Following in the apostles’ footsteps: martyrdom, mysticism, and proto-feminism in Lucrezia Marinella’s Holocausto d’Amore della Vergine Santa Giustina (1648)

This article examines the relationship between protofeminism and faith in Lucrezia Marinella’s “Holocausto d’amore della vergine Santa Giustina” (1648). In particular, it explores Marinella’s departures from her sources, which serve to assert women’s excellence as preachers, exegetes, and rulers. Situating the life of the martyr Saint Justina within the context of the querelle des femmes and the Counter-Reformation backlash against public displays of female mysticism and religious authority, this contribution proposes that the hagiography promotes a form of female holiness inspired by the mystics and living saints who dispensed with male ecclesiastical mediation and exercised power beyond the monastic enclosure. This reading complicates the hypothesis that Marinella relinquished her pro-woman advocacy in her later years.