Francis of Assisi and the Feminine - Franciscan Institute Publications

FOREWORD 13
space, Margaret of Cortona (†1297), Clare of Montefalco
(†1308) or Angela of Foligno (†1309). In spite of the remarkable
study by Guiseppe Garampi, prefect of the Secret Archives
of the Vatican, dedicated to her in the 18th century,
the penitent of Rimini remains among the neglected, medieval
women characters, even today when we seem so hungry
for sanctity and mysticism.
While recently proposing a new edition of the Italian
legend of Clare of Rimini, I had the good fortune to detect,
word for word and step by step, the emergence of a female
voice in the field of the sacred. Although stuttering and still
imprisoned in masculine language, it was, nonetheless, alive
and could not be extinguished. The existence of this one
example, given that each voice has within it something
which cannot be suppressed, points to a much broader
movement which historians are beginning to perceive more
clearly. This movement followed two directions, the appropriation
of religion by women and the feminization of religious
themselves, during the last centuries of the Middle Ages
in the West. For a long time the movement was regarded as
insignificant. It was often blocked; it was always controlled.
The feminization of religion was an ambiguous, complex
process, inseparable from and contemporary with the
movement away from the father tongue, Latin, used by clerics,
towards the development of a mother tongue from all
the vernacular dialects. “God changed gender,” ventured
Michelet. 4 The language was crumbling. Lapsus linguæ.
In one region, Fontevraud, there emerged the first clear
signs of a renewed interest in the fate and, in part, the salvation
of women. In another, the communes of Italy, two centuries
after the so-called Gregorian period, a little later and
more hesitantly than in Northern Europe, the murmur of
female voices could be detected seeking redemption but also
nurturing genuinely theological ambitions: to speak to God
and to speak about God. Francis of Assisi was situated between
these two developments. Robert of Arbrissel has sometimes
been presented as a pre-Franciscan figure. This
description may be debatable but indeed, chronologically,