Habitual Offenders: A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-Century Italy
344
Habitual Offenders: A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-Century Italy
344eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
In April 1644, two nuns fled Bologna’s convent for reformed prostitutes. A perfunctory archiepiscopal investigation went nowhere, and the nuns were quickly forgotten. By June of the next year, however, an overwhelming stench drew a woman to the wine cellar of her Bolognese townhouse, reopened after a two-year absence—where to her horror she discovered the eerily intact, garroted corpses of the two missing women.
Drawing on over four thousand pages of primary sources, the intrepid Craig A. Monson reconstructs this fascinating history of crime and punishment in seventeenth-century Italy. Along the way, he explores Italy’s back streets and back stairs, giving us access to voices we rarely encounter in conventional histories: prostitutes and maidservants, mercenaries and bandits, along with other “dubious” figures negotiating the boundaries of polite society. Painstakingly researched and breathlessly told, Habitual Offenders will delight historians and true-crime fans alike.
“Monson’s combination of style and substance makes this a thoroughly engaging work to read. His ability to move from the smallest of significant objects, silver-handled forks and scarlet jackets, to examine the struggles for power between the Pope and Europe’s most powerful families is notable, resulting in a work highly enjoyable for academic and lay readers alike.” —Women’s History
“Monson delivers cut-to-the-quick truths about survival strategies for individuals and families, both great and small, caught in networks from Bologna, through Venice and papal Rome, reaching as far as Mazarin and the king of France.” —Alison K. Frazier, author of Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226335476 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 03/04/2020 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 344 |
| Sales rank: | 875,710 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Habitual Offenders
A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-Century Italy
By Craig A. Monson
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2016 The University of ChicagoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-33547-6
CHAPTER 1
Airing Dirty Linen
Easter arrived early in 1644. Although the days seemed warm for late March in Bologna, persistent overcast still shrouded the usual paschal signs of spring or ecclesiastical renewal in the days leading up to March 27, Resurrection Sunday. For the aging Pope Urban VIII Barberini (r. 1623–44) and his nephews, the political climate would also make this Easter especially bleak.
Bologna's central piazza (modern-day Piazza Maggiore) and the streets running out from it in all directions seemed congested nevertheless, not so much with the faithful intent on their Easter duty, hastening to San Petronio (fig. 5, G) or its nearby rival, the cathedral of San Pietro (fig. 5, O), but with soldiers loitering around an unsightly barracks hurriedly thrown up in the piazza. They had been drawn into the papal army and to the second city of the Papal States by the War of Castro. This prolonged Barberini feud with Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma and Castro, had dragged on since 1641, devastating the countryside and depleting papal coffers. The war had continued to disrupt daily life in Bologna, particularly during the past two years, as Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Bolognese papal legate and enthusiastic militarist, co-directed military operations out of the Palazzo del Legato (today, Palazzo Comunale, fig. 5, H; 44.493840° N, 11.342440° E) or on the battlefield.
On Thursday after Judica Sunday (March 17), as the papal choir intoned "Wherefore all that Thou hast done unto us, Thou hast done in true judgment," papal regiments clashed with Farnese's Venetian allies at Fortezza Lagoscuro (44.8731° N, 11.607° E) on the river Po, thirty-seven miles northeast of Bologna. On that day God did not judge in the Barberini's favor: two hundred soldiers fell on the battlefield and another hundred were captured. Cardinal Antonio himself barely escaped, thanks not to the troops of God's holy representative on earth, but to a particularly fleet-footed horse that carried the fleeing prelate to safety. After such a disastrous Easter season, Urban VIII and his nephews finally conceded. A treaty ending the conflict was signed on March 31, Easter Thursday.
In the early hours of Easter Friday Leonardo Peri, better known as Leonardo Ortolano (Leonard the gardener) prepared to take back his fields (fig. 2, D): not battlefields, but the dormant gardens of Bologna's Capuchin nuns della Natività di Maria Vergine on via delle Lame, on the northwestern outskirts of Bologna, within sight of the city gate called Porta delle Lame (44.502331° N, 11.333295° E) and nearby Canale Navile (fig. 2, F), the waterway to Ferrara and Venice.
Like other open expanses in this least-developed corner of Bologna, the Capuchins' fields showed scant evidence of field-workers' labors. A tangy haze from early morning fires, fortified by mists rising from nearby canals in this watery district, veiled modest orchards and skeletal trees, bare except for a few desiccated remnants of last autumn's foliage stubbornly retained. Dawn revealed gardens whose bare earth scarcely contrasted with the greening, threadbare carpet of sprouting weeds. Gray heaps of dead branches, brambles, and canes testified to Leonardo's preliminary efforts, still too soggy for the fire.
