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Julian of Norwich, Her Showings and Its Contexts, Website © Julia Bolton Holloway, 1997
{We know so little about Julian of Norwich. We know a great deal, through historical documents and through paintings and sculpture, about her somewhat earlier sister, la Beata Umiltà, Blessed Humility, who was in turn a wife, a mother, a nun, an anchoress and an abbess.
Rosanesa was born in Faenza to noble parents named Elimonte and Richilda in 1226. At fifteen she was married to Ugolotto, bearing him two sons who both died following their baptisms. She begged her husband to make a reciprocal vow of chastity. At first he drowned his sorrows in fun, then fell ill and consented, becoming himself a monk, while she became a nun, both of the double Monastery of St Perpetua, in 1250. Rosanesa thus went from freedom to unconditional obedience, from an abundance of wealth to monastic poverty, from marriage to total consecration to God. She mortified herself by taking on the most humble and servile jobs. The other Sisters thought this was a passing phase but the Prior of the two monasteries understood her virtue and named her anew as 'Humility', Umiltà.
The nuns would eat in silence, one of their number reading to them from
a book. Umiltà, though from a rich and noble family, was illiterate.
One day, in fun, the other Sisters asked her to read. She obeyed humbly
and from her mouth came words of the highest things, yet none of which
were to be found written in the book from which she supposedly read. What
she said was, 'Do not despise the work of God, which is always true and
just, though it is hard. In heaven shall be raised what is always humble'.
Was she inspired? She was taught, humbly, to read and to write in Latin
by her sisters, and her Sermons testify to the richness of her mind.
It is said that when she dictated her sermons, the whitest of doves, with
golden feet and beak, would appear at her ears, and that when it rained
while she dictated, her shoulder remained dry.
Umiltà became ill with cancer of the kidneys, causing a nauseous
smell from her rotting flesh. She begged God that, if it were his will,
he would not inflict such disturbance upon the nursing Sisters. Immediately
the Infirmarian Sister saw that the wound had healed. In her four years
at St Perpetua she gained esteem and admiration. She felt the need for
more isolation, for the life of a hermit. In the night a mysterious voice
whispered, 'Soror Humilitas, surge; meque sequere,' 'Rise up, Sister Umiltà,
and follow me'. She did not ask 'Who are you? Where are you taking me?'
Instead, quickly, she made the sign of the cross and dressed for travel,
taking her Office book and leaving it on the high wall of the monastery,
where it was found the next day in evidence of this impossible and mysterious
flight. The doors had remained locked all night. Yet Umiltà, crossing
the river, had remained dry.
She came to the island of St Martin where Sister Philippa, a wise and severe woman, opened the door to her. In the morning the Prior and her uncle Niccolo learned about the locked door and the Psalter left on the wall. They gave permission for Umiltà to live in a secret and sealed room. Prayer and penance, bread and water, and bitter herbs, were to be her life (ut Christum pauperem sequatur paupercula). The city spoke of her as a saint.
A Vallombrosan monk was about to have his feet amputated, but desired instead to be brought to Umiltà. She signed his feet with the sign of the cross and he was healed. The Vallombrosans built her a cell next to the church of St Apollinarius, into which she was sealed, and which had a small window looking onto the church through which she could see and receive the Sacrament (qua videre posset et recipere sacrosanctae Matris Ecclesiae Sacramenta), and another looking onto the street, through which she could receive food and give counsel. She lived there for twenty-eight years. One day a ferret came to join her, keeping her company. Her husband, hearing that she had become Vallombrosan, himself became a monk of that order, then died.
Umiltà's little cell attracted a great company, other young women wishing to imitate her, such that the cells multiplied like those in a beehive and the prayers and psalms could be heard in unity ascending into heaven. But the Abbot of Vallombrosa now decided that women could join the Order, and that Umiltà should be their Abbess. Umiltà's pet ferret fled at the news. Umiltà cried at being unsealed from her cell, but obeyed her Abbot, following twelve years of self-imposed imprisonment stepping out again into the world. In 1266 she was made Abbess of the first Vallombrosan convent for nuns. She was stern with both nuns and priests, insisting that they confess their faults before their deaths or before celebrating Mass, for the sake of their souls. One day the cellarer was given a fish to prepare and, thinking it was only enough for the Abbess, served it to her in a delicious sauce. Umiltà flung it into the midst of the refectory floor. The cellarer retrieved it and found it was miraculously large enough to serve all the Sisters.
