I. Introduction
Francesca Bussa wanted to be a nun. Her parents, like many elite parents, wanted her to marry to cement an economic and political alliance. Francesca obliged her parents and married Lorenzo Ponziani, yet, while married, she lived the life of a bizzoca and gathered like women around her. In her vita, Father Ippolito sought to capture Francesca’s style of dress while she was married to her husband, writing that “although she was the wife of a noble and very rich husband, she clothed herself in coarse and beggarly garments.”Footnote 1 In choosing to dress simply, even “beggarly,” Francesca rejected the sumptuous dress that was the norm for elite Roman women. Eventually, Francesca and her companions would become Oblates to the Benedictine Olivetans and live as bizzoche and, as such, would wear a particular habit associated with their community.
The bizzoche did not take formal religious vows, like nuns, although they could be affiliated with a religious order. Nevertheless, they were more than mere laywomen in that they practiced a particular type of piety that included devotion to the Eucharist, asceticism, and service to the poor. They were, therefore, something in between; they were non-cloistered religious women. Scholarship on such women largely focuses on the beguines in northern Europe.Footnote 2 When studies do center Italian bizzoche, they are limited to one particular community or a single woman.Footnote 3 This article, in contrast, examines eleven communities of Roman bizzoche as a whole to reveal how “ordinary” non-cloistered religious women conducted their daily lives. These eleven communities were established between 1282 and 1461 and were affiliated with various religious orders (see Table 1). Most of the communities thrived up until the sixteenth century when they either disappeared from the historical record or transitioned to enclosed communities of formal nuns, largely due to lack of funds, the emphasis on enclosure by the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and Pope Pius V’s bull Circa pastoralis (1566), and changing social norms.Footnote 4 Because of their various affiliations, fifteenth-century Roman bizzoche adhered to different rules and statutes, but all dressed modestly. Shared practices, such as dress, piety, and service to the poor transcended a mere association with a particular religious order and marked bizzoche as different from other Roman women, aiding their ability to practice a life of piety despite increasing Church restrictions on non-cloistered women. Like other non-cloistered religious women—such as their counterparts in Tuscany and Venice, the pinzochere, and the beguines in Germany—bizzoche shared in the practices of simple dress and public piety, indicating a broader European cultural repertoire from which such women drew their models. Investigating such a shared repertoire can provide insight into a universal practice that, at the same time, was dependent on local contexts. Drawing on original archival research regarding eleven communities of Roman bizzoche, the vitae of late medieval, non-cloistered saints, such as Catherine of Siena, and synthesizing an array of secondary sources, this article argues that late medieval, non-cloistered religious women across Europe formed a shared identity through their choice of dress and their pious practices. Such an identity distinguished them from both laywomen and nuns, placing them in a liminal space and allowing them to thrive at a time of increasing suspicion of non-cloistered religious women.
Communities of Roman bizzoche and their affiliation
II. Status and Conformity in the Lives of Non-cloistered Religious Women
In the late Middle Ages, women’s options for a pious way of life were many, even as the Church increasingly tried to regulate them. Women, whether nuns or non-cloistered religious, were flexible in their associations with religious orders for their benefit.Footnote 5 Sometimes a woman or group of women would change their religious affiliation to gain more autonomy. At other times, a woman or group of women would choose to affiliate with a particular order only because they wanted to avoid accusations of heresy or immorality. The abundance of religious options along with flexibility in association means that scholars cannot rely on affiliation with a particular order to define a woman’s religious sentiments. Rather, scholars should examine the practices that such women used to create a shared identity, such as dress and pious works. This shared identity allowed women in these communities and those who interacted with them to recognize that bizzoche, no matter what religious affiliation they had or where they were located, belonged to a broader network of non-cloistered religious women.
