God as a Woman

In the year 1300, a Catholic nun by the name of Maifreda was burnt at the stake in the public square in the city of Milan. With her, another nun and a layman were also executed by fire as leaders of a heretical group recently uncovered by the Inquisition.

Historians believe that the ruling family in Milan, the Visconti, were related to Maifreda and wanted the affair to be closed in the shortest time possible, even though they were unable to save their relative. Several other people who were also arrested, tried, and presumably tortured walked free instead after an admonition. This, on the whole, was a remarkably lenient sentence — believe it or not —  especially considering the bewildering “heresy” which these people confessed to. 

According to the trial documents — which are kept intact to this day — Maifreda preached, and the rest believed, that a saintly woman recently dead and buried in a chapel of the Cistercian Abbey sitting on the outskirts of Milan had been the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, just like Jesus was the incarnation of the Son, the second person. Such a woman, by the name of Guglielma, would soon resurrect in Jesus-like fashion and inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth.

As to the mechanics of such imminent and awe-filled events, some in the group speculated that Maifreda would go to Rome to be recognized as the popess, and from there she would have asked the most learned scholars to rewrite the Gospels. Unfortunately, we don’t know what the content of the new Gospels would have been. There is a reference in the trial records, however, that Maifreda would have been able to baptize all Jews and Muslims, or to include them in some fashion within the same holy fold. 

The name of the group as recorded in the trial is Guglielmites. Sometimes I go back to reflect on these oddballs because my last name could well derive from them. They really represent one of the wildest religious speculations of the Middle Ages, and yet so close to my sensibility. 

They never claimed not to be Catholic or that any dogma of the Catholic Church was wrong. They simply transcended such dogmas, partly by trusting their personal experience, and partly by reasoning from within the same dogmatic scheme. That really sounds like me!

Let me try to reconstruct how the events unfolded. So many people in Milan in previous years had felt they were in the presence of the divine Spirit when Guglielma was speaking or healing people. The Cistercians themselves authorized the prayer meetings with her. At some point, new litanies to the healing power of the Holy Spirit were composed and sung — Maifreda confessed in the trial to be the author of them. Later on, the belief took shape in the group that Guglielma was not just full of the Holy Spirit: she was the Holy Spirit. I would dare say that the historical process by which Jesus was declared the incarnation of the Holy Wisdom by his followers was not very dissimilar.

Interestingly, Guglielma denied sharply that she was anything but a human being, according to testimonies. And, again, many historians would say that Jesus would have done the same. Yet, her corpse was unearthed and tossed on Maifreda’s pyre. For added measure, one thinks, or perhaps for purifying the city. So much fear can be engendered by the incarnation of God as a woman. Couldn’t the learned inquisitors see that the Guglielmites, after all — although perhaps mistakenly — were simply following to the extremes the Catholic theological logic? 

As Maifreda had already been interrogated a few years earlier, with no consequences except an admonition — and she kept her status as a nun — there must have been some events that precipitated the second trial and the capital punishment. Most likely, Maifreda’s misstep was that of celebrating Mass on Easter Day in a somewhat public fashion. She got arrested less than a week later.

Witnesses talk about a somewhat extensive preparation for such an Easter Mass, including rich vestments. Two men were serving at this semi-clandestine mass as subdeacons, and two nuns as deacons. Maifreda acted as the priest without having been ordained by any man. Did Guglielma commission her before dying? We will never know. Was the fact that some men were employed in the performance of such a sacred rite in a lower function than women the trigger of the inquisitorial rage? 

Feminist philosopher and historian Luisa Muraro has mused deeply about the last words that Guglielma — the presumed incarnation of the Holy Spirit — spoke before dying a natural death. Addressing her friends, she reportedly said: You want to see stigmata in my body, because you have no faith and you need signs, but you won’t see them. Muraro believes that Guglielma was alluding to a new way of being divine in the world, one that does not need the glorification of suffering anymore. The Guglielmites never put in doubt the first incarnation, that of God in Jesus; they simply argued for a second incarnation as well. Possibly, Guglielma believed that the incarnation of God was not complete if the chosen human being was a man: God should have been incarnate in both a man and a woman. 

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Banner Image: Early 16th-century lunetta fresco depicting an enthroned Madonna and Child surrounded by monks, from the 13th-century Cistercian cloister of Chiaravalle Abbey near Milan (Italy). Wikimedia Commons

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Queries for Contemplation

Is gender relevant to your imagination of God as immanent, that is, as present and embodied in people? How do you understand violence in relation to the image of God as a woman? 

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Related Readings by Matthew Fox

Charles Burack, ed., Matthew Fox: Essential Writings on Creation Spirituality

Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond

Hildegard of Bingen, A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

Natural Grace: Dialogues on creation, darkness, and the soul in spirituality and science

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