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CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BOLOGNA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2012

LIISE LEHTSALU
LIISE LEHTSALU*
Affiliation:
Brown University
*
History Department, Box N, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USALiise_Lehtsalu@brown.edu
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Abstract

Eighteenth-century convents are little studied, and women's third order houses even less so, despite the growing numbers of the latter. Through a case-study, this article explores the origins and functions of one eighteenth-century third order house in an Italian urban community. Relying on the rich meeting minutes of Santa Maria Egiziaca in Bologna, the article analyses the everyday realities and the changing perceptions of women's religious institutions among the urban elites connected to the house. Santa Maria Egiziaca emerges as neither only a convent nor a shelter, the two institutional types recognized in current scholarship, but rather as both. The diverse goals of the house's administrators and benefactors suggest why third order houses thrived in the eighteenth century when more traditional convents came under increasing criticism and declined.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 939 - 959
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Caroline Castiglione, Evelyn Lincoln, Robert Self, the Fall 2011 graduate workshop at Brown University History department, and the Historical Journal's anonymous readers for their comments.

References

1 Archivio di Stato di Bologna (ASB), Fondo Demaniale (Dem), Santa Maria Egiziaca (SME), 24/7061, Libro primo (Libro), fo. 74r.

2 Ibid., fo. 74v.

3 Ibid., fos. 20v–21r.

4 R. Roddy, ‘Franciscan sisters’, in New Catholic encyclopedia (2nd edn, 15 vols., Detroit, MI, and Washington, DC, 2003), v, pp. 875–6; L. Secondo and G. Schinelli, ‘Franciscans, third order regular’, in New Catholic encyclopedia, v, pp. 906–8; Gersbach, K. A., ‘Augustinian nuns and sisters’, New Catholic encyclopedia, i, pp. 871–3Google Scholar. For medieval Italy, see K. Gill ‘Open monasteries for women in later medieval and early modern Italy: two Roman examples’, in C. Monson, ed., The crannied wall: women, religion, and the arts in early modern Europe (Ann Arbor, MI, 1992); and essays by A. Rigon, M. Sensi, A. Benvenuti Papi, and A. Esposito in D. E. Bornstein and R. Rusconi, eds., Women and religion in medieval and Renaissance Italy (Chicago, IL, 1996).

5 Third orders had to adopt enclosure and solemn vows, or face auto-extinction. Zarri, G., Recinti: donne, clausura e matrimonio nella prima età moderna (Bologna, 2000), pp. 105–11Google Scholar.

6 Rapley, E., The dévotes: women and church in seventeenth-century France (Montreal, 1990)Google Scholar; Diefendorf, B., From penitence to charity: pious women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (New York, NY, 2004)Google Scholar; Lux-Sterritt, L., Redefining female religious life: French Ursulines and English ladies in seventeenth-century Catholicism (Aldershot, 2005)Google Scholar; Dinan, S., Women and poor relief in seventeenth-century France: early history of the Daughters of Charity (Burlington, VT, 2006)Google Scholar. For Italy: Zarri, Recinti, ch. 7; S. Evangelisti, Nuns: a history of convent life (New York, NY, 2007), ch. 7.

7 Zarri, Recinti, pp. 131–3.

8 Bellettini, A., La popolazione di Bologna dal secolo XV all'unificazione italiana (Bologna, 1961), p. 27Google Scholar; Archivio Arcivescovile di Bologna (AAB), Visite Pastorali (VP), 53, Visita Lambertini, 1734; M. Fanti, Abiti e lavori delle monache di Bologna (Bologna, 1972).

9 Zarri, G., ‘I monasteri femminili a Bologna tra il XIII e il XVII secolo’, Atti e memorie, 24 (Bologna, 1973), pp. 163–219Google Scholar.

10 Bellettini, La popolazione, p. 61.

11 Ibid., pp. 58–9.

12 Evangelisti, S., ‘Wives, widows, and brides of Christ: marriage and the convent in the historiography of early modern Italy’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000), pp. 233–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Sperling, J. G., Convents and the body politic in late Renaissance Venice (Chicago, IL, 1999)Google Scholar; Baernstein, P. R., A convent tale: a century of sisterhood in Spanish Milan (New York, NY, 2002)Google Scholar; Laven, M., Virgins of Venice: broken vows and cloistered lives in the Renaissance convent (New York, NY, 2003)Google Scholar; Zarri, Recinti; Evangelisti, Nuns.

