ABSTRACT
This article will investigate the religious world of Observant Dominican nuns in Genoa at the end of the Middle Ages through a study of sermons and preaching. The role of one particular nun, Tommasina Fieschi, will be considered. Tommasina left letters, a short religious treatise, and nine sermons. Her sermons, which remain unedited, provide insight into how strictly enclosed nuns aspired to create a new life of perfection and contemplation within the walls of their convent. Although Tommasina and her sisters led a cloistered life, the content of her sermons underline that these monastic women were not removed from the larger religious trends of reform that were emerging in the sixteenth century. Like her Genoese contemporary, Christopher Columbus, Tommasina was on a path to discovering a new viewpoint. However, her method did not rely on travel and adventure, but on interior contemplation and imagination. Furthermore, the nature of her reform, which relied on defining the self through an understanding of divine love, has been somewhat eclipsed by the larger focus on the Protestant Reformation. This paper, therefore, will demonstrate the lesser known path of Catholic reform of the early sixteenth century as practiced by Observant Dominican nuns. It will show that their new world was formed through preaching and listening to sermons in the exploration of the self and community.
