, who transcribed the Vita| of Caterina
Mattei da Racconigi (another holy woman who reported visions of Savonarola and attested to his glorious state in heaven), persisted in his conviction of
Lucia’s holiness. Lucia, who may have heard about Caterina from Marcheselli, described how mystical encounters with this Piedmontese visionary consoled her during her lengthy seclusion.64
More than fifteen years after Lucia had been accused of fabricating the
wounds of her stigmata, fra Giovanni Cagnazzo and fra Domenico da Calvisano, Dominicans associated with the Savonarolan movement, continued to
seek affirmations of their authenticity. Cagnazzo, a renowned theologian and
inquisitor, was serving as Ercole d’Este’s confessor when Lucia arrived in Ferrara. A contemporary manuscript copy in the Archivio Generalizio dell’Ordine dei Predicatori in Rome of the examination of Lucia’s stigmata on 2
March 1500 indicates that Cagnazzo was in charge of conducting it.65 Cagnazzo’s collaboration with other Savonarolans in the propagation of Savonarolan devotion, which has not previously been noted by scholars, is mentioned
in one of Bernardino da Ferrara’s reports in the Trattato.66 Little is known
about fra Domenico, but a document I have found in the Beato Angelico archive in Rome indicates that he was engaged in the circulation in northern
Italy of the vision of pseudo-Alberto da Trento, which allegedly predicted Savonarola’s mission and martyrdom in Florence.67 Fra Domenico also served
as confessor of the living saint Stefana Quinzani (1457–1530) and wrote an
63. Beltrán de Heredia (n. 21), p.|129.
64. Razzi, pp.|153–154; Zarri, “Lucia,” pp.|112–113.
65. AGOP, Ms. Sez. XIV, GGG, pt. 1a, fols.|333r–335v.
66. Misc. sav.| 2, c. 55B; Vita del glorioso P. Savonarola .|.|.|, BCR, Ms. 1224, p.|139.
Cagnazzo probably died in the 1520s, but the precise dates of his birth and death are
debatable. Leandro Alberti, Descrittione di tutta Italia, Bologna 1550, fol.|11r; cf. A.
Rovetta, Bibliotheca chronologica illustrium virorum provinciae Lombardiae sacri Ordinis
Praedicatorum, Bologna 1691, p.|110.
67. See the copy of the letter sent by fra Domenico da Calvisano on the first day of
Lent 1527 and entitled “Prophetia di Don Alberto da Tridento circa il Padre Fra Hieronimo da Ferrara,” in: Misc. sav.| 2, c. 76B. On the Piagnoni’s use of Alberto’s prophecy, see Weinstein, “The Apocalypse in Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Vision of
Alberto of Trent,” in Anthony Molho and John Tedeschi (ed.): Renaissance Studies in
Honor of Hans Baron, Dekalb, IL 1971, pp.|311–331.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
56
Lucia Brocadelli
abridged version of her Latin hagiography. Stefana was venerated by Savonarola’s followers in northern Italy, including Ercole d’Este.68 In his 1501
pamphlet, Ercole described Stefana’s ecstasies, in which she relived Christ’s
Passion, along with Colomba’s and Lucia’s divine gifts. He tried to persuade
Stefana to settle in Ferrara, and later supported her in establishing her tertiaries’ house near Soncino. Stefana was acquainted with some of the Soncinian
tertiaries in Lucia’s convent and in a letter of early 1502 urged Ercole to fulfill
his financial obligations to Santa Caterina da Siena.69 Fra Domenico assures
us in his hagiography that Stefana revered Lucia. When he and Cagnazzo interrogated her about Lucia’s stigmata in 1522, Stefana replied that they were
certainly a true manifestation of divine grace. The disappearance of their visible signs, she went on to explain, may have resulted from the ingratitude of
certain friars – an allusion to Lucia’s enemies within the Dominican order.70
Despite some Savonarolans’ efforts to prove Lucia’s genuine holiness, we
can detect a clear attempt on the part of many Piagnoni to dissociate her from
their movement following her fall from grace. Savonarolan activists were
quick to comprehend that affiliation with their reform of a woman who was
now suspected of fraud could be harmful. They thus began purging references
to Lucia from earlier Savonarolan writings. Fra Leandro Alberti’s redaction of
the Vita| of Colomba da Rieti exemplifies this process. The Dominican Alberti
(1479-c.1552), a Bolognese Savonarolan who collaborated with some of the
ardent Piagnoni of his time, among them Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and Luca Bettini, decided to translate Bontempi’s hagiography of Colomba from Latin into Italian. Aiming to spread and enhance this celebrated
Savonarolan mystic’s saintly reputation in order to facilitate her beatification,
he published his translation in 1521.71
68. An allusion to Savonarola’s theme of Noah’s ark (see n.|14) appears in the dedication of the Vita manoscritta [trascritta] dal P. Sisto Illuminato da Genova, AGOP, Ms.