13 Bellettini, La popolazione, pp. 58–9; Litchfield, R. Burr, ‘Demographic characteristics of Florentine patrician families, sixteenth to nineteenth centuries’, Journal of Economic History, 29 (1969), p. 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gross, H., Rome in the age of Enlightenment: the post-Tridentine syndrome and the ancien regime (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 67–70Google Scholar.

14 G. Penco, ‘Aspetti e caratteri del monachesimo nel Settecento italiano’, and E. Boaga, ‘Orientamenti della vita religiosa nell'Italia del Settecento’, in G. Farnedi and G. Spinelli, eds., Settecento monastico italiano (Cesena, 1990).

15 Choudhury, M., Convents and nuns in eighteenth-century French politics and culture (Ithaca, NY, 2004)Google Scholar; Wolshinsky, B., Imagining women's conventual spaces in France, 1600–1800 (Burlington, VT, 2010)Google Scholar.

16 Chojnacka, M., ‘Women, charity and community in early modern Venice: the Casa delle Zitelle’, Renaissance Quarterly, 51 (1998), pp. 68–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Working women of early modern Venice (Baltimore, MD, 2001), ch. 6; Cohen, S., ‘Convertite e malmaritate: donne “irregolari” ed ordini religiosi nella Firenze rinascimentale’, Memoria: rivista di storia delle donne, 5 (1982), pp. 23–65Google Scholar; L. Ferrante, ‘“Malmaritate”: tra assistenza e punizione (Bologna sec. xvi–xviii)’, in M. Fanti, ed., Forme e soggetti dell'intervento assistenziale in una cità di antico regime (Bologna, 1986); idem, ‘Honor regained: women in the Casa del Soccorso di San Paolo in sixteenth-century Bologna’, in E. Muir and G. Ruggiero, eds., Sex and gender in historical perspective (Baltimore, MD, 1990); Ferraro, J. M., ‘The power to decide: battered wives in early modern Venice’, Renaissance Quarterly, 48 (1995), pp. 492–512CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maldini, D., ‘Donne sole, “figlie raminghe”, “convertite”, e “forzate”: aspetti assistenziali nella Torino di fine settecento’, Il Risorgimento, 33 (1980), pp. 115–38Google Scholar; McGough, L. J., Gender, sexuality, and syphilis in early modern Venice: the disease that came to stay (New York, NY, 2011)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

17 Cohen, S., The evolution of women's asylums since 1500: from refuges for ex-prostitutes to shelters for battered women (New York, NY, 1992), pp. 105–18Google Scholar; Groppi, A., I conservatori della virtù: donne recluse nella Roma dei papi (Rome, 1994), pp. 26–41Google Scholar; Cavallo, S., Charity and power in early modern Italy: benefactors and their motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (New York, NY, 1995)Google Scholar, ch. 4.

18 Zarri suggests that third orders were involved with the new custodial institutions, all the while clearly distinguishing between custodial institutions and the third order houses that staffed them (Recinti, pp. 474–5).

19 Santa Maria Egiziaca was suppressed in 1810. Detailed sources for the second half of the eighteenth century are lacking but the extant visitation and notarial records are comparable to the earlier period.

20 Most scholars do refer to similar administrative books of minutes or books of memories (ricordi) but use them to supplement prescriptive sources; the books of memories written by nuns have been used to analyse the nuns’ perceptions of convent life. For examples see Ferrante, ‘Honor regained’; Lowe, K. J. P., Nuns' chronicles and convent culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar.

21 A. Masini, ‘Aggiunti’, in Bologna perlustrata (1666) (2 vols., Bologna, 1986), ii, p. 47; Libro, fo. 2r; Biblioteca Archiginnasio (BA), Archivio Gozzadini (Gozz), 168, fasc. 24, ‘Ristretto del Modo, che è stato erretto il Munistero delle Suore Penitenti di Santa Maria Egiziaca’.

22 Libro, fos. 2v–6r.

23 Ibid., fos. 5r–7r.

24 Ibid., fo. 3r.

25 Ibid., fo. 6r.

26 Ibid., fos. 5r–7r.

27 Ibid., fos. 6v–7r.

28 Libro, fos. 7r–9v.

29 Ibid., 8/7045, num. 33 (2 May 1692).

30 ASB, Dem, SME, 18/7055, Constituzioni (Constituzioni), p. 35. The Ursulines are mentioned as a model also elsewhere in the constitution. This suggests that when sanctioning Santa Maria Egiziaca, the archbishop deemed the house similar to other new third order houses. Extant sources show no official connection between Santa Maria Egiziaca and the Ursulines. On Italian Ursulines see Mazzonis, Q., Spirituality, gender, and the self in Renaissance Italy: Angela Merci and the Company of St. Ursula (1474–1540) (Washington, DC, 2007)Google Scholar.

