An Unknown Female Lay Confraternity, Terni, 1613
This exceptional manuscript contains the rules of an otherwise unknown religious confraternity of laywomen in the Umbrian town of Terni who were dedicated to special devotion for the Blessed Virgin Mary. It may well reflect the broader orientation of the Roman Catholic Church in Terni, whose basilica was devoted to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The overarching purpose of such all-female confraternities was to offer lay Catholics an opportunity to dedicate themselves to the Church in formal ways that more closely resembled the commitments of the ordained secular and regular clergy. Their members were drawn from the ranks of unmarried women, wives, mothers, and widows who were unprepared or unable—whether financially or because of their family circumstances and responsibilities—to formally take the veil in a female monastic order through solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
Such organizations were constituted through the thorough explication of specific rules that all members of the confraternity were compelled to obey on pain of sanction or expulsion from the community. Such rules were duly proposed, edited, and approved by ecclesiastical authorities, as is evident here in a final statement of approbation formally signed and sealed by the bishop of Terni, Clemente Gera, who presided over the See of Terni from November 1613 through 1625. Indeed, it appears that it might have been his recent appointment that provided a special opportunity to aspiring members of such a confraternity to propose its foundation, as the title page of the present manuscript rule is dated 1613 and was given Gera’s formal approbation months later, on April 9, 1614.
Even though it was the male bishop who authorized the foundation of this lay confraternity, the responsibility for its structure, internal governance, activities, and finances would have fallen upon the lay sisters themselves. Despite the fact that they were obliged to live in familial households separate from a communal house, their intention was to gather and meet in a dedicated structure and to share their possessions in support of one another as sisters. The rule stipulates that they could take vows of chastity or not, depending on their individual circumstances, and that every sister was obligated to lead a life of personal poverty within the context of the confraternity, wherein everything acquired by the congregation through gift or purchase, including books such as this manuscript, were to be shared by all.
The members of the congregation also regulated their own behavior and observed others doing the same. Ritual fasting, regimens of mental and vocal prayer, daily spiritual contemplation, regular sacramental observance of confession and mass, visits to the sick, and communal work and reading with one another all were hallmarks of their devotion. Conversely, participation in balls and masquerades or public singing, were to be avoided. Any action deemed unchaste was expressly forbidden on pain of expulsion.
The unique manuscript text of this confraternity’s rule is divided into twenty-five separate chapters, beginning with a uniform declaration of obedience to the appointed “Preposita,” or female head of the larger congregation, who normally was to be a mature women at least forty years old, whose term was limited to no more than three years of incumbency and elected through secret ballots. Very precise devotions were also prescribed, including the Liturgy of the Hours, personal examinations of conscience for at least fifteen minutes of every day, and prayers for recently deceased sisters. The admission of new lay sisters was restricted to those known to not be vain, sick, or guilty of a bad reputation, and only after the successful completion of a one-year novitiate. A majority vote using black and white balls would be tallied by the community to ensure that votes for new members were conducted correctly.
This particular manuscript rule is unusual, for it is not simply a utilitarian explication of a distinct set of rules but is also interestingly “extra-illustrated” with engravings taken from other sources that convey in visual terms the profoundly devotional tenor of the confraternity that this volume aspires to describe. This may have been important, for the prose used throughout the manuscript is plain and direct, and thus accessible to those with poor literacy. Explicit mention is also made of sisters within the confraternity who may not be able to read at all.
Among these several visual representations is, appropriately to this community, an engraving of Saint Mary Major by Karel van Mallery. He was a Flemish artist closely associated with the Plantin-Moretus Press in Antwerp, which was renowned throughout Catholic Europe for its production of fine, even lavish, liturgical and spiritual Catholic books. So, too, was Hieronimus Wierix, an associate of the Plantin-Moretus Press whose intricate engraving of the Crucifixion in this volume is mirrored by another depicting the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, the canonical events in the lives of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary that together fill and help to embody a holy cross. The ritual observance of these mysteries would have formed a central component of the spiritual lives of the sisters of this congregation.
An additional engraving depicts Saint Carlo Borromeo “S.R.E.C.,” likely denoting his title as Sanctae Romanae Ecclesia Cardinalis (Cardinal of the Most Holy Roman Church). Cardinal Borromeo—long-time archbishop of Milan and the quintessential ecclesiastical administrator and champion of the internal reforms of the Catholic Reformation—had been canonized as a saint in 1610, just about three years prior to the production of this manuscript rule for Terni. Its inclusion may have been designed either to flatter, or simply to delight, Bishop Gera by suggesting some kind of similarity and ecclesiastical association between the two men. Indeed, Gera was a native of the Piedmont town of Novara, and thus likely to have been counted among Borromeo’s many devoted admirers in that region. If so, this gesture to episcopal authority also underscores the fragility of many of these confraternities and their reliance on the continued approbation and support of local and regional bishops for their success. The apparent lack of any further documents regarding this community suggests that the congregation most likely enjoyed a relatively short life. In 1625, just eleven years after his initial approval of this manuscript rule, Bishop Gera was elevated to the See of Lodi; his departure may well have contributed in some way to its apparent decline.
—Kelsey Champagne, Earle Havens
Bibliography
Silvia Evangelisti, “Wives, Widows, and Brides of Christ: Marriage and the Convent in the Historiography of Early Modern Italy,” The Historical Journal 43:1 (March 2000), 233–47; Jennifer Hillman, “Lay Female Devotional Lives in the Counter Reformation,” Church History and Religious Culture 97 (2017): esp. 369–74; Alison Weber (ed.), Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World (Routledge, 2016), esp. 16–26; Nicholas Terpstra et al. (eds.), Faith’s Boundaries: Laity and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities (Brepols, 2013); Nicholas Terpstra (ed.), The Politics of Ritual Kinship: Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2000); Christopher Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1989).