Sez. X, 2864 (unpaginated). On the problem of identifying the author of this hagiography, see Pietro Guerrini, “La prima ‘Legenda volgare’ della beata Stefana Quinzani
d’Orzinuovi secondo il codice Vaticano-Urbinate latino 1755,” in: Memorie storiche
della diocesi di Brescia| 1 (1950), p.|72. On Savonarola’s influence on Stefana’s religiosity, see ibid., p.|77.
69. See n.|21 above; Guerrini, p.|125; Zarri, Sante vive, p.|79, n.|72.
70. Excerpta ex scriptis F. Baptistae de Salodio per F. Dominicum de Calvisano,
AGOP, Ms. Sez. X, 2857, fasc. 13 (unpaginated): “.|.|. Interogata aprilis 5. Mag. Ioan.
de Thabia .|.|. se credens stigmata sororis Lucie fuisse vera et bona .|.|. mihi fratri Domenico de Calvisano afirmavit firmiter et quod fortasse fratres ingrati de tanto dono erant
causa quod ipsa visibiliter amisisset.”
71. On Alberti, see A. L. Redigonda, “Alberti, Leandro,” in: DBI| 1, pp.|699–702. In
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
57
Unlike Bontempi’s manuscript hagiography of Colomba, intended for circulation mainly in Dominican circles, Alberti’s version was directed at a wide
audience, including high ecclesiastics. Therefore he was careful not to include
any information that might blemish Colomba’s orthodox image. Among other
things, he omitted all references to Colomba’s ties with Lucia. Chapter fortytwo in Bontempi’s hagiography, which underscores Colomba’s high esteem of
Lucia, does not appear in Alberti’s edition. Alberti also modified the account
of Colomba’s posthumous apparition to Lucia. He changed Bontempi’s explicit mention of Lucia into a vague reference to an unnamed “most distinguished virgin” in Ferrara.72
The Piagnoni who compiled and transcribed the Trattato dei Miracoli| in
the mid-sixteenth century likewise attempted to efface Lucia’s participation in
the Savonarolan movement. The accounts in the Trattato| are based on earlier
sources, many of which were later lost or destroyed. For obvious reasons, the
compilers chose to incorporate into the Trattato| only the reports that could
promote the Savonarolan cause. Even though they relied heavily on fra Jacopo’s compilation for information on Savonarola’s miracles and apparitions in
the first years of the Cinquecento, they left out the reports concerning his apparition to Lucia.73 Emphasizing the devotion of Colomba, whose saintly reputation remained unblemished at the time of their writing, they prudently ignored Lucia’s contribution to the cultivation of Savonarolan devotion.
Unlike the reports concerning Lucia’s vision, the story of the Spanish
priest’s miraculous healing was deemed important enough for the Savonarolan cause to appear in all the manuscripts of the Trattato. This is hardly surprising, for the episode served as evidence that Savonarola was venerated outside Italy. However, not all manuscripts of the Trattato| mention Lucia, and in
almost all those I have examined that do, she is erroneously identified as Suor
Lucia “in| Viterbo,” not “of Viterbo.” We cannot know whether this was an
innocent mistake or a conscious attempt by the transcribers to downplay Lucia’s contribution to the transmission of this miracle. In any case, the referDescrittione di tutta Italia| (fol.|313r), Alberti praised Savonarola’s saintly life and deeds
and blamed the Florentines for his execution.
72. Alberti, Vita della Beata Colomba da Rieto dil terzo ordine di S. Domenego, Bologna 1521, ch. 49. Zarri (Sante vive, p.|75, n.|52) mentions Alberti’s modification of
Colomba’s apparition. Note that he did not omit the reference to Ercole d’Este.
73. On the late-Cinquecento transcribers’ role in the disappearance of earlier Savonarolan documents, with particular reference to the Trattato, see Benavent, “Le biografie” (n. 31), pp.|15–21. On their reliance on the Magliabechiano codex, see Schnitzer
(n. 30), 2, pp.|489–491, nn. 109–110.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
58
Lucia Brocadelli
ence to “Sister Lucia in Viterbo” causes confusion: how can the reader understand what the Spanish tertiary’s desire to visit a nun in Viterbo has to do with
the miracle she reported in Ferrara?74
By the time Lucia’s saintly reputation was rehabilitated, many years after
her demise, her participation in the Savonarolan reform had long been forgotten. In 1577 Serafino Razzi, a Dominican of San Marco, published the first
hagiographical account of her. Even though he was a committed Piagnone,
who transcribed and edited one of the Vitae| of Savonarola, in his hagiography of Lucia Razzi did not mention her role in the formation of fra Girolamo’s cult. Lucia’s later hagiographers were equally silent on the matter. Consequently, in biographies of Savonarola and modern studies of his movement,
she is never included among the holy men and women who attested to his
saintliness.75
VI.