Many of the women who joined the eleven communities of bizzoche noted in the table above were from elite families. For example, Francesca’s father and uncle were conservators (a high office to hold in Renaissance Rome), and her husband’s family were bovattieri or prosperous cattle ranchers.Footnote 6 Other bizzoche also came from families tied to these careers. Many of the families of the bizzoche, and sometimes the women themselves, were registered in the elite confraternity Societas Sancti Salvatoris ad Sancta Sanctorum. Footnote 7 The members of this confraternity included cardinals, barons, and the urban elite.Footnote 8 The membership of relatives and, at least in one case, of a bizzoca herself, indicates that these women belonged to important Renaissance Roman families and thus could have made other choices for their lives rather than becoming a non-cloistered religious woman, and their choice of dress strikingly distinguished them from other elite Roman women.Footnote 9
Elite women wore luxurious clothing to distinguish themselves from other social classes and to bolster the prestige of their families. In fifteenth-century Rome, as in Europe generally, clothing was symbolic, and an ordinary person recognized the status of others (either in person or in images) via their dress.Footnote 10 In Rome, as in other affluent cities, elite women wore especially elaborate items such as long cloaks, elaborate veils, perfumed gloves, and corked slippers. In a letter to Cardinal Giulio de’Medici of Florence in 1519, an anonymous writer described women attending a Pentecost Festival in Rome as wearing golden dresses made of satin and velvet with pearls, gold, jasper, and carnelian jewelry.Footnote 11 By regulating dress, sumptuary laws regulated status by reinforcing social barriers to maintain the social hierarchy.Footnote 12 As the Church became increasingly restrictive for women, by the fifteenth century, most sumptuary laws in Italy regarded women’s clothing rather than men’s clothing or ceremonies and feasts.Footnote 13 Often, these laws used moral reasons for such restrictions and emphasized the need for charity rather than opulent dress, but the effect was to strip power.
In contrast, bizzoche, many of whom belonged to this elite Roman class insofar as their families were wealthy, opposed the social norms of class and gender by choosing an austere life of lay piety. However, even modest dress and good works posed problems for women in a time when appearing in public was considered disgraceful. For example, prostitutes could not legally wear veils, so women wearing veils technically could be considered respectable. In reality, however, there was no good way to police dress (thus the numerous sumptuary laws) so any woman on a public street was assumed to be dishonest. To mitigate this risk, the bizzoche adopted a particular style of dress to mark them as morally upright women. Such dress allowed them the freedom to engage in public charitable work without garnering a bad reputation. There remained, of course, some suspicion and hostility towards bizzoche as the adoption of simple habits by elite women could be perceived as performative rather than sincere. Although later than the period covered in this article, the satirical Protestant depiction of Rome in the Mappe-Monde Nouvelle Papistique depicts bizzoche counterparts in one of the provinces of Rome, the pinzohcere, in religious dress but with the faces of wolves, suggesting that pinzochere/bizzoche were not holy women but only disguised themselves as such to hide their true nefarious doings.Footnote 14 Nevertheless, as neither prostitutes, professed nuns, nor elite laywomen, the bizzoche were, in the words of Victor Turner, “betwixt and between all the recognized fixed points in space–time and structural classification” and therefore better able to navigate gender- and class-based restrictions.Footnote 15
Precisely what style of dress the bizzoche wore would have largely depended on their religious affiliation. Of the eleven communities of bizzoche examined here, only Tor de’Specchi, affiliated with the Benedictines, left an extant rule detailing their dress and way of life, but we have surviving rules for the Franciscan and Dominican Third Orders as well as the Augustinian Rule. These rules along with notarial records, artwork, and hagiography provide insight into what these other bizzoche might have worn and what they might have practiced. One clue lies in the etymological connection of bizzoche and Franciscan tertiaries. Roberta A. McKelvie points out that the Italian Dictionary from 1925 has an entry that states “Pinzochero-a (It. Pinzzochero, lengthened form of Pizzoco, that is, Bizzoco, a corruption of Bigio, from the grey dress of the Franciscans); devotee, one who wears a habit of an Order, but has taken no vows.”Footnote 16 While some bizzoche did not wear the grey habit of the Franciscan Order, it is possible that some of the women of the eight communities associated with the Third Order of St. Francis did so. In particular, the community of S. Giacomo delle Muratte may have worn the gray habits of the Poor Clares. Mariano Armellini, in his comprehensive study of the churches of Rome, stated that the church of S. Giacomo delle Muratte had a monastery of Poor Clares and a hospital of twenty bizzoche attached to it.Footnote 17 However, since these bizzoche were united with Ss. Trinitatis and later with the community of S. Apollonia, both of whom are indicated in several notarial records as Third-Order Franciscans, I have placed the community of S. Giacomo with these other bizzoche in regards to habit.
