Guglielma of Bohemia

PhotoView on the original blog↗This is the story of Guglielma, known as "la Boema" (the Bohemian): one of the mysteries of medieval Milan, as fascinating as it is little told. Around the year 1270 a young woman of very elegant manners but with little money in her pocket found lodgings in the Bregonia district, between Porta Orientale and Porta Tosa. She had with her a son a few months old and no husband. Her origins were not Milanese, nor even Italian. The presence of a foreigner in the district was not an everyday occurrence at that time, and Guglielma soon aroused the curiosity of the neighbourhood. Many wondered who she was and why she had come to Italy, who the child's father was and why he was not with her. What was certain was that this young stranger was poor and would not be able to support herself and the child. In her halting Italian Guglielma painted a fairy-tale picture of herself. She said she was a princess, daughter of the King of Bohemia and of his wife Queen Constance. Her kindness, her refined manners and her delicate, fragile appearance lent credibility to her story, but what was unclear was what had led her to leave a family of such lineage to come to a poor quarter of Milan. History tells that in Bohemia, in the second half of the 13th century, Queen Constance, wife of Přemysl, had three daughters, one of whom, called Agnes, was forced to take the veil. This gave rise to all sorts of speculation: that Guglielma and Agnes were the same person, that Přemysl's daughter was a kind of Nun of Monza, that the son Guglielma had with her was the fruit of sin, and that the young woman had fled the kingdom to escape the punishment that had instead fallen on her beloved. The chatter and gossip about her were soon replaced by sincere admiration for such an adorable person, who truly behaved like a princess despite her poverty, which she bore with distinguished dignity. It was hard to believe that a woman who, despite the many difficulties she had to face in daily life, always showed a noble spirit devoted to helping those as needy as herself could be an impostor. This stranger with a mysterious past became a caring friend to homeless orphans, to the sick and to the dying, at whose bedsides she spent hours. Her devotion to others was not shaken even by the grievous loss that struck her when her child died young. In the eyes of ordinary people this young woman was no longer a foreigner or a princess, but an angel come down from heaven. It was at that sad moment in her life that Guglielma decided to leave the Bregonia and move to the district of San Pietro all'Orto, where a street still bears her name today, behind the famous Duomo. Popular rumour had already transformed the figure of Guglielma, making her a kind of healer, a wonder-working saint. It was then that the Church of Rome began to take an interest in her. In particular, the Humiliati nuns of the Monastery of Santa Caterina in Brera established a very close relationship with her. The link between Guglielma and this order is said to have been a man, a well-to-do Milanese citizen, probably a merchant, one Andrea Saramita, so attached and devoted to the order that he entrusted a sister and a daughter to it. Besides being devout, Saramita was also a well-known bon viveur, so much so that it was suspected that Guglielma was actually his lover. Saramita was so taken with Guglielma that he made himself her prophet and created a veritable cult around her, extolling not only her holiness but even her divine nature. He went so far as to declare her the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus Christ was the incarnation of God. Such statements, especially at that time, were considered outright heresy by the Church and could easily have led the woman to trial before the tribunal of the Holy Office; and the fact that she was venerated not only by the people but also by a group of nuns subject to the authority of the Roman Church was a misunderstanding that could have had dangerous consequences and therefore had to be resolved as soon as possible. Guglielma was twice subjected to the investigations and trial of the Holy Inquisition, at a time when the Church was beginning to claim hundreds of victims in the so-called "witch hunt". In Guglielma's case the Inquisition came away empty-handed both times. It was known that the Bohemian had distanced herself from Saramita's declarations, to the point of breaking off relations with him, and that she had firmly rejected his claims about the divine nature he attributed to her. For about ten years, therefore, Guglielma continued her work caring for the needy without being charged with anything. She continued her close association with the Humiliati nuns, and the Cistercian monks of the Abbey of Chiaravalle, south of Milan, also drew close to her and her particular spirituality. It was in the Abbey of Chiaravalle that our Guglielma was buried after her sudden death, since she herself had asked that her remains be laid to rest in that abbey. It was 24 August 1281. A crowd followed her coffin in procession to her place of eternal rest. Guglielma's fame certainly did not die with her mortal body. Rather than causing her to be forgotten, the pious woman's death revived her memory. While alive, Guglielma had been the people's saint; now death provided the right distance to raise her easily to the status of a cult idol. And so she went from being admired, esteemed and loved to being venerated. Her tomb became the destination of daily pilgrimages, with requests for graces and miracles. It was Andrea Saramita who systematised the cult that arose spontaneously around Guglielma, gathering the faithful and organising them into an order: the Guglielmites. According to Saramita, Guglielma was the incarnation of the Holy Spirit and would rise again in the flesh on the day of Pentecost. Four gospels, signed by Saramita himself, gathered Guglielma's legacy, and a kind of "female pope" was elected: Maifreda da Pirovano, a Humiliati nun whom Guglielma had named as her heir. Thus a veritable Church was born. The ranks of the Guglielmites grew daily with crowds of followers literally possessed by the figure of Guglielma. Hierarchies arose, hymns, a liturgical calendar with feast days, and masses were celebrated. The faithful gathered in several places, but the favourite centres were the cloister of the Abbey of Chiaravalle and the Humiliati monastery. The history of the cult culminated in the consecration of Maifreda as "female pope", who also announced the resurrection of the Bohemian. All this took place on Easter Day 1299. It was this act that led the Roman Church to decide to act firmly before the cult supplanted the Church of Rome itself. By now the ranks of the Guglielmites included figures of considerable importance, starting with the "female pope" Maifreda, of the Pirovano family, no less than a cousin of Matteo Visconti, lord of Milan. The practices of this "New Church" were becoming so established and so rich in followers that in 1300 proceedings began against all members of the Guglielmite order. But there was no mass extermination; on the contrary, the Inquisition proved exceptionally lenient towards its "deviant" brethren, who were recognised as simple people led astray by the image of a woman who had done so much for the poor and the neglected. The death sentence was pronounced on those who refused to abjure and return to the Roman Catholic Church, that is, those who had promoted the heresy itself: Andrea Saramita, Maifreda da Pirovano and a few others, who were burned alive at the stake in December of the same year at Sant'Eustorgio, then the seat of the tribunal. The records of the trial against Maifreda tell us the charges brought against her: the woman had allegedly given blessings, celebrated mass, administered the Eucharist and received the homage due to a Pope. But to be sure of uprooting the cult entirely, the Church struck at the heart of the Guglielmites' devotion: the remains of the Bohemian. Since the rumour was by now known throughout Milan that the saint could work miracles even from the grave, Guglielma's remains were exhumed and burned at the stake. With such relentlessness the Church carried out a bizarre act, unworthy of the work of a mercifully Christian woman. Guglielma, who had lived and died a saint, was thus condemned as a heretic after her death and her remains contemptuously violated. The story of Guglielma the Bohemian expresses in exemplary fashion the contradictions of medieval spirituality, in which a burning pyre separated sainthood from heresy.

Bibliography:

Le Grandi donne di Milano, Daniela Ferro, Newton Compton Editori 2007