For The Darkest Sin, DV Bishop’s latest novel set in 16th-century Florence, he needed to find out about life behind the closed doors of Italian convents. He unveils the truth about Florentine nuns for Historia.
Nuns have always fascinated me. One of my older cousins was a nun, and nuns taught many classes at the convent schools I attended. Even at high school there was an enclosed nunnery across the road. One nun sometimes emerged to go shopping, but the others remained behind closed doors, unseen and unheard. That stayed with me long after I had forgotten all the classes I took at school.
The lies men tell each other and themselves was the theme of my first historical crime novel, City of Vengeance. For the second Cesare Aldo novel set in Renaissance Florence series, The Darkest Sin, I wanted to write about the silencing of women. In a patriarchal society driven by commerce, women were often denied a voice by men and the Church. And what better place for a locked room mystery than behind the closed doors of a convent?
Immersing readers in such a setting required considerable research yet a lightness of touch when weaving that research into the narrative.
Not long before lockdown I visited Florence in search of convents from the 1530s that were still standing and still serving their original purposes. I found none.
One of the largest Florentine convents of that period, Le Murate, is now a mixture of shops, galleries and apartment. The spaces once given over to nuns have been erased or repurposed, yet many monasteries from that period remain intact.
To find answers meant seeking out accounts and letters written by nuns of the time. What emerged was an intriguing, sometimes startling narrative of the lives these women lived.
Florence had a population of around 60,000 during much of the 16th century. It is estimated at least one in 20 women lived in convents; that’s 1,500 nuns. More than a quarter of women from elite families entered religious institutions. Those who did found a private world occupied almost entirely by their own gender. Convents gave many women agency and autonomy. But it was a life sentence for those forced inside against their will.
There were many reasons a woman took the veil in Renaissance Florence. To some it was a vocation, the truest expression of their faith. For others the convent was a safe space, a way to live in a world free of men. Some sought simplicity and tranquillity. Convents offered the opportunity for education, to pursue learning denied them outside its walls.
Being a nun meant women could escape family expectations such as being a wife and a mother. They did not need to face the dangers of childbearing, nor the uncertainties of being a widow.
Some women were admitted to convents for reasons not of their choosing. The spiritual dowry for a nun was far less than that for a marriage. Where a family had more daughters than funds to see them wed, the convent was a common alternative. Daughters from wealthy families deemed too ugly or too independent for marriage were instead entrusted to a life of worship, reading and work. But the convent also gave homes to women from humble origins without prospects.
Just as Renaissance Florence had a strict hierarchy, one largely determined by wealth and family background, so it was inside many convents. All those who took the veil might be equal in the eyes of God, but there was not strict equality inside a convent. The majority slept in large dormitories but a privileged few had private cells of their own.
Women from wealthy backgrounds were given lighter work, while those from less fortunate upbringings entered a convent as servant nuns, performing manual tasks and domestic services for others. Yet that could still be an improvement for those from the poorest backgrounds.
Convents had two large communal spaces: the refectory, where everyone ate together; and the chapter house. The latter was reserved for debate and decision-making.
Many choices within a convent were determined by the collective, giving women choice over aspects of their lives that was simply not available to most outside. Nuns could adopt rules that suited their circumstances.
Convents in the same city and from the same religious order developed different practices. This brought them into conflict with outside authorities.
Nuns used their autonomy to pursue activities and opportunities often denied them elsewhere. They wrote chronicles and plays; composed and made music; commissioned artists, bookbinders and architects. There were convent theatres and concerts. In short, a life of religion offered significant opportunities for female expression.
But not all those in convents were happy about that, nor did all nuns approve of convents being open to the world. Close living quarters were a hothouse for factions who believed convents should not interact with the community surrounding their walls. Such debates raged in chapter house.
There were other dangers. An illegitimate daughter of the astronomer Galileo Galilei was a nun in a convent just outside Florence and wrote frequently to her father. In one missive she describes a novice who stabbed herself thirteen times with a small blade.
After the wounds were attended by a surgeon, the novice was tied to her bed with nuns guarding her day and night to prevent another violent outburst. There was nowhere else for her to go.
The push for convent enclosures came most frequently from beyond their walls. Charges could be made anonymously against nuns, accusing them of suspicious or ungodly conduct.
Such denunciations helped fuel rhetoric focused on curtailing the agency nuns had within convent walls, and on using enclosure to cut them off from the world. Many patriarchal bodies exercised authority over nuns, ranging from the Church to the city’s leadership.
Convents could be forced to accept interference by means of inspections and inquisitions. But not all willingly gave way. One account tells of nuns climbing on their convent roof to hurl terracotta tiles at clerics intent on enforcing enclosure!
The tactic worked initially but could not be sustained forever. Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici ordered a census of Florentine nuns in the 1540s and interfered with the city’s convents in subsequent years.
The threat of enclosure was never far off, even though locking nuns away from the world made it difficult for them to trade and halted their charitable works in local communities.
Open or enclosed, convent life was a complex existence. It was hellish for those who did not wish to remain within the walls but had no say in the matter. Yet convents were also places of freedom and autonomy.
In Renaissance Florence, most women had two choices – the veil or the marriage bed. For many becoming a nun was more than welcome. It was an escape.
The Darkest Sin by DV Bishop was published on 3 March, 2022.
See more about this book.
DV Bishop is an award-winning screenwriter and TV dramatist. His love for the city of Florence and the Renaissance period meant there could be only one setting for his crime fiction.T
he first book in the Cesare Aldo series, City of Vengeance, won the Pitch Perfect competition at the Bloody Scotland crime writing festival, and was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. It won the New Zealand Booklovers Award for Best Adult Fiction Book 2022.
He has written about the background to City of Vengeance in Walking in the footsteps of Florentine history.
Images:
St Catherine with the Lily by Plautilla Nelli*, 1580s (detail): Wikimedia (public domain)
Le Murate, piazza by sailko: Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Portrait of a Woman, possibly by Jacopo Zucchi, mid-16th century: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (public domain)
Portrait of Maria Salviati (dressed as a novice) by Pontormo, 1543–5: Wikimedia (public domain)
Saint Catherine Receives the Stigmata by Plautilla Nelli: Wikimedia
Siege of Florence by Giorgio Vasari, 1558 (detail): Wikimedia (public domain)
*Plautilla Nelli was a 16th-century Florentine nun, so who better to use to illustrate this feature?
