Immodest acts

Fülszöveg

The Life ofa Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy
JUDITH C. BROWN
Immodesí Acís is at once an immensely compelling narrative and the product of a major historical dis-covery. Drawn from a rich array of primary doc-uments, which the author found by accident, it illuminates an entire area of Renaissance social history, religious studies, and the history of sex-ual relations between women never previously explored.
Set in Pescia, a small town near Florence, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the book telis the story of Sister Benedetta Carlini, Abbess of the Theatine Convent of the Mother of God. Benedetta had dedicated herself to the service of God early in life, having been sent to the convent by her well-to-do parents at the age of nine. At age 23, she began to have visions of both a religious and erotic nature and became wracked by physical pain. She was assigned a companion, a young nun named Bartolomea Crivelli, to help her in her travail. In time church... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The Life ofa Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy
JUDITH C. BROWN
Immodesí Acís is at once an immensely compelling narrative and the product of a major historical dis-covery. Drawn from a rich array of primary doc-uments, which the author found by accident, it illuminates an entire area of Renaissance social history, religious studies, and the history of sex-ual relations between women never previously explored.
Set in Pescia, a small town near Florence, in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the book telis the story of Sister Benedetta Carlini, Abbess of the Theatine Convent of the Mother of God. Benedetta had dedicated herself to the service of God early in life, having been sent to the convent by her well-to-do parents at the age of nine. At age 23, she began to have visions of both a religious and erotic nature and became wracked by physical pain. She was assigned a companion, a young nun named Bartolomea Crivelli, to help her in her travail. In time church authorities became suspicious of Benedetta's claims of supernatural contacts with Christ. The resulting ecclesiastical in-quests revealed that Benedetta and Bartolomea had been engaged in a sexual relationship for years. The story of their relationship and Benedetta's fali from the honored position of Abbess is both moving and dramatic.
Historically, Immodest Acís sheds tremendous light on the possibilities open to women in pre-modern times: the channels available to their am-bition, their lives within convents, their relation Vissza