Domenica da Paradiso and the Prophetic Discipline of the Body and Soul

Although some assumptions changed by the end of the Renaissance, women’s sex-ual difference was understood as deeply rooted in their bodies, particularly intheir lower body heat, and was usually seen as indicating a natural inferiority. The idea that materiality has a history helps to frame the long-standing identification between women and their bodies, which isfound as far back as Aristotle and Aquinas. Women’s capacity to procreate was interpreted as a sign of weakness, making the body not only an anatomical fact, but also a symbolic construction. The case of the sixteenth-century woman prophet Domenica da Paradiso can shed new light on the subjective movements that made so many women think of their own body, and women's bodies in general, not as a mark of inferiority, but rather as an instrument of spiritual and intellectual advancement. Moreover, her writings allow us to deepen our understanding of Renaissance women's ideas on and practices of the dialectic between body and intellect that continues to be key to reconstructing the experiences of late medieval and early modern women.