Exemplary Interpreters of the Sacred Text and Holy Women Preachers in Catholic Culture

In the Catholic culture, some saintly figures are proposed as exemplary interpreters and mediators of the Scriptures. Instances of this kind are great preacher saints such as Saint Dominic, or translators like Saint Jerome. These characters can be ascribed to a specific model of sainthood, which is of utmost interest from a semiotic perspective, because it is connected to social, political and cultural issues that influence how the interpretation of the sacred texts is conceptualized, practiced, and evaluated. The way in which the work of these interpreters is evaluated and narrated should thus be read in the framework of tensions concerning both the values and criteria underlying the interpretative practice, and issues of authority and authoriality. This complex problematic knot is particularly evident in light of the controversies surrounding the representation of women interpreters as exemplary figures and official judgments about their exegetic endeavors. As a consequence, this essay highlights three main interpretative roles taken on by saintly figures (tra translation, comment, production of hypertexts) and highlights how this interpretative role is a central feature of their exemplarity in the Church’s discourse. It then focuses on exemplary female interpreters, in particular women preachers, with a focus on the figure and work of Domenica da Paradiso (1473––1553), a preacher who explicitly addressed the role of the woman interpreter and cuttingly interpreted the Pauline prescription that women should be silent in the church, the prescription serving as one of the main scriptural bases on which the Church legitimized women’s exclusion from preaching in public.