Foundresses of the Franciscan Life: Umiliana Cerchi and Margaret of Cortona

"Foundresses of the Franciscan Life: Umiliana Cerchi and Margaret of Cortona," This article examines the earliest vitae of Blessed Umiliana of Cerchi (1219-1246) and Saint Margaret of Cortona (1247-1297), two Franciscan penitents from Tuscany. In an era when many Friars Minor resisted any official relationship between themselves and lay penitents, the authors of these vitae argued that such penitents might be legitimately incorporated into a lay branch of the Franciscan order. Both women were offered by their hagiographers, therefore, not only as models of the penitential life and examples of a new form of feminine sanctity, but as foundresses and patronesses of the Franciscan Third Order.