Convent Paradise (Volume 73) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series) [1 ed.] 086698626X, 9780866986267

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Arcangela Tarabotti

Convent Paradise E D I TE D A ND TR A NS L ATE D BY

Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 73

CONVENT PARADISE

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 73

Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies Volume 568

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series Madre María Rosa Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns Edited and translated by Sarah E. Owens Volume 1, 2009 Giovan Battista Andreini Love in the Mirror: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Jon R. Snyder Volume 2, 2009 Raymond de Sabanac and Simone Zanacchi Two Women of the Great Schism: The Revelations of Constance de Rabastens by Raymond de Sabanac and Life of the Blessed Ursulina of Parma by Simone Zanacchi Edited and translated by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Bruce L. Venarde Volume 3, 2010 Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera The True Medicine Edited and translated by Gianna Pomata Volume 4, 2010 Louise-Geneviève Gillot de Sainctonge Dramatizing Dido, Circe, and Griselda Edited and translated by Janet Levarie Smarr Volume 5, 2010

Pernette du Guillet Complete Poems: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Karen Simroth James Translated by Marta Rijn Finch Volume 6, 2010 Antonia Pulci Saints’ Lives and Bible Stories for the Stage: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Elissa B. Weaver Translated by James Wyatt Cook Volume 7, 2010 Valeria Miani Celinda, A Tragedy: A Bilingual Edition Edited by Valeria Finucci Translated by Julia Kisacky Annotated by Valeria Finucci and Julia Kisacky Volume 8, 2010 Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers Edited and translated by Lewis C. Seifert and Domna C. Stanton Volume 9, 2010 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sophie, Electress of Hanover and Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia Leibniz and the Two Sophies: The Philosophical Correspondence Edited and translated by Lloyd Strickland Volume 10, 2011

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

Previous Publications in the Series In Dialogue with the Other Voice in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Literary and Social Contexts for Women’s Writing Edited by Julie D. Campbell and Maria Galli Stampino Volume 11, 2011 Sister Giustina Niccolini The Chronicle of Le Murate Edited and translated by Saundra Weddle Volume 12, 2011 Liubov Krichevskaya No Good without Reward: Selected Writings: A Bilingual Edition Edited and translated by Brian James Baer Volume 13, 2011 Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell The Writings of an English Sappho Edited by Patricia Phillippy With translations by Jaime Goodrich Volume 14, 2011 Lucrezia Marinella Exhortations to Women and to Others If They Please Edited and translated by Laura Benedetti Volume 15, 2012 Margherita Datini Letters to Francesco Datini Translated by Carolyn James and Antonio Pagliaro Volume 16, 2012

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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Se rie S ed i to r S Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr. Se rie S ed i to r , e ng l i Sh te x tS Elizabeth H. Hageman

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ARCANGELA TARABOTTI

Convent Paradise

•

Edited and translated by MEREDITH K. RAY AND LYNN LARA WESTWATER

Iter Press Toronto, Ontario Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tempe, Arizona 2020

Iter Press Tel: 416/978–7074

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 416/978–1668

Web: www.itergateway.org

Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Tel: 480/965–5900

Email: [email protected]

Fax: 480/965–1681 Web: acmrs.org © 2020 Iter, Inc. and the Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tarabotti, Arcangela, author. | Ray, Meredith K., 1969- editor, translator. | Westwater, Lynn Lara, editor, translator. Title: Convent paradise / Arcangela Tarabotti ; edited and translated by Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater. Other titles: Paradiso monacale libri tre. English Description: [Toronto] : Iter Press ; [Tempe, Arizona] : Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020. | Series: The other voice in early modern Europe: the Toronto series ; 73 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Translated into English from Italian. | Summary: “English translation of Arcangela Tarabotti’s major devotional work, first published in Italian in 1643, celebrating the joys of convent life for willing nuns -- a striking contrast to her more famous Paternal Tyranny, attacking the practice of cloistering girls against their will.”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019028742 (print) | LCCN 2019028743 (ebook) | ISBN 9780866986267 (paperback) | ISBN 9780866987592 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Monastic and religious life of women--Italy--Venice--History--17th century. Classification: LCC BX4220.I8 T3613 2019 (print) | LCC BX4220.I8 (ebook) | DDC 271/.97--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028742 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028743 Cover illustration: Veiling of a Nun. Engraving by Franceso Villamena. Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII. Pont. Max Iussu. Restitutum atque Editum (Rome: Apud Iacobum Lunam, 1595), p. 210. Reproduced from the original held by the Department of Special Collections of the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame. Cover design: Maureen Morin, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries. Typesetting and production: Iter Press.

For Crennan M. Ray David K. Ray Ann Meredyth Ed R. Westwater

Contents Illustrations Abbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction The Other Voice Convent Paradise and Convent Life in Seventeenth-Century Venice The Convent of Sant’Anna The Contours of Monastic Life Composing from the Convent Tarabotti’s Literary Works Publishing Convent Paradise: Context and Paratext Reading Convent Paradise In Dialogue with Saint Augustine Style and Rhetoric in Convent Paradise Sources for Convent Paradise Reception and Afterlife Editors’ Note

xvii xix xxi 1 1 2 9 16 31 31 34 44 44 47 50 52 60

Convent Paradise Paratext: Dedication, Letters, and Poems Soliloquy to God Arcangela Tarabotti to the Reader Book One Book Two Book Three “The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems

65 67 81 111 115 163 201 245

Bibliography

259

Index

277

xv

Illustrations Cover.

Veiling of a Nun. Engraving by Francesco Villamena. Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII. Pont. Max Iussu. Restitutum atque Editum (Rome: Apud Iacobum Lunam, 1595), p. 210. Reproduced from the original held by the Department of Special Collections of the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame.

Figure 1.

Record of the 1200-ducat dowry payment by Stefano Tarabotti (Steffano Tarrabotto) for his daughter Elena (Arcangela), with an accounting of how the money was spent. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 4 doppia fila (52). With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

Figure 2. Accounting for the 1200-ducat dowry payment for Arcangela Tarabotti (Argangiola Tarrabotta). Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 4 doppia fila (52). With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Figure 3. Benedictine nun dressed for choir, Convent of San Zaccaria, Venice. Newberry Library, Chicago, D7.395. Figure 4. Convent of Sant’Anna in Venice: Canal-Side Exterior, 2010. Photo by Jeff Cotton, . Figure 5. Convent of Sant’Anna in Venice: Interior Courtyard, 2018. Photo by the editors. Figure 6. Map of Venice by Giovanni Merlo, Vero e real disegno della inclita città di Venetia, 1676. Newberry Library, Chicago, Novacco 4F288. Figure 7. Location of Sant’Anna convent on map of Venice by Giovanni Merlo, Vero e real disegno della inclita città di Venetia, 1676, Newberry Library, Chicago, Novacco 4F288. Figure 8.

Parlour of the San Zaccaria Convent (oil on canvas), Francesco Guardi (1712–93)/Ca’ Rezzonico, Museo del Settecento, Venice, Italy/Bridgeman Images.

Figure 9. Monastic marriage, nun’s profession ceremony. Engraving by Francesco Villamena. Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII. Pont. Max Iussu. Restitutum atque Editum. Rome: Apud Iacobum Lunam, 1595, p. 212. Reproduced from the original held by the Department of Special Collections of the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame. Figure 10. Record of expenses for the convent of Sant’Anna from December, 1622. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 4 doppia fila (52). With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. xvii

xviii Illustrations Figure 11. Accounting of a debt between Tarabotti and Mother Prioress Foscola, 1650–1651. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 4 doppia fila (52). With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Figure 12. Record of a vote in a chapter meeting from June 1645. Archivio Patriarcale di Venezia, Monalium: Decreti e Licenze, reg. 1–7 (1632– 55), c. 82r–v. With permission of the Ufficio Beni Culturali. Figure 13. Copy of poem by Ciro di Pers from the records of the convent of Sant’Anna: “Vita humana assomiglia a tre horologi da sole, da rota, e di polvere” (“Human Life Resembles Three Time-Pieces: A Sundial, a Clock, and an Hourglass”). Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 11. With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Figure 14. Tarabotti’s autograph letter to Angelico Aprosio dated 25 September 1642, at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Genova [BUG], E VI 22, c. 129. With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Figure 15. Frontispiece from Convent Paradise, executed by Giacomo Pecini (Piccini) (ca. 1617–1669), after a design by Francesco Ruschi (1610– 1661). With the permission of the Comune di Padova—Assessorato alla Cultura. Figure 16. Title page, Convent Paradise. With the permission of the Comune di Padova—Assessorato alla Cultura. Figure 17. Pax, or allegory of Peace. Sixteenth-century engraving by Étienne Delaune. © Trustees of the British Museum. Figure 18. The Holy Family, or “Mary knitting in the round with four needles,” by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, c. 1345. Abegg-Stiftung Collection, CH-3132 Riggisberg. Inv. no. 14.21.66. ©Abegg-Stiftung Collection, CH-3132 Riggisberg, 2011 (photo: SIK-ISEA, Zürich). Figure 19. Pallas, guardian of virgins. From Andrea Alciato, Emblemata (Leiden: ex Officina Plantiniana, apud Franciscum Raphelengium, 1591), Emblem 22, p. 39. Published with permission of the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Abbreviations APV ASV

Archivio Patriarcale di Venezia Archivio di Stato di Venezia

OED

Oxford English Dictionary

xix

Acknowledgments We are enormously grateful to the many people who have enriched this volume by sharing their expertise with us. In Venice, Mario Infelise aided our research on print culture and provided key assistance regarding printing privileges. Daria Perocco offered context on mid-seventeenth-century literary culture. Margherita Valenti generously shared her thesis on the Sant’Anna convent with us, while Jonathan Glixon, with similar collegiality, shared his inventory of the documents from the Sant’Anna convent held by the Archivio di Stato di Venezia. On this side of the Atlantic, Benjamin Olshin and Diana Robin provided crucial help with difficult Latin passages. Diana Robin and Robert Kendrick provided incisive feedback at lightning speed. Anne Jacobsen Schutte commented on our manuscript, unstintingly sharing her vast expertise on early modern Venetian religious culture. We feel profound sorrow at her passing. Elissa Weaver, always a model of intellectual generosity and kindness, provided invaluable suggestions based on her deep knowledge of convent history and the intricacies of Tarabotti’s prose. Margaret King was an early champion of this volume and has shepherded it through the editorial process with remarkable efficiency. Cheryl Lemmens copyedited the volume meticulously and enriched it with her knowledge and insight; Crennan Ray was an expert proofreader. We are also grateful for the support of many friends, colleagues at our home institutions, and fellow early modernists, including Masha Belenky, Leah Chang, Eva Del Soldato, Gary Ferguson, Nathalie Hester, Dana Katz, Suzanne Magnanini, Timothy McCall, Jill Pederson, Laura Salsini, Michael Sherberg, David Stone, Courtney Quaintance, and Sergio Waisman. We were able to prepare this volume thanks to the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities Scholarly Editions and Translations Grant. The year’s leave that the grant provided not only allowed us to create a volume much more rapidly than would otherwise have been possible, but also gave us the space to think deeply about the importance of Tarabotti’s devotional works, the centerpiece of which is her Convent Paradise. The support of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation enabled us to travel to Venice to gather archival materials essential for the project. We are thankful to the University of Delaware and the George Washington University for administering the grant and accommodating our research in myriad ways. At a personal level, we are grateful for the support of our partners and families, who never tire of our stories of Tarabotti’s genius. Sofia, Julia, and Anna Brodsky and Owen Johnson not only showed remarkable patience as they waited for us to wrap up many long telephone conferences, but also displayed genuine curiosity and admiration for this outspoken seventeenth-century writer. Jay Brodsky, a long-time member of the Tarabotti production team, would surely xxi

xxii Acknowledgments earn the nun’s accolades for his belief in the egalitarianism that helped to move this project forward. Sam Olshin was quick to catch up on all things Tarabotti, offering encouragement and support and even making the pilgrimage to Sant’Anna in Venice. Finally, as always, all of our work is informed by our parents, Crennan Ray and David Ray and Ann Meredyth and Ed Westwater. They have taught us to strive for excellence, to believe in ourselves, and to always to ask questions. We dedicate this volume to them.

Introduction The Other Voice The shadow of convent walls loomed over the life and literary production of the Venetian nun and feminist writer Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–1652), forced as a young woman to become a Benedictine nun. The most radical female writer in early modern Italy, Tarabotti took up her pen to protest her consignment to the cloister, publishing—at the height of the Counter-Reformation—a series of works attacking the Venetian state and the Church for their abuse of women. By speaking unflinchingly about the physical and psychological toll of enclosure, Tarabotti was able to address not only the experience of nuns but also the broader subjugation of all women. Tarabotti wrote seven widely circulated texts and several others that have been lost: most of those that survive are polemical in nature, explicitly contesting the raison d’état that led both secular and ecclesiastical leaders to sacrifice the needs of women to advance their own power. Tarabotti called convents prisons because of the number of unwilling girls who lived in them, relegated to the strict cloister imposed after the Council of Trent even though they had no religious vocation. Beyond issues concerning the cloister, Tarabotti’s works also advanced a more general, and equally trenchant, critique of the misogyny intrinsic to social custom and literary and religious culture. She exposed the paradoxes of women’s condition—how men deprived women of an education and then judged them to be ignorant, or expected women (and not themselves) to be chaste and temperate—and described how economic and political factors such as rising dowries worsened women’s situation in the Republic. With a clear-sightedness worthy of Machiavelli himself (whose works she read despite their prohibition by the Church), Tarabotti analyzed the larger political and social mechanisms that conditioned women’s lives. Her scathing attack on forced monachization landed one work, La semplicità ingannata (Innocence Deceived), on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1661. While monastic walls are a constant presence in all of Tarabotti’s works, usually as a barrier imposed forcibly upon nuns, Paradiso monacale (Convent Paradise)—Tarabotti’s first published work and the centerpiece of her devotional writing—invites the reader into the cloister to experience the spiritual joys as well as trials of enclosure. In Convent Paradise, the figure of the nun as protagonist is flanked by the built environment of the convent and the rituals that structure the lives of its inhabitants. Despite the wide interest garnered by Tarabotti’s feminist thought, her devotional writing has been largely overlooked. Most notably, Convent Paradise, originally published in 1643, has remained without a modern edition or translation until now. Yet as the work with which Tarabotti first announced herself to Venice’s literary milieu, it was central to the development of her social and political thought 1

2 Introduction as well as to her literary success. Along with Le lagrime d’Arcangela Tarabotti per la morte dell’Illustrissima Signora Regina Donati (Tears of Arcangela Tarabotti For the Death of the Most Illustrious Signora Regina Donati, 1650), an elegy for a convent sister that elaborates a powerful vision of female sanctity, Convent Paradise provides important insight into the religious and cultural climate that shaped Tarabotti’s life and literary voice.1 More nuanced than the straightforward celebration of religious life for women that it presents itself to be, the work—as careful analysis reveals—offers a new framework in which to understand this foundational feminist writer and political theoretician. With Convent Paradise, Tarabotti embraces her status as a nun in order to assert authority in religious matters, and claims a divine endorsement of her controversial sociopolitical thought. Her text is also shaped by a persistently feminist approach to sacred materials: a radicalism that, while less overt than that found in her other works, is equally compelling and rewards close attention. At the same time, Convent Paradise reflects the religious culture that colored every aspect of Tarabotti’s life as a seventeenth-century Venetian and nun, offering a meditative portrait of monastic life and of the material and spiritual challenges of the cloister. Richly intertextual, it offers insight into the liturgy Tarabotti recited and into her familiarity with an array of religious texts and biblical passages; Latin citations from scriptural readings and the Church Fathers are woven into the text, alongside references to vernacular literary works by Dante, Petrarch, and others. Convent Paradise underscores her commitment to certain aspects of Catholic thought, such as the importance of female saints, the intercessionary role of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, and the centrality of free will. Tarabotti herself saw no contradiction between her religious and secular writings, which, taken together, reflect the many facets of female experience in the early modern period. Considering Tarabotti’s devotional writing alongside her more openly polemical texts illuminates the complex interplay between religion, gender, and dissent in early modern Venice.

Convent Paradise and Convent Life in Seventeenth-Century Venice Born in 1604, Elena Cassandra Tarabotti—who would assume the name Arcangela as a nun—entered the convent of Sant’Anna in Castello as a young girl, probably around 1617.2 One of six daughters, Tarabotti (as she tells us in her Letters 1. Arcangela Tarabotti, Le lagrime d’Arcangela Tarabotti per la morte dell’Illustrissima Signora Regina Donati. Venice: Guerigli, 1650. A modern edition and translation of this work by Ray and Westwater is forthcoming. 2. In her Letters, Tarabotti says she was eleven years old when she entered the convent, but Emilio Zanette’s research suggests the date was 1617, making her thirteen. See Arcangela Tarabotti, Letters Familiar and Formal, trans. and ed. Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater (Toronto: Iter Inc. and Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), 153n319 (letter 99); see also Emilio Zanette, Suor Arcangela monaca del Seicento veneziano (Rome: Istituto per la collaborazione culturale, 1960), 27.

Introduction 3 Familiar and Formal) was born with a limp; her parents, Stefano Tarabotti and Maria Cadena dei Tolentini, would have deemed her less marriageable than her sisters.3 Marriages in Tarabotti’s Venice were a costly undertaking, requiring a steep dowry; in comparison, the fee required to enter a convent was more modest, making it an appealing alternative for many families, if not for their daughters. Records for Tarabotti’s convent, for example, show that her father paid a sum of 1,200 ducats for her “spiritual dowry”; more unusually, he also paid a supplementary fee to exempt his daughter, because of her congenital condition, from extra duties.4 By contrast, a typical marriage dowry for a young woman of Tarabotti’s social class in seventeenth-century Venice could cost tens of thousands of ducats.5 Girls who paid a dowry to the convent would become choir nuns, with a voice in convent governance, as distinct from the converse, usually of lower social class, who did not pay such a fee. Many young girls entered the convent, like Tarabotti, as putte a spese, or boarders, entrusted to the nuns in order to receive

3. On Tarabotti’s limp, see her Letters, 108 (letter 53). Of Tarabotti’s five sisters, two would marry, while the others remained unmarried but did not enter convents. See Zanette, Suor Arcangela, 4; Elissa Weaver, “Introduzione,” in Francesco Buoninsegni and Arcangela Tarabotti, Satira e Antisatira, ed. Elissa Weaver (Rome: Salerno, 1998), 11; Elissa B. Weaver, “Introduction,” in Tarabotti, Antisatire: In Defense of Women, against Francesco Buoninsegni, ed. and trans. Elissa B. Weaver (Toronto: Iter Press; Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020), 4; and Simona Bortot, “Introduzione: La penna all’ombra delle grate,” in Arcangela Tarabotti, La semplicità ingannata, ed. Simona Bortot (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2007), 23. Francesca Medioli states that Tarabotti had four, not five, sisters; see Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale di Arcangela Tarabotti, ed. Francesca Medioli (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990), 111. According to Zanette (Suor Arcangela, 27), Tarabotti’s younger sister Camilla was accepted into Sant’Anna as an educanda (boarder), but never entered the convent. Medioli says that another younger sister did enter, although no archival source is cited: “Tarabotti, Arcangela (1604–1652).” Encyclopedia.com. . 4. See the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (hereafter ASV), Sant’Anna di Castello, Atti, busta 4 doppia fila [subsection marked “1620, polizze del mese luglio e agosto”]: “On September 12 we received 1000 ducats from Steffano Tarrabotto [sic] for his daughter Elena’s dowry, which with the 200 ducats already given amounts to the 1200 ducats he promised his said daughter as her dowry” (12 settembre r.mo [ricevemmo] dal s[igno]r Steffano Tarrabotto duccatti mille che son per dotte d’Elena sua figliuolla et con gli altri duccatti 200 datti per inanzi fanno li duccati mille e dugento ch’havea promesso per dotte di detta figliolla). On the supplement paid by Stefano Tarabotti to circumvent convent rules against admitting a candidate with an illness or disability, see Margherita Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello. Inventario archivistico di un monastero benedettino femminile” (tesi di laurea, University of Ca’ Foscari, Venice, 2005–2006), 22. 5. Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale, 113. The average dowry for marriage ranged from eight to forty times the cost of a spiritual dowry. Cf. Francesca Medioli, “Monache e monacazioni nel Seicento,” in “De monialibus (secoli XVI–XVIII),” ed. Gabriella Zarri, Francesca Medioli, and Paola Vismara Chiappa, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 33 (1997): 688.

4 Introduction

Figure 1. Record of the 1200-ducat dowry payment by Stefano Tarabotti (Steffano Tarrabotto) for his daughter Elena (Arcangela), with an accounting of how the money was spent. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 4 doppia fila (52). With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

Introduction 5

Figure 2. Accounting for the 1200-ducat dowry payment for Arcangela Tarabotti (Argangiola Tarrabotta). Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 4 doppia fila (52). With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

6 Introduction a rudimentary education before going on to take vows (or, for those whose families had not designated them for monastic life, before returning to the secular world). In mid-seventeenth-century Venice, there were some thirty-nine convents on the main island alone, housing more than 2,500 cloistered nuns, a number that had risen significantly since the mid-sixteenth century.6 The increase was not due to growing religious fervor, but rather to complex economic and political factors that took little account of girls’ own desires. As the price of marital dowries skyrocketed, convents provided a safe and honorable placement for girls whose families could not afford to, or chose not to, marry them off. Among the noble class, there were also fewer available bridegrooms; Venetian aristocratic families increasingly restricted marriage and inheritance to one son alone so that a family’s landholdings would not be parceled out into many increasingly less valuable portions. Jutta Sperling has argued that noble families, facing a dearth of eligible men, thus placed their daughters in convents rather than marry them “down.”7 Although Tarabotti’s family was not noble—it belonged to the well-to-do citizen class—the demographic factors described above conditioned the seventeenthcentury convent environment whose contours Tarabotti exposes in her works. If eldest sons, by primogeniture, were destined by their families to marry and inherit, older sisters were often consigned to the cloister so that a family would have time to save money for younger sisters’ marital dowries. As the eldest of six sisters, Tarabotti’s position in the family (even beyond her congenital limp) rendered her a likely candidate for the convent. In Convent Hell, one of Tarabotti’s earliest works, which circulated only in manuscript due to its portrayal of the moral corruption rife in convents, Tarabotti bitterly contrasts the lives of married daughters, filled with luxury, and those of daughters in convents, marked by physical deprivation and discomfort.8 Convent Paradise, by contrast, embraces the physical trials of living in a convent as necessary to spiritual rectitude. Convent Paradise and Convent Hell can be understood as two radically different perspectives on the same convent experience: one belonging to nuns by vocation, the other to nuns by coercion.

6. See Medioli, “Monache e monacazioni,” 676–78. According to Jutta Sperling, there were almost three thousand nuns in Venice in 1642: see Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 28, table 2. 7. In Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, 26–29. See also Stanley Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). Although a religious career was also frequently chosen for unmarried sons, men were not subject to strict cloister. 8. In her Letters (158, 231), Tarabotti directs two missives (letters 106 and 188) to her sisters that suggest tension in their relationship.

Introduction 7

Figure 3. Benedictine nun dressed for choir, Convent of San Zaccaria, Venice. Published in Pierre Héylot and Maximilien Bullot, Histoire des ordres religieux et militaires, et des congregations seculieres de l’un & de l’autre sexe, qui ont ésté éstablies jusqu’à present…, volume 6 (Paris: chez Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1721), p. 314, fig. 2. Newberry Library, Chicago, D7.395.

8 Introduction Families’ economic and social motivations for placing their daughters in convents aligned precisely with the policies of the Venetian Republic, which encouraged this practice as a means to control the growth of the patriciate.9 Tarabotti herself recognized the political dimension of forced monachization and criticized the “reasons of state” that led to girls’ unwilling enclosure. Although Tarabotti takes pains in Convent Paradise to emphasize that many nuns voluntarily chose convent life, the frequency of forced monachization compelled even influential Church figures to recognize the problem. Venetian Patriarch Giovanni Tiepolo stated that nuns made “a gift of their own liberty  … not just to God, but to their native land, to the world, and to their closest relatives,” emphasizing not the spiritual dimension of their religious profession but its convenience to family and state.10 Cardinal Giovanni Battista de Luca described forced enclosure as a penance of “everlasting imprisonment, which is perhaps the second greatest after capital punishment.”11 As Craig Monson has noted, it would be difficult to find “a clearer example of male domination” than forced monachization, since it “devised a sexually segregated, constricted sphere for women, where they were locked away to preserve the family patrimony and protect family honor.”12 Forced monachization was officially prohibited by the Church. Chapter 17 of the Decree on Regulars and Nuns, which was formulated during the twentyfifth (and last) session of the Council of Trent in 1563, required that girls be examined before taking the veil to make sure they took this step of their own volition and not under coercion.13 Practically speaking, however, it was impossible 9. On forced monachization, see, for example, Gabriella Zarri, “Monasteri femminili e città (secoli XV–XVIII),” in Storia d’Italia, annali 9, La chiesa e il potere politico, ed. Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), 359–429; Francesca Medioli, “Monacazioni forzate: Donne ribelle al proprio destino,” Clio: Trimestrale di studi storici 30 (1994): 431–54; Francesca Medioli, “The Dimensions of the Cloister: Enclosure, Constraint, and Protection in Seventeenth Century Italy,” in Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Italy, ed. Anne Jacobson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn, and Silvana Seidel Menchi (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001), 165–80; Giovanna Paolin, Lo spazio del silenzio: Monacazioni forzate, clausura e proposte di vita religiosa femminile nell’eta moderna (Pordenone: Biblioteca dell’Immagine, 1996); Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic; and Mary Laven, “Cast Out and Shut In: The Experience of Nuns in Counter-Reformation Venice,” in At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, ed. Stephen J. Milner (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 72–93. 10. Quoted in Letizia Panizza, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” in Paternal Tyranny, by Arcangela Tarabotti, ed. and trans. Letizia Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 4n6. Panizza’s edition is a slightly abridged translation of Tarabotti’s Semplicità ingannata; see  p. 31 below. As Patriarch of Venice, Tiepolo was the highest ranking ecclesiastical figure in the Republic. 11. Quoted in Medioli, “The Dimensions of the Cloister,” 169. 12. Craig A. Monson, Divas in the Convent: Nuns, Music, and Defiance in Seventeenth-Century Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 6–7. 13. Giuseppe Alberigo et al., eds., Conciliarum oecumenicorum decreta (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1991), 781.

Introduction 9 to enforce this rule, since families could pressure girls into feigning that they had chosen religious life for themselves.14 In Convent Hell, Tarabotti pointed her finger at professed nuns, too, as complicit in such coercion, deceiving girls into thinking convent life was pleasant and easy when the reality was quite the opposite. In Convent Paradise, on the other hand, Tarabotti tends to blame unwilling nuns themselves for their lack of vocation. With the Counter-Reformation imposition of strict enclosure—driven by the Church’s anxiety to protect nuns’ chastity at any cost—the practice of forced monachization assumed drastic consequences. Nuns were prevented from setting foot outside the convent after the profession of vows, their contact with the outside world was discouraged, and their lives were so strictly regulated that even their contact with female relatives had to take place across the parlor grate. Convent architecture began to assume a prison-like aspect, as windows and doors were reduced in size, barred, or eliminated altogether.15 While Convent Paradise does not comment directly on such measures, the text—again, in contrast to the perspective presented in Tarabotti’s other works—presents nuns’ isolation from the world as useful to their spiritual advancement.

The Convent of Sant’Anna The Sant’Anna convent in which Tarabotti spent most of her life is the setting for Convent Paradise, both materially and spiritually. Within the walls of this convent, situated at the margins of Venice, Tarabotti underwent the rites of passage that bound her to the perpetual enclosure celebrated in Convent Paradise, while the convent’s daily rhythms of worship and communion provided the inspiration and the source material for her narrative. 14. In many cases it was difficult for girls to go against the wishes of their families or to question a destiny that might have been laid out for them from birth. See Schutte, “The Permeable Cloister?,” in Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice, ed. Elissa B. Weaver (Ravenna: Longo, 2006), 21. 15. On strict cloister and its effects, see, for example, Raimondo Creytens, “La giurisprudenza della Sacra Congregazione del Concilio nella questione della clausura delle monache (1564–1576),” in La Sacra Congregazione del Concilio: Quarto centenario dalla Fondazione (1564–1964) (Vatican City: n.p., 1964), 563–97; Raimondo Creytens, “La riforma dei monasteri femminili dopo i Decreti Tridentini,” in Il Concilio di Trento e la riforma tridentina: Atti del convegno storico internazionale (Rome: Herder, 1965), 45–84; Francesca Medioli, “La clausura delle monache nell’amministrazione della congregazione romana sopra i regolari,” in Il monachesimo femminile in Italia dall’alto medioevo al secolo XVII a confronto con l’oggi: Atti del VI convengo del Cento Studi Farfensi, Santa Vittoria in Matenano, 21–24 settembre, 1995, ed. Gabriella Zarri (Negarine di San Pietro in Cariano [Verona]: Il Segno dei Gabrielli Editori, 1997), 249–82; Medioli, “Monache e monacazioni”; and Zarri, “Monasteri femminili.” On convent organization and rules see Schutte, “Permeable Cloister”; Zarri, “Monasteri femminili”; and Medioli, “La clausura delle monache.”

10 Introduction

Figure 4. Convent of Sant’Anna in Venice: Canal-Side Exterior, 2010. Photo by Jeff Cotton, churchesofvenice.com.

Introduction 11

Figure 5. Convent of Sant’Anna in Venice: Interior Courtyard, 2018. Photo by the editors. The convent of Sant’Anna was established at the far edge of the Castello sestiere in the early thirteenth century as an institution for Augustinian hermits,16 with the church, convent, and cemetery dedicated to Saints Anne and Catherine. When the monks moved to a more central location, they sold the property to a group of Benedictine nuns who desired a secluded setting. These nuns—who numbered four plus the abbess—took official possession of the property in 1305. As time passed, however, the nuns living in the convent began to lose the ascetic religious fervor that had led them to this isolated spot, and—pleading poor health—asked ecclesiastical authorities for permission to leave the premises when necessary in order to visit their families. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 16. Of the Brittiniani branch. The information on Sant’Anna that follows in this paragraph is from Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 3–8.

12 Introduction such loosening of regulations became common in Venetian convents. From authority figures such as abbesses and prioresses to simple choir nuns, there was increased laxity both inside and outside the convent: fasting and prayers were not always maintained, nuns left the convent even for long periods, and men were allowed relatively free access to the parlatorio (the convent parlor or visiting room). In large part because many of the women were unwilling residents, these sorts of violations continued to occur despite legislation promulgated in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. By the end of the sixteenth century, the structures of the Sant’Anna complex—already nearly four centuries old—began to fail. In the early seventeenth century, a decision was made to tear down the old church and build a new one. The construction project would stretch from 1634, when the first stone of the new church was laid, until 1659, when the new church was consecrated.17 It was ongoing, that is, for about half of the time that Tarabotti spent at Sant’Anna, from her entrance around 1617 until her death in 1652. The church contained some notable ornamentation, including paintings by Domenico Tintoretto, Bartolomeo Scaligero, Santo Piatti, and others; the ceiling was painted by Francesco Ruschi.18 A gilded grate divided the nuns’ church from the exterior church. In the internal choir, there were two paintings by Albrecht Dürer, while the refectory featured a Greek marble column. A cloth embroidered with silk and gold threads by Perina and Ottavia Robusti, daughters of Tintoretto and nuns at Sant’Anna, was modeled on the Crucifixion painted by Tintoretto for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and exhibited on the altar several times a year starting in 1609.19 17. Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 14–16. Many documents regarding the church’s decrepit state in the seventeenth century and the nuns’ attempts to rectify it can be found in ASV, Sant’Anna, Atti, busta 6. A loose sheet from 1636, for instance, reads: “The convent building in which we most poor nuns of Sant’Anna live is among the oldest in the city, since it was built 800 years ago. It usually houses more than seventy of its noble and citizen women who constantly pray to the blessed Lord for this most serene Republic. This building has been reduced to such a state that—beyond it being necessary to knock it to the ground for its decrepitude because of its age, such that it no longer can stay upright—it is also necessary to level the adjoining coro [choir], where we go for all the Divine Offices both day and night. Experts say that we will have to do the same to the church.” (Il Monasterio di Noi poveriss.e Monache di S.ta Anna di questa città, il quale è delle più antiqui, perch’è 800 anni che fu’ fabricato, ordinamente ha più di 70 sue nobile et cittadine, che continuamente pregano il sig.r Iddio per questa ser.ma Rep.ca, è esso ridutto in tal stato, ch’oltra ch’è necess.o di metterlo tutto in Terra per la corrosità, nella ditta antiquità sua, che più non può tenirsi in piedi, fa’ anche che insieme insieme [sic] il nostro coro ch’è congiunto con esso, nel qual stamo a’ tutti li divini officij, diurni et notturni, convenirà medesmamente venir in terra, et li Periti affirmano che cosi saremo astrette di fare anche della giesia.) The account exaggerates both the age of the church and the number of elite nuns. 18. On Francesco Ruschi, see p. 40 below. 19. Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 17–19. On the cloth, see Isabella Campagnol, “Invisible Seamstresses: Feminine Works in Venetian Convents from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century,” in Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750–1950, ed. Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin (Farnham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 167–68.

Figure 6. Map of Venice by Giovanni Merlo, Vero e real disegno della inclita città di Venetia, 1676. Newberry Library, Chicago, Novacco 4F288.

Introduction 13

14 Introduction

Figure 7. Location of Sant’Anna convent on map of Venice by Giovanni Merlo, Vero e real disegno della inclita città di Venetia, 1676, Newberry Library, Chicago, Novacco 4F288. In the space dedicated to the convent, there were two parlatori and two courtyard cloisters.20 The first floor of the convent had a bread pantry and bakery, as well as the kitchen, refectory, pantry, and a cantina.21 On the second floor were the infirmary and the dormitories, which alarmed Patriarch Lorenzo Priuli during his 1593 pastoral visit: he found the windows in many of these spaces, and particularly in the infirmary, to be overly large, stretching all the way to the floor and allowing curious outsiders to look in and nuns to look out and communicate with the outside world. He ordered the windows partially bricked in and obstructed.22 These restrictions, while limiting visibility in and out of the convent, also limited the light that entered. The darkness in the convent that Tarabotti laments

20. Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 23. Schutte (“Permeable Cloister,” 26) explains the function of the two parlatori: the smaller was used by the nuns’ elected superiors to meet with outsiders in conducting convent business, while the larger was a space in which the nuns could see approved visitors. 21. Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 23. 22. Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 23–24.

Introduction 15 in other works, such as Paternal Tyranny, was therefore not just metaphoric.23 Patriarch Francesco Vendramin, in his 1609 pastoral visit, would seek additional measures to limit fenestral visibility, ordering curved metal bars and wooden shades to be installed.24 He noted other points in the convent where unauthorized contact could take place: there was lax security in the sacristy, for instance, and the grata between the church and convent was excessively large.25 He demanded changes to increase the security of the parlatori, and, in addition to the changes in windows noted above, ordered certain doors to be secured with additional locks or bricked shut.26 Despite such attempts to prohibit the nuns’ contact with the outside world, however, records show that there were infractions at Sant’Anna,27 as at other convents. Tarabotti herself exploited elasticity in the rules: she engaged in correspondence and published her Letters despite prohibitions against letterwriting by nuns, and met with male literary associates in the parlatorio, although such visits were officially prohibited.28

Figure 8. “Parlour of the San Zaccaria Convent” (oil on canvas), Francesco Guardi (1712–93)/Ca’ Rezzonico, Museo del Settecento, Venice, Italy/Bridgeman Images. 23. See, for example, Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, ed. and trans. Letizia Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 71. 24. Schutte, “Permeable Cloister,” 26–27. 25. Ibid., 26. 26. Schutte, “Permeable Cloister,” 25–27. 27. Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 26–28; Schutte, “Permeable Cloister,” 28. 28. On the prohibition against letter-writing for nuns, see Meredith K. Ray and Lara Lynn Westwater, introduction to Arcangela Tarabotti, Letters Familiar and Formal (Toronto: Iter Inc. and Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), 19–21.

16 Introduction As for the cells at Sant’Anna, in the absence of an account contemporary to Tarabotti, an eighteenth-century description must suffice: one cell contained a variety of decorations (four big pictures and twelve small, plus an ivory sculpture of Christ), various furniture (two chests, a small table, a stool, two chairs, and a bed), accessories (bedding, window curtains, a copper bucket, a tin lamp), and some tableware (a jug and a silver utensil).29 Patriarch Priuli had complained at the end of the sixteenth century that the convent’s cells locked from the inside, which was a serious infraction of the rules.30 Vendramin repeated the prohibition on locks in his 1609 visit.31 Such privacy was forbidden.

The Contours of Monastic Life The built environment of Sant’Anna was imbued with both practical and symbolic purpose. For those who were destined to take vows, passage from the secular world to the convent was framed by a succession of rituals that were carefully choreographed to move from the public to the private parts of the convent and to punctuate the trajectory of spiritual transformation. Chief among these rituals was the clothing ceremony, or vestizione (vestition, also known as investiture), which marked the transition to perpetual enclosure and communal religious life. The reforms instituted by the Council of Trent mandated, at least in theory, a minimum age of fifteen for the clothing ceremony; Tarabotti, as we learn from Convent Paradise, was sixteen when she underwent hers. Lacking an official liturgy to govern it, the clothing ceremony varied from convent to convent, but it had two distinct aspects, with the first part unfolding before a public audience that included the girl’s friends and relatives, and the second part within the private spaces of the church reserved for the nuns.32 After the recitation of Psalm 41, Quemadmodum desiderat cervus (“As the hart panteth”), expressing the soul’s thirst for God, the postulant processed through the main part of the church.33 The spectacle was accompanied by verse and music, sometimes polyphonic 29. This description is found in Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 24. 30. Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 24. 31. Schutte, “Permeable Cloister,” 27. 32. Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, 137. The descriptions of the rites of clothing and profession in the following paragraphs are based primarily on the Ordo rituum et caeremoniarum suscipendi habitum monialum et emittendi professionem (Venice: n.p., 1612); see also Craig A. Monson, Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 183–85, and Robert L. Kendrick, Celestial Sirens: Nuns and Their Music in Early Modern Milan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 132–37. Jonathan E. Glixon notes that the absence of an official liturgy for the clothing ceremony “gave rise to a bewildering variety of formulas” for the ritual; see Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven or Worldly Theaters?: Venetian Nunneries and Their Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 33. See Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, 137–38.

Introduction 17 (featuring multiple independent melodic lines and viewed with ambivalence by the Church).34 As the strains of Psalm 121—Laetatus sum (“I rejoiced”)—filled the air, the postulant continued to make her way to the door of the convent, where she was received by the nuns. The Te Deum laudamus (“Thee, O God, we praise”) was then sung, followed by Mass, with clergy and relatives remaining in the public part of the church and postulant and nuns retreating to the inner part of the church, where the girl’s family could not follow. The postulant was expected to express to the father confessor her willingness to sacrifice herself to God. Although, as noted above, the reforms of the Council of Trent aimed to ensure the consent of girls entering the convent, Tarabotti writes in Convent Paradise that she participated in this part of the ceremony with her tongue, but not her heart.35 To symbolize the novice’s new status, her hair—that reminder of female beauty and secular vanities—was shorn. After her tonsure, the novice donned the habit and veil, as well as a belt symbolizing temperance and chastity.36 The kiss of peace was exchanged between the novice and the nuns, and the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” (“Come, Creator Spirit”) was sung; at this point the novice assumed her new religious name. Festivities, paid for by the family, commonly followed the ceremony. This sequence of events could vary.37 After the clothing ceremony, the novice nun was supposed to wait at least a year before pronouncing her solemn vows in the profession ceremony, although in practice this next and most important step occurred sometimes sooner and sometimes later. For Tarabotti, it took place in 1623, three years after her vestizione.38 Profession was a grave moment, marking the nun’s death to the world and her new life as a bride dedicated to Christ, and the rituals associated with the ceremony borrowed from both marriage and funeral rites. It was also, in many cases, the last time the nun would appear in a public space.39 Here, too, as in the clothing ceremony, the sequence of events varied, but Benedictine professions often began with an invitation and the antiphon Prudentes virgines (“Prudent Virgins”), followed by an exchange between the celebrant and the novice and an interrogation reaffirming her desire to be admitted to the order.40 Mass was said, and the novice 34. Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, 138. See pp. 21–22 below for further discussion. 35. See Convent Paradise, p. 86, perhaps echoing a warning in Antonio Grimani, Costituzioni et decreti approvati nella sinodo diocesana, sopra la retta disciplina monacale (Venice: Meietti, 1592), chapter 60 (LX). See also Mary Laven, Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent (New York: Viking, 2003), 11, 213n41. 36. Ordo, 10–12; Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, 138. 37. Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven, 125. On the hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus,” see note 169 of Convent Paradise. 38. See Tarabotti, Convent Paradise, 27. 39. Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 133. 40. Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven, 132.

18 Introduction

Figure 9. Monastic marriage, nun’s profession ceremony. Engraving by Francesco Villamena. Pontificale Romanum Clementis VIII. Pont. Max Iussu. Restitutum atque Editum. Rome: Apud Iacobum Lunam, 1595, p. 212. Reproduced from the original held by the Department of Special Collections of the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame.

Introduction 19 pronounced her solemn and permanent vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. More prayers followed, and the “Veni Creator Spiritus” was again sung. The novice’s new habit was blessed and, covered with a black cloth that symbolized the funeral pall, she lay face down on the stone floor of the church (and thus we find Tarabotti recalling in Convent Paradise the experience of “swearing upon the holy stones” [p. 87]). Candles were placed near her head and feet. Upon being invited by the priest to rise and meet her new spouse, she then answered with words declaring her love: Mel et lac ex eius ore suscepi (“Milk and honey have I received from his lips”41). The newly professed nun was then given a copy of her order’s Rule governing convent life, and sometimes a breviary or psalter.42 Tarabotti’s earlier manuscript, Convent Hell, offered a harrowing description of the profession ceremony and its effect on forced nuns. Miserable and desolate, such women see “no possible recourse.” When they realize that their laments will not cause heaven to take pity on them, “with harsh resignation” they “try to sublimate their feelings of anguish and, with lips weakened by despair, they force themselves to utter their own burial rites.”43 Convent Paradise—in which Tarabotti is always careful to characterize herself as a willing nun—describes the moment of profession more positively as a solemn step on the nun’s gradual path to salvation, and casts her status as a bride of Christ as the highest privilege. Yet even here, Tarabotti struggles to come to terms with her vows. Tarabotti initially suggests that not at profession, but only subsequently, after a third and final ceremony known as consecration, did she “truly” became a nun, putting aside the inner reservations that had continued since her profession: Even if I spoke and acted in one way, my mind’s intentions were quite different. I lived in this manner up until my consecration, a nun in name, but not in dress or behavior—the former foolishly vain and the latter vainly foolish. (p. 87) The “ritual betrothal” of consecration was the final step on the path to becoming a fully professed choir nun and could occur only after a woman turned twenty-five.44 Tarabotti was consecrated at this age in 1629. Although performance of the rite was increasingly rare after the Council of Trent, its liturgy largely subsumed into that of profession, some convents did continue to enact it

41. This response also appears in the consecration ceremony, discussed below. See Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven, 111. 42. Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven, 130. On the Rule of Saint Benedict, which governed Tarabotti’s convent, see note 110 of Convent Paradise. 43. Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale, 70. 44. Monson, Disembodied Voices, 195.

20 Introduction sporadically.45 The consecration of virgins highlighted the nuns’ special status as brides of Christ and borrowed many aspects of the secular marriage ceremony, including the “giving away” of the bride (by a paranympha, a special matron appointed for this task46) and the bestowing of a ring symbolizing the union with the celestial bridegroom. A group rite, it could involve several professed nuns at once, and last up to six hours; much of it was based on the Feast of Saint Agnes, patron saint of virgins, or on the Common of Virgins.47 Like the other major ceremonies, consecration—known in Venice as the sagra—was an occasion for festivity; typically, the nuns’ families would offer sweets and money to the convent sisters to mark the occasion.48 Consecration had a distinctly public aspect, with a complex and stylized liturgy. If in Convent Paradise Tarabotti at first foregrounds consecration as a pivotal moment of her spiritual journey, however, she soon admits that her resistance to religious life continued for several years after the ceremony: After my consecration I returned to the vomitus of briefly abandoned vanities—as a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is the fool that repeateth his folly49—and persevered in these for five years, with greater harm to this soul than the relapse of a serious illness would cause. (p. 91) Only around 1633, Tarabotti explains, did she truly come to accept monastic life, following a transformative encounter with a figure whose presence pervades Convent Paradise: Cardinal Federico Corner (1579–1653), Patriarch of Venice, to whom Tarabotti would dedicate the work.50 The cardinal’s guidance, she 45. On the consecration ceremony, which eventually fell out of use until the nineteenth century, see Giancarlo Rocca, ed., Dizionario degli istituti di perfezione, 10 vols. (Rome: Edizioni paoline, 1974– 2003), 2:1620. Monson (Disembodied Voices, 197) further notes that the expense and spectacle of the ceremony, along with its public nature, rendered it increasingly problematic. See also Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven, 116. 46. On the role of the paranymph, see also note 619 in Convent Paradise. 47. Monson, Disembodied Voices, 194; Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven, 115. The Common of Virgins refers to the office and mass devoted to virgin saints heard throughout the year. See Santha Bhattacharji, “ ‘Pearl’ And the Liturgical ‘Common Of Virgins’ Medium Ævum 64, no. 1 (1995): 37–50. 48. Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 25. 49. [S]icut canis, qui revertit [sic] ad vomitum suum, sic imprudens qui iterat stultutiam suam. Cf. Proverbs 26.11: Sicut canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum, sic imprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam. 50. Federico Corner (Cornaro), son of Doge Giovanni Corner, was appointed cardinal in 1626, despite Venetian laws that prevented doges’ sons from accepting papal appointments. A fierce controversy, however, erupted in 1629 when Corner was appointed bishop of Padua; the Republic strongly opposed the placement of a doge’s son in this visible role. For two years Rome and Venice were in a stalemate over the issue, which was still not resolved by the death of Doge Giovanni in the same year. The matter was finally settled when the Patriarch of Venice, Giovanni Tiepolo, died in 1631; Federico ascended to

Introduction 21 writes, along with the trials of ill health, finally helped to effect a change of heart. Tarabotti’s account shows that Corner served as her confessor and played an important role in her efforts to resign herself to convent life—exerting an influence that the three principal ceremonies of female monasticism had not.51 A man of culture, Corner founded the Accademia dei Ricovrati in 1599 in Padua, where he was also part of the circle around Galileo Galilei.52 The cardinal’s literary interests would undoubtedly have strengthened Tarabotti’s strong sense of connection to him, and perhaps even inspired her to publish her account of female enclosure. It is possible that Corner encouraged her interest in writing the work as a way to reconcile her literary and spiritual vocations. Apart from the punctuation of religious ceremonies detailed in Convent Paradise, the nuns’ daily lives unfolded according to an exacting system of devotional offices. Choir nuns were expected to gather at regular intervals throughout each twenty-four hour period to recite the Divine Office, beginning in the middle of the night with Matins, and continuing with Lauds (dawn), Prime (early morning), Terce (mid-morning), Sext (midday), None (mid-afternoon), Vespers (evening), and Compline (completion of the day). The prayers could vary according to the breviary of the religious order, as could the timing. As Robert Kendrick notes, the daily recitation of the Office texts was “the major task of monastic life”;53 Monson observes that “for those whose lives were regulated by the constant recitation of Scripture, the language it speaks could come to be heard as the language of their own lives.”54 The Office, or Liturgy of the Hours, was in theory recited by all the nuns together in plainchant in the convent chapel, although nuns could be excused from—or were known to neglect—this duty for various reasons.55 The nuns could use polyphony in their recitation for important feast days, which expanded in

the role of patriarch, while his brother Marcantonio became bishop of Padua. See Giuseppe Gullino, “Corner, Federico,” in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 29 (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1983), 185–88. 51. On the important relationship between nuns and their confessors, see, for example, Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618– 1750 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). 52. The “Academy of the Sheltered” counted Galileo as a founding member. See Diego Valeri, L’Accademia dei Ricovrati, alias Accademia Patavina di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti (Padua: Sede dell’Accademia, 1987), 10. 53. Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 123. 54. Monson, Divas in the Convent, 106. 55. On Tarabotti’s exemption from various duties, see note 4 above. On reports of “tremendous negligence” in the recitation of the Office at a Bolognese convent, see Monson, Divas in the Convent, 100–1. See also Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 132, who describes the case of Claudia Rusca, a nun and composer who was exempted from Matins due to ill health.

22 Introduction number in the early Seicento.56 Although the use of polyphony was widespread in seventeenth-century convents, Tarabotti condemns it as too worldly in Convent Paradise, proclaiming, “Let us indeed sing, but may it not be a polyphonic, degenerate, and lascivious song;57 rather, may the mouth in accord with the heart express notes meant for exalting and glorifying the supreme Lord” (p. 209).58 Tarabotti underscores the centrality of the Divine Office to convent life, portraying its proper recitation as the most important work of a nun: Those women who took the vow of obedience must place no duty before the uninterrupted observation of choir, which is truly an antechamber of paradise in which one learns through spiritual dialogue how best to serve and love the prince of princes. … This is a practice so necessary and fruitful in the garden of the Holy Church that it gives the final perfection to monastic discipline …. It is a foundation so able to sustain elevated religious devotion that sooner will one see the weighty mass of earth rise and heaven fall than religious devotion maintain itself alive in the heart of those cloistered without this. (p. 211) By contrast, Tarabotti writes, improper or inattentive recitation of the Office jeopardized its many functions, with respect not only to the nuns’ own spiritual development but to that of other souls and to the financial health of the convent itself: [T]o participate in choir with a distracted mind, inattentively, and with indecency, as if we were in a theater and among stage sets, is not to render glory to the highest Good …. By praying and singing psalms in this manner … one loses the merit of praying and singing psalms, beyond the fact that we make ourselves guilty of a triple theft, stealing in a certain way honor from God, suffrages from souls, and the salaries and allotments assigned to the churches, monasteries, and pious institutes. (pp. 209–10) 56. Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 126, notes that these changes are reflected in a 1613 Breviarium monasticum published in Venice. 57. Figurato, molle, e lascivo: these were common criticisms of secular music. See Craig A. Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 55, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 13, 20, 25–26; and Robert L. Kendrick, “Devotion, Piety, and Commemoration: Sacred Songs and Oratorios,” in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music, ed. Tim Carter and John Butt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 324–77. Tarabotti’s Letters show her inviting three lay musicians, two men and a woman, to perform their music at Sant’Anna (Letters, 141–42 [letter 90]). On the woman (Countess S.), to whom letter 90 is addressed, see note 142 below. 58. Glixon points out that, in contrast to other Italian cities, Venice was stricter about polyphony in public settings, though nuns “might have performed polyphony for themselves, with the doors of the church shut”; see Mirrors of Heaven, 212.

Introduction 23 Tarabotti likely quoted from memory many of the passages interspersed throughout Convent Paradise, being intimately familiar with them through such daily recitation.59 Indeed, in her Antisatire (published in 1644), Tarabotti complains that she is accused of making errors in her Latin citations because she is relying on her breviary rather than on formal schooling.60 Nuns were also expected to engage in private prayer and penitence, including fasting and flagellation, and were required by the Council of Trent to take communion and confess at least once a month.61 Outside of their devotional duties, they participated in the daily life of the convent in a myriad of ways. There were gardens, orchards, and poultry to tend, as well as refectories and infirmaries to manage.62 The convent earned money not only through the dowries and donations it received and the fees it charged to house its educande, or boarders, but also through income from property it owned.63 Nuns also made products to sell, including foodstuffs, medicines, and the lacework for which Venetian nuns were well known. Although such commercial activity was supposed to occur on behalf of the entire convent community, nuns often engaged in private enterprise. Tarabotti, for example, evidently acting on her own behalf and not in any official capacity, served as an intermediary for noblewomen who wished to commission lacework from the nuns of Sant’Anna.64 In one letter, she complained that her convent sisters had not been paid for work produced.65 59. “The Office texts must have been completely familiar, possibly by memory.” Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 123. 60. As she writes in her Antisatira: “Let them say  … that I do not write with the requisite art and order—I confess this myself—and that I cite Latin phrases, not because I am well versed in that language, but because a great amount of it remains in my memory from my daily recitation of the Divine Office, which contains a good part of Sacred Scripture” (“Dicano … ch’io non scrivo con quell’arte e ordine che si doverebbe, che lo confesso anch’io e che apporto sentenze latine, non già perch’io sia versata in lingua tale, ma perché la mia memoria ne conserva quantità grande per la cotidiana recitazione dell’officio divino, nel quale si contiene buona parte della Sacra Scrittura”): Tarabotti, Antisatira, in Buoninsegni and Tarabotti, Satira e Antisatira (1998), 75; Tarabotti, Antisatire (2020), 69. Tarabotti reports that her former friend Angelico Aprosio attacked Convent Paradise because of its use of the breviary, which he claimed was false erudition since, “if the breviary could produce doctors, all the priests, friars and nuns would be such.” Tarabotti, Letters, 237 (letter 195). 61. Laven, Virgins of Venice, 12. 62. On Tarabotti’s exemption from certain duties—which would have granted her valuable time to devote to her prolific writing career—see Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 22, and note 4 above. 63. The convent of Sant’Anna owned some twenty-five nearby houses, plus several others around Venice. The convent also owned 240 parcels of land in terraferma (i.e., on the mainland) that provided food and wine. See Valenti, “Sant’Anna di Castello,” 25. 64. See Meredith K. Ray, “Letters and Lace: Arcangela Tarabotti and Convent Culture in Seicento Venice,” in Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters, ed. Julie Campbell and Ann Larsen (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 45–73. 65. Tarabotti, Letters, 220 (letter 174).

24 Introduction

Figure 10. Record of expenses for the convent of Sant’Anna from December, 1622. Several of the expenses are for food, including oil, beef, fish, grapes, veal, and bread. A payment to the convent’s confessor is also recorded. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 4 doppia fila (52). With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

Introduction 25

Figure 11. Accounting of a debt between Tarabotti and Mother Prioress Foscola, 1650–1651. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 4 doppia fila (52). With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

26 Introduction Choir nuns such as Tarabotti had a voice in chapter (a regular meeting for convent governance) and could be elected to positions of authority; the number of choir nuns in Sant’Anna hovered at around thirty-six in Tarabotti’s time. Tarabotti’s name appears on numerous lists recording the nuns present in chapter; for example, in 1645, two years after the publication of Convent Paradise, a convent document records her vote in the election of Maria Celestina Trevisan as abbess.66 Although individual nuns wielded authority in such positions, the central tenet of the convent remained communal identity. Nuns were enjoined to reject particular affective bonds as well as private property, and to sublimate personal desires. As Tarabotti writes in Convent Paradise, “in the cross of the religious life one must discount knowledge, scorn power, forgo all possessions, and abhor the will” (p. 153). Tensions around this ideal abounded, however, and manifested themselves in many aspects of daily life. Gabriella Zarri, for instance, has shown that nuns often recreated familial networks within the convent, which sometimes housed multiple members of the same family. In many cases nuns also resisted the ideal of communal space in favor of retreating to individual cells.67 Mary Laven notes that some nuns asserted personal ownership over the chickens kept by convents to produce eggs for the community. Some nuns even kept dogs or birds as pets.68 Similarly, although nuns were supposed to obtain their garments from the convent’s common supply and adopt a strictly uniform appearance, these rules, too, were regularly flouted: nuns were reprimanded for wearing embroidered veils, jewelry, and low-cut bodices, and for carrying handkerchiefs and gloves, in imitation of their secular counterparts.69 In Convent Paradise, Tarabotti berates herself on numerous occasions for having paid too much attention to her physical appearance and having been too attached to vanities, such as the long hair she had lost at her clothing ceremony. Throughout Convent Paradise, Tarabotti describes the difficulty of renouncing individuality, as required by monasticism; her emphasis on the resignation and obedience that made the convent tolerable reveals her own struggle to adapt to cloistered life and the loss of personal freedom it represents. Even those women who are called to the cloister, Tarabotti suggests, have to overcome these same fundamental conflicts: for willing nuns, “nothing stands in their way: not the deprivations of religious life, nor that most human aversion to obediently submitting

66. Archivio Patriarcale di Venezia, Monalium: Decreti e Licenze, reg. 1–7 (1632–55), c. 82r–v. See Figure 14. 67. See Gabriella Zarri, Recinti: Donne, clausura e matrimonio nella prima età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000), 82–100. 68. Laven, Virgins of Venice, 3–4. See also Tarabotti, Letters, 252n638 (letter 215). 69. Isabella Campagnol, Forbidden Fashions: Invisible Luxuries in Early Venetian Convents (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2014), 61–71.

Introduction 27 to another’s inclination and will.”70 By highlighting the intrinsic difficulty of such submission even for voluntary nuns, Tarabotti implies that it is impossible for those who have unwillingly entered into religious life: the human need for freedom is too powerful. The task, as she suggests in many of her writings, is made more difficult by the tensions that arise among people living in close quarters in perpetual enclosure, particularly given that a good number of them are there involuntarily.71 Outlets for such tensions could be found in creative pursuits. In theory, nuns were supposed to limit themselves to devotional readings such as breviaries, saints’ lives, and the like. Indeed, convents were subject to regular inspection by the patriarch to ensure that they harbored no forbidden reading material.72 Nonetheless, convent records—and Tarabotti’s own recollections—reveal a far richer and more complex cultural climate, in which music and literature formed an important backdrop to the nuns’ activities. For example, in addition to the recitations of verse and music that accompanied the major ceremonies of convent life, nuns composed and performed plays in the convent, as Elissa B. Weaver has shown.73 Records of Sant’Anna, for instance, show that in April 1636 the nuns staged a pastoral piece to celebrate the election of their abbess.74 Also preserved among the documents from Sant’Anna are copies of both devotional and secular poems, including one by the well-known poet Ciro di Pers

70. See Tarabotti, Convent Paradise, 115. 71. “But amid such ambivalence I kept putting off penitence under vain pretexts of worldly appearances. I passed two whole years uselessly in order not to appear changeable in the eyes of mortals and so that the women who were my enemies should not take satisfaction in my change, thinking that only as a result of their malice and not with the goal of saving my soul had I changed direction to walk the straight path of virtue after such long wanderings.” See Tarabotti, Convent Paradise, 98. 72. See Schutte, “Permeable Cloister,” 27. 73. Elissa B. Weaver, Convent Theater in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 74. ASV, Sant’Anna, Atti, busta 11: “a quite lovely and well-structured little pastoral play was staged by six people. Suor Girleta was one of them and played the part of Venus; another was Suor Barbara and she played two roles, one of Momo and the other Vulcan; another was Suor Paulina, and she played the part of Juno; another was Suor Agustina and she played the part of Pallas. Cataruzza played the part of the god of love, and Biancheta recited the two parts assigned to the chorus” (fu recitato un pastoraleta, da sei persone assai vaga, et ben compartita, una fu suor Gi[rlet]a et fece la parte di Venere, l’altra suor Barbara et fece due parte una da momo et l’altro da vulcano, l’altra fu suor Paulina et fece la parte de giunone, l’altra fu suor Agustina et fece la parte de palade, Cataruzza fece la parte del dio d’amore, et Biancheta recita dui cori). This episode is also briefly noted by Glixon, who observes that regulations were imposed at various intervals in an attempt to ensure that nuns did not engage in public performances of such plays or commit infractions such as donning masculine clothing for costumes; see Mirrors of Heaven, 254.

28 Introduction (1599–1663), who contributed poems for Convent Paradise.75 Although Tarabotti had only a rudimentary formal education, like others in the convent,76 and often complained that she lacked “any light of letters,”77 she was remarkably wellread and had access to a surprisingly wide array of books. She was familiar with secular writers from both the classical and vernacular traditions, and was able to read—often on loan from her male literary associates—such controversial works as L’Anima di Ferrante Pallavicino (The Soul of Ferrante Pallavicino), which she describes as having gained entry into “the Purgatory of Sant’Anna.”78 Tarabotti even states in her Letters that she read Machiavelli, whose Opera omnia had been placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559.79 Convent Paradise is studded with references to some of the less controversial secular authors whose works Tarabotti knew, alongside the devotional literature that was a regular backdrop to religious life. It is not inconceivable that Tarabotti may even have had access to a vernacular translation of the Bible; such translations sometimes found their way into female convents, although they were prohibited by the Church.80

75. See, for example, ASV, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, busta 11, unnumbered sheet: copy of a poem by Ciro di Pers titled “Vita humana assomiglia a tre horologi da sole, da rota, e di polvere” (“Human Life Resembles Three Time-Pieces: A Sundial, a Clock, and an Hourglass”). For a printed version of the poem, see Poesie del Cavalier Fra Ciro di Pers. Venice: Appresso Steffano Curti, 1675, 109 (“Li tre Orologi da mostra, che batte, e da polvere”). 76. See, for example, Tarabotti, Letters, 53 (letter 2). 77. See Tarabotti, Letters, 70 (letter 16). In Paternal Tyranny, Tarabotti laments the cyclical inadequacy of education for women who are taught by other women lacking anything beyond the most rudimentary education (99). 78. See Tarabotti, Letters, 68, 118 (letters 15 and 64). Ferrante Pallavicino, private secretary of Giovan Francesco Loredan (founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti), was the most radical antipapal critic of seventeenth-century Italy. He was executed in Avignon by the pope’s forces. Loredan was probably the author of The Soul of Ferrante Pallavicino, the Incogniti’s “most virulent attack on the church.” See Edward Muir, “The Morality of Doubt: The Religious Skeptics of Seventeenth-Century Venice,” in A Sourcebook of Early Modern European History: Life, Death, and Everything in Between, ed. Ute Lotz-Heumann (Abingdon, UK, and New York: Routledge, 2019), 292–93. See also Mario Infelise, “Pallavicino, Ferrante,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 80: 506–11. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2014. 79. See Tarabotti, Letters, 251 (letter 213). 80. See Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo: La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scrittura (1471–1605) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), 54, 289.

Introduction 29

Figure 12. Record of a vote in a chapter meeting from June 1645. Tarabotti’s name (Arcanzola Tarabota) appears two-thirds of the way down the list. Archivio Patriarcale di Venezia, Monalium: Decreti e Licenze, reg. 1–7 (1632–55), c. 82r–v. With permission of the Ufficio Beni Culturali.

30 Introduction

Figure 13. Copy of poem by Ciro di Pers from the records of the convent of Sant’Anna: “Vita humana assomiglia a tre horologi da sole, da rota, e di polvere” (“Human Life Resembles Three Time-Pieces: A Sundial, a Clock, and an Hourglass”). Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Cong. Rel. sopp., Sant’Anna di Castello, b. 11. With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

Introduction 31

Composing from the Convent Tarabotti’s Literary Works Although Convent Paradise was the first work Tarabotti published, it was not the first she wrote. By 1643, Tarabotti had already made a name for herself with two controversial treatises she circulated in Venetian intellectual circles. In both these works, Tarabotti protests vehemently against forced monachization, taking a different tack in each. Tirannia paterna (Paternal Tyranny) was published posthumously by the Elsevier press in Leiden as La semplicità ingannata, or Innocence Deceived (1654), under the pseudonym Galerana Baratotti.81 This work systematically lays out her case against the fathers—biological, religious, and political— whom she charges with conspiring to cloister girls without their consent, depriving them of their God-given free will. Publishing the text would become the most important crusade of her life. After a decade of failed attempts, she succeeded only in having it printed in the Protestant Netherlands, posthumously, with the milder title, after it had been rejected in Venice, Florence, Rome, and Paris—all places in which the volume’s criticism of the Church and monastic practice was considered too risky.82 Convent Hell describes the experience of these young girls as they move from enchantment with the convent, represented to them by family and professed nuns alike as an earthly paradise, to the realization that they have been tricked into taking a perpetual vow of enclosure that they experience as a hell on earth. Tarabotti argues that the desperation and bitterness of the forced nuns leads to a poisonous atmosphere in which vice and sin flourish. Although Tarabotti sought tirelessly to publish her other controversial works, she did not even attempt to put this one to press.83 Tarabotti’s other published works address additional aspects of women’s unequal sociopolitical and cultural status, and provide detail about her own biography. The Antisatira (Antisatire), printed in 1644, is a mordant response to 81. The title page lists “Gio. Sambix,” a well-known pseudonym for Daniel Elsevier, as the publisher of the work. The best overviews of this work are offered in the introductions to the modern editions by Panizza and by Simona Bortot. See Panizza, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” 1–31; Bortot, “Introduzione,” 19–167. 82. See Lynn Lara Westwater, “A Rediscovered Friendship in the Republic of Letters: The Unpublished Correspondence of Arcangela Tarabotti and Ismaёl Boulliau,” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 1 (2012): 67–134, and Lynn Lara Westwater, “A Cloistered Nun Abroad: Arcangela Tarabotti’s International Literary Career,” in Women Writing Back/Writing Women Back: Transnational Perspectives from the Late Middle Ages to the Dawn of the Modern Era, ed. Alicia Montoya, Anke Gilleir, and Suzan van Dijk (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 283–308. 83. On this subject, see Tarabotti, Lettere, 265nn683, 685 (letter 232). Inferno monacale (Convent Hell) was published for the first time in 1990 by Medioli (see Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale).

32 Introduction a satire of women’s vanity by the Sienese academician Francesco Buoninsegni,84 while the epistolary collection Lettere familiari e di complimento (Letters Familiar and Formal, 1650) showcases Tarabotti’s powerful network of literary and political contacts and documents the successes and controversies of her literary career.85 Tarabotti’s other devotional composition, the Tears for … Regina Donati, was published with her Letters.86 The final work published during Tarabotti’s lifetime is Che le donne siano della spetie degli huomini (Women Are of the Human Species, 1651), published under the pseudonym Galerana Barcitotti; this was a response to an anonymous Latin treatise, translated into Italian and printed in Venice in 1647, which asserted that women were not human and had no souls.87 These volumes appeared in octavo format with little or no illustration or paratext. To make her literary entrée into print, Tarabotti instead chose Convent Paradise. A seemingly conformist work espousing the joys of the freely chosen religious life, Convent Paradise was lavishly published in quarto format, with an elaborate full-page engraving on the frontispiece and extensive encomiastic material. Tarabotti seems to have envisioned this work as the culmination of a Dantean trilogy, after Convent Hell and a lost second work in the series, Purgatorio delle

84. Francesco Buoninsegni and Arcangela Tarabotti, Satira e Antisatira (Venice: Francesco Valvasense, 1644); the Antisatira appears on pages 67–227. The modern critical edition is Buoninsegni and Tarabotti, Satira e Antisatira (1998), with the Antisatira appearing on pages 56–105; Weaver has translated the work in Tarabotti, Antisatire (2020), at pages 55–93. 85. Arcangela Tarabotti, Lettere familiari e di complimento (Venice: Guerigli, 1650). Published by Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater in a modern edition as Lettere familiari e di complimento (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 2005) and in English as Letters Familiar and Formal. On Tarabotti’s letters, see Meredith K. Ray, Writing Gender in Women’s Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 184–213, and Meredith K. Ray, “Letters from the Cloister: Defending the Literary Self in Arcangela Tarabotti’s Lettere familiari e di complimento,” Italica 81, no. 1 (2004): 24–43. On Tarabotti and her letters in a political framework, see Stephanie H. Jed, Wings for Our Courage: Gender, Erudition, and Republican Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), and Stephanie H. Jed, “Arcangela Tarabotti and Gabriel Naudé: Libraries, Taxonomies and ‘Ragion di Stato,’ ” in Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice, ed. Elissa B. Weaver (Ravenna: Longo, 2006), 129–40. 86. A partial translation by Ray and Westwater of the work entitled The Tears of Arcangela Tarabotti For the Death of the Most Illustrious Signora Regina Donati appears in Tarabotti, Letters, 285–96; a complete translation and edition of the work by Ray and Westwater is in progress. 87. Tarabotti’s Che le donne siano della spetie degli huomini (Nuremberg: Iuvann Cherchenbergher, 1651) was actually printed in Venice. For modern editions, see Tarabotti’s Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini: Women Are No Less Rational Than Men, ed. Letizia Panizza (London: Institute of Romance Studies, 1994), and Tarabotti’s Women are of the Human Species: A Defense of Women, in “Women are Not Human”: An Anonymous Treatise and Responses, trans. and ed. Theresa Kenney (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 89–159.

Introduction 33 malmaritate (Purgatory of Ill-Married Women).88 Dante, the Florentine poet of the afterlife, was a perennial source of inspiration for Tarabotti, serving, as Letizia Panizza puts it, as “her personal philosopher and theologian of liberty for all.”89 Tarabotti buttresses many of her works with references to the Divine Comedy.90 In her own trilogy, Tarabotti becomes the pilgrim-narrator who—from a condition of spiritual desolation—embarks on a journey toward salvation. The narrative point of view shifts over the course of this journey from the documentary impulse of Convent Hell to the intimate first-person perspective of Convent Paradise that intertwines author and protagonist. Convent Hell, in particular, incorporates direct quotations from Dante and allusions to his Inferno: however, the unwilling nuns Tarabotti describes have lapsed into sinfulness not because of their own failings but as the victims of others’ depravity. The convent is a living hell (in contrast to that imagined by Dante in the afterlife), and the nuns who trick young girls into thinking that it is an earthly paradise are complicit in their damnation. In Convent Paradise, by contrast, Tarabotti turns her attention inward, focusing on the slow penitential process by which she herself strives toward a state of salvation as a “willing” nun. Despite Dante’s indisputable role as a structural model for Convent Paradise, the Comedy’s presence is less overt here than elsewhere, although its influence is implicit in Tarabotti’s insistence on free will. Tarabotti states in her Letters that she also composed a corpus of devotional works, including La via lastricata per andar al cielo (The Paved Road to Heaven), Contemplazioni dell’anima amante (Contemplations of the Loving Soul), and Luce monacale (Convent Light). These works, if they were ever completed, are no longer extant,91 leaving Tears for … Regina Donati as Tarabotti’s only other 88. Tarabotti’s lost work, Purgatorio delle malmaritate, which likely addressed the situation of women who sought refuge in female institutions after their marriages had ended due to physical, financial, or other conflict, is mentioned in the presentation to her Letters (49) by Giovanni Dandolo and in a letter she wrote to Lorenzo Pisani. See Tarabotti, Letters, 126–27 (letter 73). Although the order in which Tarabotti composed the trilogy is not known with certainty, it is likely that Purgatory of Ill-Married Women was written after both Convent Hell and Convent Paradise (1643). In the letter to the reader that prefaces her Antisatira (1644), Tarabotti indicates that she has planned, but not yet composed, the work: Tarabotti, Antisatira (1998), 59; Tarabotti, Antisatire (2020), 36. 89. Letizia Panizza, “Reader Over Arcangela’s Shoulder: Tarabotti at Work with Her Sources,” in Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice, ed. Elissa B. Weaver (Ravenna: Longo, 2006), 124. 90. See, for example, Tarabotti’s account of her imagined voyage to the afterworld in Letters, 143– 45 (letter 92). For a discussion of Tarabotti’s use of Dante, see Panizza, “Reader Over Arcangela’s Shoulder,” as well as Nancy L. Canepa, “The Writing Behind the Wall: Arcangela Tarabotti’s Inferno monacale and Cloistral Autobiography in the Seventeenth Century,” Forum Italicum 30, no. 1 (1996): 1–23; Julie Robarts, “Dante’s Commedia in a Venetian Convent: Arcangela Tarabotti’s Inferno monacale,” Italica 90, no. 3 (2013): 378–97; and Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale, 146–47. 91. These works are mentioned in Tarabotti, Letters, 82–83 (letter 26); see also Giovanni Dandolo’s letter to the printer, Guerigli: Tarabotti, Letters, 49.

34 Introduction surviving religious work after Convent Paradise. Whereas Convent Paradise relies heavily on the authority of religious sources and describes Tarabotti’s difficult transition to convent life while at the same time praising freely chosen monastic life, Tears incorporates few citations, offering instead an intimate portrait of Tarabotti’s dear friend—one who, in Tarabotti’s telling, embodies the ideals of female religiosity. Indeed, Regina Donati becomes the archetype of the voluntary nun who lives her religious vocation in utter serenity, her will in complete consonance with the destiny that has been assigned to her. Convent Paradise and the Tears for … Regina Donati thus create, respectively, a tableau and an individual portrait that show the joys possible in female religious communities. This celebratory tone stands in marked contrast to the bleak descriptions of convent life in Tarabotti’s other works. As Tarabotti’s editorial debut, Convent Paradise was clearly intended to offer readers a carefully fashioned portrait of the author that would pique her readers’ interest without offending their sense of propriety. Tarabotti’s printer Guglielmo Oddoni understood that on the surface the work did not threaten to ruffle any feathers; indeed, Oddoni deemed it so proper in content, so restrained in tone, as to be out of step with current literary tastes, and promised readers “more provocative” works to come—expressing hope that Paternal Tyranny would be the first among these, presumably from his press.92 Although Convent Paradise was unorthodox in its own right, it allowed Tarabotti to project an image of piety that provided cover for her more openly polemic and political works. The publication of Convent Paradise quickly earned Tarabotti numerous admirers, and she courted others by sending them copies of the book, an ongoing effort of self-promotion she details in her Letters.93 Praise for Tarabotti evaporated, however, following the publication of her Antisatire in 1644. Despite its light tone, the Antisatire—in which Tarabotti sparred with the well-liked male intellectual Francesco Buoninsegni—was greeted with hostility, and many of the nun’s former supporters, who had appreciated her strong opinions and satirical thrust when she targeted political and religious structures in the works that circulated in manuscript, became her antagonists when she attacked men in general, pillorying their vanity and ignorance.

Publishing Convent Paradise: Context and Paratext Devotional literature written for and by women figured prominently in the landscape of early modern literary culture. In addition to being familiar with the breviary, various martyrologies, and saints’ lives, Tarabotti had access to important female-authored works such as the letters of Catherine of Siena, printed in 1500; 92. See Oddoni’s Letter to Readers. Tarabotti, Convent Paradise, 68. 93. See, for example, Tarabotti, Letters, 51–52, 126–27 (letters 1 and 73).

Introduction 35 in Convent Paradise, she admiringly mentions this saint, one of the most powerful figures in the history of Christianity. Tarabotti may also have known volumes such as the slim treatise by Caterina de’ Vigri (Catherine of Bologna) known as Le sette armi spirituali (The Seven Spiritual Weapons), a meditative work in the tradition of the devotio moderna.94 Printed in 1470, The Seven Spiritual Weapons describes nuns’ perpetual struggle against individual will and temptation, a problem with which Tarabotti engages at length in Convent Paradise. Although the two works are very different, Catherine of Bologna, like Tarabotti, highlights the effects of spiritual doubt on novice nuns. Describing herself as initially “lukewarm” in her own vocation, she explains that she now writes in order to: … comfort those persons who have entered the noble battle of this obedience and, being strongly attacked and assaulted by their own will and by how they see things or how things appear to them, are very sad, thinking that, by this, they lose all the merit of obedience.95 In Convent Paradise, likewise, Tarabotti speaks frequently of the difficulties inherent in the renunciation of individual will, that most intrinsic of human attributes (p. 115).96 Tarabotti also read less widely-circulated works than these, including those shared with her by other women, some of them nuns like herself.97 In her Letters, for example, we learn that Tarabotti exchanged compositions with Guid’Ascania Orsi, a nun and writer in Bologna whose writing Tarabotti praises.98 94. As Zarri notes, there is no direct “documentary evidence” tying to Italy the tradition of devotio moderna that originated in the Low Countries, but historians agree that its influence spread south by way of religious orders. See Gabriella Zarri, “Religious and Devotional Writing,” in A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, ed. Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 80. Saint Catherine of Siena is mentioned in other works by Tarabotti, including La Semplicità ingannata (2007), 216, 377 (translation in Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, 61, 145). 95. Saint Catherine of Bologna, The Seven Spiritual Weapons, trans. Hugh Feiss and Daniela Re, introd. Hugh Feiss and Marilyn Hall (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing, 1999), 32. 96. For the centrality of free will in Tarabotti’s thought, see also, for example, Tarabotti, La Semplicità ingannata (2007), 191–94 (translation in Paternal Tyranny, 49–51); Tarabotti, Antisatira (1998), 89–90; and Tarabotti, Antisatire (2020), 5 and 80. 97. On writing by nuns, see, for example, Elisabetta Graziosi, “Arcipelago sommerso: Le rime delle monache tra obbedienza e trasgressione,” in I monasteri femminili come centri di cultura fra Rinascimento e Barocco: Atti del convegno storico internazionale, Bologna, 8–10 dicembre 2000, ed. Gabriella Zarri and Gianna Pomata (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2005), 146–81. 98. See, for example, Tarabotti, Letters, 81, 125, 207–8 (letters 24, 71, and 160). Tarabotti sent Orsi Convent Paradise, seeking feedback from the “lofty intellects” of Bologna; she seems to have been considering issuing a new edition. An inscription in one of the copies of Convent Paradise we consulted shows that the work was used by a community of nuns: “For the use of Suor Angela Felice Lacca and

36 Introduction Tarabotti also thanks a certain “Reverend Mother N.” for sending her a work titled Contemplazione de’ suoi santissimi dolori (Contemplation of Her Holiest Sorrows), which she refers to as a corona, or rosary.99 Tarabotti identifies this volume as a meditation on the grief of the Virgin Mary, a figure who is also central to her own Convent Paradise and who indeed occupied a position of increasing importance as a focus of devotional practice after the Council of Trent.100 In exchange for the Contemplation, Tarabotti sends Mother N. a copy of her own work, begging her to “[l]ook on it with a kind eye, for you will see the audacity of a sinner (as I am) in daring to create a Convent Paradise ….”101 A key point of reference for Tarabotti as she was composing Convent Paradise were the numerous religious works of her contemporary Lucrezia Marinella (1573–1653). The only other woman writing and publishing in Venice in these years, Marinella contributed two sonnets to Convent Paradise (although she does not directly mention Tarabotti in her own works).102 While Marinella is best known for her protofemininist treatise entitled La Nobiltà ed eccellenza delle donne e i diffetti e mancamenti degli uomini (The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men), published in 1600 and immediately expanded and republished in 1601, she was predominantly a writer of devotional texts. By the time Convent Paradise appeared, Marinella had published eight distinct religious works, many of which had been repeatedly reprinted. In her writing on female saints, Marinella underscores their intellectual gifts, an emphasis that likely resonated with Tarabotti, a champion for women’s education. Like Tarabotti after her, Marinella launched her public literary career with the publication of a devotional work, La Colomba sacra, poema eroico (The Holy Dove: Heroic Poem, 1595),103 but her most famous religious work—published on the heels of her blockbuster Nobility and Excellence of Women—is her 1602 Vita di Maria Vergine imperatrice dell’universo (Life of the Virgin Mary, Empress of

the nuns of her cell, in the convent of San Benedetto.” See ArcangelaTarabotti, Paradiso monacale. Libri tre. Con un soliloqio a Dio (Venice: Guglielmo Oddoni, 1663 [1643]), private collection. 99. Tarabotti praises this devotional composition, writing that: “With such a meditation, there is no doubt that a soul can lift its thoughts to such an understanding of God that it can even gain Paradise” (see Tarabotti, Letters, 243–44 [letter 203]). 100. See Susan Haskins, ed. and trans., Who is Mary?: Three Early Modern Women on the Idea of the Virgin Mary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 35. 101. See Tarabotti, Letters, 243–44 (letter 203). 102. Tarabotti mentions other secular women writers directly in her works, including Casandra Fedele, in her Antisatira, and Veronica Gambara, Vittoria Colonna, Isabella Andreini, Moderata Fonte, and many others in La semplicità ingannata. See Tarabotti, Antisatira (1998), 77; Tarabotti, Antisatire (2020), 70; and Tarabotti, La semplicità ingannata (2007), 301–302 (for Fonte, 295). 103. Lucrezia Marinella, La colomba sacra, poema eroico (Venice: Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1595).

