ABOUT THIS BOOK

My sister Angelina knows all about my things. This morning she was talking about my things like they were no big deal; and my brother was making fun of them together with her. I'm not afraid of their jokes, you know? . . . My sister even brought her classmates to the house, and she tells them this, just to make fun of me: "Come, let's go see Gemma go in ecstasy."

Gemma Galgani was the first person who lived in the twentieth century to become a saint. Born in Lucca to a pharmacist and his wife, Gemma died of tuberculosis at the young age of twenty-five after a life of intense personal spirituality. Jesus caressed her as lovers do; the Virgin Mary was her affectionate Mom; Brother Gabriel playfully teased her about whether she preferred his visits to those of Jesus; and she even received all of Christ's wounds in her hands, feet, and side. At the same time, she was mocked by her family and labeled a hysteric by doctors and the local bishop. Her trials and the intimate details of her supernatural encounters—the voices of Gemma Galgani—are revealed here in this marvelous book by Rudolph M. Bell and Cristina Mazzoni.

Bell and Mazzoni have chosen and translated the most important of Gemma's words: her autobiographical account of her childhood, her diary, and key selections from her "ecstasies" and letters. Gemma emerges as a very modern saint indeed: confident, grandiose, manipulative, childish, admired, and with this book, no longer forgotten. Following Gemma's own voice, Bell carefully contextualizes her life and passion and explores her afterlife, specifically the complicated process of her canonization. Mazzoni closes the book with a "Saint's Alphabet" that finds, through Gemma's voice, spiritual meaning for women in the twenty-first century.

Far more than the reinvigoration of a neglected historical figure, The Voices of Gemma Galgani is a portrait of a complex girl-woman caught between the medieval and the modern and a potent reminder of spirituality in a supposedly secular age.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Rudolph M. Bell is a professor of history at Rutgers University. He is the author or coauthor of five books, four of them published by the University of Chicago Press, including Holy Anorexia and How to Do It.

Cristina Mazzoni is an associate professor of Romance Languages at the University of Vermont and the author or editor of three books, including Saint Hysteria.

REVIEWS

"A young Italian laywoman, Gemma Galgani (1878-1903) was the first person who lived in the 20th century to be canonized (1940) as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. She was a mystic in the medieval mode, complete with ecstatic visions, extreme asceticism, and stigmata. . . .The book under review includes English translations of Galgani's complete autobiography and diary as well as selected letters and ecstatic utterances. Bell introduces the historical setting, while Mazzoni applies feminist theology and theory to expand understanding of Galgani's life and work. This sympathetic yet thoroughly scholarly work is the first book-length treatment of St. Gemma in English since 1950."

— Library Journal

"Bell and Mazzoni demonstrate how potentially subversive Gemma's physical eloquence was.... At the heart of Bell and Mazzoni's endeavour is an understanding that a phenomenon may retain spiritual value, even after its biological and psychological roots have been uncovered."

— Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books

"Was Gemma an inspired young woman, heroic in her physical sufferings and prescient in her mystical understanding? Or was she simply mad? Her writings show her to be perhaps a combination of the two--thoroughgoing in her religious devotion, yet also emotionally manipulative and psychologically precarious. This absorbing collection of primary sources and scholarly analysis sheds light on one of the modern era's most intriguing yet understudied female saints."

— Publishers Weekly

“The authors skillfully navigate the boundaries distinguishing biography from hagiography. . . . The volume tackles important issues of source bias and historical veracity, which loom especially large when trying to make scholarly sense of the ineffable. . . . This volume makes for interesting reading and enhances our understanding of female spirituality and modern Catholicism.”

— Sharon Strocchia, Biography

“[The authors] rescue Gemma from contempt, pity, and platitude. They render her empathetically by tracing the stages of her life and placing her in the context of larger political and religious currents affecting the newly unified Italian state. . . . The book is a fascinating resource for students of women’s mysticism, Italian popular Catholicism, and hagiography. The imaginative use of documentary sources and the richly drawn multivocal portrait of Gemma and her culture are a model for future work.”

— Paula Kane, Journal of Religion

“This is a multi-textured study of the spiritual experience of Gemma Galgani. . . . Mazzoni allows Saint Gemma Galgani to speak to a postmodern world by considering her embodied self and clothing, her devotion to the Eucharist, her difficulties with food and hysteria, and much more. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.”

— John J. O’Brien, Catholic Historical Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Historical Setting—Rudolph M. Bell
Part One: Her Words: Gemma Galgani's Life
2. Autobiography—Until Fall 1899
3. Diary—Summer 1900
4. Ecstasies and Letters—Summer 1902
Part Two: Our Readings: Gemma Galgani's Afterlife
5. Canonization—Rudolph M. Bell
6. A Saint's Alphabet, or Learning to Read (with) Gemma Galgani: Theory, Theology, Feminism—Cristina Mazzoni
Notes
Index

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