7 - Religious Desire in the Poetry of Vittoria Colonna: Insights into Early Modern Piety and Poetics

Summary

Abstract

This chapter examines Vittoria Colonna's biblically inspired verse and the pious traditions to which they point, suggesting that for her, a devout writer, the Bible was not just a text to be read, interpreted, written about and shared, but also prayed and ruminated upon. Through a close reading of selected verses in which the poet inserts scriptural transpositions into poetic constructs highlighting the lyric persona's unrealized spiritual desires, this chapter explores the writer's practice and seeming promotion of the lectio divina and the lectio spiritualis, that is, of her use of the Bible not as a pious source of inspiration, but as an instrument of personal devotion by which she might be brought to direct, personally transformative engagement with the divine.

Keywords: sacred reading, empathic meditation, Italian Reformation, Counter-Reformation, sola fide

Vittoria Colonna has received considerable scholarly attention for her spiritual poetry and for the traditions of prayer and empathic meditation to which they point. Analyses of Colonna and her writing discuss religion and spirituality, theology and literature, but little has been said about the poet as an explicitly pious reader of the Bible, that is, about her approach to the Scriptures as spiritually efficacious devotional texts by which one might be brought to direct and transformative engagement with the divine.

A religious reader of the Bible, Vittoria Colonna approached the Scriptures and other spiritual texts with pious desire, asking important personal and existential questions—ones framed and defined by the terms and contours of Christian eschatology. For Colonna, as for her literate contemporaries, the Scriptures were not just texts to be read and interpreted, or copied and shared, but also prayed and ruminated upon; loci of divine encounter, the books of the Bible were promising instruments of spiritual self-change. Colonna's devotional approach to the Scriptures is evident in her spiritual verses. According to one count, sixty-two of Colonna's spiritual poems are inspired by scriptural passages.

In Colonna's verses, where the speaker communicates wishes in explicit reference to biblical figures, types and narratives, one finds a rewarding terrain for exploring the poet's piety, as the scriptural references Colonna weaves into her texts reveal the devout writer's spiritual habits and her approach to religious composition. Through a close reading of religious sonnets in which the poet deploys biblical transpositions to express the lyric persona's unrealised spiritual desires, this chapter will explore the writer's knowledge of pious modes of scriptural engagement.