Cloistered in an Italian library, leafing through dusty sixteenth-century manuscripts, historian P. Renée Baernstein stumbled on a mystery: The nuns of San Paolo, a vital part of community life in Milan, always busy with missionary or charity work, were suddenly in 1552 forced by the Inquisition to remain behind the thick stone walls of the convent.
An absorbing work of historical reconstruction, A Convent Tale paints a rich portrait of remarkable women forced to change, adapt and survive in the Counter-reformation world of Renaissance Italy. Baernstein traces how the nuns, stripped of their mission to transform Milan into a New Jerusalem, redirected their energies to securing their own families' political gain and status in the community.