The title of Craig Monson's work on naughty nuns doesn't leave much to the imagination. It is, as stated, a compilation of incidents involving Italy's nuns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - taken straight from the Vatican archives, no less. Some were rather mundane, certainly by today's standards: a nun who loved to sing, for example, and had to be barred from doing so by formal decree, only to fall afoul of the decree. Others - such as the Calabrian nuns who set fire to their convent in order to escaped the cloistered life - are admittedly more shocking.
As Monson discovered in the course of his research, a typical nun's life was rather dull. Surprised? I wasn't either. I was surprised to learn, though that the life of a nun often began at the age of six or seven, and sometimes as young as two. Also, that there were aristocratic convents, convents for converted prostitutes (the appropriately named Convertites), and for everyone in between. What's more, the convent was the usual choice for younger daughters, as the Church's dowry requirements were significantly less than a husband's.
All of which is to say that as much as I enjoyed reading about the episodes themselves (sneaking relatives into convents! sneaking out to the opera! an escalating dispute over convent cushions!), I enjoyed even more learning learning about this aspect of life during and after the Renaissance. I've commented before of being impressed by the power of the Church and its total and utter domination of life; I come away from Nuns Behaving Badly amazed again at the acts committed in the name of God.
Amen.
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