Introduction 37 the Universe).104 This account of Mary’s life, which draws on the apocryphal accounts as well as the gospel versions, had numerous editions between 1604 and 1617.105 Tarabotti knew the work, and mentions it directly in Innocence Deceived; in Convent Paradise she expresses a similar devotion to Mary, stressing her place at the very heart of the Church, while also playing on Mary’s central position in Venetian civic mythology.106 There are other parallels between the two writers. In one of the Life’s notable moments, for example, Marinella praises Mary’s avoidance of luxuries while condemning other women’s excesses,107 an attack on female extravagance that conflicts with the ideals expressed by Marinella in The Nobility and Excellence of Women, published just two years before, in which she defended women’s right to finery.108 In a similar about-face, Tarabotti lamented in Convent Paradise her own previous vanity,109 but the next year defended female luxury in her Antisatire. The inconsistencies both writers show between their secular and devotional texts were commonplace to writers of the period, when it was not unusual for an author to publish piquant works alongside religious ones.110 In addition to Mary’s modesty, Marinella emphasizes her erudition. She says that 104. The year is not included on the title page, but the dedication is signed 1602. The work is translated in Haskins, Who is Mary?, 119–246. 105. In 1604, 1610, and 1617. We examined the 1602 and 1617 editions. On Marinella’s use of sources, including apocryphal writings, see Haskins, Who is Mary?, 21. 106. See Tarabotti, La semplicità ingannata (2007), 301. On Mary’s importance to Venice, see, for example, David Rosand, “Venetia figurata: The Iconography of a Myth,” in Interpretazioni veneziane: Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice: Arsenale Editore, 1984), 177–96; and Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), esp. 139–56. 107. “She shone, not among the purples and golds beneath which the swollen vanities of women are concealed, but among the whiteness and simplicity of a pure, plain, single robe…..” (See Marinella, Life of the Virgin Mary, in Haskins, Who is Mary?, 152). 108. See, for example, Marinella’s comment that: “It is necessary … to conclude that women are nobler than men because they are honored by men. Further indications of honor are the ornaments bestowed on women, who are permitted to dress themselves in purple and cloth of gold with diverse embroideries decorated with pearls and diamonds, and to adorn their heads with pretty gold ornaments and finest enamel and precious stone. These things are forbidden to men, apart from rulers.” Lucrezia Marinella, The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, ed. and trans. Anne Dunhill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 70. 109. Tarabotti berates herself for her vanity on numerous occasions in Convent Paradise, primarily in general terms (“briefly abandoned vanities,” Convent Paradise, 91; “the vanities so common among my sex,” Convent Paradise, 111), but sometimes with more specific reference, for example to her hair (“He made me correct my vanities. I cut my hair, but I did not uproot my affections,” Convent Paradise, 101). 110. Giovan Francesco Loredan, for example, co-founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti (“Academy of the Unknowns,” the most important literary body in mid-seventeenth-century Venice) and an early promoter of Tarabotti, published in a variety of genres, including novels, religious works, and letters. For a complete bibliography, see Tiziana Menegatti, “Ex ignoto notus”: Bibliografia delle opere a stampa

38 Introduction Mary’s youthful insights into sacred writing enlightened the highest religious authorities,111 and she describes Mary’s intellect as divine and “endowed with the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures”; Tarabotti also underscores Mary’s intellectual and leadership qualities as a model for all Christians in both Convent Paradise and Innocence Deceived.112 Marinella’s elegy of Saint Catherine of Siena, De’ gesti eroici e della vita maravigliosa della serafica Santa Caterina da Siena (Of the Heroic Deeds and the Marvelous Life of the Seraphic Saint Catherine of Siena), which concerns another figure dear to Tarabotti, likewise praises feminine austerity and erudition.113 Marinella’s life of Saints Francis and Clare, published the year before Convent Paradise, similarly places emphasis on Clare’s scholarly aptitude in addition to her other virtues,114 and underscores her authority.115 Like Convent Paradise, Marinella’s religious volumes were accompanied by extensive paratext. La Colomba sacra, for instance, Marinella’s first published work, included encomiastic poems from five literary luminaries.116 Additionally, del Principe degli Incogniti: Giovan Francesco Loredano (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2000). Loredan also held a number of posts in the Venetian government. 111. See Lucrezia Marinella, La vita di Maria vergine imperatrice dell’universo descritta in prosa e in ottava rima (Venice: Barezzo Barezzi, 1602). English translations are from Marinella, Life of the Virgin Mary, in Haskins, Who is Mary?, 119–246. “However, the virgins, priests, and high priests were all overcome by wonder on hearing her interpretations of the obscure meanings of the Holy Scriptures and the way she sweetly unlocked confused interpretations in the arcane subjects, arching her brows and pursing her lips together” (150). 112. Marinella, Life of the Virgin Mary, 150. Cf. Convent Paradise, 122–23; Book 3 of Tarabotti, La Semplicità ingannata (2007), esp. 378. 113. Marinella writes that Saint Catherine understood “the most obscure meanings, the most arcane mysteries, the most hidden secrets that were concealed by the sacred pens of holy men and by the inspired prophets in the blind fog of their writings.” Marinella, De’ gesti eroici e della vita maravigliosa della serafica Santa Caterina da Siena (Venice: Barezzo Barezzi, 1624), 132. The modern edition is Marinella, De’ gesti eroici e della vita maravigliosa della serafica Santa Caterina da Siena, ed. Armando Maggi (Ravenna: Longo, 2011). 114. Marinella writes of Clare: “With great pleasure and with a holy and devout manner she read the scriptures of the Old and New Testament that reveal the heights of the heavenly mysteries … with acute intellect she drew forth from obscure and convoluted material the hidden parts of the senses …” (Le vittorie di Francesco il serafico. Li passi gloriosi della diva Chiara [Padua: Giulio Crivellari, 1642], 190). See also the modern edition by Armando Maggi, Vita del serafico et glorioso S. Francesco e Le vittorie di Francesco il Serafico. Li passi gloriosi della diva Chiara (Ravenna: Longo, 2018). 115. See, for example, Marinella, Le vittorie, 194: “She was revered and praised by her friends, honored by her city and with amazement regarded and admired as a delight of nature and a glory of the age.” 116. Gioseppe Policretti, Boncio Leone, Teodoro Angelucci, and Giovanni Maria Avanzi introduce the work and give an idea of the young writer’s already powerful connections. Leone and Angelucci were members of the Accademia Veneziana, an influential group founded in 1593 and flourishing until 1609. Giovanni Battista Ciotti, who printed the work, was also a member of this academy and its official publisher.

Introduction 39 Marinella chose powerful protectors for these works, dedicating her Life of the Virgin Mary, for example, to the Doge and the Republic of Venice. Tarabotti’s dedication of Convent Paradise to Patriarch Corner would also appeal to the heights of power in Venice.117 While Marinella’s strategic use of the dedication and inclusion of encomiastic poetry may have provided inspiration to Tarabotti, the older writer’s Life of the Virgin Mary was also a forerunner of Convent Paradise in a less fortunate way: Marinella was accused of plagiarizing it, as Tarabotti would later be accused of plagiarizing Convent Paradise.118 Despite each writer’s tremendous success, this charge hung over the rest of their literary careers and continued to gnaw at them both. It was a remarkable achievement for a cloistered nun to circulate and publish even her devotional works, and Tarabotti needed the support of influential allies to take such a public step. She found it in the Accademia degli Incogniti, the most powerful cultural institution in seventeenth-century Venice, whose members composed works with libertine and antipapal (and in frequent instances, misogynistic) content. Tarabotti was likely brought into the orbit of the Incogniti by Giacomo Pighetti (d. 1647), a lawyer and writer who was married to Tarabotti’s sister Lorenzina.119 Her ties to the group enabled her to bring her works to press and were therefore the bedrock of her success. Although her relationships with the academy’s members would later become tumultuous, Convent Paradise represented the apex of her connection to this circle. Several Incogniti—including Pighetti—embellished Convent Paradise with encomiastic compositions. The academy’s powerful founder, Giovan Francesco Loredan (1607–1661), who took a particularly active interest in the polemical nun and her writing, lent his authority to Convent Paradise by contributing a letter of presentation.120 Tarabotti 117. Marinella’s dedication may also have been what Tarabotti seized upon—in order to upend it—in Paternal Tyranny; dedicated to the Venetian Republic, Tarabotti’s work is an attack on the authority of the Venetian state rather than an affirmation of it. 118. Although no direct evidence of the accusation against Marinella exists and it is not clear if it was made in writing or spread as a rumor, Giovan Battista Ciotti, who published many of Marinella’s works, defends her against it. He mentions these negative charges in a letter to readers at the beginning of her Arcadia felice, where he says the Vita “was recognized to be, as it certainly is, the true product of her intellect.” Marinella, Arcadia felice (Venice: Giovan Battista Ciotti, 1605), a4v. The modern edition is Marinella, Arcadia felice, ed. Françoise Lavocat (Florence: Olschki, 1998). On the charges against Tarabotti, see below (p. 53). 119. Born in Bergamo, Pighetti lived and worked in Venice and was in close touch with Tarabotti. The two corresponded frequently and Tarabotti published several missives to him in her Letters. Pighetti was an active member of the Accademia degli Incogniti; his poetry was published in many contemporary collections. 120. On Loredan, see also note 110; on his publications, see Tiziana Menegatti’s bibliography, “Ex ignoto notus.” On Loredan and the Venetian press, see Mario Infelise, “Ex ignotus notus? Note sul tipografo Sarzina e l’Accademia degli Incogniti,” in Libri, tipografi, biblioteche: Ricerche storiche dedicate a

40 Introduction thus refers to Loredan as the “champion” of her Convent Paradise, a protector who, “with the shining shield of his letter,” defends her work against all critics.121 The engraving that appears on the frontispiece of Convent Paradise evokes this praise of Loredan even as it directly refers to Federico Corner, Convent Paradise’s dedicatee, whom Tarabotti also designates as a defender of the work.122 The image was executed by Venetian engraver Giacomo Pecini (Piccini, ca. 1617–1669), after a design by Francesco Ruschi (1610–1661),123 who had also painted the ceiling of Sant’Anna’s church and was a friend of Loredan (see Figure 15). It depicts an idealized knight wielding a shield, surrounded by three cherubim who hold a banner advertising the work’s title. The knight is wearing a crown of laurels: symbol of triumph, eternity, and chastity.124 He carries a number of accoutrements befitting Corner’s status as cardinal and patriarch: a galero (broad-brimmed hat), a staff with a patriarchal cross, and a papal tiara symbolizing the exalted office which the image suggests Corner will one day hold (although this did not come to pass). He is also holding a helmet and a crown, suggesting the power of the Corner family in the secular realm, also singled out by Tarabotti in Convent Paradise.125 The coins spilling down toward the ground evoke the cardinal’s generosity. The knight’s shield bears the Corner family coat of arms, depicting crowned lions rampant and the Jerusalem cross, while a Maltese cross hovers beneath the knight’s wrist. The multifaceted image, with its links to Corner as well as to Loredan, suggests Luigi Balsamo, ed. Arnaldo Ganda et al. (Florence: Olschki, 1997), 207–23; Mario Infelise, “La crise de la librairie vénitienne: 1620–1650,” in Le livre et l’historien: Études offertes en l’honneur du Professeur Henri-Jean Martin, ed. Frédéric Barbier et al. (Geneva: Droz, 1997), 343–52. 121. See Tarabotti, Letters, 61 (letter 9): “My Paradise will consider itself the more glorious with such a champion than ever the Earthly Paradise with the Cherubim or the Empyrean with the Fisherman. Let each of them give way, then, to the angelic Loredano, who, more valorous than they, with the shining shield of his letter forbids the malice of any Aretino to enter my Paradise.” Tarabotti makes reference to Pietro Aretino, whose biting prose earned him the epithet “scourge of princes”; see Letters, 61n37. 122. See Figure 1. Tarabotti (Convent Paradise, 67–68) writes in her dedication to Corner: “Therefore under the protection of Your Eminence, who is the epitome of all perfection, the distillation of all the goodness and happiness found in Convent Paradise comes to take shelter.” On Corner, see note 50. 123. Pecini and Ruschi also collaborated on the engraving that opened Le glorie degli Incogniti (Venice: Francesco Valvasense, 1647), a work that profiled the most important members of the Accademia degli Incogniti. 124. George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 33. The laurel, a symbol of literary glory, could also be seen as another indirect reference to Loredan. 125. Tarabotti (Convent Paradise, 67) writes to Corner: “I do not know how I could doubt that I would find a kindness equal to those worthy qualities that will lead you to the most holy throne of Peter. Do not scorn, I beg you, this prediction of mine because it comes from a woman, for besides being founded upon the greatness of your infinite merit, it has been revealed to me by those three crowned lions that in the coat of arms of your most noble house foretell a triple reign. Your most ancient house is destined for scepters and crowns in both the ecclesiastical and secular realms ….”

Introduction 41 that, for her devotional literary debut, Tarabotti has the full backing of the most powerful men in Venetian literary and religious life. Following this visual display of power is the title page, which features Corner’s name prominently positioned just below that of the author (as a choir nun, Tarabotti is referred to on the title page by the honorific Donna [Lady], rather than Suor [Sister]).126 In the dedication to Corner, Tarabotti thanks the cardinal for his protection of the work and proffers (as in the image) the incorrect prediction that Corner will ascend to the papacy. The dedication is followed by an address to readers from the publisher, Guglielmo Oddoni, who apologizes for the work’s many typographical errors, especially in the Latin excerpts, for which he exculpates Tarabotti and writes that “if the author had been able to be present for the printing, there would not have been certain errors in the Latin quotations.”127 (Tarabotti’s strict enclosure, of course, prevented her from following the book’s physical production.) Oddoni was not a particularly prominent publisher, nor was he especially prolific overall: he published sixteen works in Venice from 1636 to 1654.128 But several factors may have made Oddoni especially appealing to Tarabotti. He was very active in 1642 (when Tarabotti was likely evaluating possible publishers), turning out five works that year. One of these was Tromba evangelica (Evangelical Trumpet),129 a devotional work by Francesco Maidalchino—published in quarto, as Paradiso monacale would be—that burnished Oddoni’s credentials as a publisher of religious texts. Another work was Carlo Ridolfi’s Vita di Giacopo Robusti detto il Tintoretto (Life of Giacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto), which would have been of particular interest to Tarabotti given that two of Tintoretto’s daughters had lived in the convent of Sant’Anna; the volume also included verse by several Incogniti, including Tarabotti’s brother-inlaw Pighetti.130 Finally, a third Oddoni publication was the Lettere amorose (Love

126. See Monson, Disembodied Voices, 24. 127. Tarabotti, Convent Paradise, 68 (note to the reader). 128. See Caterina Griffante, Alessia Giachery, and Sabrina Minuzzi, eds., Le edizioni veneziane del Seicento: Censimento, vol. 2 (Venice: Regione del Veneto; Milan: Editrice Bibliografica, 2006), 468. Le edizioni gives the date of publication for Paradiso monacale as 1663, based on the work’s title page, but the actual year of publication was 1643 (the error was caused by the transposition of two Roman numerals: MDCLXIII was printed instead of the correct MDCXLIII). 129. Francesco Maidalchino, Tromba evangelica per la incarnatione del venturo Messia … con una predica nel fine intitolata l’ottavo miracolo del mondo del p.F. Tomaso Caraffa … per la solennità dell’angelico dottore S. Tomaso d’Aquino (Venice: Guglielmo Oddoni, 1642). 130. Carlo Ridolfi, Vita di Giacopo Robusti detto il Tintoretto (Venice: Guglielmo Oddoni, 1642). Pighetti contributed a eulogy (unnumbered, but appearing on page 95). The volume also included verse by Accademia degli Incogniti members Pietro Michiel (b2v) and Alessandro Berardelli (b3r-v), the latter the nemesis of another prominent woman writer: Sarra Copia Sulam, a poet and polemicist who held a salon in the Venetian ghetto from 1618 until her falling out with Berardelli in 1626.

42 Introduction Letters) of Girolamo Brusoni, Tarabotti’s friend and literary associate.131 Although the two would later have a serious falling out,132 they were in close and friendly contact at the time of Paradiso’s publication, drawn together by their many commonalities.133 The publication of Brusoni’s work by Oddoni would have been of great interest to Tarabotti, and it is possible that Brusoni suggested the printer to the nun or even acted as an intermediary between them. Oddoni’s handsome printing in the same year of a Latin work by Peregrinus Pitorius—Opobalsami romani censura, which featured a title page with an elaborate engraving—might have been an additional attraction for Tarabotti. Oddoni began to specialize in devotional literature from 1643 onward (in 1642, for example, this production was only a small part of his offerings). In 1643, in addition to Paradiso monacale, he also published the Assunti predicabili, a book of homilies by Tommaso Carafa, Bishop of Capaccio. In subsequent years, all but one of his publications were devotional.134 Paradiso monacale, therefore, was part of Oddoni’s shift from a general catalogue to one that was primarily devotional in nature. Like many of Tarabotti’s works, Paradiso monacale advertised on its title page that it was printed with a “privilegio,” or printing privilege—what in modern terms would be called a copyright. However, no privilege was granted for the work.135 Other works by Tarabotti, including her Antisatira and Lettere familiari e di complimento, also advertise a printing privilege, but—as in the case of Paradiso monacale—no such privilege was granted. In the Seicento, the privilegio primarily protected the publisher. It is curious to note that Oddoni requested a printing privilege for many other works, but none for those of Tarabotti. Of the nine works he published between 1642 and 1644, Oddoni sought privileges for six.136 It is not clear what criteria the publisher used when deciding whether or not to obtain a privilege for a work. His misleading advertisement of a privilege in Paradiso On Copia Sulam and her Venetian context, see Lynn Lara Westwater, Sarra Copia Sulam: A Jewish Salonnière and the Press in Counter-Reformation Venice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020). 131. Girolamo Brusoni, Delle lettere amorose … libri Quattro (Venice: Guglielmo Oddoni, 1642). 132. Their friendship began to deteriorate after the publication of Tarabotti’s Antisatira in 1644. See Tarabotti, Letters, 192n453. 133. For example, they had both been forced into a religious life, even though they lacked a vocation (Brusoni’s rejection of the religious life was more extreme than Tarabotti’s; he was an apostate who fled the monastery on three different occasions). They were also both prolific writers who challenged the status quo and who were in the orbit of the Accademia degli Incogniti. 134. Griffante, Giachery, and Minuzzi, Le edizioni, 468. The one exception is Riflessioni politiche et morali sopra le vite de’ re di Francia (Political and Moral Reflections on the Life of the King of France), trans. Rechierio Prisca (Venice: Guglielmo Oddoni, 1644). 135. Cf. ASV, Atti, busta 166 (“Privilegi di stampa”). We are grateful to Mario Infelise for his help on this matter. 136. ASV, Atti, busta 166 (“Privilegi di stampa”).

Introduction 43 monacale might have been intended to thwart competitors even as he scrimped by not obtaining that legal protection. After Oddoni’s note to readers, Convent Paradise is introduced by poems or letters from no fewer than eight well-known writers. Most notable among these is the letter from Loredan to Giovanni Polani, who was the uncle of Tarabotti’s convent friend Betta Polani and served as intermediary between Tarabotti and her publisher for this volume.137 Loredan predicts that Convent Paradise will be “admired and admirable for the eternity of the ages.”138 His endorsement of Tarabotti’s debut work was of fundamental importance since, as “literary dictator of Venice,”139 Loredan influenced not only which books were published but which found favor. Two compositions precede Loredan’s letter. The first is a poem penned by Ciro di Pers in praise of Corner, written in the voice of Tarabotti. Pers—who also contributes a second prefatory encomiastic sonnet—was an Incognito and well known to the nuns of Sant’Anna, perhaps through Tarabotti.140 A Latin encomium by her brother-in-law Pighetti follows—noteworthy both for its language of composition, which immediately established an erudite tone for the work, and for the tie it created between Tarabotti’s private and public lives. The familial affection Pighetti expresses for Tarabotti acts to soften the boldness that might be associated with Tarabotti’s decision to publish, even a devotional work. Pighetti’s poem may also have been prominently placed in recognition of the invaluable role that he, as a member of the Accademia degli Incogniti, had played in introducing Tarabotti to male literary society. Other contributors of prefatory encomiastic verse include a “Signor F.D.”—perhaps the Incognito Ferdinando Donno di Manduria (1591–1649?)—and Francesco Carmeni (fl. mid-17th century), the secretary of the Incogniti.141 Especially significant among the introductory poems are the contributions from two female poets: Lucrezia Marinella and an unnamed contributor.142 These endorsements demonstrate that Convent Paradise, while praising bonds between religious women in the convent, also helped Tarabotti to 137. On the role of Polani (d. before 1654) as intermediary for Paradiso monacale, see Tarabotti, Letters, 60–61 (letter 8). 138. Tarabotti, Convent Paradise, 72. 139. Zanette, Suor Arcangela, 346. 140. See note 75. 141. On Donno and Carmeni, see Le glorie degli Incogniti, 132–35, 152–55. Carmeni is listed as secretary of the group on the title page of the Novelle amorose de’ signori academici Incogniti (Cremona: Dal Belpieri, 1642). 142. On the latter’s identity, see Tarabotti, Letters, 85 (letter 29), where Tarabotti thanks an anonymous female correspondent (the “Most Illustrious Countess S.”) for contributing to Convent Paradise. Tarabotti writes: “Truly my most imperfect Paradise had need of an angelic voice to make people consider it Paradise in fact. Knowing this, Your Illustrious Ladyship, by virtue of your kindness, deigned to prove it to be so.” The countess and her husband are two of the musicians invited by Tarabotti to give a concert at the convent, as discussed in Letters, 141–42 (letter 90); see note 57 above.

44 Introduction breach its walls to forge bonds with literary women. Convent Paradise concludes with additional encomiastic compositions, including a lengthy anonymous work in verse, titled “The Archangel,” an obvious homage to Donna Arcangela. The work closes with a second sonnet by Marinella and a composition by Salvatore Cavalcanti. The quantity of verse and the importance of many of the contributors created an impressive frame for Tarabotti’s literary debut.

Reading Convent Paradise In Dialogue with Saint Augustine Convent Paradise, a spiritual autobiography in the tradition of Saint Augustine’s Confessions, provides the most explicitly personal reflection of any of Tarabotti’s extant writing. Tarabotti, who dramatizes the devastating consequences of forced vocations in Convent Hell and targets the social and political underpinnings of the practice of forced enclosure in Paternal Tyranny, positions herself squarely at the center of her first-person narrative in Convent Paradise. Echoing the Confessions, which tells the story of Augustine’s long and hard-fought religious conversion, Tarabotti offers in Convent Paradise an account of her own difficult journey toward accepting her identity as a bride of Christ. Providing a detailed timeline of her sinful actions and redemption, Tarabotti admits that she took the habit and was consecrated without belief, and that she persisted for years in being a nun in name but not in spirit. Nonetheless, in contrast to the way she characterizes herself elsewhere (for example, in her Letters143), Tarabotti is careful to present herself in Convent Paradise as a voluntary nun, not a monaca forzata, explaining that her critique of forced monachization is based not on her own experience but instead derives from a more general compulsion to defend her sex: Neither should you believe that I decry paternal tyranny144 and the unfounded arrogance of men for my own personal interests or with a fervor derived from my own circumstances, because I swear to you on my honor that only to contradict the evil and untrue slander with which men continually, with lying words, have sullied women for so many centuries, have I permitted my pen to spill a bit of ink in defense of my sex. (To Readers, p. 113) 143. See Tarabotti, Letters, 210–11 (letter 163), where she writes unequivocally of her life in the convent: “Mine is no prison, it is a hell where no hope of leaving can enter, and where my crying will continue until, with God’s help, that prophetic saying can be realized within me: Ademplebis me laetitia in vultu tuo [Thou shalt fill me with joy with thy countenance].” Elsewhere, Tarabotti characterizes the inhabitants of Sant’Anna as “poor imprisoned women.” Tarabotti, Letters, 139 (letter 88). 144. A reference to Tarabotti’s own work, Paternal Tyranny.

Introduction 45 Like Augustine, Tarabotti addresses herself directly to God. In the “Soliloquy to God” that precedes the three books of Convent Paradise proper, she engages in an intimate conversation with Jesus, bridegroom of nuns. Looking inward to scrutinize her faults and shortcomings, she finally accepts and surrenders herself to the boundless generosity and compassion of God’s love. As Tarabotti explains in the subsequent note to readers, where she tempers much of the confession she made in the “Soliloquy,” God alone is able to judge the truth of what she recounts in Convent Paradise.145 Tarabotti’s work is structured as a confession in the full sense of the word: simultaneously a recognition and catalogue of her sins and an expression of praise for God. Also resonant with Augustine’s model is Tarabotti’s perpetual struggle not just to overcome her own failings, but to muster the commitment and will to do so. Throughout Convent Paradise, Tarabotti reiterates the nearly insurmountable conflict between desire (for the secular world, for romantic and sexual love, for pleasure and self-expression), and faith (expressed as submission to convent life and as the reorienting of romantic and sexual desire toward religious love). Bemoaning her inability to apply to herself the lessons she knows she must internalize, Tarabotti quotes Augustine directly: Now I would like, oh Lord, to imitate your dear Augustine, who, recalling how before his first conversion he had shed tears upon reading of Dido’s death in the Aeneid, mourned and grieved with these words, I wept for Dido’s dying, who killed herself for the love of Aeneas, and all the time—pitiable though I was—in such matters I endured my own dying away from you, O God, my life; and I shed not a single tear. What, after all, is more pitiful than a pitiable person who does not look with pity on his own pitifulness—and who weeps for the death of Dido, which came about through her love for Aeneas; yet does not weep for his own death, which was coming about because he has no love for you? (p. 99) Like Augustine, who famously implored God, “Grant me chastity and celibacy, but not just yet!” (Confessions, 8.7.17),146 Tarabotti confesses that for too long she actively resisted her own redemption, remaining “unmoved” even “in the face of loving encouragement from my superiors” (p. 85). She mourned the loss of her 145. Tarabotti returns to this device in La semplicità ingannata, the final version of Paternal Tyranny that was eventually published posthumously in 1654, where she substitutes the original address to Venice of the earlier manuscript with an address to God, who alone is able to perceive the truth of her work. 146. The translation is based on Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. and ed. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014–16), 1:389.

46 Introduction hair and her worldly clothes, and continued to read “vain books that have nothing truthful in them but their profanity” (p. 103). Still worse, she explains, was that the insincerity of her vocation caused her to sin more gravely still (a paradox Tarabotti also identifies in Convent Hell as the cruel consequence of forced monachization).147 Tarabotti exclaims, Oh most benevolent God! And did I not deserve, therefore, to be eternally chained to the prince of ingrates down in the center of hell? Even as I spoke to you with my tongue but stood apart from you in my heart, I took advantage of your graces, and uttering words to heaven I turned all my affection to earth, hiding my worldly desires beneath that holy façade. Arrogantly, I sought opportunities to harm myself by hurting you, sinking ever deeper into destructive thoughts and seeking to harm myself as eagerly as a deer seeks a spring to slake his thirst. I deserved to experience the eternal death of my soul, since she who wanders through this world without your life-giving grace must be considered dead. (p. 86) Yet, just as Augustine experiences his moment of clarity after a reading from Saint Paul on chastity,148 so too Tarabotti—echoing the imagery of reading that is so central to Augustine’s account—seizes her opportunity for spiritual redemption after God sends her a series of challenges in the form of grave illness and other obstacles that cause her to reflect on the salvation of her soul: You visited upon me, I say, a very grave illness that led me near to death, at which time, oh true Redeemer of this iniquitous soul, a devout priest filled with your holy grace read to me in you, my crucified love, as if in an open book, all my ingratitudes, my misdeeds, my stubbornness. (p. 91, our italics)149 Despite the use of Augustine’s introspective model, however, Convent Paradise offers a more uncertain picture of the converted sinner. Indeed, the note to readers that follows the “Soliloquy” immediately calls into question the 147. Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale, 81. 148. See Augustine, Confessions, 381 (8.6.14) and 387 (8:7.16). 149. Tarabotti (Convent Paradise, 96) elaborates: “This I say, Lord, because after being lifted through your mercy from that harshest illness which for three months’ time had in part subdued my vain spirits, once again I placed my neck under the old yoke and gave myself over to plowing the field of the usual vanities, in which one who sows hope reaps nothing but tribulations. And yet you, my Creator, not yet tired of loving me, perhaps to avoid having to repudiate me eternally, let me fall ill again and let me be unjustly offended by an unexpected blow from a friendly but traitorous hand.”

Introduction 47 sincerity of Tarabotti’s prior confession. Always anticipating harsh criticism, Tarabotti asserts—with a notable change of tone—that her readers should not be taken aback by her admissions of dishonesty, vanity, or any other failings. She has inflated her sins, as is customary in such confessions to God, but her faults have stopped “at the hem of her habit”: If you find some of my expositions, where I speak about myself and my actions, to be a bit too open, remember, oh courteous reader, that the tribunals of the divine judge are not like earthly ones, before which people hide their crimes and proffer excuses in order to beg pardon. I speak with God, before whom I deem it best humbly to exaggerate one’s faults in order to placate more easily his most righteous anger and regain his grace. (p. 111) By placing her conversation with God in such marked contrast to her conversation with men, Tarabotti exhibits acute awareness of her different audiences. Whereas she expects mercy from Heaven, she anticipates nothing but censure from the world of men.

Style and Rhetoric in Convent Paradise Tarabotti was thoroughly of her age in her writing style, her prose a Baroque tour de force that stacks metaphor upon metaphor and clause upon clause. Her syntax at times collapses, whether because of the urgency she felt to express her ideas, or lacunae in her formal education, or her lack of opportunity to properly proofread her volumes. Her tone varies markedly across (and within) her works: she is at times a chastened sinner, at others a righteous believer, sometimes an anthropologist or political scientist, but always a passionate advocate for women. Convent Paradise displays these and many other signature elements of Tarabotti’s rhetorical style, showcasing, for example, the same peregrinating approach to narration that would become her trademark. Tarabotti’s writing moves relentlessly, albeit in a serpentine fashion, toward clear goals. In Convent Paradise, these goals are both thematic (to celebrate female monasticism when freely chosen and to valorize the experience of women religious) and personal (to demonstrate her literary bravura, to make a display of her piety, and to showcase the strength of her literary connections). The tone and style of Tarabotti’s prose shifts repeatedly throughout Convent Paradise, as in many of her other works. At times, she speaks to her readers directly as she describes the holiness and devotion of willing nuns. In other moments, she engages in biblical exegesis, connecting aspects of scripture to female monastic life. In yet others, she engages in direct dialogue with Christ,

48 Introduction sometimes as a tête-à-tête between herself and her bridegroom, sometimes as a discussion between Christ and all willing nuns. Additional stylistic aspects of Convent Paradise, by contrast, distinguish the text from Tarabotti’s other literary production. Excepting occasional explicitly protofeminist passages, discussed below, Convent Paradise lacks much of the blistering rhetoric that is a hallmark of Tarabotti’s polemical texts. In Paternal Tyranny, for example, Tarabotti calls forced monachization “a gross abuse,” exclaiming, “what an unforgivable error, what a wicked decision, and what sheer audacity is this deed when Divine Providence, after all, has granted free will to His creatures, whether male or female, and bestowed on both sexes intellect, memory and will!”150 The printed page can barely contain her outrage. Convent Paradise, on the other hand, takes a more indirect tack. Here, Tarabotti praises women’s voluntary submission of their free will, asking, “if there are those who glory in losing their own free will in exchange for an always fleeting and fragile beauty, and moreover a false one, what woman will not submit her own will to another’s for a beauty that will last for eternity?” (p. 150). While the rhetorical style of the two passages differs markedly—the former a bold declaration, the latter an unanswered question —the centrality of women’s agency is foregrounded in both cases. Tarabotti employs Baroque conceits in many of her works.151 But in Convent Paradise, they achieve new levels of complexity, even beyond the structuring metaphor of the convent as an earthly paradise. Her consideration of nuns’ tonsure, which stretches almost two thousand words, serves as an example. First, Tarabotti states that “hair is nothing more than a snare, which by entrapping other hearts also imprisons women’s own souls” (p. 133). She then transforms this common metaphor equating hair with female vanity and male desire by insisting that it beguiles not only the men it allures but women as well. Tarabotti thus urges nuns to embrace tonsure as a symbol of religious devotion, insisting that, since physical hair ensnares women, its removal is liberating. She writes: Let [the new nuns] chop off their ephemeral locks with joyfulness and jubilation, that in their place a long, dense head of chaste and holy thoughts might appear, for indeed hair is a perpetual symbol of thoughts in holy Scripture. Let them abandon the superfluous mane that causes another’s death … and in its place cultivate thick and long tresses of holy desires, of which, enamored, my sweetest Redeemer, turning to all his brides, can say, Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse, with one hair of thy neck.152 No other locks but the spiritual ones of holy thoughts have the power to wound and 150. Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, 44. 151. See for instance the discussion of Tarabotti’s use of metaphor in Tarabotti, Letters, 33–35. 152. Cf. Song of Songs 4:9 (Convent Paradise, 134n284).

Introduction 49 ensnare with loving knot the heart of the eternal Lover—not those made into ringlets with the iron or made blonde by artifice. Little does he notice the mane, which—vile excrement of the body (even if it sometimes, snaking around the candor of a face, seems to render it more lovely)—as much as it embellishes the visage, so it deforms the soul. (pp. 133–34) The insistent contrast in this passage between lowly physical hair and glorious spiritual locks suggests that Tarabotti felt the need to demonstrate at length—to others or to herself—that tonsure represented an advance for women. The drawnout metaphor, in which Tarabotti’s longing for the hair she has sacrificed is as palpable as her disparagement of it, bespeaks the tortured reasoning she uses to reconcile herself to what was clearly a deeply traumatic physical transformation. Such rhetorical tension—where Tarabotti’s desires seem to run counter to the ideas she espouses—is one of the most pervasive features of Convent Paradise. While Tarabotti celebrates the mortification of the senses that accompanies convent life (the coarse garments nuns wear, for example, or their rough beds), she frequently turns to contemplate the sensual pleasure that willing nuns experience on earth, and will experience in paradise through their relationship with Christ. She writes, for instance: I say that the true God of love does not neglect to embrace anyone whom he loves. Hence his dear beloved nuns are tightly grasped in the embraces of their adored and loving bridegroom amid the paradises of the cloister which I am describing, so that, reassured by his loving tenderness, not only can they boldly speak with him and embrace him, but they can daringly invite his kisses. Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.153 It is said that earthly lovers experience such delight in joining lips to lips, drawing one mouth near to another, and mixing the breath of one with the spirit of the other. If this is so, what will happen, then—my life, my delight—when, at the summit of your glory, I shall be permitted to kiss you, to embrace you, and to delight in you, not with the impure lasciviousness of an earthly body, but with the most lively feelings of the soul, which, separated from my earthliness, all spirit and all love, will not be impeded in actions by the weight and darkness of this earthly material? All willing and devout nuns yearn, along with me, to join themselves to you, most yearned-for consort of their souls, and before arriving at this perfect

153. Osculetur me osculo oris sui. Song of Songs 1:1. On biblical citations used in this edition, see Editors’ Note below.

50 Introduction happiness, with loving anxiousness they seek you in the uncomfortable little bed of religious life. (p. 127) Whereas Tarabotti’s description of tonsure seems designed to sublimate her longing for her shorn hair, here she seems most openly to express her desire—one that she says is shared with other nuns—for sensual fulfillment through union with her bridegroom. Although striking, such sensuality was not unusual in a devotional context, evident in the writings of female mystics and in visual representations of religious ecstasy.154 The “passionate eroticism” of the Song of Songs—the “central book of Seicento devotion,” as Kendrick terms it,155 from which Tarabotti frequently cites in such instances—was closely identified with female monastic chastity.156 Understood in the Christian tradition as an allegory for the mystical union between Christ and the Church,157 the text’s evocation of the relationship between a young woman and her lover had a particular resonance for nuns, who were taught to await the ecstasy of union with their celestial bridegroom; the tension of that expectancy pervades Tarabotti’s text.158 This sensuality is prominently featured in both Convent Paradise and Tarabotti’s other devotional work, Tears for … Regina Donati.

Sources for Convent Paradise Together with Tarabotti’s Baroque flourishes and the sensual mysticism she expresses in her longing for union with Christ as the bridegroom of nuns, the most notable feature of Tarabotti’s Convent Paradise is the text’s heavy reliance on citations taken from a range of authoritative sources: a typical page features at least three or four examples. Tarabotti often quotes passages in Latin, drawn from the Scriptural readings of the breviary, antiphones and prayers in the liturgy, and the monastic rites of passage. She also refers to exegetical works, such as the homilies of Saint John Chrysostom, as well as philosophical texts and vernacular literary 154. See, for example, Teresa of Avila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila, trans. David Lewis (New York: Cosimo, 2006), 226; see also Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculptural representation of her ecstasy in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. 155. As Kendrick notes, the Song of Songs offered a “wide range of allegorical tropes for earthly phenomena,” and provided “comfort in the often difficult personal search for Christ.” Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 166–67. 156. Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 169. 157. See Robert L. Kendrick, “Sonet voxtua in auribus meis: Song of Songs Exegesis and the Seventeenth Century Motet,” Schütz Jahrbuch 16 (1994): 99–118; see also E. A. Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Medieval Western Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990). 158. Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 167, notes that this interpretation of the Song of Songs as describing a union between a nun and her bridegroom Christ gained ground in the seventeenth century as the monastic population grew.

Introduction 51 sources. Tarabotti frequently cites Dante, Petrarch, and even Ovid, including The Art of Love, as well as the Metamorphoses and other works incongruous to the setting of the convent; Giovanni Battista Guarini’s romance Il Pastor Fido makes several appearances. Secular writers, particularly those writing in the vernacular, are prominently quoted in several of Tarabotti’s other works as well,159 suggesting her desire to position herself as a literary figure and not just a religious writer or chronicler of the convent. In Convent Paradise, however, religious citations outnumber secular references, in keeping with the image of pious authority Tarabotti wished to project. In some cases, Tarabotti offers a different interpretation of sources she uses in other works. In one notable instance, a religious story that Tarabotti uses elsewhere to highlight men’s violent treatment of women becomes in Convent Paradise an example of a man’s praiseworthy action.160 Tarabotti was likely working from a  combination of seventeenth-century translations, commentaries, and common repertories such as Ravisius Textor’s Officina, Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (Moral Emblems), Giovanni Pierio Valeriano’s Hieroglyphica, Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Philosophers, and Domenico Cavalca’s Lives of the Fathers.161 She also turned to compilations such as the Secondo libro delle prediche (Second Book of Sermons) of Cornelio Musso (1511–1574), a Friar Minor Conventual who was a well-known preacher.162 The use of such intermediary sources may account, in some instances, for discrepancies in Tarabotti’s citations as compared to original sources. Numerous errors in quoted passages occur in the Convent Paradise—a fact which aggrieved Tarabotti—and her publisher Oddoni apologizes for some of them in the letter to readers that precedes the text. However, just as Oddoni is careful to absolve the author of responsibility for such infelicities (which include an erroneous publication date on the frontispiece), so too should we be cautious in assessing the quality of Tarabotti’s Latin, or indeed the accuracy of her citations in general. As Letizia Panizza notes, the situation of texts and translations was “chaotic” in Tarabotti’s time: the Greek classics were generally cited in Latin translation, while much of the Latin canon was translated into Italian; competing commentaries, summaries, and translations abounded.163 159. For just a few among dozens of examples, see Tarabotti, Antisatira (1998), 59, 73; Tarabotti, Antisatire (2020), 67–68; and Tarabotti, La semplicità ingannata (2007), 174, 211, 274, 390. 160. See Convent Paradise, p. 182 and n520. 161. Joannes Ravisius Textor, Officina, sive theatrum histor. et poeticum (Basel: König, 1626); Cesare Ripa, Iconologia … divisa in tre libri … Ne i quali si esprimono varie imagini di virtù, vitij, passioni humane, affetti … (Venice: Presso Cristoforo Tomasini, 1645); Giovanni Pierio Valeriano, Ieroglifici, overo commentari delle occulte significationi de gli Egitij, e d’altre nationi (Venice: Giovanni Antonio and Giacomo de’ Franceschi, 1602); Diogenes Laertius, Delle vite de’ filosofi (Venice: Appresso Giovanni Battista Bertoni, 1606). See also Domenico Cavalca, Vita dei santi padri, ed. Carlo Delcorno, 2 vols. (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2009); and Bortot, “Introduzione,” 130. 162. Cornelio Musso, Il secondo libro delle prediche (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1571). 163. See Panizza, “Reader over Arcangela’s Shoulder,” 109.

52 Introduction The use of repertories and encyclopedic texts was characteristic of early modern literary culture.164 In employing such intermediary sources, therefore, Tarabotti used the same technique as her male literary counterparts and appealed to readers’ interest in works that compiled wide arrays of exempla.

Reception and Afterlife With its large format, engraving, and extensive paratext, Convent Paradise is not only the most elaborately produced of Tarabotti’s works, it also seems to have received the most editorial care. The margins contain regular and generally accurate glosses to help the reader identify Tarabotti’s sources, and the text displays fewer typographical errors and syntactical inconsistencies than Tarabotti’s other volumes, despite the errors in Latin. Indeed, Tarabotti closely followed the book’s production. As the work was being printed, for example, she wrote to complain to her agent Polani that the two folios she had received were riddled with errors: From that text from which, since it is entitled Paradise, I hoped for every consolation, I receive an inferno of pain. The errors are infinite and so conspicuous that they do not seem to be caused by the press but by the author. I feel myself dying of shame because in this way I can only attract the laughter of everyone, all the more so since as a woman it will appear to the masses as if I, like a monkey, wanted to imitate lettered men without having an idea of what I was saying. I therefore pray Your Lordship to take pity upon me and, if you do not have the patience to oversee the printing with the diligence that is needed, to tell me so in the spirit of confidence that I deserve, and I will be satisfied by your sincerity. I do not distrust your kindness but at times one cannot do what one would like; for this reason I pray you not to deny me the fruits of your candor in this affair, while I attest that I am compelled to have these two folios reprinted at my own cost since they are so distorted in their conceits, as Your Lordship will see. From your niece you can learn the truth and you can also gain assurance that important reasons motivate me to do this. If the expense were mine I swear to God that I would give everything to the devil; in any case a perpetual rage would trouble me more than the loss of a thousand scudi. (Letter 87, p. 136) Tarabotti’s intervention seems to have worked: the final product displays a remarkable degree of formal correctness. Nonetheless, she was not able to avoid 164. On this subject, see, for example, Paolo Cherchi, ed., Enciclopedismo e politica della riscrittura: Tommaso Garzoni (Pisa: Pacini, 1980).

Introduction 53 criticism for Convent Paradise—criticism which, as her letter to Polani shows, she had anticipated would be particularly harsh against her as a woman writer. Such reaction did not come immediately. Initially, male literati who had urged Tarabotti to publish the work—including her brother-in-law Pighetti and the friar and literary gossip Angelico Aprosio, with whom Tarabotti corresponded about drafts of the work—praised it effusively.165 But after Tarabotti published her more overtly polemical Antisatire the next year, these same writers turned on her and subjected Convent Paradise to vicious attacks. They began to circulate rumors that Tarabotti was not the true author of the work, claiming it was too different in style from the Antisatire to have come from the same pen. Tarabotti recounts to a correspondent that “these great writers who, having once urged me with a thousand adulations to expose my Convent Paradise to public light, now, with a perfidy that could only occur in men’s hearts, decry it and doubt that it could be the fruit of my labors.”166 In another letter, Tarabotti mocks such criticisms, writing: “Certainly these fellows must have little experience with writing, since they marvel that the style of the Paradise should be different from that of the Antisatire, whereby they show that they do not know that style must be varied according to the topic.”167 Tarabotti also ridiculed her critics by saying that their skepticism about her authorship was in fact backhanded praise: I take pride in the fact that these men say those compositions are not the product of my talents, which appear (more as a result of their envy than the merit of my pen) so perfect that one might doubt my sterile intellect produced them. Would to God they were so perfect and provoked these doubts caused by envy, which makes the things of others seem more perfect than they actually are.168

165. Angelico Aprosio (1607–81) was an Eremitani friar of the Augustinian order. Despite initially encouraging Tarabotti and praising her Convent Paradise, their relationship disintegrated after Aprosio composed and circulated The Mask Lifted (La maschera scoperta), a work that attacked the nun and threatened to reveal her as the true author of the quasi-anonymous Antisatire; Tarabotti was able to block the publication of Aprosio’s work. See Emilia Biga, Una polemica antifemminista del ’600: La “Maschera scoperta” di Angelico Aprosio (Ventimiglia: Civica Biblioteca Aprosiana, 1989). For a friendly exchange that preceded this break, see Tarabotti’s autograph letter to Aprosio dated 25 September 1642, at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Genova [BUG], E VI 22, c. 129, published by F. Medioli [with the erroneous date of September 24] as an appendix to “La scrittura forzata: Le lettere autografe di Arcangela Tarabotti,” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 32 [1996]: 149,n. 1. 166. Tarabotti, Letters, 73 (letter 17). 167. Tarabotti, Letters, 166 (letter 113). 168. Tarabotti, Letters, 74 (letter 17).

54 Introduction

Figure 14. Tarabotti’s autograph letter to Angelico Aprosio dated 25 September 1642, at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Genova [BUG], E VI 22, c. 129. With permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.

Introduction 55 In addition to these charges of plagiarism, Tarabotti explained that errors in the Latin passages, in particular, had become a lightning rod for criticism of Convent Paradise. Thus she defends herself in a letter to one of her antagonists, insisting that the fault lay mostly with the printer: I, too, realize that there are many errors in the Latin phrases in the Paradise, but the fault lies more with the press than with me, as the illustrious Signor Giovanni Polani and others can attest, knowing my pain at finding these unseemly mistakes.169 Criticism of these errors in Latin was particularly irksome to Tarabotti, who pointed out in her Antisatire that men deprived women of formal education and then mocked them for their ignorance. Tarabotti’s contemporaries, however, also lodged other complaints against the work, some of which she details in a letter to her correspondent and confidant Nicolas Bretel de Grémonville: They say that calling Alexander the Great incontinent in the Paradise was a very grave error, but I disagree, since, even if he used great continence with Darius’s wife and daughters, an ear of wheat does not make it summer, and in other instances he acted most incontinently, even going so far as to marry a maiden who was his subject. They criticize me for calling Dante a vain poet and for putting Saint Anthony in the place of Saint Paul. It is true that I might have created such an anachronism, but these condemnations have no substance and are characterized more by malice than rigor.170 These criticisms are striking not for their virulence but for their narrowness, quibbles regarding small details in a text that was some 80,000 words long. Such minor complaints aside, it is notable that the two most damning criticisms of the work— that it was plagiarized, and that it contained errors in its Latin—were complaints to which female writers were particularly vulnerable. Despite such attacks, Convent Paradise was the one work in Tarabotti’s corpus that engendered the most contemporary acclaim. In more recent memory, however, it has struggled for recognition. Perhaps because of its apparent conventionality, some modern literary historians, such as Tarabotti’s early biographer Giuseppe Portigliotti, characterize Convent Paradise as a reversal of the strong views she expresses in her other works, a simplistic view that may have been partially based on confusion about Convent Paradise’s publication date.171 Like 169. Tarabotti, Letters, 140–41 (letter 89). 170. Tarabotti, Letters, 153 (letter 99). 171. As mentioned in note 128, a printing error listed the year of publication on the title page as MDCLXIII [1663] rather than the correct year, 1643. Portigliotti reads Convent Paradise as the product

56 Introduction Portigliotti, early critics, including Emilio Cicogna and Benedetto Croce, sought to understand the work by dividing Tarabotti’s literary production neatly into two phases, pre- and post-conversion.172 While Francesca Medioli argues that Convent Paradise is coherent with Tarabotti’s other literary works,173 others see the work as either an ambiguous or else entirely feigned expression of Tarabotti’s conversion to a true religious calling. Emilio Zanette, for example, asserts that Convent Paradise was an intellectual exercise rather than a genuine expression of spiritual struggle. Yet another line of criticism—including Daniela de Bellis, Letizia Panizza, and Elissa B. Weaver—emphasizes that Tarabotti, in describing the joys of convent life, discussed an experience that was foreign to her.174 The most fruitful interpretation of Convent Paradise is one that sees the work in conversation with both Tarabotti’s overall literary career and her religious life: Tarabotti’s literary persona and the formulation of her social and political critique cannot be detached from her religious and spiritual experience, which emerges so clearly in Convent Paradise and which so deeply shaped her and informed her views. Convent Paradise itself is suffused with a spiritual fervor far exceeding that which would be required were she writing for solely strategic purposes. At the same time, however, this work is more closely linked to Tarabotti’s polemical works than has been previously understood. Tarabotti praises the religious life only for women who accept it. Nowhere does she condone coerced monachization—and in fact the condemnation of this practice, as a counterpoint to religious life freely chosen, pervades the text. Indeed, in the note to the reader that precedes Convent Paradise, Tarabotti explicitly states that her decision not to publish her most polemical denunciations of forced monachization, Convent Hell and Paternal Tyranny, stemmed not from her repudiation of the argument of those works but rather from her certainty that men would condemn them out of political—not religious—motivations:

of “the second period of Tarabotti’s life,” when the nun’s “rebellious spirit” had been transformed into “heartfelt peace.” Giuseppe Portigliotti, Penombre claustrali (Milan: Fratelli Treves Editori, 1930), 256. 172. See Emmanuele Antonio Cicogna, Delle iscrizioni veneziane raccolte ed illustrate (Venice: Orlandelli, 1824), 1:135; Benedetto Croce, “Appunti di letteratura secentesca inedita o rara,” La Critica 3, no. 6 (20 November 1929): 468–80; and Benedetto Croce, Nuovi saggi della letteratura italiana del Seicento (Bari: Laterza, 1931), 157. See also Antonio Niero, “Tarabotti (Arcangela), 1604–1652,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, ed. Marcel Viller, Ferdinand Cavallera, and Joseph de Guibert, vol. 15 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1991), 41–44. 173. Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale, 152. 174. Zanette, Suor Arcangela, 200–201; Daniela De Bellis, “Arcangela Tarabotti nella cultura veneziana del XVII secolo,” Annali del Dipartmento di Filosofia, Università di Firenze 6 (1990): 77–78; Panizza, “Volume Editor’s Introduction,” 9; Weaver, “Introduction,” in Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice, ed. Elissa B. Weaver (Ravenna: Longo, 2006), 9–10. Taking the other view, Bortot (“Introduzione,” 49–50) writes that Tarabotti’s “mea culpa … is probably an honest confession.”

Introduction 57 Were [these manuscripts] ever to see the light of day, I declare before God and my superiors that this would cause me extreme mortification, not because I believe they contain words that are scandalous or anything less than pious, but because I know men care much more about political matters than they do divine precepts. (p. 113) Despite Convent Paradise’s generally restrained tone, moreover, Tarabotti does engage at several points in her trademark gender polemics. These appear as frequent asides—she criticizes men’s lack of chastity in contrast to women’s virginity, for example (p. 215)—but are given particularly free rein at two points in the text. The first of these instances is prominently situated at the opening of Book I, where Tarabotti observes: God loves all creatures, but in particular Woman, and then Man, even if he does not deserve it. And in order to explain the nature of his love for that most ungrateful creature, it suffices to say that the eternal Creator loves him as only God could. (p. 115) By foregrounding gender polemics in her celebration of religious life, Tarabotti makes clear that not even the genre of devotional literature will entirely blunt her sharp pen (already evident in her manuscript works), and that none of the text that follows in any way diminishes her advocacy for women or her derision of men’s treachery. The second such instance, though situated less prominently, speaks even more strongly to Tarabotti’s unapologetic feminist religiosity. After duly praising Saint Benedict, founder of her order, Tarabotti makes it clear that it is instead female saints who stand at the center of her religious vision: Men should not strut about proudly if, as I describe women’s convents as paradise, I also speak about saints of the male sex. In fact, I would have no trouble forming a most perfect paradise by recalling how many extremely saintly women, through the perfect example of their angelic lives, have transformed their cells here on earth into celestial abodes, and the cloister into an Olympus. (p. 122) As in her polemical works, Tarabotti here assumes that an antagonistic male reader will try to distort the meaning of her text. Seeking to silence such criticism, Tarabotti uses the most inviolate of women to argue her case: Let masculine arrogance be silent, since if those who founded and regulated monastic orders were men, they learned from Mary, and no one else, the true precepts and rules for religious life. And who

58 Introduction will be so bold as to deny this? After the death of her son, she was in a way the first—before Saint Peter—to exercise the role of pontiff in the Christian Church, because everyone received teachings from her and her superhuman erudition, and learned how to live in accordance with divine will. Therefore, she was the mistress and teacher of all saints. (p. 123) The early modern period saw an enormous increase in Marian art and literature, which emphasized Mary’s role as Mother of all Christians, co-redemptrix with her son, and mediatrix, although these precepts were not accepted as dogma. Tarabotti herself, in La Semplicità ingannata, calls Mary the “cornerstone” of the Church.175 However, Tarabotti goes beyond even such devoted worship of Mary by naming her, rather than Peter, as the founder of the Catholic Church.176 Tarabotti continues on to say that female saints regularly outstrip their saintly brethren: If Benedict was a saint, and received favors from God that can be compared to those granted to Abraham, his sister Saint Scholastica greatly surpassed him, as he himself admits. She performed the miracle of making rain and bolts of lightning come down from heaven so that he would not leave in the middle of conversation with her, for he refused to bend to her entreaties to stay, because he did not want to remain outside his monastery.177 Female saints surpass men of virtue and religion not only qualitatively, in terms of the holiness and religiosity of their life, but also quantitatively, in their number. Sufficient testimony to this comes from Ursula, who led an entire army of eleven thousand virgins.178 (p. 123)

175. See Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, 146; see also La semplicità ingannata (2007), 378, for Mary as the “timone,” or helm, of the Church. 176. Later in the text, Tarabotti pursues a similar argument, saying that Mary transcends in virtues and merits all the saints of paradise (Convent Paradise, 199). On the veneration of Mary and her characterization in works by other early modern women see Haskins, Who is Mary?. 177. Saint Scholastica (ca. 480–543), the sister, perhaps twin, of Benedict of Nursia, held special importance for Tarabotti as the patron saint of Benedictine women’s communities. The well-known story about Scholastica mentioned by Tarabotti in this passage derives from Book 2, chapter 33 of the Dialogues, a work traditionally attributed to Pope Gregory the Great. 178. Saint Ursula was a fourth-century Christian martyr said to have embarked upon a pilgrimage along with 11,000 virginal handmaidens. All are said to have been killed by Huns in Cologne in approximately 383.

Introduction 59 In strains very similar to those in her polemic texts, Tarabotti insists on women’s spiritual superiority.179 However, she says that in Convent Paradise she cannot let her pen flow so freely in this direction: But since it is not proper to make polemics that might seem spiteful in heaven, I would like to repeat again that true nuns take inspiration from Abraham ….180 (p. 123) Tarabotti, in essence, acknowledges the limits imposed by devotional writing. But, as she suggests, she does this for reasons of genre and propriety, not because she has any doubts about her claims. A similar instance arises when Tarabotti briefly rails against fathers who, motivated by ambition and avarice, place their unwilling daughters in “convent hell” (Tarabotti goes so far as to equate these fathers with Lucifer himself)—but Tarabotti calls even this digression “untimely,” and indeed it contrasts markedly with the surrounding discussion that praises “true,” or willing, nuns.181 Tarabotti’s retreat from her customary polemics has led Convent Paradise to be considered separately from the rest of her oeuvre—or indeed not to be considered at all. The author herself, in her Letters, expresses her greatest reservations about the work: [O]ne who is not in love with God cannot speak of him. I was much better able to describe Paternal Tyranny and to erect the workings of Inferno than to describe the greatness of Paradise. (Letter 44, pp. 99–100) In more than a just profession of modesty (she does, after all, praise her creation of Paternal Tyranny and Inferno), Tarabotti here seems to express her basic unease with the devotional genre. It is an unease that we believe some modern readers share, and one of the reasons that, despite the rediscovery and dissemination in recent decades of early modern women’s literary works, their devotional texts—a 179. Some scholars are beginning to turn increased attention to this aspect of Tarabotti’s writing: see, for example, Joy A. Schroeder, “Envying Jepthah’s Daughter: Judges 11 in the Thought of Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–1652),” in  Strangely Familiar: Protofeminist Interpretations of Patriarchal Biblical Texts, ed. Nancy Calvert-Koyzis and Heather E. Weir (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 75–91. See also Joy A. Schroeder, “Tarabotti, Arcangela: 1604–1652,” in Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide, ed. Marion Ann Taylor and Agnes Choi (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012), 491–93. 180. That is, just as Abraham was given a new name to symbolize that he had been called to a new relationship with God (Genesis 17:5), so too do nuns assume new names in the convent. 181. See p. 199.

60 Introduction significant part of their production—still tend to attract less critical attention.182 This edition of Convent Paradise aims, therefore, not only to add to our understanding of Tarabotti’s work, but also to reappraise and restore the importance of the devotional genre in early modern women’s writing. Tarabotti’s own example, in which she launched her public literary career with the high-profile publication of a devotional work, shows how the genre could be utilized to achieve very worldly goals. This is the paradox at the center of Convent Paradise, a text that praises strict monastic cloister but at the same time grants Tarabotti an entreé to the outside world. Yet it also serves as a conduit in the other direction, providing a window on Tarabotti’s daily life as a nun, however unwilling, in the convent of Sant’Anna. At the threshold between these two worlds, Convent Paradise represents Tarabotti’s liminal position between secular and sacred space, as she uses this reflection on her religious devotion as a springboard to literary fame.

Editors’ Note Our goal in translating Convent Paradise has been to produce a volume that conveys the distinctive tone and style of Tarabotti’s original prose while remaining thoroughly readable to a modern, English-speaking audience. Tarabotti’s writing displays the intricate structures, imagery, and metaphors typical of the Baroque period, which we have sought to maintain when these do not impede readability. Throughout the translation, succinct explanatory notes accompany Tarabotti’s text, with the most detailed notes appearing at first mention of people, works, and important episodes. Religious references that may be obscure to educated English-speaking readers are explained. For Tarabotti’s frequent citations from biblical, philosophical, and literary texts, we provide the original sources when possible, even though it is probable that she worked from one or more general repertories, and, for her biblical citations, that she relied on her memory of liturgy and of the breviary. For sources that she cites directly, we provide reference to modern editions where possible. For indirect references and allusions where it is unclear whether Tarabotti had a specific work in mind, we suggest possible authors and titles, but do not reference specific editions. Many of the quotations that Tarabotti includes in Convent Paradise are in Latin. We translate all Latin quotations into English in the text—using published translations where available—and provide her original Latin citation in the notes. Since Tarabotti speaks frequently in her Letters about the criticisms she receives for the errors in her Latin in Convent Paradise, we reproduce in the footnotes the 182. An encouraging development is the multi-year transnational research project, “The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden: Women, Politics, and Reform in Renaissance Italy,” directed by Unn Falkeid with Anna Wainwright. As part of this project, Ray and Westwater are studying Tarabotti in relation to larger trends in devotional literature in the Counter-Reformation.

Introduction 61 quotations as they appear in her text. When Tarabotti’s biblical quotations match the Vulgate text precisely, we simply provide the book and verse; if there is slight variation from the Vulgate we indicate this in the note by placing a “cf.” before the book and verse cited. If Tarabotti’s verse differs significantly from the Vulgate, we provide both versions. For English translations of biblical passages, we rely on the six-volume Douay-Rheims Bible edited by Swift Edgar and Angela M. Kinney (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010–13), also available at . We chose to use this translation—produced in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and revised in the mid-eighteenth century—to provide a contrast between biblical quotations and the contemporary English of the rest of the text, much as in Tarabotti’s original text, where biblical passages quoted in Latin were distinguished from the surrounding Italian text. All quotations are set in italics. For quotations originally in the vernacular, we likewise provide the original version—exactly as it appears in Tarabotti’s text—in the footnote, noting any variation from the root text. Translations of Italian and Latin quotations are ours when no source is listed; in some cases, even where English translations exist, we have chosen to provide our own translation to better render the citation in context. For the vernacular poetry by Tarabotti’s contemporaries that accompanies Convent Paradise, we have provided the complete text in the original Italian, followed by our prose translation in English. This poetic paratext has been lightly edited for clarity. The encomiastic Latin composition that precedes Tarabotti’s text has been transcribed without any intervention or correction in order to preserve any uncertainties in grammar and spelling. The 1643 edition of Convent Paradise was accompanied by a list of errata. In most cases we have corrected Tarabotti’s text in accordance with the errata, but in cases where the change seems to introduce an error, we preserve what we believe to have been Tarabotti’s original text (for example, sexum for senum: see note 481). We flag such instances in the footnotes, and have corrected the text in cases of other obvious errors.

Figure 15. Frontispiece from Convent Paradise, executed by Giacomo Pecini (Piccini) (ca. 1617–1669), after a design by Francesco Ruschi (1610–1661). With the permission of the Comune di Padova—Assessorato alla Cultura.

Figure 16. Title page, Convent Paradise. The work was actually published in 1643; the error in the publication date was the result of the transposition of two Roman numerals. With the permission of the Comune di Padova— Assessorato alla Cultura.

CONVENT PARADISE IN THREE BOOKS WITH A SOLILOQUY TO GOD BY ARCANGELA TARABOTTI. Dedicated to the Most Eminent and Reverend FEDERICO CORNER CARDINAL OF THE HOLY CHURCH, Patriarch of Venice and Primate of Dalmatia. Venice, 1663 Guglielmo Oddoni. With the Permission of the Authorities [Superiori] and Privilege.

Paratext: Dedication, Letters, and Poems Arcangela Tarabotti to Federico Corner1 Most Eminent and Reverend Signor: The ancient Gentiles used to make sacrifices to the sun. Having come to idolize the merit of Your Eminence, who, like a sun in the theater of the Holy Church, shines with the most radiant beams of charity, religion, and every other necessary virtue, I consecrate to you, my tutelary deity, Convent Paradise, which, if nothing else, will at least render itself worthy of appearing before your eyes because it contains within itself all the delights sent by the Celestial Monarch to be enjoyed down here on earth among mortals. Therefore, within Your Eminence’s most generous breast—upon which the integrity of your ways and the crimson of your cardinal vestments studded with the rubies of Christ’s blood have sculpted a true portrait of God—I do not know how I could doubt that I would find a kindness equal to those worthy qualities that will lead you to the most holy throne of Peter. Do not scorn, I beg you, this prediction of mine because it comes from a woman, for besides being founded upon the greatness of your infinite merit, it has been revealed to me by those three crowned lions that in the coat of arms of your most noble house foretell a triple reign. Your most ancient house is destined for scepters and crowns in both the ecclesiastical and secular realms, set in motion not by fortune but by the secret will of God, who foresaw the sublime qualities and extraordinary gifts of the one who must resemble him on earth. Certainly this republic—indeed the whole world—has had occasion to recognize that it can produce personages worthy of princedoms, for the dogeship of Your Eminence’s most serene father, who added the magnanimity of his family to the greatness of the Venetian lion, made it known that the heroic Cornaro family is truly born to rule, if within their very surname the word “crown” is inscribed.2 Here I would describe how riches copiously gild the splendors of your greatness, but because these are only vile excrement of the earth, unworthy of sharing in your glory, I feel myself obliged instead to recall how the candor of your soul and the purity of your life surpass the gleam of silver and the beauty of gold; or rather, to tell how they are dispensed to your subjects and servants with such splendid generosity that they shall consecrate your name to immortal fame. Therefore under the protection of Your Eminence, who is the epitome of 1. Cardinal Federico Corner (Cornaro) (1579–1653), to whom Tarabotti dedicates Convent Paradise; see the Introduction, p. 20n50. 2. Tarabotti plays on the similarity between the Italian corona, or crown, and the name Cornaro, which was the common Italianized version of the Venetian Corner family name.

67

68 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI all perfection, the distillation of all the goodness and happiness found in Convent Paradise comes to take shelter. Therefore, most humbly kneeling before you, I await that most fortunate time when it shall be possible for me to adore you, who will have ascended to that sublime height that will make you superior to all men, and just inferior to my bridegroom, from whom I pray for Your Eminence every pinnacle of fortune. In Venice, from the convent of Sant’Anna, 15 February 1643, Your most reverend Eminence’s most humble and devoted servant, Arcangela Tarabotti

Guglielmo Oddoni3 to the Reader Reader, excuse with your excessive kindness the failings of our trade. Those who try to print without errors will sooner see a night without darkness. If the author had been able to be present for the printing, there would not have been certain errors in the Latin quotations. People of discernment, however, never attribute such shortcomings to the author. Please enjoy, oh reader, this most gracious composition, perfect in all its parts, but admirable for having issued forth from those hands that ordinarily attend more to the work of Arachne than to the teachings of Pallas.4 From the same most celebrated pen you may await in short order other, perhaps more provocative, compositions, much more in keeping with the taste of our time. I hope that Paternal Tyranny will be the first. In the meantime, be well, for I will spare neither effort nor expense to satisfy your curiosity.

3. Guglielmo Oddoni, the publisher of Tarabotti’s Convent Paradise, was active in Venice from 1636 to 1654; see the Introduction, pp. 41–42. 4. That is, as a woman, Tarabotti would ordinarily be expected to attend to domestic chores, symbolized by Arachne, the great weaver of mythology. Instead,Tarabotti has entered the realm of men as an author and devotee of Pallas, or Athena, goddess of wisdom and learning. Cf. the second poem by Signor F.D. (page 73, below), which asks: “Is this a Muse, or a new Pallas / to noble studies turned, / a lover of knowledge?” See also note 461. Nevertheless, the importance of women’s work in weaving and spinning will be a recurring theme in Convent Paradise.

Convent Paradise 69

Cavalier Fra’ Ciro di Pers,5 in the name of the author, to the most eminent Signor Cardinal Corner O gran germe d’eroe ch’a’ giorni nostri trasportano il roman sangue vetusto, tu di gran fregi e di gran merti onusto, accresci onor del Vaticano agli ostri. Chi stringe il PARADISO in brevi chiostri non sa stringer tue lodi in foglio angusto. O qual giorno promette aureo e augusto, quella purpurea aurora, onde t’inostri! Del Paradiso mio serto di fiori la tua fronte non sdegni, ancorché nata di tre corone a sostener gli onori. E de l’un Paradiso in sù l’entrata il sacro nome de l’eroe si adori, cui la chiave de l’altro un dì fia data. Oh great progeny of heroes, who in our time  /  continue the ancient Roman bloodline, / you, cloaked with great adornment and great merit,  /  increase the honor of the scarlet Vatican mantle. // She who captures PARADISE in the narrow cloisters / cannot capture your praise on a brief page. / Oh what golden and noble day is promised / by the crimson dawn with which you are adorned! / May my garland of flowers from Paradise / not be disdained by your temples, since you were born / of three crowns to uphold such honor. // And upon the entrance of one Paradise, / let us adore the sacred name of the hero / who one day will hold the key to the other.6

5. Ciro di Pers (1599–1663), a well-known Baroque poet. See the Introduction, pp. 27–28 and 43. This sonnet was later included in his Poesie del Cavalier Fra Ciro di Pers (Venice: Appresso Steffano Curti, 1675), 49, with the order of the verses in the second stanza transposed.  6. Like Tarabotti, Ciro di Pers appears to suggest that Corner will one day become pope. The three crowned lions on the Corner coat of arms correspond to the triple crown on the papal coat of arms, representing the pope’s three functions as pastor, teacher, and priest. Also, Corner will “one day hold the key” to Paradise—i.e., the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven given to Saint Peter, which dominate the papal coat of arms.

70 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI

Giacomo Pighetti7 to Arcangela Tarabotti Iure, ac merito Archangela Tarabottia. Sacrarum virginum decus angelico te nomine nuncupavere mortales. Tu namquam ad feminei sexus gloriam nata Angelico tuo spiritu terrenum orbem celesti beas Paradiso. Tuus mehercule hic Paradisus divino igne usque adeo est refertus, ut eius custodiendi ergo Christianam non Vestalem Virginem caelitus datam viri etiam sapientes existimaverint. Purissimum quo uteris calamum ab aliquo angelo suis ex alis tibi fuisse tributum verè dixerim. Tuæ paginæ nondum impuris attamentis fedatæ nativum nusquam amittunt candorem, immo nitidissimi Styli, argenteæquae dictionis exornatæ candore evadunt feliciter candidiores tibi igitur musarum gratiæ quales quales referent gratias sacrarum virginum chori tanto insigniti splendore? Macte Virgo lectissima typos gemmeis tuis lucubrationibus gloriose ditare perge; perennem liquidem tibi nominis celebritatem, multisque scriptoribus palmam erepturam syncera, neque affinitate empta fide polliceor. Jacobus Pighettus patritius Bergomas sororius addictissimus. By right and deservedly, / Arcangela Tarabotti, / glory of holy virgins, / mortals have bestowed upon you / an angelic name. // For indeed, born to the glory of the female sex, / By your angelic spirit you bless the terrestrial orb with a celestial Paradise. / Indeed, this Paradise of yours is so alight with a divine fire, / that wise people possessed by it might have considered you / not a vestal virgin but a Christian woman, divinely given. // Truly I might have said a tribute should be made to you / since you use the purest quill from an angel’s wings. / Your pages, not yet stained with foul ink, never lose their native purity; / what is more, by means of your shining pen and silvery speech adorned with purity, / they happily emerge purer still. // What kinds of graces do the choirs of holy virgins, / distinguished with such splendor, give / to you by the grace of the muses? // Most elect Virgin Mother, / continue to gloriously enrich these characters with your rare gems; / by 7. Giacomo Pighetti, Tarabotti’s brother-in-law; see the Introduction, p. 39n119.

Convent Paradise 71 means of your perpetual tears she will seize  /  the palm for you from many illustrious writers; / I promise this sincerely, not by dint of blood affinity. // Virgin, honored as the most chosen, / Proceed gloriously to enrich the presses / with your glittering compositions written in the depth of night;  /  accordingly, I promise in sincere  /  faith, not bought through familial ties,  /  everlasting fame for your name and the palm of victory, / now ready to be snatched away from many other writers. / Giacomo Pighetti, patrician of Bergamo, most dedicated brother-in-law.

Giovan Francesco Loredan8 to the Most Illustrious Giovanni Polani9 I have received the book sent to me by your most illustrious Lordship with the same indebtedness with which one receives heaven’s graces, and I looked over it with the same marvel with which one regards the work of angels. At first sight I truly believed it to be an earthly paradise, for the branches of its erudition, the fronds of its phrasing, the flowers of its ideas, the fruits of its learning, combined with a sweetness of style, a harmony of expression and a multiplicity of delights, required me to consider it such; but knowing it to be a Convent Paradise, I have declared it divine, because women who take vows to become brides of Christ shed their earthly being. I would like to praise it, but I would not know how to say anything that was not prejudicial, since in venerating superhuman greatness, one can only take from the heart as much as the tongue permits. And moreover, all that I might say about it would be less than what could be said. Great things are made greater by silence and (as the gymnosophists celebrated the sun)10 with a finger in front of the mouth. We know that an angel could not help but work marvels, and that no marvels could issue from the hands of an angel except those from paradise. We know that Convent Paradise exceeds all other paradises in nobility, because those had inhabitants contaminated by sin, whereas no one is allowed in this one who is not immaculate and irreproachable. Let the miseries of humanity be consoled, therefore, for even this world has its paradises. Let the heavens rejoice, for if on other occasions angels tried to destroy paradise by emptying it, now an angel is creating as many paradises as there 8. Giovan Francesco Loredan (Loredano) (1607–1661), an influential literary figure and co-founder of the Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti; see the Introduction, pp. 37n110 and 39n120. 9. Giovanni Polani (d. before 1654), the uncle of Tarabotti’s convent friend Betta Polani, served as an intermediary for Tarabotti as she sought to bring Convent Paradise to press; see the Introduction, p. 43n137 . 10. Pliny, in Naturalis historiae, reports that the gymnosophists, philosophers and wise men of ancient India, used to stay in one position from morning till night with their eyes fixed on the sun. Tarabotti makes a similar reference in her letters. See Tarabotti, Letters Familiar and Formal, ed. Ray and Westwater, 258n660.

72 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI are convents. Therefore let Donna Arcangela glory, for if earthly paradise, a work issued from the hands of God, is at present far from being enjoyed by mankind, and perhaps even (according to some) tainted and destroyed, her Paradise, by contrast, will create a constant scene of marvels in the eyes of the immaculate, and will continue to be admired and admirable for the eternity of the ages. For now, may Your most illustrious Lordship pardon me if I do not add anything further, for the glories of a Paradise oblige amazement rather than praise.

By the Most Illustrious Signor F.D.11 In se stessa perfetta, unica, eterna d’immenso ben là su reggia risplende, lume, cui mortal nube aggrava e offende, si abbaglia sì ch’in lei nulla s’interna. Ma qui dove natura i mali alterna, qual Empireo novello a noi discende? Com’ogni cor più freddo arde e s’acende ove avien che bearsi in lui discerna? Cert’è dell’altro almeno vivace imago, qui pur spirano ancor semplici menti; qui di gioire il Sommo Amante è vago. Deh se pur sete voi Tantali ardenti, a render sempre il bel desio qui pago, che più tardate, O stolti, O egri viventi? Perfect in itself, unique, eternal, / the regal palace gleams with boundless good, / its light, threatened and insulted by mortal clouds,  /  so dazzling that nothing can obscure it. // But here, where Nature’s trials are unceasing, / what new Empyrean to us descends?12  /  How greatly does even the coldest heart burn, become inflamed, / where, within itself, it feels now blessed? // This one a living image of the other; / here too pure minds still breathe the air, / here the Supreme Lover longs the joy to share. // Oh, since you are but a thirsting Tantalus,  /  why still delay fulfilling heaven’s joy here below, / oh fools, weak mortals all?

11. Possibly Ferdinando Donno di Manduria (1591–1649?), a member of the Accademia degli Incogniti; see the Introduction. p. 43. 12. That is, Convent Paradise.

Convent Paradise 73

By the Most Illustrious Signor F.D.13 Leggo, e in leggendo or qual di rupe immota prendo per lo stupor forma e sembiante? O carte, O inchiostri, O non espressi inante pensiero, O mente al cieco mondo ignota! È Musa questa, o a’ studi almi devota novella Palla, o intelligenza amante? Qual forza occulta e qual virtù prestante, quasi magica sia, spira ogni nota? Mio cor, ché più fra te dubbio e diviso? Pur troppo, ahi troppo, infra gli orrori omai di morte, errasti tu vinto e conquiso. Già nova luce a te dissera i rai, già folgorando s’apre il PARADISO. Ah, ben reprobo sei s’a lui non vai. I read, and reading, do I not now take / in my amazement form and semblance of a stone? / Oh pages, oh ink, oh thoughts never before expressed, / oh intellect yet unknown to this blind world! // Is this a Muse, or a new Pallas  /  to noble studies turned,  /  a lover of knowledge? // What hidden power and compelling virtue, / like unto magic, infuse her every line? // My heart—why still doubtful and divided within? / Alas, overcome and vanquished, you have wandered / long now amid the horrors of death. // Now a new light bathes you in its rays, // now dazzling PARADISE opens to you. / Ah, truly you are beneath contempt if you do not run to it!]

13. See note 11 above.

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By Signor Cavalier Fra’ Ciro di Pers14 In vano a rintracciar dove s’asconda il Terren Paradiso oggi l’umano ingegno errante si affattica, e ’n vano cerca ove il Tigre, ove l’Eufrate inonda. D’Arcangela celeste arte faconda or qui lo spiega a noi (lungi, O profano!); Tolto agli oltraggi di lasciva mano di puri fior, di puri frutti abbonda. Spira divina odore ogni sua foglia, ch’a celeste desio desta la mente, e da cura volgar l’anima spoglia. Non v’entri unghia rapace, invido dente, ch’ancor qui stassi a custodi la soglia un cherubin del Vaticano ardente. Vainly seeking to discover where  /  earthly paradise is hidden, these days  /  the human mind labors misguidedly and vainly / seeks it in those lands bathed / by the Tigris, by the Euphrates. // The eloquent skill of the heavenly Arcangela / now reveals it to us here / (take your distance, unbeliever!); / removed from the insults of the lascivious hand, / it abounds in pure flowers, in pure fruits. // Each one of its leaves exudes a divine fragrance / that awakens the mind to heavenly desire / and strips the soul of earthly cares. // Let no rapacious claw or envious tooth invade this place, / for an ardent cherub of the Vatican / still stands here to guard the threshold.

14. See note 5 above.

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By the Most Noble Signora Lucrezia Marinella15 Correte, O figlie, O voi saggie donzelle, con cor placido e pio, con dolce viso. A goder novo in terra un paradiso; a farvi in man di Dio lucenti stelle. Né siate al vostro ben crude e rubelle. Là non tigre o leon rende conquiso virginal petto, ma perpetuo riso v’invita a farvi di Dio spose e ancelle. ARCANGELA, il tuo nome illustre intorno veggio volar pien d’immortali onori, e dove sorge e dove cade il giorno; Perché con sensi e detti alti e sonori un Paradiso fai di laude adorno, tra gaudio eterno e sempiterni amori. Run, oh daughters, oh you wise maidens, / with placid and pious heart, with sweet visage, / to delight in a new paradise on earth; / to make yourselves shining stars in the hand of God. // Do not be harsh and rebellious toward your own wellbeing. / There, neither tiger nor lion conquers the / virginal heart, but perpetual joy / invites you to become brides and handmaidens of God. // ARCANGELA, I see soar your illustrious name / replete with eternal honors, / where the sun rises and where it sets; // for with elevated and resounding thoughts and words / you embellish a Paradise with praise / amid eternal rejoicing and everlasting love.

