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In the steps of Birgitta of Sweden: the reluctant authority of Paola Antonia Negri (1508–1555) *

This article reappraises the experience of the visionary Angelic Paola Antonia Negri (1508–1555) in order to reconstruct the missing links of a hidden genealogy of charismatic women. Birgitta of Sweden (1303–1373), celebrated author of eight books of revelations, played a major role in this genealogy, establishing the canon of women’s prophetic history and thus making it possible to talk of a Birgittine prophetic model. This article investigates how Negri, by exercising charismatic authority and developing her authorial voice, revived and ‘reactivated’ Birgitta’s prophetic model in its critique and legitimation of spiritual and temporal powers, its textual agency and its challenge to male hierarchies. Through the analysis of Negri’s Spiritual Letters (published posthumously in 1576), her hagiography, her milieu and the Inquisition’s and the Barnabites’ documents, this article shows how Negri made the Birgittine model available to all Christians, thus intensifying its potential to question the ecclesiastical and male monopoly of truth and spiritual power and the hierarchical nature of the early modern concept of authority.