Nei monasteri Pavesimonache patrizie e scritture autobiografiche (secoli XVI-XVII)

Abstract

The research area of the present dissertation is female monasticism, which binds religious history to gender history studies. The present work focuses on the spiritual autobiographies written by two Seventeenth century capuchin nuns, that is sister Maria Marta Bicuti and sister Maria Domitilla Galluzzi, who belonged to the patriciate of Pavia. The town of Pavia was not so far from Milan; yet, its diocese was under an independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction, so the two cases cannot really be assimilated. In particular, this work is organized in two closely linked parts, adopting a perspective moving through the permeable walls of nunneries: from the outside, that is the town dimension, towards the inside, that is the intimate and spiritual space occupied by the two nuns. The first part has an institutional approach and deals with the relation between the nunneries and the town. To begin with, we analyse how the cloisters system developed, in the light of the peculiar ecclesiastical reform locally introduced by Monsignor Ippolito de’ Rossi. This part takes a wide range of sources into account, including pastoral visits, in order to register the monastic population in relation to their family origin. Moreover, this part investigates the family origin of the educande, young women who were hosted for some time in a cloister to receive a good education. Throughout the analysis of these sources, we show how nunneries tended to reproduce to a great extent Pavia’s social and political inner dynamics, due to a familiar network, whose strings crossed the cloisters walls, though producing a tension with the rules established by Monsignor de’ Rossi. The second part of the dissertation explores female monasticism from a cultural and spiritual point of view, by taking into account the spiritual autobiographies of sister Maria Domitilla Galluzzi and sister Maria Marta Bicuti. Whereas the autobiography of the former has already been published, Bicuti’s one is still unavailable, so for the analysis the transcription of the manuscript conserved in the Archivio Civico di Pavia was needed. In comparing the two “ego-documents”, some significant differences take shape, for instance concerning the way the two nuns portrayed themselves, their reference to literal tradition and mystical models, their relationship with the male authority represented by the confessor: ultimately, two alternative ways of being a “santa viva”.