Camilla Battista da Varano

Elected abbess of the monastery of Camerino, Battista da Varano also exercised a role as a reformer: in 1505, Pope Julius II sent her to found a community of Poor Clares in Fermo, where she remained for about two years, and she later contributed to the reform of the monastery of San Severino Marche around 1521-1522. Her reputation rests primarily on her written work, composed in Italian and Latin and appreciated by prominent spiritual figures, including, later, Saint Philip Neri. Among her best-known texts are I dolori mentali di Gesù Cristo nella sua passione (begun around 1488), a meditation on the interior sufferings of Christ during his Passion, considered her masterpiece, and La vita spirituale (1491), an autobiographical account of her spiritual journey. She is also credited with the Ricordi di Gesù, the Istruzioni al discepolo, and a treatise on the purity of the heart (La purità del cuore). Blending humanist culture and Franciscan spirituality of the Observance, she occupies a unique place in Italian mystical literature, at the crossroads of the Renaissance and the Reformation.

The spirituality of Battista da Varano is entirely turned toward the Passion, and more particularly toward the interior and moral sufferings of Christ, which she meditates upon with an intensity and psychological depth unusual for her time. She underwent a long mystical trial that she describes as a silence of God, an experience of presence-absence that she compares to the abandonment of Christ in Gethsemane. Her holiness was tested by a family tragedy: in 1502, when Camerino was taken by the troops of Cesare Borgia, her father Giulio Cesare da Varano and several of her brothers were imprisoned and then put to death; she herself had to flee and found refuge in Atri, in the Abruzzo region, until the election of Pope Julius II in 1503 made her return possible. Through these bereavements and deprivations, her reputation for holiness grew, founded on her life of prayer, her humility as an abbess, and the influence of her writings.

The cult rendered to Battista da Varano in Camerino and in the Marches was maintained for centuries. Recognizing this immemorial cult, Pope Gregory XVI proceeded with her beatification on April 7, 1843. The cause for canonization concluded much later: Pope Benedict XVI inscribed her in the catalogue of saints on October 17, 2010, during a celebration in St. Peter's Square where she was canonized at the same time as several other blesseds. According to sources linked to her cause, the miracle accepted for the canonization concerns the healing of a child from Camerino. Her liturgical memory is celebrated on May 31, the anniversary of her death; the Franciscan Order has also commemorated her on other dates according to local customs.

Camilla Battista da Varano remains one of the great voices of female Franciscan mysticism of the Renaissance, read and studied for the psychological finesse of her meditation on the Passion. Her body is preserved at the Saint Clare Monastery in Camerino, which she had joined and where she lived the greater part of her cloistered life; the city and the diocese of Camerino particularly maintain her memory, as she is one of their emblematic spiritual figures. Her writings, long circulated in Poor Clare and Franciscan circles, are now the subject of critical editions and academic works that highlight the originality of her thought and the quality of her language. Honored by Poor Clares throughout the world, she is invoked as a model of contemplative life and union with the Passion of Christ.