The eight communities affiliated with the Franciscan Order (S. Apollonia, S. Elisabetta, S. Elisabetta in Ponte, S. Croce in Monte Citorio, Monte Citorio, S. Giacomo delle Muratte, S. Bernardino ai Monti, and Ss. Trinitatis) may have followed the rule set forth in Supra montem in 1289,Footnote 18 which states:
Let the sisters also wear a cloak and tunic made of the same common cloth, or at least with the cloak let them have a black or white skirt or dress or an ample robe of hemp or linen, sewn without any pleats…Let the brothers and sisters, however, not use ribbons or silk cords. Let them have furs only of lambskin, purses of leather and the thongs made without any silk, and none other shall they have. Other ornaments of the world are to be set aside according to the salutary counsel of Saint Peter, prince of the apostles.Footnote 19
The community of S. Elisabetta in Trastevere was dedicated to St. Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary. Since after the death of her husband, she took the habit of the tertiaries of St. Francis, it is most likely that these bizzoche did so as well. A seventeenth-century document cited by Armellini stated that the women of S. Croce in Monte Citorio wore the “abito di saia beretina.”Footnote 20 The only other reference to such a habit, that I have found, indicates that it was similar to those worn by the confraternity dedicated to the Stigmata of St. Francis.Footnote 21 In any case, whether the women of these communities wore a dress in the color of black, white, or the grey of the Poor Clares, the garments would have been plain, without pleats or ribbons or any other ornaments, and the very plainness of their attire served to distinguish them from other laywomen and protect their reputations.
The bizzoche of Tor de’Specchi wore the habits of the Oblates of the Benedictine Order: a black dress and white veil. Tor de’Specchi’s extant rule is called the Statues of Ordinations for the Blessed Francesca. These seventy-three statutes, according to tradition, were given to Francesca in November 1432 when the Blessed Virgin Mary and Christ told St. Peter to dictate the rules to Francesca.Footnote 22 Statute sixty-four concerns dress: “clothing should be worn this way: underneath a white skirt will be worn; on top of that, a black skirt and a belt of black rope; the cloth for coverings will be of linen; that is, bed sheets and edged cloth and other cloth for the head, and the woolen clothes as well as the others should be rough and not ostentatious.” Further, statute sixty-six directs: “in folding the skirt, it should not have pleats. Said skirt should not be longer than 18 palmi from the foot, and from the head it should cover part of the neck so that it will be necessary to have a button on one side. The head cloth should not have pleats…there should be nothing on top of the veil…the head should be covered in such a way that nothing is visible beyond the forehead. No one should go out unless she has shoes on.”Footnote 23 The dress of the Oblates of Tor de’Specchi would have been similar, therefore, to those who followed Supra montem: plain, black, and with no pleats.
The mantellate of S. Monica de Martellitiis were one of three communities affiliated with the Augustinian church of S. Trifone. They most likely wore the dress of other consororities of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine. This habit consisted of blue mantles, in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, veils, and belts.Footnote 24 The will of Maria de Cenciis, the foundress of one of the other two communities affiliated with S. Trifone, references the habit of the sisters as a mantle, veil, and leather belt.Footnote 25 It is, therefore, likely that the mantellate of S. Monica wore the same.
The bizzoche of S. Cecilia, associated with the Dominican Third Order, probably wore the dress of a Dominican tertiary. An official Rule for the Third Order of St. Dominic was not approved until 1405. The Dominican Penitent Rule’s instructions state that their dress should be made of “white and black cloth…which should be of no value…The mantle should be black…The tunics should be white, and their sleeves should reach the palms of the hands. The sleeves are to be cut narrow. Only leather belts should be worn, and the belts of the sisters should be fastened under their tunics…The veil and wimple of the sisters are to be made of white linen or hemp.”Footnote 26 Thus, their dress resembled that of the Oblates of Tor de’Specchi and those women associated with the Franciscan Third Order who followed Supra montem.
