Read The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal Online
Authors: Hubert Wolf
UNCHASTITY AND SODOMY
Reading Agnese Eletta’s written testimony, Sallua realized the women had broken their vow of chastity. Like all Catholic nuns, Eletta had professed vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Every
line of her text speaks of repressed physicality and sexuality. The Church’s long tradition of somatophobia was constantly reinforced by Sant’Ambrogio’s confessors. Contemporary handbooks “For the Use of Priests and Father Confessors”
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stressed the need, when addressing the sixth commandment in the confessional, to focus on chastity, abstinence, and honesty. “It is not permitted to allow one’s eye to rest unnecessarily on things that one cannot observe without injuring one’s modesty and putting oneself in danger of committing some sin of impurity. The dishonest gaze is a mortal sin or a venial sin, according to whether it is more or less dangerous and excites the passions more or less.… The same applies to touching, which is even more dangerous than a look, and for this reason can easily be a mortal sin.”
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According to the precepts of Catholic moral theology, a Catholic woman—in particular a nun, who was duty-bound to embody the ideal of “virginal chastity”—should be embarrassed to have her genitals or breasts examined by a doctor.
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A Catholic woman became a “victim of shame” when she had to undress for a doctor to look at or touch her, as Agnese Eletta, who was entirely committed to the Catholic ethos of shame, described so tellingly.
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Maria Luisa made clever use of this taboo to satisfy her own sexual urges. But after a year, she had obviously grown weary of her bedfellow and dropped Agnese Eletta like a hot potato, leaving the nun alone with her guilt and her “sin.”
And as if the fact that a virgin dedicated to God had broken the vow of chastity wasn’t bad enough, Agnese Eletta’s testimony confronted the inquisitor with a much thornier issue: a sexual relationship between women. What resources did he have on hand to help him grasp and judge this phenomenon? A glance through the Roman Inquisition’s files would have been no help at all. While cases involving sexual acts between men arose relatively frequently, with these acts often being described as
il pessimo
—the worst possible mortal sin—there was hardly any information on sexual relationships between women.
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But this was nothing out of the ordinary: in the nineteenth century, relationships between women were very seldom connected with “forbidden sexuality.” People were often “entirely convinced that these women satisfied no independent erotic desires beyond reproductive sexuality.”
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The only thing left for Sallua—who was both a Dominican priest
and a confessor—was to consult the relevant handbooks on moral theology. If there was any information on lesbian sexuality, it was sure to be contained in the texts on the sixth commandment.
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In the Decalogue, this commandment merely stated: “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” but over the course of Church history, all possible sexual sins were subsumed under this. Sexuality outside marriage was completely forbidden, and the act of married love had exclusively to serve the conception of children.
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The lust of a man for a woman, and a woman for a man, was “unchaste” according to the moral theology of the time—though since it served the aim of procreation, it was counted as a venial sin, which could always be forgiven in confession. Homosexual desire between men, on the other hand, was seen as a mortal sin
contra naturam
, and was often termed “sodomy.”
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Until well into the twentieth century, gay men faced criminal prosecution almost everywhere in Europe; occasionally women were prosecuted, too.
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The question of whether “unnatural fornication” could even exist between women had been the subject of debate for a long time, both inside and outside the Church—not least because in Europe sexuality was “male-dominated and phallocentric, identified with penetration.” The question resulting from this assumption was: “Could women penetrate other [women] without using an implement, and thereby commit the sin of sodomy?”
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Or did their anatomy make them incapable of this sin?
In his
Summa theologiae
, which became the most important reference work of scholastic-influenced Catholic moral theology in the nineteenth century, Thomas Aquinas laid out four possible forms of unnatural lust. Alongside masturbation, sodomy, and sexual intercourse in an unnatural position, there was also “sleeping with the wrong sex, man with man and woman with woman.”
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The moral theologians were unclear for a long time, however, on how this “concupitus” of two women could be “technically” possible. From a phallocentric point of view, it could only happen if one woman “inserts some wooden or glass object into the belly of another.”
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The moral theologians believed this was the only way the mortal sin of sodomy could be committed by women.
