Updated 05-11-08
Catherine of Bologna
/Caterina Vigri /Vegri (1413-1463)
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"I HAVE BEEN MOVED TO WRITE THE PRESENT LITTLE BOOK AS A
WARNING AND INSTRUCTION."
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Catherine Vigri was born and died in Bologna but spent most
of her life in Ferrara. She was raised at the court of Nicholas
III d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara, whom her father served as a diplomatic
agent. Ferrara had spent much of the preceding century defending
itself from Milan and Venice, so a period of relative peace allowed
the Este family to do what the other northern courts were doing:
trying to compete with Florence as a cultural center.
In this environment Catherine apparently received a humanist
education; we know that she learned Latin, music, and the art
of manuscript illumination. She was educated with Margaret d'Este,
Nicholas' daughter, and was one of her attendants until 1427,
when Margaret was married. After Margaret's marriage and the
death of her own father, Catherine joined a community of about
15 lay women in Ferrara. The women wished to join one of the
established religious orders but disagreed as to which.
Twenty years earlier a Frenchwoman, Colette of Corbie, had
established a reformed branch of the Poor Clares, the order that
had been founded by Clare of Assisi
200 years earlier but that had, over the years, grown far away
from Clare's vision. Word of Colette's reform had spread to Italy,
and Catherine and some (but only some) of the other women in
her group wished to join the Reformed Poor Clares. The disagreement
among the women was severe: first, in 1431, the bishop briefly
disbanded the entire group; a year later, Catherine and some
of the others were professed as Poor Clares, although not according
to the reformed Rule; then in 1434, 14 nuns, including Catherine,
were absolved by the pope of unspecified crimes involving "apostasy."
It wasn't until the following year that the new monastery was
officially allowed to follow Colette's reformed Rule.
During her years in Ferrara, Catherine acted as mistress of
novices, and it was in this capacity that she began to write
Le sette armi spirituali (The seven spiritual weapons).
By 1450 the Ferrara monastery had grown to include 85 women,
and in 1456 Catherine was sent to found a new house in Bologna.
There she became abbess and stayed until her death. Before she
died, she gave her nuns her manuscript to be read by them and
to be shared with the nuns at Ferrara. Le sette armi spirituali
was printed by the Bolognese nuns in 1475 (one of the earliest
printed works in that city) and was frequently reprinted during
the 1500s.
A collection of Catherine's other treatises, with her hymns
and letters, has been published but not yet translated.
Among the treatises is I dodici giardini (The twelve gardens),
on the stages of growth in love of God; others are il Rosarium
and I Sermoni. Shortly after Catherine's death, her
secretary at Bologna, Illuminata Bembo (d.1483), wrote Catherine's
biography, Specchio di illuminazione, which includes the
words of as well as anecdotes about the abbess.
Catherine also produced frescoes, free-standing paintings,
and illuminated manuscripts; the frescoes are gone, but some
of her other art has survived (see one online). When art scholars
write of her work, they usually use her family name, Caterina
Vigri.
Le sette armi spirituali seems to be almost two separate
documents. The first six chapters and the start of the seventh
are very practical and down-to-earth, intended for newcomers
to the religious life. This part is brief, the organization is
clear and easy to follow, and the dominant image is that of the
almost constant warfare familiar to the courtier families from
which her novices had come.
The rest of the long Chapter 7 and Chapters 8-10 describe
Catherine's visionary experiences and her attempts to make sense
of them. Like Chapters 1-6 they are addressed to the novices,
but content and structure are quite different. For the modern
reader, the last chapters are perhaps the most interesting because
of what they reveal of Catherine's internal conflict.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from a translation in print.
Information about secondary sources.
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Online
1. A 1998 translation of Le sette armi spirituali, by
Hugh Feiss and Daniela Re, The
Seven Spiritual Weapons; the introduction by Feiss and
Marilyn Hall provides a valuable review of Catherine's life and
chief work (for excerpts from the translation, see below, under
"In print").