The habits chosen by bizzoche set them apart from other laywomen and created a shared affinity with other non-cloistered religious women. Current scholarship has unfortunately occluded our vision of this larger pattern insofar as it typically focuses on one or two communities rather than picturing the broader landscape of Roman bizzoche or even the broader phenomenon of European non-cloistered religious women. It is true that the eleven communities studied here could be distinguished by the habits associated with their affiliated religious orders, but while their clothing would have had subtle distinctions based on religious affiliation, to the common person, these distinctions would not have been clear. Rather, the similarities of the habits would have marked them as non-cloistered religious women, distinguishing them from other laywomen and providing them with respectability.Footnote 27
Similarly, communities of beguines in Germany also developed a shared identity based on dress, particularly clothing color. Jennifer Deane explains, “In the north, for example, lay religious women were often known as ‘blue sisters’… Elsewhere, the women were known variously as grey sisters, brown sisters, white sisters, and even black sisters.”Footnote 28 As with Roman bizzoche, the habits of the beguines established an identity that separated them from other laywomen and also served as a legitimizing force for their public pious expressions.Footnote 29 Similar to beguines in northern Europe and bizzoche in Italy, Spanish non-cloistered religious women, such as beatas and seroras, also wore distinguishing habits. The Basque seroras were independent of the Third Orders, yet some chose to adopt Franciscan or Dominican habits to distinguish them as devout women who played central roles in caring for local religious sites and objects.Footnote 30 The Castillian and New World beatas also donned specific habits, which marked these women as different and were more important than any kind of vows, which they may or may not have taken. These examples show that the use of special habits to distinguish non-cloistered religious women and create a shared identity was not a phenomenon exclusive to Roman bizzoche and points to a broader European women’s religious movement.
III. Practicing Piety as Bizzoche
The clothing that bizzoche chose to wear marked them as different and created a shared identity as non-cloistered religious women, but they also shared a pattern of life that revolved around a particular expression of piety that was marked by Eucharistic devotion, ascetic practices such as fasting and flagellation, acts of service, and charity. Many of the vitae from women in the thirteenth to sixteenth century were marked by such practices. We know that women, both religious and lay, read and shared devotional literature, including vitae of saints. In this way, they drew on a shared repertoire from which they shaped their pious practices.Footnote 31
For many holy women, Eucharistic devotion meant frequently partaking in the sacrament, sometimes living only on the Eucharist without other food. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 required all Christians to take communion once per year at Easter. Pious women, both nuns and laywomen, desired to take frequent communion, and it is likely that Roman bizzoche also sought to do so. Francesca, for example, took frequent communion and often fell into ecstasy when visiting various churches in the city.Footnote 32 She was even able to tell when a priest gave her and her sister-in-law, Vannozza, unconsecrated hosts.Footnote 33 The priest did so because he did not agree with the frequent communion that the women sought. This denial of communion to women was a common theme in many women’s vitae. Footnote 34 There were various reasons for the refusals, ranging from a fear that frequency would lessen the feeling of awe at the miracle of the Eucharist to the belief that, because holy women often went into ecstasy during communion, its denial would prevent such spectacles and preserve male authority.Footnote 35 In the case of Francesca, many of her ecstatic visions happened in churches, especially in the presence of the Eucharist. Her access to the divine through these visions gave her the ability to see the priest’s intentions or even the priest’s sins.Footnote 36 Women’s access to the divine, through such mystical visions, was one way in which holy women could contest or even bypass priestly authority.Footnote 37 Like her dress, Francesca’s visions, accessed through ingesting the Eucharist, distinguished her from other laywomen. They marked her as a holy woman who could participate in public charitable acts and inspire others to do the same.
Other Roman bizzoche did not leave records of mystical visions as did Francesca. Nevertheless, drawing on other types of sources, scholars can reconstruct how they might have interacted with the Eucharist. In the 1451 canonization process (processo) for Santa Francesca Romana, Margherita Martelluci, the foundress of S. Monica, testified that she saw Francesca receive communion from the prior of S. Clemente in the church of S. Angeli and the priest Giovanni at the church of S. Maria in Trastevere.Footnote 38 While this testimony does not indicate that Margherita also received communion on these occasions, probably she did so. If that is the case, then it could be that Roman bizzoche received communion at various churches throughout the city, no matter what religious affiliation it was under, reinforcing the argument that shared practices rather than religious affiliation connected these women. The eleven communities of bizzoche discussed here were spread throughout Rome in the neighborhoods (rione) of Monti, Trevi, Campo Marzio, Ponte, S. Eustachio, Campitelli, and Trastevere. Santa Francesca Romana lived in her husband’s house in Trastevere until joining her community (Tor de’Specchi) located in Campitelli while Margherita’s community of S. Monica was located in Campo Marzio. Examining this one case of Santa Francesca and Margherita at S. Maria in Trastevere provides insight into the geographic span and movement of these women within Rome and how location was not a barrier to the creation of a shared identity. The figure below demonstrates the geographic spread of these eleven communities.
