Catálogo de Santas Vivas (Fase Final): Hacia el primer modelo de santidad femenina de la Contrarreforma (PID2023-104237GB-I00; September 2024-August 2028) is a research project funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Spanish Government, directed by Rebeca Sanmartín Bastida, which aims to complete the Catalogue of Living Saints, an online wiki catalogue which provides knowledge on the lives of Castilian women previous to Saint Teresa who acquired a reputation for holiness in their time. The term "living saints" was coined by G. Zarri for a similar female paradigm in Italy, influential in religion and politics. The lives of these "holy" women, which show a great contact between court and convent, contribute to better understanding women's history. The collected lives appeared in manuscripts of the 15th-16th centuries and handwritten and printed chronicles of religious orders in 17th century Castile and other works (conventual books) or compendiums containing lives of saints (flos sanctorum). Thus, this project recovers several texts that have never been printed and most that were never edited independently.

Female spiritual authority was embodied especially in visionary women between 1400 and 1550. Although they are still quite unknown today outside the scope of the history of the Church, in their times these "living saints" enjoyed social leadership. The new paradigm they established was marked by Catherine of Siena and in some cases responded to a "catherinian" movement sponsored by the followers of Jerome Savonarola, in which the gift of prophecy and monastic reform were promoted. Following a pattern of feminine holiness in Europe, which dated back to the 13th century and was based on extreme fasting, intense penance and eucharistic ecstasy, and embodied in beguines in Central Europe and beatas and tertiaries in the Mediterranean, the living saints added stigmata to other charisms since Catherine of Siena’s success. These visionary women gave fame to houses and convents that would win economic resources, but despite their reputation, they were never canonized, even in cases where it was attempted, which this new project will analyze.

This Project aims to specifically study how living saints became the first hagiographic model in the Counter-Reformation before the canonization of Saint Teresa, the subsequent decline of the paradigm, and to finish developing a geolocation of the places where the living saints lived.

This Project is a continuation of the following projects directed by Sanmartín Bastida: Catalogue of Living Saints (1400-1550): Towards a Complete Corpus of a Female Hagiographic Model (Ref- PID2019-104237GB-I00, 2020-2024), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Sciencie and Innovation; The Emergence of Spiritual Female Authority, a research funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and by FEDER funds (Ref. FFI2015-63625-C2-2-P; 2016-2019), in which the Catalogue was envisioned; and The Construction of Female Sanctity and Visionary Discourse (15th-17th Centuries): Analysis and Recovery of Conventual Writing (Ref. FFI2012-32073; 2013-2015), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

Read paper "Digital visionary women: introducing the “Catalogue of Living Saints”, by Pablo Acosta-García and Rebeca Sanmartín Bastida.