2. From other translations of Le sette armi spirituali:
(a) An excerpt from
the opening of the work.
(b) At the bottom of the page, a passage given a few lines later,
which names the
seven needed weapons.
(c) From one of Catherine's other works, an excerpt on two
kinds of temptations.
(d) Use your browser's search function to go to "Bologna"
for an anecdote from Illuminata Bembo's vita, on a dying
Catherine
playing the viola (and at another site, a picure of Catherine's
violetta, still at Bologna).
3. In a 2004 Italian-language essay on Catherine by Carlo
Caffarra, three brief original
passages from Le sette armi spirituali and the closing
sentence of I dodici giarini.
4. Art by Caterina Vigri:
(a) A painting of Mary
and the child Jesus with an apple.
(b) Part of a manuscript page from Vigri's
breviary; we aren't sure if the lettering is her work, but
the illumination is.
5. Another painting, "Saint
Ursula and Four Saints." Long believed to be by Vigri,
the work is now generally attributed to the workshop of Giovanni
Bellini. It is given here because you will find it named in older
references to her art; for example, see its description
at #54 in a early 1900s catalog of one of the rooms in Venice's
Accademia.
6. Essays:
(a) "Breaking
the Silence: The Poor Clares and the Visual Arts in Fifteenth-century
Italy" (1995), by Jeryldine M. Wood, includes a discussion
of Catherine's art and writing (unfortunately, the illustrations
of the original article are not included online).
(b) The entry on Catherine in the 1913 edition of the
Catholic Encyclopedia.
7. Reviews (for information on the books' treatment of Catherine,
see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Fiora A. Bassanese on the 2000 essay collection, A
History of Women's Writing in Italy.
(b) In the opening pages of a review of several studies, Ann
Roberts on Wood's 1996 Women,
Art, and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy.
8. A bibliography
of editions of Catherine's writings; and elsewhere, after a brief
biography, a 2-page bibliography
of studies.
9. Contemporary images:
(a) A miniature
of Catherine, made at Ferrara about six years after her death
by Guglielmo Giraldi.
(b) And within 20 years of her death, a Flemish panel-painting,
"Saint
Catherine of Bologna with three donors" (the Colettine
reform, of which Catherine was a part, was more successful in
Flanders than in Italy).
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[Hugh Feiss and Daniela Re have translated Le sette
armi spirituali. The introduction is divided into two parts:
Feiss gives information on Catherine's life and something of
the political background; then Marilyn Hall looks at the work
for evidence of clinical depression in Catherine. The notes and
bibliography are brief but useful. The work is available online:]
The Seven Spiritual Weapons / Catherine of Bologna; Translated,
with notes by Hugh Feiss and Daniela Re (Peregrina Translation
Series; 25). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Peregrina Publishing Co.,
1998. (103 p.: ill.)
LC#: BX2349 .C37 1998
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"Come to the dance singing of love."
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[From the Preface:]
In the name of the eternal Father and of his only begotten
Son Christ Jesus, of the splendour of the Father's glory, for
love of whom, with jubilation of heart, I cry, saying to his
refined servants and spouses:
Let every lover who loves the Lord
Come to the dance singing of love,
Let her come dancing all afire
Desiring only him who created her
And separated her from the dangerous worldly state. [pp.31-32]
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"...assaulted by their own will and by how they see things."
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[But in order to participate in the dance, the religious
must live a life of obedience.
Catherine knows the difficulty of doing this, and so she will
give her novices the needed weapons:]
...I have written here below... some counsels to comfort those
persons who have entered the noble battle of this obedience and,
being strongly attacked and assaulted by their own will and by
how they see things or how things appear to them, are very sad,
thinking that, by this, they lose all the merit of obedience.
[p.32]
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"Let her first take up the arms necessary...."
