The Feast of St. Guglielma
THE THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 2:14a,36-41 • 1 Peter 1:17-23 • Luke 24:13-35
Today is not only the third Sunday of the Easter season; it’s also the feast day of St. Guglielma of Milan. We don’t typically observe the feast of St. Guglielma in the Episcopal Church, for several reasons. For one, it’s hard for most of us to say “Guglielma.” You need a dexterous tongue! For another, most people don’t know Guglielma existed. She lived and died in thirteenth-century Milan, and for centuries she was honored only in the remote mountain village of Brunate. But the most obvious reason that people rarely observe her feast is that after Guglielma’s death, her followers were interrogated, some of them were executed, and Guglielma was convicted of heresy. Her body was exhumed and burned, and the ashes scattered.
It seems that the “Guglielmites”—as her followers are called—had come to believe that just as Jesus was the Incarnation of God the Son, so Guglielma was the Incarnation of the Holy Spirit—in female form. In her lifetime, Guglielma denied that she was the Holy Spirit. When she was asked directly about it, she said she was but “a lowly woman and a vile worm.” But her followers remembered her mysterious words about “the body of the Holy Spirit,” and they believed that Guglielma, the Holy Spirit incarnate, had launched through them a new Church to replace the corrupt church of their day. Just as Jesus saved Christians, so Guglielma would welcome Jewish and Muslim people through her new inclusive Church. The leader of this Church would be Sister Maifreda, a nun who would become the movement’s papessa—the first female pope.
The fourth Sunday of April—Guglielma’s feast day—always falls between Easter—the day of Jesus’s resurrection—and Pentecost, the day when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. The third Sunday of the Easter season, which this year coincides with Guglielma’s feast, puts us in the same disjointed time in which the Guglielmites lived. For them, the Holy Spirit had come in the form of Guglielma, and yet the Holy Spirit had not arrived in all her transformative fullness for the Church and for the world.
Like the Guglielmites awaiting the Holy Spirit’s future arrival, we’re still 35 days away from the feast of Pentecost. But also like the Guglielmites, confident that the Holy Spirit had arrived in a new more palpable form, we heard about Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit onto his disciples in our gospel reading from last week. And our first reading today, on the third Sunday of Easter, actually takes place right after the reading we’ll hear on Pentecost, about Holy Spirit descending on the twelve apostles and enabling them to speak diverse languages. (I’ll bet they could say “Guglielma”!) Last week, Evan called that “the good part” of the chapter that our Easter-season readings skip over.
In some ways, I think it’s helpful to place this reading here as a reminder that the Holy Spirit’s fullness may not have arrived, even on the first Pentecost, described in the book of Acts. In his long sermon after that event, Peter said that the miracle of speaking multiple languages fulfilled a prophesy that God would “pour forth” the “Spirit upon all flesh”—on “sons” and “daughters,” on “male” and on “female.” The prophetic language explicitly names masculine and feminine persons. But in the story of that first Pentecost, the Holy Spirit appears to give gifts only to the twelve (male) apostles, and in his sermon afterward, Peter appears to speak only to men. To give Peter some credit, though, he’s the only person in the gospel of Luke to trust the testimony of women that they found Jesus’s tomb empty. The other disciples dismissed these women for telling what sounded like “an idle tale.”
Peter also is able to persuade a crowd that although Jesus was crucified, Jesus nevertheless was the Messiah—the anointed leader of the kingdom that they’d been waiting for. We don’t know exactly how Peter persuaded everyone, because we don’t hear Peter’s whole sermon. The book of Acts and the people who select our Scripture readings for Sundays had some mercy on us, a less-patient audience. Our passage today mentions Peter’s “many other arguments” and “exhort[ations]” but doesn’t include all the actual words, thank goodness. We heard part of Peter’s sermon last week, but I guess the people who select our readings didn’t want to make people listen to two whole or partial sermons today—one from the lectern and one from the pulpit.
But what today’s reading from Acts makes sure that we know is that Peter invited his audience to repent, to be baptized, and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. As we’ll hear next week, the baptized, Spirit-infused people also began living in common households, breaking bread and praying together, and sharing all their possessions.
The Guglielmites may have been mistaken that Guglielma was an incarnation of the Holy Spirit. But they weren’t wrong to trust in the Holy Spirit’s power and greater fullness. The Holy Spirit expanded their vision to an inclusive Church, a utopian world, embodied in an ordained ministry of women and men. To fulfill this vision, the Guglielmites didn’t only look to the future; they also returned to what’s called “the apostolic life” depicted in the book of Acts—a type of religious life based in household meals and prayers.
Despite the Dominican inquisition’s attempt to destroy Guglielmite writings and images and to eradicate her following, one family privately kept Guglielma’s memory alive. One hundred and fifty years after Guglielma’s death, they even commissioned a fresco for a church in the village of Brunate, depicting Guglielma blessing and laying a hand on Sister Maifreda’s head to consecrate her as the first female pope.
This image was misunderstood centuries later as a depiction of Guglielma curing a nun’s headache. With so few people who knew Guglielma’s history, she became a go-to saint for headaches. By the twentieth century, a local bishop wrote an official prayer to Guglielma—unaware she’d been condemned as a heretic centuries before.
The medieval scholar Barbara Newman calls the persistence of Guglielma, including the survival of this heretical fresco, “a small but remarkable triumph over the forces of repression.” I think that the story shows that the Holy Spirit is resilient and irrepressible—even when charged with heresy.
We may not officially observe Guglielma’s feast day in the Episcopal Church, or in any church outside the village of Brunate. But our readings, our bread-breaking, and our fellowship on this day between Easter and Pentecost inspire us to envision what’s possible when we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit in something closer to her fullness.
* All information about St. Guglielma is drawn from Barabara Newman, “The Heretic Saint: Guglielma of Bohemia, Milan, and Brunate” Church History 74, no. 1 (2005): 1-38.
© 2023 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas