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Renaissance Sexuality and the Florentine Archives: An Exchange

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Rudolph M. Bell
Rudolph M. Bell*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, Stanford University
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Extract

Benedetta 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 1661, at the age of seventy-one. Abbess Benedetta's fascinating story is reconstructed by historian Judith C. Brown in Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1987 , pp. 485 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1987

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References

1 The microfilm itself is available from the Alexander Library of Rutgers University (Special Collections). It also includes the two frames from Corporazioni Religiose Soppresse, number 924, S. Domenico di Pescia, Archivio di Stato di Pisa, that describe the deaths of Benedetta and of her companion Bartolomea (to be considered further along in this essay).