Pazze di Lui - Mad for Him: Hagiographic Stereotypes, Mental Disturbances and Anthropological Implications of Female Saintliness in Italy and Abroad from the 13th to the 20th Century

The aim of this book is to investigate the delicate relationship between female sanctity and madness, in a time-frame extending from medieval until contemporary times. Constellated by visions, ecstatic raptures, morbid rituals, stigmata and obsessions, the complex phenomenology of female mysticism appears in fact to be articulated and polymorphous, traversed by ‘representations’ that it seems possible to link to the wide spectrum of mental disorders, as well to the hagiographic stereotypes and anthropological implications. Male and female scholars from different disciplines (from history to philology, from anthropology to art history, from theology to literary criticism, from psychiatry to psychoanalysis) try to outline a thematic and problematic itinerary, intended to examine, step by step, potential pathological aspects and contexts of reference for the purpose of attempting to reconstruct the complex evolutionary trajectory of female mystical language.





Inhalt:
Mattia Zangari
Paroxysms, stigmata and dolls in convents. Female Sanctity and Mental Illness between the Middle Ages and the Modern Ages (introduction)

Isabella Gagliardi
Discretio, diagnosi e patente di santità alla prova della “pazzia” (secc. XI-XIV)

Maurizio Gronchi
Sante e malate, non solo d’amore? Uno sguardo storico-teologico

Martina Bengert, André Otto
Between Pathology and Pathos. Spectacular Utterances in The Book of Margery Kempe

Alfonsina Bellio
Un «lungo Medioevo»? Femminilità profetiche tra letture di tipo psicopatologico e antropologia

Mattia Zangari
Female Visionary Saints: an alternative Interpretation. Female sanctity, Visionaryism and Hysteria in the Medieval and Modern Age

Torsten Passie, Elisabeth Petrow
The Ecstasies of St. Teresa of Avila. Phenomenology, Illness and Resilience

Armando Maggi
L’abbandono al Male. Le esperienze di Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi e Veronica Giuliani .

Rudolph M. Bell
Saint Veronica Giuliani. The Five Autobiographies of Orsolina Giuliani

Tine Van Osselaer, Leonardo Rossi, Kristof Smeyers, Linde Tuybens
Mystical phenomena as symptoms of social disease .

Manuela Fraire (a cura di Greta Maria Alessia Redaelli)
Baby doll. La “maternità” in convento

Chiara Basta
Tra pedagogia e amour fou. Il culto di Gesù bambino nei monasteri femminili (secoli XV-XVII)

Curricula
Index of names

Autor:inneninformation:
PhD at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (2016), Dr. Mattia Zangari’s research interests are directed at female sanctity, from the Middle Ages to the modern period. As well as studying the biographies of female saints, for many years he has studied the relationship between female sanctity and mental disturbance, and he has carried out cutting-edge research (he was the first Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow to conduct research at the Vatican, in the frame of a co-supervision with Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia). Dr. Zangari carried out research at prestigious centres abroad, such as the CRRS of the University of Toronto. He is author of many publications, the most important are: Santità femminile e disturbi mentali fra Medioevo ed età moderna (Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2022); La santa e il Giglio: mistiche nella Firenze del Seicento (Roma, Carocci, 2022); Tre storie di santità femminile tra parole e immagini: agiografie, memoriali e fabulae depictae fra Due e Trecento (Narr, Tübingen, 2019).