3 - Confraternities and lay female religiosity in late medieval and Renaissance Umbria

Summary

Many scholars have noted women's participation in late medieval and early modern fraternal associations. Yet this presence rarely constitutes the specific topic of research. While women are undoubtedly found within at least certain types of confraternities, it is difficult to determine how their presence should be qualified. To adopt the terminology used by Angela Groppi in her discussion of women's participation in the late medieval workplace, we must determine what their esserci (presence) is in terms of valere (worth).

In his magisterial work, Ordo Fraternitatis, G. G. Meersseman recorded women's involvement in Italian and European fraternities from at least the tenth and eleventh centuries. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries the Dominican order oversaw an extensive diffusion of mixed Marian fraternities. The statute of the fraternity of the Virgin in Arezzo (1262) establishes the admission of women “because God does not make any discrimination between men and women in order to perform the works of salvation.” In practice, however, women could only carry out certain duties of a religious-devotional character such as prayers and attendance at monthly meetings and the feast-days of the Virgin. They were excluded from the administration of the fraternity itself. The Dominicans also provided scope for the recruitment of women to later devotional confraternities such as those of the Rosary and, from the fifteenth century on, to confraternities of St. Peter Martyr which undertook the defence of the faith.