31 Constituzioni, p. 2.

32 Ibid., pp. 14–25.

33 Ibid., pp. 26–31.

34 Ibid., pp. 10–11.

35 Ibid., p. 12.

36 AAB, VP, 53, Visita Lambertini, 1734; ibid., 57, ‘Libro Delle Visite fatte alle Terziarie della Città, e Diocesi di Bologna Dell'Anno 1744’; ibid., 86, ‘Relazione della Sacra Visita … dell'Anno 1772 … ’.

37 Ibid., 57, ‘regole, ed ordini’.

38 ASB, Dem, SME, 12/7049, num. 11 (29 Dec. 1736).

39 Santa Maria Egiziaca first bought a house on Via Nosadella in 1692, after renting there since 1689 (ibid., 20/7057, ‘Testamento di Antonio Masini’). Adjacent buildings to the first house were purchased in 1706/7, 1708, and 1729 (Libro, fos. 50v–51v, 57r, 96v–97r). Via Nosadella also housed Santa Elisabetta, a Franciscan tertiary community, and Santa Maria degli Angeli, an Augustinian convent (Fanti, Abiti e lavori). Zarri has noted the concentration of convents in specific Bolognese neighbourhoods by the seventeenth century (‘I monasteri femminili’, p. 155).

40 On post-Tridentine convent architecture see Hills, H., Invisible city: the architecture of devotion in seventeenth-century Neapolitan convents (New York, NY, 2004)Google Scholar; Zarri, Recinti, pp. 117–24.

41 Libro, fo. 53r.

42 Ibid., fos. 68r, 94r.

43 Ibid., fo. 93v.

44 Constituzioni, pp. 5–6.

45 Catterina Moretti, whose probation was disrupted by illness, was re-accepted after hospitalization in Ospedale della Morte in 1708 (Libro, fos. 58r–58v); Maria Cattarina Padoani, who had a violent father, was accepted in 1710 with an understanding that the acceptance violated the constitution (fo. 67v); Maria Catterina Trotti spent extra time with her ‘loved ones’ before entering the house in 1712 (fo. 73r); Giuglia Alibani entered in 1718, despite the administrators’ objection to her old age (fo. 83r).

46 Ibid., fo. 101r.

47 Ibid., fos. 10r, 12r, 13r, 26r–v.

48 ASB, Dem, 24/7061, Beati Misericordes identifies thiry-eight “mouths to feed” in 1716; AAB, VP, 57, ‘Santa Maria Egiziaca’ indicates twenty-seven women in 1744; Libro, fos. 52r, 92r, 110v, testify to on-going struggles to limit the population.

49 Constituzioni, pp. 38–9.

50 Bonni named Father Pietro Costa, a herbalist Camillo Turlaia, a printer Giacomo Longhi, clerics Ignazio Brizzi, Ludovico dell'Horto, Giovanni Battista Vecchietti, and Antonio Porta, noblemen Pietro Fava and Tomaso Sturoli, as well as Paris Maria Boschi, Lorenzo Lapi, and Alessandro Grandi (BA, Gozz, 168, fasc. 24).

51 Constituzioni listed Brizzi, dall'Horto, Porta, Sturoli, Fava, Turlaia, and Grandi (p. 41).

52 ASB, Dem, SME, 13/7050, num. 24 primo (Mar. 1755). Francesco Boschi joined the congregazione on 10 May 1717 (Libro, fo. 82r). The expenses of Santa Maria Egiziaca amounted to 25,461 Bolognese lire in 1748, the last complete year of surviving accounts. The aggregate debt of the community was 22,274 Bolognese lire in 1748 (ASB, Dem, SME, 24/7061, Spese, et Entrate (Spese), 1748).