15. The Venetian writer and poet Lucrezia Marinella (1573–1653); see the Introduction, pp. 36–39.

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By an Unnamed Woman16 Vibrano in alto stile i morti inchiostri fiamme di eterno amor, sensi di vita. Da’ caratteri tuoi l’alma è rapita, s’aperto in loro il PARADISO mostri. Ben pronti a seguir fian gli affetti nostri de la tua penna il vol, ch’al canto unita, dolcemente a volar teco n’invita e imparadisa a Dio sacrati i chiostri. Diè chi sovrasta a l’uno e a l’altro impero (de’ PARADISI il custodir diviso), la spada al cherubin, le chiavi a Piero. Ma a te di cangiar diede il pianto in riso (principessa degli angioli) e l’impero d’aprir ne’ sacri chiostri il PARADISO. With high style the lifeless ink pulses  /  with flames of eternal love, sensations of life.  /  The soul is enraptured by your words  /  when you reveal that through them, PARADISE is opened. // Our affections are most ready to follow / the flight of your pen, which united with song / sweetly invites us to soar with you / and renders the holy cloisters a paradise to God. // The one who rules the one and the other empire / (since the guardianship of the PARADISES is divided) / gave the sword to the cherub, the keys to Peter. // But to you, princess of the angels, he gave / the ability to turn tears to joy, and the power / to open a PARADISE amid the holy cloisters.

16. On the identity of this unnamed female contributor, see the Introduction, p. 43n142.

Convent Paradise 77

Francesco Carmeni17 to Signora Donna Arcangela Tarabotti for her Convent Paradise Taccian de la tua penna omai gl’inchiostri, Arcangela di ciel, sposa di Cristo, già l’universo a le tue voci ha visto, d’eloquenza apparir stupori e mostri, Che se non taci al tuo parlar facondo tutto il femineo stuol seguace i’ miro correr fra chiostri a ricercar l’Empiro, e impoverir di sue bellezze il mondo. Non più da trecce d’oro, o sen d’argento sentiremo arrichir le nostre pene, né un fuggitivo e sospirato bene sarà de’ nostri incendi esca al tormento. D’un guardo non più, no, d’un cenno o riso a lo splendore, al balenar vezzoso, l’ingannato desio, pazzo amoroso, giurerà le lusinghe un Paradiso. Più non istudierà ne’ specchi amati la donnesca follia superbe prove per fulminar al paragon di Giove saettando in altrui fochi adorati, Ma con più saggia e onorata cura, chiusa ogni donna in solitaria cella, solo agli occhi divini ornata e bella sarà contro a se stessa acerba e dura. Ivi sotto al rigor di roze spoglie, fia che ’l morbido sen maceri e ’l fianco, che nell’eterno immacolato e bianco mostra la purità ch’interna accoglie. La volontaria sferza e il cilizio, le pie preghiere e i diguini casti, 17. Francesco Carmeni (fl. mid-17th century) was a member of the Accademia degli Incogniti; see the Introduction, p. 43n141.

78 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI saranno i suoi diletti e i suoi pasti ch’uccideranno infra l’inopie il vizio. Vanti questi saran de la tua voce, che di Giesù non solo ai cor seguaci ma potria d’Asia in su le rive ai Traci fare abbracciar del tuo Signore la Croce. Forse da l’ali ai seraffini ardenti hai sterpata la penna onde tu scrivi, poiché sí dolci, innamorati e vivi sono de le tue carte i puri accenti. Intrecciati in corone, amici allori, ad Arcangela il crin tosto cingete, più da le tempie sue che non darete sete per ottener glorie e onori. Ma no. Lungi da lei, poich’altro serto, che di terreno allor merto a le chiome s’ha d’Arcangelo il cor non men che ’l nome, s’ha d’Arcangelo mente e penna e merto. Coronatela voi, stelle del cielo, con luminosi e meritati omaggi, benché a lei molto più dei vostri raggi sian graditi gli orror di fosco velo. Let the ink of your pen cease to flow,  /  Arcangela of the heavens, bride of Christ; / the universe has now seen wonders and marvels appear / through your eloquent words. // For if you do not cease your flowing discourse, / I will see flocks of your female followers / running to the cloisters to seek the Empyrean, / and the world impoverished of beauty. // No longer will we find our sufferings / enriched by golden braids or gleaming bosoms; / nor will a stolen and yearned for good be / tinder for the torment of our ardent flames. // No more gazing, no, no gestures, or pleasure  /  in splendor, in charming appearance;  /  deceptive desire, that foolish lover, / will swear these yearnings are Paradise. // No longer will womanly folly seek / in beloved mirrors prideful evidence, / in order to strike / like Jove by shooting / arrows at the adored hearts of others; // but with wiser and more honorable concerns / each woman, enclosed in a solitary cell, / adorned and beautiful only for divine eyes, / will be harsh against herself, and hard. // There

Convent Paradise 79 beneath the discomforts of rough cloth / may her soft breast and flank wither, / for with her fair and immaculate aspect, / she shows the purity she harbors within. // The voluntary lashes and hair shirt,  /  the pious prayers and chaste fasts,  /  will be her delights and her sustenance  /  that amidst want will kill vice. // These will be boasts of your voice: / that not only will it cause loyal hearts to embrace Jesus, / but the cross of your Lord will also be embraced / from Asia to the banks of Thrace. // Perhaps you plucked the quill with which you write / from the wings of ardent Seraphs, / since the pure notes of your pages are / so sweet, loving and alive. // Friendly laurels, hasten to encircle the locks / of Arcangela with a braided crown; / you could cause no greater thirst / for glory and honor than from her temples. // But no! Keep away from her, for her brow / deserves a wreath other than earthly laurels, / for she possesses the heart of an Archangel no less than the name, / for she possesses the mind of an archangel, and the pen, and worth. // Crown her, stars of heaven, / with luminous and deserving praise, / although she much prefers the darkness / of her gloomy veil to your rays.

Soliloquy to God My God and my Lord, prostrate at your most holy feet, I pledge before your divine tribunal that the only aim of my pen is to serve you devoutly. Since I lack understanding and knowledge, I fear that rather than serving you, the subject of all my thoughts, I will cause the scandal and rumors that are so typical of men. I implore you, oh beloved Bridegroom, to aid me in my weakness, so that the catholic minds of those who read this discourse will not be scandalized by human frailty but rather enlightened by your mercy. You, to whom All things are naked and open,18 penetrate every thought with your gaze, even though a man’s breast is not made of crystal, as that ancient philosopher vainly wished.19 Hence, my intention in writing these words—stripped of any ill will and clothed in a most ardent desire to help Christian souls—are also clear to you. If my boldness is too great, forgive me. Experience has already taught me that you are much more inclined to be a Father of mercy than a God of vengeance.20 Truly, my Lord, I am amazed merely to think how extremely patient you are. When I was living in sin, you could have caught me red-handed, like a thief, and thrown me into the chasms of hell, but you preferred—oh true Savior of my soul—to suspend the bolts of your wrath and instead warn me with illness and suffering that gave me a clear sign of your love, almost as if I deserved to be among those of whom you yourself say, Such as I love, I rebuke and chastise.21 Being so benevolent, my Savior, you add to such great and manifold kindnesses the grace not to scorn my humble efforts to reveal the immense favors you have granted me. Allow me to recount how you deigned to wake me from the lethargy in which I lay drowsy—recognizing neither the worth of religion nor the duty of a true nun and disdaining your harsh judgment—almost like those lunatics of whom your royal prophet sang, The fool has said in his heart: there is no God.22 Oh my God and Lord: when Moses stopped for a brief moment on Mount Sinai to receive the law from Your Majesty, the Jewish people—annoyed by the 18. omnia nuda, et aperta sunt. Cf. Hebrews 4:13: omnia autem nuda et aperta sunt oculis eius (all things are naked and open to his eyes). 19. This variation on the topos of the window onto the heart was widely associated with Socrates, probably via Vitruvius. See Mario Andrea Rigoni, “La finestra aperta nel cuore,” Lettere italiane 26, no. 4 (1974): 434–58. Tarabotti may have also known it through its attribution to Giambattista Marino’s Dicerie sacre (Turin: Luigi Pizzamiglio, 1614), 6r, which states: “Socrate bramava il petto di cristallo, perché di fuora trasparesse il cuore” (Socrates yearned for his breast to be made of crystal, so that his heart might be visible from the outside). 20. Pater misericordiarum. Cf. 2 Corinthians 1:3. Deus ultionum. Cf. Psalms 93:1. 21. Quos amo, arguo, corrigo e castigo. Cf. Revelation 3:19. 22. Dixit insipiens in corde suo non est Deus. Cf. Psalms 13:1. The “royal prophet” is King David, who is referred to in both the “Soliloquy” and Convent Paradise as the “royal lyricist,” “royal psalmist,” etc.

81

82 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI delay—made a golden calf and worshipped it. Vexed by this, you cried to your captain, Let me alone, that my wrath may be kindled against them,23 so that, for this sin alone, almost thirty-three thousand were killed. What punishments did I deserve, since the idols I worshipped were as numerous as the vanities cluttering my mind? How greatly, oh how greatly did the mercies with which you privileged me, a miserable sinner, surpass those with which you favored your chosen people? The graces you have so liberally shared with me are quite beyond usual graces. You released that people from servitude to Pharaoh, but you have freed me from the slavery to the devil contracted through original sin, leading me not through the Red Sea with dry feet like the Jews, but through the divine waters of holy baptism and through the precious sea of your blood. If manna from heaven showered down upon them, graces flooded down upon me when in the immaculate womb of the most blessed Virgin, the word was made flesh.24 The leader of the Jews made water gush forth from a stone for them, but no less have I seen rivers of salutary waters flow from your side for my benefit, you who are the true font and stone of salvation. And the rock was Christ.25 To favor such an ungrateful people you drowned powerful Pharaoh in the sea and then vanquished the kings of Palestine, filling all the nearby people with terror,26 whereas to provide for the salvation of my most ungrateful soul you drowned all of my sins in the red sea of your blood. You permitted my many insults to you to deform the beauty of the heavenly face about which divine music had already proclaimed, Thou art beautiful above the sons of men.27 Likewise, the angels, when they saw you so ragged and mistreated on account of love for me, cried and exclaimed, Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra?28 And they were right, because that face, on whom the angels desire to look,29 was barely recognized by his bride,30 who, all dazed with painful confusion, said with Jeremiah: How is the gold become dim, the finest colour is changed.31 23. Dimitte me, ut irascatur furor meus. Cf. Exodus 32:10. 24. Verbum caro facto est. Cf. John 1:14. “Manna from heaven” was given by God to the Israelites to sustain them in the desert; see Exodus 16. Tarabotti makes other references to this episode in the text. 25. Petra autem erat Christus. Cf. 1 Corinthians 10:4. 26. A reference to Exodus 15:1–21, which describes the drowning of the Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea (the geographical counterpoint to the “red sea” of Christ’s blood). Exodus 15:14 refers to the inhabitants of Philisthiim (Palestine). 27. Speciosus forma prae filiis hominum. Cf. Psalms 44:3. 28. Quis est iste, qui venit de Edom, tinctis vestibus de Bosdra? Cf. Isaiah 63:1. In Tarabotti’s text, “Bosdra” is an error for “Bosra,” [“Bozrah”], located in what is now Jordan. See also note 107. 29. [in] quem desiderant Angeli prospicere. Cf. 1 Peter 1:12. In Tarabotti’s text the preposition “in” is omitted. 30. Tarabotti refers to herself. 31. Quomodo obscuratum est aurum, mutatus est color optimus. Cf. Lamentations 4:1.

Convent Paradise 83 To conclude: if you gave the Jews the promised land out of kindness alone, after they had endured the suffering they deserved for their sins, I was much luckier. After suffering a few brief travails, I was assured that I had been given not a promised land, but the heaven promised me. You, you, oh most merciful and loving Christ, you do not treat sinners with the harsh methods used by your Moses to punish offences. Instead, taking upon yourself even the sins of those who crucify you and suffering for my failings, when you rose to the tribunal of the most holy cross you maintained my judgment and cause on the throne.32 And still I was wicked, committing so many wrongs and disgraces against your innocence, forgetting that if you didn’t save this soul, there would be no appeal to the sentence of eternal death. I would be sentenced without reprieve to eternal death, and since I had enslaved myself to hell, I entirely deserved to be condemned for all eternity to the chasms of infinite suffering which my persistent errors indeed merited. Ah, infinite kindness, if I fully consider my inconstancy, I can truly exclaim, along with despairing Cain, My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon!33 But if I turn to your immense mercy, I recall that you said, I came not to call the just, but sinners.34 Won over by your mercies, I do not know what else to do but plead for forgiveness, and if I do not deserve it since I was so deaf to your many calls, I most humbly beg Mary, shelter of the most desperate sinners, to step in, interceding on my behalf. If the gravity of my sins does not merit pardon, surely she will merit it by the mere means of one of those sorrowful sighs she let out when, at the foot of that unhappy wooden cross, she stood gazing at the horrific spectacle of your lacerated body, nailed up there by my sins. I must turn to you, oh Virgin, since I know that your precious prayers were the source of the grace which, showing me my miserable errors, woke me from the slumbers of sinfulness and opened my ears, so long closed to the call of your justice almost like the deaf asp, who will not hear the voice of the charmers.35 I thank you alone, blessed Virgin, for favoring me with those watery droplets of grace that softened my heart, so hardened in its mistreatment of your most beloved son. You need merely shed one of your tears in the sight of your—and my—Jesus, and by the value of the pearl that falls like liquid from your eyes, I will see my soul saved and redeemed. If one drop of water hollows stone, falling not twice, but 32. That is, the cause of the Church: fecisti iudicium, et causam meam super tronum. Cf. Psalms 9:5, Quoniam fecisti judicium meum et causam meam; sedisti super thronum, qui judias justitiam (for thou hast maintained my judgment and my cause; thou hast sat on the throne, who judgest justice). 33. Maior est iniquitas mea, quam ut veniam merear. Cf. Genesis 4:13. 34. Non veni vocare iustos, sed peccatores. Cf. Luke 5:32. Tarabotti omits the final part of the verse, ad poenitentiam (to penance). 35. quasi aspidis surdae, quae non exaudiet vocem incantantium. Cf. Psalms 57:5–6: sicut aspidis surdae et obturantis aures suas, quae non exaudiet vocem incantantium (like the deaf asp that stoppeth her ears, / Which will not hear the voice of the charmers).

84 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI continually,36 so a single drop, falling once from your eyes, will suffice to elicit your son’s most tender-hearted feelings of loving pity and mercy. Pray, oh eternally blessed one, that, after an age of sin, almost like a phoenix reborn I will be transformed by the sunlit rays of justice and pass on to an age of penitence, so that I may live renewed unto the age of ages. Do not allow, most holy Virgin, the flowers of your graces to wither and fall on the soil of ingratitude, but let them mature—kissed by the breeze of holy inspiration, warmed by the fervor of charity, and drenched by the waters of my tears—into fruits of penitence. Kneeling, I pray you intercede for me, since I have given myself so thoroughly over to God’s will that nothing issues forth from my heart or from my lips but: Teach me to do thy will, for thou art my God.37 And with all my will ready, and full of repentance, I cry out, but not in vain: Save me, O God: for the waters are come in even unto my soul.38 I stick fast in the mire of the deep.39 Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy.40 I will freely sacrifice to thee.41 But alas, wretched me, why do I recall the penitence of David, whose sins were less severe and less numerous than my own? I received a greater abundance of grace. It is true that he was transported from his flock to the royal throne, even when his own father, believing him of little worth, thought it folly to present him to Samuel, who was seeking one of his sons to anoint as king of Israel. Recognizing the extreme excess of such favor, he describes his rise from the low station of humble shepherd to the royal throne in Psalm 77: And he chose his servant David and he took him from the flocks of sheep; and he brought him from following the nursing ewes.42 And he anointed me with the oil of his mercy.43 Ah, he 36. cauat lapidem, non bis, sed saepe cadendo. Versions of this proverbial expression are found in the works of authors such as Lucretius (De rerum natura, 1:314; 4:1281) and Ovid (Ars amatoria, 1:476); the phrase also appears in Giordano Bruno, Il candelaio, act 3, scene 6. See Bruno, Il candelaio, ed. Isa Guerrini Angrisani (Milan: Rizzoli, 1976). All three potential sources would have been unusual to find in the library of a cloistered nun. 37. Doce me facere voluntatem tuam, quia Deus meus es tu. Cf. Psalms 142:10. 38. Salvam me fac Deus, quoniam intrauerunt aquae usque ad animam meam. Cf. Psalms 68:2. Tarabotti’s text gives salvam for salvum. 39. Infixa sum in limo profundi. Cf. Psalms 68:3. 40. Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. Cf. Psalms 50:3. 41. Voluntarie sacrificabo tibi. Cf. Psalms 53:8. 42. Et elegit Dauid puerum suum. Et de grege ouium sustulit eum; et de post lactantes accepit eum. Cf. Psalms 77:70, Et elegit Dauid servum suum; et sustilit eum de gregibus ovium; de post foetantes accepit eum (And he chose his servant David, and took him from the flocks of sheep. He brought him from following the ewes great with young). The printer’s Errata (list of corrections) accompanying Tarabotti’s Paradiso monacale appears to be mistaken in correcting lactantes with lectantes. 43. Et unxit me, unctione misericordiae suae. This responsory appears several times in the breviary. See Breviarium Romanum Ex decreto Sacrosancti Concilij Tridentini restitutum, Pii V Pont. Max. iussu editum et Clementis VIII primùm, nunc denuò Urbani PP. VIII auctoritate recognitum (Antwerp: Ex

Convent Paradise 85 truly deserved this because he was a man who lived according to God’s heart. I have found a man after my own heart.44 But my Christ, raising me up from earthly filth, gave me the enviable title of his bride, and through the lips of one of his vicars, with the voice of a true lover, with the words of the Holy Spirit, he invited me, saying, Come, bride of Christ.45 Ah, words my heart pronounces with embarrassed shame, since so ungratefully did I reciprocate the true love of such a worthy lover! And which benefit was greater? Being freed from caring for sheep in order to rule over people, or being elevated from the lowliness of a sinful woman to enjoy the royal marriage bed as bride to the king of kings? The graces given to your dear prophet were lesser, and lesser were his sins. Greater were the graces shown to me, who you singled out for conversion, though I did not deserve it, and greater were my sins. Only three times did the royal psalmist stray from the path of your divine precepts, and not even a year passed before he—repentant, wailing, and weeping day and night—repeatedly asked for forgiveness with sorrowful sounds from a heart overflowing with repentance. I have labored in my groanings, every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears.46 For I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.47 With just a word from Nathan, he awoke, he wept, and he repented.48 But I, in the face of loving encouragement from my superiors, remained unmoved. In fact, it seemed that not out of human weakness but out of a deliberate desire to hurt you, piling sin upon sin, I haughtily followed in the footsteps of vanity when I should have been praying again and again to you, Turn away my eyes, that they may not behold vanity.49 Oh my Bridegroom, you Officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti [Plantin Press of Balthasar Moretus], 1641), 552 (Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, “First Nocturn,” responsory to the second reading). Translation from The Roman Breviary: Reformed by Order of the Holy Oecumenical Council of Trent; Published by Order of Pope St. Pius V; and Revised by Pope Clement VII; Urban VIII; and Leo XIII, trans. John Patrick CrichtonStuart, Marquess of Bute (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1908), 419. 44. Inueni hominem secundum cor meum. Cf. Gratian, Tractatus de penitentia, distinctio 2. See Gratian’s Tractatus de Penitentia: A New Latin Edition with English Translation, ed. and trans. Atria A. Larson (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 122. 45. Veni sponsa Christi. The Magnificat antiphon, sung at Second Vespers, from the Common of Virgins in the Catholic Breviary. 46. Laboraui in gemitu meo, lauabo per singulas noctes lectum meum. Lacrimis meis stratum meum rigabo. Cf. Psalms 6:7. 47. Cinerem tanquam panem manducabam, et potum meum cum fletu miscebam. Cf. Psalms 101:10. 48. This sentence, and the text immediately preceding it, refers to the prophet Nathan’s confrontation with David over the death of Uriah the Hittite, a soldier in David’s army (2 Samuel 12). David had committed adultery with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and later had Uriah murdered to prevent him from learning of both the adultery and Bathsheba’s subsequent pregnancy (2 Samuel 11). See also notes 54, 59, and 138. 49. Averte, averte oculos meos, ne videant vanitatem. Cf. Psalms 118:37.

86 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI never failed to show me the most affectionate favor. Rather, so that the day that I passed from secular to religious life might be marked with divine grace, I was called to the celestial wedding sixteen hundred and twenty years after your birth, on the day the angels celebrated and the earth rejoiced for the birth of that dear child whose first cries were so majestic that they proclaimed she had been born in ancient times and selected to be the mother of God.50 The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived.51 Such grace! Such privileged favors—both the event itself and its timing! Thus invited, I replied: I come to you now as a new flower / O beloved bridegroom of my soul.52 But, alas, I didn’t understand what those words truly meant. Instead, like a false and deceitful siren, I strained to use those verses more to enchant the hearts of my listeners than to reciprocate the infinite love and inimitable charity of you, my unrequited Lover. Oh most benevolent God! And did I not deserve, therefore, to be eternally chained to the prince of ingrates down in the center of hell? Even as I spoke to you with my tongue but stood apart from you in my heart, I took advantage of your graces, and uttering words to heaven I turned all my affection to earth, hiding my worldly desires beneath that holy façade. Arrogantly, I sought opportunities to harm myself by hurting you, sinking ever deeper into destructive thoughts and seeking to harm myself as eagerly as a deer seeks a spring to slake his thirst. I deserved to experience the eternal death of my soul, since she who wanders through this world without your life-giving grace must be considered dead. I fear, however, my Lord, I fear that even if I now feel some spasm of compunction in my heart, I will not find shelter from your anger. I would flee into the hollow of your blessed side but I find nowhere to turn because I myself so often helped to deepen that holy wound. You can therefore say of me: and they have added to the grief of my wounds.53 My sins do not deserve ever to hear: the Lord hath taken away thy sin.54 Rather, at the terrible day of the Last Judgment, I have reason to fear that I will be told along with the other reprobates: Go away, cursed woman, into everlasting fire.55 50. That is, September 8th, the day in which the feast of the nativity of the Virgin Mary is celebrated. The earliest account of Mary’s birth is found in the Protoevangelium of James, ca. second century CE. Tarabotti may refer here to the notion that Mary’s birth was prophesied in the Old Testament (see, for example, in Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 7:14; Micah 5:2–3; Jeremiah 31:22). 51. Nondum erant abissi, et ego iam concepta eram. Cf. Proverbs 8:24. 52. A te ne vengo omai pianta nouella, / O de l’anima mia gradito sposo. Citation not identified; the lines may be Tarabotti’s own. 53. supra dolorum vulnerum meorum addiderunt. Cf. Psalm 68:27, super dolorum vulnerum meorum addiderunt. 54. Dominus transtulit peccatum tuum. Cf. 2 Samuel 12:13, Dominus quoque transtulit peccatum tuum. This sentence is spoken to David by the prophet Nathan after he confronts the king about the murder of Uriah; see also notes 48, 59, and 138. 55. Vattene maledetta al fuoco eterno. Cf. Matthew 25:41, discedite a me maledicti in ignem aeternum. A similar phrase appears in Francesco Panigarola, Cento ragionamenti sopra la passione del nostro

Convent Paradise 87 It is true that Magdalene sinned, but with the intensity of her love it was rightly said of her that Many sins are forgiven her, because she hath loved much.56 But I, who wronged you as deeply as my heart was vain and my mind capricious, and who loved you neither greatly nor poorly, how can I deserve to have my faults forgiven? Oh Lord, my Lord, my life, how many times have I trespassed with adulterous thoughts against the honor of the holy marriage you deigned to contract with me? Called upon by your ministers, I promised you—only for worldly appearances—the purest faithfulness with the irrevocable sacrament of my wedding vows, but immediately in the recesses of my heart I stained the purity such promises require, promises that I renewed in 1623 with the most solemn vows, swearing upon the holy stones under the guidance of a priest.57 Even if I spoke and acted in one way, my mind’s intentions were quite different. I lived in this manner up until my consecration, a nun in name, but not in dress or behavior—the former foolishly vain and the latter vainly foolish. I did not deserve the glorious name of daughter to the great father Saint Benedict, under whose banner I soldiered in such a cowardly manner, neither carefully observing his Rule nor profiting from his holy teachings. Son, with all watchfulness keep thy heart.58 Quite the contrary, I despicably killed other souls by infecting them with the disease of my sins through my scandalous, vain, and inconstant behavior. To continue with the comparison I have already undertaken: if the royal lyricist was guilty of only one murder, having killed Uriah,59 I was guilty of thousands of deaths, killing many souls each day with the lasciviousness of my dress that I so enjoyed. You quite justly could have punished me with righteous anger for my scandalous behavior Signore (Naples: Ad instantia di Giacomo Carlino, 1587), 582: “Vattene maledetto dentro al fuoco eterno.” 56. Remittuntur ei peccata multa quoniam dilexit multum. Cf. Luke 7:47. Although this verse refers to an unnamed woman, the Western tradition conflated her with Mary Magdelene. 57. Tarabotti refers to her own profession ceremony, in which she lay face down on the floor of the convent church under a black cloth symbolizing her death to the world. See Arcangela Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale di Arcangela Tarabotti, ed. Francesca Medioli (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990), 70. On the ceremonies that marked the passage toward becoming a nun—vestition, profession, and consecration—see Kate Lowe, “Secular Brides and Convent Brides: Wedding Ceremonies in Italy During the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation,” in Marriage in Italy 1300–1650, ed. Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 41–65. See also Guerrino Pelliccia and Giancarlo Rocca, eds., Dizionario degli istituti di perfezione (Rome: Edizioni Paoline, 1974 –), 2:613–27 (consecration), and 7:916–71 (profession). 58. Fili omni custodia serua cor tuum. The sentence appears in Albertus Magnus, Commentarii in Psalmos, volume 7, commentary on Psalm 9 (Lyon: sumptibus Claudii Prost, Petri et Claudii Rigaud, Hieronymi Delagarde, Ioan. Ant. Hugvetan, 1651), 50. Cf. also Proverbs 4:23, Omnia custodia serva cor tuum. 59. Another reference to David having Uriah murdered to cover up both David’s adultery with Bathsheba and her subsequent pregnancy. See also notes 48, 54, and 138.

88 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI that was harming innocent souls.60 Yet perhaps to overwhelm me more greatly in my ingratitude and to heighten my wonder at your extreme mercy, instead you accorded me grace after grace, favor after favor: you consecrated me to yourself, my betrayed Bridegroom, through the guidance of such a worthy prince and magnificent shepherd.61 With those grave and loving words—I will espouse thee to me in faith62—he should have made me recognize my numerous and frequent sins so that I could readily reply, with the bride, I held him and I will not let him go.63 Oh Lord, my Lord, truly God of Love, after so many wrongs, you called to me, invited me, and almost forced me to love you back. But with a heart of stone in my breast, I disdained your favors, took advantage of your mercy, refused to respond to such exalted invitations, and yet dared to proclaim, I am wedded to the Lord, whom the angels serve.64 Unjust thoughts and earthly desires continued to brood in my heart. But still you did not cease, oh most benevolent one, to beckon me to your love and to offer me salutary penitence as payment for my egregious lack of faith, promising me the renewal of our marriage vows and the fervor of your perfect charity. But I did not run to the true font of Paradise, where blessed spirits are beatified—I mean to the font of your divine mercy, which forever quenches the thirst of those who drink from it—saying, as the hart panteth after the fountain of water, so my soul panteth after thee, O God.65 Instead, like a fugitive, I ran away from it, diving 60. Tarabotti says that by dressing in a manner inconsistent with her religious status, she encouraged others to sin. In her Antisatira, by contrast, she vehemently defends women and their attention to appearance against accusations of female vanity launched by Francesco Buoninsegni in his Satira. See Tarabotti, Antisatira (1998), 56–105; Tarabotti, Antisatire (2020), 55–93. For example, she states that by adorning themselves with pendant earrings, women keep their ears open to religious teachings: Tarabotti, Antisatira (1998), 80; Antisatire (2020), 73. 61. Although Tarabotti ascribes importance to the priest who officiated over her consecration, she does not name him, as she later names Federico Corner (see the Introduction, pp. 20–21 and note 69 below), perhaps because her true “conversion” happened only under Corner’s influence. 62. sponsabo te mihi in fide. Cf. Hosea 2:20. 63. Tenui eum nec dimittam. Cf. Song of Songs 3:4. 64. Ipsi sum desponsata, cui angeli seruiunt. Compare the antiphon recited after the nun has received a ring symbolizing her marriage to Christ as part of the ceremony for the consecration of nuns: Pontificale romanum Clementis VIII primum: Nunc denvo Urbani Papae VIII auctoritate recognitum (Antwerp: Ex Officina Plantiniana Balthasaris Moreti [Plantin Press of Balthasar Moretus], 1663), 1:155 (“De benedictione et consecratione virginum”). The same words are used in the formula of profession in Ordo admittendi virgines ad monasterii ingressum, Habitumque regularem suscipiendi, Ritus item servandus ad professionis emissionem, ad provincitiae Mediol. Usum, by order of Federico Borromeo (Milan: Haer. Quon. Pacifici Pontij [Heirs of Pacifico Da Ponte] and Joan. Baptistam Piccaleum [Giovanni Battista Piccaglia], 1617), 32. Tarabotti quotes this verse at greater length later in Convent Paradise; see note 507 below. 65. quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum ita desiderat anima mea ad te Deus. Cf. Psalms 41:2, and see also page 16.

Convent Paradise 89 into the broken cisterns of the earth in order to drink up the tortuous vanities of earthly life. And these were not sins of ignorance for me, for I knew quite well that I was supposed to love you without limit and say with all my soul: “I most surely want the reward for your faith to be unblemished faith.”66 And therefore, Lord, I once again greatly fear for my salvation, seeing how you shower me so generously with favors and knowing how ungrateful I am for them. I fear in fact that the awareness you give me of my debt to you is evidence of my perdition, since I do not derive the profit I should from such knowledge. Well do I know, Lord, that you said: On this day, in which the sinner sighs, I will remember his offense no longer.67 But I also know that since I have been most half-hearted in fulfilling the duties that this knowledge imposes, I can only await the terrible judgment unleashed against those who serve you half-heartedly: I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.68 In the face of one small tear, you forget trespasses, but I never forgot to offend you in the face of so many divine kindnesses. Among the many graces you deigned to grant me, in 1633 you sent as an ambassador, or herald of peace, one of the most eminent and exemplary people on earth, so that I, as a little lamb of so great a shepherd, might learn not to be what I had been but to become what he was. For this duty you selected, oh most merciful one, the most renowned and reverend Cardinal Corner,69 whose intellectual gifts are matched only by the splendor of his bloodline, and both of these, spreading from his most serene house to every corner of the earth, glorify the city of Venice no less than the Roman consistory.70 His supremacy and virtues should earn him those worlds without end that Alexander the Great yearned for.71 Just as his body is dressed in purple, so his soul is dressed in white, so it can be said of him, holy, innocent, 66. Premio di vostra fè, sia intatta fede. Citation not identified; perhaps Tarabotti’s own verses. 67. In quacumque die ingemuerit peccator, iniquitatum eius non recordabor. For the second half of the verse, compare Hebrews 10.17. The sentiment is found in Gratian, Tractatus de penitentia, distinctio 1, chapter 32, a source cited by Tarabotti above (see note 44), as in quacumque hora peccator ingemuerit, non recordabor iniquitatum eius; see Bernd Wannewetsch, “A Love Formed by Faith: Relating Theological Virtues in Augustine and Luther,” in The Authority of the Gospel: Explorations in Moral and Political Theology in Honor of Oliver O’Donovan, ed. Robert Song and Brent Waters (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2015), 10n19. 68. Incipiam te euomere ex ore meo. Cf. Revelation 3:16. Tarabotti predicts that God will punish her for her inconstancy. The full verse reads: “sed quia tepidus es, et nec frigidus, nec calidus, incipiam te evomere ex ore meo” (But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth). 69. That is, Federico Corner, the volume’s dedicatee. See the Introduction, p. 20n50. 70. The council of cardinals. 71. Probably a reference to the legendary story that Alexander wept because there were no other worlds to conquer. See Plutarch, “On Tranquillity of Mind,” in Moralia, Book 6, trans. W.C. Helmbold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 177, 179.

90 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI undefiled.72 He is mild in punishing offenders, benign even with the lowest of his handmaidens, and so resplendent in virtues and privileges that his office is more ennobled by him than he by it. His greatness will only match his merit when, on the highest rung of sublime graces, he will be the closest to God. I shall not recall the sweetness of his habits, the maturity of his judgment, the integrity of his life,73 for these would exhaust the tongue of a Cicero or a Demosthenes, not to mention the voice of a cicada who, scalded and blinded by the rays of such illustrious qualities, can do nothing but screech.74 This is not a sea to be feebly traversed by a miserable little ship guided by a female hand. Nonetheless, I must not fail respectfully to praise piety and prudence, for these are the foundation of all virtue in princes, and when they are lacking, malice, deceit, and licentiousness reign among their subjects instead of wholesome faith and fear. In certain convents in particular, which are bent only on the oppression of innocents, he arrives most prudently to hear with impartiality the arguments brought forward by both parties. Ah, for he is a collection of all the virtues! Among these, like the sun among the stars, his justice shines beautifully above a foundation of marvelous intelligence and learning, without which he would not guide the inclinations of humankind, and of nuns in particular, so righteously. Solon used to say that just as among the senses the most noble is sight, so among the virtues prudence can claim superiority.75 How rich in it is this most benevolent of princes! I had occasion to observe it in the kind arguments he made to me with such caring and charity that I adore his name. And because it seems to me that the confession of debts is a form of gratitude—necessary because I know myself to be extremely undeserving and worthless—I declare myself eternally indebted to this sublime cornerstone of the holy Church.76 Because my weakness and lowliness prevent me from doing more, I pray you flood him with graces and perfectly fulfill his generous, just, and holy wishes. But where have I been led astray from you, oh my dear Christ? Forgive my careless mind, which has allowed itself to be distracted from my discussion with you by the merit of so great a hero. I know you know that praise is the sweet 72. Sanctus, innocens, impollutus. Cf. Hebrews 7:26. 73. Tarabotti uses the rhetorical device of preterition, mentioning what she says need not be mentioned. 74. Tarabotti repeatedly describes herself as a cicada and her writing as the insect’s screech. See, for example, Arcangela Tarabotti, Letters Familiar and Formal, trans. and ed. Meredith K. Ray and Lynn Lara Westwater (Toronto: Iter Inc. and Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), 64, 71 (letters 11 and 16). 75. Although this quotation has been attributed to the Athenian statesman and poet Solon, Diogenes Laertius cites as its source the Greek philosopher Bion of Borysthenes (ca. 325–ca. 250 BCE): “Prudence, he said, excels the other virtues as much as sight excels the other senses.” See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R.D. Hicks, vol. 1: Books 1–5 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 4:51, 429. 76. See Ephesians 2:20.

Convent Paradise 91 reward for virtue and that the princes who imitate you enjoy the devotion of a sincere heart. Thus I have lost myself in stammering his praises, even though, knowing my own inability, I know I am too reckless. Ah, if only I had never offended Your Majesty in anything other than my distraction and immersion in the praise of your dear minister! But here I am, returning to you with all my soul and spirit. Now I am reminded, oh my Beloved, to continue living my life, whose days are greatly outnumbered by the countless graces you shower upon me. After my consecration I returned to the vomitus of briefly abandoned vanities—as a dog that returneth to his vomit, so is the fool that repeateth his folly77—and persevered in these for five years, with greater harm to this soul than the relapse of a serious illness would cause. As if to make a final effort to lift me from the ruinous shore of my iniquities, from which I was about to plunge into the most profound abyss of eternal damnation, you visited me on the very day in which the Church Militant celebrates on earth the festivities of all the inhabitants of triumphant heaven.78 You visited upon me, I say, a very grave illness that led me near to death, at which time, oh true Redeemer of this iniquitous soul, a devout priest filled with your holy grace read to me in you, my crucified love, as if in an open book, all my ingratitudes, my misdeeds, my stubbornness. And if I saw that my pride crowned your head with thorns, that my unfaithfulness pierced your breast, and that my irreligious actions wounded your whole body, I saw just as clearly on the virgin paper of your humanity, distinguishable in letters of blood and authenticated by the seal of your divinity, the testament of my redemption, approved and signed by earth and heaven, men, angels, and the Eternal Father himself. In the divine Apocalypse the chronicler of paradise, your beloved disciple, saw a book written within and without, sealed with seven seals.79 Within your sacred breast, what letters did I see written upon that loving heart? I am wounded by love.80 What stupendous syllables! I am wounded for your iniquities. I am bruised for your sins.81 Oh what a fine book, sealed by the seven sacraments, inscribed inside and out 77. sicut canis, qui revertit [sic] ad vomitum suum, sic imprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam. Cf. Proverbs 26:11, Sicut canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum, sic imprudens qui iterat stultitiam suam. 78. Tarabotti refers to All Saints’ Day, a major feast day in the Catholic Church celebrated on November 1 since the eighth century. The “Church Militant” is one of the three traditional divisions or states of the Christian Church, comprising Christians on earth who fight the daily battle against sin and evil. The other divisions are the Church Penitent (those in Purgatory) and the Church Triumphant (those in Heaven, whose festivities are celebrated on All Saints’ Day). 79. Intus, et foris, signatum sigillis septem. Revelation 5:1. 80. Vulnerata caritate ego sum. A variation of Song of Songs 2.5 and 5.8, amore langueo (I languish with love). See also notes 129, 246, 516, and 591. 81. Vulneratus sum propter iniquitates vestras. Atritus sum propter scelera vestra. Cf. Isaiah 53:5, Ipse autem vulneratus est propter iniquitates nostras,  attritus est propter scelera nostra (But he was also wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins). The precise verse Tarabotti cites is from Saint Anthony of Padua, “Expositio in Psalmos,” sermon 64. See Anthony of Padua, Opera omnia,

92 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI with so many blows, lashes, and wounds stamped upon that most patient body! A book neither fantastic, deceptive, artificial, nor fallacious (like that of Ovid, which teaches the art of love82), but in which one sees recorded with vermillion characters the laws of love, the complete art of loving, and the harmonious fulfillment of divine love. The proverb “Love him who loves you” is an ancient fact, sang the enamored 83 poet. Why, then, shouldn’t I love you, oh my life, if you have loved me so much, and still love me? What signs of love do I not discern in your heart, the scalding forge of true amorous flames? The perfection of your divine affections has not lacked even jealousy, contained nowhere if not in the hearts of those who love perfectly, for you chose rather to die upon the trunk of the cross than to leave us in the power of the devil, your ancient rival. So Saint Dionysius says, God is said to be jealous because of the great love he has for us.84 But may I be permitted, oh my dear Lord, to consider briefly with my weak intellect the qualities one seeks in earthly lovers, to see if I might recognize all of these in you, for the comfort of my soul, since finding many foolish and false qualities in earthly lovers can only help me to find in you all those that are most perfect and true. I believe there are five principal attributes of sensual lovers: suffering, transformation, generosity, union, and ecstasy. I see each of these qualities in you, oh prince of faithful lovers. When standing before the object of their desire, false lovers of mortal beauty know how to turn more colors than those of the iris itself, and swear they are ill, that they burn and freeze at the same time, proving their lies even with tears. Speaking of this in On Mercy, Seneca asks, what in Medii Aevi Bibliotheca Patristica, ed. César Auguste Horoy (Paris: Imprimerie de la Bibliothèque Ecclésiastique, 1882), 6:734. 82. Tarabotti refers to Ovid’s Ars amatoria, or Art of Love, a satire of didactic poetry from the earliest years of the common era that instructed men and women how to win their beloveds. See Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems, trans. J. H. Mozley, rev. G. P. Goold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979). 83. Proverbio “Ama chi t’ama” è fatto antico. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 105.31. See the edition of the Rime sparse in Francesco Petrarca, Opere, ed. Emilio Bigi (Milan: Mursia, 1963), 83. Translations of the Canzoniere are from Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, trans. and ed. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Durling’s translation follows Il Canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca riprodotto letteralmente dal Cod. Vat. Lat. 3195, ed. Ettore Modigliani (Rome: Società Filologica Romana, 1904). 84. Deus dicitur Zelotes, propter amorem maximum quem ad nos habet. Cf. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, On Divine Names, part 1, chapter 4, section 13. See The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, ed. John Parker (London: James Parker, 1897), 49: “Wherefore, those skilled in Divine things call him even Jealous, as (being) that vast good love towards all beings, and as rousing his loving inclination to jealousy.” This fifth/sixth century CE figure wrote a number of works identifying himself as “Dionysios,” and was thus often confused with the real Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, who lived during Christ’s lifetime and was converted to Christianity by Saint Paul.

Convent Paradise 93 greater faith must be granted to tears than to words?85 For, in speaking, the tongue often lies, but the eyes rarely deceive, and just as the heart displays its happiness through the tongue, so does the soul reveal its distress through the eyes. Yet it is true that tears, too, can be deceiving.86 Even you, my Lord, truthful and celestial lover—what colors did you not turn? What illness did you not suffer? What burning cold did you not experience? Naked, frozen with cold but inflamed with charity, torn, swollen, pierced, and all bloody and bruised, you could truthfully say, There is no health in my flesh.87 If sensual lovers boast of being transformed into the person they love—such that becoming one and the same as that person and a single soul divided in two bodies,88 together they might fear, hope, grieve, and rejoice—much more do you, my Lord, know how to transform yourself in the souls of your beloveds, and them in you. Therefore the bride, who is the very idea of the loving soul and beloved by you, openly proclaims this union in the Canticle in order to introduce this truth to human souls: My beloved to me and I to him.89 If in order to make a conquest of their beloved ladies’ souls, earthly lovers profess—more with words than with deeds—to lavish them with riches, how can they compare to you, who by making a gift of yourself, give to souls—along with love—every earthly and celestial good? They only give in order to conquer modesty, whereas you, chastest of lovers, you gave us all that is precious,90 such that we preserve ourselves in chastity against the attempts of those three fiercest of enemies: Devil, World, and Flesh.91 85. Tarabotti uses the Latin title De clementia, a treatise on just governance by Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE). This sentiment—which Tarabotti presents in Italian—does not seem to appear in Seneca’s “On Clemency”; he in fact states the opposite: “good men will all display mercy and gentleness, but pity they will avoid; for it is the failing of a weak nature that succumbs to the sight of others’ ills. And so it is most often seen in the poorest types of persons; there are old women and wretched females who are moved by the tears of the worst criminals.” See “On Clemency” in Seneca, Moral Essays, trans. John W. Basore, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 439 (part 5); see also 441, 443 (part 6). A sentiment similar to the one Tarabotti attributes to Seneca appears instead in Paradiso spirituale di morali discorsi con diversi notabili esempi cavati da santi e gravi autori, parte prima, ed. Luca Mora (Verona: Giovanni Battista Marini, 1607), 93. 86. che le lagrime anch’esse han le lor frodi. This sentence appears in Isabella Andreini, Lettere (Venice: Appresso Marc’Antonio Zaltieri, 1607), letter 146 (“Della sagacità delle donne” [On Women’s Wisdom]). 87. Non est sanitas in carne mea. Psalms 37:4. 88. This concept is derived from Aristotle (Eth Nic 9.8.2). See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Harris Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 548–51. A similar idea can be found in Ovid, Tristia 4.4.72. See Ovid, Tristia / Ex Ponto, 2nd ed., reprinted with corrections, trans. Arthur Leslie Wheeler, rev. G. P. Goold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 180–81. 89. Dilectus meus mihi, et ego illi. Cf. Song of Songs 2:16. 90. omnia nobis, et pretiosa donasti. Cf. 2 Peter 1:3–4. 91. The three traditional enemies of the soul (the world, the flesh, and the devil), which are shown in the story of the Temptation of Christ (Luke 4:1–13). As Tarabotti states on page 108, Mary has

94 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI Oh, what extreme generosity is this! The union of common lovers is no less fallacious and deceptive than the false and mendacious constancy and professed faithfulness they boast of. Even if they sometimes join themselves to one another, such a union is unhappy and worthless, since at each mere sight of some new beauty, men, infatuated, give themselves to her, and forgetting their first love, with every effort they seek to fulfill the second, and then they pass on to the third. They become newfangled chameleons who dress themselves in a new desire for each beauty they see. But she who draws near to your divine table, imbibing the celestial manna of the sacrosanct Eucharist, knows how constantly and faithfully you unite yourself, Lord, with your beloved souls. You said to her, he that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him.92 Oh, what an amorous and sweet union, not to mention the examples of the Catherines of Alexandria and Siena,93 joined to you with extraordinary privilege like other most holy virgins! Finally, if we consider the ecstasy these lying lovers say they experience in the contemplation of their beloveds’ beauty, we will find nothing but fallacies adorned with vain words and stolen ideas. But you, Lord, you allow yourself to be caught up in ecstasy for love of these beloved souls, such that someone rightly said: Thus did love make you so drunk that not even the cross did you deem an opprobrium, for the sake of love.94 Indeed, you also capture souls enamored of your beauty in an ecstasy that the human intellect cannot arrive so far as to comprehend, nor the mortal tongue to explain. Divine love makes ecstasy, said that saint.95 And what ecstasies, my dearest vanquished all three. See also pages 150 and 180. 92. qui manducat meam carnem, et bibit meum sangiunem, in me manet, et ego in illo. Cf. John 6:57. 93. Saint Catherine of Alexandria (or Saint Catherine of the Wheel), a convert to Christianity martyred in the early fourth century at the hands of the emperor Maxentius; she was said to have have been a scholar. Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380) was a Dominican tertiary (lay associate) and writer who advocated for the transfer of the papacy from Avignon back to Rome. A common religious image showed the mystical marriages of these female saints to Jesus. 94. In te fecit sic amor ebrius/ ut ne crucem putes obbrobrium/ amoris gratia. See Paolo Bozi, Tebaide sacra: Nella quale con l’occasione di alcuni padri eremiti si ragiona di molte e varie virtù (Venice: Appresso Santo e Mattia Grillo fratelli, 1621), 7. 95. Extasim facit divinus amor. Cf. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, On Divine Names, part 1, chapter 4, section 13: “Divine love is ecstatic.” See The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, 48. These words were put into circulation by the fifteenth-century friar Girolamo Savonarola and disseminated by the painter Fra Bartolmeo, who included the text in a portrait of Mary Magdalene. See Ronald Steinberg,  Fra Girolamo Savonarola: Florentine Art and Renaissance Historiography (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977), 91–93.

Convent Paradise 95 love, what ecstasies do you provoke in the souls who are in love with you, if the beauty of your divinity, the overflowing abundance of your glory, in merely shining upon them, wondrously steal earthly hearts and transport them to Paradise! Indeed it is true, my life, that before reaching this joyful ecstasy, it is necessary to pass through a bitter one, which a soul that loves you experiences whenever, moved by compassion for your harshest suffering, it contemplates you hanging upon the wooden cross of Calvary, the target of insults, full of wounds, beset with torments, silently mourning nothing else but the scant reciprocation of love from the souls who are dear to you. And how could I not reciprocate so ardent a lover? Ah, yes, For love excuses no one from loving.96 Yes, yes, my one true Good, I shall love you, I shall adore you. And who would not consume herself in reciprocating your love? Certainly every other heart less stubborn than mine. But I did not even soften when from the mouth of the abovementioned holy father,97 from the pulpit of the most holy cross, I heard your feeble voice, weakened by torments, compassionately reproach me: O my beloved woman, behold all I that I suffer for you. See the torments with which I am afflicted! Behold the nails with which I am pierced. I, who am dying for you, cry to you.98 “Ah, 96. Ch’amor a nullo amato amar perdona. Cf. Dante’s Inferno, 5.103. See Dante Alighieri, Commedia: Inferno, ed. Emilio Pasquini and Antonio Quaglio (Milan: Garzanti, 1982), 50. The words—among the most famous in Dante’s Comedy and in Italian literature—are spoken by Francesca as she describes the forbidden love she shares with Paolo. The translation is based on Dante Alighieri, Inferno: Italian Text and Verse Translation, trans. and ed. Mark Musa (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 49. 97. Perhaps a reference to Corner (see note 1). 98. O dilecta mea, vide, quæ pro te patior. Vide pœnas quibus afficior. Vide clauos quibus confodior, ad te clamo, qui per te morior. The text glosses these verses as deriving from “Io. Ger. In med. De vita Cristi” (Jean Gerson, In meditatione vitae Cristi), although this text (Meditationes vitae Cristi) was ascribed to Saint Bonaventure (1221–1274)—and, more recently, pseudo-Bonaventure. These same verses, with small changes in wording and order, are also found as the last item in a cycle of madrigals, together titled Le lagrime di San Pietro [The Tears of Saint Peter] (Munich: Adam Berg, 1595) by the Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso (1532?–1594), which set to music penitential poems from the eponymous work by Luigi Tansillo as well as the Latin composition cited by Tarabotti. On the Lagrime di San Pietro see Alexander J. Fisher, “ ‘Per mia particolare devotione’: Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro and Catholic Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Munich,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 132, no. 2 (2007): 167–220. This cycle of madrigals is among the most famous and admired of the Italian musical tradition. The final madrigal, which contains verses similar to Tarabotti’s, dramatizes Christ speaking directly to humankind, and becomes a meditation on human sinfulness as the cause of the crucifixion. Lasso’s text reads: Vide homo quae pro te patior,  / Ad te clamo, qui pro te morior, / Vide poenas quibus afficior; / Vide clavos quibus confodior; / Non est dolor sicut quo crucior (Behold, man, all that I suffer for you! / I, who am dying for you, cry to you. / See the torments with which I am afflicted! / Behold the nails with which I am pierced! / Is there any suffering to compare with crucifixion?). See Chester L. Alwes, A History of Western Choral Music, vol. 1, From Medieval Foundations to the Romantic Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 119; our translation of Tarabotti’s rendering is based on this text. Tarabotti may have known these verses through

96 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI do not be ungrateful to me, dear soul.” This devout interpreter of yours did not fail to express to me with the energy of the Holy Spirit the thirst you had to save me as you cried, I thirst.99 He made me hear the sweetness of your voice saying to me, “This thirst that torments me is not material thirst that burns my tongue but the thirst of love, which burns my insides. Here we are not speaking of punishments or penalties for you, ungrateful soul, but of graces and favors. For you I surely bear so many wounds in my heart,100 which can in themselves satisfy divine justice, offended by your sins. Do not increase my torments with your ingratitude.” He made me feel a worm in my conscience,101 not through harshness meant to terrify a vile soul but with gentle and sweet manners, since he did not want me to become a bundle of thorns destined for eternal fire. In my anguish, may this thorn at least not be fastened.102 Here, Lord, I should return to the story of my vanities, with which, little heeding your loving voice, I began again to offend you. Oh, with what difficulty are wicked habits set aside! With what difficulty are bad inclinations turned to good! This I say, Lord, because after being lifted through your mercy from that harshest illness which for three months’ time had in part subdued my vain spirits, once again I placed my neck under the old yoke and gave myself over to plowing the field of the usual vanities, in which one who sows hope reaps nothing but tribulations. And yet you, my Creator, not yet tired of loving me, perhaps to avoid having to repudiate me eternally, let me fall ill again and let me be unjustly offended by an unexpected blow from a friendly but traitorous hand.103 That event showed me pseudo-Bonaventure or a printed copy of Lasso’s work, or she may have heard them performed in the convent. Her most significant change to the words, replacing “man” with “my beloved woman,” regenders Christ’s interlocutor as female, while the addition of the word “beloved” (dilecta) increases the emotional intimacy of the exchange and evokes the dialogue of the Song of Songs. 99. Sitio. Cf. John 19:28. The verse is part of John’s account of Christ’s passion. 100. Ho ben io in sen per te cotante pene. This verse comes from the pastoral poem Filli di Sciro (Phillis of Scyros) by Guidobaldo de’ Bonarelli (Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1607), 144 (Act 5, Scene 3). The correct work is cited in a gloss, but the gloss lists the verse as deriving from Act 2, Scene 3. It is not clear who introduced the error. 101. The trope of the “worm of conscience” derives from a sermon by Origen (ca. 184 CE–ca. 253 CE) on the Book of Exodus (Homiliae in Exodum), Homily 7:6, where he discusses why manna from Heaven can putrify and be filled with worms when hoarded against God’s will. On this metaphor, see Anders Schinkel, Conscience and Conscientious Objections (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 114–117. 102. In ærumna mea saltem non confrigatur [sic] hæc spina. The words seem to be a corruption of Psalms 31:4, conversus sum in ærumna mea, dum configitur spina (I am turned in my anguish, whilst the thorn is fastened.) 103. It is not clear exactly to what wrong Tarabotti refers, but she mentions discord with other sisters elsewhere in Convent Paradise (see notes 113, 334, 573, and 805 below), and she speaks about the hostility and falsity of nuns in her other works (see, for example, Convent Hell, 64, and Letters, 210 and 263 [letters 163 and 231]).

Convent Paradise 97 clearly how far human perfidy and self-interested convent malice extend. Despite this, I did not give you thanks for these repeated prods and put an end once and for all to the vanities of my soul; I did not say, together with saintly Job, if we have received good things at the hand of God, why would we not also bear evil?104 Instead, this tongue proffered exactly the opposite, imitating the most patient one only in maledictions, but he expressed these with a better and different sense than mine: Let the day perish wherein I was born.105 I kept testing your patience, not considering that if I, an innocent, was betrayed, never having strayed from the confines of an honorable modesty, nor transgressed the limits proper to my state, it was all an artful invitation from you, my Lord, to pull me away from these worldly inclinations. You teased me with tribulations and trials so that I would turn to you saying, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man can do unto me.106 And since you had not been able to pull me to your side through the fullness of graces, you wished with a simple blow of tribulation to make me understand that the hidden treasures of consolation are found in you alone. The above discourse, oh my God, is a brief compendium of your graces and of the ingratitude with which I reciprocated your majesty. But I must also recall the favors with which the most serene Queen of Heaven and Mother of Mercy was pleased to aid me. When I sought out her image, it seemed to utter these words from her mute features, with the voice of the Holy Spirit: “Ungrateful soul! In order to give you glory and eternal life, my beloved lies in my lap, lifeless, wounded, dead, and lacerated, such that at his return to heaven, when the angels saw him, they exclaimed, who is this?107 And you disdain the worth of those deep scars that render him unrecognizable to the blessed spirits? Oh, again, ungrateful soul! You know who battered him thus, you hear it directly from his mouth: ‘these wounds, these bruises, this death, I have received in the house of them that loved me.’108 You, you are the one who caused him such wounds with your sinful life, not in your own house, like the Jews, but in his: within religious cloisters you betrayed my son, your Lord and God.”109 Thus your most chaste and aggrieved mother made the reproaches of conscience resonate in my heart with the sound of mercy. I began to understand the 104. si bona suscepimus de manu Domini, mala autem quare non sustinemus? Cf. Job 2:10, Si bona suscepimus de manu Dei, mala quare non suscipiamus? 105. Pereat dies, in qua natus sum. Cf. Job 3:3. 106. Dominus mihi adiutor, non timebo quid faciat mihi homo. Cf. Psalms 117:6. See also Psalms 55:11. 107. Quis est iste? These words appear repeatedly in the Bible. In Paradiso monacale, Isaiah 65 is glossed, but this is erroneous. The words can be found at the start of Isaiah 63 (63:1), which is quoted earlier by Tarabotti (see note 28). 108. in domo eorum, qui diligebant me. Cf. Zachariah 13:6. These are the words of a false prophet to the Jews, but are considered by Christians to allude to Jesus, who is wounded by those he came to befriend. 109. See note 108 above.

98 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI ugliness of my sins, even the small ones, made larger with the sum of religious debt. I was uncertain about my state, and I did not know how to make up my mind. My faults frightened me, and I saw the wrath of God catching up to me. I hoped for forgiveness and, caught in a battle of thoughts, I could not sin in transgressions of the Rule without remorse.110 I recalled and took heart from that saying of Ezekiel: But if the wicked do penance for all his sins which he hath committed, I will not remember all his iniquities that he hath done.111 On the other hand, it terrified me and I felt within myself that the perverse are hard to be corrected.112 But amid such ambivalence I kept putting off penitence under vain pretexts of worldly appearances. I passed two whole years uselessly in order not to appear changeable in the eyes of mortals, and so that the women who were my enemies113 should not take satisfaction in my change, thinking that only as a result of their malice and not with the goal of saving my soul had I changed direction to walk the straight path of virtue after such long wanderings. I also failed to recall the saying that issued from the mouth of Cicero, the soul of eloquence: It is prudence, not inconstancy, to change sides, when one changes for the better.114 So I lived stubbornly in evil because others did not believe me to be good—as if being evil befits a person consecrated to you. Such teachings are learned in the fallacious school of the world, in which those who enter in jest learn only how to die forever. Oh how blind, how miserable I was, delaying—out of temporal hesitations—to act on divine inspiration and to reciprocate the affectionate mercy of your Eternal Father, who in order to destroy sin, sent you among men to be the object of the most torturous injuries and injurious tortures that the cruelest executioners could invent! God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten son.115 Despite so many 110. Tarabotti refers to The Rule of Saint Benedict, the guidebook for monastic life of the Benedictine order. See Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary, trans. and ed. Terrance G. Kardong (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996). 111. Si autem impius egerit penitentiam ab omninbus peccatis suis, quae operatus est, omnium iniquitatum eius, quas operatus est non recordabor. Cf. Ezekiel 18:21–22, Si autem impius egerit poenitentiam ab omnibus peccatis suis, quae operatus est, et custodierit omnia praecepta mea, et fecerit judicium et justitiam, vita viet, et non morietur: Omnium iniquitatum ejus, quas operatus est, non recordabor: in justitia sua, quam operatus est, vivet (But if the wicked do penance for all his sins which he hath committed, and keep all my commandments, and do judgment, and justice, living he shall live, and shall not die, I will not remember all his iniquities that he hath done: in his justice which he hath wrought, he shall live). 112. perversi difficile corriguntur. Cf. Ecclesiastes 1:15. 113. Tarabotti uses “le mie nimiche,” probably referring to the convent sisters mentioned above. See also notes 103, 334, 573, and 805. 114. Esser prudenza non incostanza il mutar parere, quando si muta in meglio. Cf. Cicero, Epistolae ad Atticus 16.7, where he defends himself for changing his mind: “No philosopher ever called a change of plan inconsistency.” Cicero, Letters to Atticus, trans. and ed. E. O. Winstedt, vol. 3 (London: William Heinemann, 1925), 396–97. 115. Sic Deus dilexit mundum, ut filium suum unigenitum daret. Cf. John 3:16, Sic enim Deus dilexit mundum, ut Filium suum unigenitum daret (For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son).

Convent Paradise 99 divine calls, and despite the worm of conscience116 that gnawed at my soul, I went on amplifying my faults as much as you your mercies. Though I felt a spirit117 inside saying to me, May your eyes pour forth rivers of water since they have not kept my law, I did not know how to begin to cry for you even if I had cried so many times for my earthly idols. Now I would like, oh Lord, to imitate your dear Augustine, who, recalling how before his first conversion he had shed tears upon reading of Dido’s death in the Aeneid, mourned and grieved with these words: I wept for Dido’s dying, who killed herself for the love of Aeneas, and all the time—pitiable though I was—in such matters I endured my own dying away from you, O God, my life; and I shed not a single tear. What, after all, is more pitiful than a pitiable person who does not look with pity on his own pitifulness—and who weeps for the death of Dido, which came about through her love for Aeneas; yet does not weep for his own death, which was coming about because he has no love for you?118 Yet I say, with Saint Anselm, what of me, oh dear Jesus? What of me? If as each day I add evil to evil, you do not add goodness to goodness, and if as I prolong my iniquities, you do not prolong your mercy on me? I believe that my miserable soul would have tasted by now the furors of your angry justice.119 But I hear, I hear, my one true Good, that if on the cross you cried out on behalf of your crucifiers, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do;120 so too will you cry out for me, “Father, forgive her,121 for she is beside herself. Let us await, let us await her penitence.” 116. Cf. Tarabotti’s earlier reference to the “worm of conscience,” which first occurs in Origen and is a reference to Exodus 16:20. See note 101. 117. Exitus aquarum deducant oculi tui, quia non custodierunt legem meam. Cf. Psalms 118:136, Exitus aquarum deduxerunt oculi mei, quia non custodierunt legem tuam (My eyes have sent forth springs of water: because they have not kept thy law). 118. Flebam Didonem mortuam, quae se occidit ob amorem Aenieae, cum interea me ipsum in his a te morientem, Deus meus, vita mea, siccis occulis ferrem miserrimus. Quid enim miserius misero, non miserante se, et flente Didonis mortem, quae fiebat amando Eeneam, non flente autem mortem suam, quae fiebat non amando te? Cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions, 1.13.20–21. Translations are based on the bilingual edition of Augustine, Confessions, ed. and trans. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014–16), 1:36–39. 119. While the text glosses Saint Anselm’s Meditations, these lines do not seem to appear there. See Anselm, Book of Meditations and Prayers, trans. M. R. [Martin Rule] (London: Burns and Oates, 1872). Instead, they appear largely verbatim in Antonio de Guevara, La seconda parte del Monte Calvario (Venice: Appresso Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1560), 46–47, which attributes these words to the saint. 120. Pater ignosce illis, quia nesciunt quid faciunt. Cf. Luke 23:34, Jesus autem dicebat: Pater, dimitte illis: non enim sciunt quid faciunt (And Jesus said: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do). 121. Pater ignosce illae. Tarabotti rewrites the verse as if Jesus’s plea for mercy for sinners applies directly to her. She uses the language of madness again when she describes her “ravings” against God

100 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI Oh immense goodness, oh infinite charity! The Jews offended you but once, causing you to die unjustly, and they did not recognize you as God, for otherwise, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.122 And if you prayed for them, it was not so that they should go unpunished for their sin. But I, who crucified you each day as many times as I sinned, and knew I was offending you, infinite Goodness—what reason could there have been not to rain down punishments on me, if not your unerring mercy? Oh, how different are your ways from those of men! Repeated offenses inflame mortal minds to implacable outrage, but you—who are a fire of love, and therefore said, I am come to cast fire on the earth, and what do I desire, but that it burn?123—do not observe these rules. Indeed, the longer sinners prolong their iniquities, the longer you prolong your mercy. What further extensions could you have granted me, oh my consolation, if after the abovementioned graces, which I no longer understood, still I continued to offend you, as if certain that you would suspend your anger at my pleasure? And because I still hoped to withdraw to a quiet religious life, I continued to desire an opportune moment to so, and lo, your merciful providence immediately provided for my every desire. I hoped for a Jubilee, in order better to reconcile myself with you, and you granted it to me.124 I asked that, for the consolation of my soul, the abovementioned father should hear me confess all my sins, and you did not deny me. You could well say to me, What could I have done more for thee, that I have not done?125 And what didn’t you do, ah my salvation—indeed, what did you do? Always you encountered my infinite faults with your immense goodness, my perverse stubbornness with your loving forgiveness. In sum, the more openly I continued to sin, the more clearly you continued to ignore it and to entreat me. I confessed to this personage, who rightly deserves to be called an exemplar of religion and a mirror of holiness, and with his tongue dipped in the honey of your wisdom he had the strength to soften the hardness of my heart, which still is not entirely yours, as it should be. Instead, I feel I am and says that, in sinning, “I had lost my senses then.” See note 163. 122. nunquam Dominum gloriae crucifixissent. 1 Corinthians 2:8. The biblical text does not blame the Jews, but “the princes of this world.” 123. Ignem veni mittere in terram, et quid volo, nisi ut ardeat? Cf. Luke 12:49, Ignem veni mittere in terram, et quid volo nisi ut accendatur? (I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled?) This passage is erroneously glossed as Matthew 10. 124. Jubilee years were celebrations of forgiveness, declared by the pope for the remission of sins. Since Tarabotti is discussing her spiritual state around the time of her consecration, she is likely referring here to the Jubilee of 1629, called by Urban VIII. 125. Quid ultra debui facere, quod non feci? The text glosses Isaiah 5:4, Quid est quod debui ultra facere vineae meae, et non feci ei? (What is there that I ought to do more to my vineyard, that I have not done to it?) However, the words appear exactly in Prayers for the Stations of the Cross, Ninth Station. See Preces Stationum / Prayers for the Stations, in Thesaurus Precum Latinarum / Treasury of Latin Prayers, ed. Michael Martin, .

Convent Paradise 101 still she who I used to be, nor for a thousand turnings about have I yet moved.126 He made me correct my vanities. I cut my hair, but I did not uproot my affections. I reformed my life, but my thoughts—like my shorn locks—the more they grow, are teeming. I beg you then, sweetest Lord of mine, by the womb of your beloved mother, to open this foul breast so that the odor of past sins might escape and you might possess me entirely, driving out all thoughts and affections contrary to your always excellent will. Remove from me, oh Lord, as you promised, this heart which by its hardness is made a stony heart,127 and give me a heart that is malleable to your will and to your service, that is made only of spiritual tenderness, that it might be called a heart of flesh,128 so that for once I can boast of truly being your servant. Give me a heart devoted in serving you, ardent in loving you, so that I can say those holy words with the bride: tell my beloved that I languish with love.129 I know that my faults should not aspire to so much, but to be a lover makes one bold, and to be bold in love sometimes leads one to attain graces and is praiseworthy. Love made her bold,130 said that poet. Give me, therefore, Lord, a spirit that, if it is not courageous in love of you, is at least humbled in the shame of my sins, so that I may be humble and prostrate on the ground, since the soul is sorrowful for the greatness of evil she hath done, and goeth bowed down.131 If I placed worldly pleasures before eternal glory, death before life, nothingness before the ultimate Good, grant to me that in the future, recognizing my transgressions, I may serve and adore you with all my spirit, oh most noble bridegroom to this most vile creature. Make it so that my heart shall never be divided from you, that I shall not love, nor yearn, seek, find, or presume to know anything outside of you, since by experience I understand that he is Wretched who sets his hope on mortal

126. com’io son pur colei, ch’esser mi soglio,  /  né per tante riscosse ancor son mossa. Cf. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 118.13–14, io son pur quel ch’i’ mi soglio, / né per mille rivolte ancor son mosso (show me to be still what I used to be, nor for a thousand turnings about have I yet moved). See Petrarch, Opere, 92; Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 226. Tarabotti alters Petrarch’s verse slightly to use the feminine colei (she) rather than the more neutral quel (what). 127. cor lapideum. Cf. Ezekiel 11:19. 128. cor carneum. Cf. Ezekiel 11.19. 129. Nunciate dilecto mio, quia amore langueo. Song of Songs 5:8, Adjuro vos, filiae Jerusalem, si inveneritis dilectum meum, ut nuntietis ei quia amore langueo (I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I languish with love). See also notes 80, 246, 516, and 591. 130. Audacem faciebat amor. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 4.96 (Pyramus and Thisbe). See Ovid, Metamorphoses, vol. 1, Books 1–8, 3rd ed., trans. Frank Justus Miller, rev. G. P. Goold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 184–85. 131. Anima tristis super magnitudinem peccati incedit curva. Cf. Baruch 2:18, Sed anima quae tristis est super magnitudine mali, et incedit curva (But the soul that is sorrowful for the greatness of evil she hath done, and goeth bowed down). This sentence also recalls the profession ceremony, in which each nun lies prostrate on the convent floor; see note 57.

102 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI things.132 And because I know, oh Creator, that anyone who loves something else as well as you, but does not love it for your sake, loves you the less as a result,133 I therefore would like to be a stranger to all other loves, neither loving nor taking pleasure from any other but you alone, for you alone, in you alone,134 who are the perfect fullness of all desirable good. Just as a single heart is incapable of multiple affections in worldly loves, the birth of one love leads immediately to the death of another, so I hope that your love concentrates itself in the depths of my heart and drives from it all worldly sensuality, As one nail may drive another out.135 I would flee, but it is too late for flight, for in any case my heart would accompany me. What in our hearts we carry, in vain we flee.136 What then, must I do? I shall turn for help to the Eternal Father. I shall hear myself irritably reproached for my crimes, as guilty of the death of his only begotten son. Then it will be said to me by him: “You go begging relief from your ills, when the precious antidote of the blood of my son, spilled with such opprobrium, was not medicine enough to cure you, since you abused it? Remove, remove the ingratitude from your heart, and call out with a repentant soul, to thee only have I sinned. Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.137 For otherwise you have nowhere to turn for forgiveness, and already you are condemned to the deserved suffering of the infernal abyss. Embrace, embrace penitence, and walk upright in the observance of the rules of your faith, for in that way you will hear it said, The Lord hath taken away thy sin.”138 Here I cannot help but shudder in horror, hearing myself reproached by your Eternal Father for the many irreligious actions with which I have always mistreated you, his son and my bridegroom. And because most of the time that I should have 132. Miser chi speme in cosa mortal pone. From the account of Laura’s death in Petrarch, Triumphus mortis (Triumph of Death), 1.85. See Petrarch, Opere, 292. Translations are from Francesco Petrarca, The Triumphs of Petrarch, trans. Ernest Hatch Wilkins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 56. 133. minus te amat, qui tecum aliquid amat, quod non propter te amat. Cf. Augustine, Confessions, 10.29.40; see Confessions, ed. Hammond, 2:138–39. 134. This phrasing echoes that of the doxology spoken by the priest just before the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at Mass 135. Come d’asse si trae chiodo con chiodo. The passage is glossed as deriving from Ariosto. See the episode in Orlando furioso when Rodomonte, rejected by Doralice, swears off women but falls immediately for Isabella (28.98.7–8: “… a modo / che da l’asse si trae chiodo con chiodo”): Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. Lanfranco Caretti (Turin: Einaudi, 1992), 870. See also Petrarch, Triumphus Cupidinis (Triumph of Love), 3.66 (Petrarch, Opere, 277; The Triumphs of Petrarch, 22). 136. Quel che nel cor si porta, in van si fuge. Cf. Battista Guarini, Il Pastor fido, 3.3. See Battista Guarini, Il Pastor fido, ed. Elisabetta Selmi (Venice: Marsilio, 1999), 162. 137. Tibi soli peccavi, amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea, et a peccato meo munda me. Cf. Psalms 50:6 and 50:4. 138. Dominus transtulit peccatum tuum. Cf. 2 Samuel 12:13. These words are spoken by Nathan to David after their confrontation over the murder of Uriah; see also notes 48, 54, and 59.

Convent Paradise 103 spent in praising divine goodness was wasted by me in reading vain books that have nothing truthful in them but their profanity, even in these I was shown by your kindness an outline of your merciful qualities. In telling their tales, the poets pretend that Jove, in imitation of your Eternal Father and the true king of the heavens, having called to counsel all the deities, resolved to send among them as punishment a blind, naked, and winged cherub, fierce enemy of human reason.139 But it is not a tale that he is no imaginary mover of all things. With the counsel of the Holy Spirit and the selfsame agreement of you, his only begotten son (a victim? Yet he himself bows to the stroke140), when the world was corrupted by boundless filth (beyond its original sin) and the devil seemed to be triumphing—the banners of death unfurled everywhere—he was moved to mercy by what he had created. Thus he sent you, true numen of love, who are not a universal torment to souls like the one born of lascivious Venus, daughter of the sea foam, though goddess of graces and loves.141 Instead you are the universal salvation of souls, born of the purest womb of the Virgin Mary, who had as her birthplace a sea of virtue. Listen to her, my soul. In me is all grace of purity. In me is all hope of life and of virtue.142 And from this empress of heaven and earth you were born, oh divine love, naked in the manger, on that most holy night, when the sun of justice was dying of cold and angelic voices were heard announcing on earth the peace that had until then had been exiled. Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.143 Idleness gave him birth, and wantonness, And he was nursed by sweet and gentle thoughts, And a vain folk made him their lord and god.144 Not so you, my love, who were born amid suffering, toil, and discomfort. In labours from my youth,145 you rightly said. Not of lasciviousness, but of a virgin womb, immaculate from the moment of conception; nourished not by sweet and 139. These words are glossed in the text as “Strozz.”—probably an attribution to Giulio Strozzi (1583– 1652), an important member of the Accademia degli Incogniti. Tarabotti may refer to his work, Il natale d’Amore, anacronismo (Venice: Giovanni Alberti, 1621), 62. Although these exact words (de l’umana ragion fiero nemico) do not appear, Strozzi casts human reason as a character who calls Cupid a monster and describes him as naked and blind. 140. Oblatus est, quia ipse voluit. Isaiah 53:7. 141. That is, Cupid. 142. In me gratia omnis puritatis. In me omnis spes vitae, et virtutis. Cf. Ecclesiasticus 24:25. 143. Gloria in Excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Cf. Luke 2:14, Gloria in altissimis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. 144. Quel nacque d’otio, e di lascivia umana, / nutrito di pensier dolci, e soavi, / fatto signore, e dio da gente vana. Cf. Petrarch, Triumph of Love, 1.82–84. See Petrarch, Opere, 269; The Triumphs of Petrarch, 8. 145. In laboribus a iuventute mea. Cf. Psalms 87:16.

104 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI gentle words but by thoughts of the Cross, always holding fixed the atrocity of the future Passion. Didn’t you prefer to be blind, closing your eyes to such offenses, and allowing the Jews to blindfold you to the light when, with contempt and laughter, they interrogated you? Prophesy, who is it that struck thee?146 Oh, true God of love, not made lord by vain people, but born eternal prince without beginning, who will have no end. Perhaps you will beg for wings, if you command the winged creatures, and fly into hearts that sincerely love you. Saint Francis, you are well able to speak about this, since in the form of a seraph, upon Mount Alverna, this inflamed Cupid did not disdain to wound you with his precious arrows, imprinting his holy wounds upon your body.147 This prestigious grace made you jubilant and joyous, for I bear the marks of my Lord Jesus Christ in my body:148 not the wounds inflicted by blind and fallacious love, In wounds to the heart, death to the soul,149 but gentle scars and sweet wounds. Come, then, oh come, love of my soul! But I hear you respond to me, as if irritated: “I had planted thee a noble vine.150 Soul, I gave you existence in order also to give you eternal glory, but How then art thou turned into a degenerate plant, which willest that Barabbas should be released unto thee, and that I should be crucified?151 See how the sweetest vine planted by my hands yields only bitterness for me, while you, most ungrateful one, place your worldly affections ahead of the fullness of the glory I acquired for you by allowing myself to be crucified, by suffering disdain in a thousand ways, and finally by dying amid a thousand pains 146. Profetiza quis est, qui te percussit. Cf. Luke 22:64. 147. Saint Francis received the stigmata on Mount La Verna (Alverna) in 1224. Saint Bonaventure, in his Life of St. Francis, writes that Francis “saw a Seraph with six fiery and shining wings descend from the height of Heaven.” He writes that the vision “imprinted on his body markings that were no less marvelous.” Bonaventure, Life of St. Francis, in Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God. The Tree of Life. Life of St. Francis, translation and introduction by Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 305–306. 148. Ego enim stigmata Domini mei Iesu Christi in corpore meo porto. Cf. Galatians 6:17, ego enim stigmata Domini Jesu in corpore meo porto. The Christian tradition of stigmata can be traced to Paul. See Carolyn Muessig, “Signs of Salvation: The Evolution of Stigmatic Spirituality Before Francis of Assisi,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, 82:1 (2013), pp. 40-68. 149. Ne le ferite al cor, la morte a l’alma. This verse does not appear in Strozzi’s Il natale d’Amore, which is glossed here (as above; see note 139); however, a similar concept is found in that work. See Strozzi, Il natale d’Amore, 74. 150. Vinea mea electa ego te plantavi. These words are recited as the responsory to the third reading in the Good Friday Mass. See Breviarium Romanum, 376. Translation from The Roman Breviary, 341. Cf. also Jeremiah 2:21, Ego autem plantavi te vineam electam (Yet I planted thee a chosen vineyard). 151. Quomodo conversa es in amaritudine? Voluisti me crucifiggere et Barabam dimittere. Recited along with the preceding verse on Good Friday (see note 150 above), this is a reference to the people’s choice of Barabbas, over Jesus, as the prisoner to be released by Pilate according to the Passover custom (Luke 23:17–25).

Convent Paradise 105 and shames. See the open arms with which I have been awaiting your penitence for such a long time. Why do you not run quickly to wash away the filth of your sin beneath those trickles of blood? You are still in time, but, like those who were invited but do not come, you do not hear or heed my invitations, nor those of your superiors, who advise you in my name.152 Instead, just as a deaf man hears not,153 when you ought to act so that tears might have been bread to you day and night,154 you remain indolent without cooperating in the interest of your salvation.” Yes, yes, oh my refuge, since there is always an opportunity for penance, so now, fallen to the ground here, once again your loving penitent, I will not move from your feet without hearing these words offered to me with gentle thunder: thy sins are forgiven thee.155 I will not fail to do so; thus let ancient rites depart, and all be new around.156 And if in curing the sickness of my heart the sweetness of your grace did not suffice, Punish me, afflict me, Lord, but spare me in eternity.157 Make use of the iron and fire of trials and tribulations, my dear Lord, since Better are the wounds of a friend than the kisses of an enemy.158 And that profane but pleasing playwright expressed it well when he put these words into the mouth of Dorinda, wounded by the arrow of her cruel lover: For to escape from life is sweet, / if Silvio has wounded me.159

152. “You are still in time” recalls the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matthew 25:1–13); “those who were invited but do not come” recalls the parables of the wedding feast (Matthew 22:1–14) and the great banquet (Luke 14:16-24). 153. tamquam surdus non audiens. Cf. Psalms 37:14, Ego autem, tamquam surdus, non audiebam (But I, as a deaf man, heard not). 154. fuissent tibi lacrymae panes die, ac nocte. Cf. Psalms 41:4, Fuerunt mihi lacrimae meae panes die ac nocte (My tears have been my bread day and night). 155. Remittuntur tibi peccata. The words recur in several books of the Bible: see, for example, Matthew 9:2. 156. Recedant vetera, et nova sint omnia. The verse appears in the hymn “Sacris Solemniis” (At This Our Solemn Feast), composed by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) at the request of Pope Urban IV for the Feast of Corpus Christi. See Thesaurus precum latinarum / Treasury of Latin Prayers, ed. Michael Martin, . 157. Ure, seca Domine, ut in aeternum parcas. This text was commonly attributed, as in the gloss here, to Saint Augustine. Although the exact words do not appear in the saint’s writings, a similar sentiment can be found in his commentary on Psalm 33. See Saint Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori, Opere ascetiche, vol. 9, ed. Oreste Gregorio (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1965), 264n10. 158. Meliora sunt vulnera diligentis, quam oscula inimici. Cf. Proverbs 27.6, Meliora sunt vulnera diligentis quam fraudulenta oscula odientis (Better are the wounds of a friend, than the deceitful kisses of an enemy). Tarabotti omits the adjective “deceitful” from the biblical verse. 159. Che dolce uscir di vita / se Silvio m’ha ferita. See Battista Guarini’s pastoral tragicomedy, Il Pastor fido, 4.9, for the words of the lovesick nymph, Dorinda, wounded by the arrow of Silvio, who has mistaken her for a wolf: O dolce uscir di vita, / se Silvio m’ha ferita. Guarini, Il Pastor fido, 223.