The Franciscan and Dominican Third Order Rules detail interaction with the Eucharist for tertiary communities. Supra montem requires members of the Third Order of St. Francis to confess at least three times a year and receive the Eucharist.Footnote 39 While the Dominican Penitent Rule requires communion only four times a year, it states that “someone who devoutly desires to receive communion more often in the course of the year has God’s blessing to do so after he has petitioned for and received permission from a prelate.”Footnote 40 The bizzoche affiliated with the Franciscan and Dominican Third Orders also had models for taking frequent communion in figures similar to Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) and Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), who also often had ecstatic visions in the presence of the Eucharist. Such models mean that it is possible bizzoche affiliated with these orders also sought to deepen their connection to the Divine through regular communion.
Frequent communion and fasting usually went hand in hand because fasting was often seen as a way to purify the body and become worthy of receiving the Eucharist. Such practices can be seen in vitae from across Europe and across all forms of religious association.Footnote 41 Francesca was remembered for her fasting and bodily asceticism. From a young age, and even while married, she was described as sleeping on the floor for no more than two hours a night. She mortified her body. She had strict dietary restrictions, only eating once a day and only fruit, herbs, and legumes without oil or salt, and she wore a sackcloth and an iron collar until her confessor ordered her not to do so.Footnote 42 Such practices align with the depictions of many other holy women in the late Middle Ages, including Catherine of Siena and Margaret of Cortona (1247–1297), lending credence to the idea that non-cloistered religious women everywhere imitated the models found in hagiography.
Approximate Locations of the Case Sante.
The Rule of St. Augustine, Supra Montem, and the Dominican Penitent Rule proscribe fasting for the sisters.Footnote 43 Bizzoche associated with the Third Order Franciscans and the Dominican Order of Penitents might also have followed the examples of popular holy women of those orders, such as Margaret of Cortona, Angela of Foligno, and Catherine of Siena. Margaret and Angela were loosely associated with the Third Order of the Franciscans.Footnote 44 Angela, in her Memorial written down by a Brother A., stated that, even while married, she “began to reject fine foods, fancy clothing, and headdresses.”Footnote 45 Brother A. recalled that Angela performed “harsh penances” for her sins although he did not detail what these penances involved.Footnote 46 Perhaps, like other late medieval holy women, she wore hair shirts or deprived herself of sleep. Margaret of Cortona is remembered as practicing “extended fasts.” Her vita states that, “she refused to keep for herself more than crumbs from her begging, giving the whole loaves to the poor.”Footnote 47 Catherine of Siena, as a young girl, did not eat meat nor drink wine. Her confessor and biographer, Raymond of Capua, recalled that “during all the time it was my privilege to witness her way of life, she took no nourishing food, either solid or liquid.”Footnote 48 While this statement is an exaggeration, it does convey that Catherine practiced extreme fasting. According to Raymond, Catherine also slept on planks without bedding, wore a hair shirt, and then switched the hair shirt for an iron chain. Similar to Francesca’s confessor, Raymond had Catherine stop wearing the iron chain as it “occasioned her great pain.”Footnote 49 Finally, as with Francesca, Catherine is described as depriving herself of sleep. Raymond stated that she slept only half an hour every other day.Footnote 50 Such ascetic practices served to connect the woman to the suffering of Christ, both mentally and physically and were believed to allow women, like Christ, to aid in the redemption of others.Footnote 51
Hagiographical works, such as the vitae of Santa Francesca Romana and Catherine of Siena and even the Memorial of Angela of Foligno, were created to demonstrate the holiness of these women and aid in their canonization. Holy women served as models and examples for both religious and laywomen, even if they were not expected to go to the same extremes in their quest for holiness. We can assume, therefore, that while the bizzoche did not all practice extreme forms of asceticism, they probably fasted more often than a regular layperson. Fasting was one way in which women could partake in the suffering of Christ, which could aid them in becoming one with the divine. This oneness with God was a frequent theme in the writings of beguine mystics, such as Hadewijch of Brabant (1200–1260) and Marguerite Porete (1250–1310), demonstrating one probable connection between bizzoche and beguines.Footnote 52 Finally, asceticism was a marker of holiness for late medieval and early modern persons, and as women seeking to live a holy life, bizzoche may have followed the models of these women and Francesca Romana and participated in such practices.Footnote 53
