PIMSPontifical Institute
of
Mediaeval Studies

The letters of Jordan of Saxony (d. 1237), Master of the Order of Preachers, to Diana d'Andalo (d. 1236) and her sisters at the convent of Sant'Agnese, Bologna, are a well-known but surprisingly underutilised resource for exploring the nature of female religious life in the central Middle Ages. While they are usually discussed in terms of their professions of spiritual friendship or their indications of the Preaching friars' success in the early universities, they contain a good deal more for those willing to pull the threads of even the most incidental of details. This seminar presentation will provide an example of what can be reconstructed from the letters by focusing on an important episode in the convent's institutional history. Passing allusions in two letters, in particular, will be shown to reveal a surprisingly dramatic narrative in which religious defection, pending political catastrophe, and the formation of a shared female religious culture all play a role in describing the endemic instabilitas of female religious life in the early thirteenth century.