Life & trial of 17th-cent. sex-cult nun Giulia di Marco: Unpublished manuscript.
[Giulia di Marco] / [Nun] / [Manuscript] / [Sex cult]. Vita Della Madre Giulia. S.l. [Italy]: s.n., s.a. [17th or 18th century]. 4to [19.6 x 13.6cm], [67] ff. Bound in contemporary vellum, blue sprinkled edges. Wrinkling, staining, edge wear, small losses to lower fore edge. In one hand, repair to small worm track in upper inner margin not affecting text, the occasional stain, neatly written and legible throughout.
Rare 17th or 18th century Italian manuscript of this still unpublished account of the life and trial of Giulia di Marco, a Franciscan holy woman in early 17th-century Naples whose ecstatic popular spirituality led to her conviction for hosting cult orgies.
This text, written by an anonymous detractor, circulated in manuscript under the title “Storia di Suor Giulia di Marco” or “Vita Della Madre Giulia.” It first seemed to appeal to those interested in the theological and political implications of the trial, but soon it was anthologized in manuscripts devoted to lurid tales of all sorts. Appended here to the narrative are the confessions of Giulia di Marco and her two male advisors.
In the first decade of the 17th century, the Franciscan Tertiary Sor Giulia di Marco gained a considerable popular following in Naples, and many considered her to be a living saint. She was assisted by two spiritual advisors, Fathers Aniello Arciero and Giuseppe de Vicariis. Between 1607 and 1615 Giulia di Marco was the subject of various tribunals and investigations in which she was opposed by Theatines and the Roman Holy Office but supported by Jesuits, certain Neapolitan secular powers, and many among the populace. In 1615, Giulia was at last tried and convicted by the Holy Office, also for having organized orgies. She, along with De Vicariis and Arciero, confessed in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Sentenced to life imprisonment, she died a prisoner in Castel Sant’Angelo.
M. L. Kuntz summarizes the affair neatly, and so I here quote her at length: “The inquisition of the Neapolitan ‘holy mother and teacher of the spirit,’ Giulia de Marco is one of the most interesting processes, and also one of the most difficult to comprehend. Giulia, who had friends among the Neapolitan nobility and especially with the court of the viceroy, the Count of Lemos, was the accused in a notorious process in 1615 in which the alleged sexual aberrations of Giulia were the central focus of the Inquisition. The great interest in her so-called obscene acts and lascivious practices have relegated to a second level the charges of feigned sanctity that had been under scrutiny by the Roman Inquisition since 1609. The Inquisition of Naples had been fearful of the reputation of holiness that had accompanied Giulia and sought to control it by 1607. When the results of the investigation were heard by the Cardinal Inquisitors in Rome, a decree of the Inquisition in August 1609 against the ‘santità afferrata’ and ‘quietismo’ of Giulia, directed to the bishop of Caserta, indicated that ‘sor’ Giulia should be admonished and warned to lay aside her pretensions and affectations of sanctity. Giulia di Marco had claimed that her soul had always been united with God and that ‘this union was such that the essence of the powers of the soul were immersed in God in an inexplicable way.’ As others who had proceeded her, she claimed that she knew the secrets of the heart and who was good or evil. She also said that obedience must be blind and that her spiritual sons must practice complete obedience and total resignation ‘in the sacred side of Christ.’ Her influence on her followers was so great that they came to her for confession and communion. The inquisitorial process lasted for eight years and in 1615 reached a conclusion with a public abjuration by Giulia and with her condemnation to prison. Two of her “spiritual sons,” Giuseppe De Vicariis and Aniello Arciero, were also condemned to prison. What is most significant about this process and other similar ones is the question of magisterium. The Holy Office of the Inquisition defined the claims of mystical women as heresies in order to preserve the magisterium of Church that was fearful of any encroachment upon its teaching and dispensation of the sacraments, as well as the perceived danger of these mystical women” (M. L. Kuntz, pp. 174-5).
*M. L. Kuntz, review of Adelisa Malena’s L’eresia dei Perfetti: Inquisizione Romana ed esperienze mistiche nel Seicento italiano, in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 1 (2005), pp. 174-76; Paola Zito, Giulia e l’inquisitore: Simulazione di santità e misticismo nella Napoli di primo Seicento; Jean-Michel Sallmann, “Di Marco, Giulia,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 40 (1991); A. Malena, L’eresia dei Perfetti: Inquisizione Romana ed esperienze mistiche nel Seicento Italiano; Luigi Amabile, Il Santo Officio della inquisizione in Napoli, vol. II, pp, 23 ff.; M. Sallmann, “La sainteté mystique féminine à Naples au tournant des XVIe et XVIIe siècles,” in Culto dei santi istituzioni e classi sociali in età preindustriale, S. Boesch Gajano, ed., pp. 681-702.