Notes

1. Vitus Cortonensis, Vita beatae Humilianae de Cerchis, in Acta Sanctorum, Maii IV (Antwerp, 1685), pp. 385-400.  Unless otherwise stated, all subsequent references to Umiliana's life are taken from this text, and shall be identified by chapter and section numbers; references to post-mortem miracles are taken from Hippolitus Florentinus, Miracula intra triennium ab obitu patrata, in Acta Sanctorum, Maii IV, pp. 403-7. Other extant versions of the Life of Umiliana appear to be based, either as translations or interpretations, on Vito's text.  See especially Francesco Cionacci, Storia della beata Umiliana de' Cerchi vedova fiorentina del terz'ordine di San Francesco, distinta in IV parti (Florence, 1682).  Further information on the life, relics, and cult of Umiliana de' Cerchi may be found in the following secondary sources:  G. Battelli, La leggenda della beata Umiliana de' Cerchi (Florence, 1940); R. Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 2.1, Guelfi e ghibellini (Florence, 1956; trans. Geschichte von Florenz, 2.1, Guelfen und Ghibellinen [Berlin, 1908]), pp. 180-88; Maria Romano Franco, La Beata Umiliana de Cerchi (Rome, 1977); Z. Lazzeri, "La Beata Umiliana dei Cerchi," Studi francescani 7 (1921), 196-206; Claudio Leonardi and Giovanni Pozzi, "Umiliana Cerchi," Scrittrici mistiche italiane (Genoa, 1988), pp. 80-93; Anna Benvenuti Papi, "Umiliana dei Cerchi: nascita di un culto nella Firenze del Dugento," Studi francescani 77 (1980), 87-117; Benvenuti Papi, "La Santa Vedova," in "In castro poenitentiae": Santità e società femminile nell'Italia medievale (Rome, 1990), pp. 58-98; Benvenuti Papi, "Cerchi, Umiliana," Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome, 1960- ), 23:692-96; Monica Cristina Storini, "Umiliana e il suo biografo: Costruzione di un'agiografia femminile fra XIII e XIV secolo," Annali d'Italianistica 13 (1995), 19-39.  For Umiliana's reliquary, see James Beck, "The Reliquary Bust of the Beata Umiliana de' Cerchi," Antichità Viva 28 (1989), 41-44; Dora Liscia Bemporad, "Due busti reliquiario in Santa Croce di Firenze," Antichità Viva 26 (1987), 59-68; Ugo Procacci, "Una lettera del Baldinucci e antiche immagini della Beata Umiliana de' Cerchi," Antichità Viva 15 (1976), 3-10.

2. Recent studies that focus specifically on the "transgressive" nature of late medieval female spirituality include Anna Benvenuti Papi, "In castro poenitentiae"; Rudolph M. Bell, Holy Anorexia (Chicago, 1985); Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi, Mistiche e devote nell'Italia tardomedievale (Naples, 1992); Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York, 1992); Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987); Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982); Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean, ed., Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women (Urbana and Chicago, 1995); Michael Goodich, "The Contours of Female Piety in Later Medieval Hagiography," Church History 50 (1981), 20-31; E. Ann Matter and John Coakley, Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1994); Grado G. Merlo, "Santità e condizione femminile nella Toscana medievale," in Archivio Storico Italiano (Florence, 1993), pp. 219-37; Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia, 1995); Elizabeth Alvida Petroff, Consolation of the Blessed: Women Saints in Medieval Tuscany (New York, 1980); Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York, 1994); André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age (Rome, 1981); Vauchez, "L'ideale di santità nel movimento femminile francescano," in Movimento religioso femminile e francescanesimo nel secolo XIII (Assisi, 1980).

3. Catherine Marie Mooney, "Women's Visions, Men's Words: The Portrayal of Holy Women and Men in Fourteenth-Century Italian Hagiography" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1991).  See also Bynum, "‘And Woman His Humanity': Female Imagery in the Religious Writing of the Later Middle Ages," in Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 151-80; Benvenuti Papi, "Una Santa Vedova"; Petroff, "Male Confessors and Female Penitents: Possibilities for Dialogue," in Body and Soul, 139-60; Storini, "Umiliana e il suo biografo."

4. For information regarding the life of Vito da Cortona, see G. G. Sbaraglia, Supplementum et castigatio ad Scriptores Trium Ordinum s. Francisi (Rome, 1936), 3:162; and L. Wadding, Scriptores Ordinis Minorem (Rome, 1906), p. 220.

5. Benvenuti Papi, "Una Santa Vedova."

6. For this period in Florentine history and the role of Franciscan friars and lay Franciscans, see M. Bertagna, "Sul Terz'Ordine francescano in Toscana nel sec. XIII: Note storiche e considerazioni," Collectanea Franciscana 43 (1973), 263-77; Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 2.1, Guelfi e ghibellini; Lazzeri, "La Beata Umiliana de' Cerchi"; G. G. Meersseman, Dossier de l'ordre de la Pénitance au XIIIe siècle (Frieburg, 1960); Anna Benvenuti Papi, "Frati mendicanti e pinzochere in Toscana," in Mistiche e devote, ed. Bornstein and Rusconi, pp. 85-106.