Fifteen years later, in 1281, Faenza was torn apart by the strife between
Guelf and Ghibelline and Umiltà's convent was sacked, though she
and her Sisters were respected by the soldiers, because of her sanctity.
It was time to leave. At first it was planned to move to Venice. But Umiltà
was inspired by St John the Evangelist instead to go to Florence,
even though in 1258 the Guelfs there had decapitated the Abbot Tesoro of
Vallombrosa. She chose to go to make peace between the warring factions.
She arrived in the midst of the Peace of the Cardinal Latino, when Guelf
and Ghibelline kissed and made up for their bitter bloodshed. In that year
Dante Alighieri was seventeen and writing his early sonnets.
Umiltà herself gathered the stones, loading them onto a donkey,
to begin building her monastery dedicated to St John the Evangelist in
Florence. One day, while she was doing so, a nurse brought to her the dead
child who was her charge. Umiltà took the boy into a nearby shrine
and laid the cadaver at the feet of the image of St John the Evangelist,
then with a candle made the sign of the cross over the child, who miraculously
opened his eyes. The convent was founded in 1282. Umiltà wanted
that convent to be simple and poor. The Florentine authorities decided
otherwise and it was constructed according to the design of Giovanni, son
of Niccolo Pisano, and consecrated in 1297, amidst the building of Santa
Croce, begun, 1295, Santa Maria del Fiore, begun 1296, and the Palazzo
della Signoria, begun 1298.
Umiltà became extremely ill with a fever one August and implored her Sisters for ice, telling them to go to the well to fetch it. They found the dry well full of ice. Their obedience had taught them charity. The well today is in the Fortezza da Basso. Another time, when she was too tired to go further on foot in the Appenines a horseman took her up onto his gentle horse, comforting her almost more by his heavenly words. Another time she and her Sisters on such a journey found they could not eat the brown bread given them, when suddenly there appeared the whitest of bread for them to eat. Two women hermits had almost decided to give up their solitude, when they dreamed of Umiltà, who then visited them in reality, and whom they recognised. A knight living near Santa Felicita in Florence was troubled about his worldly affairs and sought advice from Umiltà. Who told him that that Thursday was to be the last day of his life. Which it turned out to be.
Her Sermons are magnificent. In Sermon II she says it is the divine word which speaks, not coming from her, but from the Father and the highest God, who gives to each as much as he desires. Secretly he has taught her with questions and answers, speaking within her, but now she speaks to us with external words. The Spirit himself had taught her in silence. And she now pronounces aloud to us his divine words which she had heard. Beware therefore that you do not receive this emptily, what her tongue is moved to say, for it is moved by the Spirit. She says in Sermon III that she marvels and fears about these things which rise up within her, which she dares to write and say; for they are not in any book, nor taught to her by any human science; only the Spirit of God speaks within her, opening her mouth with these words which she must say.
And in another Sermon she says, 'I go to the Lord, and he orders me to do this work, and then the Spirit of Jesus teaches me. And then and always the King of Creation is with me, who would not wish me to speak in ignorance, but I understand what I see, being fully instructed in what I think.' In Sermon VIII, she declares 'While you, my teacher, are King, most sweet and kind, you speak to me, exhilerating me, and I speak, burning with desire through being loved by Christ. You teach me to speak and to know the truth. With me you are near and make me, your unworthy slave, speak and open my mouth with these words, which are not my own'. She also composed Laude to the Virgin which her nuns at San Salvi continued to sing for centuries and which are noted to be full of mysteries 'sunt enim plenae mysteriis'.
