From Arnulf of Lisieux to Stefania of San Silvestro: A 12th-Century Letter and Its Hagiographic Afterlife

This is a story about a single letter and its circulation. It began as a letter addressed to an unnamed nun in France in the mid-twelfth century, and made its way into a vita of a Franciscan holy woman in Italy in the late thirteenth century. The letter was composed by Arnulf, the bishop of Lisieux from 1141 to 1181. Arnulf later included it in the various collections of his letters that he prepared for publication. Although transmission of Arnulf ’s letter in Italy was very minimal, it somehow got into the hands of Stefania, a member of the Sorores minores inclusae at San Silvestro in Capite (Rome), and it became part of her story about the founder of her community, Margherita Colonna. From Arnulf ’s hand to Stefania’s, the letter was transformed to meet the needs of widely disparate audiences. The outlines of the life of Arnulf of Lisieux are fairly well established. He had prepared for the clerical life, beginning his education by 1122 in Sées. Thereafter, his higher education can only be indirectly traced, with evidence that he studied at Chartres, Rome or Bologna (in 1133), and Paris.2 As bishop of Lisieux, he was involved in many of the political and ecclesiastical conflicts of the mid-twelfth century. In addition to his letters, which have been mined for evidence about the papal schism of 1159, the confrontation between Henry II and Thomas Becket, and the succession politics surrounding Henry II, Arnulf also composed a series of sermons, a collection of poems, and a polemical tract addressing the papal schism.3 Among Arnulf ’s 140 letters, only one was addressed to