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[She lists the seven weapons:]
Whoever from deep within her noble and zealous heart wished
to take up the cross..., let her first take up the arms necessary
for such battles...: first is diligence; second, distrust of
self; third, confidence in God; fourth, memory of his passion;
fifth, memory of one's own death; sixth, memory of the glory
of God; seventh and last, the authority of Holy Scripture as
it gives the example of Christ Jesus in the desert. [p.33]
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"...our adversary, like a wicked traitor, assails us from
ambush."
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[Catherine's novices need weapons because they are fighting
a war with the devil, who for Catherine was very real. Most of
the first six chapters describes how the devil will try to conquer
and how the appropriate weapon will defeat him. For example,
on the first weapon, "diligence":]
The first weapon I call zeal, that is solicitude in doing
good.... but with discretion, so that when our adversary, like
a wicked traitor, assails us from ambush, we can defend ourselves.
By "from ambush," I mean, when under the appearance
of good, he wishes to kill you, for there is as much danger in
too much as in too little....
...[W]hen the enemy sees that he cannot impede the servant
of Christ from doing good, he will seek to entice her with doing
too much. So exercise all the virtues in proper measure that
the weapon of true and diligent discretion may be exercised for
our salvation and for the praise of Christ.
[p.35]
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"Test... whether it is a good or a wicked spirit before
you listen to him."
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[Chapters 7-10 make up over three-fourth of the work; here
Catherine describes the efforts of the devil against her desire
to be an obedient religious and against the plans for the reformed
monastery. She starts:]
Of the seventh weapon I will elaborate more at length. I will
do this in order to make clear a very subtle trick played on
one of the first sisters by the enemy of our salvation. This
is the reason that I have been moved to write the present little
book as a warning and instruction for all the novice sisters
who are here at present or will follow in the future in this
monastery....
The seventh weapon... is the memory of Holy Scripture which
we must carry in our hearts and from which, as from a most devoted
mother, we must take counsel in all the things we have to do....
[W]ith this weapon, our saviour Christ Jesus conquered and confounded
the devil in the desert....
And be on guard that you are not deceived by the mere appearance
of good, for the devil sometimes appears in the appearance of
Christ or the virgin Mary or in the shape of an angel or a saint.
Therefore, in every apparition that might occur, take up the
weapon of Scripture which shows how the mother of Christ comported
herself when the angel Gabriel appeared to her. She said to him,
"What is this greeting?" Follow her example in every
appearance and feeling, and you will want to test much better
whether it is a good or a wicked spirit before you listen to
him. [pp.41-42]
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"...she should abandon the soul of her own senses and of
her own opinion."
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[Perhaps the most interesting passages in this section
show Catherine trying to deal with her own internal conflict
during her group's first years. She favored joining the reformed
Poor Clares; her first superior did not. Catherine therefore
disagreed with much of what the superior was doing, yet felt
an obligation to obey her. The result was two visions --- apparently
of Mary and of Christ --- which urged an unthinking and undiscerning
obedience:]
[The apparition of Mary] wished to say that she [Catherine]
should abandon the soul of her own senses and of her own opinion.
Because of this, with all her zeal she renewed her effort to
obey her superior without any discernment or care for herself....
Still by means of this her enemies sought to deceive her and
began to send into her heart various and new thoughts against
obedience so that judgments and murmuring entered her mind regarding
almost all the things done or said by her superior....
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"I cannot restrain the thoughts which come to me."
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[Next was a vision of Christ on the cross; just before
this passage, the apparition had called Catherine a thief:]
She understood that he said this because of the thoughts of
infidelity which she had in her heart against her abbess...,
and she answered: "My Lord, what should I do because I do
not have my heart in the control of my free will and I cannot
restrain the thoughts which come to me?"
He answered saying: "Do as I tell you; catch your will,
memory and intellect and make sure that in no matter you do something
other than the desire of your elders."
