On Wednesday October 5 the UVM History Department along with Silver Special Collections and the Humanities Center sponsored a talk by renowned French historian Jacques Dalarun (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres) and UVM’s Sean Field introducing their new book, A Female Apostle in Medieval Italy:  The Life of Clare of Rimini (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022, co-authored with Valerio Cappozzo).  The two historians first discussed the eighteenth-century “backstory” of scholarship on Clare of Rimini, particularly relevant to our scholarly community because Silver Special Collections owns a rare copy of the most important early modern study of her life, published by the Italian scholar and cardinal Giuseppe Garampi in 1755.  The standing room only crowd was able to look at this rare book while Professor Dalarun explained the fascinating web of forgeries and false claims that Garampi’s scholarly adversaries spun in the wake of his pioneering study.

The talk took the form of a conversation, with Professor Field often asking Professor Dalarun to share his expertise as the modern world’s greatest expert on Clare of Rimini.  As the dialogue unfolded, the audience of students, faculty, and community members learned about this fourteenth-century women’s fascinating and controversial life, which included two marriages, two exiles from the city of Rimini, life as a penitent in a roofless cell in the city’s half-ruined Roman walls, her foundation of a more stable community of like minded women, accusations of heresy and demonic possession, and finally the writing of her “life,” probably by a Franciscan friar and probably when Clare was still alive, on her deathbed, around 1326.  A lively question and answer period gave Professor Dalarun the opportunity to insist on the importance of recovering medieval women’s stories and understanding them as leaders, thinkers, and legislators.