7. For the history of dowry laws in late medieval Florence, see Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1994); Isabella Chabot, "Widowhood and Poverty in Late Medieval Florence," Continuity and Change 3 (1988), 291-311; and Maria Consiglia De Matteis, "La donna e la vita quotidiana nell'Italia tardo medievale," in Frau und Spätmittellterlicher Alltag (Vienna, 1986), pp. 409-28.

8. The past thirty years have seen a remarkable increase in the number of studies that utilize hagiography for social histories.  A non-comprehensive list of major general studies on saints and medieval society includes Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, ed., Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1991); Peter Brown, The Cult of Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981); Pierre Delooz, Sociologie et canonisations. Collection scientifique de la Faculté de Droit de l'Université de Liège 30 (Liège and The Hague, 1969); Sofia Boesch Gajano, ed., Agiografia Altomedievale (Bologna, 1976); Michael Goodich, Vita Perfecta: The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Stuttgart, 1982); F. Graus, Volk, Herrscher, und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger: Studien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit (Prague, 1965); Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, 1984); Aviad M. Kleinberg, Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago, 1992); Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination (Chicago, 1985); Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident; Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event 1000-1215 (Philadelphia, 1982); Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago, 1982); Stephen Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore, and History (Cambridge, 1983).

9. For a complete account of this history, see Benvenuti Papi, "Una Santa Vedova," pp. 76-98.

10. It is worth noting that Umiliana's mother, Ulivieri Cerchi's first wife, died young, and although the Life lists Umiliana's stepmother as one of her testimonies, the absence of Umiliana's biological mother in Vito's text underscores the masculine genealogy into which Umiliana's life is inserted.  For a discussion of the absent mother and genealogy, see Luce Irigaray, Sexes et parentes (Paris, 1987).

11. Vito's text begins with a list of thirty-three witnesses:  the three male witnesses are Franciscans (Umiliana's confessor, Michele of Florence, Vito himself, and a certain friar "Bonamicus"); two of the thirty female witnesses ("Soror Gisla de Mucello" and "Soror Benevenuta") are nuns; and sixteen are married women—the marital status of twelve others is not revealed.  What is striking about this brief list of witnesses is that the female relatives of Umiliana are described not in relation to their husbands, as in "wife of . . ." (like other female witnesses) but in relation to Umiliana, as in "sister of Umiliana" or "daughter of Umiliana."  Umiliana's stepmother, for example, is described not as the wife of Ulivieri Cerchi, but as "noverca prædictæ S. Humilianæ" (Vita, Prologus).  The list of testimonies clearly shows a preponderance of female followers.  Similarly, Umiliana's miracles, both those performed during her life and described in Vito's text, and those performed after her death and recounted in the Miracula, reveal an overwhelming number of women recipients of the beata's favor.

12. Katherine Jane Gill, "Penitents, Pinzochere and Mantellate: Varieties of Women's Religious Communities in Central Italy, c. 1300-1520" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1994).

13. "Women's myths and rituals tend to explore a state of being; men's tend to build elaborate and discrete stages between self and other":  Caroline Walker Bynum, "Introduction," in Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. Bynum, Steven Harrell, and Paul Richmans (Boston, 1986), p. 13.  See also Bynum, "Women's Stories, Women's Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner's Theory of Liminality," in Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 27-51; and Bynum, "Women's Symbols," in Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 277-96.

14. Petroff, "The Rhetoric of Transgression in the Lives of Italian Women Saints," in Body and Soul, pp. 161-81.

15. For rates of canonization of married women compared to unmarried women, see Weinstein and Bell, Saints and Society, pp. 121-37; Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident, pp. 355-74.

16. The use of the preposition di further illustrates my point:  Umiliana is "of" the Cerchi lineage, or one of the Cerchis' (possessive).  She is identified not with her city, Florence (like Vito da Cortona or Michele da Firenze), but by the genealogy within which she was born.

17. At least two children are mentioned (Vita 1.1, 1.7 and 1.43), but it is possible that Umiliana had more.  I am inclined to think these two, both daughters, were the only children Umiliana had, given her brief marriage (five years).  It is possible that a male child would have provoked greater attention by both the author of the Life and Umiliana's family.  On motherhood and sainthood in the Middle Ages, see Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, "Introduction," in Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens, GA, 1990), pp. 1-68; Clarissa Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1991); Dyan Elliot, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, 1993); and Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy Mothers in the Middle Ages (New York, 1996).

18. Rudolph Bell suggests that Umiliana's family did not fully trust her in the care of her children (Holy Anorexia, pp. 106-7); however, it would not have been unusual for children to be raised in their father's household, as that was the house to which they societally belonged.

19. Mooney, "Women's Visions, Men's Words," pp. 264-73.