Performing the Bible

This chapter considers two other women writers in Florence, the playwriter Antonia Pulci and the visionary nun Domenica da Paradiso. It discusses first the creation and religious-political use of sacre rappresentazioni in Medici Florence. In this context Antonia Pulci intended her works (which were in print from 1483) to promote the value of the role of women in families and society. The second part of the chapter is dedicated to the illiterate nun Domenica da Paradiso, whose sermons, transcribed by her spiritual director, show a striking level of (self-)awareness of her dignity as a woman. The nun countered St Paul’s message decrying women’s active participation in assemblies (preaching) (1Cor 14, 34), through skillful exegesis of passages from the Bible, stressing her status as a woman chosen by God for a mission to empower her sister-nuns to benefit from their own talents.