medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 06:58 PM 5/21/2004 -0500, I wrote, quoting Phyllis:
>>Humilitas (d. 1310) Humilitas was from Faenza. She was married off
>>at age 15; her husband got religion nine years later when he was very
>>ill and the two of them decided to give up marriage and take to the
>>religious life. H. became a hermit near the Vollombrosan monastery
>>of St. Apollinaris where her husband was a monk. Later she was sent
>>to found and govern the first two houses of Vallombrosan nuns. Her
>>cult was confirmed in 1720.
<snip>
>I don't know where the business of H.'s having been "sent" to found these
>houses comes from. Her Latin Life ascribes these activities to her own
>initiative. See Adele Simonetti, ed., _Le Vite di Umilta' da Faenza:
>agiografica trecentesca dal latino al volgare_, Per verba: testi
>mediolatini con traduzione, no. 8 (Florence: SISMEL - Edizioni del
>Galluzzo, 1997).
To be more precise, the Latin Life ascribes the first foundation to
Humility's acceptance of the entreaties of many clerics, prominent among
them the chief abbot of the Vallombrosans: _Ceperunt episcopi, abbates,
aliique clerici religiosi eam ut construeret monasterium incitare, inter
quos extitit reverendus vir dompnus plebanus abbas maior ordinis
Vallisumbrose_. (cap. 24). The Italian Life (dated 1345) is in this
respect as in many others very similar to the Latin Life but (cap. 19, 20)
specifies only one bishop (that of Faenza), says that H. was commanded in a
vision by the BVM to found what became the first of her two Vallombrosan
houses, and adds that the abbot of the monastery at Faenza where H. had
been residing as a solitary had been implored by other women to allow them
to establish cells near hers and to form a community under her leadership
(the Latin Life says that by this time there were already women in adjacent
cells). In both Lives it is clear that H.'s first foundation resulted from
local demand (at Faenza, so there's no question of her being "sent" to do
this) and though under Vallombrosan guidance and sponsorship did not owe
its origin to that community alone. Both Lives make the second foundation
something H. had been planning, though the choice of venue (Florence as
opposed to H.'s previously selected Venice) was the work of John the
Baptist, who in one of his many appearances to H. told her where her new
convent should be (Latin Life, cap. 37; Italian Life, cap. 39).
It is worth noting that H. is medieval Italy's only known woman author of a
substantial body of surviving writing in Latin not likely to have been
ghostwritten or redacted by a male secretary or confessor. These are her
fifteen so-called _Sermons_, of which some are sermons in the general
medieval and modern sense and the remainder, for which Humility accurately
uses the term _oratio_ ("prayer"), are formally addresses of devotion to
Christ, the Virgin Mary, and others. These have also been edited fairly
recently by Adele Simonetti as _I Sermoni di Umilta' da Faenza_, Biblioteca
di "Medioevo Latino," no. 14 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'Alto
Medioevo, 1995).
Julia Bolton Holloway has an excellent website on H., complete with color
images from the (now disassembled) polyptych illustrating H.'s life and
miracles often ascribed to Pietro Lorenzetti:
http://www.umilta.net/umilta.html
This site also has a brief but valuable bibliography on H.; other
contributions are listed in the entry on her in Christopher Kleinhenz, ed.,
_Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia_ (New York: Routledge, 2003), vol. 1, pp.
519-20.
Elizabeth Petroff's translation of the Latin Life, originally published in
_Consolation of the Blessed_ (New York: Alta Gaia Society, 1979), is
reproduced here:
http://www.mw.mcmaster.ca/scriptorium/umilta.html
Best again,
John Dillon
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