A final characteristic that Roman bizzoche exhibited that demonstrates their piety was an adherence to poverty and service to the poor. Herbert Grundmann noted that it “was not lack of wealth but rather the flight from riches which precipitated [women’s] desire for voluntary poverty.”Footnote 54 Furthermore, Luigi Pellegrini argues that “radical poverty is the most striking characteristic of the female religious groups in central-northern Italy toward the end of the second decade of the thirteenth century.”Footnote 55 Although the bizzoche of Tor de’Specchi were born elites, on July 4, 1433, Pope Eugene IV (r. 1431–1447) granted them permission “to imitate the apostolic life” of poverty.Footnote 56 Therefore, we know that at least the members of Tor de’Specchi sought to live out this ideal of voluntary poverty. The canonization processi and vita of Santa Francesca Romana recalled that during a time of famine, Francesca opened the palazzo to the poor and gave out the food and all the wine that her father-in-law had been saving for the family’s use. He became very angry at her but, miraculously, Francesca caused the empty wine casks to be filled with even better wine.Footnote 57 Her selfless act was memorialized in one of the frescoes inside Tor de’Specchi. As an elite wife, Francesca was in charge of the running of the household. She was expected to ensure the provision of her household first before providing for those in need. Yet, as a bizzoca, Francesca’s duty was to serve God through serving the poor. The tension between these two duties caused some trouble within her household, but it is in these tensions that Francesca was able to demonstrate her power as an elite woman able to give the household’s wine to the poor and as a holy woman able to miraculously refill the casks. We do not know if other bizzoche from Tor de’Specchi also disposed of family property, but by choosing to live in a community focused on a pious way of life, they did renounce the extravagancies of their upper-class families. The Statutes of Ordination for the Beata Francesca advised that no member may keep items without permission from the president “otherwise she must give up that which she has and will fast on bread and water for one day, on the floor, having tied that which she has around her neck.”Footnote 58 The statutes, therefore, promoted restraint when it comes to personal property and encouraged the Oblates to shun excesses.
The other communities of bizzoche may have also adhered to voluntary poverty. If they wanted to do so, they had plenty of models, such as Margaret of Cortona, Catherine of Sienna, and Angela of Foligno. It is more likely, however, that they maintained their property and sought to live simply rather than in a state of radical poverty. Neither Supra montem nor the Dominican Penitent Rule have any prohibition against owning personal property. Pinzochere in Venice associated with the Franciscan and Dominican orders did not adhere to radical poverty, and their belongings remained their own when they joined the community.Footnote 59 Although the Rule of St. Augustine states that members should “call nothing your own, but let everything be yours in common,”Footnote 60 this statute does not seem to have been taken literally by the mantellate of S. Monica as we know from testament documents that at least two members, Rita and Jacobella, disposed of their personal property to others, including other mantellate. Footnote 61 Some of the items in Jacobella’s testament included a house that was part of her dowry, a ring, a mantle, a dress, and a copy of the divine office. Many of the communities of bizzoche in Rome owned houses or land, either bought by the community or given to them by others in testament documents.Footnote 62 It could be that members, such as Jacobella, used rents from personal property to support themselves and the rest of the community during their lifetimes and thus felt that the command to hold all things in common was met.
Roman bizzoche also had a local model, Margherita of Colonna (1255–1280), who they could follow if they did not want to adhere to radical poverty. Bianca Lopez has argued that, among Roman elites, pious practices were associated with “almsgiving and endow[ing] churches” rather than the radical poverty associated with the Franciscans.Footnote 63 In Margherita’s vita, it was her virtues of “humility, nobility, and almsgiving, which carried specific connotations related to class, gender, and piety in the thirteenth century” that were emphasized.Footnote 64 Margherita used her dowry to provide for those in need and “even made loans (without expecting repayment) or provided anonymous funding for those who had fallen on hard times.”Footnote 65 So, rather than eschewing all possessions, some bizzoche may have chosen to follow a more moderate path, using their wealth and possessions in service to their communities. Such a path was in line with many beguines who integrated themselves economically into their local societies.
