The past three decades have seen the rise of far-reaching scholarship on the roles of women in historical Christianity, a distinct subset of which highlights the written texts of religious women who achieved fame as visionaries, mystics, and spiritual adepts. The two women highlighted in the collected essays in this book, Birgitta of Sweden (Birgitta Birgersdotter, 1302/03–1373) and Catherine of Siena (Caterina Benincasa, 1347–1380) are two important figures whose religious lives came at the end of the period Bernard McGinn has characterized as “The Flowering of Mysticism” (The Flowering if Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism [1200–1350], vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism [New York: Crossroad, 1998]). Birgitta and Catherine, although from contrasting social classes and different late medieval cultures and language traditions, nevertheless had similar charismatic ministries, attracted large numbers of followers (including priests), and left substantial bodies of visionary writings that were read by both religious and lay people and were translated into many languages.
Sanctity and Female Authorship grew out of presentations made at international workshops at the Norwegian Institute in Rome in 2015 and in the former monastery of the Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris in Vadstena, Sweden, in 2017 (for the full table of contents see the end of this review). These workshops explored Birgitta and Catherine from a variety of disciplines. Some of the essays published here contribute directly to the field of “religious women's literacy” in medieval Europe through comparative analysis of how the texts were written and diffused (Thomas Luongo on “textual communities,” Silvia Nocentini on the transmission of their works “within the mystical tradition,” and Maria Oen on “ambivalent images of authorship”). Others speak more to the contemporary roles and consequent fame of Birgitta and Caterina; for example, Unn Falkreid uses the biblical “two Marys” to contemplate “constructing female authority,” and Roger Andersson discusses the reception and use of the two women by late medieval preachers. Two essays place Birgitta and Catherine in the context of large medieval Christian movements (Jane Tylus on pilgrimage and Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski on Crusading), while the last two contributions (Gabor Klaniczay on Birgitta's “mystical pregnancy” and Catherine's “invisible stigmata” and Camille Rouxpetel on the role of Alfonso of Jaén as a spiritual guide and protector in the lives of both Birgitta and Catherine) consider the most personal aspects of their spiritual lives and the almost serendipitous events that connected them. These essays are accompanied by seven black-and-white illustrations showing portraits of Birgitta and Catherine from various sources. Finally, an Epilogue by André Vauchez points out that, even though Birgitta and Catherine belonged to different generations and almost certainly never met, they have often been mentioned together, making it striking that this volume marks the first time scholars have considered the lives and legacies of Birgitta and Catherine together in a systematic way. Vauchez ends by noting that after the canonization of the two women and the diffusion of their works throughout fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, “for the first time in Christian history, two women—Birgitta and Catherine—were regarded as authentic sacred authors and their writings as sources of valuable inspiration for all the faithful” (211).
This book makes sophisticated comparisons between Birgitta and Catherine from so many scholarly perspectives that it is rather startling that one important part of both lives, their roles as founders and leaders of religious communities, is nowhere addressed. Oen and Falkreid say in their Introduction, “Birgitta, like Catherine, was a lay woman who had become known in her lifetime for her particular relationship with God” (1). While it is true that neither Birgitta nor Catherine were professed nuns, nevertheless both were founders of women's religious orders. In 1344, Birgitta founded in Sweden the Order of the Most Holy Savior of St. Bridget (the Bridgettines or Birgettines), “double monasteries” housing both men and women, living by the Rule of Birgitta, under jurisdiction of the local bishop but ruled by an Abbess. The nuns in these communities were strictly enclosed, although the monks, who acted as chaplains to the communities, were also preachers and itinerant missionaries. The order spread rapidly throughout Europe; by the fifteenth century it included the famous Sion Abbey in England.
Catherine of Siena also lived in a community of women. They professed a more mendicant than monastic ideal and, allying themselves with the Dominican Order, were called “Dominican Penitent Women.” Eventually, this movement also developed a Rule, as Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner has shown (“Writing Religious Rules as an Interactive Process: Dominican Penitent Women and the Making of Their ‘Regula,’” Speculum 79 [2004] 660–687). It is a shame that this book, in spite of its contributions to understanding the roles of Birgitta and Catherine in many medieval contexts, did not also evaluate them as important participants in the changing world of Christian religious communities in the later Middle Ages.
