Lucia Brocadelli: Autobiographical Preacher
of the Early Modern Lombard Courts
E. Ann
Matter
University
of Pennsylvania
Among
"Le Sante Vive," the live women saints of early modern Italy, Lucia
Brocadelli (d. 1545) is an especially revealing example of women's literacy.
This Dominican Penitent was a follower of Savonarola, the Court Prophet of
Ferrara, and a favorite of Duke Ercole I d'Este, "Ercole il
Magnifico." She was famous
from Italy to Bohemia, and greatly revered in her own time. Suor Lucia was the author of two autobiographical
works: "Seven Revelations," and a "Vita." The "Revelations" is found in
an autograph manuscript in Pavia, and has been published in Italian and
translated into English; while the "Vita," extant in a later copy
(said to be copied from an autograph) in Bologna, is only now being critically
edited. Both are lively texts,
written in an Italian that uses dialect forms, but also quotes Savonarola in
Italian and the Bible in Latin, showing the wide range of Lucia's literary
habits. My paper will describe
these texts, with particular attention to the format of the manuscripts and the
peculiarities of the Italian language used and the Latin Bible quoted. My goal is to help illuminate what
"literacy" meant in Lucia's intellectual and religious context,
including her use of sources, and her mastery of different linguistic forms.
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