As the gardener settled a cloak around his shoulders outside his lodgings in Borgo del Rondone (Swallow's or Swift's Borough), south of the Capuchins, he noticed a small crowd idling near the large gate in the high wall that hedged in the side street outside his door, known as via del Rondone, (fig. 2, B; 44.500489° N, 11.334963° E). It marked the border of another women's community, the Carmelite nuns of SS. Filippo e Giacomo (fig. 2, A; 44.500384° N, 11.33444° E), better known as the Convertite, a refuge for reformed prostitutes. They had claimed the corner of via delle Lame and via del Rondone in the 1560s and founded a convent there. Back then the area seemed appropriately remote from the respectable palaces of Bologna's elite, nearer the city center.
Nevertheless, the entry to this retreat where "women of the world" retired to a quieter life of prayer and contemplation seemed unsuitably astir. To make ends meet, the repentant sinners took in laundry, which drew a steady trickle of servants laden with baskets of their betters' dirty linen. Ever since the War of Castro came too close for comfort, the convent portals seemed busier still, with idle soldiers turning up with their shirts (stained with food more often than blood), in search of a little conversation in the convent's public visiting room, the parlatorio.
But never at this hour. Had someone fallen victim to hooligans on the dark street during the night, the gardener wondered? (Foul play happened often enough with so many footpads and foreigners about.) Nothing had disturbed Leonardo's rest, however, or broken the Great Silence of the Carmelites or Capuchins, safe inside their walls.
Leonardo spotted a cause for the commotion: articles of clothing lay scattered along low parapets bordering his field and the street. He moved quietly to gather them up, lest they fall into the hands of some loitering opportunist. He shook a little debris from two long sleeveless garments of mud-colored serge, open at the sides. There were tunics of similar coarse weave and hue as well as two lengths of thinner black fabric and, in stark contrast, pieces of white linen limp from the dampness. In the gloom he also made out two pairs of wooden slippers, decorated with red and black ribbons that stood out against little drifts of sodden leaves. These had to be nuns' vestments, but not those of his employers, the Capuchins. They looked like those worn by sisters behind the wall across the street.
"Look there — the gate's open too!" a bystander exclaimed. By then Leonardo's wife had come out to join him, always curious about any fuss. The pair approached the Convertite's wide carters' gate: the door was indeed unlocked, the bolt barely thrown. Leonardo gave a good hard pull on the bell cord dangling beside the portal to summon a nun gatekeeper — clearly not at her post near the door — from somewhere in the hidden recesses inside the wall.
It was still not much after first light. Still half asleep, Suor Paola Costanza Torosanti, the portinara, or gatekeeper, on duty that week, hurried along the wall of a shadowy upstairs hallway until she reached the staircase, then padded down to answer the clangor that jarred everybody's last sweet moments of rest. Crossing the dusky courtyard, she hiked up the hem of her habit to negotiate a muddy corner where she knew a lazy nun often emptied slops from an upstairs window. Then she was startled from her doze: the heavy timber doors of the inner gate were unlocked. She dragged one open wide enough to slip through. The inside bolt on the outer doors several feet ahead of her was also unsecured, and she detected movement outside through gaps and cracks in the boards. She manhandled a door open just enough to discover Leonardo Ortolano and his wife, their arms draped with what were obviously Carmelite nuns' garments. "The gate were open. These were outside, so some nuns must have run off."
"She didn't fall over dead (God forbid!)," Leonardo later recalled. Instead, Suor Paola Costanza, now wide awake, turned and hurried back up the stairs and down the corridor to fetch the prioress. By the time she reached her door she was fighting back tears. "Two sisters have run away, and I don't know how, because I've still got my own keys to the gate!" Prioress Lucina Conti rose stiffly from her kneeler, hastily made herself presentable, mustering whatever dignity she could, then opened her door.
"Look — look here: these are my keys!" Suor Paola Costanza blurted out.
"But how can the sisters have gone if you still have your keys?" the prioress asked mildly. Then she accompanied Suor Paola Costanza downstairs to make sense of it all.