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Over time, however, as medical knowledge of the female sexual organs improved, they became increasingly convinced that there was “a true sodomy between women,” because
“mutual rubbing” caused a fluid to accumulate in the vagina without the use of sex aids, and this was interpreted as female ejaculation.
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A DOMINICAN WANTS THE DETAILS
In light of this discovery, Sister Agnese Eletta’s written testimony wasn’t sufficient for Sallua. He had to know more about the sexual practices between the nuns, and on November 3, 1859, he insisted on a further face-to-face interview with the witness under oath. Agnese Eletta gave a detailed explanation in response to the inquisitor’s inquiries.
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What I said about the letter that Sister Maria Luisa gave me, so that I would read it and follow the heavenly commands, happened when I slept in her cell and was still in the dormatorium, before I went into the novitiate. It happened at night, and so she ordered me to light the lamp and do what the letter said. As she lay there in bed seeming to be out of her senses, I was to undress her and gaze at
all the parts of her body
. She wanted me to look at my own body at the same time, to find out whether we were the same in every way. Before I did all this I was so upset, fearing this was one of the devil’s tricks, that I said a few Ave Marias and scattered holy water over her bed. Straight afterwards, she asked me to lie down to sleep in her bed, and from then on we slept together, although I also sometimes slept in my own bed.
Regarding the unions that took place between us which, she said, the Lord had commanded so that I might be healed, she also taught me how I should perform this union with her. This happened in various ways. She told me that the gifts and blessings that she had received from the Lord would be transferred to me when I touched
her private parts
with my hands, and she then repeated the same actions on my body. She also touched first herself, and then me. This had an effect on her sexual parts that I could not observe in my own, and from her behavior and what she said, I gathered that she got great enjoyment from it. She told me I could do these things with a clear conscience, in order to receive the blessings from the
Lord that she had pronounced to me. She said there was no evil in it, as we were pursuing this aim that the Lord had revealed to her.
I will admit that it took a great deal of effort to obey her and subordinate myself to these acts. I will admit that after she and I had confessed to the extraordinary father confessor, we continued to sleep in the same room and sometimes in the same bed, and this gave me some reassurance, as I said in my letter. At the start of our relationship and friendship it appeared that she was training me towards greater obedience and a perfection of the spirit.
Regarding the treatment of
my private parts
, of which I spoke in my letter, Maria Luisa told me she had already spoken to the father confessor about it. She said I should just tell him that she was treating me for a little problem, and this is what I did. At this time she told me that when the Lord appeared to her, He taught her a great many things regarding honesty that she had not known, and He had done this so that if necessary, she could give the novices advice, dispel their doubts, and instruct them in their difficulties. When she finally said all this to Padre Leziroli, he answered that the Lord had told her these things for the healing of souls.
Maria Luisa started having long conversations in the evenings with the novice Sister Maria Giacinta, and I made a few remarks about this. She replied that this novice felt certain difficulties and temptations regarding her purity, and she had to communicate her needs to Maria Luisa, so that she could give her advice. This Maria Giacinta is the same person whom Maria Luisa called to sleep in her cell after I had left it. I knew she used to call one or another of the novices to her at night for them to sleep with her, as she admitted to me herself. However, I do not believe that she shared the same intimacies with them as she had with me, and which I described in my letter.
When she made me leave the novices’ wing, I scolded her for what she had done with me, and told her she should be wary of doing these things with other novices, because they would not keep it all a secret as I had done. But I said she should have no doubts about me, as I would never talk about it. In general she was always humble and said I could talk about it if I wished. However, I knew that she would then say the devil had taken her form and done these things, as she had on many other occasions. She told me that the Lord had determined the way everything would be revealed.
