Le predicatrici valdesi medievali: mundus reversus et perversus o mundus novus? Sulla testimonianza custodita nel Super Apocalypsim di Goffredo di Auxerre

‘After preaching, they feasted quite lavishly every day, they chose new lovers almost every night, they spent their time without being subjected to anyone, without worries, without fatigue, without danger’. In his Super Apocalypsim, the Cistercian monk Geoffrey of Auxerre describes in this way two Waldensian lady preachers, delineating an extraordinary condition of female autonomy. The article explores the ‘textual physiognomy’ of Super Apocalypsim, a biblical commentary written in the second half of the 1180s, but also highlights its historical and editorial context. The testimony of Geoffrey of Auxerre, a leading representative of ecclesiastical hierarchies, allows us to analyse lexical choices and conceptual nuclei in order to clarify the specific polemics underlying this description of the subversive life of an order which is represented by the two Waldensian women and the manner in which they experience female freedom. Emphasis is given to the issue of a dangerous ‘upside-down world’ (mundus reversus et perversus); this witnesses the subversive experience of the two Waldensian women. The article also recognises possible surviving traces of a radical evangelism and the attempt to create a new world (mundus novus).