106 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI But let this literary love give way to divine love. By the merits of all your suffering, by the blood shed, by the painful suffering endured by the purest Virgin who bore you, I beseech you, true fire of Christian souls, to pierce this impenitent heart of mine with the selfsame cruel lance that ripped open your breast.160 Wound me on the left side, like Catherine of Siena, that lover so dearly loved by you, and let the wounds be letters that spell out the precious name of Jesus, which you wrote in the heart of your beloved Ignatius.161 Then I too will be able to say more rightly, For to escape from life is sweet, / if Christ has wounded me.162 Listen no longer, my Lord, to my ravings. It is true that I loved with greater ardor those tendencies that endangered my soul than the embraces and kisses from you, who in order to love me died in such pain. But I had lost my senses then, and deserved to be counted among those ingrates who at the time of your Passion, raved at the physician who had come to heal them.163 I wish to rave no longer, my Life, no longer. Heal me, oh Redeemer of the universe, and I shall be healed.164 Help me regain a pristine intellect, a steady mind, a will that bends to goodness. With your boundless mercy, heal me of my unruly vain desires, my prying eyes, my needless words, my delight in my senses. Heal my soul, which sinned against you in thought, delectation, omission.165 I sinned against you in consent and deed.166 And since I—who like the prodigal son, have squandered all my wealth by offending you with all the power of my soul and in all my bodily appearance—no longer deserve to call myself your daughter, I turn to you, most merciful Father, calling, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, I am not now worthy to be called thy daughter. Make me as one of thy hired servants.167 Be quick, free your arms from those nails on that cross and bend them to embrace me. Can I alone not hope for the forgiveness granted to the sinful Magdalene, to 160. A reference to John 19:33–34. 161. In the iconography of Saint Catherine of Siena, she received the stigmata on her left side. Saint Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 35–ca. 107 CE), a bishop and martyr, was said to have the name of Jesus written in his heart. 162. Che dolce uscir di vita, / se Cristo m’ha ferita: Tarabotti plays on the verses from Guarini’s Il Pastor fido cited above (see note 159). 163. insaniebant in medicum, qui venerat curare eos. Cf. Saint Augustine, “Enarratio in Psalmum 63,” commentary on verse 3. See Augustine, Opera omnia, ed. J.-P. Migne, vol. 4.1 (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1845), 762. On Tarabotti’s use of the language of madness, see also note 121. 164. et sanabor. Cf. Jeremiah 17:14, Sana me, Domine, et sanabor (Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed). 165. Sana animam meam, quia peccavi tibi: cf. Psalms 40:5; cogitatione, delectatione, omissione: from a version of the Confiteor, or penitential prayer, said at the beginning of Mass. 166. Peccavi tibi consensu, et opere. This text is also from the Confiteor. See note 165. 167. Pater peccavi in coelo, et coram te, iam non sum digna vocari filia tua, fac me sicut unam de mercenarijs tuis. Tarabotti here combines two verses from the parable of the prodigal son, Luke 15:21 and Luke 15:19, changing the masculine “filius” (son) in the former to “filia” (daughter).

Convent Paradise 107 doubting Peter, to the Samaritan adulteress?168 No, for you do not deny your grace to anyone who trusts in you with a pure heart and a true faith. But alas, doubts also rise up to meddle with my joys. How will I respond to the reprimands of the Holy Spirit, who like the whitest dove tried so many times to nest in my heart, and to bring to it all of its purity, yet I chased it away by ignoring the light of its holy inspiration and refusing the grace of its succor? How will I be able to summon it, saying, Come, Creator Spirit,169 if other times it came unbidden and I chased it away? In the end I will hasten to Mary, the refuge of every sinner. Intercede on my behalf, most glorious queen, before the most Holy Trinity—to whom you are daughter, mother, and bride—with the compassion and mercy that can free this soul from its slavery to the devil, to whom it has become loyal because of my sins. They will not deny you graces, for you are the only delight of your son. One is my dove, my beloved one.170 You are the only one who can mitigate his anger and suspend his imminent judgment; you are in fact grace itself. Mary, Mother of Grace. So does every grace that comes to the world pass through the hands of Mary.171 Remember, oh Virgin, that it was man’s sin that occasioned the conception of your son in your womb. Concede as payment for such honor what is asked by me, a sinful woman. I know that your heart feels love for sinners no less ardently than Christ’s, and that you would readily have suffered in your body the Passion that he underwent, which nevertheless tormented you in your soul as you stood on Mount Calvary. At the slightest hint of your will—since you rightly, by merit and by dignity, stand above all the blessed souls of heaven—I will indeed pray for peace from all paradise. In fact, there will be no angel or blessed soul who will not joyfully celebrate the conversion of this sinful woman. There shall be joy before the angels of God upon one sinner doing penance.172 The 168. Mary Magdalene was said to have been a sinful woman who became a faithful follower of Jesus; according to the Gospels she was the first to witness his resurrection. Peter saw Jesus walking on water and faltered as he tried to reach him; Jesus chastised him for doubting (Matthew 24:31). In John 4, Jesus talks with a Samaritan woman, sometimes interpreted as an adultress, at the well. 169. “Veni Creator Spiritus.” The title of a hymn (English: Come Holy Spirit, Creator Blest) attributed to Rabanus Maurus (ca. 776–856) and sung on many occasions including Vespers, Pentecost, confirmation, and profession. See Thesaurus Precum Latinarum, . 170. Una est columba mea, dilecta mea. Cf. Song of Songs 6:9, una est columba mea, perfecta mea. 171. Maria Mater gratiae: from the hymn for the Little Office of Our Lady. Nulla gratia venit de coelo, nisi transeat per manus Mariae: the gloss, which attributes these lines to Saint Anselm, appears to be erroneous. They are found instead in Saint Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori’s Opere ascetiche, where they are attributed to Saint Bernardino of Siena. See Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori, Opere ascetiche, ed. Antonio Maria Tannoia, vol. 3 (Turin: Giacinto Marietti, 1880), 290. This verse highlights Mary’s role as Mediatrix. 172. Gaudium erit coram angelis Dei super uno peccatore poenitentiam agente. Cf. Luke 15:10, a verse from the parable of the prodigal son; see also note 167.

108 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins will rejoice, and among them my father Saint Benedict will exult, seeing me finally on the road to salvation. My dear John the Evangelist, to whom I profess a particular devotion, will be pleased. And in order to be forgiven, I am bold enough to turn to him alongside Mary. And what possible thing could be asked of God by his beloved son173 and his beloved daughter that would not be granted them? Therefore, I take refuge in the shadow of the rays of so lofty and sublime an advocatess. I entrust myself to her with my whole heart, even though I recognize that I am the harbor of all sins. And what must I fear? Hell, which she vanquished and subdued? Woman, you vanquished the strong. The world, the flesh? You softened the hard, you united with God.174 Surely there is nothing left for me to fear. I have victory in my grasp. I give thanks to you, oh glorious Mary, and with my whole soul turned to you, I pray you help me my whole life and in extremis, so that I may breathe my last breaths in the embrace of my bridegroom, invoking his name and yours. Mary that mother art of grace, of mercy mother also art, save and defend me from my foe, receive me when I hence depart.175 Thus, let hell be confounded. For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me.176

173. This seems to be a reference to John the Evangelist as “the other disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2). The identity of the “beloved disciple” had been a topic of debate for centuries, with Church Fathers such as Saint Augustine in his Tractates on the Gospel of John, for example, arguing that the disciple was in fact John the Apostle. Here, it would seem that Tarabotti takes the view that it was John the Evangelist. See also page 235. 174. Mulier quae vicisti fortem…. Emolisti durum, conciliasti Deum. These words come from a prayer said for the Virgin Mary on Assumption Day. Cf. Cornelio Musso, Il secondo libro delle prediche (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1571), 216. Tarabotti intersperses these citations with references to “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” the three enemies of the soul. See also pages 93, 150, and 180. 175. Maria Mater Gratiae, Mater Misericordiae, tu me ab hoste protege, et hora mortis suscipe. From the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the Little Hours and Compline. Translation based on A Hypertext Book of Hours, ed. Glenn Gunhouse, , which is derived from the Latin text in The Primer, or Office of the Blessed Virgin Marie, in Latin and English (Antwerp: Arnold Conings, 1599). See, e.g., the prayer as said at Prime: . 176. Et si ambulavero in medio umbrae mortis, non timebo mala, quaniam in mecum es. Cf. Psalms 22:4.

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Sonnet for the Preceding Soliloquy By an Unnamed Man177 Mentono queste carte, e questi accenti son di santa umiltà stupendi eccessi da un’Arcangela amante a Cristo espressi, per fede far de le sue fiamme ardenti. Le glorie di colei tacete, O genti, che lagrimando i suoi lascivi eccessi quelli c’avea nel core incendi impressi mutò in fochi celesti ed innocenti. Se questa pianse i gravi suoi peccati, e col pianto bagnò, terse col crine al diletto Maestro i piè beati, quella, amando de chiostri il bel confine, i capegli al suo Dio sacrificati, stima ree l’opre sue, che son divine. These pages lie, and these words / are a stunning abundance of holy humilty / expressed by an Archangel, a lover of Christ, / to give proof of the flames that burn within. // Speak not of her glories, oh people,  /  for in repenting her lascivious excesses / she transformed what was impressed on her heart / into heavenly and innocent fires. // If this lady bewailed her grave sins, / and with her tears bathed, with her locks dried / the blessed feet of her beloved teacher,178 // that one, loving the beautiful confines of the cloisters,  /  having sacrificed her long hair to God, / deems wicked her actions, which are divine.

177. This sonnet was written by Bertucci Valier (1596–1658), a member of one of the most powerful families in Venice who would go on to be elected doge of Venice in 1656. He was one of Tarabotti’s most powerful correspondents. She thanks him in a letter for this sonnet, which she says “makes my Paradise sparkle like a jewel”; see Tarabotti, Letters, 214 (letter 168). In an earlier letter, Tarabotti apologizes that this composition was left out of the draft sent to censors for approval: Tarabotti, Letters, 254–55 (letter 218). 178. The reference is to the Anointing of Jesus by a woman who is not named in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but identified as Mary of Bethany—the sister of Martha and Lazarus—in John 12:1–8. John 11.2 describes Mary as “she that anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair: whose brother Lazarus was sick.” Mary of Bethany was long conflated with Mary Magdalene.

Arcangela Tarabotti to the Reader If the humble confession that I made to God in the preceding Soliloquy did not prove my innocence to you, I fear that you might be too harsh of a judge. But know that you will not escape punishment for this. Judge not: and you shall not be judged.179 If you find some of my expositions, where I speak about myself and my actions, to be a bit too open, remember, oh courteous reader, that the tribunals of the divine judge are not like earthly ones, before which people hide their crimes and proffer excuses in order to beg pardon. I speak with God, before whom I deem it best humbly to exaggerate one’s faults in order to placate more easily his most righteous anger and regain his grace. Therefore, do not let yourself be blinded by any false rumors, because I want to make it clear that I did not sin against religion, and the very gaze of the divine eye that peers into the innermost recesses of the heart saw in me no infractions but those I have always found to be common in convents. I sinned against the boundless Good, it is true, more than the grains of sand in the sea,180 but I did not stray from the dutiful honor that my birth, my upbringing, and my own nature demand of me. If I was carried away by the meaningless frivolities of youth, I always maintained a morality that was so unblemished that it could proudly be called the purest innocence. My excesses stopped at the hem of my habit. They were the vanities so common among my sex. I always had that saying on my mind: without chastity a woman is not beautiful, and bodily beauty cannot and should not require any greater ornament than purity. In fact, knowing myself to be full of ugliness and bodily defects, I set myself to maintaining the beautiful aspects of my soul, the only things that deserve regard and admiration. Thus Christian philosophers teach me, and thus I have learned from the moral Gentiles, who declare before me that we do not deserve praise for those privileges which God and Nature concede to us, but for those that we acquire on our own. These honorable sentiments of mine were able for some time to keep me safe from the poisonous bites of disparaging tongues; but it is in fact true that innocence itself is disappointed on this most unjust worldly stage. Nonetheless, I do not want to digress on the topic of others’ dishonesty lest you suppose that I, by forming a Convent Paradise, am nurturing hatred and rancor against anyone; and in fact I declare that I have, with every ounce of Christian sincerity, placed 179. Nolite judicare, et non iudicabimini. Luke 6:37. 180. Supra numerum arenæ maris. Cf. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, “In Festo SS. Petri et Pauli Apostolorum,” Sermon 1. See Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera genuina, 2 vols. (Lyon and Paris: Perisse Frères, 1854), 2:369. This phrase was repeated frequently in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music; compare for example the motet by Giovanni Piccioni, “Peccavi super numerum arenae maris,” published as the seventeenth of his Concerti ecclesiastici (Venice: Appresso Giacomo Vincenti, 1610).

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112 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI my defense at the base of the highest tribunal, before which neither the dishonesty of gray-haired men nor the authority of earthly titles will have the least advantage over youthful truths, since up there self-interest is banished and evils are not condoned. Truth—which, rising up to heaven, left to us here on earth only a mantle to cover lies—will triumph over these mendacious and mocking tongues, to my eternal honor. Let my judge thus be that most benevolent Christ, who died beneath all of those lies most wrongfully heaped upon him. David, too, God’s beloved, invoked Christ to judge between him and Saul, who unjustly persecuted him. The lord judge between me and thee.181 For the rest, oh kind reader, do not expect from me carefully chosen words, beautiful conceits, lovely descriptions, compelling narration, lofty declarations or wide-ranging knowledge, since these ornaments belong to great minds and not to a weak intellect such as my own. Consider whether there could be any sweetness in expression, any style, any order to the exposition, any smoothness to the transitions, in the writings of a woman who has not had the slightest exposure to grammar or the other disciplines necessary for writing, and who in spelling knows no rules but those the dictionary teaches her. Someone like her—who was never taught to write and doesn’t even remember learning to read, though she has taken a great pleasure in such pursuits—could never gain skills enough to write without glaring errors. Given this, I shan’t believe that you, in glancing over these few pages, will be amazed that an ignorant woman like me, who lacks any knowledge of literature, is cut off and excluded from all activity and interaction, and whose mind is illuminated not by the lofty rays of wisdom but merely by natural light, has been so bold as to place before the gaze of the whole world these pages entitled Convent Paradise because she declares herself to be erudite, as most men do. You won’t allow yourself to be subject to such astonishment, which the wisest thinkers have always considered to be the daughter of ignorance.182 If this Paradise seems lacking in erudition and conceits to you, blame it on the fact that I concentrate on observing my vows and my religious duties. Keep in mind that if in donning the nun’s habit I did not reciprocate the call of the Holy Spirit with as much ardor as I should have, this does not mean that I should be numbered among those women who, forced against their will 181. Sit dominus iudex inter me, et te. Cf. 1 Samuel 24:16, sit Dominus judex et judicet inter me et te (Be the Lord judge, and judge between me and thee). 182. A reference to Saint Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle (Chapter 2: 982b 11–983a 23), which discusses the relationship between maraviglia (astonishment or wonder) and ignorance. In section 27, Aristotle writes that “it is because of wonder that men both now and formerly began to philosophize …. But one who raises questions and wonders seems to be ignorant.” In his commentary (section 55), Saint Thomas notes Aristotle’s point “that perplexity and wonder arise from ignorance.” See Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, trans. John P. Rowan (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), vol. 1, pp. 22–24.

Convent Paradise 113 and driven to desperation by being shut up within the cloister, transform Convent Paradise into a Hell, for themselves and others.183 Neither should you believe that I decry paternal tyranny184 and the unfounded arrogance of men for my own personal interests or with a fervor derived from my own circumstances, because I swear to you on my honor that only to contradict the evil and untrue slander with which men continually, with lying words, have sullied women for so many centuries, have I permitted my pen to spill a bit of ink in defense of my sex. I have composed two other books, each of which, divided in three parts, are full of real and true facts. They were both immediately stolen right from my hands.185 Were they ever to see the light of day, I declare before God and my superiors that this would cause me extreme mortification, not because I believe they contain words that are scandalous or anything less than pious, but because I know men care much more about political matters than they do divine precepts. Moreover, the brief span in which I created them and the multiple errors they contain clearly show these works to be miscarriages of my most sterile mind. I have no other objective, however, than to show you through the leaves of this book that the cloisters, when inhabited by women who have freely chosen a religious life, are true paradises created by the beauty of the virginal pureness that shines in these earthly angels. Please forgive any failings. May you be well and die in a state of grace.

183. In contrast to her statements in other works, Tarabotti here distinguishes her own gradual acceptance of religious life from the plight of women who were truly forced into professing religious vows. Her references to “Convent Paradise” and “Hell” play on the title of the present work, as well as that of her far more controversial early work, Inferno monacale (Convent Hell), which circulated in Venice and later France in manuscript form. 184. A reference to another of Tarabotti’s controversial works, La tirannia paterna (Paternal Tyranny). Like Inferno monacale, this work circulated in manuscript and decried the practice of forcing women to enter convents. It was published only in 1654, after Tarabotti’s death, with the title La semplicità ingannata (Innocence Deceived), and was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1661 (see the Introduction, pp. 1 and 31). See also the modern edition published by Simona Bortot (Arcangela Tarabotti, La semplicità ingannata [Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2007]), as well as the edition and translation by Letizia Panizza (Arcangela Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004]). 185. Tarabotti refers to the works mentioned in notes 183 and 184, Convent Hell and Paternal Tyranny. Tarabotti knew these works were dangerous because they challenged powerful religious and secular authorities, as she admits in the following lines; she therefore attempts to distance herself from the works in order to deny any responsibility should they come to press. Although evidence suggests that, indeed, Tarabotti did not try to publish Convent Hell, she sought tirelessly to publish Paternal Tyranny.

Convent Paradise Book One God loves all creatures, but in particular Woman, and then Man, even if he does not deserve it. And in order to explain the nature of his love for that most ungrateful creature, it suffices to say that the eternal Creator loves him as only God could.186 He loves him in such a way that, were he subject to earthly passions, he would experience all those same emotions that earthly and fraudulent lovers suffer, or say they suffer. He would not lack, and in a certain way he already does not lack, the annoyance of jealousy, the impatience of desire, the most ardent longing to see one’s love reciprocated. He goes around begging, so to say, for opportunities to understand whether this most vile pile of ashes returns his love in equal measure. He attempts, sometimes by means of trials, to see if man is ready to suffer some tribulation out of love for him, since he died amid a thousand torments to save man. He imposes certain rules that run counter to sense in order to have, with man’s quick obedience, a glimmer of proof that a loving fire burns within him. This perhaps prompted His Divine Majesty to turn once to his servant Abraham and say: Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father’s house, and come into the land which I shall shew thee.187 He—who truly returned God’s love—simply obeyed, without saying a word, without losing his way when faced with such an unexpected command, carrying out God’s will despite the fact that leaving his homeland for exile risked causing him various misfortunes. It is my opinion that this holy patriarch, inimitable in his ready obedience, should be chosen as lord of lords and as a model for willing nuns, who—called by the Holy Spirit—leave their fathers’ homes, indeed abandon the world, in order to heed the internal voice that calls out to them. With such holiness of purpose, nothing stands in their way: not the deprivations of religious life, nor that most human aversion to obediently submitting to another’s inclination and will. They are, however, different in their similarity to Abraham, because he obeyed by not refusing to wander far and wide in pilgrimage; and they, by leaving this wicked world behind, set their sights on the discomforts of enclosure behind the convent wall as part of their earthly pilgrimage, fixing their hearts in heavenly contemplation and their bodies within the cloister. Joyful and breathless with haste, discouraged by their relatives (although rare is the relative who does so), tempted by the 186. Tarabotti opens this first book of Convent Paradise, the centerpiece of her devotional corpus, with a trademark barb aimed at men. 187. Egraedere de terra tua, et de cognatione tua, et de domo patris tui, et vade in terram, quam monstrabi tibi. Cf. Genesis 12:1.

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116 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI devil and tormented by the flesh, they always say, with the most steadfast and astounding constancy, I will not come forth, but here I will die.188 They know by faith, if not by experience, that sensual delights and the honors of worldly adulation do not suffice to fill the vessel of the human heart, for the waters of pleasure always flow quickly away. Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.189 They know that only the water from the font of divine grace—which streams from the immense ocean of glory—can fill it completely. Only a portion of divine essence can gratify our stubbornly dissatisfied souls. They know this well, these women, who like David understand that only in the world of the blessed are all desires fulfilled: I shall be satisfied when thy glory shall appear.190 They realize that faith without works is dead.191 Therefore they shove away worldly pleasures and they retreat into their solitary cells so that their faith is always accompanied by their active works of abstinence, fasting, and discipline—weapons they use to fight in a manly way and to place daunting obstacles before the enemies of their souls. Safely aboard the bark of religion, they sail over this bitter sea, and by means of their labors and deprivations they happily approach the shore of eternal health. To keep this boat from sinking amid the turbulent waves, faith, hope, charity, constancy, obedience, humility, prudence, chastity, exemplarity, and poverty—all used in different ways toward the same goal of safely guiding the little craft—assure that the boat, so well protected and well captained, will arrive serenely on the banks of paradise, as I will prove in this discussion of mine. To recount this adequately, with words befitting the subject matter, I beg you, prostrate before you, oh sweet redeemer of my soul, to grant me the intelligence of the angels, the heart of the seraphs, the pen of your faithful secretary, and to prompt me with conceits that are truly worthy of paradise. But religion is a vast ocean that cannot be sailed without danger of shipwreck, and even a sublime intellect would have difficulty avoiding the risk of being engulfed while navigating it—that is, taking sail upon one’s thoughts to explore its nature and then describing it in words. Therefore I admit that my bravery should be called insanity since I, an ignorant woman, dare to undertake a discussion of paradise, which demands a detailed knowledge of theology and other requisites I do not possess. But let whoever wants to criticize me do so, for, if Clement of Alexandria says, I do not imagine that any composition can be so fortunate as that no one will speak against it,192 how can and should I, a most ignorant female, dare to cross this most danger188. Non egraediar, non egraediar, sed hic moriar. 1 Kings 2:30. See also note 198. 189. Inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te. Cf. Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.1; see Confessions, ed. Hammond, 1:2–3. 190. Satiabor, cum aparverit gloria tua. Cf. Psalms 16:15. 191. fides sine operibus mortua est. Cf. James 2:20. 192. Nullam existimo scripturam aliquam ita fortunatam procedere, cui nullus omnino contradicat. Cf. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata (or Miscellanies), bk. 1, chap. 1, in Fathers of the Second Century:

Convent Paradise 117 ous gulf of slander and opposition as I write about this sublime subject? Let it be clear that, just as nuns forced to enter the convent suffer all the torments of hell in this life, as I will show you elsewhere,193 so do those who choose to enter experience all the sweetness of paradise within themselves, and because of the love that they hold for their bridegroom, they enjoy a glorious ecstasy that lifts their souls from earth to heaven. Every bit of toil is so sweet for them, and they embody the words of their lover: For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.194 If those who were forced to become nuns by violent means must call out, It is hard to kick against the goad,195 those who voluntarily accepted the invitations of the Holy Spirit can join that secular poet in singing, Suffering is so dear to me, and dying sweet.196 They know that to know how we should abstain from that which gives us pleasure, if that must prove destructive, is the highest virtue.197 In fact, thinking about the horrible torments that those people suffer in the next life who in this life, falling again and again into softness and sensuality, know no other god than their own pleasure, these women gladly rejoice amid suffering and exult in penitence, as if these bespeak the greatness of their bridegroom. They constantly say, in response to the sophisms with which the devil tempts them, “I will not come forth.198 I will not leave these walls that give me more delight than sumptuous palaces. I will not leave this humble and meager table that for me is much more splendid than that of Lucullus.199 I am more restored by resting in my rough and coarse bed, with my heart surrendered to God, than I would be in the softest and most delicate feather beds that provide comfort to kings.” The soldier enrolled in Christ’s army must certainly suffer to follow in the tracks of his leader, who endured so much suffering. These women are true friends and servants of God, and because Hermes, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), vol. 2 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers, trans. William Wilson, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, rev. A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 303; rev. and ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight, . Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 215 CE) was a convert to Christianity and a theologian often considered a Church father. 193. Tarabotti refers to her Convent Hell. 194. Iugum enim meum suave est, et onus meum leve. Cf. Matthew 11:30. 195. Durum est contra stimulum calcitrare. Cf. Acts 9:5 and 26:14, durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare (It is hard for thee to kick against the goad). 196. Il penar m’è sì caro, e ’l morir dolce. Cf. Guarini, Il Pastor fido, 4.9: l’esser punta m’è caro, e ’l morir dolce (“Being stung is dear to me, and dying sweet”). Guarini, Il Pastor fido, 228. 197. Il sapersi astener da quel che piace; se quel, che piace offende: Guarini, Il Pastor fido, 3.3. See Guarini, Il Pastor fido, 162. The translation is from Guarini, The Faithful Shepherd, trans. Thomas Sheridan, ed. and completed by Robert Hogan and Edward A. Nickerson (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 93. 198. Non egraediar; see note 188 above. 199. Lucius Lucinius Lucullus (ca. 118–57/56 BCE), the Roman general also known as a great gastronome.

118 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI he that is a true friend loveth at all times,200 and he cares not for a loss who loves a friend,201 they consider the harm suffered and experienced by their singular friend and bridegroom, and they contemplate his death, the cross, the Passion, and the terrible opprobrium he was subjected to, and therefore resolve with their hearts to show him ceaselessly faithful servitude. Truly those cloisters that are inhabited by such pure souls can most accurately be called earthly paradises. When the Prime Mover commanded Abraham, father of the people, to leave his homeland Chaldea, he made six promises of great regard and import to him, to explain how contrary it is to our inclinations and how much merit one gains in his eyes by leaving the secular world behind.202 Oh, how thoroughly and how greatly does His Supreme Majesty rejoice in seeing his beloved flock removed from worldly comforts, luxuries, and ease in order to serve him! For this reason he said to Abraham: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and magnify thy name. I will bless them that bless thee, and in thee all the kindred of the earth shall be blessed.203 These are the mysteries that my lowly intellect is incapable of understanding; it has no way of penetrating them, much less expressing them. When God commanded this, his dearest follower, to go wandering and to establish a new home, he bolstered his courage with the most generous promises and prominent and important rewards. But when he ordered him to kill his own son, he promised him nothing in reward; he only ordered unconditionally that he offer him in sacrifice. His Divine Majesty knew well that it was much more distressing and unbearable for him to renounce his own things, to search for a new home, to experience difficulties and troubles, to deprive himself of his loved ones, than to kill a son in sacrifice with his own hand. Therefore, in return for the pilgrimage that he ordered, he offered Abraham various rewards, yet he offered him nothing when he ordered him in no uncertain terms to sacrifice Isaac. If these women, true servants of God, are not dissimilar to Abraham in their immediate obedience and their abandonment of worldly comforts, neither will they be as a result dissimilar in enjoying the same blessings that were given to him by his Creator. If only I did not lack the eloquence—just as I do not lack the intelligence—to understand that precisely in the Rule of Saint Benedict the 200. omni tempore diligit, qui verus est amicus. Cf. Proverbs 17:17. 201. nec damnum considerat, qui diligit amicum. Cf. Proverbs 12:26, Qui negligit damnum propter amicum, justus est (He that neglecteth a loss for the sake of a friend, is just). 202. This episode occurs in Genesis 12:1–3, which Tarabotti cites immediately below. The homeland of Abraham (originally Abram) is referred to as “Ur of the Chaldees” (see, e.g., Genesis 11:28)—Ur Kasdím, believed to have been in southern part of modern-day Iraq. 203. Faciamque te in gentem magnam, & benedicam tibi. Magnifacabo nomen tuum. Benedicam benedicentibus tibi, atque in te benedicentur universae cognationes terrae. Cf. Genesis 12:2–3. Tarabotti omits part of the verse.

Convent Paradise 119 same blessings are wholly granted to all the nuns who are bound by it!204 If, when considering the similarity between the old and the new law,205 the chosen vessel Saint Paul said, “All these things happened to them in figure,”206 then I consider myself justified in boldly saying that if the patriarch Abraham was the Benedict of the old law, then Benedict is the Abraham of the new law. There is no eye so blind that it cannot clearly recognize the sacraments that are recorded on those pages, as if roughly sketched out, where the true religion is still in shadow and the whole modern Church appears hidden and prefigured under sacrosanct veils. All the greatest and most renowned champions and leaders of the Christian army were foreshadowed in the Old Testament: Christ was prefigured in Isaac, the Virgin in Judith, and John the Baptist in Elias, as those words openly testify, And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias.207 Thus we will not stray from the truth by saying that many of those who established Rules and founded orders, and great leaders of entire holy religious phalanxes, were already prefigured in the personages of the Jewish law. Therefore it is neither improper nor untrue to say that Abraham prefigured Benedict, and that other saints and prophets of the Old Testament have prefigured the most central columns of the Holy Church, just as the holiness and sublime status of many remarkable Jewish women were the embodied prelude to the countless women who ennoble Christianity with their most holy conduct. Those ancient times did not lack figures similar to Bernard and seraphic Francis after they, in their profound humility, erected a staircase like the one Jacob saw,208 so that angels (that is, the souls of men and women religious) descend to earth from heaven, and from earth ascend to heaven. The most glorious Saint Dominic, a colonel in heaven, deserves to be compared to any of the ancient and holy fathers, since he earned entire armies of men and women of the cloth for his Lord. Now the Gospel truth echoes throughout the whole world, spread by the eloquent tongues of the innumerable preachers of his Rule. It can truly be said of him that he was one of the pillars upon which the Catholic Church is founded. Each one of these founders, like expert oarsmen in the sea of this world, has brought an infinite number of souls into the safe harbor of religion, since it is also true that those righteous people who choose religious vocations freely, as Saint John Chrysostom says, calmly come into the port, and like torches or lights placed 204. On The Rule of Saint Benedict, see note 110. 205. That is, the Old and New Testament. 206. Omnia in figuris contingebat illis. 1 Corinthians 10:11. By “in figure,” Paul means “figuratively,” as Tarabotti goes on to explain. 207. Ipse praeibit in spiritu, et virtute Eliae. Cf. Luke 1:17, Et ipse praecedet ante illum in spiritu et virtute Eliae. 208. A reference to “Jacob’s ladder,” a ladder leading to Heaven that was seen by Jacob in a dream (Genesis 28:10–19).

120 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI in a high location they illuminate the passengers with their light.209 Mortal life is a journey that begins on earth and ends in heaven. No one, sailing these worldly seas, can ever know what true tranquility and peace are like; instead, everyone wanders about, at times crashing into rocks and getting caught in the depths. Only true men and women religious, pushed by a gentle breeze and guided by Mary—the north wind—arrive at the harbor of salvation with their ship intact and safe. Who therefore will deny that cloisters are earthly paradises, or rather the Empyrean heavens, since God is present in them by grace, and they are inhabited by angels? I am bold enough to say that the willing inhabitants of the convent are more praiseworthy than angels, since angels, immaculate and incorporeal, do not feel the urge to sin, while nuns, made of the most fragile flesh, are victorious over themselves and curb their own inclinations for love of their cherished bridegroom. What miracles of holiness did the glorious virgin Saint Clare, the exemplar of religious life, Saint Catherine of Siena, and the blessed Catherine of Prato,210 not provide? Oh, how many souls, following in the footsteps of their example, enriched themselves with heaven, and enriched heaven with themselves? The number of nuns who have illuminated the Church with the splendor of sanctity is limitless. It is unnecessary to name them, for I know I can say, without anyone contradicting me (since men with their usual slanderous tongues assert that women are excessive in everything they do), that women engage in devotional and holy practices and actions with excessive ardor and unrivalled goodness, for they practice abstinence, mortifications, and penitence with the utmost precision and rigor. Moreover, the perpetual enclosure they have chosen should provide sufficient evidence of their extreme perfection to anyone wishing to plumb the profound depths of their holiness with an unjaundiced eye. These willing nuns are so extremely perfect that one can say they are divine paragons of religious life. They offer their heart and body to their bridegroom, remembering that he, in love with the soul, anxiously seeks it amid thousands of hardships and sufferings, circling cities, fortified towns, and villages looking for it. Nor would he ever want to have occasion to say: I sought it, and found it not.211 They run into his arms, and 209. Tranquillo in portu nauigant, ac veluti luminaria sunt sublimi de loco nauigantibus fulgore suo iter aperientes. This citation is found in Lorenzo de Zamora, Del Santuario, overo discorso de’ santi (Venice: Presso Andrea Baba, 1628), 2:123. Zamora provides the quotations both in Latin and in Italian translation. 210. Saint Clare of Assisi (1194–1253), one of the first followers of Saint Francis of Assisi, founded the order that became the Poor Clares. On Saint Catherine of Siena, see note 93 above. Catherine of Prato, or Catherine de’ Ricci (1522–1590), was a Dominican tertiary nun and mystic; she was not beatified until 1732. It was not uncommon in the early modern period for the terms “saint” and “blessed” to be applied to figures who were revered but not yet officially beatified or sanctified by the Church. 211. Quaesivi illam, et non inveni. Cf. Song of Songs 5:6, Quaesivi, et non inveni illum (I sought him, and found him not).

Convent Paradise 121 they close themselves up in the cloisters, so that he need never have feelings of jealousy toward them, since he—most jealously—says, I am God, jealous.212 They promise him their unsullied faithfulness by means of sacraments, and in order to release the happiness inside them they shout: I found, I found him whom my soul loveth. I held him, and I will not let him go.213 So that acts of mercy might be more perfect and more pleasing to the Lord, Saint Ambrose asserts that they must not be requested or begged for by anyone, but offered freely of one’s own accord. From this I derive the necessary corollary that the willing donation of one’s heart is more pleasing to God than anything offered to him that has been compelled or coaxed by others. I therefore contend that the most glorious saints mentioned above, together with the innumerable women—living lights of the Church and founders of well-instituted Rules, who have chosen for themselves and shown to other women the true path to eternal salvation—work in perfect synchrony with God’s heart, and are loved most passionately by him in return.214 But little, or in fact not at all, does he appreciate those women who have been forced into the religious life as worthy of his excessive mercy. At the entrance to the paradise in which our first father made us the heirs of sin, there was a cherub on guard with a sword of fire in his hand.215 At the door to the cloisters, which are certainly nothing less than earthly paradises, there stands—to protect the women enclosed inside from the offenses of the senses—divine love, armed with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Not only does he serve as their defense, but he also scorches them with a most blessed holy ardor at the moment they are called by God, whence they say O how good is Jesus, thy word is exceedingly refined.216 Therefore, burning with the fire of their vocation, in addition the loving flames administered to them by the burning furnace of Christ’s side, they leave behind the stagnant waters of the earthly swamp and run thirsting to be flooded with the immense river of heavenly graces. And who will have so little love for her own salvation that she will not take shelter behind the walls of a convent to which God himself is the door? I am the door.217 His is the door which,

212. ego sum Deus zelotes. Cf. Exodus 20:5, ego sum Dominus Deus tuus fortis, zelotes (I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous). 213. inueni, inueni, quem diligit anima mea. Tenui eum, nec dimittam. Cf. Song of Songs 3:4. Tarabotti underscores the joy of discovering divine love by repeating “inueni,” used only once in the original verse. 214. Tarabotti, in a grammatical twist, uses the feminine gender in the last two clauses of this sentence, although the initial subject refers to both men and women. 215. Cf. Genesis 3:24. 216. O quam ignitum eloquium tuum vehementer bone Iesu. Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 146 to Burchard, Abbot of Balerne, in Opera genuina, 2 vols. (Lyon and Paris: Perisse Frères, 1854), 1:130. 217. Ego sum hostium. John 10:9.

122 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI thrown open by mercy, opens up the entrance to paradise. To reach it, there is no surer road than religious life. But let us return to the comparison between Abraham and Saint Benedict, because—we being required to imitate Benedict as much as he imitated Abraham—we shall extract the teachings necessary to walk righteously and surely on the path of the religious life. If Abraham was extremely beloved to God for his obedience, the angelic doctor Saint Thomas called Benedict in the opening to a sermon, Beloved of God, and men.218 God promised to make Abraham father of all peoples; he proliferated the spiritual children of Benedict and gave him more blessings than there are grains of sand in the sea. The Lord gave him the blessings of all nations.219 Among those that God gave to the patriarch Abraham, one was: and kings shall come out of thee.220 My Benedict did not lack this same grace, since to make themselves into sons of so great a father many emperors, kings, and princes have thrown down their scepters and abandoned their crowns, and in order to follow such a noble champion of heaven they have judged it proper to disdain earthly powers and human grandeur, which in the end are nothing but contemptible vanities. Men should not strut about proudly if, as I describe women’s convents as paradise, I also speak about saints of the male sex.221 In fact, I would have no trouble forming a most perfect paradise by recalling how many extremely saintly women, through the perfect example of their angelic lives, have transformed their cells here on earth into celestial abodes, and the cloister into an Olympus. I need only mention the Virgin Mother, who set a most perfect example for true nuns, since she humbly obeyed the celestial messenger just as nuns obey their superiors: Behold the handmaid of the Lord.222 She was so poor that at the birth of the 218. Dilectus Deo et hominibus. Cf. Ecclesiasticus 45:1. The words “Dilectus Deo et hominibus” were used for Benedict’s feast day, March 21. The text glosses Saint Thomas, who makes mention of (but does not quote) this verse, and does not cite Benedict, in Part 2 of his Summa theologiae. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa sancti Thomae: Hodiernis academiarum moribus accommodata, ed. Charles René Billuart (Paris: Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1904), 5:85. Saint Thomas, who received his first education from Benedictine monks, endorses the degrees of humility of the Benedictine Rule in question 161. Translation from The Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas: Second Part of the Second Part, QQ. CXLI–CLXX, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster: Edus. Canonicus Surmont, Vicarius Generalis, 1920), 215–31; ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight, . 219. Benedictionem omnium gentium dedit illi Dominus. Ecclesiasticus 44:25. 220. Regesque ex te egredientur. Genesis 17:6. 221. That is, even though the founders of the religious orders Tarabotti speaks of were men, her readers should not assume that she will praise male saints over female—for, as she explains below, they all learned holiness from Mary. 222. Ecce ancilla Domini. Luke 1:38. This verse is also regularly sung in the Angelus, a Catholic prayer that commemorates the Incarnation.

Convent Paradise 123 infant Jesus, she didn’t even have enough rags to swaddle him, and when fleeing to Egypt she had to avail herself of a lowly little donkey. There was no equal, and never will be, to the purity of her virginity, since she, who was the founder of perfect religious life, completely fulfilled the three vows that are fundamental to all religious orders and to nuns.223 Let masculine arrogance be silent, since if those who founded and regulated monastic orders were men, they learned from Mary, and no one else, the true precepts and rules for religious life. And who will be so bold as to deny this? After the death of her son, she was in a way the first—before Saint Peter—to exercise the role of pontiff in the Christian Church, because everyone received teachings from her and her superhuman erudition, and learned how to live in accordance with divine will. Therefore, she was the mistress and the teacher of all saints.224 If Benedict was a saint, and received favors from God that can be compared to those granted to Abraham, his sister Saint Scholastica greatly surpassed him, as he himself admits. She performed the miracle of making rain and bolts of lightning come down from heaven so that he would not leave in the middle of conversation with her, for he refused to bend to her entreaties to stay, because he did not want to remain outside his monastery.225 Female saints surpass men of virtue and religion not only qualitatively, in terms of the holiness and religiosity of their life, but also quantitatively, in their number. Sufficient testimony to this comes from Ursula, who led an entire army of eleven thousand virgins. She valued the joys of virginity and the crown of martyrdom more than the worthless jewels of earthly life and a queen’s crown.226 But since it is not proper to make polemics that might seem spiteful in heaven, I would like to repeat again that true nuns take inspiration from Abraham; for if his pilgrimage ended in the blessings given to him by God, the voyage of these women, after some time in the secular world, will end in the heaven of a convent filled with all of the delights a soul that has given itself over to His Divine Majesty could want. Therefore, the cloisters that house perfect nuns—that is, willing, not unwilling, nuns—are celestial abodes and residences for the blessed on earth. If into such places there enters a young woman who is dead with sin, weighed down with faults, and worthy of scorn for her offenses against God, she has but to 223. The three vows are poverty, chastity, and obedience. 224. The early modern period saw an enormous increase in Marian art and literature, which emphasized Mary’s role as mother of all Christians, co-redemptrix with her son, and mediatrix—although these were never accepted as dogma. Tarabotti, however, went beyond even such devoted worship of Mary to name her, rather than Peter, as the founder of the Catholic Church. 225. Saint Scholastica (ca. 480–543) was the sister of Saint Benedict and was considered the first Benedictine nun. The story of her compelling her brother to stay (along with most of what is known about her) comes from the sixth-century Dialogues of Gregory the Great (see the Introduction, p. 58n177). 226. Saint Ursula (d. 383) was an early Christian martyr said to have been killed by Huns along with her entourage of virginal handmaidens (see the Introduction, p. 58n178).

124 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI receive the gentle and merciful breath of the Holy Spirit, and she is returned to life and restored to grace. She receives all the joys of this mortal life in the bright skies of the convent, and then, after her death, glory in the Eternal Kingdom. Ah, wicked world! If every secular person can have such privilege and enjoy such marvels, why do so few of them choose to leave behind earthly delights when they know that almost as from earth to heaven thus from their own houses to the monasteries might any holy men go?227 Fathers and mothers of innocent virgins, be proud that they run to take shelter in the cloisters, and rejoice when you hear those earthly angels sing, our conversation is in heaven!228 They have reason to sing thus, because—abhorring the vain conversation of the secular world—they retreat into themselves and want no other discussions than those which, through holy meditation and heavenly contemplation, sweeten their souls in thinking of their beloved bridegroom Jesus. Hence they often cry to their darling beloved: O how sweet are thy words to my palate! more than honey to my mouth.229 They know by experience that there is no greater sweetness than to repeat their Lord’s most gentle words. Therefore, they do not fear tribulations, wrongs, false accusations, deaths, crosses, and gallows, for these seem gentle when mixed with the sweetness of conversation with God. Thus, steadfast and firm amid their tribulations, like a reef amid waves, they will say along with the Bradamante of verse: Jesus, as I always was, so do I wish to remain / until death, and beyond, if beyond I may.230 These divine spirits make no distinction in loving friends and enemies; indeed, they love the latter as a means to gain merit in order to earn themselves heaven’s rewards and crowns. For they remember that the most just captain Moses, injured by the stubborn Jewish people when they had provoked divine anger against themselves, not only forgave those traitors but, turning to God, full of love toward those evildoers, said: “Oh Lord, either forgive them or erase me from your book, since I no longer wish to join with you.”231 Likewise, they know that Saint Stephen, as his most holy soul was leaving his body amid the multitude of rocks with which he had been stoned, turned to God as if those stones had not hurt him

227. de terra in coelum, ita ad sancti cuiuslibet viri monasteria de proprijs domibus itur. Cf. John Chrysostom, Enarrationes in divi Pauli epistolas (Antwerp: Jan Steels, 1544), 49v. See also the explication of 1 Timothy in Cosma Magaliano, Operis hierarchici, sive, De ecclesiastico principatu, libri III (Leiden: Horatio Cardon, 1609), 605. 228. Nostra conuersatio in caelis est. Cf. Philippians 3:20, nostra autem conversatio in caelis est. 229. O quam dulcia faucibus meis eloquia tua super mel ori meo. Cf. Psalms 118:103. 230. Gesù qual sempre fui, tal esser voglio / fin alla morte, e più se più si puote. Cf. Ariosto, Orlando furioso, 44.61, verses 1–2: “Ruggier, qual sempre fui, tal esser voglio / fin alla morte, e più, se più si puote.” See Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. Caretti, 2:1336. 231. Cf. Exodus 32:31–32, where Moses beseeches God to forgive the Jews, saying, “either forgive them this trespass, or, if thou do not, strike me out of the book that thou hast written.”

Convent Paradise 125 and begged forgiveness for the stoners.232 Thus with holy jealousy for these excesses of divine love, these virgins beseechingly pray for those who disdain them and exalt those who humiliate them. If Moses of the Old Testament and Stephen of the New Testament of Christ showed ardent love to those who injured them, even though in those times it was not prescribed by as many evangelical preachers to love one’s enemies, well do these female seraphs, burning with heavenly flames, know that they must imitate them.233 For they have heard thundering in their ears a thousand times that word of Christ: if one strikes thee on thy cheek, turn to him also the other.234 They know well that religious perfection consists in abnegating one’s own will and submitting oneself not only to another’s inclination, but also, when necessary, to harm. I believe that this highest mount of religious perfection is the one we read about in the Song of Songs: I will go to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.235 For where, more than in convents, can be found a greater abundance of the myrrh of mortification and abnegation of will through the castigation of the flesh and the senses? There, meditation on the cross and on the passion of our Savior cannot be separated from the mortifications of this flesh that always opposes the spirit. And where, oh where are senses more trampled, where is the secular world more scorned, than in such paradises? The secular world encounters no greater mockery than from those with true religious callings, and those with true religious callings know no greater mockery than from the very world they scorn, by which they are often scorned. Rightly they preach caution, for there is no greater folly than to serve this ungrateful world, which yields no good that is not uncertain and fleeting; and that which men call riches and happiness are dreams and shadows.236 They know that you cannot live without loving, since love is the life of the heart. Who does not love, does not live; / Love gives life.237 And so from vain and fallacious and fickle loves they make a ladder for themselves to holy, divine, and constant affections. And with an admirable refusal of earthly things they fall in love with God, and in order to please him, they bury themselves in holy cloisters, solitary places which favor contemplation. And there, ardently in love, their souls speak among themselves and conclude—without the opinion of earthly sages, who for the most part have no sense when it comes to 232. See Acts of the Apostles 7:58–60. 233. That is, nuns must imitate Moses and Stephen. 234. Si percusserit tibi unam maxilam, prebe illi, et alteram. Cf. Matthew 5:39, sed si quis te percusserit in dexteram maxillam tuam, praebe illi et alteram. 235. Ibo ad montem mire et ad colem turris. Cf. Song of Songs 4:6. 236. Cf. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 156.4: “che quant’io miro par sogni, ombre, e fumi” (for whatever I look on seems dreams, shadows, and smoke). See Petrarch, Opere, 127; Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 302. Petrarch is glossed in the margin of the text. 237. Chi non ama non vive, / Amor dà vita. Citation not identified. Verses may be Tarabotti’s own; perhaps a reference to 1 John 3:14: “ He that loveth not abideth in death.”

126 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI spiritual health—that they cannot live without love in their hearts. And since they do not love each other, they conclude that in order to rejoice, no more worthy nor more perfect object to love can be chosen than God himself, who in recompense for their love offers the highest and sweetest enjoyment of eternal glory. And this is not a love in which one must worry about reciprocation, for our Lord said, I love them that love me.238 The humble virgin nuns love him beyond measure, certain of being loved in return, since he was the first to give them the signs of his love. For love alone he created the world out of nothing. Even Plato understood this, when he said, God made the world by means of love.239 All that can be done, he has done, for love of humankind. He made us masters of this whole apparatus, and finally, at the price of his own blood, he chose to buy humankind back and redeem it from eternal damnation, almost like a merciful and loving pelican,240 allowing his breast to be struck and torn in order to give vital nourishment to the souls of the faithful, his children, by him made heirs of heaven. Earthly love can never be tranquil when it is not sure it is reciprocated, but from the celestial lover one obtains a benevolence so sure and abundant and reciprocal that an angelic tongue could not rise high enough to express its excellence. His having suffered and died upon the trunk of the cross is evidence that creates in the enamored nuns a faith of blood and spirit in the overflowing, unchangeable, and always firm affection of their most faithful bridegroom. Lascivious lovers, torn by their jealousy, say, But jealous fear, alas, assails me, / that love no longer binds you, / my faith, my love are disregarded.241 What then will these happiest of loving souls, whose love is reciprocated, say if they see the heart of their one true beloved Good torn open by the blow of a lance,242 since from that wound they may conclude that his is an unparalleled love? And because love cannot be repaid except by equal love, these true servants of God reciprocate with the greatest affection that can issue forth from a mortal heart. 238. Ego diligentes me diligo. Proverbs 8:17. 239. A gloss attributes this statement to Plato’s Timaeus, which provides an account of the universe as formed by a beneficent “Craftsman.” Tarabotti may have known the Timaeus through an intermediate source. This phrase appears exactly as Tarabotti cites it in Muzio Pansa, De osculo seu consensu ethnicae et christianae philosophae, tractatus (Marburg: Paul Egenolff, 1605). 240. A common image in bestiaries and religious art depicts the adult pelican piercing its breast to revive its young with its blood. The image was understood as an allegory for Christ’s shedding his blood for humankind’s salvation. 241. Ma geloso timor, lasso, m’assala, / che te di novo amor non leghi / la mia fe, l’amor mio messo in non cale. See Antonio Bruni, “Zefiro à Clori,” in Epistole heroiche (Venice: Appresso lo Scaglia, 1636), 268: “Ma, lasso hor fredda tema il cor m’assale, / Che di te nuovo amor laccio non leghi, / La mia fè, l’amor mio messo in non cale.” 242. A reference to the lance used by one of the Roman soldiers to ascertain Jesus’s death as he hung on the cross: see John 19:33–34.

Convent Paradise 127 Speaking about love, Plato said it is all embracing.243 I say that the true God of love does not neglect to embrace anyone whom he loves. Hence his dear beloved nuns are tightly grasped in the embraces of their adored and loving bridegroom amid the paradises of the cloister which I am describing, so that, reassured by his loving tenderness, not only can they boldly speak with him and embrace him, but they can daringly invite his kisses. Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.244 It is said that earthly lovers experience such delight in joining lips to lips, drawing one mouth near to another, and mixing the breath of one with the spirit of the other. If this is so, what will happen, then—my life, my delight—when, at the summit of your glory, I shall be permitted to kiss you, to embrace you, and to delight in you, not with the impure lasciviousness of an earthly body, but with the most lively feelings of the soul, which, separated from my earthliness, all spirit and all love, will not be impeded in actions by the weight and darkness of this earthly material? All willing and devout nuns yearn, along with me, to join themselves to you, most yearned-for consort of their souls, and before arriving at this perfect happiness, with loving anxiousness they seek you in the uncomfortable little bed of religious life. In my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth.245 And from here he does not move. But if it happens that they do not find him on the first try, inflamed with the marvelous ardor conferred on them by the Holy Spirit, they advance little by little up the mount of perfection, and with vigorous steps they climb toward heaven by way of righteous actions. They begin to recognize their cowardice, their sins, and they deem themselves worthy of infernal punishment. And realizing that in paying heed to the secular world, the holiness of the soul is lost, all their thoughts become inflamed with divine love, and they exclaim devoutly, Announce, my beloved, that I languish with love!246 They languish, but their languor is so gentle and dear that it increases their spiritual strength, reinforced by the promises made by him who cannot lie to those who willingly labor to serve him. Thus, these—I will not say women, but rather miracles of nature—enter into the eternal chambers abhorred by false nuns. Indeed, within the perpetually impenetrable walls that surround them, they console themselves, and they delight, as if these walls are a prelude to those dwellings in which they have a sure hope of delighting in paradise. Inhabiting those places forever frightens them little—indeed not at all—for they know them to be heavens in the form of convents, since in loving so deeply, neither the inviolable vow of constrictive enclosure, nor a 243. Probably a reference to the concept of love Plato presents in his Symposium. 244. Osculetur me osculo oris sui. Song of Songs 1:1. 245. In lectulo meo quaesivi, quem diligit anima mea. Cf. Song of Songs 3:1. Tarabotti’s citation leaves out “by night” from the full phrase: In lectulo meo, per noctes, quaesivi quem diligit anima mea. 246. Nunciate dilecto meo, quia amore langueo. Cf. Song of Songs 5:8, Adjuro vos, filiae Jerusalem, si inveneritis dilectum meum, ut nuntietis ei quia amore langueo (I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, that you tell him that I languish with love). See also notes 80, 129, 516, and 591.

128 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI punishing way of life, nor severe penitence can diminish their heartfelt affection. A mighty love that hardship could not quell,247 even if the suffering is lengthy and enduring, for in any case with the eternity of faith and affection, they shall praise thee for ever and ever,248 in spite of Satan, who in vain sets out traps for these invincible hearts. If those unhappy women who are forced by paternal tyranny249 to consign themselves unwillingly to a cloister attempt with tears and laments to soften the hardness of their parents and relatives, these women250 solicit their relatives with prayers and procure with tears to be granted enclosure. Their relatives, because of that sad bit of profit they derive from the little money they must spend to make them nuns, procrastinate and delay introducing them to that gateway which, when it opens, seals the entrance of hell to them forever. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.251 Those convent walls, encircled and strengthened by every virtue, protect the inhabitants from the forces of a numerous army of devils, driven out so many times by the holy founders of the orders and by the humble virgins, who are not strong because of a robust body or fierce because of their sex, but are generous and worthy by virtue of that love which the bridegroom said is as strong as death.252 This love is stronger than death by far, since it has caused many martyrs to despise life. Saint Paul, wounded by this divine and loving arrow, said, I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ.253 For those who receive this purest love in their breast, all the virtues flower in their hearts and all the vices of the soul are banished. In earthly loves, internal changes are measured by the movements of the pulse (let them say it about Stratonice’s stepson),254 but in this heavenly love, 247. Vivace amor che negli affanni cresce. Petrarch, Triumph of Love, 3.37. See Petrarch, Opere, 276; The Triumphs of Petrarch, 21. A gloss in Tarabotti’s edition erroneously refers to Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). 248. in saecula saeculoroum laudabunt te. Psalms 83:5. 249. Tarabotti refers to the practice of forced monachization, against which she fought vociferously throughout her life, and most directly in her Tirannia paterna (Paternal Tyranny). Tarabotti’s reference to this work here makes it clear that while Convent Paradise celebrates the spiritually joyful life of voluntary nuns, she in no way means to back away from her condemnation of forced monachization. 250. Tarabotti refers here to voluntary nuns. 251. Portae inferi non praevalebunt adversus eas. Matthew 16:18. 252. Fortis est ut mors dilectio. Song of Songs 8:6. 253. Cupio dissolvi, et esse cum Christo. Cf. Philippians 1:23, desiderium habens dissolvi, et esse cum Christo (having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ). 254. Queen Stratonice of Syria was married to King Seleucus but was loved by her stepson Antiochus. When Antiochus fell ill, the physician Erasistratus diagnosed him with a dangerous lovesickness because of his quickening pulse when he saw Stratonice. Seleucus eventually allowed Antiochus to marry Stratonice. Cf. Plutarch, “Life of Demetrius,” chap. 38. See Plutarch, Lives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, vol. 9, Demetrius and Antony. Pyrrhus and Gaius Marcus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920), 93.

Convent Paradise 129 external mortification is a clear sign of the hottest fires of the soul, which, abandoning earthly delights, can say, a new love has chased away an old desire.255 Loves and thoughts have their seat in the heart and are revealed by the veins through changes (sometimes slow, sometimes unnaturally frequent), because inner affections must correspond to the external movements of the arm and the hand. And thus the bride, in order to understand whether she was perfectly loved, said, Put me as a seal upon thy heart and upon thy arm.256 So also do the new brides of Christ love, when they are truly called by the voice of the Holy Spirit. Their external appearance and behavior reflects the loving soul they have inside. Hence, they still seek a way to clearly manifest the effects of their affections, saying, What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?257 They abandon the world, and with their heart they also turn the flush of their cheeks to pallor, they fast, they mortify their flesh, they waste away, they pray; and so the spirit, warring with the flesh, is victorious. They languish so much like lovers that they fall ill, but with a blessed illness caused by love. This sickness is not unto death, says Christ the physician, but unto life.258 These nuns, preparing themselves to walk the dreadful pilgrimage of this life as they leave their homes, clothe themselves in a garment of uncorrupted innocence; they equip themselves with the strongest rod of humility; they arm themselves with the most ardent charity; and with a pocket full of holy desires they walk to the cloister with hurried steps in order to flee the enticements of the secular world, that false siren. Having so filled their minds with divine thoughts, they do not see what they are leaving, so that one could say that they make the journey with closed eyes. Their hearts and minds are so firm and founded in God that they do not incline in the least to the things to which the secular world tacitly coaxes them with its invitations, it being characteristic of one whose mind is engaged in weighty thoughts not to hear unless spoken to from close by. Because, as the natural philosophers truthfully assert, by great abundance of imagination and reasoning is hearing hindered.259 Thus in vain does the demon spread false promises, deceitful affections of men, and false worldly delights, since the pure and candid virgins, wholly absorbed in God, have lost their sight and their hearing for everyone else but their bridegroom. In order not to stray or even be distracted 255. Scacciato ha novo amor vecchio desio. Cf. Guarini, Il Pastor fido, 3.3, “Scaccerà vecchio amor novo desio” (a new desire will chase away an old love). Guarini, Il Pastor fido, 162. 256. Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum, et super brachium tuum. Cf. Song of Songs 8:6, Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum, ut signaculum super brachium tuum (Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm). 257. Quid faciemus, ut operemur opera Dei? John 6:28. 258. Infirmitas non est ad mortem… sed ad vitam. Cf. John 11:4, Infirmitas haec non est ad mortem, sed pro gloria Dei (This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God). 259. per magnam abundantiam immaginandi, et ratiocinandi est impeditum sentire. Citation not identified.

130 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI from the path they have begun, they never look backwards, unlike those unhappy women who, tyrannized by their fathers and relatives, enter the convent against their will, turning their faces—and more so, their minds—at every step to gaze back at the delights of the world, which they abandon under duress.260 They261 aspire only to what they can hope for through faith, and every delay, no matter how momentary, to their being received in the house of their one true beloved Good, seems years,262 even a century, to these most ardently enamored young women. The vehemence with which they set out to wander the paths of religious life toward the homeland of heaven makes them thirst for the purest waters of divine grace and causes within them, on the contrary, a great nausea for earthly things. Hence they sing, Whoever sees a fair fountain trickle down a face of rock is foolish if he leaves the pure and chaste silver and drinks from the muddy and tainted river nearby.263 They see and confess that this miserable world is nothing but a vale of tears264 and pain, and whoever puts the most trust in it derives the most torment. Therefore, until they have reached the safe harbor of religious life, painfully uncertain of attaining their yearned-for desires, they give vent to their amorous passions. “Oh, my God,” they say, “Oh, love of my soul, oh, sweetest and inexhaustible font of all graces, when, when shall it be that we come to submit ourselves to you as your handmaidens, unworthy to embrace you as your brides (or made worthy of such by you)? Let these waters remain impure from earthly pleasures, and let them be replaced by the purest torrents of your favors. Alas, for the pilgrimage of this life is indeed long, which delays our union with you! Oh, Saint Paul, rightly did you ask, who shall deliver me from the body of this death,265 if we shall come to

260. Tarabotti refers to forced nuns.. 261. The willing nuns. 262. More precisely, un lustro, or five years. 263. Chi vede un fonte distillar da un sasso, / stolto se lascia il puro argento, e casto, / e bee del vicin rio turbato, e guasto. The verse is in part derived from Tasso, who is glossed. Cf. Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, 6.109: ove un bel fonte distillar d’in sasso (where a fair fountain trickles down a face / of rock), and 13.60: S’alcun giamai tra frondeggianti rive / puro vide stagnar liquido argento (If any man through leafy banks has seen / the liquid silver glimmer). The last verse of Tarabotti’s does not appear in Tasso. Cf. Torquato Tasso, La Gerusalemme liberata, ed. Lanfranco Caretti (Turin: Einaudi, 1993), 191, 411. Translations are from Torquato Tasso, The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata), trans. Max Wickert, introd. Mark Davie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 118, 251. 264. Cf. Psalms 83:7. 265. Quis me liberabit de corpore mortis huius. Romans 7:24.

Convent Paradise 131 see you neither through riddles nor as a likeness,266 but unveiled in your essence, just as the angels and the saints rejoice in you. Oh, how much, how much shall we kiss you with the lips of intellect and will! But because we know, oh Redeemer of our souls, that you don’t want anyone in your glory unless first cleansed of the stain of sin in the fire of tribulation, as even the profane poets perfectly understand (hence a translator of Horace said, Those who wish to reach their longed-for goal / must work and sweat for it / for good must be achieved by many efforts267), so, by our own actions, do we enclose ourselves in eternal prison in order to obey, and suffer, and contemplate your beauty and greatness amid mortification. May you, Lord, who placed in our breast the burning coal of so fiery a longing,268 may you also be the one who, with the constant breath of your invitations, keeps the fire of your most holy love alight in our frozen hearts. We know, oh our one true Good, that you are ready to offer your blessedness to our souls, so long as they prepare to receive it and, with your help, do not render themselves unworthy of it; but we also know that they cannot make themselves worthy of it on their own. Watch over them and protect them so that they shall not lack strength against the rebellion of the flesh. These souls love you well, oh Lord, but not as much as they would like nor as much as you deserve. Nor is their love of the world completely dead. Make it die, make us want it to die, not as in the death of men, but as in the death of death and the death of sin, so that afterwards we may be reborn by it to a life of grace.269 May your most just will always be done, however, in all things and for all things: for even if we truly desire to free ourselves from our earthly limbs to be with you, yet may the division of the soul from the body be delayed, so that each one of us in her own time may hear it said, Come from Libanus, my spouse, come: thou shalt be crowned.270 For this aim, we now willingly hurry to consecrate our virginity to you, thinking we hear you, delight of our souls, say to us, Arise, make haste, my love.271 Hurry, my darlings, and if my vicar invites each of you individually, saying, Hearken, O 266. non in enigmate per similitudinem. Cf. Numbers 12:8, et palam, et non per aenigmata et figuras Dominum videt (and plainly, and not by riddles and figures doth he see the Lord). 267. Chi giunger vuole al desiato fine, / egli è mestier, che s’affatichi, e sudi, / ch’al ben si va con varie discipline. These words are attributed to Horace in Fabio Glissenti, Discorsi morali (Venice: Appresso Bartolameo de gli Alberti, 1609), 515v. 268. Cf. Isaiah 6:6: “And one of the seraphim flew to me, and in his hand was a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs off the altar.” 269. ad mortem hominis; ad mortem mortis, et ad mortem culpae; ad vitam gratiae. Cf. Musso, Il secondo libro delle prediche, 173. 270. Veni de Libano, sponsa mea, veni coronaberis. Cf. Song of Songs 4:8, Veni de Libano, sponsa mea: veni de Libano, veni, coronaberis (Come from Libanus, my spouse, come from Libanus, come: thou shalt be crowned). 271. Surge, propera, amica mea. Song of Songs 2:10.

132 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI daughter, and see, and incline thy ear: and forget thy father’ s house, for the king shall greatly desire thy comeliness,272 run quickly to his voice, and let your voice sound in his ears.273 Make it so that we may hear the sweetness of our voices resound with loving echoes within the walls of your church, loudly proclaiming our denial of the secular world and our abandonment of our father’s house. Thus speak the humble holy virgins, to whom it is very clear that if for love of their lover they now crowd into a narrow and poor cell, they will soon exchange it for a spacious and rich heaven in which he has prepared many sumptuous dwellings to remunerate the merits of his faithful. In my Father’s house there are many mansions.274 There they are certain to attain the first seats so long as they open the door of the heart to their bridegroom sincerely, and not falsely, like those who—violated by paternal tyranny and by the wicked actions of men and enamored of the world—abandon secular grandeur and delights by force and not for the love of God.275 Run quickly, then, oh innocent maidens alight with the fire of the Holy Spirit, to the secure havens of religious life, for if on the outside you are dressed in humble wool, inside you will be adorned with nuptial garments of innumerable graces and honors. Among the other visions of Saint John in Apocalypse, he saw this one: I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.276 This resembles those nuns who present themselves before Christ their bridegroom adorned with no other ornaments but purity and sanctity. Oh, how pleasing to these nuns are rough serge,277 simple wools, and enclosed places, since they can say with certainty, Such is the good that I await / that my every punishment is delight.278

272. Audi filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam, et obliviscere domum patris tui, quia concupiuit rex speciem tuam. Cf. Psalms 44:11–12, Audi, filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam; et obliviscere populum tuum, et domum patris tui. Et concupiscet rex decorem tuum (Hearken, O daughter, and see, and incline thy ear: and forget thy people and thy father’s house. And the king shall greatly desire thy beauty). A gloss to the text notes that the priest uses these words to invite girls to become nuns; for the verse’s place in the clothing ceremony for nuns, see Glixon, Mirrors of Heaven, 120. 273. et sonet vox vestra in auribus eius. Cf. Song of Songs 2:14, sonet vox tua in auribus meis (let thy voice sound in my ears). 274. In domo patris mei mansiones multae sunt. John 14:2. 275. Tarabotti again makes reference to her Paternal Tyranny and summarizes one of its major themes: that men bear the responsiblity for the consequences of forcing girls into a religious life not freely chosen. 276. Vidi civitatem sanctam Ierusalem novam descendetem de caelo a Deo paratam, sicut sponsam, ornatam viro suo. Revelation 21:2. 277. Rasse=rascie: cloth rash, a type of fabric (milled serge). 278. Tale è il bene, ch’aspetto, / ch’ogni pena m’è diletto. These words were the basis of one of Saint Francis’s sermons. See Paul Sabatier, Life of Saint Francis of Assisi, trans. Louise Seymour Houghton (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919), 172.

Convent Paradise 133 Oh, how dear it is to them, oh Lord, to shear their locks in order to become your brides!279 In any case, hair is nothing more than a snare, which by entrapping other hearts also imprisons women’s own souls. It was the custom of the ancients when they were nearing death to tear out their hair. Thus Amphiaraus, about to be submerged, pulled the hair and crown of laurel from his head, along with all other ornament, and putting them down, he said, Already I hear the flow of swift Styx, the black rivers of Dis, the triple gape of the evil guardian. Take the laurels committed to adorn my head, which ’twere sacrilege to bring to Erebus, take them.280 Thus Phaedra, about to kill herself, expressed these words: I must pacify your shade; take from my head these laurels, accept this hair cut from my wounded brow.281 Now, if the custom of the foolish ancients showed that before leaving this life they judged it good to divest themselves of all vanities as flimsy and transient, why shouldn’t the wise brides of God—being eager, and approaching their death to the world—readily cut their hair and divest themselves of all pomp and vain ornament? Why should they not strip themselves willingly of secular clothing to dress in that of nuns, which though honest and simple, are still nuptial garments, sent to them by the celestial bridegroom? Let them chop off their ephemeral locks with joyfulness and jubilation, that in their place a long, dense head of chaste and holy thoughts might appear, for indeed hair is a perpetual symbol of thoughts in

279. The paragraphs that follow offer an extended and sometimes strained metaphor in which nuns, after the ceremonial shearing of their hair to represent their abandonment of the secular world and its ideals of beauty, grow new “spiritual locks” of hair. Hair was a central concern of early modern fashion for both men and women. In her Antisatira, Tarabotti says elaborate hair styling is natural and proper for women, but she mocks men’s preoccupation with elaborate wigs: Tarabotti, Antisatira (1998), 82–83; Tarabotti, Antisatire (2020), 74. On this subject, see Eugenia Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2014), 186–93. 280. Audio iamo rapide cursum Stigis, atraque Ditis  /  flumina ter geminansque mali custodis hiatus.  /  Accipe commissum capiti decus, accipe Laucos  /  quas Herebo differre nefas. Statius, Thebaid, 7.782–85. See Statius, Thebaid, Vol. 1, Books 1–7, ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 456–57. Amphiaraus was a king and seer who participated in the war against Thebes. He was killed when a lightning bolt unleashed by Zeus split the earth, and Amphiaraus fell into the void. The words cited by Tarabotti were addressed by Amphiaraus to Phoebus Apollo shortly before he was submerged. Erebus was a region of the Underworld where the dead first went. 281. Placemus Umbris. Capitis exuvias cape, laceramque frontis accipe abscisam comam. Seneca, Phaedra (or Hippolytus), 1181–82. See Seneca, Tragedies, trans. and ed. John G. Fitch, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 544–45. Seneca tells the story of Phaedra, who is married to King Theseus of Athens but lustful toward her stepson Hippolytus. Hippolytus rejects Phaedra, who in revenge publicly accuses him of desiring her. After Theseus has Hippolytus killed, Phaedra commits suicide over guilt for her actions. Shortly before she kills herself, she speaks the lines cited by Tarabotti to Hippolytus’s corpse.

134 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI holy Scripture.282 Let them abandon the superfluous mane that causes another’s death, as happened to the young man Absalom,283 and in its place cultivate thick and long tresses of holy desires, of which, enamored, my sweetest Redeemer, turning to all his brides, can say, Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse, with one hair of thy neck.284 No other locks but the spiritual ones of holy thoughts have the power to wound and ensnare with loving knot the heart of the eternal Lover—not those made into ringlets with the iron or made blonde by artifice. Little does he notice the mane, which—vile excrement of the body (even if it sometimes, snaking around the candor of a face, seems to render it more lovely)—as much as it embellishes the visage, so it deforms the soul. Well did the bridegroom, separated from the bride, lament that his mystical locks had suffered in the humidity of the night: Open to me, my sister, my beloved, for my head is full of dew, and my locks of the drops of the nights.285 But never did he complain when his bodily locks were torn from his head by the impious Jews. Indeed, with the most extremely ardent charity he suffered them to remove his golden mane, which was a most precious ornament to his most beautiful face. Let material hair fall, then, to the floor, shorn and despised, so long as the coiffure of perfect and spiritual thoughts remains intact. And if there is anyone who fears that this might come undone as a result of poor disposition, let them apply the unguent of the most holy name of Jesus (Thy name is as oil poured out, 282. Tarabotti here begins a contorted discussion contrasting women’s hair, a symbol of vanity, with the “locks” of spiritual thoughts; for a discussion of this passage, see the Introduction, pp. 48–49. To make her case, Tarabotti uses a variety of words for hair, including the term “crine,” which can apply to both animals and people, thus underscoring its base bodily aspect. We here translate “crine” with the equivalent English term “mane.” Regarding the importance ascribed to women’s hair in Scripture, see 1 Corinthians 11:15: Paul says that “if a woman nourish her hair, it is a glory to her; for her hair is given to her for a covering.” But in 1 Corinthians 11:5–6, he states that a woman must worship with her head covered: “But every woman praying or prophesying with her head not covered disgraceth her head: for it is all one as if she were shaven. / For if a woman be not covered, let her be shorn. But if it be a shame to a woman to be shorn or made bald, let her cover her head.” 283. Tarabotti does not refer to the biblical figure most famous for his hair—Samson. Absalom was a son of King David whose head was weighed down by his voluminous hair (2 Samuel 14:26). He rose up in rebellion against his father but was caught and killed when his hair became tangled in the branches of an oak tree (2 Samuel 18:9–15). 284. Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea sponsa, in uno crine coli tui. Cf. Song of Songs 4:9, Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea, sponsa; vulnerasti cor meum in uno oculorum tuorum, et in uno crine colli tui (Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse, thou hast wounded my heart with one of thy eyes, and with one hair of thy neck). 285. Aperi mihi, soror mea, dilecta mea, quia caput meum plenum est rore, et cincini mei guttis noctium. Cf. Song of Songs 5:2, Aperi mihi, soror mea, amica mea, columba mea, immaculata mea, quia caput meum plenum est rore, et cincinni mei guttis noctium (Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is full of dew, and my locks of the drops of the nights).

Convent Paradise 135 Jesus),286 for they will feel it take shape, and grow with noteworthy enhancement, never undone by the gusts of pride, nor sullied by the filth of sensuality. And if this oil were not enough to perfectly care for the locks of holy thoughts, the sweetest and most precious lye of the blood of Christ will not fail to purify it of any stain. To one who is well armed with holy desire, little should profane Apuleius’s assertion matter regarding the ugliness of the woman shorn of her locks, who, even if she resembled Venus in every other aspect of beauty, appears ugly and deformed. He says, If you were to strip the hair from the head of even the most beautiful woman, even if she were descended from heaven, born out of the sea, and raised by the waves, even, I say, if she were Venus herself, surrounded by the whole chorus of Graces and accompanied by the entire throng of Cupids, she could not attract even her husband Vulcan.287 But little does it matter to you, my most loving Lord, that the corporeal features of your lovers and servants should be deformed, since only the well-coiffed locks of their modest thoughts are dear to you. And so, having shorn the long hair from my head, I hang it from the nails of your cross, so that the infernal traitor may not braid a chain from it with which to guide me to eternal damnation. Keep me far from those snares in which mendacious and carnal lovers swear they feel their souls bound, for I do not care about earthly loves. I do not wish to follow any other love than that born of Venus Urania,288 which is celestial, nor do I care—neither little nor greatly—about pleasing those that are self-interested and insidious. I want you alone, oh my dear and holy Good, to be the object of my love, and I don’t want to find fulfillment in any but in you. I to my beloved, and his turning is toward me.289 If there is yet some beauty in me, it all belongs to my beloved, my bridegroom, and he is wholly within me, and I care only to please and gratify him. This is the aim of my thoughts, the summit of my desires, and my actions are directed to nothing else. May all other affection be distant from my heart. Thus deprived of my hair and disfigured as I find myself, I do not fear at all that I will not be pleasing to my Vulcan, for you are my Lord and God of fire. God is a consuming fire.290 Do not disdain, oh my Redeemer, that I should compare you to a mythical god, when the qualities attributed to him by the poets are fitting, in 286. oeleum effusum nomen tuum Iesum. Cf. Song of Songs 1:2. 287. Mulierem … etiam venutissimam, si capilitio nuditur, licet illa coelo deiecta, Mari abdita, fluctibus educata, licet, in quam, Venus ipsa fuerit, licet omninum gratiarum choro stipata, et totum cupidinum populo comitata, placere non poterit, ne Vulcano quidem suo. Cf. Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 2.8. See Apuleius, Metamorphoses, vol.  1, Books 1–6, ed. and trans. J. Arthur Hanson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 62. Our translation is adapted from page 63 of this edition. 288. That is, heavenly Venus, who represents spiritual or celestial love. 289. Ego dilecto meo, et ad me converso eius. Song of Songs 7:10. 290. Deus ignis consumens est. Cf. Hebrews 12:29, Deus noster ignis consumens est (Our god is a consuming fire).

136 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI a different way, for you. He was forcibly ejected from heaven, whence he became lame. You, after leaving your celestial abode, willingly came among men, where, weighed down by the gravity of suffering and the burden of the cross, not only did you harm your foot,291 but there was no part of you that was not mistreated and wronged. He, dwelling among the horrors of a forge, appeared all smoky and filthy. You, coming into the dark forge of a world grown shadowy through sin,292 became all black and bruised as a result of beatings and abuses; and you were so disfigured in your appearance that Isaiah said of you, we have seen him, and there was no sightliness, and we have thought him as it were a leper.293 He was fabricating lightning bolts for the mythical Jove; you have never had any other occupation but to make arrows to lovingly wound my soul. Therefore, in the footsteps of your saints Benedict, Augustine, Bernard, Dominic, Francis, Clare, Catherine, and others, sure of pleasing you even without my material locks, I lopped them from my head, placing in their stead the sign of your most holy cross.294 The mantlet and wimple295 imposed on me by your ministers signify only this, for armed with these defensive weapons against the devil and his followers, I am defended from immoderate desires and illicit longings. What’s more, I enjoy appearing ugly to the world, and being deemed lowly for being wrapped in coarse cloth. Indeed, full of joy I rejoice; I unabashedly exclaim to vain people, Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my color.296 291. Regarding the foot injuries of Vulcan and Christ: Tarabotti may refer to the story that Vulcan was ejected from the heavens because he was “shriveled of foot,” or perhaps she refers to the injury that Vulcan sustained when he fell. The injury to Christ’s feet was caused by their transfixion to the cross. She says Vulcan sustained his foot injury when “forcibly ejected from heaven.” The figure Christians would immediately connect with these words is not Christ, however, but Lucifer (Satan). As Jesus says in Luke 10:18, “I saw Satan like lightning falling from Heaven.” Satan’s fall, which is also recorded in Revelation 12:9, is traditionally said to have left him with a limp. With the comparison between Vulcan and Christ, Tarabotti, who also had a limp, implicitly assigns a positive spiritual meaning to this trait. 292. This phrasing also recalls the moment just before Christ’s crucifixion: “And it was almost the sixth hour: and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.” (Luke 23:44). 293. Vidimus eum, et non erat aspectus, et reputavimus eum quasi leprosum. Cf. Isaiah 53:2, vidimus eum, et non erat aspectus (we have seen him, and there was no sightliness), and 53.4, et nos putavimus eum quasi leprosum (and we have thought him as it were a leper). 294. Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–543); Augustine of Hippo (354–386); Bernard of Clairvaux (1090– 1153); Dominic (ca. 1170–1221); Francis of Assisi (ca. 1181–1226); Clare of Assisi (1194–1253); and Catherine [probably Catherine of Siena, to whom Tarabotti often refers] (1347–1380). 295. bavara e benda. A mantlet is a short mantle, or cloak; a wimple is a cloth head covering extending to the neck and chin, usually white, and probably the most recognizable part of a nun’s attire. For an overview of religious costume, see Giancarlo Rocca, ed., La sostanza dell’effimero: Gli abiti degli ordini religiosi in occidente. Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo, 18 gennaio–31 marzo 2000: Guida alla mostra (Rome: Edizioni Paoline, 2000). 296. Nollite me considerare, quod fusca sim, quia decoloravit me sol. Song of Songs 1:5. Although Tarabotti is always quick to point out anti-woman bias, she displays the racial prejudices that were

Convent Paradise 137 If you see me with dull skin, with pallid cheeks, poor and humble, dressed in coarse and loathsome clothing, know that my one true Good, my beloved, the bridegroom of my soul, my sun, has burnt my heart to ash with his fiery loving rays; this is why such lowliness and deformity arise in me. Yet my repugnant senses do not as a result fail to fight me, no, persuading me not to continue so abjectly and humbly in the pursuit of the religious life in order in some part to reciprocate my beloved. Little—indeed not at all—do I value what the deceptive world can offer, and, like a phoenix, I will enjoy dying on the convent pyre in order to rise there again, renewed to eternal life in paradise. Nor will the rays of my God the sun—or indeed, his flames—fail to administer the fire to me, since he is the purest fire. This is what Moses called him, not only after seeing him in the burning bush without being consumed by flame,297 but because he knew very well the resemblances that exist between God and fire. Dionysius,298 fully informed about these after making a compilation of thirty-four qualities of fire, concludes by saying, The figure of fire shows the Divine to all.299 This is a truth so unmistakable that even the Gentiles understood it. Hence, perhaps for this reason, Zoroaster300 asserted that all things were created from fire, and from one fire alone.301 Laertius302 also said that all things are composed of fire, and into fire they are again resolved.303 Why, then, don’t the souls that burn with love for their bridegroom run to seek shelter in convents, which are the forges where this fire burns with most life, and where God is honing his arrows, better to wound the hearts of his servants? Since Saint Francis and Saint Catherine of Siena were truly afflicted with loving wounds by the seraph of the seraphim within the cloister, let typical of seventeenth-century Western European culture. See also note 533. 297. See Exodus 3:2. 298. On Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, see note 84. 299. Deitatem ignis figura per omnia docet. While this exact quotation could not be located in PseudoDionysius the Areopagite’s On the Celestial Hierarchy, the work does discuss the holy characteristics of fire and the relationship between fire and God. See, for example, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Celestial Hierarchy, in Esoterica, vol. 2 (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 2000), , 191. 300. Iranian prophet and religious reformer (probably fl. seventh/sixth century BCE) who proposed a monotheistic and dualistic religion important in the development of other faiths including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 301. In some versions of Zoroastrianism, the god-like figure Ormazd, or Ahura Mazda, produced fire from Infinite Light, and out of that fire all things were born. On the centrality of fire to Zoroastrianism, see Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism, 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 1:220–28. 302. Diogenes Laertius (fl. third century CE), biographer of philosophers; see note 75 above. 303. omnia exeunt ab igne, et in ignem reducuntur. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 9.1.7, in which he discusses Heraclitus. See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks, vol. 2: Books 6–10 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 415.