53 Zarri, Recinti, pp. 112–14; Cohen, Evolution, ch. 5.

54 Constituzioni, pp. 29–35, 39.

55 Libro, fo. 52r.

56 Ibid., fo. 68r.

57 Ibid., fo. 66v.

58 Constituzioni, p. 39.

59 BA, Gozz, 168, fasc. 24.

60 Libro, fo. 79v.

61 Ibid., fo. 82v.

62 Ibid., fos. 95r, 98v.

63 The partially surviving Spese from 1723 to 1753 include a monthly allowance to the Mother Superior – another evidence for greater self-management after 1723. However, since earlier accounts do not survive, it cannot be known if this allowance existed already before 1723. Libro primo never mentions it.

64 Evangelisti, Nuns, chs. 2–3.

65 Libro, fo. 51v.

66 Elisabetta Santoli was imprisoned for the ‘extortion of good people’ before entering Santa Maria Egiziaca in 1712 (Libro, fo. 72r); Luisa Negrini, a ‘true penitent’, entered in 1736 (fo. 102r). Maria Maddalena Posterla (accepted in 1704), Bartolomia Maranelli (accepted in 1705), and Pietra Gherardi (accepted in 1709) had all been recorded in Camplonus meretricum, a tax registry for public prostitutes (ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette, Camplonus meretricum, 1700–1710). The registry stops in 1710.

67 Constituzioni, p. 32.

68 Libro, fos. 106r, 111r, 113v.

69 Monache coriste and monache converse (lay nuns) paid different dowry amounts and performed different tasks within a convent. Evangelisti, S., ‘To find God in works? Female social stratification in early modern Italian convents’, European History Quarterly, 38 (2008), pp. 398–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Cohen argues that continued esteem for traditional monastic forms in the seventeenth century encouraged many administrative bodies to transform custodial institutions into monastic houses (Evolution, p. 106).

71 ASB, Dem, 24/7061, Beati Misericordes quoniam ipsi Miserecordiam consequettur.

72 Both Cavallo in Charity and power, and McGough, L. in ‘Women, private property, and the limitations of state authority in early modern Venice’, Journal of Women's History, 14 (2002), pp. 32–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discuss the social and cultural functions of women's patronage. Strocchia, S. in ‘Remembering the family: women, kin, and commemorative masses in Renaissance Florence’, Renaissance Quarterly, 42 (1989), pp. 635–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cohn, S. K. Jr in ‘Women and the Counter-Reformation in Siena: authority and property in the family’, in Women on the streets: essays on sex and power in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore, MD, 1996)Google Scholar, provide a more general discussion of gendered pious and family legacies.

73 Constituzioni, p. 6.

74 Ibid., pp. 27–8, 39.

75 In 1704, visitors’ licences were given to Catterina Aldrovandi, Catterina Caprara, Marchesa Monroli Fava, a signora Isolana, Marchesa Suplizia Cattanei Albergati, Livia Melara, Francesca Albergati Ghisilieri, Pantasilea Volta Ghisilieri (Libro, fo. 50r); in 1708, to Teresa Zambeccari Tanari (fo. 55v); in 1711, and again in 1722, to Elena Pepoli Aldrovandi, Catterina Zambeccari Caprara, Marchesa Silvia Davia Manzoli, Maria Francesca Lupari Isolani, Marchesa Suplizia Cattanei Albergati, Livia Alberici Melara, Francesca Albergati Ghisilieri, Pantasilea Ghisilieri Volta, Ergia Ghisilieri Fava, Teresa Zambeccari Tanara, Artimisia Caprara Orsi, Rosalia Albergati Gozzadini, Ginevra Fava Sampieri, Marchesa Diana Tanari Campeggi, Marchesa Anna Pasi Albergati, Marchesa Anna Grassi Albergati, Elisabetta Belloni, Francesca Cartelli, Paola Cattellani Danzi, Maria Madalena degli Antonij, Maria Madalena Rannuzzi (fos. 68v, 88r).

76 A forty-one-year-old zitella Angela Tomba was denied admission in 1711 in spite of Livia Melara's recommendation. This is the only rejection of this kind recorded in Libro primo (Libro, fo. 69r).

77 Libro, fo. 55r.

78 Waddy, P., Seventeenth-century Roman palaces: use and the art of the plan (New York, NY, and Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 196–7, 311–12Google Scholar. The majority of the Bolognese noble palaces, including the Albergati palace, were modified in the seventeenth century; the architects in charge of these modifications travelled frequently between Rome and Bologna. See Cuppini, G., I palazzi senatorii a Bologsna: architettura come immagine del potere (Bologna, 1974)Google Scholar.