"When I left the house I found these clothes over on the wall," the gardener explained, gesturing across the road toward the Capuchins' fields. "Then I saw that this here gate of yours were open, so I figured right then that some of your nuns must've run away. I rang to give you these clothes." Closer examination revealed a single letter S embroidered on the front of one damp wimple and an L on the other. Oh, those two: Suor Silveria Catterina Pasi (commonly known as La Generona) and Suor Laura Vittoria Regi (called La Rossa). The prioress also spied some keys, not hanging on a nail in the parlatorio where they should be, but half buried in the unswept debris at her feet, between the inner and outer gates, as if tossed in through the gap above the outer threshold. Rifling through one bundle of cast-off clothing, Prioress Lucina discovered more keys: to Suor Silveria Catterina's cell.
She turned and headed briskly across the courtyard and back upstairs, with a few senior nuns who had filtered down to join her. "Suor Silveria! Suor Silveria! Suor Laura!" Her former mildness had given way to indignation, carefully contained yet unlike anything ever heard through the cell doors along the corridor. Behind the prioress, Suor Paola Costanza quietly secured the gates. A bit late, of course, once the sheep had strayed.
Upstairs, the prioress unlocked the first door on the right side of a vaulted corridor and entered Suor Silveria Catterina's two-room suite: it had been picked clean. In one room the dim early light revealed a walnut kneeler, an ordinary armoire containing a few majolica plates, and a walnut chest with various cooking utensils and a bed warmer or two. In the adjoining room investigators discovered a few low stools and benches, dwarfed by a more imposing walnut armoire emblazoned with a coat of arms. Inside they found little of note besides four baskets of crisp, folded linens, ready for collection. Suor Silveria's parchment certificate of profession lay abandoned in another basket, half hidden beneath scattered sheets of paper, blank or delicately painted with oval miniatures of saints, birds, and flowers.
In a back corner of a lower shelf Prioress Lucina spotted a small paneled casket. She worked to get it open: empty except for two creased sheets of heavy paper, marked on the outside with bits of hardened dark red sealing wax:
My Lady,
I would like at least to know what game this is we are playing. For me to write and for your ladyship not to respond! Enough! Because if someone is present, you want to do and say something, but as soon as I turn my back, it is goodbye. Wretched is he who too readily believes and puts his trust in a woman who has nothing else to do — or so it seems to me — but to mock first this one, then that one! Deliver me, O Jesus, save me! I would see her more compassionate, more mindful, more diligent in writing, and — what matters most — more heedful of her word. This is my third letter. Let us see if there is any power in the Trinity. But I will hold my peace, lest I say too much. All the more so because a few words speak volumes to one who truly understands. Console me then, my lady, by your grace, with your letters. And I kiss you there, that fairest part of you.
Rome, February 13, 1644
Your ladyship's most affectionate and most indebted servant, Desiderio Desiderato
Lucina Conti unfolded a second letter.
My Most Beloved Lady,
At last! After waiting so long, I now feel the greatest contentment that I can have in this world, which is to hold your letters! Even though distance deprives me of that sweet sight of you and of your conversation, yet I remained thoroughly content to behold the sweet remembrance that you keep of promises made. And I pray God to make the outcome of that promise follow quickly. I give you good news about myself: that I am well, and I hope to receive good news about you with your answer. I therefore pray you to remember me, your servant, and to honor me with your commands. And I salute you with all my heart.
Rome, March 4, 1644 My Most Reverend Ladyship's most affectionate and most indebted servant, Desiderio Desiderato
This second letter was less than a month old. In rooms picked so clean, how could Suor Silveria Catterina have overlooked these egregious testimonials to mischief and inconstancy? Has she cast aside this pathetic, lovesick "Desiderio Desiderato" as carelessly as the letters she overlooked? Or does this sickeningly sweet talk of promises made and promises kept bespeak her rejection of far greater sacred promises and of those who had accepted her, whom she ought to hold dear?
The prioress stuffed the letters back into the casket and returned it to the shelf, firmly closed the cell door, and locked it. Then she reluctantly sent word to the convent's lay administrator.
Prioress Lucina could have saved her messenger a trip. In no time sucha delicious convent tale mingling favorite themes in the public imagination (flight from the cloister and fantasies of sexual impropriety), spiced in this case by the character of its protagonists (relapsed convertite), spread far beyond Borgo del Rondone.
