This work examines the lives of fifteenth-century Italian holy women to demonstrate how their interaction with the demonic simulates Christ’s struggles with Satan in the desert and as such constitutes a form of imitatio Christi. Huesman argues that most studies of female spirituality stress embodiment as a primary means for imitating Christ, overlooking holy women’s increasing interaction with demons as a possibility. The women under consideration are Elena da Udine, Caterina Vigri (better known as Caterina da Bologna) and Columba da Rieti. All three of them are sante vive or ‘living saints’ – a category made famous by Gabriella Zarri.
Chapter i examines the historiography of sanctity and the conditions that gave rise to the living saint. Huesman recounts how the disparaging view of the quattrocento as a period of decadence and superstition has been recently supplanted by a more optimistic vision of continuity and renewal. Lay piety was newly stimulated by the Observant movement and the rise of print culture, with special emphasis on Christ’s passion. These factors, in conjunction with the political and social turmoil of the period, rendered Italian cities especially receptive to the presence of holy women in their midst.
The following three chapters introduce the saints under consideration: their backgrounds, how they came to be affiliated with a given mendicant order, their ascetic feats, miracles and pious deaths. Elena da Udine, probably the most obscure of the three, was a pious matron who, upon the death of her husband, transitioned from a privileged life in the nobility to a deeply ascetic existence as an Augustinian tertiary. Caterina Vigri’s pious trajectory was more dramatic still. Serving in Ferrara as a lady-in-waiting at the court of the Este family, she then embraced a semi-religious life in the Augustinian house of pinozochere, and ultimately became an enclosed Clarissan nun. Her reputation for holiness attracted the attention of the Franciscan Observants, who established her as an abbess of a community in Bologna. Columba of Rieti was of an affluent mercantile background, not unlike Catherine of Siena, upon whom she modelled herself. She became a Dominican tertiary and prioress of the convent that was built for her in Perugia.
The subsequent chapters begin with overviews of aspects of medieval piety before placing the select saints within these traditions. Chapter v focuses on the cult of the suffering Christ: its treatment in devotional literature and women’s identification with this image. Huesman enlists Aquinas’s portrayal of Christ’s voluntary subjection to the Devil’s temptations, and the redemptive nature of his ensuing suffering, arguing that the women in question endorsed a similar view, and likewise perceived their demonic travails as a benefit to society. Satan’s very aggression is construed as a testimony to the purity of his victims – a perception that is borne out by the desert Fathers, the hagiographical tradition and, ultimately, the living saints. Elena and Columba proved their heroic piety through physical attacks from Satan, while Caterina was plagued by satanically inspired self-doubt.
Chapter vi builds on the previous chapter by advancing that female asceticism was a deliberate goad to the Devil. This was in keeping with the exegesis of St Ambrose, who perceived Christ’s fasting in the desert as deliberately luring the Devil, allowing Christ to triumph. These women followed suit, attempting to recreate a desert in their own cells by fasting interminably, praying unceasingly and inflicting suffering on themselves in remembrance of the passion. The very intensity of this suffering was intended to provoke Satan.
The risks of such provocation become apparent in chapter vii, which addresses spiritual discernment: the ability to discern between divine and diabolical influences. After reviewing the medieval clergy’s rising preoccupation with spiritual discernment, the chapter concludes with instances from these women’s vitae. The Devil made some startling appearances to Caterina as Christ and the Virgin Mary – deceptions that she could not initially discern. In contrast, both Columba and Caterina ran afoul of church authorities, who failed to discern their impeccable inspiration.
The last two chapters examine the factors that enabled the cults of these women both in life and after death. Chapter viii examines the living saint as anointed by service to the Church at large, her respective religious order and the local community. In the wake of the Avignon papacy and schism, with church leadership at its nadir, ‘the Church actually needed these charismatic women to keep the people in their local communities in the fold and to inspire them to seek a deeper devotion’ (p. 174). By the same token, these women were invaluable to the orders associated with the Observant movement, which promoted their cults with zeal. Local communities, in turn, benefitted from saintly services like mediations for peace and tangible miracles, and would go to great lengths not only to support, but to keep their saint. These included vigorous tactics to keep Caterina Vigri from leaving Ferrara and efforts to kidnap Columba from Perugia.