138 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI them say,304 “We are all made of fire, and God is our sphere.” We lean, therefore, toward him, as to our center, sure of finding him in the most delicious paradise of the religious life, for such is the immutable and seemingly humble dwelling of the convent. We do not follow in the footsteps of the unwilling nuns. Instead, in the profession by which we bind ourselves irrevocably to our lover, we promise him, with overflowing joyfulness and unbreakable vows, an unwavering firmness in eternally serving him. I promise my stability.305 Love was always the reward for love, and indeed the reciprocation of love between true lovers must be equal. Love your lover,306 said the Doctor of Gentiles.307 The charity of God presseth us.308 He wishes to infer that God’s charity and love for us should not only oblige us, but also compel us to return his love. The most beloved apostle of Christ also says that the precious love of God cannot be bought with greater treasure than with that same love; whence that Philosopher proffered these words: If you would be loved, love.309 That heart is overhard which, even though it were unwilling to bestow love, would be unwilling to return it,310 because love accepts only love as payment.311 Even if to love him were once irksome, it should not prove irksome to return that love.312 Too, oh too cruel and inhuman is the heart which, not wishing to love, refuses even to reciprocate love. Who are the women who have so fallen out of love that they will not love with all their soul and all their affections their celestial lover, when he vows that his chaste embraces will be eternal and his blessedness infinite? Which woman is so ungrateful that she does not immediately show him that she will enclose herself within the walls of a convent for however long this briefest life endures, in order then to receive in exchange that glory which, immune to the worm of time or the variation of fortune, never suffers any diminution or change? 304. Like Saint Francis of Assisi (see note 147), Saint Catherine of Siena received the stigmata. 305. Promitto stabilitatem meam. These words are part of the Benedictine formula of profession and imply a commitment to constancy in place and spirit. 306. Ama amatorem tuum. These words are attributed to Augustine in Cornelius a Lapide, Commentarii in scripturam sacram, vol. 9 (Leiden: J. P. Pelagaud, 1864), 625. 307. That is, Saint Paul. Cf. 1 Timothy 2:7. 308. Caritas Dei urget nos. Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:14. 309. Si vis amari ama. See Seneca, Epistles, trans. Richard M. Gummere, vol.  1, Epistles 1–65 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917), 44–45. Petrarch quotes these words of Seneca in his Rerum memorandarum libri, 3.82, to which Tarabotti also refers below (note 311). See Petrarch, Rerum memorandarum libri, ed. Giuseppe Billanovich (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1943), 173. 310. Durus est animus nimis, qui dilectionem, et si non vult impendere, nollit rependere. Cf. Saint Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, 1.4. See Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, liber unus, trans. and ed. Joseph Patrick Christopher (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1926), 26–27: Nimis durus est animus, qui dilectionem, si nolebat impendere, nolit rependere. 311. quia amor amore pensandus est. Petrarch, Rerum memorandarum libri, ed. Billanovich, 173. 312. Si ergo olim amare piguit, redamare non pigeat. Cf. Augustine, De catechizandis, 1.4. See Augustine, De catechizandis, ed. Christopher, 26–27.

Convent Paradise 139 Even if they had to live perpetually enclosed more than a thousand years, as they would do willingly out of love and reciprocation for our sweetest bridegroom? She who, at his melodious words, And I will espouse thee to me for ever,313 does not lovingly respond, saying, I hold you, and I will not let you go,314 is either not a woman; or if she is a woman, has a heart of stone. Go ahead, let an army of vanities be put forth and let a thousand false promises and temptations be set against me. Never will I repeat anything with an echoed response but this, that I promise my stability,315 knowing that every willing nun will stand beside me in this inviolate determination, as much as can be promised by the fragility of this flesh of ours, and by this vessel full of iniquity. Ours will not be the constancy that lying and sensual lovers profess and promise, but that which you lend to us, since without the guide of your divine help we fear falling under the treacherous enchantment of the senses. You have placed each one of us as the guardian of the vineyard that is her own soul, but we do not guard or cultivate it as is the duty of the true farmer. My vineyard, which is mine, I have not kept.316 Prior to presenting the early crop of fruit to you, who are the lord of this vineyard, before making up our minds at the entrance of Convent Paradise, we allowed ourselves to become frightened by the appearance of your fire, which blazes above the door to convents, as if it might burn us. We did not realize that the fire had only to dry out the wood, unfortunately still green, of carnal lust, and, in purifying us, render us all beautiful and pure. Thus we might become worthy of being embraced by the loving bridegroom, having cleansed ourselves of all sins and having prayed the Lord, not in vain, that he strip us of our deeply ingrained wicked habits. Strip me, Lord, of the old man with his deeds.317 Lift from us, Lord, this contagion of sin contracted from our first father, so that we can serve you with all of our heart and not just for appearance, like your treacherous and unwilling brides. In this way, having arrived at the sure shelter of the religious life and achieved victory against the world, it seems we have done nothing at all in enclosing ourselves forever in the service of our God. Well do we know that the past, even if one has behaved perfectly, matters not if one does not persevere until the end. We learn this from Saint Paul, who wrote: Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; having forgotten the things that are behind 313. sposabo te mihi in sempiternum. Hosea 2:19. 314. teneo te nec dimittam. Cf. Song of Songs 3:4, tenui eum, nec dimittam (I held him, and I will not let him go). 315. Promitto stabilitatem meam. See above, note 305. 316. Vineam meam, quae est mihi non custodivi. Cf. Song of Songs 1:5. 317. Exue me, Domine, veterem hominem cum actibus suis. Cf. Colossians 3:9 Nolite metiri invicem, expoliantes vos veterem hominem cum actibus suis (Lie not to one another, stripping yourself of the old man with his deeds). The marginal gloss notes that these are “words said in putting on the nun’s habit.” In fact, Tarabotti voices in the first person the words spoken to nuns after the tonsure in the vesting ceremony. Cf. Ordo admittendi virgines, 19.

140 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press toward the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation.318 Quite useful for true men and women religious and perfect Christians is the lesson drawn from the simile of those who run toward a banner, who in order to win the destined reward, never turn to look back on the distance they have run, but keep their gaze fixed on what remains. Cloistered nuns act in the same way, since they never look backwards, nor do they swell with pride at having abandoned their relatives and the delights of the world for love of God. Instead they turn inward and strengthen themselves in a perpetual will to serve Him always, and just as the man approaching the banner reaches out his hand to grasp it, so these earthly angels run until their death, and when they reach it, they put all their strength toward receiving the celestial prize for the struggles and mortifications undergone.319 It is said of the four animals of Ezekiel that they were turned not when they went,320 just to explain to us that we must always move forward in the service of the Lord. True nuns never cease, but always move forward with their desire and with their actions, careering toward divine service, making use of those precepts of Saint Augustine: always do better, always march onwards; always to make progress, not to linger on the path; he who lingers remains behind.321 They follow with all haste in the footsteps of their teachers, seeking to imitate them; and, treasuring the orders given to them by saints and shepherds, they always advance in their good works. They know that as wayfarers in this world, we must not stop until we finally come to understand.322 They flee vices little by little until they embrace virtue, it being impossible to reach in an instant the summit of the mount where it abides. Saint Gregory left it clearly written: No one comes suddenly to the summit.323 It took 318. Frates ego non arbitror me comprendisse, quae retro sum oblitus, ad ea vero, quae priora sunt extendo me ipsum, ad destinatum prosequor brauium supernae, vocationis. Cf. Philippians 3:13–14, Frates, ego non arbitror comprehendisse. Unum autem, quae quidem retro sunt obliviscens, ad ea vero quae sunt priora, extendens meipsum, Ad destinatum persequor, ad bravium supernae vocationis Dei in Christo Jesu (Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. But one thing I do: forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press toward the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus). 319. See Exodus 3:2. 320. non vertebantur cum ambularent. Cf. Ezekiel 1:17, not Daniel 1 as in the text’s gloss. 321. semper adde, semper ambula, semper proficere, noli in via remanere, remanet qui non proficit. Cf. Saint Augustine, “De verbis apostoli,” Sermon 169 on Philippians 3:3–16. See Augustine, Opera omnia, vol. 5.1 (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1865), 926. 322. esser comprensori, to attain full comprehension; cf. Philippians 3:12–13. 323. Nemo repente sit sumus. Saint Thomas Aquinas credits Saint Gregory with these words in the Summa, question 189. Translation from The Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas: Second Part of the Second Part, QQ. CLXXI–CLXXXIX, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster: Edus. Canonicus Surmont, Vicarius Generalis, 1920); ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight, .

Convent Paradise 141 forty steps to ascend to the sanctuary of the temple seen by Ezekiel, in order to emphasize that not in haste, but step by step, we must climb the stairway of Christian perfection. David, too, wished to imply the same when he said: He hath disposed to ascend by steps in the vale of tears. They shall go forth from virtue to virtue. The God of gods shall be seen in Sion.324 If true nuns act in accordance with the words of the Holy King, let those who have understanding of virtue declare it: that step by step, and from good to better, do these nuns soldier on. To such women as these, convents are not a stage or a living hell, as they are for the violated. For voluntary nuns, the cloisters are not only a true temple of God and theater of the angels who are present as spectators to such a worthy show, but a true Convent Paradise. It is rendered such with the help of all the virtues of religious life, whereby these souls, reconciled to their bridegroom, have no other goal but the profit of an honest life. In the midst of the convent, like a queen, reigns Peace, closely embraced by them. Fighting and rumor-mongering are always banned, since it is well known to them that if in earthly armies war is enjoined, in these holy armies of Christ peace is proclaimed and announced. Hear what he himself imposed on his most valorous champions: Into whatsoever house you enter, first say: Peace be to this house.325 He wants his soldiers, entering into battle, to say, Peace be to this house.326 Such words must serve instead of the drum and the trumpet when one of his soldiers undertakes the first attack on the fortress of some house in which sin must be killed. Thus, under the auspices of peace, these courageous Amazons of Christ descend onto the battlefield, and, armed with an inner serenity against the rebellion of the senses and against the insults of injustice, they beseech their bridegroom to equip them always with these peaceful arms. The peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding, keep our hearts and our minds.327 Peace is a gift of the Holy Spirit, as Saint Paul maintains, infused into the hearts of the faithful. The peace of God is a warrior so valorous that it is invincible. Earthly Peace is usually depicted with an axe in one hand and in the other a burning torch, with which she succeeds in reducing a great quantity of weapons to ashes, and this is in order to show us what an implacable enemy of war she is.328 Hence Seneca had occasion to say: If you love peace, do not make mention of 324. Ascensiones disposuit in valle lacrimarum. Ibunt de virtute in virtutem. Videbitur Deus Deorum in Sion. Although the marginal gloss cites Psalms 88, Tarabotti here amends verses from Psalms 83:6–8. 325. In qua[m]cumque domum intraveritis primum dicite pax huic domui. Luke 10:5. 326. Pax huic domui. Luke 10:5. See note 325 above. 327. Pax Dei, quae exuperat omnem sensum custodiat corda nostra, et intelligentias nostras. Cf. Philippians 4:7. Tarabotti’s text changes the vestra and vestras (your) of the original verse to nostra and nostras (our). 328. This is probably a reference to the Roman divinity Peace, or Pax. She was sometimes depicted holding in one hand a cornucopia or olive branch and in the other a burning torch with which she set

142 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI

Figure 17. Pax, or allegory of Peace. In her right hand, Peace, personified as a partially robed woman, holds an olive branch while sheep graze at her feet. In her left hand she holds a flaming torch and sets fire to a suit of armor and weaponry. Sixteenth-century engraving by Étienne Delaune. © Trustees of the British Museum. war.329 The good nuns, therefore, in love with holy peace, knowing how hateful even the word war is to him, forsake disdain, hate, and dissension. They leave those sentiments to the women who—because they are forced nuns—are the opposite of good nuns330 in every way in their inclinations, and also as regards peace, since the good nuns make constant war against their senses, internal and external. They chase away sins from the soul with blood and fire. They trample fire to armour and weapons; alternatively, she was figured holiding a palm branch in one hand and an axe in the other. Tarabotti probably combined different representations of Pax to create the image evoked here. See Figure 17. 329. Si pacem diligis, belli ne feceris mentionem. These words are attributed to Seneca’s De moribus in various seventeenth-century sources, including Valeriano Castiglione, Statista regnante (Turin: Appresso gli HH. di Gio. Dom. Tarino [Heirs of Giovanni Domenico Tarino], 1630), 210, and Joseph Lang, Polyanthea nova (Frankfurt: Lazarus Zetzner, 1607), 871. Although De moribus was long believed to have been written by Seneca, modern scholarship now attributes this work to “pseudoSeneca.” These commonly cited words, moreover, do not appear in De moribus, although they have been attributed to others, including Socrates and Solomon. 330. I.e., willing nuns.

Convent Paradise 143 their enemies with their feet. They compel them to such an extent that, when they have subdued them, they make peace with them, with such glory to the celestial emperor for whom they fight that the evildoers never again have the courage to rise up, but remain forever subject and overcome. Because they love peace with a true heart, they do not respond to the reproaches of iniquitous tongues, nor to the unjust attribution of sins of which they are not guilty, nor even do they lose their temper at the relentless war that the devil, together with his followers, wages against them, because perfect nuns are rare, but nuns who disdain them are not. Instead they continually persevere in imitating holy and peaceful David, and because they are true seraphs of Convent Paradise, they say with him: I was dumb, and was humbled.331 It is well known to them that as soon as you descended from heaven, oh Redeemer of mine, to take on a human form, when you came out of Mary’s maternal womb, the first message that the singing angels brought to humankind was peace. And on earth peace to men of good will.332 And each one of them asks, “Must not I be quiet in order to enjoy such a precious gift333 of God?” All the more so since, neither responding nor losing my temper at the unjust rebukes of those who mistreat me, I proceed to imitate you who, amid the greatest outrages and disparagements, were always silent, such that there was one who said prophetically of you: And he shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer.334 The same night in which not only did you announce peace but actually brought it to the war-torn world, you humbled yourself to such an extent that you deigned to be born in the lowliest manger, lacking, among many other things, a site adequate to you. There was no room for him in the inn.335 Thus, if you remained mute and lowered yourself with such humility, shall not I, for love of you and in imitation of you, do as the royal lyricist336 said? I was dumb and was humbled.337 In order to serve you, yes, yes, my life, since you barely found room in a stable, I too will enjoy being confined in a cell, just as I will enjoy the pleasures and sweetnesses of paradise. And I will try yet to enrich myself in the peace of humility, an incomparable treasure, since you were so pleased with this virtue, appreciating and admiring it among many others in your holy mother, that she herself sang: Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid.338 331. Obmutui et humiliatus sum. Psalms 38:3. 332. Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Luke 2:14. 333. donno; either a hypercorrection for dono, gift, or perhaps donno, lord, referring back to Christ. 334. Et sicut agnus coram tondente se obmutescet. Cf. Isaiah 53:7. On Tarabotti’s reference to conflict within the convent, see notes 103, 113, 573, and 805. 335. Non erat ei locus in diversorio. Cf. Luke 2:7. 336. That is, King David. 337. Obmutui et humiliatus sum. Psalms 38:3, also cited above (see note 331). 338. Quia respexit humilitatem Ancillae suae. Luke 1:48.

144 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI You showered down upon her breast, making her fertile in all graces. According to physicians, things are cured by their opposites, since by nature one of them fights the other until one is vanquished and the other victorious.339 The plague of pride can only be cured with humility, and she who wishes the battle against the prince of the prideful to end in victory must arm herself with a sincere humility. If she longs to earn the title of true bride and maidservant of Christ, she must—turning her mind to her own nothingness—humbly bow her head not only to the nuns her superiors, but also to those who are her equals or inferiors. On the subject of Mary’s humility, regarding those lovely words of the Song of Songs, Who is she that goeth up by the desert, as a pillar of smoke of aromatical spices, of myrrh, and frankincense, and of all the powders of the perfumer?,340 Robert the Abbot341 infers that although this most humble lady knew that she was loved and favored by God, she did not on this account become prideful. And God so appreciated the low opinion she had of herself that, just as the rivers of ambition stink to his divine nostrils, so her profound humility, like the sweetest mixture of various scents, rose up, bringing a fragrant delight to His Divine Majesty. These angels of Convent Paradise, capable of understanding the nature of holy humility which only angelic tongues are equal to praising, act in accordance with it, along with Paul the Apostle, who humbly said, I am the least of the apostles, and I am not worthy to be called an apostle.342 In order that we fall more deeply in love, I would even like to recall some ornament owed to this excellent virtue, but its merit renders me speechless, for Look up to heaven and number the multitude of the stars if thou canst.343 Let us push courageously forward in the attainment of such a precious joy, and let us consider that to be celebrated by the secular world, by lords and princes, is merely a vanity founded upon the instability of a fleeting wave and a whipping wind. What is more, one sees for the most part the virtuous trampled and disdained and the wicked and unworthy puffed up and exalted. Well do these pure souls who humble themselves in the service of the Lord who is ruler of all and he that is mighty,344 also understand that to engage in a holy disdain of themselves by 339. A concept that originated in the theory of the four humors, represented by blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Hippocrates (ca. 460–ca. 370 BCE) believed that the four humours should be kept in balance to maintain health. Galen (129–ca. 210 CE) took up this concept with the theory of opposites, a way to correct an imbalance by introducing an opposite substance to counter the adverse effect. Tarabotti returns to this subject in Book Three; see note 695. 340. Quae est ista, quae ascendit per desertum sicut virgula fumi, et aromatibus mirae, et thuris, et universae pulveris pigmentarii. Song of Songs 3:6. 341. Probably Saint Robert of Molesme (1028–1111), one of the founders of the Cistercian order. 342. Ego sum minimus apostolorum et non sum dignus vocari apostolus. Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:9. 343. Suspice coelum, et numera multitudinem stellarum si potes. Cf. Genesis 15:5. 344. et qui potens est. This phrase appears in numerous places in the Bible; see, for example, Luke 1:49.

Convent Paradise 145 reputing themselves base and abject is like receiving a ransom on heaven, since without this Christian humility it is impossible to enter the kingdom of the heavens. Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,345 said the only begotten son of the Eternal Father himself. Therefore they abhor haughtiness and pride as the root and spring of all evils, fearful that they will hear their bridegroom say to them, Turn away thy eyes from me, for they have made me flee away.346 Even if this passage is usually interpreted as talking about the temple, this way of speaking is much more appropriate against those who haughtily see themselves through prideful eyes. In order not to encounter these rebukes against the prideful made by the ruler of the heavens, these holy souls go about the cloisters saying, Be you humbled under the mighty hand of God, and may he exalt us in the day of visitation.347 The humility of the holy founders of orders serves them as a model, in particular that of seraphic Francis, who, in order to lower himself further, chose the title of Friar Minor. Thus Saint Bonaventure had occasion to say, The spirit of the Lord rests upon the humble.348 This loving seraph enjoyed being made laughing-stock to the whole world to such an extent that he was not at all dismayed by the ridicule of children in the public piazzas and he was content to be reputed a madman by men, as long as he was allowed to practice extremes of humility.349 Ah, if we applied ourselves to contemplating our lowliness, we would understand the virtue of our origins, which were but a man made up of lowly mud and dirt! And well would we need to learn from the tyrant who, deprived of the true light of faith, in order not to forget his humble origins or give way to pridefulness, wished that in his treasury, where gold cups were hidden, there be intermingled some cups that his father, a potter, had made with his own hands from simple mud.350 But let us not go begging examples from the infidels and pagans, when our own true master Christ humbled himself for us351 in order to teach us, and by dying 345. Nisi efficiamini sicut paruuli, non intrabitis in regnum coelorum. Cf. Matthew 18:3. 346. Averte oculos tuos a me, quia ipsi me avolare fecerunt. Song of Songs 6:5. 347. Humiliamini sub potenti manu Domini, ut exaltet nos in die visitationis. Cf. 1 Peter 5:6, Humiliamini igitur sub potenti manu Domini, ut vos exaltet nos in tempore visitationis (Be you humbled therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in the time of visitation). 348. Requisescit spiritus Domini super humilem. Cf. Saint Bonaventure, Expositio in Psalterium, Psalm 1. See Bonaventure, Opera omnia, ed. A.C. Peltier, vol. 9 (Paris: Louis Vives, 1867), 158. Cf. also Isaiah 11:2. 349. The radical nature of Francis of Assisi’s devotion to poverty earned him ridicule and suspicion, as recounted by his biographers. 350. This story concerning Agathocles appeared in Erasmus’s Apophthegmata, part 2. See The Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 38, trans. and ann. Betty I. Knott and Elaine Fantham, ed. Betty I. Knott (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 479. 351. Humiliavit semetipsum pro nobis. Cf. Philippians 2:8, Humiliavit semetipsum factus obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis (He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the

146 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI on the lowliest cross taught us that we must be lovers of humility until we breathe our last. Thus true nuns, made followers and imitators of so worthy a teacher, turn inward to acquire the deepest knowledge of their lowliness, having learned from the words of the divine Ambrose that being humble is the same as rendering oneself similar to Christ. How can the crowd, except for the humble, see Christ?352 A humble heart contains the effigy of that beatifying face that is the sole glory of paradise. The simple shepherdess described by Solomon under the guise of a bride was entirely consumed with the desire to see the adored face of her sweetest beloved so that she could imprint his portrait in her heart. But because of her innocence, unaware that she should practice holy humility, she eagerly boasted of her affections by saying, Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.353 She beseeches him lovingly: Draw me after thee.354 She tries to understand where she can find him: Shew me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday, lest I begin to wander.355 And then finally she prays him: shew me thy face.356 In this way, consuming herself in loving supplications, she wanted to communicate this meaning to her dearest with these words: “Oh my most loved bridegroom, oh heart of my heart, do not flee from my eyes that once gave you such pleasure. Do not hide yourself from me, but let me contemplate you, and do not make me run in vain to follow your footsteps, poor and weary. Do not keep me from dwelling on your beauty, for even if I am a simple and unwitting shepherdess, I do it to imprint your adored image in my breast, in order that it never be removed from my heart.” Thus did she affectionately continue to repeat, Shew me where thou feedest, lest I begin to wander.357 But even by this means she would not have been able to understand why her adored bridegroom hid himself from her if he had not made her aware that without holy humility—if she did not first lower herself to contemplate her base condition—she could not be rendered worthy to receive his portrait in her heart. He then told her, If thou know not thyself, O fairest among women, go forth, and

death of the cross). 352. Quomodo potest turba, nisi in humili, Christum videre? Cf. Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii Secundum Lucan, ed. Karl and Heinrich Schenkl, 5:46 (Prague and Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1902), 199. 353. Osculetur me osculo oris sui. Song of Songs 1:1. 354. Trahe me post te. Cf. Song of Songs 1:3, Trahe me post te curremus (Draw me: we will run after thee). 355. Indica mihi quem diligit anima mea, ubi pascas, ubi cubes, in meridie, ne vari incipiam. Song of Songs 1:6. 356. ostende mihi faciem tuam. These words come from a chant responsory recited after the eighth reading on the fourth Sunday of Advent. Cf. Breviarium Romanum, 137. Translation from The Roman Breviary, 146. Cf. also Song of Songs 2:14 and Exodus 33:13; see also notes 502 and 830. 357. Song of Songs 1:6. See note 355 above.

Convent Paradise 147 follow the steps of your flocks.358 “Oh soul desirous of seeing my face,” the heavenly bridegroom was trying to say, “you have not even earned it. To obtain the object of your desire, you must humble yourself and look at the tracks of your flock imprinted in the road it has trodden, for in this way you will be able to consider the earth, which is the material of which you are formed. And just as these tracks are imprinted into the lightest dust, which at every breath of wind erases the shapes left in effigy upon it, so you (who are indeed nothing but fine and formless dust), ever since you left your mother’s womb, have been perishing in the lap of death, at every little headwind, whether a weak blow or a slight illness.” Listen to the long-suffering one, for he will tell you that you are a heap of ashes. Remember, man, that we are dust, and ashes.359 “Leave behind, leave behind, oh my beloved brides,” says Christ to his most adored nuns, “leave behind the delights and the temptations of the world, and walk in the humble footsteps of your holy founders. Feed your kids beside the tents of the shepherds.360 Feed your spirit in the tabernacle of the holy shepherds, since convents are indeed tabernacles and your superiors are shepherds.” Invited by these affectionate and dear words, they bind themselves willingly in the indissoluble knot of the three vows, and they frequently repeat, A threefold cord is not easily broken.361 They rejoice at feeling themselves bound with a triple knot, since the chains that keep them tied to their beloved are even stronger and they enjoy these bonds much more than freedom. If Jacob, in love with Rachel’s fragile beauty, commuted his precious freedom into servitude for seven years,362 it is quite proper that these nuns, for the infinite and eternal beauty of their adored bridegroom, renounce the expectation of every worldly freedom for all the time of this life—which is always brief, even momentary. By means of his servant, Isaac sent the most precious gifts to his beloved Rebecca in order to give her a sign of the enormity of affection with which he loved her. But since God loves his convent handmaidens more than Isaac loved Rebecca, with greater and more precious gifts does he enrich them. And what more exquisite gift could the love-struck God have sent them than himself, 358. Si ignoras te, ò pulcherrima inter mulieres, aegredere, et abi post vestigia gregium tuorum. Cf. Song of Songs 1:7, Si ignoras te, o pulcherrima inter mulieres, egredere, et abi post vestigia gregum, et pasce haedos tuos juxta tabernacula pastorum (If thou know not thyself, O fairest among women, go forth, and follow after the steps of the flocks, and feed thy kids beside the tents of the shepherds). 359. Memento homo quia pulvis sumus, et cinis. The passage is glossed in Tarabotti’s text as Genesis 3, where we read quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris “for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return” (3:19). See also Genesis 18:27, loquar ad Dominum meum, cum sim pulvis et cinis (I will speak to my Lord, whereas I am dust and ashes). 360. Pascite edos vestros iuxta tabernacula pastorum. Cf. Song of Songs 1:7. Tarabotti uses “vestros” (your [plural]) as opposed to “tuos” (your [singular]) in the Vulgate. This is the second part of the verse Tarabotti cites just above (see note 358). 361. Funiculus triplex difficile rumpitur. Ecclesiastes 4:12. 362. See Genesis 29.

148 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI especially since by the hand of his servant and minister he has administered his most precious body and blood to them? Let it be added that he himself invites them through their vocations, and mercifully he allows them to hear the priestly voice call them, and to make their spiritual treasures complete he orders them to enjoy the grace of profession, which exceeds what any mortal creature merits as much as infinite divine goodness exceeds frail human transience. Willing nuns can rightly call themselves heavenly swans, for, dying to the world, feeling extreme joy in promising obedience, poverty, and chastity, they sing with Saint Paul, We exceedingly abound with grace in all our tribulation.363 They call the religious life sweet relief and consolation, although they abandon all pleasures and pastimes and take the cross on their shoulders, walking in the footsteps of their beloved Christ. Since he, having promised to set them on the path of a righteous and sure journey, leads me on the right path,364 they are more certain that they can expect gentle rest and happy enjoyment, even if it seems by appearance that they are bound to suffer amid a thousand drudgeries. And therefore devout Saint Basil conveys to true nuns those words from the Gospel, Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you.365 “Come to me, oh you who, weary under the burden of the miseries of the world, are tired, because I alone can give you strength, spirit, and respite. Enter amid the cloisters, for here—in the form of sufferings and sweat—you will find true tranquility and rest. Willingly subjugate your personal will to that of your superiors, if you yearn to be my servants. Remember that I submitted myself to the will of my Eternal Father. Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me; if I must drink it, let your will be done.366 I yielded to death and suffered yet more so that you would have something by which to understand how dear holy obedience is to me, for if that had not been the case (always leaving aside my absolute determination to die for human salvation), please know too that living or dying was in my power. And I have the power

363. Superabundemus gratia in omni tribulatione nostra. Cf. 2 Corinthians 7:4, superabundo gaudio in omni tribulation nostra (I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulation). Tarabotti changes the verse slightly to apply to the nuns, substituting gratia for gaudio and putting the phrase in the first person plural. 364. Deducet me in rectem viam. Cf. Psalms 142:10, deducet me in terram rectam (shall lead me into the right land). See also Psalms 26:11. 365. Venite ad me omnes qui laboratis, et onerati estis, ego refficiam vos. Cf. Matthew 11:28. 366. Pater si possibile est transeat à me calix iste, si vis bibam illud, fiat voluntas tua. Cf. Matthew 26:39 and 26:42.

Convent Paradise 149 to lay down my soul, and I have the power to take it up again.”367 By the mouth of Saint Basil, His Divine Majesty wishes to communicate this to his beloveds.368 The best theologians also teach us, though I am ignorant of their thought, that among the beings who comprise the most Holy Trinity there is no disunion either in will or in power, whence Christ said I and my father are [one],369 and Saint Ambrose in his creed, Such is the Father, such is the son, such is the Holy Spirit.370 For if the son had not wished to die, the Father and the Holy Spirit would have been in agreement with this desire of his. But he wished to show a little bit of reluctance in encountering death, because by submitting himself subsequently to mortal suffering, as if to obey his Father, he gave us an example of the perfect obedience with which we must carry out every wish of our prelates. True nuns, Amazons of Christ and models of perfect sanctity, knowing how much their souls’ love is gratified by this virtue, disavow each of their own desires in imitation of him and all of them resign themselves to the orders of their superiors. Publicly renouncing their every desire, they swear in the church to God—in the presence of his vicars who are there not only as witnesses but also as judges—never again to change their decision and forevermore to depend on the will of others. I promise my stability, and obedience according to the Rule.371 Having given away all of their will for love of their bridegroom, they lavishly boast of this, just like crazed earthly lovers who brag of their loving slavery as of a trophy of their affection. Thus did 367. Potestatem habeo ponendi animam meam, et iterum sumendi eam. Cf. John 10.18, et potestatem habeo ponendi eam, et potestatem habeo iterum sumendi eam (and I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again). 368. The Aurea legenda (Golden Legend), an account of saints’ lives compiled by the Archbishop of Genoa, Jacobus de Voragine, in 1275 and then widely disseminated, says of Saint Basil: “verily the Holy Ghost speaketh in his mouth.” Cf. “The Life of Basil” in vol. 2 of The Golden Legend, published by Fordham University as part of its Internet Medieval Sourcebook project (); the text is based on the English translation of William Caxton (1483) as edited by F.S. Ellis (1900). For Saint Basil, see . Tarabotti seems to knit together several passages taken from Saint Basil’s letters and other works. See, for example, his letter 46, “To a Fallen Virgin,” where he cites Matthew 11:28: Saint Basil, Letters: Vol. 1 (1–185), trans. Sister Agnes Clare Way, with notes by Roy J. Deferrari (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1951), 127. See also his commentary on Matthew 26:39 in Basil, Letters and Select Works, trans. Blomfield Jackson, vol. 8 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1895), xxxix. 369. Ego et Pater meus sumus. Likely a transcription error for John 10:30, Ego et pater unum sumus (I and the Father are one). 370. Talis Pater, talis filius, talis Spiritus Sanctus. Cf. Quicumque vult (Athanasian Creed) in the Book of Hours, Qualis Pater, talis filius, talis Spiritus Sanctus. While it is attributed to Saint Athanasius, other authors, including Saint Ambrose, have been suggested. The full text is available in English and Latin at . 371. Promitto stabilitatem meam, et obedientiam secundum Regulam. Obedience and stability were among the promises made at profession according to the Benedictines. See Benedict’s Rule, 462–63.

150 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI one of them sing of being an example of a perfect love: To make from the will of others a law unto oneself.372 Now if there are those who glory in losing their own free will in exchange for an always fleeting and fragile beauty, and moreover a false one, what woman will not submit her own will to another’s for a beauty that will last for eternity? Infinite love became flesh for no other reason than obedience; for obedience he died: Becoming obedient unto the death of the cross.373 In order to show that he was infinitely obedient, it was not enough for Christ to die; in order to obey he wanted to die a reprehensible death upon an infamous wooden cross. All Christians must therefore, in imitation of him, obey every law and rule of their superiors; but more bound to do this than anyone are those who live in convents, who in every necessity, as followers of their bridegroom, willingly carry the cross of suffering and with him—never to abandon him—they climb the rough terrain of Mount Calvary, comprised of a thousand penances and varied suffering. May still others follow you, oh Lord, to the wedding of Galilee, to the supper with your apostles, and may they join the crowd that you sated with five loaves and two fishes. But these spirits chosen to inhabit the earthly paradise of the cloisters will better enjoy imitating you as you were when you were born naked in a stable, crying and frozen by the extremes of cold, and needed to be warmed by the foul breath of two lowly animals, rather than when—amid banqueters and miracles—you gave a sign of your most glorious omnipotence. Therefore they renounce all property and cry like beggars on account of the ice that previously froze their heart to your service. They are far more penitent and remorseful than the poet who wisely sang: I go weeping for my past time, which I spent in loving a mortal thing without lifting myself in flight, though I had wings to make of myself perhaps not a base example.374 Though persecuted, offended, and fleeing to Egypt from Herod’s traps, you must take shelter; for you will have as followers these souls who are persecuted and tyrannized, if not by Herod then by the devil, the world, and by the flesh,375 and they will follow you into the Egypt of the religious life in order to be safe 372. Far de voleri altrui legge a se stesso. The text glosses Guarini’s Il Pastor fido for these verses, perhaps a reference to 5:5, which discusses obedience (chè chi dà legge altrui / non è da legge in ogni parte sciolto; “for he who gives laws to others / is not entirely exempt from them himself ”). See Guarini, Il Pastor fido, 248. 373. Factus obediens usque ad mortem crucis. Cf. Philippians 2:8. 374. Io vo piangendo i miei passati tempi, / i quai posi in amar cosa mortale, / senza levarmi a’ volo, avendo l’ale,  /  per dar forse di me non bassi esempi. Cf. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 365.1–4, which gives “abbiend’io l’ale” in line 3. See Petrarch, Opere, 260; Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 574. 375. The three traditional enemies of the soul (the world, the flesh, and the devil), which are shown in the story of the Temptation of Christ (Luke 4:1–13). See also pages 93, 108, and 180.

Convent Paradise 151 from the dangerous evildoings of Satan. But know, oh highest diviner of hearts, that even if they strive to imitate you and follow you, they do not presume they will come anywhere close to equaling you: since you are perfection itself, every quality of yours is inimitable. If they attempt to resemble you in obedience, well do they know that they are trying in vain, since not only did it please you to obey the Eternal Father to the point of death but (oh marvel of your humble obedience) you also subjected your divinity, veiled as humanity, to obey even your earthly mother and father. You were always immediately obedient not only to Mary, who had already participated with her precious blood in producing your human flesh, but also to Joseph, who was no more than your putative father. He was not considered by the world to be anything more than a lowly and plebeian carpenter,376 and nonetheless you, entrusted to him by heaven, submitted every desire of yours to his will, and you did not disdain being called the son of a carpenter.377 Oh, these were the excesses of an admirable, but not imitable, obedience! If you, therefore, King of the universe, were so obedient, why shouldn’t the holy nuns, who have set aside all pride, readily obey anyone at all, without discerning if those who rule over them have a lesser lineage, birth, or status? Can any profession be imagined that is more plebeian than that of a carpenter? And yet, our humanized God paid him every homage of obedient readiness. Oh, firstborn of the heavens, oh glory of the blessed, if you so lowered yourself for the souls of your beloveds, why then shouldn’t they, if necessary, gather in the innermost womb of the earth378 in order to obey—without retorts and without excuses—the ministers you have designated as their superiors? Why shouldn’t they be ready to heed every intimation, not to mention every command, of those who were assigned to them by Your Divine Majesty as your deputies? Yes, yes, oh most obedient and most beneficent Jesus, you will always find them to be unmovingly obedient and tolerant of the tension and discomfort that sometimes go along with conforming to another’s will. If those who enter religious enclosure make themselves objects of admiration and observation like a spectacle in the theater of the world (as the Apostle said, we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men),379 they would be carrying out actions worthy of the eyes of whoever is watching them, and leading a life so excellent in holiness that not only would the entire universe have reason to admire them with astonishment, but even the angels to marvel and men of wicked habits to be confounded in contemplating the perfection of their goodness. 376. In Italian, fabro (here and below), a term Tarabotti gets from the Vulgate faber, a translation of the Greek tektonos, n. tekton, meaning humble artisan, often one who worked with wood. Following the Douay Rheims translation, we use the term “carpenter.” 377. See Matthew 13:54–57 and Mark 6:1–4. 378. That is, in convents. 379. Spectaculum facti sumus mundo, et angelis, et hominibus. 1 Corinthians 4:9.

152 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI To this end, true nuns do not neglect to appear in every deed as worthy marvels of religious life, paragons of obedience, and exemplars of every virtue. Already they do not mind being observed by the world and by men, being women who disdain all praise and applause unsuited to those who perfectly serve God. Indeed, they desire and seek to ensure that those who examine their actions understand that they follow in the footsteps of their beloved Christ, and that they do not deviate from the paths that the saints have paved with devout and exemplary deeds. Their words do not merit censure, their conversations are praiseworthy and innocent, their inclinations honest, their desires holy, and in every way alien and distant from that deplorable vice of hypocrisy so abhorred by heaven. They know that, by declaring themselves your servants, they must carefully consider what they are setting out to do, since they are destined to be a model for everyone. If they prove to be good and exemplary, they will be a universal mirror in which every man will learn what he should be; but if they have wicked habits—like most of those women imprisoned in convents by paternal tyranny, who never enjoy a single moment of peace—they will be a public target for the eyes and tongues of anyone who finds their behavior to be scandalous and corrupting. But because the principal foundation and basis of every religious virtue is obedience alone, they would like—and continually beg—the Universal Redeemer of souls to allow them in life and death to be perfectly obedient to the one to whom they are obliged, just as the final action he carried out in this world before breathing his last breath was to bow his head in a sign of obedience to the Eternal Father. They want to have happen to them what happened to the monk who is given as an example of inimitable obedience in the lives of the holy fathers.380 Infirm and advanced in age, he called for his father, Abbot Arsenius, a monk of such holiness that he is well known for it. He said to him, “You see, oh father, how much I suffer as I await death. I beg you to command me to die out of holy obedience, so that in this final hour I may reap the benefit of this worthy gesture, since I have already lived sixty years always praying not to die before my superior commands me to.” Having heard this with great astonishment, the abbot said, “I command you, oh fra Rugiero”—for that was his name—“by the virtue of holy obedience to now leave this life, returning your sinful soul to your Redeemer, whom I pray, by the gift of his passion, will not refuse to accept and aid it with my blessing.” As soon as the abbot had uttered these words, the monk expired and appeared to him the same night. He said that Christ had ascribed greater value to the death that had transpired in this way than to any penitence or good works that he had carried 380. In the text and the marginal gloss, Tarabotti refers to Domenico Cavalca’s fourteenth-century compendium, Lives of the Holy Fathers. The following story seems to refer to the Desert Father Abba Arsenius (ca. 350–445 CE), or Arsenius the Great, who was himself known for his obedience. Accounts of Arsenius’s holiness are found in Cavalca; however, this anecdote does not appear there. See Domenico Cavalca, Vite dei santi padri, ed. Carlo Delcorno, 2 vols. (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2009).

Convent Paradise 153 out in the entire course of his life, since in having wished to exercise the virtue of obedience even in dying, he had imitated him in his death on the cross. Because in this case one speaks of the obedience practiced by devout nuns, I ought to recall here some marvelous examples of their obedient readiness. But so many of them come to my mind that the abundance confounds me, so that in order not to bore the reader too much, I will keep silent about them all. If our Lord Christ bent his head before breathing his spirit into the hands of God, in imitation of him we too must bow our head before our prelate as a sign of the everlasting surrender of all our will forever in his hands. And indeed we must do so willingly, whatever our condition may be, since in the cross of the religious life one must discount knowledge, scorn power, forgo all possessions, and abhor the will. So let us embrace holy obedience, since the Lord holds most dear those vows with which we obligate ourselves to be steadfast and constant in obedience until our last breaths upon the cross of the religious life. Let no one accuse me by saying that I call the religious life a cross, since not only do I believe that the religious life must be a cross, but I also assert that the cross was a mystic monastery in which Christ was the first monk to enter. And the three nails that fixed him to the pitiless tree were a manifest symbol of the three vows, which include the obedience one could see expressed, as we have just said, when you bowed your head and breathed your last. Chastity appeared in the streams of your blood, which flowed to render us pure and cleansed of every stain of sensuality. Lastly, poverty was symbolized by your nakedness, since, oh Creator of this life, you died so poor and, naked before the people, you had not even a drop of water to slake your thirst, and you lacked even an unhappy place in which to lay your tormented head. Oh how much, oh how much was poverty beloved and dear to you in every age! Aware of this, we choose it as our second vow in imitation of your disciples, with whom we rejoice and glory in being able to say truthfully and wholeheartedly, Behold, we nuns have relinquished all things, and have followed thee.381 From this it immediately followed that we were included in that most generous proposal from the divine mouth of God: what therefore shall we have? You shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting.382 We are more than certain of your mercy and incomparable generosity (oh sweet God), since in serving you in spirit and truth as we are bound, we know that our discomforts will lead to delights for us in paradise, and that our want of sustenance will result in an abundance of manna from heaven for us. Those who serve you with a pure heart, a good conscience, and an unfeigned faith,383 are happy amid travails and rich amid suffering, for poverty 381. Ecce nos reliquimus omnia, et secute sumus te. Cf. Matthew 19:27. Ecce nos reliquimus omnia, et secuti sumus te. Tarabotti feminizes the participle. 382. Quid ergo erit vobis? Centuplum accipietis, et vitam eternam possidebitis. Matthew 19:27 and 19:29. 383. corde puro, conscientia bona, et fide non ficta. I Timothy 1:5. On “manna from heaven,” see note 24.

154 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI truly has power to enrich those who embrace it willingly. Listen to Saint John Chrysostom, who truly with a mouth of gold says, No one is richer than he who loves poverty of his own free will and eagerly accepts it.384 There is no one who lives more lavishly and abundantly than those who have in their breast a heart rich in poverty. Plato’s conception was profound in this respect when he said that love is the son of Poros, god of abundance, and Penia, goddess of poverty.385 He wished to imply that true love impoverishes the lover in order to enrich the beloved. Have not these Platonic declarations proved themselves true in you and all the souls of the faithful, oh most compassionate Christ? As a result of loving us too much, you have been impoverished to the height of destitution. He made himself a beggar for us;386 whereas, since we nuns are bound to return your love, in order to display our pride in it, we must then, out of requisite reciprocation, impoverish ourselves of whatever the world can provide—with greater justification than Lamia, who possessed not only riches but also Demetrius’s heart.387 Instead, amid poverty, which is the true wealth of souls enamored of God, we know ourselves to be mistresses of our divine bridegroom’s heart, and therefore he said, Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse.388 Let those who wish to, boast of having captured corruptible, fickle, vain, and flighty hearts, dispersing their riches more to buy their own pleasure than to benefit their beloveds; nuns instead glory—by impoverishing themselves—in having captured all the eternal riches that are the heart of the Omnipotent. Let us indeed renounce and neglect earthly goods and let our sole love and our sole wealth be the affection of our most loving Redeemer. Let us give ourselves to poverty, for we shall not lack for goods and peace. When describing the seven happinesses that arise from poverty, the angelic doctor said that one of the greatest was a sated desire,389 since our insatiable desires can find no greater repose than in willing poverty. Let there be one as rich in temporal goods as he could wish, and let him possess the treasures of Crassus,390 and then let him then say to me 384. Nihil opulentius eo, qui paupertatem sponte diligit, et alacritate suscipit. These words are attributed to Saint John Chrysostom in Saint Bonaventure, Apologia pauperum, 9.15. See Bonaventure, Opera omnia, ed. Aloysius Lauer, vol. 8 (Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1898), 299. 385. Cf. the description of the birth of love in Plato’s Symposium (203b–c). See Plato, Lysis. Symposium. Gorgias, trans. W. R. M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 178–81. 386. Mendicus factus est pro nobis. Cf. Saint Bonaventure, Expositionis in Evangelium Sancti Lucae, chapter 16. See Bonaventure, Opera omnia, ed. A. C. Peltier, vol. 11 (Paris: Louis Vives, 1867), 27. 387. Plutarch (Lives, chapter 27) recounts that Demetrius loved Lamia to an exaggerated extent and gave her lavish gifts. See Plutarch, Lives, trans. Perrin, 62–63. 388. Vulnerasti cor meum soror mea sponsa. Song of Songs 4:9. 389. desiderii impletio. Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, In Psalmos Davidis Expositio, “Psalmus 20,” section 2. See Aquinas, Opera omnia (Paris: Louis Vives, 1876), 18:338. 390. Crassus (ca. 155–53 BCE), a general considered to be one of the wealthiest men in Roman history.

Convent Paradise 155 that his desires are fulfilled. It can never be, for the greedy desires of the insatiable heart are never quieted; indeed, gold breeds ever greater desire for gold, in this case proving that saying of Ovid: The more he drinks, the thirstier he grows.391 Only, only in poverty is there true abundance, in this alone do the heart and the soul find satisfaction. Oh Lord, we promise you this poverty that enriches us with the innermost part of our spirit, not just with our voice, like those forced by their relatives to don the nun’s habit. Like your Peter, prince of the Apostles, let us abandon not only the possessions and riches of the world, but also all desire for them, for they are not properly left behind if one does not renounce all drive, not to mention all longing, to possess them. Again with your first vicar we repeat a second time, Behold, we nuns have relinquished all things, and have followed thee.392 Oh, what words truly worthy to be repeated a thousand times, not just once! Oh, what a promise truly worthy of being pronounced upon the holy floor of the chapel with inviolable vows and sacraments, as we do at our profession! But what reward shall we receive for so generous a renunciation, oh our most beloved Bridegroom? What, therefore, shall we have?393 So too the apostles questioned their master—boundlessly more magnanimous in rewarding his courtiers and servants than the great Alexander or any of the other most generous worldly kings—who responded to them with the words mentioned just above: You shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting.394 Oh, inestimable reward, whose merit is exceedingly more valuable than that of those who willingly make themselves poor! Oh, words more precious than the pearls of the Orient, which, like a cornucopia of pearls, issue forth from the mouth of the redeemer! Enamored of these, many of the enraptured have chosen to obligate themselves by vowing eternal and willing poverty. These are the voices that have crowded the cloisters with men and women religious and seeded the woods with anchorites. David wished to imply this when he said, for the sake of the words of thy lips, I have kept hard ways.395 Many who have been enriched and invigorated by your promises, oh my love, have chosen nakedness for their garments, fasting for their nourishment, hair shirts for their pomp, and poverty for their treasure. When Anthony heard of the great reward Christ generously promises to those who impoverish themselves—You shall receive an hundredfold396—he gave himself over to a poverty so complete that he possessed nothing. 391. Quo plus sunt pote, plus sitiuntur aquae. Ovid, Fasti, I.216. The translation is from Ovid, Fastorum libri sex / The Fasti of Ovid, ed. and trans. James George Frazer, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1929), 14–15. 392. Ecce nos reliquimus omnia, et secutae sumus te. See note 382. 393. Quid ergo erit nobis. Matthew 19:27. 394. See note 382. 395. Propter verba labiorum tuorum ego custodivi vias duras. Psalms 16:4. 396. See note 382.

156 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI With no other goal than the incomparable recompense promised by God, upon hearing those words of the Gospel, Sell everything thou hast and follow me,397 he renounced all his earthly goods, eager for the promised prize.398 It is not, however, sufficient to scorn possessions and comforts; rather, those who wish to merit the name of true nuns must follow Christ in poverty. Nature itself teaches us that alienation from riches is reasonable and worthy. Most ancient philosophers despised them so much that they never found peace and tranquility unless in poverty, as in the true and real wealth of the soul. Seneca, always marvelous as was his wont, said, for poverty contains a sense of freedom from care,—and without this nothing is pleasant.399 Diogenes—who accumulated immense amounts of gold, which worldly kings showered on him for his virtues—preferred, instead of enriching himself, to live in a cramped barrel, which he took in exchange for the august palaces that Alexander—who didn’t know how to make a gift of anything less than a city—wanted to bestow on him.400 They who applied themselves to moral living knew that to live in poverty was to ensure oneself of enjoying a tranquil security that could not be harmed by envy, and as one of them said, they knew that riches do not diminish—in fact they augment—the desire for them. And yet they, whether Christians, or men or women religious, did not wait for that prize which was so excellent, so sublime, which with a most benevolent voice and a most generous hand is promised to all, and especially to us lowly handmaidens and most unworthy brides of the sovereign Lord. You shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting.401 This is a reward so singular and precious that it deserves to be bought at the cost of unceasing hardships and sweat. In order to acquire it, most worthily did Saint Benedict and many other men and women religious scorn almost innumerable worldly treasures, which are nothing but the vilest excrement of the earth.402 Let us follow our Christ, then, oh sisters, who tells us in his own words in the Gospel, Blessed are the 397. Vende omnia quae habes, et sequere me. Cf. Matthew 19:21. 398. The reference is to Saint Anthony the Great (ca. 251–356 CE), who sold all his possessions and lived an ascetic, contemplative life in the Egyptian desert; he is considered the father of desert monasticism. See also note 697. 399. Inest paupertati, sine qua nihil est iucundum, securitas. Cf. Seneca, Epistles 1–65, 138–39 (epistle 20): inest enim illis, sine qua nihil est iucundum, securitas (“they [lives of voluntary poverty] contain a sense of freedom from care,—and without this nothing is pleasant”). 400. A reference to the meeting of Alexander the Great and the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, who was said to live in a barrel. According to Plutarch, Alexander, encountering Diogenes, asked the philosopher if there was anything he could do for him—to which Diogenes apparently replied, “Yes, stand a little outside of my sun.” Plutarch, Lives, Vol. 7, Demosthenes and Cicero. Alexander and Caesar, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919), 258-259. 401. See note 382. 402. A reference to the long association of money with dung or filth. Saint Paul, for example, uses the term “filthy lucre” in letters to Timothy and Titus (e.g., 1 Timothy 3:8 and Titus 1:7 and 1:11).

Convent Paradise 157 poor in spirit.403 Let us then enclose ourselves for love of our bridegroom within walls that crumble with age, in narrow and barren cells, covering this flesh with coarse and rough garments; for we will not lack tranquility and spiritual repose, since, as Seneca said, gilded ceilings break our rest.404 Tranquility cannot be had in rooms roofed by gilded trusses with the finest tapestries of Syria hanging on the walls, where famous chisels or brushes have industriously created carvings and paintings, upon beds topped with canopies woven of silken threads, among superfluous ornaments, and amid comforts and treasures, because gold disturbs the tranquility of miserable mortals. Indeed, amid such abundance, insatiable human greed increases and is continually tormented by fears of losing gold and gems. And it would with stubborn self-interest prefer that the great reward of paradise promised by the mouth of truth be converted into earthly interest, and that where Christ, speaking of eternal glory, said, You shall receive an hundredfold,405 it would mean a hundredfold increase in temporal and fleeting goods. Gold is of the same nature as the waters of the sea, which instead of slaking thirst, increase it, and instead giving repose to the heart through pleasures, deprive the soul of joy. Such waters do not lack for rocks, shoals, and storms, amid which even the most expert sailor will shipwreck if he does not take refuge in the port of poverty, which was called by Saint John Chrysostom a tranquil harbor.406 Even if there were not hidden in poverty such riches and happiness as I truthfully mention, it is still worthy of being practiced, because God himself was poor, and those dearest to him were needy and wanting for everything. The twelve columns that were placed by Christ as a foundation for his church were humble fishermen, whom he—not satisfied with their poverty—commanded to abandon even the poor tools they possessed. Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes.407 Our creator, who was born naked upon a handful of hay and died naked upon the pitiless wood, does not want his servants to possess anything of their own, nor keep anything imaginable, no matter the condition. Instead he prefers that they walk the path of this life, stripped of everything, with no other riches than poverty, a path which will lead them to the kingdom of heaven. Thus, without being weighed down by those things that seem like wealth and are weights, they go freely and lightly along the road they have begun, and if the occasion arises, they can bravely fight against the enemy of the human race without impediment. 403. Beati pauperes spiritu. Matthew 5:3. 404. aurea rumpunt tecta quietem. Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus, line 646. See Seneca’s Tragedies, trans. and ed. Frank Justus Miller, vol. 2 (London: William Heinemann, 1917), 238–39. 405. See note 382. 406. portus tranquillus. Saint John Chrysostom, Homilia XVIII, chapter 10, in a comment on Matthew 19:21, which Tarabotti cited earlier. See John Chrysostom, Opera omnia quae exstant, vol. 12 (Paris: Gaume Frères, 1838), 254. 407. Nolite portare sacculum, neque peram, neque calceamenta. Luke 10:4.

158 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI Here it is worth investigating the reason why Christ, calling Saint Peter to him, made him walk on water, and why he once liberated the Jewish people from bitter servitude in Egypt, leading them across the Red Sea, which parted its waters and the chosen people walked on the sands of the seafloor without ever wetting the tips of their toes. His omnipotence could have made the waves support the sons of Israel and made them walk, like Peter, as if on a paved road;408 but he didn’t choose to because they were weighed down with riches and vases of gold and silver taken from the Egyptians.409 From this it must be concluded that one who is weighed down with treasures and comforts does not deserve to have God work the greatness of his miracles in him, since being laden with gold cannot be separated from being weighed down with sin, nor can it be that people enamored of riches do not as a consequence uniformly love vice. Saint Paul clearly states this, saying, Money is the root of all evils,410 and he confirms it with these words, they that will become rich, fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil.411 Plato, too, though a pagan, understood this, when he wrote, It is impossible for a man to be at once very rich and very good.412 The prince of the apostles, in order to be perfectly poor, abandoned everything, even his nets, for love of his adored teacher; thus quick and light, almost as if flying, he walked on the water, unimpeded by anything. Oh, how light and swift does the holy virtue of poverty render souls in their flight toward heaven, assuring them a most happy journey! It seemed that Seneca wished to imply this by saying, Unburdened poverty is free from care.413 Job did not succeed in sparking, so to say, desire in God to have a servant so patient and good, and admiration even in the devil himself, until he reached the ultimate extremes of indigence, living in a stable, having become an open wound, using bits of stone to scrape off the filth around him. Then his highest majesty said, turning to our common enemy, Hast thou considered my servant Job, simple and upright?414 Then he deserved to be canonized by God’s words as simple and just when, immersed in extreme poverty, he neither sought nor desired riches but went on blessing divine 408. un lastricato pavimento. Tarabotti was said to have written a work entitled La via lastricata per andare al Cielo (The Paved Road to Heaven). See Tarabotti, Letters, 49–50, 83. 409. A reference to Exodus 11:2. Before delivering the Israelites out of Egypt, God instructs Moses: “Therefore thou shalt tell all the people, that every man ask of his friend, and every woman of her neighbour, vessels of silver and of gold.” 410. Radix omnium malorum est pecunia. Cf. 1 Timothy 6:10, Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas (For the desire of money is the root of all evils). 411. Qui volunt divites fieri incidunt in tentationem, et in laqueum Diaboli. 1 Timothy 6:9. 412. Divites valde, semelque probos esse est impossibile. Cf. Plato, De legibus, book 5, part 743: “If a man is superlatively good, it is impossible that he should also be superlatively rich.” Plato, Laws, vol. 1, Books 1–6, trans. R. G. Bury (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 375. 413. Paupertas expedita est secura. Cf. Seneca, Epistles 1–65, 110–11 (letter 17): paupertas expedita est, secura est (poverty is unburdened and free from care). 414. Numquid considerasti servus meus Iob simplux, et rectus? Cf. Job 1:8.

Convent Paradise 159 providence, which earned him recognition as a miracle among just men and as a trophy of the works of the omnipotent hand. Poverty reaches this supreme condition in which it is admired even by God himself, and it allows those who possess it to be exceedingly favored by him and given the infinite reward of eternal glory. Let it be said by that unhappy beggar Lazarus, who had been reduced to such poverty that he did not have even a crust of bread for the nourishment his body needed; thus starving he implored to be granted those pitiful and scant crumbs that fell from the rich Epulone’s table.415 He desired to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table, and no one did give him.416 Let this be affirmed by him who soon after his death—by virtue of God’s high majesty, to show how he esteems the poor—was received by an infinite number of angels and brought to the bosom of Abraham.417 Whereas the rich man—separated from his riches and accompanied by a numerous host of devils to hell, all his possessions taken from him, and without even a drop of water to slake the most burning thirst that tormented him—begged mercy, love, and compassion, but his requests for help were in vain. Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame.418 Learn from this, oh faithful ones, which is more desirable, the state of the poor or the rich man, and how their fortunes are changed by divine judgments. The wrath of God always strikes the rich harshly, while his greatest favors are bestowed on his poorest servants. Which graces cannot the blessed Joan of the Cross419 vaunt, who—on earth a poor shepherdess—enjoys an eternal crown of blessedness in heaven? Beside which, even in this mortal life, she was allowed to speak with God, to converse with angels, and to work with saints. Nor was the blessed Lidwina420 any less rich in celestial favors, a poorest Dutch virgin who for thirty-eight continuous years, oppressed by innumerable infirmities, lay miserably impoverished and with her whole body in sores, in a poor little bed, aided by no one but angels and by Christ who is always a most ardent lover of the poor. If, then, His Divine Majesty rewards the virtuous with a prodigious hand, who will not run to him with open arms? We poor nuns do not ask for more than what suffices to keep us alive in order to serve you. Let us have food, and 415. Tarabotti calls the man “il ricco Epulone;” Epulone means “glutton,” but it was also at times used as a proper name in the Italian tradition. Tarabotti could use the word with either or both senses. Luke 16:19–31 tells the story of an unnamed rich man and a beggar named Lazarus. See also the sixteenthcentury Venetian painting known as Il ricco Epulone e Lazzaro by Bonifacio Veronese (Bonifacio de’ Pitati). 416. Cupiebat saturari de micis, quae cadebant de mensa divitis, et nemo illi dabat. Cf. Luke 16:21. 417. That is, by Lazarus. 418. Mitte Lazarum, ut intingat extremum digiti sui in aquam, ut refrigeret linguam meam, quia crucior in hac flamma. Luke 16:24. 419. Saint Joan of Arc (1412–1431). 420. Saint Lidwina (1380–1433).

160 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI wherewith to be covered, with these we are content.421 We do not care about having a variety of foods, nor an abundance or a variety of clothing since, having a duty to imitate you, oh dear God, who were the true teacher of poverty, this is what we must do. In all the years of your most innocent life, you needed only two garments: one was knitted of wool by your gentle mother,422 the other was the seamless robe, as Chrysostom says, comprised of various bits of rough cloth sewn together, with a thin mesh over it, so that its ugliness would not be so apparent.423 Now, if you went about dressed in such a way, oh Lord of lords, like the humblest paupers of Palestine, we who call ourselves your handmaidens and brides must not be so bold as to expect extra tunics and luxurious cucullas.424 Far be from us such wicked thoughts, not to mention acts. You had us born naked and you plucked us from the snares of the world, where people wear excessive and indecent clothing, so that, naked, we should follow you with the cross of tribulations and poverty upon our shoulders. And we—poor by desire and by example—must abhor in the cloisters every sort of abundance and excess. Hilary, discussing the words of Saint Matthew,425 says that Christ preached extreme poverty to us more effectively by example than with words; since he was born needy, he lived, on only what was necessary for human sustenance, off the earnings of Joseph, a wood cutter426 for whom he served as apprentice and whom he obeyed with a son’s respect. Thus the one who feeds all living souls, who nourishes the inhabitants of heaven with glory, was pleased to be nourished by the humble earnings of a carpenter, and by the labor of his poor mother, who was destined to rule paradise. He was not at all disturbed by seeing himself reviled and scorned by the people, among whom was a certain man who understood, from the rays that sparked from that 421. Habeamus alimentum, et quibus tegamur, his contentae sumus. Cf. 1 Timothy 6:8, Habentes autem alimenta, et quibus tegamur, his contenti simus (But having food, and wherewith to be covered, with these we are content). Tarabotti feminizes the adjective ending. 422. Portraits of the “knitting Madonna” proliferated in early modern Europe as the popularity of knitting spread. One example is Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s painting of the Holy Family, ca. 1345, in which Mary knits “in the round” as she sits with Joseph and the young Jesus; a round rack of thread bobbins is nearby. See Figure 18. 423. Vestiment[o]…inconsuttile, or the seamless robe, refers to the robe Jesus is said to have worn before and during the Passion. See John 19:23. John Chrysostom emphasized the poorness of the garment; see Homily 85 on the Gospel of John in his Homilies on the Gospel of John and the Epistle to the Hebrews, trans. Charles Marriott, in vol. 14 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889), 317–18; rev. and ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight, . In describing an apparent contradiction, that is, a seamless garment that is sewn together, Tarabotti seems to be trying to reconcile disparate accounts. 424. A cuculla is a long wide-sleeved robe with a hood, especially as worn in monasteries; the word “cuculla” is Latin for “cowl.” 425. Saint Hilary of Poitiers (ca. 310–ca. 367) wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. 426. Legnaiolo, wood cutter or carpenter, a variation on the term fabro that Tarabotti uses elsewhere. See above, note 376.

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Figure 18. The Holy Family, or “Mary knitting in the round with four needles,” by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, c. 1345. Abegg-Stiftung Collection, CH-3132 Riggisberg. Inv. no. 14.21.66. ©Abegg-Stiftung Collection, CH-3132 Riggisberg, 2011 (photo: SIK-ISEA, Zürich).

162 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI divine visage, that he was God concealed beneath the veil of humanity.427 Indeed, he rejoiced in being considered by all to be poor and humble. Even at the last supper when he gave himself as a sacrament for men, as a loving guarantee he showed the affectionate partiality with which he was always a friend to poverty, for he did not leave his body sculpted in gold or figured in silver, or in other such precious material, nor in a delicate elixir which only the rich could enjoy. Instead he transformed himself within a bit of bread, so that every unhappy beggar could nourish himself on that most holy food, and so that the ministers of his church could share it with all and it would not be denied to those who in all other ways are poor in fortune. Add to this that he so loved being a pauper, lacking all riches, that upon his death he had nothing to bequeath. But if he was born naked, naked he died, and was buried in a poor sheet. From these things we nuns must learn to live and die poor, with nothing of our own except, when we are buried in the tomb that is the convent, the white cloth in which we are wrapped that is nothing other than the virginal purity that we promised with our third vow to our most chaste bridegroom. END OF BOOK ONE

427. Possibly a reference to John the Baptist. Cf. John 1:29: and Matthew 3:14, where John recognizes Jesus.

Book Two All things—be they offered to God or to men—where they lack in value and price, must be rendered remarkable and worthy of being perfect to the extent possible. Thus an unrefined young shepherd will give a great lord the meager gift of clotted milk in a rough basket which, even if it is not precious, is still perfectly prepared and decorated. The virgins married to His Divine Majesty are indeed shepherdesses who offer their celestial lover the pure milk of their chastity, which pleases him all the more since it is the third promise that perfects their vows and that— added to obedience and poverty—constitutes the most perfect number and is the last knot with which they join themselves to him in a most holy bond. Thus they readily promise it with the most ardent fervor, certain that—if the obedience and poverty to which they pledge themselves are so dear and pleasing to the celestial Lord—most pleasing to him must be chastity, which is not only in and of itself sublime and loved by him, but also is of such worth that it perfects every other virtue. This is the completion of that triad which establishes the foundation of religious life. Everything trine is perfect,428 you yourself said. And thus, in order not to offer you something imperfect, we promise you the three most essential vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. The latter—being placed in the third position—becomes the one which completes religious perfection, since by transforming nuns into angels, it consequently converts the cloisters into heavens. And if in heaven no one who is at all stained by any sin can enter (Nothing defiled shall enter the kingdom of heaven429), it is therefore right that convents be the home of souls who, in the purity of their hearts and bodies, imitate the continence of the celestials. We shall indeed deserve to be called angels when in this mortal life we live a pure and immaculate life, as Saint Augustine said. Virginal integrity and freedom through pious continence from all sexual intercourse is the portion of angels.430 This virtue truly has the power and the privilege to transform, by a marvelous metamorphosis, the horrors of this earthly body into the most splendid rays of angelic beauty, whence Saint John Chrysostom said that we have the power to make ourselves into angels, and he taught us how: It is virtue which makes angels, 428. Omne trinum est perfectum is a common maxim. See L. De Mauri [Ernesto Sarasino], 5000 proverbi e motti latini: Flores sententiarum, 2nd ed., ed. Angelo Paredi and Gabriele Nepi (Milan: Hoepli, 2006), 450. 429. Nihil coinquinatum intrabit in regnum caelorum. Cf. Revelation 21:27, Non intrabit in eam aliquod coinquinatum (There shall not enter into it any thing defiled). 430. Virginalis integritas et per piam continentiam ab omni concubitu immunitas, angelica portio est. Cf. Saint Augustine, “De sancta virginitate,” bk. 13. See Augustine, Opera omnia, ed. J.-P. Migne, vol. 6 (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1865), 401. The translation is from Augustine, Seventeen Short Treatises, trans. and ed. C. L. Cornish and Henry Browne (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1847), 315.

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164 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI therefore we are able to make angels, and if not in nature,  certainly  in  will and choice.431 It is in our power to become angelic spirits, as though nature made us so, if we are firmly resolved to remain untouched virgins; the fall of Lucifer teaches us that the very angels formed by God were not guaranteed to be impeccable and immaculate if they did not have the determination and will to be so. We, then, must be constant and firm in our resolve to live chastely, undisturbed by the foolish croaking of one who on another occasion said: In this world so changeable and blind / it’s often constancy to change one’s mind.432 Let us thus avoid, oh sisters, any occasion to change our minds, and let us undertake the firm commitment to keep ourselves pure for the pure embraces of our Lord and Bridegroom. In order to do this more easily, let each one of us retreat from worldly cares and pledge to him the modesty which in the greatest fervor of the nuptials she knows has been preserved unstained. Yearning to arrive at the nuptial bed of her chaste wedding, she vents her amorous ardors: I love Christ, into whose marriage-chamber I shall enter, whose Mother is a virgin, whose Father knows not a woman, whose music and melody sound sweetly together in my ears; if I love Him, I shall be chaste; if I touch Him, I shall be clean; if I embrace him Him, I shall be a virgin indeed.433 We ask you, oh our most gentle, oh our most merciful Beloved, not to allow intemperance even to enter into our mind, so that our purity—called a flower by Saint Cyprian, or rather a garden of the Church,

431. Si virtus angelos facit, utique angelos possumus facere, et si non natura, certe proposito, et electione. Cf. John Chrysostom, Homily 32 on the Acts of the Apostles, in his Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans, trans. J. Walker, J. Sheppard, and H. Browne, rev. George B. Stevens, in vol.  11 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1889), 205; rev. and ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight, : “In a word, it is virtue which makes angels: but this is in our power: therefore we are able to make angels, though not in nature, certainly in will.” 432. In questo mondo instabile e leggiero / costanza è spesso il variar pensiero. Although the gloss refers to Ariosto, these lines come from Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata, 5.3.7–8: ché nel mondo mutabile e leggiero / costanza è spesso il variar pensiero (In a changeable and volatile world it often is constancy to change one’s mind). Tasso, La Gerusalemme liberarata, 132; Tasso, The Liberation of Jerusalem, 78. Tarabotti also cites these lines in her Antisatira. See Tarabotti, Antisatira (1998), 76; Tarabotti, Antisatire (2020), 70, with no gloss or attribution.   433. Amo Christum, in cuius talamum introibo, cuius Mater Virgo est, cuius Pater foeminam nescit, cuius mihi organa modulatis vocibus cantant, quem cum amavero casta sum, cum tetigero munda sum, cum accepero virgo sum. These words are from the Feast of the Virgin Martyr Saint Agnes (January 21), patron saint of virgins (see note 453 below). Translation based on The Roman Breviary, 715. The ceremony to bless and consecrate nuns frequently borrowed from this Mass. See also Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 135. However, the words cited here appear not to have been part of the consecration ceremony, although those that immediately follow these in the Mass for Saint Agnes’s birth (Mel e lac ex huius ore suscepi, e sanguis eius ornavit genas meas) do appear. See Pontificale romanum, 1:161, “De benedictione et consecratione virginum.”

Convent Paradise 165 the most fertile and beautiful part of the flock of Christ434—be truly worthy of such lovely names, and so that we be worthy of your coming into the precious and fragrant little garden of our virginity. We, together with your beloved bride,435 beseech you tenderly: Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat the fruit of his apple trees.436 Come, come, oh Lord of our redemption, oh our wounded love, to gather the fruits of our most ardent affection, but only if our condition is worthy of your greatness, omnipotence, and infinite goodness. We truly hope you will not turn from us—since you are all sweetness and mercy—and once we have been transformed into angels by virtue of our uncorrupted purity, you will not find us unworthy of your nuptials. That virginity renders us so has been asserted with one voice by Ambrose, Athanasius, Cyprian, Augustine, Chrysostom,437 and many other authors whose testimony leaves nothing to doubt. The Church, also speaking about those who voluntarily agree to perpetual continence, says: They shall neither marry nor be married; but shall be as the angels of God.438 The cloisters, therefore, inhabited by these purest souls, will not only be gardens filled with fragrant and incorruptible flowers of continence, but earthly paradises overflowing with angels made human, for if the part of heaven that gives blessings is called the assembling together of all good things,439 in convents are gathered all good and beautiful virtues, which are our greatest possessions. Oh dear God, oh God of goodness, what soul will be so crazed and lost in the pursuit of sensuality that she does not yearn to make herself equal to angels? Such honor is attested by the words of the angel who, having prostrated himself before the immaculate virgin Saint John in order to adore him, was not permitted to do so. Instead the saint took him aside and said, See thou do it not; 434. Saint Cyprian, Treatise 2, “On the Dress of Virgins,” section 3, in Fathers of the Third Century: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, plus Appendix, trans. Ernest Wallis, vol. 5 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, rev. A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1886); rev. and ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight (). 435. Tarabotti may intend the Church, portrayed in Scripture as the bride of Christ, but there is also a tradition—especially among female mystics—that portrays Mary as bride of Christ. Tarabotti may have in mind the latter, since elsewhere in Convent Paradise she calls Jesus Mary’s bridegroom (see, for example, p. 235). 436. Veniat Dilectus meus in hortum suum et commedat fructum pomorum suorum. Song of Songs 5:1. 437. Ambrose (ca. 340–397); Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 286/298–373); Cyprian (ca. 200–258); Augustine of Hippo (354–386); and John Chrysostom (ca. 349–407). 438. Neque nubent, neque nubentur, sed erunt sicut Angeli Dei. Matthew 22:30. 439. agregatio omnium bonorum. Cf. Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, 3.2.3, lines 15–16): statum bonorum omnium congregatione perfectum (a state perfected by the assembling together of all good things). See the edition of Wilhelm Weinberger, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum [CSEL], vol. 67 (Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1934), 47. The translation is from Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, ed. H. R. James (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1901), 73.

166 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI for I am thy fellow servant.440 This was in homage to the virginity of your beloved apostle, who also for this reason deserved the supreme honor of becoming Mary’s son, an honor you gave to him as you expired on the cross.441 I have neither the wings nor eyes of an eagle to raise my mind’s gaze into the luminous reaches of the sun of the virginity that you always loved, favored, and privileged.442 It is impossible for hunters to capture the ferocious alicorn,443 which, however, then runs willingly into the embrace of a virgin to let himself be imprisoned. You—who descended from heaven to earth to enclose yourself, by your own will, in the womb of the maiden whose name queen of virgins444 most worthily suits her—make us understand how uncorrupted were the lilies of her incomparable virginity. Not only did you allow yourself to be captured in her womb, but you were so ensnared by the love of humankind that you submitted yourself to the atrocities of the Passion, whose torment all men know but none understands. Ambrose, knowing the value Your Divine Majesty ascribed to those who love such an important virtue, said of them: You are of this world, and yet not in this world.445 Almost implying that those who live chastely transcend the human condition and become part of the angelic, he continues: What a great thing it is that angels because of incontinence fell from heaven into this world, that virgins because of chastity passed from the world into heaven.446 Oh marvelous virginity, glory of paradise, inexhaustible fount from which spring rivulets of every other virtue! Happy is the generation that embraces you. As Solomon said: O how beautiful is the chaste generation, with glory?447 This blessed and glorious generation is the entire community of true nuns and virgins, who, even if they are 440. Vide ne feceris, conservus enim tuus sum. Revelation 22:9. 441. See John 19:26. “When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son.” 442. Medieval bestiaries, based on Pliny the Elder and other sources, associated eagles with their ability to withstand the sun and its rays. 443. A winged unicorn. 444. Regina Virginum. This title for Mary is common. 445. De hoc mundo estis, & non estis de hoc mundo. Saint Ambrose, De virginibus, 1:8:52. See Ambrose, Opera omnia, ed. J.-P.  Migne (Paris: Garnier Frères et J.-P.  Migne Successeurs, 1880), 2:1:214. The English version is based on Concerning Virginity, trans. Henry de Romestin, Eugene de Romestin, and Henry Thomas Forbes Duckworth, in St. Ambrose: Select Works and Letters, vol. 10 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1896), 361–87; rev. and ed. for New Advent by Kevin Knight, . Cf. also John 8:23. 446. Quam praeclarum Angelos propter intemperantiam suam in saeculum cecidisse de Coelo, Virgines propter castimoniam in Coelum transisse de secolo. Cf. Saint Ambrose, De virginibus, 1:8:53. See Ambrose, Opera omnia, 2:1:214. As cited above in note 445, the English translation is accessible at . 447. O quam pulcra est casta generatio cum claritate? Wisdom 4:1.

Convent Paradise 167 still weak in understanding (I do not say this because they are such, but just to follow the false and ill-willed claims of men), nevertheless do not lack a strength of mind reinforced by the purity that, since it naturally belongs to them, is a weapon that wounds the infernal enemies. Armed with virginity, Catherine of Alexandria fought fearlessly against the Emperor Maxentius and every other trap, whether earthly or infernal, set for her by men or the devil, and she was victorious. By her worth she merited the bridal bed of God and deserved to receive the marriage ring from the Christ child. He not only wanted her blood to authenticate such a licit and holy contract; he also wanted the whitest milk, mixed with the bloody red, to gush forth when her head was chopped off by the vile henchman.448 A young woman, who in our times flies like a phoenix to the world amid the breezes of virtues, wrote on this subject: And from her pure veins / Gushed forth virginal milk, birthed from her heart.449 Therefore it is clear what a high price he puts on the fragrance of the lily of virginity, which wafts sweetly from those bodies that even after death have remained untouched by the filth of earthly stench. Upon the sword that severed his head from his torso, the apostle Paul, too, in the form of whitest milk left a message of the chastity that shone in him most excellently, above every other virtue.450 Virginal purity is so feared by hell, and so horrifying to the enemies of God, that Publia, with her other virgins, girded her breast with it against Julian the Apostate. In the presence of that tyrant and others, she boldly said: Let them all be confounded, that adore graven things, and that glory in their idols.451 In convents, situated in places where iniquitous heresy rears its head, how many cloistered women—like roses among thorns and lilies amid foul grasses—flower in the gardens of holy religion, wafting the sweetest odors of exemplary chastity? Just as holy virginity is as torturous as martyrdom to forced nuns, so voluntary nuns prefer encountering every torment and even martyrdom in order not to lose the virginal crown. In love with God, they profess the three vows by their own election and not under duress. They continually ask God, because of the incomparable virginity of Mary his mother, to grant them a chaste soul that corresponds to the promises with which 448. Catherine of Alexandria (or Saint Catherine of the Wheel; see note 93). 449. E da le vene intatte / Sgorgò, parto del cor, virgineo latte. Citation not identified. These lines do not appear in the works of Lucrezia Marinella, the best female poet in Tarabotti’s Venice, who contributed encomiastic verses to Convent Paradise. 450. The Aurea legenda (Golden Legend) recounts that when Paul was decapitated, a stream of milk first poured forth, followed by blood. See “The Life of St. Paul the Apostle” in vol.  4 of The Golden Legend, . 451. Confundantur omnes, qui adorant sculptilia, et qui gloriantur in simulacris suis. Psalms 96:7. This is a reference to Publia, Deaconess of Antioch, and Julian, Emperor of Rome (331/332–363), known as “the Apostate” because of his rejection of Christianity. Publia encouraged the young women in her care to sing psalms against idolatry as Julian was passing by the building while on a visit to Antioch.

168 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI they obligate themselves to him. They pray for virginal purity with an ardor as great as they know that virtue to be, unequaled by all the treasures, gems, gold, and silver in the world. Solomon said in Ecclesiasticus: No price is worthy of a continent soul.452 Nothing is so valuable that it can be compared to a chaste soul. Agnes— with perfect understanding of this, in order to escape the importunate advances of the young man who was enamored of her and desired her as a wife, urging her with flattery to accept him as her husband—spoke of her celestial Bridegroom, to whom she had consecrated her virginity, in this way: My right hand and neck hath he clasped with precious stones, and put pearls beyond price in my ears, and hath crowned me with the springtime blossoms and shimmering jewels.453 Now if the Lord, who treats everyone equally and is not partial to anyone, enriches even us at our solemn consecration with jewels of such worth, who among us, in order to reciprocate such love, will not imitate the glorious virgin Agnes in her martyrdom—if not dying for Christ, at least willingly suffering for him, and preserving in herself such excellent and meritorious purity—especially those who have by their vow consecrated such purity to God? Saint Ambrose therefore implied that it can be called the mother of martyrdom. He says: virginity is not praiseworthy because it is found in  martyrs, but because itself makes  martyrs.454 And which man is so blind and obtuse that he does not recognize how proper and necessary it is for true nuns to desire martyrdom, since they run spontaneously to their nuptials with their Bridegroom, incited by nothing but the pure ardor that drives them to chastity? And who does not recognize how necessary it is for nuns to suffer and share in his passion in order to become worthy of his grace and join themselves to him for eternity? Let us confront not only suffering but even death itself, in whatever most horrendous form, in order to rejoice, face to face, in the incomprehensible beauties of our lover whose love we reciprocate. The ancients celebrated with worthy and glorious accounts the fame of many virtuous women who, to remain pure in their marital faithfulness to their husbands, preferred—either because of the cruelty of others or their own magnanimity—to die rather than lose their chastity. They preferred to suffer the sullying of their most pure bodies with rivers of blood rather than the dirtying of their marital beds with unchaste embraces. Let us undertake such reasoning and deduce the consequences: how much, oh how much more pure faith must be 452. Omnis ponderatio non est digna continentis animae. Ecclesiasticus 26:20. 453. Dexteram meam, et colum meum cinxit lapidibus pretiosis, tradidit auribus meis inestimabiles margaritas, circundedit me vernantibus atque corruscantibus gemmis. Responsory to the second reading for the First Nocturn of the Feast of Saint Agnes (January 21). Cf. Breviarium Romanum, 766. Translation from The Roman Breviary, 715. Agnes (ca. 291–ca. 304) is one of seven women commemorated, along with Mary, in prayers that are part of the Catholic liturgy. 454. Non ideo laudabilis virginitas, quia et in martiribus reperitur, sed quia ipsa martires facit. Cf. Saint Ambrose, De virginibus, book 1, chapter 3, paragraph 10. See Ambrose, Opera omnia, 2:1:202, and, as cited in note 445, the English translation at .

