Witchcraft. Arson. Going AWOL. Some nuns in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Italy strayed far from the paradigms of
monastic life. Cloistered in convents, subjected to stifling
hierarchy, repressed, and occasionally persecuted by their male
superiors, these women circumvented authority in sometimes
extraordinary ways. But tales of their transgressions have long
been buried in the Vatican Secret Archive. That is, until
now.
In "Nuns Behaving Badly," Craig A. Monson resurrects forgotten
tales and restores to life the long-silent voices of these
cloistered heroines. Here we meet nuns who dared speak out about
physical assault and sexual impropriety (some real, some imagined).
Others were only guilty of misjudgment or defacing valuable artwork
that offended their sensibilities. But what unites the women and
their stories is the challenges they faced: these were women trying
to find their way within the Catholicism of their day and through
the strict limits it imposed on them. Monson introduces us to women
who were occasionally desperate to flee cloistered life, as when an
entire community conspired to torch their convent and be set free.
But more often, he shows us nuns just trying to live their lives.
When they were crossed--by powerful priests who claimed to know
what was best for them--bad behavior could escalate from mere
troublemaking to open confrontation.
In resurrecting these long-forgotten tales and trials, Monson also
draws attention to the predicament of modern religious women, whose
"misbehavior"--seeking ordination as priests or refusing to give up
their endowments to pay for priestly wrongdoing in their own
archdioceses--continues even today. The nuns of early modern Italy,
Monson shows, set the standard for religious transgression in their
own age--and beyond.
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