Chapter ix treats post-mortem veneration, surveying the various factors contributing to the late holy woman’s fama. Whether or not a saint is officially canonised, everything begins at the local level and the reputation for sanctity built up over a lifetime. The female saint is confronted by particular hurdles, however. Although a holy woman’s entrance into public life has hitherto been understood as transgressive by historians, André Vauchez has recently argued that Catherine of Siena (canonised 1461) ultimately normalised such transgressions, initiating a ‘spiritual matriarchate’ and paving the way for the living saints who became associated with particular Italian cities (p. 191). A second hurdle is the mirroring between the female saint and the witch – a parallel articulated by Richard Kieckhefer, Tamar Herzig and others. Huesman argues that this was never really a danger for the women under consideration, however, who only lured the Devil so that he would challenge, not empower, them. The book concludes with the demise of the phenomenon of the living saint. Her charisma and active ministry gave way to the strictures placed upon women with the Counter-Reformation, particularly claustration.
The case for diabolical temptation as imitation of Christ is most convincingly made for Caterina Vigri, whose vita not only describes the Devil’s impersonations of Christ or the Virgin Mary but which Caterina further elaborates upon at length in her spiritual masterpiece The seven spiritual weapons. The seventh and most detailed discussion of weaponry is based on the Devil’s temptation of Christ in the desert. A sermon that Caterina wrote for her nuns likewise urges them to welcome such temptations as intrinsic to the quest for true obedience (pp. 65–72).
Although Caterina’s own account of her diabolical struggles is corroborated by her vita, written by a close companion, we have no such assurances for the other women under examination. Indeed, the author of Elena’s life did not seem to know the saint at all. Columba’s vita inspires somewhat more confidence insofar as it was written by one of her confessors. Even so, it is well-known that hagiographers put their own constructions on the lives of their holy subjects. Columba’s whole vita is so carefully aligned with the life of Christ, including her diabolical struggles, that the cumulative effect is rather suspicious. By the same token, when Elena’s hagiographer argued that the saint overcame Satan in the same manner as Christ by using Scripture as a weapon, Huesman interprets this as ‘perhaps the most important in Elena’s efforts to live a life in imitation of Christ’ (p. 52). And yet, as Huesman reported a few pages earlier, the hagiographer was not her confessor, nor does he make any reference to eyewitnesses (p. 48). But he was a theologian who would, arguably, be inclined to see Scripture as the ultimate weapon against Satan.
Occasionally, Huesman’s analysis veers off the point. Chapter vi, for example, is marred by a tangent into a quasi-scientific and anachronistic assessment of the physical and psychological impact of these austerities, largely derived from Ariel Glucklich’s Sacred pain (pp. 140ff). Her study is further undercut by an over-reliance on secondary sources and historiographic surveys that often serve as a kind of filler. The situation would probably have been ameliorated had Huesman not limited herself to one particular vita per saint – albeit the earliest and, arguably, the most authentic. Even so, there were often several more or less contemporaneous extant vitae that could have proven valuable. Huesman seems to recognise this, opening chapter v with a quotation from Giacomo da Udine vaunting Elena’s ‘unheard of imitation of Christ’. This promising foray outside Elena’s ur-vita, however, is but another instance in which the notes read ‘quoted by’ (p. 98. n.1).
Nevertheless, Huesman’s basic contention that diabolical temptation could serve as a form of imitiatio Christi is a compelling intervention that could help develop a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to the role that the demonic played in lives of late medieval holy women. In her conclusion, Huesman described these three women as but ‘a representative sample of the holy women who populated the religious landscape of the Quattrocento in Italy’, implying that many other holy women perceived their demonic struggles as central to their imitation of Christ (p. 206). This interesting claim deserves to be tested. It may also be useful to push the paradigm back in time to the demon-ridden landscape of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century female spirituality to assess the role that imitatio Christi may have played.