Convent Paradise 169 maintained for the divine Bridegroom by a humble virgin lover who has obligated herself to him with an inviolable promise? This woman must make her heart and mind into a temple in which not only does she offer her virginity in sacrifice to God, but—if it becomes necessary—she must make a sacrifice of herself and more readily die a thousand times for the love of such a worthy consort than ever violate her sworn faithfulness, even in her imagination. Countless women, in order to preserve their chastity, cut the thread of their own lives. Many, pierced through by grief at their husbands’ death, could give no more ardent testimony of their chaste and loving affections than to throw themselves on the flames of the same pyre that consumed their husbands.455 If in life they lived amid the flames of a faithful love, they died burnt amid the ardors of a pyre from which immortal phoenixes of faithfulness were resurrected. If the marital love and faithfulness of pagan women reached this far, what must earthly angels do for their Bridegroom, Creator, and Life, to give proof of their affection? Bring on axes, the wheel, prongs, and even more painful punishments, for when it is a matter of faithful constancy and stable faithfulness to God, they consider themselves fortunate to die. “Who will grant me, that I might die for thee?”456 Mary said to her tortured son. “Who will grant me, that I might die for thee?”457 the veiled virgins exclaim to him who was crucified for them, their Creator and Beloved. The pagan women ran like moths toward the light of the flames that burned their husbands’ bodies, and the women who followed Christ, seeing him on the wood of the cross amid the fires of an amorous pyre, desire to be crucified as he was, hearing his words thunder in their hearts: “Look, and make it according to the pattern, that was shewn thee on the mount.”458 The enamored God—yearning for his love to be returned—wishes to say: “Raise your eyes, oh my Beloved, and see how I languish—if not over a pyre burning with real fire, at least at the summit of Mount Calvary, almost as if burnt to ash by the flames of love. Follow me, oh my dearest, and suffer from the same cross for which I suffer, and may those flames that reduced me to ash burn away unchaste and less than honorable desires in you.” At such lovingly tender tones, issuing from the mouth of a dying God, there is not a soul vowed to him who, transported, does not fling herself to burn in the fires of the Holy Spirit, who is more present in the cloisters 455. A reference to sati, an Indian custom that was first described by Greek historians such as Aristobulus of Cassandreia, who traveled with Alexander the Great, and Diodorus Siculus, who wrote a detailed account of the ceremony. See Przemysław Szczurek, “Source or Sources of Diodorus’ Account of Indian Satī/Suttee (Diod. Sic. 19.33–34.6)?” in The Children of Herodotus: Greek and Roman Historiography and Related Genres, ed. Jakub Pigorí (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 119–43. 456. Quis mihi det, ut tecum ego moriar? Cf. 2 Samuel 18:33. 457. Ibid. 458. Inspice, et fac secundum exemplar, quod tibi in monte mostratum est. Cf. Exodus 25:40.

170 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI than elsewhere, and—every lust eliminated amid those ardors—does not then preserve untouched her chastity, so dear to His Divine Majesty. Human industry and diligence manage to find a remedy for whatever calamity or harm befalls us, either by the influence of the stars or the evildoings of men, except for lost chastity, since, if it is stained even once, no force, wisdom, or skill can ever restore it from the harm that it has suffered. A secular poet wrote: Drowned chastity does not return to shore, / And having expired cannot be brought back to life.459 Saint Paul says that God himself set a limit to his omnipotence, not allowing the restoration of lost virginity. I will say it boldly; though God can do all things, he cannot raise a virgin up after she has fallen.460 It is a gem that, lost, is never regained, a loss of such grave consequence that there is no mortal harm that equals it. The ancients understood this, representing Pallas with a dragon at her feet and armed with a staff and a shield on which was effigied the horrible face of the Gorgon, her head ringed by snakes.461 They hoped thus to teach us that we must arm ourselves with vigilant and watchful guard against those who threaten our chastity. But if the ancients suggested that the candor of purity must be guarded by such a diligent sentry, even though they did not know the reward that was waiting in heaven for women who are adorned with the virginal flower and the divine nuptials that awaited them, well must we—who know the celestial recompense that virgins enjoy from their Bridegroom—keep a hundred eyes open and grasp a hundred swords, almost like a modern Argus or Briareus,462 to guard and defend 459. La sommersa honestà non torna a riva, / E poich’è estinta più non si raviva. Although the gloss refers to Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, this seems to be a common proverb and is found in Stefano Guazzo’s “Dell’honor delle donne.” See Stefano Guazzo, Dialoghi piacevoli … novamente da lui corretti, et in molti luoghi ampliati (Venice: Antonio Pinelli, 1610), 443. 460. Audacter dicam, cum omnia possit Deus suscitare, virginem non potest post ruinam. Cf. Saint Jerome, Letter 22, “To Eustochium” (“The Virgin’s Profession”), in Jerome, Select Letters, ed. F. A. Wright (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), 62–63. Jerome prefaces this statement by quoting Amos 5:2, the Vulgate translation of which reads: “The virgin of Israel is cast down upon her land, there is none to raise her up.” 461. Pallas, or Athena, in Greek mythology the goddess of wisdom, craft, and warfare. She was said to have helped Perseus slay Medusa, the Gorgon; thus her shield is traditionally depicted as displaying Medusa’s visage. The image of Pallas as protector of virgins was immortalized by Andrea Alciato in his Emblemata (see Figure 19), where the dragon, staff and shielf are all figured. The emblem is titled “Custodiendas virgines” (“Virgins must be guarded”) and the text explains that Pallas’s dragon accompanies her because “[t]he protection of things was entrusted to it; it guards the sacred forests and temples. It is necessary to warily guard unwed maidens, for lays its lures everywhere.” See Andrea Alciati, A Book of Emblems: The Emblematum Liber in Latin and English, trans. and ed. John F. Moffitt (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2004), 39. 462. Argus Panoptes, or Argos, in Greek mythology the many-eyed giant who served Hera; Briareus, or Aegaeon, in Greek mythology one of the three Hechatonchieres, the one hundred-handed and fifty-headed sons of Uranus and Gaia.

Convent Paradise 171

Figure 19. Pallas, guardian of virgins. The emblem is titled “Custodiendas virgines” (“Virgins must be guarded”). From Andrea Alciato, Emblemata (Leiden: ex Officina Plantiniana, apud Franciscum Raphelengium, 1591), Emblem 22, p. 39. Published with permission of the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. the purity that, if sullied even once, can never be made whole again. May our weapon be the mortification of our own flesh, with which we will wage our tireless and constant fight to subdue vehement and importunate assaults of passion. We will certainly attain victory by adhering to constant prayers, penitence, abstinence, and vigils, ignoring the opinion of those who say:

172 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI Fasting, abstinence, and other hardships are vain, and good works without fruit; who ever returned from the infernal places to say that down there is rejoicing in grief?463 After we have vanquished ourselves, we will attain joy and infinite reward as triumph while we share in the merit and praises that the wise man attributed to these women: The patient man is better than the valiant; and he that ruleth his spirit than the one that taketh cities.464 The pagan philosopher Xenocrates,465 although he was by inclination devoted to shameful vices, knew how to subject his senses to reason to such an extent that he became a miracle of continence among men. How must we humble virgins, consecrated to the king of heaven, use all of our power to obtain victory over the cravings of the flesh? We are not only bound to make our stand before enemies, but also to flee any occasion that could cast even the slightest suspicion on us. As he repudiated his wife, Caesar said he did not only want her to be innocent and free from guilt, but even from suspicion of guilt, as befitted an emperor’s wife.466 These women married to the emperor of heaven should be protected Not only from evil, but from the suspicion of evil, because good name is better than great riches.467 In order to keep ourselves worthy and pure for such a great husband and lord, we must avoid the stains and shadows of even the smallest failing. Yes, yes, my God, my dear, we will protect the flower of our virginity with utmost zeal and love in order to perfect our three vows, and we will abhor, almost as horrible serpents, the faces of those who—like limbs of Satan—seek only to awaken vain and lascivious loves in even the chastest hearts. We will flee from them as you advised us: Flee from sins as from the face of a serpent.468 We will flee from these pestiferous monsters who know only how to make others sin and who only love treacherously, who bring torment even when they promise happiness and pleasure. We will also flee because a great mind taught us flight as a cure to such a shameful plague. Flee, if you wish to survive; only flight / frees souls from the deceptions of love.469 Keep 463. Il digiun, l’astinenza, e l’altre pene  /  son vane e ’l ben oprar senz’alcun frutto,  /  chi tornò mai da l’infernali arene  /  a dir che sia là giù festa ne lutto? See Benedetto dell’Uva, Le vergini prudenti (Florence: Bartolomeo Sermartelli, 1637), 9. 464. Melior est patiens viro forti et qui dominatur animo suo expugnatore urbium. Proverbs 16:32. 465. Xenocrates (396–314 BCE), Greek philosopher and disciple of Plato. 466. On Caesar’s repudiation of Pompeia, see Plutarch’s Lives, trans. and ed. John Langhorne and William Langhorne, 4 vols. (New York: Harper, 1841), 3:324. 467. Non solum à malo, sed etiam à suspectione mali. Citation not identified. The second clause, melius est nomen bonum quam divitiae multae, is from Proverbs 22:1. 468. A facie colubri fuge peccatum. Ecclesiasticus 21:2. 469. Fuggi, se scampar vuoi, la fuga sola  /  alle frodi d’Amor l’anime invola. Benedetto dell’Uva, Il Doroteo (Florence: Bartolomeo Sermatelli, 1582), 14.

Convent Paradise 173 them far away, since we are bound to preserve the purity not only of our body but of our mind so that we may be worthy—once the twenty-fifth year of our life has passed—to consecrate ourselves, most pure, to our celestial and true lover.470 To achieve this more easily, we love and embrace solitude, distancing ourselves from the windows and from the convent parlor, rarely exiting from our celestial cells, since retreat is the mother of every merit and virtue. The wounds that blind love inflicts, the poets say, Can only be cured by distance, or disdain, / Or worthier love, different than the first.471 To detach our heart completely from every earthly love, we must stay far from the world and become outraged with it. With our thoughts turned to our crucified lover, more worthy than any other lover, we will often repeat the words of Saint Augustine who, full of the burning ardor of continence, exclaimed to God, “On your exceedingly great mercy alone rests my entire hope. Give what you command, and command what you will: you demand of us continence, through which we are joined together and restored to wholeness, from which we trickled away into multiplicity. O Love, you burn for ever and are never quenched, set me on fire! You command continence: give what you command, and command what you will.”472 Weak and unhappy creatures, we can do nothing without divine help and nothing will we be able do to serve our Redeemer without his help. But more than any other thing are we incapable of protecting our chastity, which rightly stands above all other virtues, if we are not sustained and supported by his celestial hand. It is true, however, that the sublime fame of your brides gives us so much courage that we hope to be able to overpower this flesh and subject it to reason, in order to attain a glorious victory with no fear for the difficulty of the battle. St. Augustine tells us that the devil, our betrayer and enemy, fights against us with two most potent weapons. One of these is pleasure, the other the fear of not being able to resist him and his temptations. Let us then arm ourselves in defense, writes this pen from Paradise, since we will not lack more powerful reinforcement. Against pleasure, let faith not be lacking; and what does a Christian fear when he is reminded to pray, to foresee [and] to have faith, so that he may say: the Lord is my helper, and I will look down upon my enemies?473 Frequent prayer—beyond being the fitting and proper exercise of true nuns so that they can 470. See the discussion of consecration in the Introduction, pp. 19–20. 471. Sol può curarle o lontananza, o sdegno, / O diverso dal primo, amor più degno. Uva, Le vergini prudenti, 200. Tarabotti changes the singular “curarla” of the original text to a plural (“curarle”). 472. Tota spes mea, non nisi in magna valde misericordia tua. Da quod iubes, et iube quod vis. Impera nobis continentiam, per quam colligimur, et redigimur in unum, a quo in multa defluximus. O Amor, qui semper ardes, et numquam extingueris, accende me, contientiam iube, da quod iubes, et iube quod vis. Cf. Augustine, Confessions, 10.29.40; see Confessions, ed. Hammond, 2:136–39. 473. Contra voluptatem non desit fides, et quid metuit christianus quando admonetur sic orare, sic presumere, sic fidere, ut dicat Dominus mihi adiutor, et ego despiciam inimicos meos. Cf. Augustine, “De symbolo: Sermo ad Catechumenos,” 1.2. See Augustine, Opera omnia, ed. Migne, vol. 6, 638. The last clause is from Psalms 117:7.

174 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI make their entreaties with uncorrupted bodily and mental purity—is a mighty arm against infernal impulses. Here it is fitting that I repeat the concept that stands at the center of my discourse, toward which all the lines of my reasoning tend: that convents are heavens and their willing inhabitants are angels in the flesh. Since the homeland of virginity is heaven and whoever possesses it is a celestial spirit, cloisters must be heaven and nuns angels. It can be easily understood and proven that virginity is native to and inhabitant of heaven, for before God became flesh, few of the Old Law were virgins, and no one vowed to remain chaste or adhered to chastity under the rule of religious life in such a way as to invite others to follow. I do not know if this was because of the need to populate the earth, as Saint Jerome and Saint Cyprian write;474 or because—since they were all men eagerly awaiting the coming of the Messiah, who they knew would be born among them—all of them were involved in propagation; or because virginity—since it had no other home but heaven—was a wanderer on earth and had no place to rest. On the authority of Saint Ambrose the point has been sufficiently made and proved that it was born in heaven and nowhere else. “Now,” he says, “if one’s country be there where is the home of one’s birth, without doubt heaven is the native country of chastity. And so she is a stranger here, but a denizen there.”475 Let this demonstrate that such a lofty virtue can come from nowhere but heaven and that this was the reason that—at the incarnation of the Word—the womb of a virgin was chosen, given how enamored he was of virginity, his beloved, his bride in heaven. But not just this! Convents are heavens and cloistered women are angels not only by virtue of virginity but for all other sorts of virtue. Daily in the choir they exalt their Bridegroom with their voices and their hearts. Having transformed themselves into the stars of a cloister’s firmament, they must boastfully sing along with the prophet, In the morning will I watch to thee. I rose at midnight to give praise to thee.476 Because of this, Chrysostom took the opportunity to say, speaking from their perspective, “He guards my spirit night and day.”477 Never do they sleep in the service of their adored Creator, and what is more, the vigils they keep so thoroughly repress the urges of the senses that sensual appetites are checked and the devil mortified (who in vain tries to catch them up in the insidious nets 474. See Saint Jerome, “To Eustochium” (), section 19, as cited in note 460, and Saint Cyprian, Treatise 2, “On the Dress of Virgins” (), section 23. 475. Si enim ibi est patria ubi est genitale domicilium, in coelo profectò est patria castitatis, itaque hic ad vena, ibi incola est. Saint Ambrose, De virginibus, book 1, chapter 5, paragraph 20. See Ambrose, Opera omnia, 2:1:205, and, as cited in note 445, the English translation at . 476. De mane vigilabo ad te. Isaiah 26:9. Media nocte surgebam ad confitendum tibi. Psalms 118.62. 477. De nocte mane vigilat spiritus meus. Quoted in Zamora, Del Santuario, 2:129. Saint John Chrysostom comments on Isaiah 26:9.

Convent Paradise 175 of the flesh, his minister). They fear nothing, and each of them can boldly say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear.478 This is the family of which Saint Jerome said, As soon as the Son of God set foot upon the earth, He formed for Himself a new household there; that, as He was adored by angels in heaven, angels might serve Him also on earth.479 We are God’s family, established by him, and as such we go dressed in his livery, and in that same candor of purity that so pleases Mary, who was so candid and pure that she is called the lily of the valleys.480 I do not think I would err in saying that true nuns are the children of the Holy Church and of His Divine Majesty who can, so to say, increase the glory of our Redeemer. Solomon had this to say about them: Much experience is the crown of our sex.481 Although it is certain that the inaccessible greatness of God does not receive glory from anyone—indeed it has the power to glorify even the damned themselves—we have however learned from David that God is wonderful in his saints.482 Insofar as we can, we do not neglect to add marvels to divine marvels. Speaking of these people’s practices, the father Saint Basil exclaimed: I was amazed at their persistency in prayer, and at their triumphing over sleep; subdued by no natural necessity, ever keeping their soul’s purpose high and free, in hunger, in thirst, in cold, in nakedness.483 Oh our crucified consort, allow, please allow us to match our actions to what these holy orators, inspired by your Holy Spirit, say about us, and to follow the paths trodden by our founders, never straying at all from their orders and rules. Give us strength to resist enemy attacks, so that at least some merit allows us to aspire to the nuptial bed you promise your sincere and faithful servants, and to the love you always grant freely and abundantly to those who have preserved the purest joy of virginity. You made such484 abundantly clear by the privileges with which you adorned your virgin mother, whom you 478. Dominus mihi adiutor non timebo. Psalms 117:6. 479. Statim, ut filius Dei ingressus est super terram, novam sibi familiam instituit, ut qui ab angelis adorabatur in caelo, haberet angelos, et in terris. Cf. Jerome, Letter 22, “To Eustochium” (), section 21, as cited in note 460. 480. Lilium convalium. Cf. Song of Songs 2:1. 481. Corona sexum multa peritia. Cf. Ecclesiasticus 25:8, Corona senum multa peritia (Much experience is the crown of old men). Although the Errata notes “sexum” as an error for “senum,” the former makes more sense in context. If the change from senum to sexum was deliberate, it shows Tarabotti adapting a biblical passage to fit her own argument. 482. mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis. Psalms 67:36. 483. Ad quorum obstupui praedicando virgorem, et costantiam, cum observarem quo pacto, nec somno victi, nec aliqua naturae necessitate deffexi, sublimem semper, et invictum animae sensum in fame, et siti, in frigore, et nuditate servarent. Cf. Saint Basil of Caesarea, Letter 223, “Against Eustathius of Sebasteia.” See Basil, Operum, vol. 2 (Paris: Michael Sonnius, 1518), 894. The English version is based on the Blomfield Jackson translation cited in note 368, as rev. and ed. Kevin Knight, . 484. That is, the importance of virginity.

176 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI elevated above the seraphim and cherubim and placed at the right hand of your tribunal. There she sits as the ordained empress of heaven and earth, to beseech graces and to dispense them among sinners as she wills. King Ninus, the first sovereign of the Assyrians, so loved his father Belus that, having erected a statue for him, he wished all those who ran to it and entrusted themselves to it to receive pardon for any crime they had committed.485 Imagine then, oh men and women who sin, whether the Redeemer of souls shall refuse clemency to you when you turn to his most beloved and adored mother, who is the very idea and the exemplar of virginity. For no reason but his virginal purity was John beloved by you above all your apostles, as Saint Jerome asserts. Jesus loved John more tenderly than the other apostles; the prerogative of his chastity made him worthy of this preference.486 John the Baptist, too—of whom the Church sings, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist487—was a virgin, and deserved to be called best among men more for his virginity than any other virtue. The first martyr was the most righteous Abel, who attained the reputation of being the one who, among all mortals, earned the first palms of martyrdom perhaps by virtue of his virginal flower.488 Those who retained their virginity always shared in divine affections. Jeremiah, Daniel, Melchizedek the great priest, Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha, despite being of the masculine sex (in which it is nearly impossible to find even one uncorrupted man) were virginal, perpetually immaculate lilies that forever flowered in the ancient garden of the Jewish law, and were therefore specially endowed with graces and favors from God.489 For her chastity, Judith deserved to hear said of her: thy heart has been strengthened, because thou hast loved chastity.490 Mary, sister of Moses, was also notable and worthy in her virginity.491 485. King Ninus, legendary king of the Assyrians, was said to have invented idolatry by worshiping a gold statue of his father Belus. 486. Praecaeteris discipulis diligebat Iesus familiarius unum nempe Ioannem et hunc speciali prerogativa castitatis ampliora dilectione fecerat dignum. This distinction was ascribed to John the Apostle by Saint Jerome. See Alphonsus Rodriguez, The Practice of Christian and Religious Perfection (Dublin: James Duffy, 1914), 3:187. The words are from the Office of Saint John and also appear in Bede’s Homily 35; see The Complete Works of Venerable Bede in the Original Latin, trans. and ed. J. A. Giles (London: Whittaker, 1843), 5:259–60. The translation is adapted from Rodriguez. 487. inter natos mulierum non surrexit maior Ioanne Baptista. These lines belong to an antiphon sung for the nativity of Saint John the Baptist. Cf. Matthew 11:11 and Luke 7:28. 488. Abel, slain by Cain, was the first martyr and the first virgin (see Genesis 4:1–12). 489. Jeremiah, Daniel, Melchizedek, Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha are figures in the Hebrew Bible associated with virginity. 490. confortatum est cor tuum, eo quod castitatem amaveris. Judith 15:11. Judith was a widow who remained chaste after the death of her husband; “chastity was joined to her virtue, so that she knew no man all the days of her life, after the death of Manasses her husband” (Judith 16:26). 491. Although Tarabotti mentions Mary here, she must mean Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses; the two figures have been sometimes confused in religious history.

Convent Paradise 177 But why continue recalling chaste women, when modesty and chastity are traits inseparable from our sex and qualities that render us as admirable and glorious above men as the sun surpasses every other celestial light? The special favors given to us by God clearly show this, for he so abhorred the reek of the carnal stench that in his holy Passion he did not reject any infamy, injury, and insult, but he never allowed there to be a voice that dared accuse or reproach him for carnality. Perhaps when he said, turning to his Father, I shall give my honor to no one,492 he meant that he did not want to be accused of sensuality. He was accused of being a seditionist and rabble-rouser, a destroyer of the Temple of Solomon, a blasphemer, magician, sorcerer. He cast out devils by Beelzebub,493 as though he were wicked and the companion of evildoers. He was reputed with the wicked.494 There were even those who reproached him as a madman. They went out to lay hold on him for he is become mad.495 He permitted it all, he submitted to every accusation, he suffered every reproach. Yet you did not allow that any tongue dare use malicious insults to besmirch the purest candor of your eternally immaculate virginity. No one, among so many, many reckless, perfidious, and malicious men, allowed himself even to think of insulting you by casting a hint or shadow of a stain upon the uncorrupted sun of your sacrosanct chastity which you so adored. Yet the beauty of your divine face, your youth, and the presence of that beautiful woman, your ardent follower, who was a sinner before she was a saint,496 could have caused some sinister ideas to take root—despite your blamelessness—in those men of sensual appetites, disposed to thinking and speaking ill. Lasciviousness is a sin so foul to the nostrils of His Divine Majesty that the Lord-made-man, who was so humble that he did not refuse to take upon himself our sins, did not allow himself to be accused of so terrible a wickedness, in order that those ugly things, which have unleashed the lightning bolts from his hands, should not—even just in words—offend his chaste ears. Not only did Christ not want such sordid sins heaped upon him, but he also wanted Mary his mother, admired since she was adorned with superhuman beauty, to have the power to remove any lasciviousness in those who looked upon her by awakening divine impulses and attracting souls to celestial contemplation, rather than exciting impure thoughts. Never was there anyone who turned his gaze toward her with feelings of carnal lust, yet she was most beautiful and lovable. She was possessed of such rare and singular beauty that her own incarnate son proudly boasted by saying, Thou art all fair, O my love, 492. honorum meum nemini dabo. A common axiom, attributed to Christ, derived from Proverbs 5:9, Ne des alienis honorem tuum (Give not thy honour to strangers). 493. In Belzebu daemonia eijcit. Cf. Luke 11:19. 494. Cum sceleratis reputatus est. Isaiah 53:12. 495. Exierunt eum tenere quia in furore versus est. Cf. Mark 3:21, exierunt tenere eum: dicebant enim: Quoniam in furorem versus est (they went out to lay hold on him. For they said: He is become mad). 496. Mary Magdalene.

178 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI and there is not a spot in thee.497 And nonetheless she was never the cause of any lascivious impulse in anyone. Some of the apostles, before becoming followers of Christ, were joined to women in matrimony, but all of them, once they became disciples of their purest teacher, devoted themselves to a celibate and chaste life, and many of them were virgins. May the preceding examples demonstrate that the immaculate lamb loves and cherishes holiest purity, of which he is king and head in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. By offering himself as husband to the virgins who enjoy virginity even in marriage to him, he drew to love him countless women who fill the garden of the Church Militant with the whitest flowers. These women, who by nature and inclination are disposed and ready to live purely, rush in almost infinite numbers to pledge themselves to perpetual continence, and they make the world beautiful with their purity now more than ever. Many more people than it might seem preserve their virginity. Hear how many of them were seen by immaculate John: And I beheld, and lo a lamb stood upon mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty-four thousand, having his name, and the name of his Father, written on their foreheads; they are virgins. These follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.498 They shall enjoy immense glory in paradise, never separated from Christ, since they are beside him wherever he may be. Saint Augustine says, It will be the joy of the virgins of Christ, about Christ, in Christ, with Christ, following Christ, through Christ, because of Christ.499 Glory is incomparably greater in heaven for virgins than for any other blessed soul because of the constant company they keep with Christ; even on earth they are never separated from him. But if paradise is where Christ is, the cloisters inhabited by so many virgins must be glorious paradises in which there is no one who does not have Christ in her heart and in her thoughts, Christ on her lips as she recites the Psalms, Christ in her meditations as she prays, and Christ guiding in every action, rivaling even the blessed souls in heaven. Most cloistered nuns pledge themselves to the vows of their profession in the flower of youth in order eagerly to follow their Bridegroom, for love of whom they refuse earthly husbands, always preserving themselves uncorrupted for the wedding they aspire to and serving their sweetest love tirelessly. Finally, the yearned-for hour of the desired wedding ceremony arrives, and our most compassionate lover regards us with merciful eyes and rejoices in seeing us await the consolation of divine union, 497. tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te. Song of Songs 4:7. 498. Et vidi, et ecce Agnus stabat super montem Sion, et cum eo centum quadraginta quattuor millia habentes nomen eius, et nomen Patris eius scriptum in frontibus suis, virgines enim sunt, et sequuntur Agnum quocumque ierit. Revelation 14:1; 14:4. 499. Gaudium virginum Christi de Christo, in Christo, cum Christo, post Christum, per Christum, propter Christum. Cf. Saint Augustine, “De sancta virginitate,” 1.27. See Augustine, Opera omnia, ed. Migne, vol. 6, 596. The translation is from Augustine, Marriage and Virginity, trans. Ray Kearney, ed. John E. Rotelle (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999), 66.

Convent Paradise 179 which occurs by means of the ceremonies of the Holy Church. Because he does not scorn our bold desire to join ourselves to him, he warmly meets us and embraces us while he has one of his ministers say out loud to us, at our consecration, Wise virgins, prepare your lamps. Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye forth to meet him.500 With joy on our faces and serenity in our hearts, we respond to such a desirable and sweet proposal: And now we follow thee with all our heart, and we fear thee, and seek to see thy face.501 Ah, yes, yes, sweetest lord, for we desire to see that face which blesses all the elect of celestial Jerusalem. After inhabiting these cloisters that represent your heaven, allow us, please allow us, to enjoy your divine presence in paradise, a presence only souls inebriated with your love are allowed see. Cause thy face to shine upon us.502 We will throw ourselves readily into your most holy arms, and to your prelate, who encourages us, we say wholeheartedly, Behold I come to my Lord Jesus Christ, whom I saw, whom I loved, in whom I believed, whom I adored.503 In order to come to you more worthily, we heap disdain upon all the vain pomp of the world, and with voices that express the affection of our heart we sing, I despised the kingdom of the world and all the beauty of the world for the love of my Lord Jesus Christ.504 Oh most beneficent God, oh sweetest love of our souls, to what greatness are we indeed raised up when we are given the ring of sacred matrimony by the same prelate and by the words of such a minister we become brides of his Highness? Can words more beneficial and glorious for us be heard than those the high priest proffers? He says, I pledge you to Jesus Christ, son of the supreme Father, that he keep you inviolate. Therefore accept this ring of faith, seal of the Holy Spirit, and call yourself the bride of God, if you will serve him and the world faithfully.505 To such loving words we respond with the greatest joy: My Lord Jesus Christ has wedded me with his ring, and has set on my head a 500. Prudens virgines, aptate vestras lampadas. Ecce sponsus venit, esite obviam ei. See the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, Matthew 25:1–13; for the second verse, Matthew 25:6. These words appear as an antiphon in the ceremony to bless and consecrate nuns. Cf. Pontificale romanum, 1:137 (“De benedictione et consecratione virginum”). Cf. also Ordo admittendi virgines, 28–29. 501. Et nunc sequimur in toto corde, et timemus te, et querimus faciem tuam videre. Another antiphon from the ceremony to bless and consecrate nuns (Ordo admittendi virgines, 138); cf. Daniel 3:41.  502. Ostende nobis faciem tuam. See notes 356 and 830. 503. Ecce venio ad Dominum meum Iesum Christum: quem vidi, quem amavi, in quem credidi, quem dilexi. These words are part of a responsory from the ceremony to bless and consecrate nuns. Cf. Pontificale romanum, 1:142–43. See also Giovanni Crisostomo Trombelli, Tractatus de sacramentis per polemicas et liturgicas dissertationes: Dispositi de matrimonio, vol. 2 (Bologna: Ex Typographia S. Thomae Aquinatis, 1781), 353. 504. Regnum mundi, et omnem ornatum saeculum contempsi propter amorem Domini mei Iesu Christi. Additional lines from the ceremony to consecrate nuns. See Pontificale romanum, 1:142. 505. Desponso te Iesu Christo filio Sumi Patris, qui te illesam custodiat. Accipe ergo anulum fidei, signaculum Spiritus Sancti, et sponsa Dei voceris, si ei fideliter, et mundo servieris. Additional lines from the ceremony to consecrate nuns. See Pontificale romanum, 1:155.

180 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI crown as the crown of a bride.506 Your love is incomparable, most lovable God! You deigned to lower your most holy divinity so much that you likened yourself to a mound of mud. Your most divine ears rejoice in hearing the enamored lips of the souls who are your lovers say, with harmonious voices in your Church, I am wedded to him whom the angels serve, whose beauty is admired by the sun and moon.507 One could not desire a more sublime matrimony or a more worthy wedding ceremony! And shall we not reciprocate such great graces, oh our heart’s sole and beloved true Good, by placing your love before any worldly pleasure or delight whatsoever? Yes, yes, my dearest, for we shall love you for eternity. If it is said of you that being wearied with your journey,508 you went to find me under the evening dew,509 why should not this body and this flesh sweat and become exhausted in serving you? How many times, my life, when my eyes kept me far from you, buried in the delights of slumber, and when my soul, sordid and wrapped in the somnolence of errors, also drowsing in sin, did not recognize you, oh how many times did you come to the door of my heart crying, Open to me, sister, my love.510 The celestial voices went unheard by my drowsy self, for like a hare I slept with my eyes open,511 not understanding the prerogatives granted to every Catholic in the lap of the Holy Church. But when I finally reached the privileged position of becoming your bride, I opened the eyes of my intellect, and proud of being joined to the Lord of lords, I sing with Agnes, He put pearls beyond price in mine ears, and hath crowned me with the bright blossoms of the eternal spring-time. And his blood is red on my cheeks.512 Amid my glorious rejoicings, seeing myself victorious against my tempters—the devil, the world, and the flesh513—I feel I can boast with 506. Anulo suo subarauit ne [me] Dominus meus Iesus Christus, et tamquam sponsam decorauit me corona. Another antiphon from the ceremony to bless and consecrate nuns. See Pontificale romanum, 1:156. 507. Ipsi sum desponsata, cui angeli serviunt, cuius pulchritudinem sol, et luna mirantur. Another antiphon recited as part of the ceremony for the consecration of nuns; see note 64 above. 508. fatigatus ex itinere. Cf. John 4:6. 509. Cf. Song of Songs 5:2. 510. Aperi mihi soror mea sponsa. Cf. Song of Songs 5:2, Aperi mihi, soror mea, amica mea (Open to me, my sister, my love). 511. The belief that hares slept with their eyes open went back to ancient Greece and Rome. The Roman scholar Aelian (ca. 170–after 230 CE), writing in Greek, noted: “The Hare has certain innate characteristics. For one thing it sleeps with its eyelids open …” See Aelian, On Animals, vol. 1, Books 1–5, trans. A.F. Scholfield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958), 2.12, “The Hare,” 109. 512. Traditit auribus meis inestimabiles margaritas; circumdedit me vernantibus, atque corruscantibus gemmis. Et sanguis eius, ornavit genas meas. The phrases are from the Roman Breviary for the Feast of Saint Agnes (January 21). The first sentence is a responsory to the second reading for the First Nocturn; the second is a responsory to the fifth reading of the Second Nocturn. Cf. Breviarium Romanum, 766, 768. Translation from The Roman Breviary, 715–16. 513. The last reference to the three traditional enemies of the soul. See also pages 93, 108, and 150.

Convent Paradise 181 that great hero and say, I came, I saw, and I conquered.514 But if I have vanquished, I have also been vanquished. I came, oh my dear, to the paradise of the cloisters. I saw you—beautiful and most lovable—sitting in the convents as in your proper realm and inviting me to you so that you could enrich me with so many gems resplendent with graces that they dim the splendors of the sun. Made courageous, I overcame the enemy, who circled me almost like a ferocious lion and roared to deprive me of my soul.515 I conquered my senses by subjecting them to reason. I conquered, yes, but I was at the same time conquered by your perfect beauty, which stole my heart. In love with you beyond all reason, I cry, Show, show to my beloved that I languish in love.516 I do not know if the losses or the victories proved dearer to me. Well do I know that, in losing, I regained myself. St. Bernard says that the way to love you perfectly is to love you without measure or limit. The rightful measure of our love to God is to exceed all measure.517 Therefore we love you with overflowing affection, and with all the truest ardor that can issue forth from a loving heart. Our only desire is to possess you as the sole desire of our thoughts. And well we must, for in addition to the fact that he is infinitely lovable, he shows such kindness when he has his sacred messenger ask us, Do you will to be blessed, consecrated, and betrothed to our Lord Jesus Christ, son of the most high King?518 Oh, what excesses of love that deserve to be returned with excess! Almost as if he were our equal, he gives us the choice whether to become his brides, and he does not mind pairing our lowliness with his greatness. He accepts the love we reciprocate as worthy of equaling the infinite inequality that exists between the created and the Creator. Let us indeed reciprocate his love, and if he transformed himself in us, we must have no other desire than to be in him. He has done it all to free us from the infernal slavery of sin. All of us, in perpetuity, dedicate ourselves to his holy worship. He gives us his most holy body; we consecrate our hearts to him for eternity. He chose to die to give us life; we are ready to give our lives for his death. He suffered, wept, sighed to redeem us; with tears and sighs of contrition and sorrow for having ever offended him, we want 514. The famous words attributed to Caesar by Appian of Alexandria. 515. A reference to Saint Peter’s warning about Satan: “Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour.” See 1 Peter 5:8, as well as note 858. 516. Nunciate, nunciate dilecto mio, quia amore langueo. From the fifth antiphon for the first Vespers for the Assumption of the Virgin. Cf. Song of Songs 5:8; see also notes 80, 129, 246, and 591. 517. Modum diligendi Deum est supramodum diligere. Cf. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo Deo, book 6. See Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera omnia, ed. Jean Mabillon, vol.  2 (Paris: J.-P.  Migne, 1862), 983: Modum esse diligendi Deo, sine modo diligere. The translation is from St. Bernard on the Love of God, trans. Marianne Caroline Patmore and Coventry Patmore (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1881), 27. 518. Vultis benedici, consecrari, et Domino nostro Iesu Christo summi Regis filio desponsari. The translation is from Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 39.

182 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI to serve him in the cloisters. Like that worldly poet, but with greater truth and affection, each one of us says: You are my idol, the delight and pursuit of lovers. To you I consecrate as votive offering incense of sighs, myrrh of tears.519 We will do what we can, even though our lowliness can never pretend to match infinite graces, immense benefits, eternal mercy, and ineffable charity. So readily and willingly will we bear the yoke of the religious life that it will seem light to us, as it truly is, given the merit of God who loves us with exceeding ardor. Prince Sichem so loved Dinah that he did not refuse to experience the atrocious pain of circumcision for her.520 Christ so loved our soul that he chose not only to be circumcised, but captured, whipped, torn apart, tortured, crucified, and killed for it. Our reciprocation of his love is weak, even if during the brief pilgrimage of life we surrender ourselves to suffer in our religious vocation out of love for him. We return his love as much as we can, but we shall never love him as much as we should: the disproportion between divinity and humanity is too great. We would need to invent new ways to love. Among the most powerful feelings of love, three are chosen as the principal ones, superior to all others. These are conjugal, maternal, and neighborly. His Divine Majesty loves us in all these ways, and in all these are we bound to repay him for what is granted to our humble and earthly nature. With maternal affection did our Savior declare his love for us when he called us daughters, saying, Hearken, O daughter.521 We do not lack his conjugal love, and he attests this to us with those words, I will espouse thee to me in faith.522 How could he show greater neighborly friendship and affectionate ardor for us, and with more vivid and manifest signs, than by the honor of calling us his friends? You are my friends, 519. Tu sei l’Idolo mio, tu degli Amanti / Delitie, e cura; à te consacro in voto / Incenso di sospir, mirra di pianti. Antonio Bruni, “Erminia à Tancredi,” in Epistole heroiche (Venice: Appresso lo Scaglia, 1636), 26. 520. It is curious that Tarabotti presents the figure of Sichem in a positive light here. In Genesis 34, Sichem (Shechem), a Canaanite prince, abducts and rapes Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, but wishes to marry her. Shechem’s father approaches Jacob with this request, to which Dinah’s brothers Simeon and Levi agree, provided all of the Canaanite men are circumcised. The circumcisions take place, but “when the pain of the wound [is] greatest,” Simeon and Levi attack the Canaanites and kill all the men, including Shechem and his father. Responding to Jacob’s anger at their actions, the brothers ask, “Should they abuse our sister as a strumpet?” In Tarabotti’s Semplicità ingannata, she presents Sichem as a rapist and an example of “unbridled lust” (Panizza, ed., Paternal Tyranny, 115). 521. Audi filia. Psalms 44:11. 522. Sponsabo te mihi in fide. Hosea 2:20.

Convent Paradise 183 and he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of my eye.523 What similarity does a most vile earthly cesspit have with the Omnipotent one in heaven, that they should almost be equals, such that the one declared himself the most passionate friend of the others and claimed to love them like the apple of his eye? Was this not perhaps proof of his affectionate friendship? At the bitter news of the death of his dear friend Jonathan, David rent his garments to show the gravest sorrow that afflicted him;524 and Christ, for the death of man caused by sin, allowed the garment of his most holy humanity to be torn. Oh what love, which having arrived at the extreme limits and bounds of the possible, truly earns the words no further!525 So as not to prove ungrateful for such clear affection, what woman will not relinquish the comfort and ease of her frail limbs; indeed, what woman will not despise the delights of the senses and the pleasures of the flesh, which in the end are nothing but fragile vanities that soon rot like flowers? And as the flower that goeth away in the morning.526 Already we forbid other loves and other lovers in our heart, for we owe this out of gratitude—in addition to the fact that at our consecration we made an unbreakable promise when we sang, He placed a seal on my face, so that I will admit no lover except him.527 Keep away, keep away vain love, nourished by nothing but lying hopes and false promises, in which there is no mercy that is not cruel nor reciprocation that is not harmful! The love of our most divine Bridegroom is different. If we carry him sculpted upon our hearts, he carries us in effigy upon his breast, and he holds our name written in his hands.528 With our hands (that is, our actions), we spread a little myrrh of penitence529 upon the burning coals of true repentance, creating a fragrant smoke that reaches the nostrils of His Divine Majesty; he with his consecrated lips spreads the myrrh of graces to enrich us with favors and to preserve us from the plague of vice. During 523. Vos amici mei estis, et qui tangit vos tangit pupillam occuli mei. Cf. John 15:14, Vos amici mei estis (You are my friends); Zachariah 2:8, qui enim tetigerit vos, tangit pupillam oculi mei (for he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of my eye). 524. Cf. 2 Samuel 1:11. 525. non plus ultra. These words were thought to have been inscribed on the Pillars of Hercules, the symbolic confine of the Mediterranean world. 526. Et sicut flos mane pertransiens. Cf. Hosea 6:4, et quasi ros mane pertransiens (and as the dew that goeth away in the morning). 527. Posui signum in faciem meam, ut nullum praeter eum amatorem admittam. Third antiphon for the First Nocturn for the Feast of Saint Agnes. The translation is from Joan Mueller, A Companion to Clare of Assisi: Life, Writings, and Spirituality (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 179. 528. Cf. Isaiah 49:16: “Behold, I have graven thee in my hands.” 529. Myrrh was traditionally associated with penitence. See, e.g., Saint Bernard’s Sermon 44 on the Canticle of Canticles: “Hence, my brethren, if you have wept over your sins, you have thereby drunk the pungent draught of myrrh…” (Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 44, “On the Mystical Oil and Wine,” in St. Bernard’s Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles, trans. by a Priest of Mount Melleray, 1–9 [Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1920]), 2.

184 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI the sprint, or the brief flight, of life, we have refused and scorned the world with its vain pomp; he for thirty-three years abandoned paradise and came to expose himself to a most atrocious Passion. We place him above all beings by choosing him as our only Beloved; he has placed us above the angels. We bear tribulations and willingly suffer the discomforts of the cloisters in order to serve him, obligated as we are to reciprocate his love; he, who was impassive, rejoiced in suffering and finally met his death to redeem us. Ah, in any case we are always surpassed by his divine mercy, both because it is infinitely superior to us and because our love, in its nature and manifestations, is infinitely inferior. As you were dying, you were able to say to that common enemy, Rejoice not over me, thou, my enemy,530 since, more pierced by love than wounded by death, you gave up the spirit. Allow us then, oh dear one, oh merciful love of our souls, to proclaim justly and boldly, Rejoice not over us, you, our enemies.531 Let the enemies of our souls not rejoice over us, but may they all remain vanquished and overcome by virtue of the love we bear you. Let sin, true death of the soul, have no power, the senses none, none the flesh.When these are trampled and confounded, let us celebrate our victories and triumphs. Indeed we are assured of it, for you will deny nothing to us, you who have honored us by introducing us to your wedding bed and found us worthy of our marriage, though we do not deserve even to be your handmaidens. The name of bride is completely improper for us, since our disproportion to you and your status is greater than that between Moses and the wife he took. This great leader of the Jewish people led into matrimony an Ethiopian woman, who, because she was black and she came from a foreign land, caused Aaron and Mary, the bridegroom’s siblings, greatly to complain that he had married a woman with those attributes.532 This was a foreshadowing of the Word incarnate, of the Son of God, who did not disdain to take as brides our souls, strangers to paradise, made black and ugly by the stains of vice and deformed by the darkness of sin.533 Instead, the angels and the Eternal Father did not complain, nor were they disdainful. In fact, there was no angelic chorus that did not rejoice to take part in our consecrated wedding ceremony, which transforms sinful women into angels and poor cloisters into the richest paradise. Having reached such sublime dignity through their union to Christ, these chosen souls have no other goal or purpose than to please him. Therefore, instead of adorning their necks with pearls, their breasts with jewels, and their bodies with sumptuous clothing, they ornament themselves only with holiness, 530. ne laeteris super me inimica mea. Cf. Micah 7:8. 531. ne laetentur super nos inimici nostri. See note 530. 532. Cf. Numbers 12:1. On Mary as the sister of Aaron and Moses, see note 491 above. 533. Tarabotti, a product of many of the cultural biases of her age despite her radical insights into gender inequality, uses a common trope in Western culture that equates dark skin with spiritual darkness. See also note 296.

Convent Paradise 185 nor do they dress in anything but the habits of virtue and salvation given them by their Bridegroom. For this reason, they sing at their consecration, The Lord has clothed me with the garments of salvation, and has surrounded me with a robe of joy,534 for, wholly ornamented with joyful virtues, they accept the honor of sacred and divine matrimony. And even when they are raised to the glorious station of brides of Christ, with profound humility they repute themselves unworthy handmaidens, expressing the most intimate feelings of the their heart with these lively words: I am the handmaiden of Christ, and so I show myself a servant535—even though they could flaunt rich gifts made to them by their Eternal Lover, as they go on to suggest, saying, The Lord clothed me in a robe of state woven with gold, and adorned me with innumerable necklaces.536 For though they lack material and fleeting ornaments and those vain and flowing locks which, for love of him, they have scorned, their heads are encircled by their Lord with a crown of gold for their virginity and they are enriched by other jewels, as precious as they are invisible. Ornamented, then, with such favors, the willing nuns ask, what shall we give in exchange? Already we dedicated our hearts upon our first entry into the convent, and at our profession we ratified the gift. Nothing else remains for us but to affirm to him again the offering of our whole selves, and, as obedient brides, to subject ourselves to him, ready for his every command; and in exchange for the excellent gifts and precious favors he has granted us, with which he has ornamented, beautified, and enriched us, to give him all our affections, our thoughts, and our actions. Let these dark cloisters be for us a luminous paradise, this poor convent a rich Jerusalem, and these confining cells charming and spacious heavens. May tyrannical passions or treacherous desires never oppose our holy determination, since we are disposed to lose our lives rather than prove ungrateful for the love and the graces granted us by our loving Redeemer. To have allowed our birth in the bosom of the Church was favor enough to oblige us eternally, without counting other gifts, which are innumerable. To have chosen us to be your servants—and moreover, to have honored and glorified us in this life by calling us brides—was to seal and authenticate as excessive all the benefits you have given us, without any merit on our part, thereby rendering even more resplendent the boundless depths of your mercy’s light, whose rays we hope can illuminate but not overwhelm our minds. To these graces you add, oh most loving Christ, our ability to understand 534. Induit me Dominus vestimento salutis, et indumento laetitiae circumdedit me. The fourth responsory from the Second Nocturn for the Feast of Saint Agnes. Translation is from Mueller, A Companion to Clare, 184. Cf. also Isaiah 61:10. 535. Ancilla Christi sum, ideo me ostendo servilem habere personam. These verses are sung after the nuns receive their veil. Translation is from Thomas Merton, The Life of the Vows, vol. 6, Initiation into the Monastic Tradition, ed. Patrick F. O’Connell (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2012), 379. 536. Induit me Dominus ciclade auro texta, et immensis monilibus ornavit me. Translation from Mueller, A Companion to Clare, 184.

186 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI your divine presence through contemplation and to recognize your goodness, beauty, power, and generosity, in such a way that—since we know that you wished to repay our boundless sins with boundless favors—we reciprocate with similarly boundless love. But since a mortal creature cannot worthily love an infinite object, we appeal to you, oh sweetest, oh most adored God, to allow us to say, after we have climbed to the highest step of love possible for a human heart: Behold, now I see what I wished, now I have what I hoped for.537 Steal our hearts from our breasts, oh beloved Bridegroom, so that from each of our mouths these words can truthfully issue forth: You have carried my heart away.538 Grant us the ardent desire to possess you on the great throne of your glory, and to rejoice in your divinity revealed (which we already adore while still hidden) and in that immortal beauty which through our faith we contemplate. This will not be the first of the graces you bestow on us; we are certain we will not be disappointed in our hopes by you who—being the immense and omnipotent sovereign of the universe—deigned to transform yourself, out of love for us, into a lowly servant: Taking the form of a servant.539 Well do we know, oh dear and sweet God, that we will receive rewards far superior to our toils and servitude, since those promises from your most gentle mouth cannot fail to come true. You yourself attest to this: Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.540 Come all the afflictions the world can bring, we will tolerate them by virtue of that hope that—as Saint Paul says—constitutes faith. Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not.541 We want to believe without a shadow of a doubt that we shall rejoice in and unite with our Beloved in glory, since along with other signs of his love he will not want to fail to grant us permission to unite with our lover. As Dionysius said, love is a unifying force.542 Christ would not deprive us of such an important favor, since it was only to unite with us that he came to live, converse, and die with us. In the meantime, in this mortal life we nuns will not neglect to unite ourselves with God, receiving his most holy body in morsels of bread, showing 537. Ecce quod concupivi video, quod speravi iam teneo. As noted in the text’s gloss, these words were pronounced at the nuns’ profession. Translation from Kendrick, Celestial Sirens, 124. 538. Abstulisti cor meum. Cf. Song of Songs 4:9. 539. Formam servi accipiens. Philippians 2:7. 540. Coelum et terram transibunt, verba autem meam non praeteribunt. Cf. Matthew 24:35. 541. Fides est substantia sperandarum rerum, argumentum non apparentium. Cf. Hebrews 11:1. 542. amore est vis unitiva. Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, who attributes this thought to Dionysius in Part 1, question 20 of the Summa, “De amore Dei,” art. 1.3. See Summa theologiae, vol. 5, trans. and ed. Thomas Gilby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 54–55. On Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, see note 84 above. See also Saint Bonaventure, Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, book 1, “Dubia circa litteram magistri,” dub. 4, in Opera omnia, vol. 1 (Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1882), 206.

Convent Paradise 187 ourselves to be true and perfect lovers, standing always undivided from him in will, spirit, heart, and soul, proving the truth of the Platonic saying, The soul is more where it loves, than where it lives.543 Therefore, since the most lively parts of our souls reside with God, consecrated to his divinity, it is no marvel that, even as we are in the heaven of the cloisters, it seems to us that we are joined to our Bridegroom in the Empyrean. Ah, this is a union that is too advantageous for us, since in order finally to draw near to our Christ, we abandoned nothing but an ugly, transitory, and treacherous world, whereas he put out of his mind—so to speak—paradise, and left the Eternal Father to come to us, as he himself affirms with his own words: I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world.544 It is as if to imply: “Because of the love that I have for you, oh souls joined to me, I turned my back on the heavens and I separated myself from my Father, even though he is one with me in substance, in essence, in nature.” He left the celestial kingdom, with all of the delights of paradise, yet he only wants us to distance ourselves from our whims and illicit desires. And shall we not do so, in order then to pass on to eternal beatitude? Ah, yes, for if he—to obtain this from us as proof of our reciprocation of his affection—left the bosom of the Eternal Father and distanced himself for thirty-three years from paradise, it is most proper that we, to attain the land of the living,545 abandon worldly pleasures and break free of sensual love. We will hardly be worthy of him even so, but we expect to enjoy the glory of Heaven because of the blood spilled for our salvation by our dear Bridegroom, a mere drop of which would have sufficed to redeem infinite worlds. In no way do we taint our faith and hope with doubt, but we are most certain that—even though we do not deserve to—we will be united with our most adored lover by sole virtue of the Lord’s Passion. The Holy Church has in many ways assured us of it and he himself promised it to us. We will not try to penetrate beyond what our faith teaches us, the reward for which we will receive in the next life. Let us distance ourselves from those paths trodden by the many enemies of Christ, true ministers of the devil, who throw into doubt the immortality of the soul or divine providence.546 Fate, the stars, or the planets could not have (as many overly speculative people insanely 543. Anima plus est ubi amat, quam ubi animat. This saying is found in Bernard of Clairvaux, but also attributed to others. See David d’Avray, Medieval Marriage: Symbolism and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 236n24. 544. Exivi a Patre, et veni in mundum. John 16:28. 545. That is, eternal life. 546. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul—a central tenet of Catholicism—had been debated by intellectuals in Italy since the early Renaissance. The topic occasioned frequent debate in Venice. In 1621, Baldassare Bonifaccio published a treatise accusing the Venetian Jewish salonnière Sarra Copia Sulam of not belieiving in the soul’s immortality—what amounted to a charge of heresy. She immediately published a response in which she strongly asserted her belief in the tenet. Cesare Cremonini (1550–1631), a professor at the University of Padua who greatly influenced the intellectual orientation

188 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI assert) composed and governed the world in such an exquisite and orderly fashion. Listen to Saint Anthony the Abbot, who never studied letters at all and yet philosophized perfectly. He said: My book is the nature itself of things, and all the workings of the world.547 He wanted to imply that, despite the fact that he had never worn out books from studying, nevertheless—on the basis of these inferior beings and the nature of all things and the masterful design that he saw formed this worldly machine—he deduced the greatness and omnipotence of the Prime Mover. There is no more perfect and better knowledge than that learned in schools of faith, without philosophy and mathematics. Faith teaches us the most recondite mysteries, even the unity of the three Divine Persons. Through this,548 the apostles, poor fishermen, learned the wisdom and knowledge which they then spread throughout the world through their preaching. Other male and female saints, more numerous than grains of sand in the sea, unlearned in anything but faith, outshone even the most erudite people who lost sleep over their studies. Everyone should have only faith for a teacher, but in particular we servants of the Omnipotent, who earn reward for belief without disturbing our mind with speculation. Even if the mysterious meanings of these ceremonies and rites are unknown to us, we wish to seek nothing else but to believe in the Holy Roman and Catholic Church, reserving for ourselves to investigate in the other life—when we have freed our mind from these corporeal barriers and unveiled our intellect and endowed it with greater light—those things that now we are not able to understand. Our intelligence can find no satisfactory explanations, and we must value this in order not to lose that which is earned with a purity of faith, for Without faith it is impossible to please God.549 When, due to our excessive speculation, some doubt in matters of faith is born in our mind, we must resist it by protesting that we would rather lose our life than live without pious and Christian beliefs, since it is not our place to understand the highest mysteries and secrets, or profound meaning of the sacraments. Even a worldly poet teaches us such, saying: of the Accademia degli Incogniti to which Tarabotti had many ties, called the soul mortal in a published work. 547. Meus liber est ipsa rerum natura, totaque huius saeculi machina. This response is attributed to Saint Anthony the Abbot upon being asked how he could be happy without the consolation of books. The words are found in Denis the Carthusian, “De natura aeterni et veri dei,” article 2. See Doctoris ecstatici D. Dionysii Cartusiani Opera omnia, vol. 34, Opera minora, book 2 (Tournay: Typis Cartusiae S. M. De Pratis, 1907), 14. See also Thomas Merton, trans., The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century (New York: New Directions, 1970), 62. Tarabotti may have heard in these words an echo of Lucretius, whose De rerum natura circulated widely despite the fact that the Counter-Reformation Church deemed it a threat. The words may have appealed to Tarabotti, an autodidact, since they downplayed the importance of book learning. 548. That is, faith. 549. Impossibile est sine fide placere Deo. Hebrews 11:6.

Convent Paradise 189 Madness it is to think that human minds can ever understand the Infinite that comprehends three persons in one being. Be satisfied with the reason unexplained, O human race! If you knew everything, no need for Mary to have borne a son.550 We, however, as nuns and brides of the celestial king, want to believe in him with the purest faith, and in order to do so perfectly, we believe not at all in men, for men are evil beasts, always liars.551 And so that Holy Faith not be divided from her other peer virtues necessary for our salvation, of the same number but superior in dignity to our three vows, we join hope and charity to faith, and—our soul armed with these three weapons—we will fight until victorious over our enemies. May sin indeed be dead in us so that sin does not lead us to death, as His Divine Majesty threatened in the words of one of his prophets. The soul that sinneth, the same shall die.552 If it wages constant war on us, both from the inside and from the outside, let us defend ourselves valorously. Strengthened by the hope of gaining the celestial kingdom, we fortify our strength and sharpen our spiritual weapons so that they may more forcefully slay vices. Let us also embrace hope, since it is not for enjoying fleeting and worldly things, but instead for obtaining, in the Jerusalem of heaven, a life eternally peaceful, blessed, secure, delightful, free from every fear of death, without travail, distress, corruption, anxiety, or disturbance, but unchanging, full of every grace, beauty, and greatness. The royal palaces in that place are not vexed by unpleasantness, nor does pleasure there ever wane; there love is perfect and unthreatened by the fear that it will diminish, as happens with sensual love. There, an eternal flaming light shines from the divine countenance which, when looked upon, blesses and, as it blesses, absorbs you in an infinite abyss of happiness and glory. There, one enjoys eternally the the glorified and deified humanity of Christ, as dazzling and lovely in his soul as in his body, exceeding all the angels and saints in beauty. Whoever wishes to merit such joys and blessings must place hope in God. David says as much: Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. Blessed is the man that hopeth 550. Matto è chi pensa che nostra ragione/ possa trascorrer l’infinita via, / che tiene una sostanza in tre persone. / State contenti, humana gente, al quia, / che sei potuto aveste veder tutto, / mestier non era partorir Maria. Cf. Dante, Purgatorio, 3.34–39. Tarabotti substitutes “chi pensa,” or “who thinks,” for Dante’s “chi spera,” “who hopes.” The translation is based on Dante Alighieri, Purgatory: Italian Text and Verse Translation, trans. and ed. Mark Musa (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), 25. 551. homines malae bestiae sunt semper mendaces. Tarabotti adapts Titus 1:12, Cretenses semper mendaces, malae bestiae (The Cretians are always liars, evil beasts). 552. Anima, quae peccaverit, ipsa morietur. Ezekiel 18:4.

190 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI in him.553 Only by grace of this hope do the angels of the cloister advance, step by step, up to the last step of Christian perfection, trusting that they will surely one day see those marvels of which Saint Paul says: Because that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what God hath prepared for them that love him.554 Oh, the greatness of hope in God! In various ways the royal prophet555 emphasizes it as marvelous and sublime, but he always concludes that blessed are those who hope. At the end of the second Psalm: Blessed are all they, that trust in him.556 Elsewhere: The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, and in them that hope in his mercy.557 Who, therefore, will not wish to place their hope in God and, amid the storms of the world, secure themselves with the anchor of a firm hope,558 oh true Creator of this life? Your king the lyricist, turning to you, says: The eyes of all hope in thee, O Lord, and thou givest them meat in due season.559 Oh our one true Good, we will proceed with our eyes turned to you, gazing into the caverns of your consecrated wounds, hoping that by virtue of them the irretractable sentence of eternal damnation will not fall on us when the time comes for us to die. More than anyone else, we must believe that we will not see dessicated and dried up the green of the hope that now nourishes us while we adhere to the saying Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord.560 Are not convents—where we live by our own choice, as the willing nuns say—the houses of God? If one who loves and fears his Divinity demonstrates greater hope than anyone else (as David asserts), nuns—who love their Lord as their Bridegroom and serve him with filial fear—can expect more than anyone else that their hopes will be realized. To this point God’s dearest David says: They that feared the Lord hath hoped in the Lord. He is their helper and protector.561 Hope is so pleasing to the Emperor of Heaven that he is the special protector of one who hopes with a holy heart. The abovementioned psalmist calls him God, protector of those that trust in you.562 It 553. Gustate, et videte quoniam suavis est Dominus. Beatus vir, qui sperat in eo. Psalms 33:9. 554. Quia nec occulos vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascenderunt, quod praeparavit Deus diligentibus se. Cf. 1 Corinthians 2:9. 555. That is, David. 556. Beati omnes, qui confidunt in te. Psalms 2:13. 557. Beneplacitum est Dominus super timentes eum, et in eis qui sperant super misericordiam eius. Psalms 146:11. 558. Cf. Hebrews 6:19, in which hope is called “an anchor of the soul.” 559. Occuli omnium in te sperant Domine, et tu das escas in tempore opportuno. Cf. Psalms 144:15. 560. Beati qui habitant in domo tua, Domine. Psalms 83:5. 561. Qui timent Dominum speraverunt in Domino. Adiutor eorum, & Protector eorum est. Psalms 113:19 (also numbered as Psalms 115:11). 562. protector in te sperantium Deus. Cf. Psalms 17:31, Deus meus… protector est omnium sperantium in se.

Convent Paradise 191 is the gentlest pasture and most honeyed nourishment that sweetens for us all the bitterness of this anguished life. Transitory and vain hopes have sometimes had the power to ease suffering and diminish troubles, not only for ordinary men but even for the greatest potentates on earth—although often we disappoint them because we feed them empty air and nourish them with frivolities of the fleeting world. Even if they were stripped of their hope and their life in the same moment, still the burden of their travails and distress was lightened. Now, if a hope that depends on worldly things can be so powerful, how, oh how sweet and gentle will hope in God be! Which passions will not be tempered? Every hope of future glory is the sturdiest column that sustains and maintains in us the edifice of virtues that are Christian and belong to the religious life. It gives us strength to be strong in our spiritual and corporeal exercises for the salvation of our soul. Hope is the antidote to travails and the protection against despair. Remove it from the world and the world becomes a hell, since all hope is eternally banned from the kingdom of perdition. This is the consolation of God’s servants and the balm to soothe the wounds that the devil sometimes tries to make in souls reconciled to divine will—among whom we wish to be counted, not because we expect infernal temptations to have the power to stain us even slightly with a mark of sin, but because we want to be among those women who, hoping in the incomparable mercy of the King of the Supreme Spheres, obtain such power that they reach the height of the heavens on wings of just actions. David explained this most clearly: They that hope in the Lord shall have strength, they shall take wings as eagles and fly, they shall not faint.563 It is true, however, that without divine help our wings would be clipped, because the Lord himself said: For without me you can do nothing.564 Therefore, the most fertile breeze of the Holy Spirit must blow amid the leaves of our hope so that they do not dry out, but become greener by the moment and grow stronger. If that same breath ignited in our breasts the ardent love that drives our desire to join with our eternal Good, let it also keep hope ever green so that we can join those of whom the Holy Church sings, Blessed are all that hope in thee, O Lord. He will not deprive of good things them that walk in innocence, O Lord of hosts. Blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.565 Being a good Christian and one who has taken religious vows consists of faith that has as its foundation the 563. Qui sperant in te, habebunt fortitudinem, assument pennas, ut Aquilae volabunt, et non deficient. Cf. Isaiah 40:31, Qui autem sperant in Domino mutabunt fortitudinem, assument pennas sicut Aquilae, current et non laborabunt, ambulabunt et non deficient (But they that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall take wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.) 564. Sine me nihil potestis facere. John 15:5. 565. Beati omnes, qui sperant in te Domine. Cf. Psalms 5:12, Et laetentur omnes qui sperant in te (But let them be glad that hope in thee). Non privabit bonis eos qui ambulant in innocentia Domine virtutum. Beatus homo, qui sperat in te. Cf. Psalms 83:13.

192 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI hope of reward, and just as faith establishes and maintains Christian truth in us, so hope is the basis of faith. In order to construct a building that truly saves the soul, however, it is necessary to flank the two most solid columns of hope and faith with a third, that is, charity, which is the soul of faith and supports all of the other virtues, as Christ at the Last Supper explained to his disciples in this way: There remain faith, hope, and charity, these three. But the greatest of these is charity.566 On the basis of these three fundamental supports of religious life, we have built constancy of mind and firmness of purpose in the observation of its precepts and orders. Our eagerness to travel further along the path to heaven grows steadily, since our works, sustained by the power of charity, and our religious practices rise under the guidance of this third virtue to the throne of the highest Lord, where faith—now superfluous—ends. In that place there is visible rejoicing, as we imagined down here, yet hope is not necessary, since the reward has been given not only as hoped for but in Good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.567 Only Charity remains in heaven, companion of Glory, fellow citizen of angels, by whose virtue the blessed in turn rejoice in what others receive, as if it were their own, and they pray for their friends, neighbors, and relatives. Charity, since she lives in aeviternity with God,568 pushed him to descend to earth, whereby Saint Paul, writing to the Romans, says: God commendeth all charity toward you.569 He meant that there is no virtue dearer to His Divine Majesty than charity to one’s neighbors, since those who love their Creator with charity cannot fail to be loved in return by God himself, because divine love, charity, and grace are indivisible and they who possess one of these three jewels are therefore enriched by all of them. Therefore with with respect for and charity toward our sisters we—not as lay people, but as perfect nuns and your brides, oh sweet God and true loving Good of ours—wish to venerate our superiors, respect our equals, and serve and love our inferiors, out of love for our charitable Savior. He did not disdain to lower himself to the point of washing the feet of his apostles, by which he left us an example of perfect charity, declaring himself such in this way: I have given you 566. Maneant in vobis fides, spes, caritas, tria haec. Maior autem horum est caritas. Tarabotti is actually quoting St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13:13 here, not Jesus’s words spoken at the Last Supper (see John 13:34–35). 567. Mensuram bonam confertam, coagitatam, et supereffluentem. Cf. Luke 6:38. 568. Aeviternity, or aevum, was one of three categories of time delineated by Scholastic philosophy, the other two being eternity (belonging to God alone) and tempus (finite time, as experienced by man). Aevum “belonged to the angels and celestial Intelligences, the ‘eviternal’ beings which were placed between God and man.” From Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, with new preface by William Chester Jordan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957; rpt. 1997), 280. The discussion of aevum occurs on pages 279–81. 569. Commendat Deus omnem caritatem in vobis. Cf. Romans 5:8, Commendat autem caritatem suam Deus in nobis (But God commendeth his charity toward us).

Convent Paradise 193 as an example, so you do also.570 If you, oh immense fount of charity, who are used to being attended by angels, do not disdain to wash filth from the foulest part of lowly fishermen, how can we hesitate to serve our sisters, be they higher or equal or even inferior in rank? In the convent we must never avoid the most fetid and dirty jobs, since it is a matter of imitating our leader, Lord, and Bridegroom, who taught us effectively to use charity in our actions and in our words, and he showed us the great value of this holy virtue. Where there is charity, and love, there is a gathering of saints; in that place there is neither wrath nor indignation, but steadfast charity forever.571 Only charity is sufficient to transform us into a gathering of saints on earth, such that the rooms of the cloister truly become paradises in which we live, while in a certain way we will compel the omnipotent Lord, at whose signal the heavens stop their course, to live among us in this vale of misery, since God lives among those who have charity. Where there is charity, and love, God is there.572 The ardor of charity was what made our dear and most beloved Bridegroom suffer so many injuries and torments and so much scorn, and it must also be what renders us tolerant of every most grave insult, and teaches us not to abhor those women who weigh us down out of malice or who oppress us out of disdain.573 All the actions of Christ were mute voices that exhorted us to honor any neighbor of ours indiscriminately, with no care for their humble status and without hesitation. But because on our own we are unable to do any meritorious action, we turn to His Divine Majesty in order that he be pleased to bring us together, sustain us, and guide us by the light of his incomparable wisdom, in such a way that we can be assured and convinced that we can, with such a faithful guide, overcome the encounters with our enemies and reach the goal of religious perfection. In order to be worthy of receiving this—to the degree that it is in our power—we have set aside every sensual appetite and have directed all of our affections to serving the supreme king within these sacred walls, which are an image of paradise on earth. Here—by imitating the most ardent charity that the Godmade-man used with us when he was among us—we will be worthy of receiving the precise knowledge of what we must do for our salvation. The Omnipotent shows such charity toward us that when we do not stain our religious state with sin, he is not only emperor, Lord, and judge for us, but as the apostle says, he will even be our advocate before the Eternal Father. In religion clean and undefiled we 570. Exemplum dedi vobis, ita et vos faciatis. Cf. John 13:15. 571. Ubi est caritas, et dilectio, ibi sanctorum est congregatio, ibi nec via [ira est, nec indignatio, sed firma caritas in perpetuum. The words are part of an antiphon for the ceremony of the Mandatum, or washing of the feet, at the Mass of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday. 572. Ubi est caritas, et amor, Deus ibi est. See note 571. 573. Tarabotti mentions, elsewhere in Convent Paradise, convent sisters with whom she has come into conflict; see also notes 103, 113, 334, and 805. Discord among nuns is a central topic of Convent Hell; see note 103.

194 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI have as our advocate Jesus Christ.574 Obliged by these divine benefits of charity, we want our will to be compelled to serve you eternally, not at all afflicted by desire for earthly pleasure and not at all troubled by the enticing but false promises of the world. Let the infernal beast fight against us, for we are most certain of victory by virtue of our ardent charity. We sing: The charity of God is poured fourth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us.575 Our heart would be indeed unyielding, impenetrable, and ungrateful if it did not understand and internalize those privileges and graces that our Bridegroom grants to us. When, when will we ever be able to repay so many favors, since from lowly slaves we are made most noble brides of our Creator? Let each one of us say: What shall I render to you, Lord Jesus Christ, for all the things you have rendered unto me?576 He desires nothing from us other than an exact and perfect charity. We proclaim this as irrevocable before him, and since the root of all sin is self-love, so charity and love of one’s neighbor are the origin of every virtue. Let the former be banished from our heart and the latter be placed in the heart above every other affection, for thus will we march untouched through diabolical snares, bravely and with a mind free of any possible fear, since perfect charity casteth out fear.577 We will not be concerned with ourselves as we serve and help meet the needs of our sisters, for never do we want to be written in that shameful catalog of those who shall all be lovers of themselves.578 If someone who knows little of spiritual life believed that we felt weighed down by suffering in the charitable actions we carry out in this convent life— which is truly happy, but not leisurely and labor-free as the mad sages of the world think, and instead full of sweet work and glorious sweat—he would be wrong, since for the love of a God so dear to us and such a beneficent Lord we can boast that we do not feel burdened by this. All that is troublesome and inhuman, love makes easy and almost as nothing.579 The sweat which rains down from our brow as a result of hardships in this religious life floods our heart with charity, while in Holy Scripture we find that divine love is not variable with the passage of time, and that charity was one of the principal tenets that the Redeemer left among his faithful for the salvation of their souls. Remember because thou has left first

574. In religione munda, et immaculata. Cf. James 1:27. habemus advocatum nostrum Iesum Christum. Cf. also 1 John 2:1. 575. Caritas Dei diffusa est in cordibus nostris per spiritum Sanctum, qui datus est nobis. Romans 5:5. 576. Quid retribuam vobis Domine Iesu Christe, pro omnibus quae retribuisti mihi. Cf. Psalms 115:3 (also numbered as Psalms 116:12). 577. perfecta caritas foras mittit timorem. 1 John 4:18. 578. erunt omnes seipsos amantes. Cf. 2 Timothy 3:2. 579. Omnia gravia, e immania, facilia, et prope nulla facit amor. Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, who attributes this thought to Augustine: Epistola II Ad Corinthios, chapter 4, reading 5, in Opera omnia, vol. 21 (Paris: Louis Vives, 1871), 91.

Convent Paradise 195 charity.580 The only sweetness of my heart, the only object of my thoughts: my God so loved charity that Saint Paul, knowing its sublime state and how dear it was to him, values it above any learning. [To know] charity surpasseth all knowledge.581 There is no doubt that our charity is the daughter of the love that we hold for our sisters, by virtue of which—when the love with which we love our neighbor does not fail to rise in us, since the loving flame by nature rises and grows—we will rise up to the level of the love with which the greatest saints have loved God, so that we will be able to say, speaking of the Holy Spirit: From above he hath sent fire into our bones.582 That will be a result of charity, by means of which we will rise up step by step to be worthy of heaven. It suffices to begin to use charitable feelings that then of their own accord grow toward ultimate perfection. Inchoate charity grows by its own merits, and so by increased merits becomes perfect.583 That all the pleasures of the world are frivolous and fleeting, and that everything is subject to death, has been taught and is acknowledged all day long by even the authors of the most worldly love poetry. Petrarch acknowledged that he understood as much when, realizing how time passes with great speed and nurtures us only with false appearances, he explained his perception in this way: A marvelous vanity it now appeared To set one’s heart on things that Time may press, For while one thinks to hold them they are gone.584 The same poet, marveling at the solemn madness of men who let themselves be tricked by the fraudulence of time that is always fleeting and never returns, says: O time, O revolving heavens that fleeing deceive us blind and wretched mortals, O days more swift than wind or arrows! Now through experience I understand your frauds.585 580. Memento quia caritatem prima reliquisti. Cf. Revelation 2:4, quod caritatem tuam prima reliquisti (because thou has left thy first charity). 581. Et supereminentem scientiae caritatem. Cf. Ephesians 3:19. 582. De excelsis misit ignis in ossibus nostris. Cf. Lamentations 1:13. Tarabotti changes the subject of the original verse from “me” to “our.” The gloss referencing this verse as Luke 12 is incorrect. 583. Caritas incoata meretur augeri, ut aucta mereatur proficisci. Cf. Aquinas, Summa theologiae, vol. 30, trans. and ed. Cornelius Ernst (Cambridge: Blackfriars, 1972), 198. 584. E parvemi mirabil vanitade / fermar in cose il cuor che tempo preme / che mentre più le stringi son passate. Cf. Petrarch, Triumphus Temporis (Triumph of Time), lines 40–42. See Petrarch, Opere, 311; The Triumphs of Petrarch, 96. Tarabotti sustitutes “mirabil vanitade” (“a marvelous vanity”) for Petrarch’s “terribil vanitate” (“arrant vanity”). 585. O tempo, o ciel volubil che fuggendo / inganni i ciechi e miseri mortali / O dì veloci più che vento o strali / Hor ab experto vostre frodi intendo. Cf. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 355.1–4. See Petrarch, Opere, 250; Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 552.

196 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI Vainglory and riches disappear in the lightest breeze, since they are nothing but smoke by which those who have the most of them are sometimes suffocated. Every mortal thing is transitory. Thus passes the glory of the world.586 But not only are all earthly things unstable and subject to the injuries of time but—as we showed with faith and hope—these virtues are also finite. Only the love for God is without end, and infinite charity. Charity never falleth away.587 Oh Charity, incomparable treasure and gem, indeed treasury of celestial riches! Let us also enrich ourselves with this virtue, in imitation of so many male and female saints who by their charity were miraculous in the world and are now glorious in heaven. That worthy knight of Christ, Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says, If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels; if I should have all faith; if I should deliver my body to be burned; if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor; if I should have all prophecy and should know all mysteries and not have charity, it profiteth me nothing, I am nothing, I am become as sounding brass or rattling snare.588 Even if we nuns were possessed of every virtuous habit, it does us no good if we do not have principal in us, among the other virtues, charity. This is the helm of the ship of religious life, which must lead us to the safe harbor of heaven amid all the waves of temptation. What more? Charity is one and the same with God. God is charity: and he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him.589 Let us join ourselves, then, to charity, enamored brides, for we will at the same time become one and the same with our adored Bridegroom. Let us arm our breasts, then, with this holy virtue, whose praises neither the flattery of the greatest orators nor the pens of the most prolific writers would suffice to explain in even the smallest measure and whose power can accomplish what it wishes at God’s hand. All the beauty of purity, the perfection of holiness, the sweetest bitterness of penitence, the merit of faith, and finally all the essense of our salvation is concentrated in the gem of charity alone. 586. Sic transit gloria mundi. A phrase used in papal coronation ceremonies from 1409 until 1963. 587. Caritas numquam excidit. 1 Corinthians 13:8. 588. Si linguis hominum loquar, et angelorum. Si habuero omnem fidem. Si tradidero corpus meum, ut videat [ardeat]. Si distribuero omnes facultates meas in cibo pauperum. Si habuero omnem profetiam. Si nouero misteria omnia, caritatem autem non habuero, nihil mihi podest, nihil sum, factus sum velut aes sonans, et timpanum tinniens. Cf. 1 Corinthians 13:1–3, Si linguis hominum loquar, et angelorum, caritatem autem non habeam, factus sum velut aes sonans, aut cymbalum tinniens. Et si habuero prophetiam, et noverim mysteria omnia, et omnem scientiam: et si habuero omnem fidem ita ut montes transferam, caritatem autem non habuero, nihil sum. Et si distribuero in cibos pauperum omnes facultates meas, et si tradidero corpus meum ita ut ardeam, caritatem autem non habuero, nihil mihi prodest (If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing). 589. Deus caritas est, et qui manet in caritate in Deo manet, et Deus in eo. 1 John 4:16.

Convent Paradise 197 Oh Charity, not only—as I said a short while before—one and the same with God, but also declared most especially loved by each person of the Holy Trinity. It is said of the Father, For his exceeding charity wherewith God loved us he sent his son.590 The Son boasts on his own account by saying, I am wounded by charity.591 It is written of the Holy Spirit, The living spring, the fire of charity.592 Mary too was possessed of such an immense treasure of charity that only a seraph would have been able to explain the ardor with which she always acted charitably for the good of humankind. Solomon says of it, Many waters cannot quench charity.593 That is, the abundant waters of such virtues and excellence as were admirably gathered in her—even though they existed with every perfection—could never quench the burning fire of charity that perpetually was ablaze in her. Saint Paul, aflame with the ardor of charity, boasts, saying, And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me.594 Concentrated within the Virgin were all the prerogatives, gifts, and graces granted to all the other saints, so that—more than Paul and more than any other soul—she was made one with God by means of charity, and she loved, in her Son, all humankind so much more greatly and with more excellence than anyone ever as ardently as she, and with a more exalted degree of charitable affection. Neither do the angels wish to be tricked out of exercising charity. Those angels who are deputed by the supreme Lord to help guard our bodies and souls accompany us with such charitable care that they never abandon us, and in our every need they are never far. Holy Scripture says, But the angel of the Lord went down with Azarias and his companions into the furnace.595 They enter even into flames in which, if they are not burned in torment, at least they are ablaze with charity in order to defend us. Oh, how great was the charity with which the angels of the Lord led Lot out of the imminent danger befalling the infamous city?596 They were no less guide and guardian of Tobias on so long a journey.597 Ah, the human tongue cannot describe 590. Propter nimiam caritatem, qua dilexit nos, misit Deus filium suum. Antiphon for the Octave of Christmas. The translation is from Willem Elders, Symbolic Scores: Studies in the Music of the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 29–30. The text glosses Song of Songs 2, but perhaps verse 2:4 is intended: ordinavit in me caritatem (he set in order charity in me). 591. Vulnerata caritate ego sum. Variation on Song of Songs 2:5 and 5:8: amore langueo (I languish with love). Cf. also Song of Songs 4:9, and see also notes 80, 129, 246, and 516. 592. Fons vivus, ignis caritas. These words are part of the invocation to the Holy Spirit sung at the Feast of the Pentecost. 593. Aquae multae non potuerunt extinguere caritatem. Song of Songs 8:7. 594. Vivo ego iam non ego, vivit autem in me Christus. Cf. Galatians 2:20. 595. Angelus Domini descendit cum Azaria, et socijs eius in fornace. Cf. Daniel 3:49. Azarias, or Azariah, is the companion of Daniel. 596. Genesis 19 recounts that Lot used charity in hosting two angels disguised as men. The angels then ensured that Lot and his family escaped from Sodom before the Lord destroyed it. 597. In the Book of Tobias (or Tobit), Tobit’s son Tobias undertakes a long journey under the protection of the angel Raphael, disguised as a man.

