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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2013
This article considers the social and cultural contexts of the two lives of Margherita Colonna (c.1254–1280) to reveal her traditional, monastic Franciscan piety that originated with her baronial Roman background. To her family, Margherita Colonna represented a moderate type of Franciscan piety that did not conflict with elite patriarchal expectations of women, and one that differed from the radical penitence of Clare of Montefalco, Angela of Foligno, and Margherita of Cortona. Her hagiographers structured their respective renditions of her life to promote their own agendas, choosing and omitting saintly virtues as they saw fit. Margherita's first life, written by her brother Giovanni Colonna, extolled her humility, nobility, and almsgiving. Her second life, written by Stefania, her relative and the successor of her spiritual community, focused on Margherita's mysticism and concern for her cloistered community. Both of these works diverge from the lives of radical female Franciscans who practiced contempt for the world and rigorous poverty. For this reason, this article argues that Margherita's pious type broke from that of Clare of Assisi, and more closely resembled the traditional monastic religiosity practiced by her family before the arrival of St. Francis. Such an approach to hagiography reveals the social context from which it arose, as well as gendered notions of holiness, thereby contributing to the fields of medieval sanctity, gender, and society.
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14 Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 111: “Margherita itaque ex nobili Romanorum progenie orta, dum paternis manis in laribus, nondum relicto seculo, altero et digniori orbata parente, matri et fratribus subdita fuit.”
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18 Ibid., 114: “Audit libenter virgo verbum et iam horas quibus audiendo vacare posit clandestine exquirit; perfigitur anima eius penetrabili gladio verbo Dei et inde primum concipit unde postea virginitatem suam Deo obsecrans in omni humilitate servavit.”
19 Ibid., 113–114.
20 Ibid., 132: “De domo sua in cordis magnificentia cunctas excellerat. Nam alie barones et comites sibi previderant, sed ipsa solius regis Filio se statuerat desponsandam.”
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42 Bevegnati, Antica leggenda, 33: “Hec est illa Margarita, que capsam donans, et vasa pauperibus tribuens, panem pro suo victu in olla fracta et lapide tecta, paupertatis amore recondidit.”
43 Oliger, B. Margherita Colonna, 195–196: “Scio, inquid, carissima Soror, te nobis suadere optima atque vera, sed quia inter virtutum cristmata sola caritas obtinet primatum, sine cuius perfectione nec martirium, nec seculi contemptus, nec maceratio carnis, nec largitio helemosinarum Deo placere non possunt.”
44 1 Cor. 13:13. The entire verse reads: “Nunc autem manet fides spes caritas, tria haec maior autem his est caritas.”
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50 Mueller, The Privilege of Poverty, 44.
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