79 Cavallo, Charity and power, p. 157 n. 18; McGough, Gender, sexuality, and syphilis, p. 134.

80 Compiled from Libro and the Spese (1723–53).

81 Libro, fo. 79r.

82 Ibid., fo. 65r.

83 Chojnacka discusses cross-stratum female solidarities in late sixteenth-century Venice in Working women, ch. 6.

84 Libro, fo. 86v.

85 Ibid., fo. 92v.

86 Ibid., fo. 92v.

87 Ibid., fo. 74v.

88 Ibid., and Spese; ASB, Dem, SME, 6/7043–14/7051, Instromenti; ibid., 20/7057, Miscellanea; ibid., 25/7062, Repertorio. Also ASB, Aldrovandi Marescotti, 626 and 35; ibid., Albergati, Miscellanea 34; ibid., Ghisilieri, Ramo Principale, 22; ibid., Grati Fantuzzi, Miscellanea Grati Fantuzzi 3.

89 Ibid., 20/7057, Miscellanea.

90 ASB, Dem, SME, 12/7049, num. 12 (7 May 1737); ibid., 13/7050, num. 13 (24 Nov. 1747).

91 Ibid., 12/7049, num. 24 (31 Oct. 1743).

92 Ibid., Grati Fantuzzi, Miscellanea Grati Fantuzzi 3, num. 63 (3 Feb. 1730) and num. 60 (2 June 1730).

93 Ibid., Dem, SME, 13/7050, num. 38 (17 Jan. 1762); ibid., 14/7051, [unnumbered] (21 Nov. 1767).

94 Ibid., 14/7051, [unnumbered] (18 Apr. 1767).

95 Ibid., 12/7049, num. 12 (7 May 1737).

96 Ibid., SME, 13/7050, num. 13 (24 Nov. 1747).

97 Anna Grassi Albergati's brother, Paris Maria Grassi, paid for a woman's entrance to the house in 1734 (Spese, 1734). ASB, Albergati, Carteggi 3, mazzo G contains letters between the brother and the sister that testify to a close relationship between the two.

98 Ibid., Aldrovandi Marescotti, 35, num. 14 (18 Aug. 1742/ 18 Feb. 1743); ibid., 626, Elena Aldrovandi, Ricevute.

99 Ibid., Albergati, Miscellanea, 34, Anna Grassi Albergati, Dare et Avere 1719.

100 Compiled from ibid., Dem, SME, 6/7043–14/7051, Instromenti; ibid., 20/7057, Miscellanea; ibid., 25/7062, Repetorio; and Spese.

101 The greater proportion of women in this group agrees with McGough's ‘Women, private property, and the limitations’ in which she argues that women used pious legacies to assert agency and defy lineage demands.

102 ‘Lodovico Girolamo Antonio Maria Barbieri, testator, charges the penitent suore of Santa Maria Egiziaca, his heirs, with the twice-daily recital of De profundis, both for his own soul and for the soul of his wife, Maria Cremonta Camoncoli.’ ASB, Dem, SME, 12/7049, num. 17 (23 Mar. 1741).

103 Ibid., 12/7049, nums. 24 and 25 (31 Oct. 1743).

104 Ibid., 6/7043–14/7051, Instromenti; ibid., 20/7057, Miscellanea.

105 Libro, fos. 11v–12r, 71r, 74r, 84r–4v, 85r, 102r.

106 Ibid., fo. 85r.

107 Constituzioni, p. 39.

108 Choudhury, Convents and nuns, p. 6.

109 My initial research in communal and diocesan archives in Bologna and Milan indicates that female third order houses existed in major towns and dotted the countryside of eighteenth-century northern and central Italy. I am unaware of any detailed studies discussing these Italian institutions. See n. 6 for recent research on similar institutions in France.

110 Recently, Jeremy Gregory has argued forcefully for the continued salience of religion in the eighteenth century. Gregory, J. ‘Introduction: transforming “the Age of Reason” into “an Age of Faiths”: or, putting religions and beliefs (back) into the eighteenth century’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32 (2009), pp. 287–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Religion: faith in the Age of Reason’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2011), pp. 435–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 Gross, Rome in the age of Enlightenment, introduction and ch. 8; O. Hufton and F. Tallett, ‘Communities of women, the religious life, and public service in eighteenth-century France’, in M. Boxer and J. Quataert, eds., Connecting spheres: European women in a globalizing world, 1500 to the present (Oxford, 2000); Lehner, U., ‘What is “Catholic Enlightenment”?’, History Compass, 8 (2010), pp. 166–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.