198 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI even the smallest of the many fruits that are produced and ripened in the soul by the most fruitful rays of charity! This, among all things, sustains faith, nourishes hope, and constantly strengthens itself. Charity believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.598 Well did the seraphic father Saint Francis know this. Thus in his contemplations he reflected, Therefore I abandon everything, I satisfy my thirst totally in you, I perceive nothing besides you. Vanity withdraws, charity advances; may divinity transform me, and may I become totally divine, so that afterwards, when I have died, I may live not for myself but so that Christ may live in me.599 When they were carrying out meritorious deeds in this worldly cave, those good servants of God whose holiness shines most brightly in the Church were more charitable [than angels].600 Catherine of Siena was outstanding in her charity; all the apostles, and in particular their prince Peter, were remarkable in their charitable works. Francis of Paola601 wrote Charity on the handle of the walking stick he used to support himself, an inscription that rendered that rod more precious and admirable than the scepters of kings. It was a sign that came to him in the hand of angels. In prayer to the angel he was given an emblem of charity.602 Bernard and Ignatius,603 splendors of true religious holiness—oh, how abundantly did they possess this treasure! Oh, how Paul, in love with this most beautiful queen of the virtues, would say, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword?604 Another generous and faithful soldier of Christ, by cutting up his garment to share it with a poor man, deserved to hear said of him: O Martin, priest of God, the heavens and the kingdom of my Father are upon unto you.605 598. Caritas omnia credit, omnia sperat, omnia sustinet. Cf. 1 Corinthians 13:7. 599. Ergo omnium abijcio, totus in te sitio, nihil praeter te sentio. Abscessit vanitas, accessit caritas, trasformet divinitas, et fiam totus divinus, ut post haec sim mortuus, et eam non mihi vivam, sed vivat in me Christus. These words are attributed to Saint Francis in Musso, Il secondo libro delle prediche, 181. 600. più degli caritativi: agrammatical in Italian. A word seems to have been omitted here; given Tarabotti’s discussion of angels above, and the articulated preposition “degli,” the word was likely “angeli” (più degli angeli caritativi). 601. Francis of Paola (ca. 1416–1507), a mendicant friar and founder of the Order of Minims. 602. In oratione ab angelis caritatis insignibus donatus. Francis of Paola was associated with charity and said to have practiced it on many occasions by using his walking stick to bring water to those who needed it. Although we have not found reference to the word “charity” being emblazoned upon the stick, it was believed that the Archangel Michael presented Francis with a shield bearing the inscription “charity”: see, for example, the altarpiece by Nicola Carta entitled Francis of Paola Receives the Stem of Charity from the Angels in the Basilica of San Francesco di Paola in Naples. 603. Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), founder of the Jesuit order. 604. Quis nos separabit a caritate Christi? An fames, an nuditas, an periculum, an persecutio, an gladium. Cf. Romans 8:35. 605. Sacerdos Dei Martine, aperti sunt tibi caeli, et regnum Patris mei. Words from the breviary for Saint Martin’s day, November 11. Saint Martin of Tours, who lived in the fifth century CE, was said

Convent Paradise 199 Queen Elizabeth of Hungary was a wonder of most ardent charity when, after giving all she had to the poor, she left herself in a state whereby she had nothing on which to live, and became so destitute that she was forced to dwell in a little stable at an inn. She had a hospital built, and she herself assisted with the care of sick women, working with her hands in the most sordid filth.606 But it is superfluous to put forth examples of charitable women when to do so would be like trying to add rays to the sun to make it brighter, since everyone knows charity and compassion exist in our sex to the highest degree, along with many other most worthy qualities not recognized by the ignorant. And no one should think that I have put men first in my description of charitable souls because I deem them to be of greater authority or more excellent in this virtue, since the Virgin Lady exceeded all the saints of Paradise in merits and virtues. I only did so to adhere to common wisdom, and in order not to give reason to the world to deride the truth of my discourse, supposing it vanity. Moreover, feminine dignity and merit do not need my overblown and imperfect praise to show themselves superior to their masculine counterparts. Moreover, the good manners common to every woman demanded I do as much,607 since we do not with flamboyant ambition wish to imitate men who, in writing of themselves, elevate themselves with bold and sordid praise and put down women as if they were of lesser value and baser condition than they. But let us put an end to this digression—as righteous as it is untimely—and return to discussing those true and willing cloistered nuns, who, all goodness, humility, and charity, give up all worldly pretensions and retire willingly from the world run by men. They are certain of victory, since they are accustomed to fighting and defeating Lucifer—and that is what men are, in every habit and, more than in any other, in the ambition and avarice with which they enclose their daughters in Convent Hell608 by force through sinful policies. But let them mistreat us, these malign and unworthy monsters of the abyss, by calling us ugly and weak, for we will show them that we know how to fight in the armies of the religious and emerge victorious, and all the more so since we find ourselves armed with the sharpest weapons of generous and abundant charity. We confess, however, that we have become languid and tired from the battle we continually fight with the devil, and so parched from the toil of religious life that we yearn to be invited,

to have cut his cloak in half to save a poor man from dying of the cold. The medieval Church of San Martino, rebuilt in the sixteenth century, is, like Sant’Anna, located in the Castello sestiere of Venice. 606. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–1231), influenced by the teachings of Saint Francis, had a Franciscan hospital built in Marburg, Germany, where she worked devotedly, especially with gravely afflicted patients. 607. That is, praise men first. 608. The title of Tarabotti’s early manuscript condemning forced monachization.

200 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI with the bride,609 to restore ourselves where the wine of divine grace is kept, in order to inebriate ourselves and become bacchants from such sweet liquor. Ah, we do not lack a flood of favors from God! Indeed, the apostle—observing how great was the grace raining down from the most liberal hand of the Infinite King upon humanity, which is nothing but a multitude of putrid earthly worms—exclaimed in astonishment, Behold what manner of charity God hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God.610 If he marveled at such favor, granted universally to the entire human race, how astonished would he be and how greatly would he exclaim, if he were to see so very many religious handmaidens in the present age being undeservingly honored with the name not just of daughters, but most adored brides of His Divine Majesty? Surely he would cry out with an elevated style appropriate to an eagle in flight—which in fact he was611—and he would recall, with words proportionate to our ingratitude, the munificence and charity of his and our Lord, and at the same time he would make us understand with what humility we are bound to reciprocate for the wealth of immense favors. We implore you, then, prostrate on the ground, oh light of our eyes, oh hope of our lives and sweet delight, to perfect with your grace our constant firmness in the execution of the three vows pledged to you, and to keep our souls, encircled by the triplicate wall of the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, protected in such a way that the foundations of our spiritual structure shall never be shaken by the assault of mortal sin. We entrust ourselves to the guidance and support of the most Holy Trinity. And because there are three vows to be observed, and three are the virtues to be exercised in order to give the finishing touch to the perfection of our religious life, oh Lord of our hearts and God of our consolation, we hope that these repeated trinities will cast a blessed influence upon us, leading us, after a brief and fleeting life, to enjoy life without end in the arms of our most cherished and adored Bridegroom. END OF BOOK TWO

609. See note 435. 610. Videte qualem caritatem dedit nobis Deus, ut filij Dei nominemur, et simus. Cf. 1 John 3:1. On humanity as “a multitude of putrid earthly worms,” cf. Job 25:6: “How much less man that is rottenness and the son of man who is a worm?” 611. The eagle is a traditional symbol of Saint John the Evangelist, sometimes depicted by his side as he writes.

Book Three The roads to the precipice of hell are neither so facile nor flowered as others describe them and as they seem to those miserable mortals who, blinded by their own passions, do not understand how much more sweat is shed in serving one’s own appetites instead of God who, with his suffering, opened to us a smooth and easy road to heaven. The price of a thousand troubles and difficulties is sometimes paid for a pleasure that has nothing delightful about it except that it lasts for a moment, and then it leads us to the abyss, where we can truthfully say that: A little sweetness ends in bitterness. / A thousand of their pleasures are not worth one of my torments.612 We, on the other hand, by remaining quietly enclosed in our cells, safe from all danger, distant from all uproar, delighting in the contemplation of paradise, assure ourselves of salvation. Let those who have experienced it tell me how much easier and sweeter is the seclusion of nuns—who, acting of their own volition, for the love of God, find pleasure even amid their own trials—than the mad freedom of those who, in order to attain either a little vain honor or worthless and transient riches, expose their life constantly to fears of death, without resting in tranquility for even a single moment. Silence is far more comfortable and easy than the obligation to speak, and this too is one of the conditions that distinguishes persons religious from others in goodness. In sum, many most worthy virtues that willing and true nuns must not forget, but effectively put into practice, are easier to abide by than are the sins of wicked worldly people. Besides those mentioned, nuns must follow other holy practices necessary to those who yearn to make spiritual profit with the force, constancy, and diligence sufficient to reach the limits of mortal life with the certainty of immortal life, not becoming blinded by the devil to the detriment of the soul. Whence any one of us must confess her fragility, saying, I see the better, and approve it, / but I follow the worse.613 Such a one then deserves to be called a useless and careless servant by the Lord she has scorned, just as she has fruitlessly filled the holy chamber with the errors by which she has rendered herself unworthy of the name bride of Christ, since she did not carry out the functions and practices required of her. The duty of worldly brides is to retire most of the time to a modest room to exercise the feminine virtues, devoting all their attention to the care of the family, avoiding idleness through work, and turning every thought toward satisfying the expectations of their dear husband, speaking little and doing much. We too, who 612. The first line (Un poco dolce molto amaro appaga) derives from Petrarch, Triumph of Love, 3.184. See Petrarch, Opere, 280; The Triumphs of Petrarch, 27. The second (Mille piacer non vagliono un tormento) is from his Canzoniere, 231.4. See Petrarch, Opere, 170; Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 386. 613. Video meliora, proboque, / deteriora sequor. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, 342–43 (7.20–21). While the Latin source is Ovid, Tarabotti may also be thinking of Petrarch’s famous line: e veggio ’l meglio, ed al peggior m’appiglio. See Petrarch, Canzoniere, 264.136 (Petrarch, Opere, 191).

201

202 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI have been given so eminent a title as brides of Christ, are obliged to keep guard over our souls and over our religious institutions from within our most chaste cells, adopting every art in order properly to govern the numerous family of our senses and to immediately satisfy in all ways such an excellent and worthy Lord and husband. Our care must also be to educate our new sisters using holy texts and to increase the virtuous reach of the Rule614 and the precepts bequeathed to us by our founding fathers, who left us as heiresses to nothing but these. The least of these is not silence, which is so pleasing to God that his beloved prophet, considering the good that results to the soul by remaining silent, insistently begged His Divinity for it: Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth: and a door round about my lips.615 The wisest among all men said, I hate a mouth with a double tongue.616 To speak little is praiseworthy in anyone, but more so in men and women religious, in whom silence creates perfection. This, perhaps, is the road of which the Lord himself said, And I shew unto you this more excellent way.617 It is such an easy road, and so excellent, that of silence, which by means of reflection leads us to heaven, since by speaking one cannot ascend to celestial contemplation as one does by remaining silent. So much does the Eternal Sun love silence that he chose to emerge from the pure womb of Mary to console the world, While all things were in quiet silence.618 He chose to point out to us in this way that when we are silent and quiet, he will come into our hearts with spiritual consolations. The Virgin was alone, and silent (speaking, however, in prayer, with God), when she was filled with grace by the heavenly paranymph.619 Those most favored by His Divine Majesty attained the greatest graces when they were alone and immersed in silence. Moses was in that state when he saw a vision of God in the burning bush, and, perhaps because he remained quiet in that moment, he deserved to speak with God.620 Abraham had a vision of the ineffable mystery of the most Holy Trinity, and Isaac learned to meditate on the divine wonders, both at that time when they had separated themselves from all interaction, immersed in a profound silence of holy meditation. So 614. I.e., Benedict’s Rule; see note 110. 615. Pone Domine, custodiam ori meo, et ostium circumstantie labijs meis. Psalms 140:3. 616. Os bilingue detestor. Proverbs 8:13. 617. Haec via vobis excellentiorum demonstro. Cf. 1 Corinthians 12:31, Et adhuc excellentiorem viam vobis demonstro (And I shew unto you yet a more excellent way). 618. dum medium silentium tenerent omnia. In the Benedictine Breviarium monasticum, these words are an antiphon often sung on the Sunday of the Christmas Octave and the Vigil of Epiphany. The lines are based on Wisdom 18:14. For an explanation of this antiphon and for this translation, see Allen Cabaniss, “Wisdom 18:14f.: An Early Christmas Text,” Vigiliae Christianae 10, no. 1 (January 1956): 97–102. 619. The term paranymph (one who assists the bride or bridegroom in a wedding ceremony) was used in the Midrash (ancient rabbinical exegesis) to describe the angels Gabriel and Michael. See also John 3:29, in which John the Baptist speaks of himself as filling this role for Jesus. 620. See Exodus 3.2.

Convent Paradise 203 must we—say the willing nuns—alone and secluded, make of our cells, like Noah, an ark, most well sealed in every part, to remove ourselves from the watery perils of the flood of earthly thoughts. Let us first seek enclosure within ourselves, and then in our cells, in order not to perish amid the roiling waves of excessive words, which cause those who use them to perish because, The things which come forth from the mouth defile a man.621 Doing otherwise, we will not find refuge from the storm of sin that submerges the world. When the apostle wrote down, the tongue no man can tame,622 he was not referring to true nuns, since we must remain silent, but those who, accustomed to slander, continually speak against their neighbor, and their own soul, and the one who has given us life. To us, who are dear to him, our crucified love does not fail to grant—with some partiality—grace sufficient to hold our tongues, and also to mortify our own senses and place a curb on the greatest gusts of the northern winds of ambition, the impulses of the flesh, and every other urge of sin. He governs our tongues as organs created so free by nature that the wise man says, It is the part of God to govern the tongue.623 So free, unbridled, and loosed is this little animal called the tongue, that it cannot be vanquished by human power if divine aid does not contribute. There is no prince or potentate of whom the tongues of the lowest plebeians do not speak ill. Even if one is a beggar, such that out of shame he does not dare to be seen anywhere, nonetheless he can with his tongue insert himself into every affair, even important ones, and even go so far as to censure ecclesiastical decisions. There is no heart that does not soften at the words of a supplicant tongue, and what is denied to requests made in letters and messages cannot be denied to the prayer of words articulated by a mouth that graciously pleads. And what cannot honeyed phrases do, though simulated and false? What damage do they not cause in the souls of those who pronounce them, and in those who listen to them? Therefore it is necessary for the good nun to mortify her tongue with silence, and keep it enclosed, as if in a cell, behind the grille of the teeth, as Agellio624 puts it very well and learnedly with those words, Set a grille before my mouth, lest I imprudently unleash words.625 Therefore let us, sisters, ask our beloved bridegroom to grant us silence and rarely to make us speak, if not with our hearts turned to him, since this more than 621. Quae de ore exeunt coinquinant hominem. Cf. Matthew 15:18, Quae autem procedunt de ore, de corde exeunt, et ea coinquinant hominem (But the things which proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the heart, and those things defile a man). 622. Linguam nullus hominum domare potest. Cf. James 3:8. 623. Dei est gubernare linguam. Cf. Proverbs 16:1. 624. Antonio Agellio (1532–1608), a bishop and editor of the Clementine edition of the Vulgate in 1592. He published a commentary on the Psalms in 1606. 625. Pone Domine claustrum ori meo, ne imprudenter in verbo prosiliam. For the first part of the verse, cf. Psalms 140:3, Pone, Domine, custodiam ori meo (Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth). The second clause is unidentified.

204 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI any other virtue is necessary for one who wishes perfectly to serve him. His most cherished King David—even though burdened with numerous responsibilities, employed in arduous dealings for the governance of a great kingdom, and surrounded continually by a multitude of subject and foreign peoples to whom by royal honor he was compelled to grant audience—knows the worth of silence and works to possess it. I said: I will take heed to my ways, in order not to commit offense with my tongue.626 There is no excuse, therefore, for the men and women religious who, having withdrawn to the cloisters, give free rein to their tongues; and if among them anyone slips by breaking the observance of silence, together with the mouth there will open a precipice to eternal damnation. The nun who does not observe the silence left her as inheritance by the founders does not deserve to be loved by God, and certainly she does not love God. And he that loveth not Lord Jesus, abideth in death.627 The multiplicity of words causes death within the soul. So willingly and so easily does the tongue stumble into slander that it is called by the theologians evil of fault.628 Those who let themselves be guided by such a small part of the body, without realizing it, stumble from one sin to another; and one of the most common sins of men and women religious is slandering and disparaging, from which one passes to lying and, what is more, to making false vows. If in the hours consecrated to silence the tongue is allowed by men and women religious to lapse into chatter, the gravest scandals arise, which spawn disquiet in the refectories, uproar in the dormitories, and confusion in the choirs. There, those who have dedicated themselves to mental prayer are distracted; the sleep of the spiritual brother or sister, which is the nourishment of life, is interrupted. Well did David understand that silence caused much good and prevented much ill, and so he commanded his priests to observe it. So esteemed, venerated, and exalted by the ancient holy fathers was this charity of curbing words that the blessed Agathon kept a pebble in his mouth for three years straight in order to impede his tongue so that it could not break his silence.629 One reads of Pythagoras that he was so taciturn that the first thing he taught his disciples was not to speak, and he 626. Dixi, custodiam vias meas, ut non delinquam lingua mea. Cf. Psalms 38:2, Dixi: Custodiam vias meas; locutus sum in lingua mea (I said: I will take heed to my ways: that I sin not with my tongue). This verse goes on say, “I have set a guard to my mouth,” a statement echoed in Psalms 140:3; see note 625. 627. Et qui non diligit Dominum Iesum manet in morte. Cf. 1 John 3:14, Qui non diligit, manet in morte (He that loveth not, abideth in death). 628. malum culpae (could also be rendered “moral evil”). According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, malum culpae was the worse sort of evil since it referred to evil done, whereas malum poenae, or the fault of punishment, referred to evil suffered. See Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: A Guide and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 116. 629. Saint Agathon of Egypt, one of the Desert Fathers of the fourth century. See “The Life of the Abbot Agathon” in vol. 7 of The Golden Legend, .

Convent Paradise 205 wanted them to observe this for two full years.630 The Romans offered sacrifices to the goddess Angerona so that she would grant them this virtue.631 The wisest of the philosophers venerated silence exceedingly: among them were Plato, whom one could call divine,632 Biante, Xenocrates, and Zeno. Some of them said: “I do not know when I have ever had reason to regret having remained silent, but only to have talked too much.”633 Socrates, who was an excellent teacher of virtuous living, sought three qualities in his followers: prudence of mind, flush of cheek, and taciturnity of speech.634 But let us move on from these profane scholars and repeat along with Solomon that in the multitude of words there shall not want a sinner,635 for from speaking too much all the gravest ills arise. Indeed let us go on to consider Christ, true wisdom, whom no one ever surpassed with a more rigorous observance of silence. Led before Pilate—who was an instrument, indeed a very limb of Satan—he remained so silent that the most unjust judge, astonished at how he could remain silent before so many insistent accusations, turned to the bystanders and said, “he answered nothing.”636 Then, in order to try to make the taciturn Lord speak, he addressed him, saying, “Dost not thou hear how great testimonies they allege against thee?”637 Interrogated by Herod, too, he had no reply. Whipped and beaten, he did

630. Pythagoras (ca. 570–ca. 490 BCE), the Greek philosopher and mathematician; according to Iamblichus, his disciples observed a period of silence lasting several years. See Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Way of Life, trans. John Dillon and Jackson Hershbell (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991). 631. Angerona or Angeronia, about whom there is conflicting information but who may have been a Roman goddess of silence, is represented in art with a bound mouth and her finger before her lips, ordering quiet. 632. Tarabotti may have in mind the work of the great Neoplatonist philopher Marsilio Ficino, who titled a work Divus Plato, or The Divine Plato, published in Venice in 1491. 633. Plato (ca. 429–347 BCE) says young people should be silent in front of their elders, out of reverence (Republic, 4.425b). See Plato, Republic, vol. 1, Books 1–5, ed. and trans. Christopher Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 360–61. Biante or Bias of Priene (sixth century BCE), a pre-Socratic philosopher and one of the Seven Sages, is reported to have said that many times he regretted having spoken but never regretted having kept quiet. The same phrase is also attributed to Xenocrates (ca. 396–314 BCE), who said that learning silence is the beginning of rhetoric. Zeno (ca. 490–ca.430 BCE) is said to have stated that in silence he heard others’ imperfections and hid his own. 634. Tarabotti might have gleaned this information from Raffaello delle Colombe, Prediche della Quaresima, vol. 2 (Florence: Nella stamperia di Bartolomeo Sermartelli e Fratelli, 1622), 250 (Delle prediche di tutto l’anno). 635. in multiloquio non deerit peccator. Cf. Proverbs 10:19, In multiloquio non deerit peccatum (In the multitude of words there shall not want sin). Cf. Benedict’s Rule, 134. 636. Nihil respondit. Cf. Matthew 27:12–13 and Mark 15:4–5. 637. Non audis quanta adversum te dicunt testimonia? Matthew 27:13.

206 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI not open his mouth, so that the prophet, prefiguring him, said, “I have always held my peace.”638 Always you remained silent, oh my Redeemer, even though you heard the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful man opened against you.639 Saint Bernard likens silence to a guard dog, who in the religious orders and cloisters dedicated to the highest Lord defends the treasures of souls from the great infernal thief, who constantly threatens to steal gems of such value; but with supreme help, by means of silence, cloistered men and women can act to foil him. Silence is the guardian of religious life.640 Whoever observes this virtue will make herself an imitator of Christ, who in silence suffered so many injuries, accusations, and torments. She will be in the number of those holy and worthy nuns who, removed from human interactions, deserve to converse with angels and will attain such a height of perfection, exalted beyond their very nature, that one can say of them, He shall sit alone, and shall be silent, because he shall raise himself above himself.641 And if silence were not worthy of love for other reasons, it is because it begets religious peace, an inexhaustible fount from which all other virtuous and holy qualities derive. Thus the time for being quiet is no less carefully circumscribed by the wise one than that for speaking: A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.642 It is granted—indeed it is necessary—to talk at times, so that we do not later have to regret, as the prophet did, having kept silent at the moment opportune, indeed necessary, for speaking. “Woe is me, because I have held my peace,”643 he said, as if he wished to imply: “Poor and unhappy me, who ignored so many iniquitous and wicked acts, about which, had I warned those who committed them, perhaps they would have mended their ways.” Some nuns, for vain reasons, keep silent and do not reproach their sisters when they see them violate the convent’s constitutions—something they should not do. Indeed, they must prudently choose when it is opportune to be silent and when to speak. They must pray their God and bridegroom—since he did not speak, except to admonish and preach—to grant them so much light that with his efficacious grace they remain quiet unless to pray, which renders them his imitators in prudence, as they are his lovers in their 638. Tacui semper. Isaiah 42:14. 639. os peccatoris, et os dolosis super vos apertum. Cf. Psalms 108:2. To integrate the verse into the text, Tarabotti changes it slightly, substituting “against you” for “against me” in the original text. The errata sheet corrects doloris in the original text to dolosis, but the Latin should be dolosi. 640. Silentium custos est religionis. Cf. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, “Sermo 2, Dominica Prima Post Octavum Epiphaniae” (Sermon 2, First Sunday after the Octave of Ephiphany). See Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera omnia, ed. Jean Mabillon, vol. 3 (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1862), 161. 641. Sedebit solitarius, et tacebit, et levabit se super se. Cf. Lamentations 3:28. See Bede’s “Life of St. Cuthbert,” in The Complete Works of Venerable Bede, 4:206–9. 642. tempus tacendi, et tempus loquendi. Ecclesiastes 3:7. 643. Uhae mihi quia tacui. Isaiah 6:5.

Convent Paradise 207 heart. If, then, it is true (as it is infallible) that everything depends on guarding the tongue—Death and life are in the power of the tongue644—it is necessary to govern loquacity in order not to slide imprudently into the death that is sin. I judge always remaining silent to be as harmful as to speak too much, these being the extremes. The father of eloquence teaches us in one of his epistles that the good man is distinguished from the bad by his works, and by the words he proffers it is debated whether he is wise or foolish. Prostrate, then, at your feet, oh sweetness of this heart and my Beloved, I pray you to open these lips so that—after silence—I do not burst out with some excessive or adulatory words so typical of nuns today. May you always pry open this mouth, oh my adored and only true Good: O Lord thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise.645 If you will take charge of my speech, I will not have to fear that my heart—disloyal to me, detached from my tongue—will not join in your praise. If you will be the usher at the door of my mouth, I will rest assured that the adulation disguised in spurious and fraudulent words, found so frequently in the speech of many of today’s nuns that it has become their essence, will not result in detriment to others and the downfall of my soul. You know how ardently I wish to avoid such a diabolic offense, so contrary to my inclination, and thus I invoke you again to be the guardian of my lips so they never slip into evil words646 but promptly repeat your praises frequently in choir and beseech you by saying anew, O Lord thou wilt open my lips.647 Even if I see you, oh tortured Savior and crucified Lover, with your lips closed, I await your spoken words with which—without opening your mouth—you speak within your servants. I know that you are the fountain of life: With thee is the fountain of life.648 Therefore I run quickly to your waters that refreshingly restore whoever is burning in the fire of your love. Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.649 Break your silence, oh Lord, now that it is a matter of helping a soul, and remove the nails from your hands so that you may descend from that throne of the cross, dressed in blood-stained purple, and come to pry open these lips, so long closed to your praises and to prayers and open only in order to occasion sin. O Lord thou wilt open my lips.650 Purify them with just one drop of your most precious blood, so that—cleansed and pure—they may worthily be used in the recitation of your Divine Office, which comprises 644. Mors et vita in manibus linguae. Cf. Proverbs 18:21. 645. Domine labia mea aperies, et os meum anunciabit laudem tuam. Psalms 50:17. This versicle opens the Liturgy of the Hours. 646. in verba malitae. Psalms 140:4. 647. Domine labia mea aperies. See note 645 above. 648. Apud te est fons vite. Psalms 35:10. 649. Loquere, Domine, quia audit serva tua. Cf. 1 Samuel 3:9. Tarabotti changes the gender from masculine (servus tuus) to feminine (serva tua). 650. Domine labia mea aperies. See note 645 above.

208 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI much of the religious life, whereas by neglecting it we commit a mortal sin. Every day we owe this tribute to you as our king, and likewise we are bound eagerly to serve you as our bridegroom and to pay our devout respect to you as our God. Help us so that we do not, by neglecting your praises, deny you the tribute, shrink from the respect, and defraud you of the service of your brides, keeping for ourselves the payment we owe you, which consists of the recitation of the Divine Office. One of the greatest delights of secular life is the jubilation that derives from musical notes which, issuing from a melodious mouth, carry sweetness to the ears of others with their measured meter. So too for those in religious life is the harmony that, from voices turned heavenward, describes the glories of the Omnipotent and blissfully praises and blesses the Creator. But in contrast to the music of the cloister, worldly music—not required or restrained by religious superiors’ orders, or impeded by illness—does not pay its debt to the divine cult because of its sheer negligence and tepid devotional fervor.651 The saying of Isaiah applies: Thou hast multiplied the nation, and hast not increased the joy.652 Because, among other things, these musicians are full of words and song, they can be called infernal, and they have banished from themselves the joyfulness with which saints exult in God. Therefore willing nuns say in the paradise of the cloisters, “Let us therefore clear our minds of every misunderstanding so that we may worthily loosen our tongues in divine praise, since we are familiar with that saying: Praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner.653 Let us part our lips with the desire chastely to praise that infinite bounty. Therefore we repeat the invocation: O Lord thou wilt open my lips; and we can courageously add: And my mouth shall declare thy praise.654 Let us resolve firmly always to sing encomia to the immense merit of our infinite treasure; and even if he, with his righteous justice, condemned us to the eternal flames, where maledictions are the language of the damned, let us resolve to praise him and to sing his blessings. Certainly we do not lack a subject for our blessings: the infinite magnificence and eternal greatness of him who is the master and monarch of heaven and earth. Benediction, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honour, and power, and strength to our God.655 Since in the paradise of the cloisters we are clothed in the religious habit, in which we resemble the angelic choirs and 651. At the twenty-fourth session of the Council of Trent, restrictions were imposed on the kind of music that could be performed in female monasteries; professional musicians and polyphony were both banned. See Craig A. Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 55, no. 1 (spring 2002): 20–21. 652. Multiplicasti gentem, et non magnifacasti laetitiam. Isaiah 9:3. 653. Non est speciosa laus in ore peccatoris. Ecclesiasticus 15:9. 654. Domine labia mea aperies. Et os meum anunciabit laudem tuam. See note 645 above. 655. Benedictio, et claritas, et sapientia, et gratiarum actio honor, virtus, et fortitudo Deo nostro. Revelation 7:12.

Convent Paradise 209 our founding fathers who are in heaven glorying in God and giving glory to God, let us remember to raise our melodious voices to celebrate divine greatness and glory. Let us indeed sing, but may it not be a polyphonic, degenerate, and lascivious song;656 rather, may the mouth in accord with the heart express notes meant for exalting and glorifying the supreme Lord, so that he, speaking of most beautiful Jerusalem, can truthfully say of these cloisters: Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen all the day, and all the night, they shall never hold their peace.657 He placed us almost like custodians within these holy walls, where day and night we must never stop praising him—but without the distraction and irreverence with which many nuns praise him, with just the tip of their tongues and a multitude of words.658 If the voice is not followed by the heart, it is not doing anything but creating the profusion of words, as I just said—a practice which Solomon attributed to sinners. Saint Paul said, I will pray with the spirit,659 because to participate in choir with a distracted mind, inattentively, and with indecency, as if we were in a theater and among stage sets, is not to render glory to the highest Good, since only the cymbal of the lips is being used; that is not what is meant by Praise him on high sounding cymbals.660 By praying and singing psalms in this manner661—as Saint Bernard maintains—one loses the merit of praying and singing psalms,662 beyond 656. Figurato, molle, e lascivo. On these criticisms of secular music, see the Introduction, pp. 21–22nn57–58. 657. Super muros tuos Ierusalem costitui custodes, tota die, et tota nocte in perpetuum non tacebunt. Isaiah 62:6. 658. Tarabotti seems to be engaging in a hidden polemic against the use of complex music in the nuns’ performance of the Office. 659. Orabo spiritu. 1 Corinthians 14:15. 660. Laudate eum in cimbalis bene sonantibus. Psalms 150:5. The Italian “cimbalo” did not mean “cymbal” in the Seicento, but rather the harpsichord, a plucked-keyboard instrument associated with worldly music and in particular opera, against which Tarabotti seems here to polemicize. Nonetheless, the Accademia degli Incogniti, to which she was closely tied, played a major role in the development of Venetian opera, in which the representation and participation of women was important. On the issue, see Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), and Wendy Heller, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women’s Voices in Seventeenth Century Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Among Tarabotti’s contacts in the opera world were the acclaimed librettist Giovan Francesco Busenello, who visited Tarabotti in the parlatorio and whom she invited to contribute a poem to Le lagrime d’Arcangela Tarabotti per la morte dell’Illustrissima Signora Regina Donati; and Pietro Paolo Bissari, whose Bradamante she praised (Letters, 127–29, 201–2, and 255 [letters 75, 76, 152, 175, 176, and 219]). 661. That is, distractedly. 662. See Saint Bernard’s letter to the Victorines of Montier-Ramey: “If there is to be singing, the melody should be grave and not flippant or uncouth. It should be sweet but not frivolous; it should both enchant the ears and move the heart; it should lighten sad hearts and soften angry passions; and it should never obscure but enhance the sense of the words.  Not a little spiritual profit is lost when

210 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI the fact that we make ourselves guilty of a triple theft, stealing in a certain way honor from God, suffrages from souls, and the salaries and allotments assigned to the churches, monasteries, and pious institutes. Divine permission allowed the blessed Bishop Hermann663 to see, as the Benedictus was sung, angels descending from heaven with thuribles664 in their hands to waft incense upon those men and women religious who were singing sacred notes. But they used different degrees of respect: they wafted incense with honor upon those who were intently singing praises of God with profound reverence, whereas they passed by (with only a small bow and brief offer of incense) those who were singing psalms inattentively. They went by others without stopping at all, holding their nose, running almost like fugitives, since those angelic spirits abhorred the stench that issued from the mouths of those who paid attention in choir to every other thing but the Divine Office. We can deduce from this, oh sisters, how pleasing to the bridegroom of our souls, to our sweetest love, are our succor and attention to all feelings, not only external, but also internal, in order that we may exalt him sincerely and not only with our lips. If we would like the angels to waft incense upon us, let us accompany the notes of our tongue with the devotion of our heart, totally absorbed and intent on exalting the saint of saints in as much as our weakness allows. To achieve this, we often repeat, turning to him: O Lord thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise.665 By doing so we can hope to feel the same abundance of spiritual consolation in the recitation of the canonical hours that Saint Ignatius was allowed to feel; while he was devotedly and fervently reciting the psalms and other prayers, so many tears of sweetness and happiness streamed from his eyes that he was in danger of losing his sight.666 I too yearn, oh my one true Good, together with my other sister nuns, to cry so much for my sins as I recite the mysteries and meditate on them that I lose the sight of my corporeal eyes in order to be worthy of taking possession of God, who is the only light and pupil of the eyes of my soul. Oh Lord, oh my life, open, open my lips. O Lord thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise.667 I know that the sound of this verse is like a trumpet that incites every valorous spiritual champion to take minds are distracted from the sense of the words by the frivolity of the melody, when more is conveyed by the modulations of the voice than by variations of meaning” (Letter 398 to Guy, Abbot of MontierRamey, and the Religious of that Abbey, in Bruno Scott James, trans., The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux [London: Burns & Oates, 1967], 501-502). 663. Presumably the eleventh-century bishop Hermann of Metz. 664. Cf. OED, 3rd ed., s.v. “thurible”: “a vessel in which incense is burnt in religious ceremonies,” also called a censer. 665. Domine labia mea aperies, et os meum anunciabit laudem tuam. See note 645 above. 666. Tears play a central devotional role in Ignatian spirituality (see The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Louis J. Puhl, S.J., preface by Avery Dulles, S.J. [New York: Vintage Books, 2000]). 667. Domine labia mea aperies, et os meum anunciabit laudem tuam. See note 645 above.

Convent Paradise 211 up arms beneath the banner of the monastic army, which is always on the ready to make war against the devil, letting fly the arrows of holy verses, the darts of antiphons, and the lances of prayers. I repeatedly avail myself of it,668 certain that without sovereign help I cannot clear the haze of internal affections which might cloud my mind in the recitation of the Holy Office. To this end, I ask fervently for the divine grace to concentrate my mind in choir. I know that it does not suffice for my Beloved to open my lips; I must also hold back my mind, which flies like a swift bird, light and graceful. Therefore I will pray him to instill in my breast a burning ray of his love so that, at the movement of my lips, my heart will stop, and from it, as from the original fount, will gush forth good and holy thoughts. He gave us the precept that in all matters we should place the interests of our soul before any other concern. Seek ye first the kingdom of God;669 that is, that before any other thing one must seek his glory, which cannot be more honored and revered than when, at the times reserved for praising his highest name, devout music issues forth from the mouths of his servants. Those women who took the vow of obedience must place no duty before the uninterrupted observation of choir, which is truly an antechamber of paradise in which one learns through spiritual dialogue how best to serve and love the prince of princes. If singing we recite the psalm I will love thee O Lord my strength,670 these notes spur us on to heavenly love. If turning to his divinity, we say O Lord, our Lord,671 we recall the miracles performed by our bridegroom and we declare him our king and Lord. In saying In thee O Lord have I hope, let me never be confounded,672 we recall the great confidence that we may have in God. Thus under the veil of the stupendous words of David, we pass from one mysterious meaning to the next, and, meditating upon divine greatness, we put into practice the worship we owe the Omnipotent. This is a practice so necessary and fruitful in the garden of the Holy Church that it gives the final perfection to monastic discipline: it is sweet and dear to God, admired by angels and compensated with the reward of eternal glory. It is a foundation so able to sustain elevated religious devotion that sooner will one see the weighty mass of earth rise and heaven fall than religious devotion maintain itself alive in the heart of those cloistered without this. But since it is impossible for human frailty to be checked continuously or for a long time, no less in the vocal work of choir than in the mental work of contemplation, let us move on to how we must perform manual work as part of our religious life in order to serve the highest Redeemer and Creator of our souls with sincerity and freedom of heart. No one is allowed to dwell continuously 668. That is, of the verse above. 669. Primum quaerite Regnum Dei. Cf. Luke 12:31. 670. Diligam te Domine fortitudo mea. Psalms 17:2. 671. Domine, Dominus noster. Psalms 8:2. 672. In te Domine speravi non confundar in aeternum. Psalms 30:2.

212 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI down here on earth deeply rapt in the highest contemplation of paradise. Though the mind is for some time raised up by means of the imagination to penetrate celestial secrets, to rejoice in them, to mourn, delight, and weep for the Passion and the death of our Beloved, never in this mortal life was there found anyone who every day was enraptured by celestial mysteries. If we want to light the fire of love for God and to know his divinity and greatness, the way to do this is to meditate. In my meditation a fire shall flame out,673 said David, the teacher of how to love His Divine Majesty well. The intellect works hard and becomes exhausted in contemplation, which is a most sure path for achieving perfection, but because it cannot remain awake and heightened all the time, I must sometimes employ it in some manual labor or in some practice regarding the urgent needs of the body. Christ himself was employed in helping with the carpentry work of his putative father Joseph. Many writers say that the glorious Virgin, when she lived in the temple, when she was not occupied in contemplation and prayer, worked on silk lacework and embroidery to decorate the Holy of Holies674 and the robes of the high priests, and on other tasks. She spent other moments of her life making clothes for Christ and spinning like a poor humble woman. The holy anchorites who lived in hermitages, when they were tired from praying for a long time and were coming back to their senses after celestial ecstasies, would weave and unweave handbaskets and, alongside other practices, they dedicated the remaining time to the care of their bodies, so as not to sink into idleness, such a detestable vice. Among so many virtues, then, that must adorn true and willing brides of Christ, one of the precious jewels that must be set is that of never vainly wasting the time that they have left after their oral or mental prayers. However, let this not take any time from the contemplation that is so sweet that Saint Ambrose wrote of it: Daily meditation takes away torpor and makes one vigilant.675 Mental prayer chases away spiritual laziness, since it is a celestial practice and the work of an earthly angel. Indeed, angels themselves praise and contemplate the Divinity with greater ease and less merit, since they do not need to conceive an imagined beauty in their minds while by grace they visibly rejoice in the boundless splendor of the divine visage that blesses paradise. But only by faith and with their mind’s eye do contemplative souls imagine the beauties of that countenance that blesses heaven and the immense greatness of that sacrosanct majesty. They make such progress in perfection that they remove themselves from human company and are enraptured in celestial light, where they rejoice in meditating with such sweetness that they—estranged even from their own selves—repeat along with Saint Augustine, 673. In meditatione mea exardescit ignis. Cf. Psalms 38:4. 674. Sancta Sanctorum. 675. Quotidiana meditatio tolit soporem, et facit vigilantem. Cf. Cristofero da Verrucchio, Compendio di cento meditationi sacre … (Venice: Appresso Nicolò Misserino, 1596), 2.

Convent Paradise 213 Oh most holy Lord, the more I meditate on you, the sweeter and more beloved you are to me.676 These elect and religious souls find greater pleasure and consolation in their ecstasies than angelic spirits in the beatific vision, because the latter, who enjoy the fullness of blessings, have nothing more to hope for; the former, because of the sweetnesses of this life, look forward to greater ones in the future. Having finished their ecstasy and returned from heaven, these nuns consider the cloister paradise itself, the seat of their superiors the throne of God, their sisters angels and saints, the scoldings and grumbling against them harmonious sounds, and the orders and demands of religious life angelic songs. If anyone told these women, who have been made holy on earth, that these poor cloisters were not rich heavens and jeweled paradises, it would seem that they wanted them to believe that fire did not burn or that the sun did not shine. Many foolish people in this world believe that these contemplative souls lead an idle life, but they lead a superhuman life centered on trampling and scorning idleness. Those who desire to imitate them must pull their hearts away from earthly lust and beseech their bridegroom to make them his followers—Draw me after thee677—and thus not think of or contemplate anything but the everlasting glory of the blessed. It is well known to us, since the eternal Lord said with his usual loving words, Yea I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee.678 He raised us up from the stinking cisterns of the earth, where we were immersed in the putrid waters of vices; he chose us for his brides; and, if we do not fail, he will perfect the effects of his love. He will not leave us to perish in the ship of religious life if we hold fast to the highest mast of contemplation and, using the sail of certain practices, studiously avoid crashing into the steep reefs of idleness. With triple vows to him we affirmed our promise not to belong to anyone but him everlastingly and not to love anyone but him for all eternity, while he confirmed his love to us with signs: And behold thy time was the time of lovers, and I spread my garment over thee, and covered thy ignominy, and I swore to thee, and I entered into a convenant with thee, and thou becamest mine.679 At the same time, our Beloved expresses his love for our salvation and gives us the spiritual vestment of the religious habit to cover this mass of flesh, obligating himself to observe his promises, as we too are bound never to violate our sworn vows. Never do we doubt his words, for as he introduced us into his 676. O piissime Deus, quanto magis in te meditor, tanto mihi es dulcior, et amabilior: Cf. Augustine, “Manuale,” 14. See Augustine, Opera omnia, vol. 6, 957. 677. Trahe me post te. See note 354. 678. In caritate perpetua dilexi te, ideo atraxi te, miserans tui. Cf. Jeremiah 31:3. 679. Ecce tempus tuum, tempus amantium, et ostende amictum meum super te, et opervi ignominiam tuam, et ivravi tibi, et ingressus sum pactum tecum, et facta fuisti mea. Cf. Ezekiel 16:8. Tarabotti uses “ostende” (from to the verb “to show”) rather than “expandi” (from the verb “to spread”) in the Vulgate; perhaps there was contamination from Italian, where “stendere” means to spread.

214 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI cloisters in public, so will he secretly introduce us into the nuptial bed, where the sweetness of the divine wedding will rain down upon our souls. The elect spirits who by their own choice have enclosed themselves in the cloister hope as much, and thus they discuss among themselves. We reply, “Let us repeat our petitions and follow our beloved bridegroom in contemplation,” lovingly beseeching him, “Draw, draw me after thee.”680 These petitions will not compromise the expectations we have for his love. Instead, they will further increase the industrious work of our hands, which, when we are not engaged in choir or obedience, will pierce through idleness with the pricks of a needle in order to kill it. Tarquinius, who raped the chaste Lucretia, declared himself lover of her chaste and virtuous beauty. (May this profane example be excused.) He found her, during the absence of her beloved consort, alone, involved in women’s work, distracting herself from the insistent thoughts that were troubling her because her dear husband was far away.681 The heavenly king’s love for us will be inflamed by seeing us in our solitary cells, exerting not only the mind in contemplation but also the hand in tasks that are the enemy of idleness. Indeed, meditation itself, in a certain way, becomes a most beautiful piece of embroidery in which one can admire the turquoise of celestial love, the crimson of ardent affection, the green of hope, the white of pure intention, the gold of immaculate faith, and the silver of the abundant disdain for all the world can give. With all these things arranged in a holy manner and artfully laid out, a belt is formed that is so preciously adorned that it can bind us with God himself in an ecstatic union. Let us indeed work continually, either with our minds or with our hands, and let not the trembling terror of offending our most gentle bridegroom ever leave us. Let us spend our time part in choir, part in silence, part in praying and part in manual work, with such disposition as best befits the monastic profession. However, if we are permitted to do a little work so that we may execute orders and obedience promptly, we must not so lose ourselves in needlework that our minds, too distracted, do not pay attention to the work of the body, thus opening a path to our common enemy to pierce through our souls sharply while we delicately embroider cloth. But if, because we are surrounded by human darkness, we stumble and fail to direct our efforts righteously to the glory and honor of the most Holy Trinity, we turn amid our greatest temptations and tribulations to our faithful guide and most merciful advocate Mary. If the winds of temptation arise, 680. Trahe, trahe me post te. See note 354. 681. Tarquin, a son of the last king of Rome, raped Lucretia, the wife of his cousin Collatinus, while the latter was away from his home. Lucretia sent word to her husband and her father, and after their hurried return, told them everything that had happened before killing herself in front of them. A revolt against the king led by Collatinus’s cousin Lucius Junius Brutus led to the downfall of the royal government and the rise of the Roman Republic, with Brutus and Collatinus serving as its first consuls. Lucretia’s death was later avenged with the killing of Tarquin. See Livy, The History of Rome, 1:57–60. Livy describes Lucretia as “involved in women’s work.”

Convent Paradise 215 if you wreck upon the rocks of tribulation, look upon the star, turn to Mary.682 By so doing we will have nothing to fear from our infernal adversary, since the Virgin can send him fleeing683 and, cleansing us of every impurity, help us valorously persist in overcoming diabolical, carnal, and earthly temptations. If we fall to vacillating, with her help we will be able to persevere in good, and after the dangerous storms on the sea of life, guided by this most beneficent star, we will come into the safe port of eternal salvation. I should remind my sister nuns of other virtues, but since those of them who voluntarily chose to live in the cloisters know better how to behave than I would know how to teach them, I will pass over many of them in silence. I do not, however, wish to steal the praises they merit by keeping silent about those triumphs when they were victorious over themselves. Greater applause and honors are due to these women than to the likes of Caesar, Pompey, and Alexander. If they do not rule over nations or subject peoples, they trample their rage and control their lecherous desires and, under their reign, they keep every vice in check. They thus prove themselves worthy of governing the whole world, since whoever knows how to govern herself deserves to have power and command over everyone else. One of the principal glories of Alexander of Macedon was the continence he showed toward the wife and daughters of Darius, even though in other ways he was most incontinent and so exceedingly ambitious that he yearned to conquer a multitude of worlds with his weapons684 and to rule them with his scepter.685 What praise, therefore, oh what acclamation will be commensurate with the merit of these pure angels who—always victorious against all the temptations of 682. Si insurgant venti tentationum, si incurras scopulos tribulationum: respice stellam, voca Mariam. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, “De laudibus Virginis Matris” (In Praise of the Virgin Mother), Homily 2. See Bernard of Clairvaux, Opera omnia, ed Jean Mabillon, vol. 4 (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1862), 70. 683. Perhaps an allusion to the traditional image of Mary as standing on the serpent, Satan, itself a reference to Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head ….” 684. Perhaps another allusion to the story that Alexander wept when he had no other worlds to conquer. See p. 89 and note 71. 685. The wife and daughters of Darius III, king of Persia, became captives of Alexander after Darius was defeated at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Darius’s wife was Stateira I, and her daughter, also named Stateira (II), became Alexander’s second wife in 324 BC. As noted by Elizabeth Donnelly Carney, “All surviving accounts stress Alexander’s unusually humane treatment of Darius’ family.” See her Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 94. Tarabotti’s representation of Alexander is ambiguous—an example of continence in one instance, but of incontinence in many others. In her Letters, Tarabotti mentions that her critics pilloried her for calling Alexander incontinent, but she defended the choice: “They say that calling Alexander the Great incontinent in the Paradise was a very grave error, but I disagree, since, even if he used great continence with Darius’s wife and daughters, an ear of wheat does not make it summer, and in other instances he acted most incontinently, even going so far as to marry a maiden who was his subject.” Tarabotti, Letters, 153 (letter 99).

216 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI the senses, the devil, and the world—show themselves to be more valorous and worthy than Alexander the Great? I wish that every part of my body could speak like an eloquent tongue so that I could fully explain how the nuns’ hearts are a fortress in their battles against the enemies of their souls. Armed with the sign of the Holy Cross, they battle face to face with the infernal monster. Not defended by anything but their own pure prayers and celestial contemplations, they always sing of a thousand triumphs and victories. We will lack no other glories than fleeting and worldly ones if, separated from the world by our own will, we defend ourselves nobly from the assaults of temptations. Even if enclosed, we will enjoy the sweetest liberty under the banners of Jesus our bridegroom, Lord, and captain. With the weapons of virtues we will beat back the blows of vices: we will fell pride with humility, avarice with charitable generosity, lust with chastity, and wrath with love for one’s neighbor, remembering that before he died, our Lord distilled all Christian law in a brief statement about nothing but love for one’s neighbor: This is my commandment, that you love one another.686 Thus Christ spoke to his disciples, and we nuns—although unworthy of being called his disciples but yearning to be called his servants—will seek to possess first the most valued treasure of divine love and then love of one another, in order to be worthy of being numbered among those of whom you said, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another.”687 And your beloved disciple so esteems love of one’s neighbor that in his first epistle he says, For he that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God?688 Whatever a man is, and a woman is, and whatever their inclinations are, such are their desires. Solomon, because he was a wise man, asked his Creator for wisdom, and we whose status is that of brides and lovers of God must ask for nothing else from him but love. Let us indeed love, but with a desire to love always more perfectly, for as we fill ourselves with celestial ardor in this manner, every other vice will leave our hearts and our minds. Give us love, love, Lord, open our hearts, oh kind Jesus, to your holy wounds, so that in our hearts and souls we know how much you have loved them. All the good that has ever been done in the world is the product of the love for God. All the male and female saints who have checked their senses, tamed their flesh, not loved life and disdained death, have done so by virtue of this love for God. So, too, we, oh lover of lovers and love of loves, pray you to wound us with this holy love, for by so doing, gluttony will cede to moderation and abstinence— illustrious virtues that raise our senses up to heaven and subjugate our flesh to the spirit. I speak of these virtues more than others for they are most necessary for 686. Hoc est praeceptum meum, ut diligatis invicem. John 15:12. 687. In hoc cognoscent omnes, quod discipuli meri eritis, si dilectionem habveritis ad invicem. John 13:35. 688. Qui non diligit fratrem suum, quem videt, Deum, quem non vidit, quomodo diligere poterit? Cf. 1 John 4:20.

Convent Paradise 217 the good nun. While he was abstinent, Moses received the law, and fasting, Elijah was brought to heaven in a chariot of fire.689 Christ himself, our model—beyond the fact that he lived his whole life eating meagerly—fasted uninterruptedly for forty days. For as long as she abstained from eating, Eve remained a virgin, and the maker of the universe, in the creation of this earthly machine, provided food first for the other animals before man to make us understand how little we must think about nourishing this body. Therefore Saint Paul devoutly boasted, saying I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection.690 And the secular but moral Petrarch, against the vice of gluttony, sang: Gluttony and sleep and the pillows of idleness have banished / from the world all virtue.691 Lot, strong because of rigorous abstinence, was worthy of being freed from fire, but shortly thereafter, weighed down with excessive food, he stumbled into sin, as everyone knows.692 We must mortify the impulses of gluttony with rigorous fasting, since we are aware that this impulse of ours, like a sated dromedary, kicking, has grown fat and thick.693 Yet we do not fear that severe fasting is harmful to our health, since the strictest abstinence of the likes of Jerome, Hilarion, Anthony, Francis, and the rigid penitence and abstinent rigors of Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, Pelagia, Euphrasia694 and other most holy women, assure us that this indomitable beast of a human body does not die under the discipline of spiritual privations. Rather, we will continue with greater rigor to improve the health of the body as much as that of the spirit, and we will be physicians unto ourselves if we use contrary cures as antidotes, in conformity with the rule of the most learned medicine, opposites are cured by opposites.695 Like the parts of the body, so the infirmities of the soul are remedied 689. See Exodus 19:14-15 and 31:18 and 2 Kings 2:11. 690. Castigo corpus meum, et in servitutem redigo. 1 Corinthians 9:27. 691. La gola, e ’l sonno, e l’oziose piume / hanno dal mondo ogni virtù sbandita. Cf. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 7.1–2. See Petrarch, Opere, 8; Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 42. 692. In her retelling of the story of Lot, Tarabotti seems to blend the concepts of sexual abstinence and abstinence from food and wine. “Just” (or righteous) Lot (as he is described in 2 Peter 2.7) is saved by angels from the fiery destruction of Sodom, which incurred God’s wrath because of the inhabitants’ infamous excesses (see Genesis 18 and 19), but later his daughters ply him with drink and lie with him in order to continue the family line. 693. Impiguatus et incrassatus recalcitravit. Cf. Deuteronomy 32:15, Incrassatus est dilectus, et recalcitravit: incrassatus, impinguatus, dilatatus (The beloved grew fat, and kicked: he grew fat, and thick and gross). The “beloved” of the bible passage is Israel. 694. Like Mary Magdalene, Saint Mary of Egypt (ca. 344–ca. 421 CE) was a sinful woman before she redeemed herself, subsequently living a life of extreme privation. There are several Saint Pelagias, but Tarabotti may mean Saint Pelagia the Penitent (fourth/fifth century CE), whose story is similar to that of Mary Magdalene and Saint Mary of Egypt. Saint Euphrasia of Constantinople (380–410 CE) used the physical labor of moving heavy rocks to escape temptation. On Saints Hilarion and Anthony the Great, see note 697 below. 695. contrarijs contraria curantur, the concept that originated in the work of Hippocrates and was later taken up by Galen; see page 144 and note 339. See also Hans Walther, Lateinische Sprichwörter

218 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI with a dose of their opposite: let us cure the disease of envy with contentment in one’s condition, rejoicing in the good of everyone, and taking as much pleasure in the drab habit, tunic, cuculla,696 cord, or belt as if we were adorned with the richest garments that clothe the greatest queens on Earth. Thus did the holy hermits and ancient anchorites do, and thus did those monks and blessed nuns content themselves, who from the very founding of their orders found their satisfaction in God alone. They would not have changed their coarse wimple or humble hood for the greatest miters and imperial crowns, their rough sticks for gilded scepters, their garments of filthy animal skin for the most sumptuous embroidery of gold, silk, and purple thread that adorns the most elevated personages of the world. True servants of Christ do not envy anything but the status of true servants of Christ. Old and humble Saint Anthony, with an envy worthy of being envied, left the cave in which he dwelled to find Hilarion and marvel at his goodness, which Hilarion practiced with an enviable but praiseworthy will.697 Spurred by this envy, they attempted and were able to surpass one another in holy works. This was the goal toward which all the lines of their actions tended; it was their principal objective and primary aim. With their striving to surpass others in goodness of life, they did not aspire to anything but to be admitted to the first ranks of glory and to be the dearest courtiers of their Lord, prince, and God. Little—indeed not at all—did they esteem mortal life. Envying others, they made themselves worthy of the envy of others through the angelic life they led on earth. Those men and women religious who do not try with all their power to follow such holy footsteps must be truly dumb and blind. For our part, let us work, and with praiseworthy envy, if not to surpass such sublime actions, at least to imitate them, so that God—true and inexhaustible fount of light—with his divine rays will infuse our tepid hearts with a splendor so luminous and burning that it will dazzle us, or rather render us totally blind to the fleeting beauty, unfaithful flattery, false hopes, and empty promises of the vain and deceitful siren that is the world. He will not fail to provide us with a shield against the fierce infernal dragon of sin, so that we can chop off its seven heads with the weapons of the opposing virtues.698 We will counter the enemy of human nature by turning to Holy Scripture, with frequent prayer, fasting, works that befit us, and holy behaviors, whereby we will confront the greatest of monsters among und Sentenzen des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit in alphabetischer Anordnung, ed. Paul Gerhard Schmidt, vol. 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), 424–25. Tarabotti also used this saying in her Letters, 104 (letter 49). 696. cocola (cuculla): See note 424. 697. Saint Hilarion (ca. 291–ca. 371), an anchorite and disciple of Saint Anthony the Great. Tarabotti transposes the figures from the written accounts of their meeting; Hilarion was fifteen when he visited Anthony for two months to experience desert monasticism with its founding father. On Saint Anthony, see note 398. 698. A reference to the seven-headed dragon of the Apocalypse, described in Revelation 13:1.

Convent Paradise 219 the sins—Ecclesiasticus says of it, idleness hath taught much evil.699 Idleness is the root of the tree from which, as from a poisonous plant (which it is), sprouts every ill; for even if this vice occupies the lowest place among the seven capital sins, from it proliferate all the others of greater severity. So it is that Saint Bernard, writing about idleness, calls it the mother of superfluous words and vain chatter, and the stepmother of the virtues.700 Plato called it the fomenter of all vices and the tinder for all ill.701 From this terrible vice arises every offense done against heaven, and in idleness worldly love is aroused, since blind love nourishes itself on nothing else. Therefore Seneca, describing it in the tragedy Octavia, said: Love is the vice of an unwell mind, When it leaves its proper place, Since the heart is inflamed With a pleasant fire, and it is born in the green of youth At the age which is capable of much, but sees little. Idleness feeds it, and human wantonness.702 Chilon termed it the portrait of madness, and Euripides called it the president of foolishness.703 Thus one who lives idly can be called a madman, since the coldness and ignorance His Divine Majesty abhors derive from idleness. The gospel reproaches the idle in such a way: Why stand you here all the day idle? This was the iniquity of Sodom, abundance of bread, and idleness.704 It can rightly be said that idleness no less entombs the living than causes the eternal death of souls. 699. multa mala docuit otiositas. Cf. Ecclesiasticus 33:29. 700. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, “On Consideration.” See Bernard of Clairvaux, Selections from His Writings, trans. Horatio Grimley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 226. 701. Plato, De legibus, 8.835. See Plato, Laws, 2:149. 702. Amore è vizio della mente insana,  /  quando si move dal suo proprio loco,  /  che di piacevol foco / l’animo scalda, e nasce ne’ verdi anni / all’età, ch’assai può, ma vede poco. / L’ozio il nodrisce, e la lascivia umana. With the exception of the third verse (“che di piacevol foco”), these words are attributed to Seneca, from the Octavia, in Cesare Ripa, Iconologia … divisa in tre libri … Ne i quali si esprimono varie imagini di virtù, vitij, passioni humane, affetti … (Venice: Presso Cristoforo Tomasini, 1645), 29. Tarabotti similarly attributes the verses to Seneca from the Octavia; however, modern scholars deny that the Octavia was written by Seneca and say the play dates to the late first century, after his death. 703. Tarabotti may have taken these characterizations of idleness from Tommaso Garzoni’s characterization of “voluttà,” or sensual pleasure, in La sinagoga degli ignoranti (Venice: Appresso Giovanni Battista Somasco, 1589), 71. 704. Quid statis hic tota die otiosi. Haec fuit iniquitas Sodomae, abundantia panis, et otium. For the first verse, cf. Matthew 20:6. For the second, cf. Ezekiel 16:49, Ecce haec fuit iniquitas Sodomae, sororis tuae: superbia, saturitas panis et abundantia, et otium ipsius, et filiarum ejus (Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom thy sister, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her, and of her daughters).

220 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI The swan of Mantua705 used to say that after the queen of Carthage had given herself over to idleness—constant companion of all sensual pleasures and lasciviousness—the city in which she lived and reigned no longer made progress in the beauty and sumptuousness of its buildings. The workers were immersed in idleness and young people sat around lazily, no longer devoting themselves to military training.706 This great poet wished to show us that idleness has power enough to destroy provinces and kingdoms. Pausanias reports that depicting Venus seated is meant to show that the woman who sits idle and undertakes no activity at all easily degenerates into a Venus, cluttering her soul with a thousand lascivious thoughts, and in the blind company of idleness she makes herself easy prey to a blinder intemperance. In our souls, then, which with triplicate vows have been bound to God, obliging our virginal flower to remain perpetually pure, we do not allow the worm of this vice to enter, so that we will not be numbered among the vain and idle women. Instead, with continual activity we strive to merit inclusion among those women who, as the wise one said, did not wait for their maidservants’ help in order to aid their families, but worked the wool and linen with their own hands. She hath looked well to the paths of her house, and hath not eaten her bread idle. She hath sought wool and flax.707 We are part of a family of religious, which we are bound to support as much in temporal needs with manual labor as in spiritual ones with the pure wool of prayer. We aid our negligent and unfeeling sisters in the love of our most ardent bridegroom and with the linen of bodily aid we assist our sisters in their illnesses, consoling them opportunely in their travails and avoiding, as much as we can, the problems that always sprout up among nuns. In this way we shall flee injustices and deceptions and become a mirror of the perfect religious life in which the new brides of Christ, seeing there a reflection of themselves, will see nothing but flowers and fruits of spiritual virtues and examples of perseverant penitence. Thus our fidelity to our celestial spouse will be singular, our chastity without compare, and the harmony among us marvelous. Are we not tied, indeed, with the bonds of matrimony to a bridegroom who deserves our immaculate faithfulness? Many iniquitous and unfaithful worldly husbands have entered into happy marriages with women ornamented with such rare virtues that writers in every age have elevated them to heaven with praises and immortalized their names because of their steadfast faithfulness and uncorrupted love. What

705. That is, Virgil. The queen of Carthage is Dido, who has fallen in love with Aeneas; see note 706 below. 706. Virgil, Aeneid, 4.86–89. Virgil, Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid, Books 1–6, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G. P. Goold (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 428–29. 707. Consideravit semitam domus suae, et panem otiasam non commedit. Quaesivit lanam, et linum. For the first verse, cf. Proverbs 31:27. The second verse is Proverbs 31:13.

Convent Paradise 221 have they not said about the devotion of Artemisia?708 About the faithfulness of Lucretia?709 And what praise did not they record in writing regarding the loves of Cleopatra, Portia, Penelope, Julia, Isicratea, of Seneca’s wife, and so many other women worthy of fame for the constancy and purity of their affections?710 So what faithfulness and love do we not owe to a celestial and divine bridegroom—indeed, to Divinity itself, ruler of heaven and earth? The faithful constancy of those idolatresses should seem a shadow, a wisp of smoke in comparison to our purest and most ardent faithfulness toward our most loving spouse. Let us love, let us love as much as a heart and soul can, and let us love this most passionate Lord in the highest degree, imploring the seraphs to lend us a spark of their affectionate ardors. In order to ignite an immense fire, our adored Jesus will not fail to give us the bellows of the breath of the Holy Spirit, so that the diabolical insinuations— with which our enemy suggests to us that penitence, hardships, and rigors are superfluous to those who do not sin—have no power. Most holy Mary, who was unburdened by and free from all contagion of sin, not to mention innocently pure and far removed from any fault, has served as a counter example since, not needing to suppress any passion at all, she imposed harsh discipline on herself, she rested her blessed limbs upon a sack of hay, and not having any stain—not even of original sin—she cried so that the water of her tears could wash away the impurities of others.711 She had no sensual impulses to repress and mortify, no hint of illicit and rebellious will, and yet she led a most austere life, making herself the model of penitence for sinners. The mysterious temple which she prepared, chaste and holy, for her only son, was more admirable than the one Artemisia raised upon the ashes of her beloved consort.712 But why 708. On Artemisia, see note 710 below. 709. Another reference to Lucretia, who committed suicide after she was raped by Tarquin (see page 214 and note 681). Her name became synonymous with chastity. 710. Cleopatra, queen of Egypt (first century BCE), was known for her love of Mark Antony. Portia (first century BCE), the daughter of Cato and the wife of Brutus, committed suicide after her husband’s death. Penelope was Odysseus’s wife, who according to Homer’s Odyssey remained faithful to the hero during his long absence. Julia (first century BCE), daughter of Julius Caesar, was famous for her virtue. Isicratea, or Hypsicratea (first century BCE), is known for her remarkable fidelity to her husband King Mithridates VI of Pontus. Seneca’s wife was Pompeia Paulina (first century CE), who tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide after Nero ordered her husband to kill himself; she was known for fidelity since she never remarried. For this list of women (including Artemisia and Lucretia, mentioned above), Tarabotti may have consulted Giovanni Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus (1361–62), which was enormously popular in early modern Italy and in which all these women appear. It is notable that Tarabotti includes Cleopatra, usually condemned for her lustfulness, in the list of women she praises. 711. Belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary—free of original sin from conception—was widely held, although it did not become dogma until 1854. 712. Artemisia II of Caria (d. 350 BCE) is said to have mourned the death of her husband Mausolus by commissioning the mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

222 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI do I mix up, with an inappropriate comparison, profane Artemisia and the purest ideation of the most perfect holiness? Solomon’s temple itself could not equal the excellence of the temple of her most holy womb, which sufficed to enclose such immensity as all the heavens together could not. For thou hast born in thy womb, whom the heavens could not contain.713 In her love and faithfulness toward her son and bridegroom,714 she surpassed all enamored women. To the words he proffered, I will espouse thee to me for ever,715 she answered, full of jubilation, I will espouse thee to me in faith.716 The love, faithfulness, and affection of the chaste Roman717—who died by her own hand for the offense she was forced to make against her husband—are shadows and dreams in comparison to Mary’s love. May we strive to merit salvation under the auspices of the queen of the enamored virgins, and, without any fear of the momentary and brief tribulations the body suffers, let us avoid falling into the eternal realm of everlasting discomforts and hardships. May we not fear living restricted and subject to a thousand inconveniences, and let us not fear fasting and bodily affliction, if by these we avoid falling into the extreme torment of body and soul. And if we do any penance, let us drown its memory in waves of oblivion so that, if we are made ambitious by what little we do in your service, the plague of desire for vain praise does not come to infect us, lest puffed up with this wind we fail to receive the mercy those men received, of whom it was said that they have received their reward.718 May we tame the flesh with fasting, mortification, hair shirts, and abstinence, so that it does not tyrannize and overcome us; may we scorn riches, so that they do not pierce our souls with arrows of gold; and, by reminding ourselves of our nothingness, let us trample our ambition—but not so as to acquire praise and stumble into the alluring enticements of this flattering siren. If praise is the constant companion of the good and virtuous life, we nonetheless do not have to live wickedly in order to disdain it. May the brides of Christ steer far clear of so iniquitous and distorted an understanding! But what must be done, then, if by following virtue one cannot avoid the perilous reef of praise? Let us learn the answer from the teacher of truth, for he will teach us the true art of avoiding human praise. He so abhorred being praised in this world that in his holy 713. Quia quem Caeli capere non poterant tuo gremio contulisti. The third responsory to the Second Nocturn at matins on Christmas Day. Translation based on A Hypertext Book of Hours, ed. Glenn Gunhouse, , which is derived from the Latin text in The Primer, or Office of the Blessed Virgin Marie, in Latin and English (Antwerp: Arnold Conings, 1599). See the prayer at . 714. See above, note 435. 715. Sponsabo te mihi in sempiternum. Hosea 2:19. 716. Sponsabo te mihi in fide. Hosea 2:20. 717. That is, Lucretia. 718. receperunt mercedum suam. Matthew 6:2.

Convent Paradise 223 Passion he said, “I seek not my own glory,”719 and elsewhere, “but I will glorify my Father who is in heaven.”720 Let us learn all we can in considering divine greatness and our humbleness, and, with a worthy disdain for ourselves, let us consider that this flesh of ours can truly work and sweat and labor and toil as much as it knows how, but nonetheless all it shall merit is merit of those discomforts, hardships, and sufferings to which our merciful Redeemer, clothed in this flesh, submitted himself. But what am I saying? Why must we—the vilest sewers of the earth—fear praises, if without our most praiseworthy Lord we are so unworthy that we do not even deserve to be called his servants? Let us consider for a moment what we are: ugly, filthy, by nature spoiled, misshapen, adorned with nothing but vices, poor in virtues, rich in defects, ignorant, born of sin, daughters of wrath, and finally, nothing but a sack of putrefaction and a meal for worms. Let us not become proud because we have a most beautiful, powerful, rich, desirable, wise, noble bridegroom and son of God, of whom it was justly said, King of kings and Lord of lords.721 If between him and us there is a parallel, well do we understand that we are never worthy of even a shadow of praise by our own merit, but only by the grace of his virtues that are not only worthy of the praise of men, but the adoration of the angels. This consideration will be a sure antidote to preserve us from the poison of pride prepared for us by Satan. Dressed in the rich habit of self-knowledge, we will encounter nothing powerful enough to divert us from divine love. We know well that the praises given by men are generally adulatory, false, and mendacious, directed to no other goal than the self-interest of those who praise; hence they are to be valued little, and from their mouths silence is considered as praise.722 Never did the saints let themselves be puffed up by these diabolically vain winds—indeed, scorned, despised, and deemed mad, they rejoiced, saying, “We are fools for Christ’s sake.”723 We can deduce from this in what esteem they were held by men, who know only how to mistake evil for good, and good for evil. Thus we will flee from the sound of their false tongues in order to avert the shipwreck of ambition, whose peril to the men and women religious who navigate the sea of infernal dangers is clearly intimated in verse by a spiritual poet:

719. Ego gloriam meam non quero. Cf. John 8:50. 720. sed glorificabo Patrem meum, qui in Coelis est. Cf. Matthew 5:16, et glorificent Patrem vestrum, qui in caelis est (and [that they may] glorify your Father who is in heaven). 721. Rex Regum, et Dominus Dominantium. Revelation 19:16. 722. reputatur sicut silentium laus. This is the literal Latin translation of the Hebrew text of Psalms 64:2 (“tibi silens laus Deus in Sion et tibi reddetur votum”), which does not correspond to the Vulgate verse. See J.-P.  Migne and V. S. Migne, eds., Scripturae sacrae cursus completus, ex commentariis omnium perfectissimis ubique habitis … , Vol. 15, In Psalmos commentarium (Paris: Migne, 1840), col. 676. 723. Nos stulti propter Christum. 1 Corinthians 4:10.

224 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI O what happiness did a happy face, a honeyed tongue, take from another’s heart, while it trapped desirous minds in snares? Just as a moth—which, playful and foolish, flies around the flame it loves— burns its wings and quickly dies if it touches it, so those who trust the sweet words of false man, or his friendly appearance, rob themselves of both rest and peace.724 If we, miserable women, wish to believe flattering monsters, we will lose the peace and the eternal rest that Christ left bequeathed to his servants, a loss so great that the loss of a thousand worlds would not compare. Let us close our ears tightly against the lying words of flatterers who, disposed by their own nature always to lie, pave our road725 to damnation by disguising envy as praise. By means of a liar, they prophesy unto you a deceitful vision and the seduction of the heart.726 These iniquitous reprobates—even when it seems they are inviting us to paradise—deceitfully create disquiet in our heart by making us ambitious for praise. The tempter, who is always preparing the lure of vainglory in his traps, ignites by means of their words the fire of aspirations for worldly fame in the souls of those who deem themselves righteous. Thus, while they rejoice in hearing themselves proclaimed citizens of heaven, they discover they are numbered among the most eminent citizens of the shadowy and everlasting kingdom of Lucifer. Our fragility is such—and so great—and we are so inclined to yearn for praise, that in order to avoid falling we must turn, again and again, to our most certain support, that is, to God. We must implore him not to let us fall and to give us that understanding that he granted to the soul of the blessed Hilarion,727 who, after having served His Divine Majesty with seventy years of penitence, still feared divine judgment. He gave courage to his own soul—so to speak—and exhorted it not to fear death and 724. O qual letitia dagli altrui non [cor] tolse / un lieto viso, una melata bocca, / mentre le vaghe menti in rete accolse. / Come farfalla, che scherzante e sciocca / d’intorno al lume innamorato vola, / s’abruccia l’ali e tosto muor se ’l tocca, / così chi s’assicura, o di parola / dolce d’huom finto, o del giocondo aspetto, / e requie, e pace a se medesimo invola. These lines come from book 2, chapter 2 of Gregorio Comanini, De gli affetti della mistica theologia tratti dalla cantica di Salomone, et sparsi di varie guise di poesie (Venice: Giovanni Battista Somasco, 1590), 163. 725. Tarabotti evokes the title of one her other works (no longer extant), The Paved Road to Heaven (La via lastricata per andare al cielo), mentioned by Giovanni Dandolo in Tarabotti, Letters, 49. 726. Per mentitorem, visionem fraudolentem, et seditionem cordis prophetant vobis. Cf. Jeremiah 14:14, Visionem mendacem, et divinationem, et fraudulentiam, et seductionem cordis sui, prophetant vobis (they prophesy unto you a lying vision, and divination and deceit, and the seduction of their own heart). 727. Saint Hilarion (see note 697).

Convent Paradise 225 to hope in celestial mercy, and so at the very end of his life he said, Go out—what art thou afraid of? Go out, my soul!—wherefore shrinkest thou? Thou hast served Christ hard on seventy years—and art thou afraid of death?728 With these words he showed that he had faith in God, not in his own rigorous penitence. This blessed saint was certain that there is no confusion to those that hope in him.729 We, too, even if we were to serve our bridegroom ardently and to preserve our conscience immaculate, must trust in divine mercies and not in ourselves, singing, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us; but to thy name give glory,”730 for why to glory, as if thou hadst not received it?731 Saint Bernard, heaven’s valiant champion so beloved by the Virgin, possessed the goodness and integrity of life known to all the world, but was nevertheless afraid and would say he had decided never to laugh until he heard the sweet voice of the supreme judge counting him among his elect, placing him among those to whom he will say, “Come, ye blessed.”732 What is more, he asserted that he wished never to cease crying until he was certain he would be excluded from that numerous crowd who will hear, “Go, you cursed.”733 In imitation of this leader of ours, we too promise not to let worldly laughter weigh down our souls, while our true happiness will consist in awaiting the promises made to us by a mouth that cannot lie. But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.734 The words of God are eternally true. Not so those of men, said the prophet: “the sons of men are liars in the balances.”735 Their promises and vows, which should cause happiness in others, are scattered to the wind, and by their fallaciousness they cause sadness. Part of this opinion of mine was validated by the poet who said: Vows and promises end up dispersed and scattered in the wind.736 728. Egredere. Quid times? Egredere anima mea. Quid dubitas? Septuaginta prope annis servisti Christum, et Mortem times? From the Roman Breviary, third reading for the Feast of Saint Hilarion (October 21). Cf. Breviarium Romanum, 1065. Translation from The Roman Breviary, 1105. 729. non est confusio sperantibus in eo. Quoted in Saint Thomas Aquinas, In Psalmos Davidis Expositio, “Psalmus 33,” section 6. See Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia, 18:419. He refers to Daniel 3:40, which in the Vulgate reads non est confusio confidentibus in te (there is no confusion to them that trust in thee). 730. non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. Psalms 113:9 (also numbered as Psalms 115:1). 731. quid gloriari quasi non acceperis. Cf. 1 Corinthians 4:7. 732. Venite benedicti. Matthew 25:34. 733. Ite maledicti. Variation of Matthew 25:41, Discedite a me maledicti (Depart from me, you cursed). 734. Verbum autem Domini manet in aeternum. 1 Peter 1:25. 735. Mendaces filij hominum in stateris. Psalms 61:10. 736. I giuramenti e le promesse vanno / nell’aria al vento dissipate e sparse. Cf. Ariosto, Orlando furioso, canto 10.6, verses 1–2: I giuramenti e le promesse vanno / dai venti in aria disipate e sparse (Ariosto,

226 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI Let us not, then, allow any other hope to nourish us, or other thought to occupy our minds, than a most ardent desire to bring to completion the work of scrupulously serving our one true eternal Good, and the desire to have no other purpose than to ensure our salvation, which we have to procure and seek, aspiring to nothing else and measuring our every action as aimed only at this end. If a worldly writer had enough illumination to say, Happy is the one who measures every step, And whoever looks at the end,737 all the more should we souls in love with the celestial Lord respect the end for which he created us. A sure rule to avoid erring in divine service, holy living, and not harming our neighbor, is to have always fixed in our minds that reminder, Consider the end.738 With these three words alone impressed on our minds, we shall abstain from malice and defend ourselves from the traps of the enemy tempter. These words serve us as a sign, like the letter T on the forehead of those who were untouched by the wrath of the angel who had been sent by God to exterminate the most wicked souls.739 These words will be like a bit that will hold us back from the precipice whenever we are assailed by temptations of ambitious thoughts, prideful pretensions, greedy desires. Consider the end.740 Those who live wickedly end with a death that never ends, accompanied by incomparable horrors and everlasting torments. If our hearts are moved to anger, to scorn, to vendetta, to lasciviousness, or to any other kind of divine offense, our knowledge of the end will hold us back from errors, and, almost like freezing water, it will extinguish the ardors of the senses and of hatred. For those who navigate the tempestuous sea of religious life, turning one’s thoughts to the end is like a compass from which they will always learn where to turn the stern, point the bow, and keep the ship of the soul safe as it is tossed about by so many opposing winds. Our end is nothing other than death. If this is the goal of our thoughts in our every action, we shall walk along the safe road of perfection, since the mere thought of having to die is the sharpest spur at the side of a Christian soul so that it may race quickly to the destination of eternal salvation. Every day, every hour—indeed, every moment—we draw closer to this end, and therefore we must hasten with our good works lest we be caught unprepared by Orlando furioso, ed. Caretti, 1:225). 737. Felice chi misura ogni suo passo, / E chi de l’opra sua riguarda il fine. A proverbial phrase. See La sapienza del mondo: ovvero, Dizionario universale dei proverbi di tutti i popoli, ed. Gustavo Strafforello (Turin: Augusto Federico Negro, 1883), 2:51. 738. Respice finem. A proverbial phrase. See La sapienza del mondo, 2:81. 739. Cf. Ezekiel 9:4–5. In the scriptural text, the mark was the letter tau (“Thau” in the Vulgate), the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. 740. Respice finem. See note 738.

Convent Paradise 227 the Tartarean enemies.741 If we take seriously the horridness of the end that looms and consider that the tribulations and scourges we suffer in this vale of tears are tolerable because they are finite, since nothing in this mortal life torments eternally, we must readily labor with holy works to avoid horrid and perpetual pain and to gain the unending joy and happiness enjoyed by the saints. But because one cannot gain celestial glory without passing beneath the sickle of death,742 we must work to achieve such an end that we are numbered among those of whom the Church sings, Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord.743 Saint Paul, anxious to make such a happy passage and to arrive at the blessed end (as he said elsewhere), declared as much, saying, “I long to be dissolved and to be with Christ.”744 And Elijah desired for his soul that he might die.745 Death, though naturally abhorred by all, is however that end we must so yearn for, and which we must longingly hope to reach, since the highly celebrated Tuscan poet said that death is not horrible except to the wicked. He wrote: Death is the end of dark imprisonment For gentle souls, but bringeth agony To those whose cares rise not above the mire.746 We, therefore, do not wish to submerge ourselves in the mud of impure, ambitious, and false thoughts, for death shall not be burdensome to us, but rather an end for us to every ill and the beginning of the sweetest glory without end. Let us always, oh mortals, keep our eyes fixed on the end. The thought of it in this pilgrimage, in this constant war—for this fragile life of ours is nothing else—will be a faithful escort, a propitious star, and a defensive weapon, and therefore in our final breaths we shall not have to whimper timidly in terror of the reaper of all our lives. Let us maintain firm in our mind the thought of the end so that we cannot sin against God, since he shall be the sole aim of all of our efforts. We shall take to heart what the beloved disciple teaches us, Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God, in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.747 To 741. I.e., “the infernal enemies,” from Tartarus, the underworld. 742. A reference to the day of judgment described in Revelation 14:14–20. 743. Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur. Revelation 14:13. 744. Cupio dissolvi, et esse cum Christo. Cf. Philippians 1:23. See note 253 (the same verse is quoted). 745. Petivit animae suae ut moreretur. Jonah 4:8. 746. La morte è’l fin d’una prigione oscura  /  agli animi gentili, agli altri annoia  /  c’hanno posto nel fango ogni lor cura. Cf. Petrarch, Triumph of Death, 2.34–36. See Petrarch, Opere, 295; The Triumphs of Petrarch, 61. 747. Sive manducatis, sive bibitis, sive aliud quid faciatis, omnia in gloriam Dei facitis, in verbo, aut in opere, omnia in nomine Domini Iesu Christi facite, gratias agentes Deo, et Patri per ipsum. Cf. 1 Corinthians 10:31, Sive ergo manducatis, sive bibitis, sive aliud quid facitis: omnia in gloriam Dei

228 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI reach a joyful end, then, we promise never to have any other end but to serve and love our Beloved as brides languishing for love and languishing for the desire to reciprocate his love,748 and so much the more as he showed his love for us with the infinity of his infinite affections. He hath first loved us.749 He wished at the end to give us signs—indeed, certainty—of the immensity of his affection, and with his last breath he tenderly recommended us to the care of the Eternal Father, obliging us to return his love until the end without concern for the hardships and tribulations of religious life. He always increased his most ardent loving flame, never diminishing it. Such did his dearest John wish to imply, saying, “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end.”750 For those who wish to love perfectly, it is necessary to love until the end, but endlessly—Christ was the teacher of this and we must be the disciples. To show that we have learned the way to love in the schools of love, we need to measure the quality of our love against the value of the thing we love, and since there is no doubt that what invites love is beauty, we are bound to love our bridegroom in proportion to his beauty, which is infinite. Aristotle said that beauty is made for nothing else but to be loved, and Diotima wrote that true beauty is what is ever-existent and neither comes to be nor perishes, neither waxes nor wanes; and all the multitude of beautiful things partake of it.751 Such is the beauty of our highest Good, which cannot be equaled, for it is not only perfect in itself but all things become beautiful by sharing in it, for, always overflowing, it never becomes less nor lacks. Who among us, then, has a heart so hardened that it does not languish at the contemplation of loveliness? Go ahead and fall in love, oh our thoughts, in longing for those most beautiful and eternal lights. Impassion yourselves, oh desires, in the longing for those celestial forms that give glory to paradise. In Plato’s academy it was accepted as an infallible truth that love is nothing but a desire to enjoy goodness and beauty. Love is the enjoyment of beauty, and the desire for good.752 Given that—since all beauty and goodness are gathered in no one but God, because he alone is infinitely beautiful and perfectly good—he alone must facite (Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God); Colossians 3:17, Omne, quodcumque facitis in verbo aut in opere, omnia in nomine Domini Jesu Christi, gratias agentes Deo et Patri per ipsum (All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him). 748. See Song of Songs 5:8. 749. Ipse prior dilexit nos. 1 John 4:10. 750. Cum dilexisset suos, qui erant in Mundum, in finem dilexit eos. Cf. John 13:1. 751. Quae semper est, nec fit, nec interit, nec crescit, nec descrescit, et cuius participatione omnia sunt pulchra. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 210e–211b. Translation from Plato, Lysis. Symposium. Gorgias, trans. Lamb, 204–205. 752. Amor est fruenda pulchritudinis, et bonitatis desiderium. Tarabotti may be using “In Convivium commentarium,” Marsilio Ficino’s commentary on Plato’s Symposium, as an intermediary source. See Ficino, ed., Plato: Opera omnia (Leiden: Antoine Vincent, 1557), 262.