The bizzoche of fifteenth-century Rome also served the poor. In fact, Daniel Le Blévec has demonstrated that “feminine holiness and charity are linked.”Footnote 66 The canonization processi of Santa Francesca Romana depicted her and her sister-in-law, Vannozza, as frequently begging for alms and bread for the poor.Footnote 67 Additionally, Francesca and Vannozza were remembered as serving the needy in the Hospital of Santa Maria in Capella.Footnote 68
Other communities of bizzoche, such as S. Croce and Ss. Trinitatis, served the poor through educating young girls.Footnote 69 Educating young women was a common practice of female monasteries, as well as pious communities of beguines, the Modern Devout, and Spanish beatas. Footnote 70 This type of education could “include…instruction in foreign language…music, Latin, and, at least in some cases, Bible study, contemporary spirituality, and possibly even theology.”Footnote 71 The education could also include instruction in “the fundamentals of reading and writing.”Footnote 72 The young girls educated by the bizzoche were most likely from the upper and upper-middle classes. For example, one of the girls educated at S. Croce was Beatrice Cenci, a notorious noblewoman.Footnote 73 A testament concerning S. Giacomo delle Muratte indicates that at least some of the members of this community were also in charge of educating Roman youth.Footnote 74 In this document, the grandmother of Lavinia, Stratonica, and Califurnie de Attavantibus paid the ministra with food to educate her grandchildren. Although outside of our time, an apostolic visitation to S. Apollonia in 1683 reiterated that the young girls the sisters were educating should “pay the monthly fee in advance and that those who defaulted had to pay or be sent home.”Footnote 75 It could be that S. Apollonia had educated young girls before the seventeenth century or it could be that since S. Giacomo delle Muratte was united with them in 1668 (see Table 1 above) that these bizzoche brought their practice of education with them to their new community.
Other bizzoche served their communities through caring for the poor. The bizzoche of S. Bernardino ai Monti took in poor and destitute spinsters and orphans.Footnote 76 Likewise, a testament involving S. Elisabetta indicates that they also worked with orphans.Footnote 77 Finally, many bizzoche cared for the sick. Some of the duties of the consorority of S. Monica, of which the mantellate of S. Monica de Martellitiis were a part, “included visiting sick members, offering prayers for the souls of the dead, providing dowries for young women, and alms to the poor of the district.”Footnote 78 Since the bizzoche of S. Elisabetta in Trastevere followed the example of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, they might have undertaken the care of the sick as she did. Finally, Francesca Romana was remembered as healing the sick in many of the testimonies contained in the processi and her and Vanozza are remembered as serving the sick and poor in the Hospital of Santa Maria in Capella.Footnote 79 These examples suggest some of the ways that Roman bizzoche sought to serve their communities, and they demonstrate that these activities were broadly consistent with the practices of other groups of non-cloistered religious women elsewhere in Europe.Footnote 80 The bizzoche of Rome, like the beguines, embraced charitable activities as part of their pious practices.
IV. Bizzoche and Beguines: A Broader Lay Religious Movement?
The practices of Roman bizzoche—simple dress, Eucharistic devotion, fasting and bodily asceticism, and poverty and service to the poor—were also the characteristic of other non-cloistered religious women throughout Europe. Both beguines and bizzoche shared these core pious practices although the extent of such practices sometimes differed. The papal bull Cum de quibusdam, issued at the Council of Vienne and published in 1317, stated that the beguines wore special dress.Footnote 81 These habits, similar to those worn by the bizzoche in Rome, served to distinguish beguines from other laywomen and marked them as belonging to a community of non-cloistered religious women.
