Women Heralds and Apostles of Jesus: Mary Magdalene

The first chapter of the second part, which is dedicated to female evangelical models, considers Mary Magdalene as follower and herald of Christ, the principal model of the active woman found in the gospels. It starts with an overview of the context in which this model became attractive for Italian women, considering Juan de Valds’s heterodox ideas which spread widely in Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century when they were adopted by religious and literary circles and cultural leaders named Spirituali . It then looks at the constitution of the Dimesse in the Venetian area in 1579, a female lay order devoted to charity and Christian education whose members remained lay and independent from ecclesiastical control. Finally, it considers how Vittoria Colonna (in poetry and prose) takes Mary Magdalene as a model of an active and learned woman, with a primary role in evangelization and spiritual agency. It also explores how in Moderata Fonte’s Christological poems Mary Magdalene is presented as a strong woman, a model of assertive engagement endowed with an emancipated spirit and the capacity for action to spread the new faith. It ends with the different view chosen by Lucrezia Marinella, who envisaged a hermit Magdalene devoted only to penance in solitude.