Sunlight already softened shadows under the porticoes in the parish of San Martino Maggiore (44.497293° N, 11.346101° E), twenty minutes' walk east of the Convertite, when Giustina Regi, younger sister of the fugitive Suor Laura Vittoria Regi, heard quick footsteps on the stairs of the lodgings she shared with her widowed mother, Lucrezia. "Oh, don't you know — Suor Laura Vittoria has fled!" the breathless Lucrezia Regi exclaimed as she burst in, then fell in a dead faint. Once a quick splash of vinegar had revived her, Giustina pointed out how improbable that rumor sounded. But Giustina would walk over to SS. Filippo e Giacomo to see for herself.
She hastily navigated the streets and alleyways leading to the broad thoroughfare along the Riva di Reno canal (fig. 2, E). She hurried past women already washing laundry on the broad steps at quayside until she came to the church of the Madonna del Ponte delle Lame (44.498396° N, 11.335767° E), looming astride the canal at the intersection with via delle Lame (fig. 2, C). There Giustina spotted a servant from the Convertite, rushing toward her.
"Alas! It's true."
"How did they escape?"
"Last night, through the carters' gateway — oh, what a terrible business this is! You won't find out much if you go there, except that they've fled. That's certain. And all the poor sisters are topsy-turvy."
By the time Giustina followed the servant back along the Riva di Reno, she could barely contain her anger and frustration. There was nothing to do but go home, confirm the family's public disgrace, and try to console her mother.
Bologna's archiepiscopal police captain, or bargello, ever alert for violations of church law, may have crossed paths with Giustina on his way to or from SS. Filippo e Giacomo, where he confirmed rumors spreading around the city. He promptly informed Bolognese nuns' vicar Monsignor Ascanio Rinaldi, overseer of all matters concerning the city's two dozen female monasteries. Nuns' Vicar Rinaldi dispatched the archiepiscopal auditor for criminal matters, Monsignor Alfonso Arnaldi, to the scene, plus a notary and appropriate witnesses.
The clerical sleuths first peered at the convent's inner and outer gates. They retrieved the keys, still lying in the dirt, and examined them. They questioned the distraught gatekeeper about how keys might have fallen into the wrong hands. Arnaldi next commanded the prioress to summon all the nuns to the refectory and make note of who failed to answer the bell. (To no one's surprise, La Generona and La Rossa were no-shows.) Then he and his witnesses followed the prioress up the stairs to inspect the fugitives' cells. (In the meantime the assembled sisters had plenty of time to compare notes about the case, which explains the uniformity and rampant hearsay in their subsequent testimony.)
Even in their present state, the opulence of Suor Silveria's private quarters might have given Monsignor Arnaldi pause. The examiners perhaps remarked upon the impropriety of a coat of arms on a nun's furnishings (particularly this sort of nun) and confiscated the telltale love letters, which the notary copied into his transcript. (The originals found their way into the massive record of the affair, where they survive to this day; fig. 6.)
The clerical visitors climbed another flight to Suor Laura Vittoria's cell. Furniture crowded the more modest space, which was obviously shared. An imposing bed dominated the room, overshadowing a second, ordinary bed alla Romana (akin to a couch). In a chest they discovered an especially lamentable vanity: a looking glass. Torn up, partially burned papers were scattered on the floor. Auditor Arnaldi commanded his notary to gather up the charred scraps, but he could make nothing of the scant handwriting that had escaped the fire.
Only then did formal interrogations begin. Episcopal visitations followed regular protocols. An interrogator began by questioning those in authority, then summoned the nuns by seniority (the common convent method of enacting hierarchy and subordination). He worked his way down through the professed nuns to novices and converse (the convent servants). All the while, the notary hectically copied everything down.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Habitual Offenders by Craig A. Monson. Copyright © 2016 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
List of FiguresAcknowledgments
Cast of Characters
Timeline
Introduction
Bologna
1 Airing Dirty Linen
2 A Tale of Two Sisters
3 The Soldier of Misfortune and the Tailor’s Son
4 A Grave Mistake
5 Pas devant les Domestiques
6 Novus Homo
7 Light at the Top of the Stairs
Rome
8 Dragnet
9 Cat and Mouse Games
10 Home Court Advantage
Bologna
11 “In This Town They’re All Malicious Liars!”
12 “I Don’t Know This Suor Laura Vittoria!”
13 “Se Sarà Fatto Pamphilio / I Barberini Andrano in Esilio”
14 “A Few Days in Jail for Love of Me”
15 Return to the Scene of the Crime
16 A Gentleman Never Tells
17 Unfinished Business
Epilogue Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index