Pious practices also marked beguines as different. The famous beguine mystics Hadewijch of Brabant (1200–1260) and Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207–1282) wrote about their devotion to the Eucharist.Footnote 82 Jacques de Vitry (1180–1240) wrote in his vita of Marie d’Oignies (1177–1213) that he saw many holy women who, when they “received [the Eucharist] they took it not only as a refreshment in the heart but also received it in their mouth as a perceptible consolation, ‘sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.’”Footnote 83 Marie, often considered the first beguine, had a special devotion to the Eucharist. Jacques de Vitry recalled several instances of visions and ecstasies experienced by Marie during the elevation of the Eucharist.Footnote 84 Similar to Santa Francesca and other non-cloistered religious women, such as Catherine of Siena, Marie also practiced bodily asceticism. Jacques de Vitry related that she would “sleep on planks” and that “she took up the cross by chastising her body through abstinence and imitated Christ by casting herself down through humility.”Footnote 85 She also participated in extreme fasting, only eating once a day.Footnote 86 Finally, many communities of beguines in the Low Countries and in Paris practiced charity, taught children, and engaged in manual labor.Footnote 87 Using the example of Marie d’Oignies, Jacques de Vitry stated that she “busied herself as far as she was able in the external works of mercy. But in these works of mercy, she occupied herself above all in assisting the sick and being present at death beds for contrition or at burials.”Footnote 88
While Marie d’Oignies and some beguines wanted to practice voluntary poverty, other communities of beguines in the Low Countries, similar to the mantellate of S. Monica, “did not condemn property per se, only its misuses and excess.”Footnote 89 In fact, social and class restrictions could prevent elite non-cloistered religious women from practicing the radical poverty of saints, such as Angela of Foligno and Catherine of Siena. Instead, the focus was on a humility that was enacted through giving alms and providing services to the poor, which “indicated a perpetual state of spiritual poverty rather than actual voluntary impoverishment.”Footnote 90 Thus, while pious practices—such as Eucharistic devotion, bodily asceticism, voluntary poverty, and service to the poor—connected these eleven communities of bizzoche and other non-cloistered religious women throughout Europe, the extent of such devotion and practice in reality could and did differ based on location, religious affiliation, and class restrictions.
Nonetheless, the commonalities in pious practices among non-cloistered religious women in Europe, both beguines to the north and bizzoche and beatas to the south, as well as the similarities across religious affiliation, indicate that the women’s religious movement was a broad one and should be examined across geographic space.Footnote 91 Yet, scholarship still tends to isolate the beguines from other non-cloistered religious women and vice versa. Doing so obscures larger issues, such as the collaborative relationships between pious women and male clerics and how pious women creatively negotiated a space to practice their way of life under increasing institutional restrictions.
This article, in examining eleven communities of bizzoche together and making comparisons with other non-cloistered religious women, not only reinforces the fact that common practices of dress, piety, and service connected pious laywomen across Europe but also demonstrates that broad issues of gender and class influenced the ways that non-cloistered religious women chose to enact their way of life. While the beguines of northern Europe and the Spanish beatas differed in some aspects from the bizzoche in late-medieval Italy, they also continued to share some characteristic practices—devotion to the Eucharist, asceticism, and service to the poor—that connected them to a larger women’s religious movement that cut across locale, region, and religious affiliation. Without an examination across these boundaries, one can miss the larger social and cultural patterns that existed in regard to women’s piety and practices. The beguines, similar to the bizzoche, were from elite families (at least at first). In choosing to dress simply or in a particular habit, bizzoche and beguines marked themselves as distinct from other elite women. In doing so, they were able to transcend the boundaries of their gender and class that would have restricted their public presence, thus allowing them to practice visible acts such as begging alms and serving the poor. Further, while bizzoche and other non-cloistered religious women had access to examples of saintly women, such as Catherine of Siena, they did not necessarily practice the extreme asceticism and poverty associated with such women. Through comparison, it seems that the lived experience, especially with respect to poverty and private property ownership, was similar across geographic context—extreme poverty was not the norm but rather the focus was on avoiding excess and serving the true poor.
When taken together, these similarities, transcending geographic borders, are indicative of a broader social influence on non-cloistered religious women’s lived practices. Their gender and class restricted the bizzoche’s ability to publicly practice their way of life since walking the street carried a risk to their reputations. However, with a shared repertoire of saintly examples and devotional literature and similar experiences as elite women, these non-cloistered religious women were able to use shared practices of habit and piety to craft a shared identity as in-between persons to mitigate these restrictions and expand their choices.
Open access
