Manoscritti miniati, manoscritti copiati: pratiche di scrittura tra le monache di Santa Brigida a Firenze e di Santa Marta a Siena

This essay compares the manuscript-production practices developed between the late Middle Ages and the early sixteenth century in two female religious communities in Tuscany: the Bridgettine monastery of Santa Brigida al Paradiso near Florence and the Augustinian monastery of Santa Marta in Siena. Both communities were embedded in dense networks of religious reform, spiritual direction, textual circulation, and vernacular culture, and both maintained active scriptoria. Their apparently similar practices, however, served markedly different purposes. At Santa Brigida, manuscript copying was primarily an ascetic and intellectual activity. The nuns autonomously selected, copied, and decorated mostly vernacular religious texts in order to build their own library, sustain a rigorous spiritual programme, and support forms of religious instruction extending beyond the enclosure. At Santa Marta, by contrast, copying and illumination became specialised forms of remunerated labour. The nuns produced books for novices and external patrons, participated in commercial networks involving stationers and religious institutions, and used manuscript production to support the convent’s finances. The spread of printing therefore affected the two communities differently. While the Bridgettines continued copying manuscripts for internal spiritual and cultural use, the Sienese nuns progressively abandoned an activity that had become economically uncompetitive and shifted towards textile production. The comparison demonstrates that women’s monastic scriptoria cannot be interpreted through a single model: manuscript production was shaped by local institutional structures, religious ideals, economic strategies, and the degree of agency exercised by the nuns themselves.