Tuscany's Noble Treasures

This study looks first at the underlying influences on Tuscan mysticism, from the legend of St Katherine of Alexandria through to the celebration of women in the secular literature of the High Middle Ages and the effect of the emerging monastic orders. It examines the life and work of Tuscan holy women and focuses in particular on how they were perceived in their largely patriarchal contexts and by the artists, biographers and "men of God" who brought their own cultural assumptions to bear on the telling of their story. In consequence, the power that stemmed from their godly lives was to varying degrees undermined by some of the people closest to them and eroded by the church itself.

This story of women alternately constrained and encouraged by their social contexts is one of individual struggles and collective achievement. Although the movement in Italy began to fade away after the death of Catherine of Siena, the mystic tradition would live on in other parts of Europe, where the experiences of holy women such as Margery Kempe or, later, Teresa of Ávila will have much in common with their Tuscan predecessors.