And she said: "How must I do this when I cannot retain
the intellect which discerns or the memory which remembers?"
And he answered: "Place your will in theirs and think
that their will is yours and do not wish to exercise memory or
intellect in any matter other than theirs."
And she even said she could not do that, aware that she did
not have her heart subject to her freedom....
She, believing he was Jesus Christ, kept her mind on these
things and thought about them often. Nevertheless,... as soon
as her abbess ordered some exercise or said something, it seemed
that a thousand judgments came to her mind: "This matter
would be better if it were thus and so," and many thoughts
of infidelity and contradiction of which she never spoke.... [pp.45-46]
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"...in order to make her come to a greater knowledge of
herself."
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[For five years Catherine lived with the temptation to blind
obedience and her despair over her intellect's refusal to give
it; she finally came to regard the visions as diabolical visitations:]
This happened to the praise of the Lord God who does not abandon
those who hope in him, who permitted her to have many great troubles
because he wished to test her in this way and make her worthy
of greater glory.
So he openly permitted that she would know how the above mentioned
apparitions had proceeded from the devil and that God had permitted
all that in order to make her come to a greater knowledge of
herself.... [p.50]
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"God alone can give understanding and strength against his
enemies."
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[Book 8-10 describe other spiritual and visionary experiences
and give advice to Catherine's novices and fellow nuns (and to
her abbess, no longer the one she had opposed). In Book 9, she
returns briefly to her purpose:]
Now, beloved sisters, I have written these things principally
for all my dear novices who are newly entered onto the field
of the spiritual battle and for those who must succeed them in
the future....
And therefore it was necessary that God let her [Catherine]
be tricked by these enemies for a little while, so that then,
humbled, she would careful to stand in in perfect fear and know
that God alone can give understanding and strength against his
enemies. [p. 82]
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Secondary sources
[Jeryldine Wood's study has a chapter on Caterina Vigri
as an artist. It includes nine reproductions: four paintings
and five illuminations; the chapter and an appendix also give
translations (and originals) from Le sette armi spirituali
and passages of verse and prose attributed to Vigri in Illuminata
Bembo's as-yet-untranslated biography. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Wood, Jeryldene. Women, art, and spirituality: the Poor Clares
of early modern Italy. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1996. (xiv, 272 p.: ill., maps; 26 cm)
LC#: BX4363.I8 W66 1996; ISBN: 0521496020
Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-268) and index
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[Gabriella Zarri's essay in this history include a discussion
of Catherine's Le sette armi spirituali as representative
of a new form of spirituality; Zarri also describes the biography
of Catherine by Bembo. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
A history of women's writing in Italy
/ edited by Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood. Cambridge [England]
; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2000. (xvi, 361 p.)
LC#: PQ4055.W6 H57 2000; ISBN: 0521570883, 0521578132
Includes bibliographical references (p. 282-350) and index
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[An essay in this collection, "Mystical Enunciations:
Mary, the Devil, and Quattrocento Spirituality," by Jane
Tylus, presents Catherine's deception by demons as representative
of a crisis in Christian spirituality in the 1400s. The essay
is accompanied by several illustrations, one an illumination
attributed to Catherine. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Women mystic writers / edited by Dino S. Cervigni (Annali d'italianistica;
v. 13). Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, c1995. (540 p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ4001 .A6 v.13; ISSN: 0741-7527
Includes bibliographical references. English and Italian.
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[This collection contains an essay by Mary Martin McLaughlin,
"Creating and Recreating Communities of Women: The Case
of Corpus Domini, Ferrara, 1406-1452," which describes the
early days of Catherine's first convent. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Sisters and workers in the Middle Ages / edited by Judith
M. Bennett... [et al.] Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1989. (299 p., [8] p. of plates: ill.)
LC#: HD1143 .S55 1989; ISBN: 0226042472, 0226042480
Includes bibliographies and indexes
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Updated 05-11-08
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