Francis of Assisi and the Feminine - Franciscan Institute Publications

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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,
14 FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND THE FEMININE Francis comes after Robert, and not Robert before Francis. The holy women who lived between the 13th and 14th centuries were, on the other hand, part of the movement led by Francis. It cannot be denied that, regardless of the institutions to which they belonged or even if they were not affiliated to any, their spirituality reflects many elements inherited as a result of the enormous impact of the man from Assisi. Were they his heiresses, or had they inherited a later representation of him manufactured during decades of hagiography and pastoral activity? However that may be, it is simply stating the obvious to note that they are undeniably post Franciscan. Post hoc, propter hoc? The causal chain is uncertain – but we are not so much looking for causes as at relationships. Situated half way between these two significant developments, does Francis, as a consequence, play a role in the respective evolution of the two genders in regard to religion and hence the relationship of the genders with one another? Does he in some way express the change or is he himself the channel? We have believed this to be so and have also wanted to believe that he is the essential channel for so many changes: the blossoming of art which is realistic and accessible to the senses, the sowing of the seeds of the Renaissance, 5 the affirmation of individual conscience in the face of the institutional church, the preference for devotion to the suffering rather than the triumphal Christ. In its artistic expression, these transformations are exactly paralleled in the sinuous and languorous feminization of the figure nailed to the wood of the cross. The book that Chiara Frugoni has just dedicated to the phenomenon of the stigmata tries to dispel our last illusions; it puts them into perspective. This essay does not therefore propose to find in Francis the only key to two centuries in the evolution of history. It sets out rather to detect, in his writings and the legends, traces of a movement that could not have failed to involve him, of all people. However famous a person he was, it is not a matter of claiming that a priori, one single person alone was the guiding light in the transition to a religion made female from
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Page 5 and 6: 7 Preface Jacques Dalarun first pub
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Francis of Assisi and the Feminine - Franciscan Institute Publications

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