Mysticism, Theology and Religious Nonconformism in Early Modern Milan. The Case of Maria Caterina Brugora

Among the materials from the old archive of the Benedictine monastery of Santa Margherita, now housed in the State Archive of Milan, there is a manuscript containing the reportatio of the ecstatic experiences of the mystic Maria Caterina Brugora. Compiled in the third decade of the Sixteenth century, it addresses delicate theological issues, drawing extensively on apocryphal texts mediated by ecclesiastics close to the monastery, often entailing ambiguous or deviant positions. Furthermore, it outlines a harsh theory of perfection and salvation that, in a particularly intense episode of deificatio, culminates with the nun envisioning herself crucified for the redemption of humankind. This contribution aims to examine the textual models and cultural matrices of the reportatio, revealing how these ecstatic experiences were the result of the convergence of different religious sensibilities that, combined, shaped a peculiar episode of female religious nonconformism in a context where the boundary between orthodoxy and heterodoxy was blurred.