Renaissance sexuality and the Florentine Archives: an exchange. The "lesbian" nun of Judith Brown: a different conclusion.
enedetta Carlini, a mystic and visionary who rose from countryside origins to become abbess of the Theatine convent known as Holy Mary of Pescia (Tuscany), was a "lesbian." For her crimes she was imprisoned for thirty-five years until her death in I66I, at the age of seventy-one. Abbess Benedetta's fascinating story is reconstructed by historian Judith C. Brown in Immodest Acts: The Life ofa Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). According to Brown, Sister Benedetta was subjected to two "investigations." The first, conducted by local church officials, began on 27 May, 1619, the very day after she became Christ's bride in a public ceremony to which she had invited the leading citizens of Pescia to join the convent nuns as witnesses. During fourteen clearly dated and thoroughly documented interrogations of Benedetta and several other sisters listed by name, evidence emerged on a wide array of spiritual graces manifest in the holy woman: an exchange of mystical love during which Jesus removed her heart (leaving a void that her companion could feel) and returned three days later, accompanied by a throng of saints, to replace it with his own larger one; stigmata, from which blood flowed freely, received as she lay in bed; a crown of thorns; and a golden wedding band from her spiritual marriage. On each of their visits the investigators checked and rechecked the physical evidence, and also explored the doctrinal correctness of her many visions and ecstatic experiences. Notwithstanding some troublesome questions, these men concluded that