Community Identity and Personal Salvation in 16th Century Florence: The Meaning of Miracles in the Chronicle of Le Murate

This thesis explores the purpose of the miraculous in the convent Chronicle of Santissima Annunziata delle Murate. Scholarship has largely tended toward accepting miracles in this and other chronicles as trope of female monastic history writing in the sixteenth century. I argue instead that miracles are a central mechanism by which the Chronicle seeks to achieve its communicative aims and serve at least two purposes: to reinforce the divinely approved nature of the community, and as a means of teaching nuns ways to live virtuously.