In this essay I have argued that while she resided in Viterbo, Lucia Brocadelli
already supported Savonarola’s reform and had ties with important Piagnoni.
After her arrival in Ferrara, brought about by Ercole d’Este, who had strong
Savonarolan sympathies, she collaborated with Ferrarese Savonarolans and
with the anonymous Spanish pilgrim in the cultivation of Savonarolan devotion. She reported Savonarola’s posthumous miracles, described her own visions of him, attested to his blessed status in heaven, and asserted that he
should be called a saint. Nevertheless, after the dramatic change in her position, Lucia’s role in the Savonarolan reform was forgotten.
Lucia was by no means the only woman effaced from the historiography of
the Savonarolan movement. The involvement of other female mystics who
had been accused of feigning sanctity – like Dorotea da Lanciuole – in the Savonarolan reform was likewise played down in later Piagnone compilations.
Savonarolan sources were also purged of all references to the radical Florentine Piagnone Pietro Bernardino, a male visionary who had been convicted of
heresy and sodomy and executed in 1502. The case of Pietro Bernardino,
however, was exceptional. References to other suspect male Piagnoni who,
like Lucia, had been repudiated by the Dominican order, were never omitted
from “official” Savonarolan writings. Luca Bettini, who had been formally expelled from his Dominican Congregation in 1526, was portrayed as one of
74. See n.|49 above.
75. For holy persons who venerated Savonarola, see Schnitzer, 2, pp.|489–491; Ridolfi, Vita, pp.|232–258.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
Herzig
59
the major protagonists of the Savonarolan reform in later Piagnone historiography.76 Moreover, pro-Savonarolan holy women who had never been accused of simulated sanctity, but whose saintly reputation had been purely local, or faded shortly after their demise, also found no place in the annals of
the Piagnone movement. Thus the names of Arcangela Panigarola and many
other early-Cinquecento “brides of Christ, and venerable nuns who live[d]
with an odor of sanctity”77 were omitted from the pseudo-Burlamacchi Vita|
and Trattato, which have hitherto served as the main sources for studying female participation in the Savonarolan movement.78 Lucia Brocadelli’s case
suggests the potential for revealing the scope of women’s contribution to the
Savonarolan reform by turning from these standard Savonarolan sources to
earlier documents. The Magliabechiano reports, fra Domenico’s writings,
and the documents from Santa Caterina da Siena are all “unauthorized”
sources, which reveal intriguing facets of the Savonarolan movement in the
first decades of its existence. Most importantly, they make clear women’s support for the Savonarolan reform and their collaboration with one another and
with male Piagnoni throughout central and northern Italy in the dissemination of devotion to Savonarola.
Tamar Herzig
Department of History
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mount Scopus
Jerusalem 91905
Israel
76. On Bernardino and Bettini, see Polizzotto, Elect Nation, pp.|117–137, 305–306.
77. See the Ferrarese Savonarolan Francesco Caloro’s assertion in “Defensione contro gli adversarii de frate Hieronymo Savonarola prenuntiatore delle instanti calamitade, et renovatione della chiesa,” in: Prediche devotissime et piene de divini mysterii del
venerando et sacro theologo Frate Hieronymo Savonarola da Ferrara. Defensione del predetto contra i calumniatori, Ferrara 1513, fols.|*3r–*3v: “io dicovi indubitatamente alcune verginelle spose de Christo, et monache venera[n]de che co[n] alcuno odore vivono de sanctitade, in questi tempi, dico dopo la felice morte de frate Hieronymo havere
havute alqua[n]te divine revelationi .|.|.|.”
78. On the almost exclusive reliance on the Pseudo-Burlamacchi, see Polizzotto,
“Savonarola, Savonaroliani” (n. 2), p.|229.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM
60
Lucia Brocadelli
ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Der vorliegende Aufsatz behandelt die Rolle Lucia Brocadellis bei der Entstehung
und Ausbreitung der von Girolamo Savonarola begründeten Reform- und Frömmigkeitsbewegung. Ihre Übersiedlung von Viterbo nach Ferrara stand in engem Zusammenhang mit Ercole d’Este, einem einflußreichen Anhänger Savonarolas. Bisher von
der Historiographie nicht beachtete Quellen machen deutlich, daß Lucia Brocadelli
eine wesentliche Rolle bei der Entstehung des Savonarola-Kultes in Ferrara zu Beginn
des 16.||Jahrhunderts spielte. Nach dem Tod Ercole d’Estes im Jahr 1505 verlor sie jedoch ihren Einfluß. Lucias Beitrag zur savonarolischen Reformbewegung wurde von
der späteren Geschichtsschreibung ignoriert, so daß man die frühen Quellen dieser Reformbewegung untersuchen muß, um ihre Bedeutung abschätzen zu können.
Unauthenticated
Download Date | 4/18/16 1:15 AM