I never spoke to Padre Leziroli about this, because he would not have believed me. He was too firmly convinced of Maria Luisa’s holiness. However, I told it all to Padre Nicola Benedetti,
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a Jesuit from Tivoli. At first he wanted permission to speak to Padre Leziroli about it himself, but when he had thought longer about it and taken into consideration that Padre Leziroli was firmly convinced of Maria Luisa’s holiness, he said to me: “We will let the Lord do it, He will ensure that all this is revealed.” And then he urged me to pray for Maria Luisa. However, I will admit that it took me a great effort to find inner peace, though I eventually did, with God’s mercy.…
During the final days I spent in Sant’Ambrogio, I avoided listening to Padre Leziroli’s sermons, and this caused surprise and scandal in the community. The reason for it was as follows: just before new appointments were made to the community’s offices, this padre had given a sermon, and it was all about a favored soul. The mother founder, Sister Maria Agnese Firrao, had revealed to this person who should be appointed to each office, and in particular how the new novice mistress was to conduct herself. She should have the freedom to lead the novices as she wished.… Maria Luisa, who was not yet the novice mistress, was not present at the sermon. But the revelation came from her: she had already said this to me and Padre Leziroli, as I have already stated. I remember that on this occasion Leziroli’s sermon did not please the older nuns. Later on, I began to hear phrases in Padre Leziroli’s sermons that I thought came from Maria Luisa’s visions. I was no longer on familiar terms with her, and since I knew that her visions were illusions, this angered me, and I did not want to go and hear any more of his sermons.
I believe this was one of the reasons they forced me to leave the convent, and the cardinal vicar also hinted at this in his reply to one of my letters.
In her hearing on November 3, 1859, Agnese Eletta was talking about events that had taken place five years previously. Following her aunt’s death on October 4, 1854, there had been good reason to give her, the mother founder’s niece, one of the convent offices. Significantly, her aunt’s death came not long after her “friendship” with Maria Luisa had begun in January 1854. From July 1854 to July 1855, their relationship
developed into a full-blown affair. On December 15, 1854, in the middle of this period, Maria Luisa was chosen as novice mistress.
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Along the road to power, Maria Luisa made clever use of visitations from the late mother founder, and befriended the dead woman’s closest relative, Agnese Eletta, whom she convinced to vouch for the authenticity of her visions. But in the summer of 1855, after Maria Luisa had ended the affair, Agnese Eletta evidently began to oppose her—partly, perhaps, from feelings of unrequited love. In retaliation, Maria Luisa utilized the confessor in an attempt to discipline her. When this seemed to have failed, and the carousel of Sant’Ambrogio’s convent offices was about to revolve once more, she mounted a concentrated campaign, enlisting Padre Leziroli, the abbess, and the convent’s cardinal protector, Patrizi, to get rid of Agnese Eletta and thus ensure she kept her mouth shut. Tellingly, Eletta was placed in the conservatory of San Pasquale in Trastevere, which also fell under Costantino Patrizi’s jurisdiction as cardinal vicar.
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Looking at the respective ages of the two nuns—Agnese Eletta was thirty-five in 1854, and Maria Luisa only twenty-two—it seems very unlikely that Maria Luisa would have been the instigator of this affair. But viewing the liaison as part of a strategy to gain power within Sant’Ambrogio, Agnese Eletta’s version of events could make perfect sense.
MANY CONVINCING PROOFS
Even after questioning the outcast Agnese Eletta three times, Sallua had still learned nothing new about the real secret of Sant’Ambrogio: the nuns venerating her aunt as a saint. On the other hand, she had more than substantiated the accusations Katharina von Hohenzollern had made against the madre vicaria, Maria Luisa. The former sister of Sant’Ambrogio laid a lot of the blame for Maria Luisa’s behavior on the spiritual director and principal confessor, Giuseppe Leziroli. He not only believed all her supernatural experiences to be real, but forced the nuns to believe in Maria Luisa’s holiness, even in the confessional. He was also aware that Agnese Eletta and Maria Luisa were sharing a bed. To Sallua’s mind, the homosexual acts that
Maria Luisa had initiated under false pretenses clearly amounted to sodomy. In the language of the highest Church authority, these acts were
rebus pessimi
, the very worst things. Here, he was employing the same terminology that the Inquisition usually used to describe intercourse between men.
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And Sallua had now also learned that Maria Luisa brought another nun into her bed besides Agnese Eletta.