In her cell she kept an image of the Child Jesus in swaddling bands, and used it to contemplate upon the Incarnation and Birth of Christ. The image is still preserved by the Vallombrosan Sisters in Bagno a Ripoli. She also spoke of her two guardian angels, one called Sapiel, the wisdom of God (whose name, she tells us, filled her heart suddenly with great joy), the other Emmanuel, God in us. Like Julian, she speaks of a universe in her heart, 'Habeo immensam gloriam in corde meo, certificata de nobilitate et magnitudine Angelorum moerum: Cum autem cogito de eorum pulchritudine, sentio me abite in ecstasim, ac veluti extra me rapi prae excessu gaudii'. She also says, in her II Sermon, 'O Emmanuel, O Sapiel, qui estis Angeli mei custodes, oro vos, dulcissimi ut ex omnibus viribus vestris praestetis mihi auxilium tam efficax, ut cum deduxeritis me ad praesentiam magnae Reginae, possim contemplare et fui matre cum dilecto filio suo, et de sinu materno inter brachia mea accipere gloriosum istum infantulum'. In Sermon IV, she says 'Suprema Deitas venit ab imperiali caelo in terram, et humiliter intravit vasculum unius puellae . . . .'
In 1300, the year of the Jubilee, Umiltà was seventy-four years
old, and weakened by worry and penance. 13 December, 1309, St Lucy's Day,
she had a stroke losing her speech and mobility. Yet her monastery experienced
miracles, such as bread and money miraculously multiplying though it was
a time of great famine. Umiltà had desired to die on a Friday. And
so she did, on three o'clock, on Friday, 22 May, 1310. All Florence was
moved at the news and came flocking. The Bishop of Florence presided at
the funeral on Sunday, 24 May.
She was buried in a tomb at the right of the altar dedicated to St John
the Evangelist. A Vallombrosan monk was healed of a crippled arm that had
prevented him from celebrating Mass. A woman who for five years had been
tormented with an illness that prevented her from speaking or swallowing
was healed. Another woman with a stomach tumor was likewise healed. The
tomb was observed to be covered with oil, and though it was cleaned, continued
that way, the monks raising the slab and finding the body of the saint
incorrupt. This was checked again, 11 June, 1311, by Antonio degli Orsi,
Bishop of Florence (whose owntomb, by Tino da Camaino, is in the Duomo)
and other witnesses.
Between 1313 and 1348, Pietro Lorenzetti painted these scenes of the life of the saint, showing her at its centre in her habit and veil, all of which is surmounted by the 'vile' sheepskin cap she was known to wear in her lifetime, and where she is shown holding forth her book and her flail, Orcagna similarly sculpting her so. Lorenzetti's polyptych is now in the Uffizi. Orcagna's statue is now in the baptistry of the church of San Michele at San Salvi. Santa Umiltà's body now rests at Bagno a Ripoli. 1 March, 1721, she was declared 'Beata Umiltà', 4 March 1948, Saint Humility. In 1534, the Medicis had the convent move to San Salvi, near the Campo di Marte. Later still, in 1815, the authorities suppressed that convent, the Sisters taking refuge finally, in 1972, with the body of their Saint in Bagno a Ripoli.
Orcagna, La Beata Umiltà
Acta Sanctorum. May V, 22 May, 203-222.
Breve Racconta della Vita Miracoli e Culto di Sant'Umilta Fondatrice della Monache Vallombrosane. Scritto da un Religioso del Medesimo Ordine. Firenze: 1722.
Davidsohn, Robert. Storia di Firenze.
Montgomery, Carmichael. 'An Altarpiece of Saint Humility'. The Ecclesiastical Review, 1913.
Salvestrini, Don Otello. Santa Umiltà: Sposa, Madre, Eremita, Monaca. Firenze: Il Consiglio Pastorale della Comunità parrocchiale di S. Michele a S. Salvi, 1981.
Simonetti, Adele. I Sermoni di Umilta da Faenza. Spoleto: Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo; Firenze: Societa Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino, 1995.
Return to the Juliansite Homepage.
Book Reviews. Submissions Encouraged.
Further Bibliography. Submissions Encouraged.
The Julian Library Portfolio, 1996.
© Copyright Julia Bolton Holloway (juliana@tin.it),
Fiesole
Website design: Timothy E. Thompson (tethomps@syr.fi.it),
Florence
Webmaster: Otfried Lieberknecht (lieberk@berlin.netsurf.de),
Berlin
Nota Bene Consultant: Tony St Quintin (tsq@nb-uk.win-uk.net),
Leeds
[It is hoped to construct a similar booklet on St Francesca Romana, the Olivetan oblate, whose life is similarly beautifully illustrated, in her case by frescoes showing the scenes of her life and miracles on the walls of her convent in Rome.]
This site last updated 2 November 1998.