Convent Paradise 229 be loved with an overflowing affection proportional to the immensity of his lovable qualities. There must be as much beauty in love as beauty itself is beloved.753 Trismegistus754 clearly explained it: Infinite beauty requires infinite love.755 We owe an infinite and immense love to the infinite and immense divine beauty, but since this is impossible for our transient nature, formed of nothing if not a bit of dust, it is fitting at least that we burn with a celestial fire until the end of our life, so that we may then truly unite ourselves with Holy Divinity, the ideation of all earthly and immortal beauty. St. Augustine teaches us which tie will bind us in this unity: Charity is the strength of coupling lover with lover.756 Charity, which is the same as love, allows us to merit this most happy union, but let it not be temporary or inconstant, but lasting until the end, insofar as we can sustain it, for in such a way we will obtain the reward we yearn for. Oh delight of our souls, what immense sweetness is felt by those hearts that, in loving you, unite with you. In them the most loving words of your servant are proven: The tongue cannot tell, Nor the tongue express, Only those who have experienced it Can believe what it is to love Jesus.757 To experience the pleasures that are felt in loving God, we must love him with ardor and perseverance because it is not enough to be dedicated to him as brides, to remain secluded in the cloisters, to maintain obedience, poverty, chastity, humility, or perseverance only for some time. If one does not, persevering, reach the very end, all is in vain and every action remains unworthy of reward and praise, because: The end crowns the life, the evening the day.758 If in advancing ourselves 753. Talis debet esse amore, qualis est amata pulcritudo. While the text glosses Ficino’s commentary on Plato (see previous note), these lines do not appear there in the form as quoted by Tarabotti. 754. Hermes Trismegistus, said to have been the author of the Corpus Hermeticum, a body of texts dating to the second and third centuries CE that were later translated by Marsilio Ficino. 755. Infinita pulcritudo infinitum requirit amorem: See Ficino, Plato: Opera omnia, 278. 756. Caritas est vis copulans amantem cum amato. Saint Bonaventure, in the third book of his Sententiarum, cites this quotation as being from the book Spiritu et Anima, which was erroneously attributed to Saint Augustine. See Bonaventure, Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, bk. 3 (distinctio 27, dub. 1), in Opera omnia, vol. 3 (Quaracchi: Collegio San Bonaventura, 1887), 615. 757. Nec lingua valet dicere, / nec lingua exprimere, / Expertus potest credere, / Quid sit Iesum diligere. Cf. “Jesu Dulcis Memoria,” a hymn attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. In the second line, lingua (“tongue”) is repeated, perhaps in error for the littera (meaning “written word”) in the original verse. 758. La vita, il fin, il dì loda la sera. Cf. Petrarch, Canzoniere, 23.31. See Petrarch, Opere, 17; Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, 60.

230 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI in the practices of religious life we carry on until the very end, serving our adored bridegroom until the welcome repose of our hearts, we have no reason to doubt our salvation—not because a mortal creature can ever advance so far as to merit an eternity of blessings, but because his mercy is greater than his every other divine quality. And his mercy is all over his works.759 With this not only did he create and redeem us, but he chose us for his servants and brides. With this he is always ready to receive our every repentance and to reconcile to his grace all those sinners who offend him every day, many of whom sacrilegiously believe their salvation is irrevocable by predestination, not remembering that the prince of the apostles exhorted all of us to contribute to our own vocation and salvation since we are free to do so.760 He said: Brethren, labor, that by good works you may make sure your calling.761 With a patent but common heresy, those people go around saying that the judgment for their damnation or salvation has been given eternally, and it matters little whether they live in a holy manner or impiously, since whoever is written in the book of life can never be erased.762 These days well can one say: How many Epicureans, and how many impious atheists / are jumbled and mixed in amid God’s flock.763 It is a most impious wickedness to live with that saying in mind, doing only as one wishes, because, as Holy Scripture says, no one can be certain whether he is worthy of hatred or love, that is, of salvation or damnation. Man knoweth not whether he be worthy of hatred, or love.764 All of us can easily look inside ourselves to know if they are in mortal sin, but this does not suffice to ensure divine grace, since all things are kept uncertain for the time to come.765 Augustine, Navarrus, and others say that no sin is so venial that it might not be made a mortal sin if it pleases the sinner.766 Who can boast of being able to determine the state of others’ souls? Only you, only you, my God, true scrutinizer of hearts, who will be the ruling judge. Even if you usually judge according to

759. Et misericordia eius super omnia opera eius. Cf. Psalms 144:9, glossed in the text: Et miserationes ejus super omnia opera ejus (And his tender mercies are all over his works). 760. A central point of discord between Catholics and Protestants was the issue of predestination. 761. Frates satagite, ut per bona opera certam vestram vocationem faciatis. Cf. 2 Peter 1:10. 762. This passage touches on a central Reformation debate between Catholics and Protestants over the role of works versus faith in salvation. Protestants argued that faith alone was sufficient for salvation, whereas the post-Tridentine Church insisted on the fundamental importance of works. 763. Quanti epicuri, e quanti empi ateisti / fra la greggia di Dio confusi e misti. Citation not identified; perhaps Tarabotti’s own. 764. Nescit homo utrum odio, an amore dignus sit. Cf. Ecclesiastes 9:1. 765. omnia in futurum servantur incerta. Ecclesiastes 9:2. 766. nullum peccatum veniale est quod non fiat criminale dum placet. These words are attributed to Augustine and Navarrus (Martín de Azpilcueta) in Giulio Mazzarino, David: Cento discorsi (Venice: Appresso la compagnia della Venezia, 1602), 321.

Convent Paradise 231 thy great mercy,767 you clearly see the internal merit or demerit of those who are worthy of your grace or of your scorn. Our minds’ eye, obfuscated by earthliness, can be fooled by appearances, since we cannot clearly recognize those errors that, easily committed, can also easily bring our souls to ruin without our even knowing. How many, oh how many mortal sins seem venial to us! But even if they were what they seem to us, the severity of punishment in Purgatory should rein us in from committing them. Dante said of a just soul who was purging venial sins: O dignity of conscience, noble, chaste, how one slight fault can sting you into shame.768 The prick769 of conscience caused by light and venial sins is very severe in this life. On the contrary, the knowledge of one’s own innocence provides more felicity, happiness, and delight than anything else in this inferior world, since it truly creates in Christian souls the peace of Paradise. Let us hear what the just said: Our glory is this: the testimony of our conscience.770 An immaculate conscience is a source of joy and consolation not only for us, but also for our most loving Creator, who does not delight merely in the flowers of holy appearances, of good thoughts, and of just intentions, since these alone do not generate actions conforming to his will. Of each of them he says, there is not strength to bring forth.771 He rejoices most highly in seeing the souls of the women who serve him free from the smallest shadow of sin. Since good conscience does not consist only of what is on the outside, our Redeemer wants real accomplishments, results, and actions. He does not only seek the visible leaves of external acts, but yearns for ripe fruit not eaten through by a worm—that is, by internal feelings. He does not care if, veiled, we call ourselves nuns in habit and his brides in name when the worm of sin rots us inside. It is divine practice to investigate whether the vine is flowering and then to see if it is bearing fruit. Let us go into the field, and let us see if the vineyard flourish.772 However, he is not content with flowers, which are good intentions, but he looks beyond: If the flowers be ready to bring forth fruits.773 Those flowers that do not 767. Secundum magnam misericordiam vestram. Psalms 50:3. 768. O degnitosa conscienza, e netta, / Come t’è picciol fallo amaro morso. Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, 3.8–9. The translation is from Dante Alighieri, Purgatory, 23. 769. sinderesi. OED, 3rd ed., s.v. “synderesis”: remorse or prick of conscience (obscure). 770. Gloria nostra haec est testimonium conscientiae nostrae. Cf. 2 Corinthians 1:12. 771. non est virtus pariendi. Cf. Isaiah 37:3. 772. Ingrediamur in agrum, et videamus si floruit vinea. Cf. Song of Songs 7:12, Mane surgamus ad vineas, et videamus si floruit vinea (Let us get up early to the vineyards, let us see if the vineyard flourish). 773. Videamus si flores fructus parturiunt. Song of Songs 7:12.

232 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI produce fruit are not to be valued at all. Good intentions and just thoughts may flower, but if they do not produce the fruit of penitence, holiness, and love, they are little valued—indeed not valued at all—by His Divine Majesty. We continually beseech him to help us with efficacious grace, as Saint Paul obtained, who heard: My grace is sufficient for thee, Paul, for power is made perfect in infirmity.774 Oh our one true Good, may one drop, we beg, one drop, of your grace fall upon us, and each of us, together with that very vessel of election, will boldly say: By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me hath not been void.775 Give us grace, grace, oh Lord, lest we perish in the hands of the infernal beast. May thy grace, O Lord, always prevent776 and follow us; and make us constantly zealous in the practice of good works.777 May the dew of divine grace surely fall on us; otherwise we cannot ripen the fruits that are so pleasing to our Creator. Without grace, faith is dead, charity cooled, and hope destroyed. We therefore seek nothing but grace from you, oh most beautiful Bridegroom of our souls. God once said: My delights were to be with the children of men.778 But if he finds it so delightful to be with us, and, wherever he lives, grace is never far, well can we believe and assuredly affirm that the convents in which floods of his holy grace rain down are empyreal heavens, always inhabited by God himself. It is said of him that in earthly paradise he walked in the afternoon air.779 But in the hearts of his brides he does not walk; immobile and fixed he admires, with the eyes of one truly in love, what bravery they display, what blows and what valor they employ in their spiritual battles. Oh, what delights befitting his divine heart does he find in these, not earthly paradises, but celestial gardens in which the triumphs of the Holy Church flourish? Here he admires the sweet-scented and inaccessible lily of virginity that gives off a fragrance worthy of his nostrils. He sees the rose of charity bud, which, burning in its colors, opens its flowering breast to the dew of grace from on high. He notices all of the other virtues budding, well cultivated, which indeed seem like flowers transplanted from paradise 774. Sufficit tibi, Paule, gratia mea, non virtus in infirmitate perficitur. Cf. 2 Corinthians 12:9. An error in Tarabotti’s text inserts a negation that is absent from the original verse: Sufficit tibi gratia mea: nam virtus in infirmitate perficitur. 775. Gratia Dei sum id quod sum, et gratia eius in me vacua non fuit. Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:10. 776. That is, come before. 777. Gratia tua, Domine semper, et perveniat, et sequatur, ac bonis operibus iugiter prestet esse intentos. These words are found in the Missale Romanum ex decreto sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, 28th ed. (Rome: Juxta Tipicam Vaticanam, 2004), 447 (oration for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost). Translation from The Roman Missal, Translated into the English Language for the Use of the Laity … by the Right Rev’d Doctor [John] England (Philadelphia: Eugene Cummiskey, 1843), 429. 778. Deliciea meae esse cum filiis hominum. Proverbs 8:31. 779. ambulabat ad auram post meridiem. Cf. Genesis 3:8, Et cum audissent vocem Domini Dei deambulantis in paradiso ad auram post meridiem (And when they heard the voice of God walking in paradise in the afternoon air).

Convent Paradise 233 to the cloisters of the true nuns, who are ideations of holiness and bind the hands of divine wrath. If these nuns did not prevent the lashings merited by the sins of the world, flames of fire would extend throughout the universe to incinerate men, waters would cover the highest towers and the most sublime peaks, and the earth would open up to swallow these reprobates who with such excessive sins offend their Creator. But the most clement one, who once pardoned the ungrateful Israelites at the prayers of his beloved Moses, now, at the prayers of the militia of men and women religious, holds back the lightning bolts which the most ungrateful Christian people deserve. Once, at the insistent entreaties of Moses, he cured Mary,780 Moses’s sister, of the leprosy set upon her because of her murmurings against her own brother;781 in present times, at the most ardent prayers of nuns, oh how many punishments does he withhold, how many tribulations does he sweeten, oh how many infistulated and cancerous ills does he cure that have fallen upon mortals from his just hand precisely because of the continual murmurings uttered by terrible tongues against priests and his maidservants and brides! In early times it was impossible to obtain graces from heaven without the intercession of the high priest. Now the entire and certain salvation of humanity, both soul and body, is in the hands of good ecclesiastical ministers and in the prayers of willing and holy nuns. Without absolution, the entrance to heaven is always barred; without their prayers, men would be punished for their sins as soon as they committed them. Joshua, to help the Jews, stopped the course of the sun.782 Nuns, for Christianity’s benefit, hold back the burning rays of divine wrath with their prayers, whereby fires do not rain down upon reckless misbelievers and infidel sinners, but instead the immense light of heavenly mercy shines upon them. God sent a gilded sword by means of Onias the priest, who had died a long time before, to Judas Maccabeus for his fight against Nicanor,783 with which a glorious victory was heralded. But God more firmly assured us of winning, giving us the holy cross, a sword in fact, gilded and bejeweled with the rubies of his most precious blood and so sharp—to the peril of the infernal Nicanor—that we are always victorious over his pridefulness. Whoever does not use this sword is not worthy of being numbered among the champions of Christ. Whosoever does not carry his cross is not worthy of this.784 780. That is, Miriam; see note 491 above. 781. Miriam was stricken with leprosy (a skin disfigurement known as tzaraath) because she had raised a complaint about Moses; see Numbers 12:10–12. 782. See Joshua 10:12-14. 783. Cf. 2 Maccabees 15. The High Priest Onias III appears to Judas Maccabeus in a vision, along with Jeremiah, who hands him the sword he will wield against the general Nicanor. 784. Qui non baiulat crucem suam, non est hac dignus. Cf. Luke 14:27, Et qui non bajulat crucem suam, et venit post me, non potest me esse discipulus (And whosoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple).

234 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI Acts of profound humility, and the harsh penitence no less of the city than of the king of Nineveh, the clamoring of the whole population, and rigorous fasting were the things that, rising up to the ears of God, made him take pity and suspend the punishment earlier threatened them by the prophet Jonah.785 The seclusion of his most faithful brides in the paradise of the cloister (who remember the promise made him in their consecration, I keep faith with him alone);786 the drab habits, punishments, hair shirts, restrictions and parsimony of food; the continual prayers and the acts of penitence that they perform for sinners in the paradise of the cloister,787 all serve to take the whip from his hand. They soften him and work in such a marvelous way that justice cedes to mercy and disdain to compassion. This is, however, an effect of divine grace, to enjoy the fruits of which one must be in a state to receive it, with a disposition to merit it, so that the Savior does not fail to communicate it—Grace and truth by Jesus Christ.788 You, oh infallible truth, are the sea from which all graces flow, and therefore I beseech you, oh my Lord and my God, kindly to give me the grace to stand before you just as Daniel obtained it before King Nebuchadnezzar, of whom your Scripture says: The Lord gave to Daniel grace in the sight of the king.789 But, oh sweetest Bridegroom and loving God, because you have rained your graces down on me with a generous hand all throughout my life, I would have grounds to fear that I could seem importunate to you and receive a refusal befitting my sins, if your judgments and graces were not entirely different from the justice and favors of earthly princes. I know myself to be the vilest creature, ungrateful, daughter of wrath, and guilty of eternal damnation, but yet I do not lose hope in the depths of your love. Oh Lord, oh dear true Good of my soul, if only I merited through my works to be able freely and truthfully to say, Father, behold, for so many years do I serve thee, and I have never transgressed thy commandment.790 But, alas, unworthy and wretched, I delayed everything that I should have done. I do not despair, however, knowing that it is your habit to smile upon penitent sinners. And where sin abounded, grace did more abound.791 I would indeed hope for this grace, but I know myself unworthy of it. 785. Jonah 1:1–2. 786. Ipsi soli servo fidem. The seventh responsory in the matins for the Office of the Feast of Saint Agnes, from which the consecration ceremony draws. Translation from Mueller, A Companion to Clare, 186. 787. Paradiso claustrale, similar to Paradiso monacale, another reference to the work’s title. 788. Gratia, et veritas per Iesum Christum. Cf. John 1:17 (incorrectly glossed in the text as Romans 15). 789. Dedit Dominus Danieli gratiam in conspectu regis. Cf. Daniel 1:9, Dedit autem Deus Danieli gratiam et misericordiam in conspectu principus eunuchorum (And God gave to Daniel grace and mercy in the sight of the prince of the eunuchs). 790. Pater, ecce tot annos servio tibi, et mandatum tuum numquam preterivi. Cf. Luke 15:29. 791. Ubi abundavit delistum, superabundavit et gratia. Cf. Romans 5:20.

Convent Paradise 235 I turn to you, therefore, oh most faithful guide and sure advocate of mortal sinners. I already feel hope grow stronger when I hear sinners say, Let us go with confidence to the throne of grace.792 And who is the throne of grace other than you, oh sacrosanct Virgin? Gabriel, the paranymph of heaven, greeted you with no other name when he paid you that happy visit on my behalf: Hail, full of grace.793 If one can admire in you the embodiment of all the graces, how many, oh how many graces can your followers hope, or rather, know you will spread among them? No one can ever hope for grace without your favor, protection, and patronage, since you are the absolute mistress and empress of heaven. The Holy Spirit, oh Mary, said you were the neck of the mystical body of the Church, whose head is God. He hath constituted him head over all the Church.794 You are the closest to him. One is my dove, she is near to me.795 At every movement of the neck, the head moves. At your every sign, God will forgive every sin. In short, in your hands, oh great queen, you hold all of the graces, and thus it has been said of you, her hand dripped with myrrh.796 Earthly princes tend to wait to concede major favors since for political reasons they do not want to grant these until their beloved consorts intercede, in order that these ladies be more loved and venerated and esteemed by their subjects, all thanks to their worldly beauty. What graces, therefore, and important favors will be conceded upon your intercession with that High Majesty, to whom you are at the same time daughter and bride797 so dearly loved? Ah, princess of the universe, you are, so to speak, the absolute mistress of divine dispositions. But forgive me if I dare too much, since this is not material suited to the lowliness of my intellect. To describe your greatness, oh most sacred Virgin, one would need an angelic tongue, apostolic eloquence, or the quill of the soaring eagle that at the Last Supper, having fallen asleep on the breast of the holy teacher, learned all the secrets and mysteries of paradise.798 You are the treasury of all the treasures

792. Adeamus cum fiducia ad tronum gratiae. Cf. Hebrews 4:16. 793. Ave gratia plena. Luke 1:28. On Gabriel’s role as paranymph, see note 619. 794. Ipsum constituit caput super omnem Ecclesiam. Cf. Ephesians 1:22. 795. Una est columba mea proxima mea. Cf. Song of Songs 6:9, Una est columba mea perfecta mea (One is my dove, my perfect one is but one). 796. Manus eius distillaverunt miram. Cf. Song of Songs 5:5, Manus meae stillaverunt myrrham (My hands dropped with myrrh). 797. See above, note 435. 798. A reference to John 13:23, in which the apostle John is described as “leaning on Jesus’ bosom.” Many depictions of the Last Supper depict John sleeping, for example the fresco by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1480) in the convent of the Ognissanti in Florence. Tarabotti conflates John the Apostle with John the Evangelist, whose symbol, the eagle, is often depicted sitting beside him as he writes. On the evangelist and the eagle, see note 611; on the conflation of the apostle with the evangelist, see page 108n173.

236 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI of divinity, and as Andrew of Crete799 said, the shared propitiatory of the world.800 I thus admire and adore you, and declare to you my heart’s everlasting homage. Since you are the epitome of virginity, I am assured that you will not fail to be pleased by my virginal offering, and since you were a model for the religious life, you will be gratified by the adoration that as a nun I have for you. The nuns’ habit had no other origin than that of the tunic that covered your most sacred flesh, and that same belt that circled your most pure loins is the one that the cloistered use to gird themselves. No virtue holds sway among them that has not already been perfected and religiously practiced by you. Therefore I—who have learned from you, oh most merciful lady, the model for the religious life—prostrate on the ground, most profoundly adore you and implore you. The impious Jewish people, having been dazzled by the luminous splendors of the moon, sacrificed to it as if to a goddess and, fooled by its silvery appearance, called it queen of the heavens.801 On account of this, your only son—who at that time left no sin unpunished—was angered and made them understand by means of a prophet that if they did not stop adoring that planet, he would destroy them as a punishment for such a great failing. Frightened, this people—as you well know, oh true empress of the angels—returned to true religion, but His Divine Majesty, not satisfied, threw down upon them many scourges and punishments. Believing that this was happening to them because they had stopped worshipping Diana, they scolded the prophet and raised their voices as one, saying: We wish to return to the queen of heaven.802 Upon my entry into the religious life, I, too, turned to consider your great merits, oh true queen of the heavens, and contemplated the immaculate candor of your virginity, more pure and radiant than any polished silver, that like a radiant moon makes you appear entirely encircled by rays: And [she] shone in [her] days as the moon at the full.803 So I undertook with all my heart and soul to adore you. But because this was a rightful and just adoration, I was persuaded not by a prophet of God, but by the senses—the devil’s ambassadors— 799. Saint Andrew of Crete, or Andrew of Jerusalem, an eighth-century bishop and theologian, known for his praises of Mary. 800. Propitiatorio. OED, 3rd ed., s.v. “mercy seat”: “The lid of gold, decorated with two winged cherubim, covering the Ark of the Covenant, upon which God is said to have been enthroned, and taken as representing the divine presence in the world. 801. This may be a reference to Jeremiah 44, which tells of God’s anger at the Jewish people “[b]ecause of the wickedness which they have committed, to provoke me to wrath, and to go and offer sacrifice, and worship other gods, which neither they, nor you, nor your fathers knew” (44:3). The deity referred to is “the queen of heaven.” As the women say to Jeremiah, “But since we left off to offer sacrifice to the queen of heaven, and to pour out frank offerings to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword, and by famine” (44:18). 802. Redire volumus ad Reginam Coeli. Mary is frequently referred to in liturgy as “Queen of Heaven,” particularly among the Benedictines. 803. Et sicut luna plena in diebus suis lucet. Cf. Ecclesiasticus 50:6.

Convent Paradise 237 to abandon that little devotion I had for you. Indignant at this, the Sun, your Christ,804 assailed me with illness, worries, and suffering, and unjust persecutions carried out by two most cunning wolves who cloaked their wickedness under falsely friendly guise, so that when I was made aware of my errors, I exclaimed not impiously—like the Jews—but in a Christian way: Therefore I want to return to the queen of heaven.805 I want to return to Mary, the guiding star of those who navigate the stormy sea of sin. I want to return from vice to grace, steered by my usual guide, mother, tutor, mistress, liberator, physician, the refuge and hope of every Catholic—but even more, of every sinner. I want again to shelter under the cloak of that queen of the heavens, of whom God himself said, One work I have done; and you all wonder.806 I want to be protected by her who, sacrarium of the Holy Spirit and (I almost said) perfection of the most Holy Trinity, had it said in praise of her, Noble triclinium of the whole Trinity.807 To you, oh sweetest Virgin, I want to return. Well do I realize that by straying from your service, I have fallen into so many adversities. Graft once again upon my unrepentant and incorrigible heart the roots of goodness that produce the fruits which are ripened by the fecund light of the Holy Spirit’s rays, so that I may have ripen in me ardent charity, spiritual jubilation, perfect peace, uninterrupted patience, gentle kindness, perseverant forbearance, simple goodness, religious meekness, constant faith, unaffected modesty, firm continence, and pure chastity. You, you, oh most merciful lady, who dispense the grace of God, share it with me, too, by means of the authoritative arm of your mercy, so that they can say of me, you have found grace before God.808 You, like a moon that remains close to the sun of justice, never lack but always overflow with graces. I beg of you, implore of your Beloved, my constancy in serving him, since he does not admit to eternal happiness him that will have begun, but says that he that will have persisted to the end, shall be saved.809 I know full well that I do not 804. I.e., Christ as the sun, in relation to Mary as moon. 805. Ergo redire volo ad Reginam Coeli. See note 802. The “cunning wolves” are likely other nuns (see, for example, notes 103, 113, 334, and 573 above). 806. Unum opus feci, et omnes miramini. John 7:21. 807. Totius Trinitatis nobile Triclinium. These are verses by the twelfth-century hymnist Adam of Saint Victor. See Oeuvres poétiques d’Adam de S.-Victor, ed. Léon Gautier (Paris: Julien, Lanier, Cosnard, 1859), 2:192. The verses appear in the sequence hymn for the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin (September 8). A triclinium describes a furnishing in ancient Rome. OED, 3rd ed., s.v. “triclinium”: “A couch, running round three sides of a table, on which to recline at meals.” Adam of Saint Victor represents Mary, in other words, as a resting place for all members of the Trinity, and Tarabotti has introduced the quotation with Mary as the sanctuary (the “sacrarium”) of the Holy Spirit. 808. Invenisti gratiam coram Deo. Cf. Proverbs 3:4, Et invenies gratiam, et disciplinam bonam, coram Deo et hominibus (And thou shalt find grace and good understanding before God and men). 809. qui inceperit; qui perseveraverit usque in finem, hic salvus erit. Cf. Saint Bernard, epistle 129: Deninque non qui inceperit sed qui perseveraverit usque in finem, hic salvus erit. For the latter verse that

238 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI deserve it, for tempted by our common enemy, accustomed to bad habits, pulled by a wicked inclination, and pushed by a natural fragility, I have cause to fear a new fall. Therefore I appeal to you, oh most clement lady, that you may intercede for me a firm and determined will to do good and an unchanging and perseverant constancy in loving your only son and my Lord and bridegroom. These good desires do not help me at all without your mediation and intercession, and thus here I am, humbly genuflected at your feet, to beg to be reconciled with God. Already, trusting in you, I am awaiting this, and in the meantime I will remain secluded within my celestial cell to rejoice in the contemplation of your—and my—dear Beloved. I am preparing my heart to receive the fullness of grace from which glory derives, with the hope of passing from this convent, called the house of God, to dwell in the celestial Jerusalem, of which, since it is the city of saints, it is said, Glorious things are said of thee, O city of God.810 But let us return to the place from which my fervor has transported me, since finding myself in a Paradise of religious life811 I had nearly forgotten that I am among mortals. And who would not lose all their senses, not just memory, while being absorbed in the spiritual delights of—I do not know if I should say—a heaven on earth or an earthly dwelling become a heaven? Here, where one continually hears the praises of God resounding—the same heard by John, who later wrote in Apocalypse, I heard as it were a great voice of much people in heaven saying: Alleluia, praise, and glory and power to our God. For true and just are his judgments.812 These most resplendent cloisters always resound with voices that exult in the praise and glory of the Saint of all saints. He so rejoices in these that, enamored, he says, Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the friends hearken to you: make me hear thy voice813—as if he wishes to say, “O humble virgin, enclosed in the convent gardens, know that all your friends in heaven are listening to you carefully; that is, the angels themselves wish to hear you. Let your voice flow, therefore, to fill my ears, and theirs, with harmony.” He calls convents horti814 because they are his paradises and gardens, in which he enjoys himself, as in those places meant for his recreation. Here it is worth considering that by saying, “Thou that dwellest in the gardens,”815 it seems he is talking to one virgin only, and he speaks of more than one garden, because this is what he means and his infinite wisdom cannot err: “Come there, my dearests, my most beloved brides, in such a Tarabotti cites, cf. also Matthew 10:22 and 24:13. 810. Gloriosa dicta sunt de te Civitas Dei. Psalms 86:3. 811. Paradiso religioso, another variation on Paradiso monacale. 812. Audivi vocem magnam, quasi turbarum multitudo in Coelum dicentium, Alelluia, laus, et gloria, et virtus Deo nostro, quoniam vera et iusta iudicia sunt eius. Cf. Revelation 19:1–2. 813. Qui habitas in hortis, amici auscultant te, fac me audire vocem tuam. Cf. Song of Songs 8:13. 814. In the Song of Songs 4:12, the bride is called “hortus conclusus,” or “a garden enclosed.” 815. Qui habitas in hortis. See note 813.

Convent Paradise 239 manner that the music of all your wills may come together in concert praising me, and in every other matter appear to be a single voice.” So too did the faithful of the early Church live, of whom Saint Luke says, “the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul.”816 Among ourselves we must not have opposing wills and hearts divided, as forced nuns do. Let sweet voices and consonant hearts be one, for in this way we shall deserve to have the highest cherubim and the most ardent seraphim as avid listeners; indeed we will see that even God our bridegroom will want to hear our virginal and harmonious notes, since he asks us, almost imploringly: make me hear thy voice.817 The qualities of paradise are not lacking in these cloisters, where like the saints in heaven we are always praising and blessing the celestial mover. Of them it is said, They shall come into Sion singing praises, and joy everlasting shall be upon their heads, they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.818 In willing nuns one sees the portrait of perfect happiness, and pain never afflicts them, nor is any complaint or quarrel ever heard from them other than some loving sigh that afflicts them when they find themselves—almost like loving doves—distant from their beloved and adored spouse. A worldly lover wrote: So lovely is the beauty that I adore, That I do not feel my suffering and languishing, And I have my heart fixed on such a pretty thing That I don’t care if I die for loving.819 We do not concede that our ardor in loving is any less than his. Just as the foundations of our affections are greater, so do we love more vehemently. Indeed, we desire nothing else but to die in order to enjoy an eternity of delights in that age without end, and our desires are all the more ardent since they have had a taste of everlasting delights in the paradise of the cloisters. The blessed in heaven enjoy eternal beauty, grace, and glory, which are communicated to them by Christ, as much by his body as by his beatifying soul, and since they know they have been redeemed by his most holy humanity, they marvelously jubilate and rejoice, as they also do when admiring the immense beauty of holiest Mary. Similarly, 816. Moltitudini credentium erat cor unum, et anima una. Acts 4:32. Acts of the Apostles is considered to be a continuation of the Gospel of Luke, who begins both books by addressing the recipient of the texts, Theophilus. 817. Fac me audire vocem tuam. See note 813. 818. Venient in Sion laudantes, et laetitia sempiterna super capita eorum, gaudium, et letitiam obtinebunt, et fugiet dolor et gemitus. Isaiah 51:11. 819. Così leggiadra è la beltà ch’adoro, / Che ‘l mio penar e ‘l mio languir non sento, / Et a sì vago ogetto ho il core intento, / Che non mi cal se per amar io moro. Although the gloss attributes these verses to “Bruni in Epistole amorose,” they are from Fulvio Testi’s Rime, first published in 1613. See Fulvio Testi, Opere del signor Conte Don Fulvio Testi (Venice: Giunti e Baba, 1644), 8.

240 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI cloistered women, blessed on earth, find no other sweetness than contemplating divine grandeur, rejoicing in the salvation received from the God-made-man and in the eminent merits of the Queen of Heaven. After so many afflictions and painful sorrows suffered on earth, those who are just, when they are finally gathered up there in those blessed choirs, will joyfully say as they turn toward God, We have rejoiced for the days in which we have seen evils.820 The nuns, sheltered in the safety of a convent turned paradise, offer constant thanks to their bridegroom who, having freed them from the perilous shipwreck of this world, has filled them with grace. Hence joyously they sing, No matter how grave our troubles be, no matter how painful my death, Never will I repent of loving.821 The delicious sweetnesses of these earthly paradises do not become bitter from any sort of suffering and penitence, since these nuns cultivate eternally toward the highest Good a love, holy and blind, that renders the most bothersome trouble sweet to them. They reason that if their bridegroom declared with Abraham in Genesis, “I am thy protector, and thy reward exceeding great,”822 he will show the same protection in this life to them, too, and afterward will grant them a mercy great beyond measure. The elect of the city of the blessed feed themselves gloriously on the precise knowledge they have of the mysteries of the most Holy Trinity, since God grants them not only complete intelligence to grasp the essence of Divinity, but also the fruitfulness of the Eternal Father, born of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the father and the son. Therefore, we chosen brides of Christ, blessed in the paradise of the cloisters, nourish ourselves with the understanding and belief our faith gives us in the union of the most Holy Trinity, and also in our usual sacramental food, the Eucharistic bread of life—I mean, the sacrament of the altar, with which, beneath a material veil, the Holy Church communicates to us the immensity of the divine. Oh, what paradises are these, where one soars above the heavens in glorious ecstasies! If God our Creator, being near to the blessed, fills them with inestimable joy, here, with equal love, having made himself the bridegroom of us blessed nuns on earth, he makes us experience all the enjoyments of paradise itself in this mortal life. Beyond the beatific vision, there is no contentment enjoyed in heaven by the elect that equals the jubilation they derive from the true charity, from the perfect 820. Letati sumus pro diebus, quibis vidimus mala. Cf. Psalms 89:15. 821. Gravi sian pur quanto esser ponno i guai, / Acerbo quanto può sia il morir mio, / Che non mi pentirò d’amar giamai. Although a gloss attributes these verses to Bruni, they are in fact those of Fulvio Testi in his Rime (see note 819). 822. Ego protector tuus sum, et merces tua magnanimis. Genesis 15:1.

Convent Paradise 241 love with which they love one another in holy union, from the harmony, from the peace, from the tranquility of the soul that fears no disturbance or end. The royal psalmist sang of this, Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem, who hath placed peace in thy borders.823 So too, within the celestial Jerusalem of the cloister walls, live the nuns, who—wholly in love with their bridegroom—love one another with holy charity, and the peace of God creates for them a happiness with unchangeable accord and almost glorious jubilation. If the perfection of beatitude is in large measure the certainty it will last, these earthly angels oblige themselves to eternal enclosure so that they, too, will not lack even this aspect of the enjoyment of heaven. From this comes the certainty of seeing God, living with God, and rejoicing in him for an eternity of happiness. Therefore they say to him: thou shalt fill me with joy with thy countenance.824 Yes, Lord, for when we see your most beautiful face, from which emanate beatifying rays, we will be filled with certain joy and with perfect charity and the greatest certitude we shall live in the kingdom of the just, gathered in the homeland of the elect. In order to merit this by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we prayed to you when we entered, withdrawing from the world to this our first Convent Paradise: Thy good spirit shall lead me into the land of innocents.825 You yourself call the convent a city of innocents, since it is in reality an image of paradise and the reflection of the state in which our first fathers were created. And they were both naked: and were not ashamed.826 We too are not ashamed of being, for your love, naked and poor. For now we await here the promises your sweetest mouth made to all of us, in the person of your mystical and beloved bride, who lovingly—almost pridefully—said, His left hand is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me.827 Since this was such an illustrious favor, she did not dare to say she had attained it, but she said that a time would come in which she would be blessed with so rare a grace. We—also your brides and servants—await at the time of our death to be welcomed finally by your right hand, and we pray you to let us hear in the very same instant your sweetest voice saying, “Come, my spouse, come my chosen one: thou shalt be crowned828—here is the crown that the purity of your virginity has earned.” To which we shall answer, repeating the same notes we sang at our consecration: “Behold, now I see that which I have desired; now I possess that for which I have hoped, now am I united in heaven to Him whom I loved with my whole 823. Lauda Ierusalem Dominum, qui posuit fines tuos pacem. Psalms 147:1 and 147:3. 824. Adimplebis me laetitia cum vulto tuo. Psalms 15:10. 825. Spiritus tuus bonus deducet me in terram innocentiae. Cf. Psalms 142:10. Tarabotti substitutes “terram innocentiae,” the land of innocents, for “terram rectam,” the right land, in the Vulgate. 826. Erat uterque, nudus et non erubescebat. Cf. Genesis 2:25. 827. Leva eius sub capite meo, et dextera illius amplexabitur me. Song of Songs 2:6. 828. Veni Sponsa mea, veni electa mea, veni coronaberis. Cf. Song of Songs 4:8.

242 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI heart upon earth.”829 Anticipating, then, the time of the final moment, we now, humbly prostrate on the ground, invoke you, as did Moses: If I have found favor in thy sight, shew me thy face.830 I, in particular—as the most contemptible, unworthy, and unfaithful of your brides—with humility ask your pardon, oh my life and Bridegroom, too noble and worthy for a soul too earthly and sinful, as I offer you these drops of ink spilled from my pen for no other purpose than to increase your glory as much as a human being can. Have no regard, oh most beneficent God, I beg you, for the imperfection of both these gifts I consecrate to you,831 but only for the devotion of the heart with which I consecrate them to you. Please admire, oh my sweetest one, my oblations with that same eye full of divinity with which you attracted Matthew the tax collector and Peter the fisherman to serve you. With the splendor of one of your glances, steal my heart, for I could call myself most fortunate—indeed, blessed—if my soul were stolen by such a dear and loving thief, who does not know how to steal without at the same time giving. All that I am, I do not want to be for anyone other than you; and if your grand omnipotence deems the offer worthy of scorn, remember, most clement one, that I am your creature, redeemed with your most precious blood. I know it is not your custom to scorn a ready will; thus, turning to you beseechingly, I say: Nor is the little I give you enough to be esteemed, But all that I have I offer to you.832 Revive me then, oh dear God, with a sweet glance from those celestial eyes eclipsed by my sins, so that my mouth, messenger of my affections, can truthfully say from the heart, “Your eye, oh good Jesus, has interceded for the sake of my soul.”833 If I never deserved to be favored by those celestial eyes, look at me at least now, oh my crucified love, for prostrate at your feet I bewail the atrocity of my sins. If the 829. Ecce quod concupivi video, quod speravi iam teneo, ipsi sum iuncta in coelis, quem in terris posita tota devotione dilexi. This antiphon was part of the ceremony to bless and consecrate nuns. Cf. Pontificale romanum, 1:158 (“De benedictione et consecratione virginum”). As with other parts of the ceremony, this was drawn from the Feast of Saint Agnes; see note 453. Translation from The Roman Breviary, 728. 830. Si inveni gratiam in cospectu tuo, ostende mihi faciem tuam. Cf. Exodus 33:13; see also notes 356 and 502. 831. That is, herself and her writing. 832. Né che poco vi dia da imputar sono, / Che quanto dar si può tutto vi dono. Cf. Ariosto, Orlando furioso, canto 1.3, verses 7–8 (Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. Caretti, 1:4). 833. Oculus tuus, o bone Iesu, deprecatus est anima mea. The text includes a gloss to “Thi. 3,” but this is probably an error for Lamentations 3, where in verse 51 we read: Oculus meus depraedatus est animam meam in cunctis filiabus urbis meae (My eye hath wasted my soul because of all the daughters of my city). In that case, deprecatus est anima mea in Tarabotti’s text could be an error for depraedatus est animam meam in the Vulgate.

Convent Paradise 243 wave of tears that flows from my eyes is not so copious as to wash away the filth of my crimes, leave to me, oh my sweet true Good, at least a shade of the value of those tears that you once offered to your Eternal Father to save me from my sins. Oh sweetest treasure of my soul, let the rivulets of your blood wash the filthy stains from my heart. Oh my most just but merciful judge, I shall cry so much that—never ceasing either day or night to drown the pupils of these eyes in a most bitter sea of tears—I shall see either moderated or placated the anger which you justifiably have for the sins I committed against you, my betrayed Bridegroom. Yes, yes, my wounded Lord, look here, for I surrender to you entirely, to you I appeal. Here I am at the foot of the cross, which is that loving throne before which one can hope for forgiveness for any sin, indeed, that throne upon which you sit in triumph over all human wickedness. So did a love poet, speaking of an imagined love, say: And there amid the grasses, faint from weeping, I saw a leader, conquering and supreme, wherein were ample grief and little joy.834 I, too, gazing over the transitory meadows of my vanities and sins, enveloped in the tears of my repentance, see you—not a false or imaginary god of love, but real—triumph over both hell and the world on the cruelest cross. You certainly seem to me a young boy, since you have become so small in comparison to your immense divinity. You are naked, and if you are not armed like vain Love with arrows to wound, you are at least furnished with the sharpest thorns that pierce your temples and crown you as supreme king of suffering. Your eyes are dimmed, oh love of my heart, by a horrible blindfold woven of the drops of your holy blood—and all this for nothing else but to redeem this undeserving soul. I, too, my wounded love, long to be led as a follower on the trail of the triumphant chariot of the Cross, from which shooting blindly, you wound those souls who welcome the wounds and are ready to return your love with loving reciprocation. Oh, how many are gloriously enchained to this chariot?835 834. Ivi tra l’herbe già dal pianger fioco / Viddi un vittorioso e sommo duce, / E dentro assai dolor con breve gioco. Cf. Petrarch, Triumph of Love, 1.10–13: Ivi, fra l’erbe, già del pianger fioco, / vinto dal sonno, vidi una gran luce, / e dentro assai dolor con breve gioco. / Vidi un victorioso e sommo duce … (And there, amid the grasses, faint from weeping, / o’ercome with sleep, I saw a spacious light / wherein were ample grief and little joy. / A leader, conquering and supreme, I saw …). See Petrarch, Opere, 267; The Triumphs of Petrarch, 5. Tarabotti alters the order of Petrarch’s verses; the omission of his second verse, which changes the meaning of the passage, may have been inadvertent. 835. A likely reference to depictions of Petrarch’s Triumphs of Love, from which Tarabotti has just quoted. A sixteenth-century edition of the Triumphs printed in Venice, for example, includes an engraving of a chariot surrounded by various figures with their hands chained. See Il Petrarca con dichiarationi non piu stampate. Insieme con alcune belle annotationi… (Venice: Appresso Nicolò Bevilacqua, 1568), p. 351.

244 ARCANGELA TARABOTTI Here I end, declaring myself your new Psyche,836 most ardently in love with you, and if it is not granted to me to enjoy the sight of you, at least I shall not be denied your embrace in the bed of religious life. However, I am desirous to have the sweet sight of you bless my eyes. Trusting in your mercy, oh Splendor of the Angels and Glory of the Saints, I do not fear that, awakened by my bothersome requests and burned by the sparks of my loving affection, you will abandon me. Instead, you will be more tightly joined to me than ever. I hope, after having rejoiced in you amid the sweetest bitterness of religious life, to have you to enjoy, oh my Beloved, eternally in the eternity of ages. END OF CONVENT PARADISE

836. The beautiful princess beloved by Cupid.

“The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems “The Archangel: Idyll” by an Unnamed Poet for Donna Arcangela Tarabotti’s Convent Paradise837 Dal ciel puro e lucente, che ’l tutto in sè racchiude, e le sfere minori e gli elementi, fuor di lui non v’ha loco che lo copra o ’l circondi, ché gli è tetto e recinto, il nulla e IDDIO. Da quel ciel che più d’altro arde e risplende, che riempie di luce il sol, le stelle, e gli elementi e ’l giorno; e pur vista mortal, vista lincea, affissar non lo può, tarpata e losca; lampa non è ma luce, foco no, ma fiammeggia, anzi di luce è un oceano immenso, appo di cui la stessa luce è orrore. Da quell’eccelsa sede del grand’IDDIO, di cui scabell’è il suolo, ch’è de’ viventi incorrottibil terra; là dove, e senza fede e senza speme ma tutto fiamma fervida e cocente, vive il fedel, colmo di gioia il seno, anzi in un mar d’immenso gioia assorto. Vengo, prima fattura, del gran fabro celeste; primogenita prole, 837. This encomiastic composition includes a wide range of scriptural and mythological references. The “unnamed poet” (incerto [m.]) is knowedgeable about liturgical practices and may have been a member of the Accademia degli Incogniti, which helped Tarabotti to publish this work. The poet could have been the friar Angelico Aprosio, a close friend of Tarabotti’s at the time of Convent Paradise’s publication; he encouraged her to publish the work. The interweaving of erudite and ecclesiastical references is characteristic of his style.

245

246 “The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems e primo erede del Monarca Eterno. Son piropo lucente, dell’empirea magion splendida stella, che del superno Giove il carro eccelso, di beati splendor fregio e adorno, e dal trono di lui tolti i splendori, vengo a cangiar di voi, ciechi mortali, la breve notte in sempiterno die. Son servo, ospite, amico, nunzio, e messaggio del superno coro. Di quel tranquill’Anfriso, di quel sovrano Eruota, di quel vasto ocean, cigno canoro, delle selve del cielo, musico augello. Degli stellanti abissi, amorosa sirena, de’ fortunati Elisi, almo cultore. Son dell’etern’amor, fedele amante; libero sì, ma non rivolto al male, mobile sì, ma nell’amar costante, mente pura e superna, del sommo bel contemplatrice eterna. Spirto son d’ogni ’ncarco terren, libero, e sciolto. Spirto son, cui non toglie inutil pondo, o fosca nube adombra; e del poter e del saper gli uffici. Che nell’oprar non suda, anzi nell’opra, trova (chi ’l crederia!) riposo eterno. Né distrigne il confin d’angusto giro l’alma virtù, ch’a pro di voi mortali, quaggiù sgorgando in amorosa pioggia, diffondo ognor de’ miei celesti influssi. Né contrasta natura, anzi soccombe ogni più eccelsa mole della mia destra al poderoso impero; ch’ad un sol cenno, in un momento solo, come gli atomi suole aura volante, dal Mar Indo l’aggiro, al Mauro Atlante. Né ammirazion vi dia, che tant’io vaglia; che tal è dell’angelica natura la forza e la possanza,

“The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems 247 che qualsisia terrena forza avanza. Ond’è che, qual io sono, menti superne e dive, dal borea all’austro, e dall’occaso all’orto, indi dal lucid’orto al nero occaso, li stellati sentier liete solcando de’ fortunati elisi, d’immortal semidei nobil soggiorno, movon, moventi, immote, del gran carro di Dio l’eterne rote. Son ierarca celeste, del sommo Dio soggetto all’altro impero, dell’angelico stuol prencipe e duce. Io de’ spirti guerrier, invitti e forti, Son fida scorta a gloriose imprese. Io de’ barbari infidi e a Dio rubelli, estermino le squadre e le falangi, smantello le città, distruggo i regni, e ’n un momento sol l’adeguo al suolo. Il sai tu, Egizzio, il sai tu, Assirio, il sanno di Gerico le a Dio nemiche mura, il sa di Giuda la gran reggia altera, che del TEANDRO alle fraterne voci, fatta sorda, qual aspe, in breve giro di giorno, pianse il suo esterminio estremo, dal nostro stuol spettacol fatta e scempio. Supremo son del Re del Ciel messaggio, che ’n terra a rivelar i più profondi misteri di là su vengo sovente. Di colà, [o]ve la fede ha i fondamenti; ove di voi la speme ha le radici, benché verdiggi co’ suoi rami in terra; onde la carità, donna e reina di tutte lor, arde ’n se stessa e infiamma de’ spiriti beati e de’ mortali, di sant’ardor, d’eterna luce, i cori. A voi ne vengo, a voi, vergini intatte, alme pudiche e belle, al Monarca sovran dilette e care che ’n chiostri umili e solitarie celle cui fregio è povertà, digiuno è pasto,

248 “The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems or del mondo fallace, calcate in uno e i van diletti e ’l fasto; qual pirauste amorose, nella fornace ardente dell’infiammato core, gioite sol del crucifisso amore ed or novelle circi, col dolce modular de’ sacri carmi, tremar fate lo ’nferno, e de’ spirti rubelli lo stuol fuggir al disperato averno, e sete a trar possenti da’ sepolcri de’ vizi i cor già spenti. A voi mi manda Iddio, nunzio lieto e giocondo, a rivelarvi più profondi arcani, che dell’eterna mente tenga riposti ne’ più occulti abissi. Il Paradiso, in queste carte accolto, mi manda a riserrarvi alme felici. Quella santa città, quella celeste Nova Gerusalem, che pur già vidde il segretario de’ celesti arcani scender dal ciel, quasi novella sposa, ch’ad incontrar vada ’l suo sposo amato; di gemme e d’or pomposamente adorna; ad aprirvi mi manda, alme beate. Quel Ciel, che già vi dissi, ch’è dell’immenso inaccessibil sede, ch’è de’ viventi incorrottibil terra, del virginal candor castello e trono; il paradiso, io dico, or scende in terra. Piantasi ’n terra un padiglione a Dio, ch’elegge conversar con l’alme pure. Ove può ognun veder, che vive in terra, con puro e mondo core, occhio di fede; tutto quel ben, tutto quel bel raccolto, che ’n contemplar di Dio si gode il volto. Qui son que’ campi Elisi e quei giardini, di piante, d’erbe, fiori, e frutti adorni, ove perpetua scorgi,

“The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems 249 non so se state, autunno o primavera (verno non già, co’ suoi rigori algenti fuggir le nevi e le gelate brine, cessar le pioggie e le tempeste e i venti). Quest’è quella magione, ov’è indiviso il gaudio, ove i voler concordi e puri, vicendevole l’ardor, la sicurezza eterna; e senza fin la gioia e ’l riso; [o]v’l tesor di virtù, che l’un possede, fassi all’altro comun, comune il merto. [O]ve ’l don, ch’a l’un da Dio concesso viene, di tutti serve a singolar profitto; beata carità, tua sol, mercede. Invido qui livor, funesta brama dell’altrui ben, qui non alligna o spunta, non discordi voler, non odi algenti non di lingua mordace o lusinghiera, il dente infido, agli altrui danni inteso, che sbrani l’altrui vita o l’altrui fama. Qui ’l piacer senza noia ognor trionfa; quivi il gaudio e la pace han sede eterna; mercè, che ’n mezo lor CRISTO risiede. Qui ognor di Dio spiegar, non men con l’opre che con le voci, le sovrane lodi, s’odono, e ’l gran TRISAGIO, in dolci accenti. Quest’è del grand’Iddio la reggia eccelsa, ove l’alme, rapite in dolce sonno d’un’estasi profonda e di sé fuori, obliando se stesse, alzano i lumi in quel d’alma chiarezza ardente sole, chiara luce dell’alme, alma del mondo, a par di cui quest’altro è fosca notte. Quel ch’a semplice suon di brevi accenti già lo produsse e n’ha paterna cura. Ei, c’ha il poter quanto il voler presume; ch’è fonte senza fonte, e fiume immenso; che stando fermo, corre, e sempre abonda, e non altronde, ma da sé deriva. Ch’eterno in sé, sol di se stesso vive, E quanto più si mostra, più s’asconde. Che nulla ha fuor di sé, ma in sé comprende quant’è, quanto sarà, quant’esser puote.

250 “The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems quell’ineffabil entità beata, ch’unica in sé medesma e indivisa, constituisce un Dio, sovrano, immenso; per tre ipostasi eccelse, in tre persone si distingue e forma e sono il Padre, il Verbo, e l’almo Spirto. Ingenerato e improdotto è il Padre; genito ma non fatto è il figlio, il verbo, ingenito e spirato, è l’almo spirto. Genera il padre solo. Non genera il figliol, ma spira insieme con l’eterno suo Padre. E l’almo spirto, che d’ambi lor procede, è sol spirato, ma non genera o spira altra persona. Che ’l Padre Eterno, sé mirando, e quando è in sé, quanto esser può, quanto in lui splende, genera, a sé sembiante, eterno il verbo. Questi, col Padre Eterno, have indivisa l’essenza e la virtù spirante e diva, onde quell’almo spirto, amando spira. Questi tre in un’essenza uniti e stretti non son però più ch’un sol Dio, ma immenso, che per produr quanto si vede e nasce, per soggetto ebbe ’l nulla, effetto, il tutto. Il crear l’universo, e quanto in ciel s’indorra e inzaffira, quanto in terra s’infiora e quanto ondeggia nell’ampio di nettun liquido smalto, quanto là sù, quanto qua giù si move, fecer del suo poter picciole prove. Di questo Paradiso almo soggiorno d’anime pure, e a Dio sacrate ancelle, te (della greggia sua fedel custode, vigilante pastor, prence de’ padri, del Vatican sublime, almo decoro; delle mitre splendor, fregio degli ostri, nato sol ad ornar porpore e scettri, e a coronar i più sublimi onori. Ricco, vie più che d’or, di viva fede, di carità vie più che d’ostro adorno; di santo zel più che di ferro armato.

“The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems 251 Un de’ più forti Alcidi, a cui s’appoggi, del fatigato Atlante il grave pondo; per esser poi col raggirar degli anni, del suo mistico cielo, invitto Atlante), ha destinato Iddio fedel custode, forte campione, imperator invitto angiol terrestre, e cherubino ardente. Tue parti fian però de’ fieri mostri, nati sol a rapir l’anime a Dio, gli orgogli rintuzzar, strugger le frodi né temer dei del fier leon, ch’ognora l’alme per devorar s’aggira intorno, il feroce rugir. Ch’ ’n tua difesa io sarò sempre o lancia o spada o scudo per atterir, per atterrar lo ’nferno; per isvanir di Babilonia il fasto; per distrugger di Dite il vasto impero. E benché ’n Cielo i’ sia, che sempre miri quel sempiterno Bel che l’alme bea; non fia però che mai di qua mi parta. Qui, non visto, sarò, per fin ch’arrivi quell’aspettato e desiato giorno, cui non succederà notte già mai. Tu, novel cherubin, saggio pastore, del novo paradiso almo custode, va, vedi, e vinci, incontra l’oste fiero. Che dell’empia Babel le squadre ostili, l’armi feroci e le superbe mura vedrai sparir, vedrai cader repente, sol al vibrar della tua spada ardente. From the pure and shining heaven, / that encloses everything within itself, / both the lower spheres and the elements / (beyond it there is no place / that encompasses or encircles it, / for nothingness and GOD are its roof and walls ); / from that heaven, which more than any other burns and shines,  /  which fills with light / the sun, the stars, and the elements, and the day / (and yet mortal sight, the eye of the lynx,838 / obstructed and flawed, / cannot gaze upon it; / a lantern it is 838. The term “eye of the lynx” may evoke the Accademia dei Lincei (“Academy of the Lynx-Eyed”) of which Galileo was the most famous member. Galileo was connected to Tarabotti’s patron Corner through the Accademia dei Ricovrati, to which they were both tied; Galileo also had two daughters in a convent outside of Florence. However, linceo was commonly used from the sixteenth century on to

252 “The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems not, but it shines; / not fire, but it blazes; / indeed it is an immense ocean of light after which light itself is darkness); / from that exalted seat / of the great GOD, whose footstool is the ground  /  which is the incorruptible earth of the living / (there, with neither faith nor hope, / but all fervent and burning flame, / lives the faithful one, breast brimming with joy, / indeed immersed in a sea of immense joy): // I come, the first creature / of the great heavenly Creator, / firstborn offspring, / and first heir of the eternal monarch. / I am shining pyrope,839 /splendid star of the empyrean mansion, / and I adorn and ornament the exalted chariot / of the divine Jove with blessed splendor,  /  having borrowed splendors from his throne. // I come to change for you, blind mortals, / the brief night into everlasting day.  /  I am servant, guest, friend,  /  messenger and message of the divine choir; / singing swan of that tranquil Amphrysus,840 / of that mighty Eurotas,841 / of that vast ocean; / musical bird of the woods of Heaven; / loving siren / of the starry abysses; / life-giving cultivator of the fortunate Elysians;842 / I am the faithful lover of eternal love; / free, yes, but not turned toward evil; / changeable, yes, but constant in love;  /  pure and divine mind,  /  eternally contemplating the highest Good / I am the spirit of every earthly undertaking, / free and unbound. / I am the spirit unburdened by needless weight / and unshadowed by gloomy cloud, / and I am the offices of power and knowledge, / who in working does not sweat, rather, with work / he finds (who would believe it!) eternal repose. / Nor do the confines of this narrow sphere / constrain noble virtue, which for the benefit of you mortals, / pouring it down here in a loving rain, / I spread at every hour my heavenly influences.  /  Neither is nature opposed:  /  indeed every most exalted mass succumbs / to the weighty power of my right hand. / At a mere gesture, in a single moment, / as particles tend upon a breeze, / I blow from the Indian Ocean to the distant Atlas Mountains.843 / Nor should you marvel that I am so worthy, / since such is the power and strength  /  of the angelic nature,  /  that it surpasses any earthly power. / I am such that / divine and godlike minds / from North to South, West to East,  /  from the rising to the setting sun,  /  happily plowing the starry mean keen sighted (cf. ). Regardless, here the term refers to the failure of earthly sight to comprehend the divine. 839. A gemstone of a fiery red color. 840. Probably a reference to Apollo, who tended the flocks of the king Admetus on the banks of the river Amphrysus, in Thessaly (see, e.g., Virgil, Georgics, 3.2). The swan was sacred to Apollo, and a Homeric Hymn addresses Apollo by saying that “of you the swan too sings in clear tone from its wings as it alights on the bank beside the eddying river Peneios.” “Homeric Hymn 21 to Apollo,” from Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer, ed. and trans. Martin L. West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 203. 841. The Eurotas, one of the major rivers of the the Peloponnese region in Greece. 842. I.e., residents of Elysium, the paradise of the afterlife. 843. A mountain range in North Africa.

“The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems 253 fields / of the fortunate Elyseans, / noble home of the immortal demigods, / move, both moving and immobile, / the eternal wheels of God’s great chariot.844 / I am heavenly hierarch, / subject to the high power of the supreme God, / prince and leader of the angelic host. / I am the faithful escort to glorious endeavors / of soldiering spirits, brave and strong; / I extinguish the battalions and phalanxes / of the faithless barbarians, rebellious to God,  /  I tear down cities, I destroy kingdoms, / and in a single moment I reduce them to dust.845 / You know this, Egyptian; you know this, Assyrian; / the walls of Jericho, hostile to God, know this;846 / the proud Kingdom of Judea knows this, / which, made deaf like an asp,847 / to the brotherly words of THEANDRIOS,848 / in a short span of time bewailed its final destruction, / having been made a spectacle and a ruin by our army. / I am the supreme messenger of the King of Heaven / who comes frequently to earth to reveal / the most profound mysteries from on high. / From there, where faith has its foundation, / where your hope has its roots, / even though its branches leaf on earth; / where charity, lady and queen / of both of them, burns within herself and inflames / the hearts of blessed spirits and of mortals / with holy ardor and eternal light; // to you I come, to you, / pure virgins, chaste and beautiful souls / (beloved and dear to the Sovereign King) / who in humble cloisters and solitary cells, / to whom poverty is ornament, to whom fasting is sustenance, / who now tread in a single step / upon the vain delights and pomp of the false world. / Like an enamored fire-fly / in the burning furnace / of an inflamed heart, / you rejoice only in your crucified love / and like a modern Circe849 / make hell tremble / with the sweet modulations of your sacred songs,  /  and chase the rebellious spirits  /  in throngs to the Avernus of despair850 / and you are able to pull / from the tombs of vice already-extinguished hearts. // God sends me to you / as a happy and joyful messenger / to reveal to you the deepest secrets / kept hidden within the most / remote depths of his eternal mind. / Paradise, captured upon these pages, / sends me to enclose you happy souls there. / That holy city, that celestial / new Jerusalem which already saw / the keeper of celestial secrets / descend from heaven851 / sends 844. Probably a reference to the four Anemoi (wind gods) who drew the chariot of Zeus in the form of horses. However, see the winged beings who draw the Chariot of the Lord in Ezekiel 1:4–28. 845. “I am heavenly hierarch….I reduce them to dust.” The passage provides a description of Michael, warrior archangel and leader of God’s army. 846. A reference to the conquest of Canaan after the walls of Jericho fell to Joshua’s army. See Joshua 6:1–27. 847. See also note 35 above. 848. That is, Jesus. The name refers to the Greek God-man diety. 849. The legendary sorceress encountered by Odysseus and his crew in Books 10 and 11 of the Odyssey. 850. Avernus: the lake believed to form the entrance to the Underworld. See book 6 of Virgil’s Aeneid. 851. Possibly Jesus Christ, whose triumphal entry into Jerusalem precedes his crucifixion and redemption of mankind. In Romans 2:16, Saint Paul refers to the judgment day as “the day when God shall

254 “The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems me to open the gates to you, blessed souls, / almost like a new bride / going to meet her beloved bridegroom / adorns herself richly with gems, with gold. / That heaven that I already described to you / that is the seat of unfathomable immensity, / that is the incorruptible land of the living, / the castle and throne of virginal purity, / paradise, I say, now descends to earth. / On earth is erected a pavilion to God / (who chooses to converse with pure souls) / where all who live on earth with / pure and unstained heart and the eye of faith / can see all that good, all that concentrated beauty  /  that one enjoys when contemplating the countenance of God. / Here are those Elysian fields, here are those gardens / adorned with plants, grasses, flowers, and fruits, / where you may always behold, / whether it is summer, autumn, or spring / (not winter, with its frigid harshness), / and the snow and icy frost recede, / the rain and the storms and the winds cease. / This is that palace in which joy is complete, / where wills are concordant and pure, / where are both ardor and eternal certainty, / and joy and laughter without end. / There the virtuous treasure of one / becomes the common good of the other, and common the merit. / There that gift which is granted by God to one, / serves all to common profit;  /  blessed charity, mercy is yours alone.  /  Jealous spite, dark yearning for / the good fortune of others, here makes no root or sprout. / No discordant wills, no frigid hatreds, / neither biting or flattering tongues, / nor the treacherous tooth bent on others’ harm, / which tears up others’ lives or others’ fame. / Here pleasure without pain always triumphs, / here joy and peace have their eternal seat, / thanks to the presence of Christ among them. / Here are heard at all times sweetly described, / no less in deeds than in words, / the supreme praise of God and the Trisagion.852 / This is the exalted kingdom of great God, / where souls, enraptured in the sweet slumber / of profound ecstasy, beside themselves, / forgetting themselves, raise their eyes / to that burning sun of noble radiance, / clear light of souls, soul of the world, / next to which this other is darkest night—/ this world which he produced by simple words853 / and for which he cares like a father, / He who has as much power as his will requires. / He is a fount without fountainhead, / an enormous river, which, though quiet, / yet flows, and is always overflowing, / and derives from nowhere but itself. / Eternal in Himself, He lives of Himself; / and the more He shows himself the more He hides. / There is nothing beyond Him,  /  but instead He encompasses  /  all that is, that will be, that can be.  /  That ineffable blessed Being  /  who, unique and undivided in himself, /

judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.” 852. The term refers to praise of God as “thrice holy” (tresanctus). The Trisagion is a standard hymn of the Divine Liturgy in Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Catholic churches. See, e.g., Hugh Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 77–80. 853. Cf. Genesis 1:1–3 and John 1:1–5.

“The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems 255 constitutes an immense sovereign God, / by three distinct hypostases854 / distinguished and formed in three persons: / and these are the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. / Neither born nor produced is the Father; / born, but not made, is the Son, the Word; / not born, but breathed forth, is the Holy Spirit. / Only the Father gives life.  /  The Son does not give life, but breathes it forth together  /  with his Eternal Father. And the Holy Spirit,  /  which proceeds from them both, is only breathed forth, / but does not give life, or breathe forth another person. / For the Eternal Father, looking upon Himself and / all that there is and may be within Him, and all that shines in Him, / makes the Word eternal in His likeness. / The Word together with the Eternal Father, / possesses undivided the essence and the divine will to breathe forth,  /  whence that Holy Spirit, by loving, breathes forth. / These three are united and linked in one essence, / but they are no more than one God alone, but immense, / who in order to produce all that is seen and born, / had nothing for materials, but the result was everything. / The creation of the universe and all that / in heaven is gilded and embellished with sapphire, / all that on earth is flowering, and all that flows / in Neptune’s abundant liquid lacquer, / all that moves above and here below, / proved but a small measure of His power. // Of this paradise, noble home of pure souls  /  and God’s consecrated handmaidens,  /  God has destined you855 (faithful keeper of his flock,  /  vigilant shepherd, prince of the fathers,  /  noble embellishment of the supreme Vatican, / splendor of miters, ornament of the scarlet robes, / born only to adorn the crimson vestments and scepters / and to be crowned with the most sublime honors, / who are richer in faith than in gold, / in charity than in scarlet adornment, / armed with holy zeal more than the sword, / one of the strongest Alcides856 upon whom / weary Atlas857 rests his heavy weight, / in order to become with the turning of the years  /  the invincible Atlas of his mystical heaven)  /  as faithful keeper. / Strong champion, invincible emperor, / earthly angel, and flaming cherub, / may your offspring therefore be fearsome monsters / born only to enrapture souls to God, / to blunt pride, to destroy deceit; / nor need you fear the ferocious roar of the fierce lion, / that at all times stalks souls in order to devour them.858 / For in your defense I will always be either a lance or sword or shield / to frighten and

854. OED, “the three ‘hypostases’ or ‘persons’ of the Godhead, which are said to be the same in ‘substance.’ ” . This section describes the Holy Trinity; see 1 John 5:7. 855. I.e., Corner, the dedicatee of the volume. 856. “Alcide” is Italian for Heracles (Hercules). 857. In Greek mythology, Atlas was condemned to hold up the heavens for eternity after the Titans’ defeat in their battle against the Olympians. 858. Satan, about whom Saint Peter warns: “your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). See also page 181.

256 “The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems fell Inferno;859 / to rob the pomp of Babylonia,860 / to destroy the vast empire of Dis.861 / And although I am in heaven, where I always / gaze upon that sempiternal / Beauty that blesses souls, / I will never depart from here. / Here, unseen, I will remain, until that / long-awaited and yearned-for day arrives, / when night will never come.  /  You, new cherub, wise shepherd,  /  noble keeper of the new Paradise, / go, gaze, and gain, meet the fierce army. / For you will see disappear from / impious Babel the hostile squadrons, / the fierce weapons, and the proud walls; / you will see them fall immediately, / at the mere rattling of your flaming sword.] THE END

859. Michael is most often depicted as the warrior archangel pointing his sword at Satan. 860. Babylon became a symbol of extreme wealth, idolatry, and pride from its representation Isaiah. 861. Dis: Hades/Pluto, ruler of the Underworld.

“The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems 257

By the Very Illustrious Signor Don Salvator Cavalcanti O penna eletta ad operar portenti, a rifar qua giù in terra il PARADISO, onde apprendesti in lieve foglio inciso, racchiudere d’ogni ben ampi torrenti? Già veggo al tuo saper i petti algenti, dolci fiamme spirar. Miro conquiso ogni fasto terren. Miro diviso dal mondo il mondo, e instupidir le genti. PARADISO immortal, orto divino, in te non fia che mostro crudo e empio, rintracci ’l varco o il piè stenda vicino. Che d’ogni invido mal faranne scempio, un PASTOR vigilante, un cherubino, di saper, di valor norma ed esempio. Oh pen chosen to make miracles, / to remake here on earth a PARADISE, / where did you learn to capture upon a modest printed leaf / the rushing torrents of all that is good? // Now I see the cool heart of your wisdom / inspire a sweet flame. / I behold every earthly pomp / vanquished. I behold the world divided / from the world, and the people astonished. // Immortal PARADISE, divine garden, / no cruel or impious creature / will cross your threshold, or step toward you. // For a vigilant shepherd, a cherub, / of wisdom and valor the form and exemplar, / will lay ruin to every envious evil.

258 “The Archangel: Idyll” and Other Poems

By Signora Lucrezia Marinella Mentre il vago intelletto alto desio maraviglie mirar guida e conduce, s’apre a li sensi suoi divina luce, monacal paradiso e ospitio pio. Luoco gradito agli angeli e a Dio, ove son canti angelici e riluce di castitade il pregio; e si riduce di gloria e ogni ben perpetuo rio. Ammira il bello, il grato, e lo splendore dell’apparita parte, e ’l gaudio e ’l riso; la concordia, la pace e il vero amore. Ode dir, mentre sta stupido e fiso, scopr’or con dotta penna alto valore, ne lo ’nferno del mondo il Paradiso. As the yearning intellect guides and leads  /  lofty desire to contemplate marvels,  /  divine light opens Convent Paradise  /  to its understanding, that pious abode: // a place that is pleasing to the angels and to God, / where there are angelic notes and the value  /  of chastity shines; and there flows  /  a never-ending stream of honor and every good. // It admires the beauty, the fulfilment, and the splendor / of the place that has been revealed, and the joy and the laughter / and the harmony, the peace, and the true love. // It hears said, while it is dazed and intent, / “Reveal with learned pen lofty valor, / a Paradise in this hellish world.”

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Index Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations; in subentries, “CP” refers to Convent Paradise. 88n60, 133n279; hostility toward, 34, 53; on issue of Latin errors, 23, 55 Aprosio, Angelico, 23n60, 53, 245n837; Tarabotti’s letter to, 54 “The Archangel: Idyll” (anonymous), 44; text of, 245–51; translation of, 251–56 Aretino, Pietro, 40n121 Arsenius the Great, Saint, 152 Athanasius of Alexandria, Saint, 165 Augustine, Saint, 105n157, 108n173; Confessions of, as influence on Tarabotti, 44–47; as quoted/referred to in CP, 99, 126, 136, 140, 163, 165, 173, 178, 212–13, 229, 230 Avanzi, Giovanni Maria, 38n116

Abraham, 59, 115, 159, 202, 240; compared to Saint Benedict, 58, 118–19, 122, 123 abstinence, 116, 120, 171–72, 216–17, 222. See also chastity; virginity Accademia degli Incogniti, 39–40, 43. See also Loredan (Loredano), Giovan Francesco; Pighetti, Giacomo Accademia dei Ricovrati, 21, 251n838 Accademia Veneziana, 38n116 Agathon of Egypt, Saint, 204 Agnes, Saint, 168, 180; Feast of, 20, 164n433, 183n527, 185n534, 234n786, 242n829 Alciato, Andrea: Emblemata, 170n461, 171 Alexander the Great, 86, 155, 156, 169n455; and wife/daughters of Darius III, 55, 215–16 All Saints’ Day, 91 Ambrose, Saint, 121, 146, 149, 212; on virginity, 165, 166, 168, 174 Andreini, Isabella, 36n102 Angelucci, Teodoro, 38n116 L’Anima di Ferrante Pallavicino (The Soul of Ferrante Pallavicino), 28 Anselm, Saint, 99 Anthony of Padua, Saint, 91n81 Anthony the Great, Saint, 155, 188, 217, 218 Antisatira (Antisatire) (Tarabotti), 31–32, 33n88, 42; defence of female vanity/luxury in, 37,

Baratotti, Galerana (Tarabotti pseudonym). See La semplicità ingannata (Innocence Deceived) Barcitotti, Galerana (Tarabotti pseudonym). See Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini (Women Are of the Human Species) Basil of Caesarea, Saint, 148, 149, 175 Benedict of Nursia, Saint, 57, 108, 136, 156; compared to Abraham, 58, 118–19, 122, 123; Rule of, 19, 87, 98, 118–19, 122n218, 149, 202. See also Scholastica, Saint 277

278 Index Benedictine convents. See Sant’Anna di Castello, Convent of; San Zaccaria, Convent of Benedictine nuns, 202n618, 236n802; as dressed for choir, 7; profession ceremony of, 17, 138n305, 149n371; Scholastica’s importance to, 58n177, 123n225. See also nuns Berardelli, Alessandro, 41n130 Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint, 119, 136, 181, 183n529, 198, 206, 225; on idleness, 219; on singing, 209–10 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 50n154 Biante (Bias) of Prene, 205 Boccaccio, Giovanni: De claris mulieribus, 221n710 Bonaventure, Saint, 95n98, 104n147, 145, 229n756 Bretel de Grémonville, Nicolas, 55 brides of Christ. See nuns, as brides of Christ Brusoni, Girolamo: Lettere amorose, 41–42 Buoninsegni, Francesco: Tarabotti’s response to Satira of, 31–32, 34, 88n60 Busenello, Giovan Francesco, 209n660 Cadena dei Tolentini, Maria (author’s mother), 3 Carafa, Tommaso: Assunti predicabili, 42 Carmeni, Francesco, 43; poem by, 77–79 Catherine of Alexandria, Saint, 94, 167 Catherine of Bologna, Saint: Le sette armi spirituali (The Seven Spiritual Weapons), 35

Catherine of Prato, Saint, 120 Catherine of Siena, Saint, 34–35, 94, 120, 136, 198; Marinella’s elegy for, 38; stigmata of, 106, 137–38 Cavalca, Domenico: Lives of the Fathers, 51, 152n380 Cavalcanti, Salvatore: poem by, 44, 257 ceremonies, conventual. See clothing ceremony; consecration, ceremony of; profession, ceremony of; tonsure chapter (convent governance meeting), 26; record of vote taken at, 29 charity, 192–200; Saint Paul on, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198 chastity, 40, 45, 46, 93, 111, 116, 216, 220–21, 229, 237; of men, 1, 57, 170–78; monastic, 9, 17, 50; spiritual vow of, 19, 123, 148, 153, 162, 163–81, 220. See also virginity Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini (Women Are of the Human Species) (Tarabotti), 32 choir, 21–22, 174, 208–11, 214, 240; Benedictine nun dressed for, 7; distraction in, 22, 204, 209–11; polyphony in, 21–22, 208–9 choir nuns, 12, 21; Tarabotti as among, 3, 19, 26, 29, 41 “Church Militant,” 91, 178 Cicogna, Emilio, 56 Ciotti, Giovanni Battista, 38n116, 39n118 Clare of Assisi, Saint, 120, 136; Marinella’s life of, 38 Clement of Alexandria, Saint, 116–17

Index 279 clothing ceremony, 16–17, 26. See also tonsure Colonna, Vittoria, 36n102 consecration, ceremony of, 19–20; as betrothal to Christ, 19–20, 44, 88n64, 164n433, 168, 172, 173, 179–87, 234, 241–43; and Tarabotti’s continued resistance, 19, 20–21, 44–47, 81–108 contemplation and meditation, 115, 124–25, 177, 178, 186; and manual work, 211–14; and silence, 201–3 Contemplazione de’ suoi santissimi dolori (Contemplation of Her Holiest Sorrows) (anonymous), 36 Contemplazioni dell’anima amante (Contemplations of the Loving Soul) (Tarabotti), 33 Convent Hell. See L’Inferno monacale (Convent Hell) Convent Light (Luce monacale) (Tarabotti), 33 Convent Paradise, 34–60; Augustine’s Confessions and, 44–47; as dedicated to Corner, 20, 39, 40, 41, 67–68; frontispiece of, 40, 62; and issue of Latin errors, 41, 51–52, 55, 60–61, 68, 112–13; paratext of, 38, 43–44, 67–79; perceived plagiarism in, 39, 53, 55; reception of, 52–55; scholarly analysis of, 55–60; sources for, 50–52; style/rhetoric in, 47–50; title page of, 41–42, 55n171, 63, 65; women’s devotional literature and, 34–38

conventual life and activities. See Sant’Anna di Castello, Convent of Cornaro family, 20n50, 67. See also entries below Corner (Cornaro), Federico, Cardinal and Patriarch of Venice, 20–21, 95–96, 251n838, 255n855; and CP frontispiece/title page, 40–41, 62, 63, 65; Pers’s encomiastic poem to, 43, 69; as Tarabotti’s confessor/ counsellor, 20–21, 88n161, 89–91, 100–1; Tarabotti’s dedication of CP to, 20, 39, 40, 41, 67–68 Corner (Cornaro), Giovanni, Doge of Venice, 20n50, 89 Corner (Cornaro), Marcantonio, bishop of Padua, 20n50 Council of Trent (1545–63), 1, 8, 16, 17, 19–20, 23, 36, 208n651 Croce, Benedetto, 56 Cyprian, Saint, 164–65, 174 Dandolo, Giovanni, 33n88 Dante Alighieri, 2, 51, 55; Divine Comedy, 32–33, 95n96, 231 Darius III, king of Persia: wife and daughters of, as subjects of Alexander the Great, 55, 215–16 David (Biblical king), 81, 84–85, 112, 116, 141, 143, 155, 175, 183; on hope, 189–90, 191, 211; and murder of Uriah, 85n48, 86n54, 87n59, 102n138; on silence/meditation, 204, 212 De Bellis, Daniela, 56 Decree on Regulars and Nuns (1653), 8–9

280 Index Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 51, 90n75, 137 Divine Office (Liturgy of the Hours), 12n17, 21–23, 207–8, 210; prayers/recitation of, 21–22 Dominic, Saint, 119, 136 Donati, Regina: Tarabotti’s lament on death of, 2, 209n660 Donno di Manduria, Ferdinando, 43, 72n11. See also “F.D., Signor,” encomiastic verse in CP by dowry, marriage, 1, 3, 6 dowry, spiritual, 23; as paid by Tarabotti’s father, 3, 4, 5 Dürer, Albrecht, 12 educande (convent boarders), 23 education of girls/women, 6, 28, 36, 47; men’s role in restricting, 1, 55 Elizabeth of Hungary, Saint, 199 Elsevier, Daniel, and publishing house of, 31 Euphrasia of Constantinople, Saint, 217 faith, 186–89; Saint Paul on, 186 fasting, 12, 23, 116, 172, 216–18, 222, 253 “F.D., Signor,” encomiastic verse in CP by, 43; texts/translations of, 72–73 Fedele, Casandra, 36n102 Fonte, Moderata, 36n102 Francis of Assisi, Saint, 119, 120n210, 132n278, 136, 198, 199n606, 217; humility of, 145; Marinella’s life of, 38; stigmata of, 104, 137–38 Francis of Paola, Saint, 198

free will, 2, 33, 154; as denied/given up through monachization, 31, 35, 48, 150 Galen, 144n339, 217n695 Galilei, Galileo, 21, 251n838 Gambara, Veronica, 36n102 Gregory the Great, Saint, 58n177, 123n225, 140 Guardi, Francesco: Parlour of the San Zaccaria Convent, 15 Guarini, Giovanni Battista: Il Pastor Fido, 51, 105, 150n372 hair, women’s. See tonsure Hermann of Metz, 210 Hermes Trismegistus, 229 Hilarion, Saint, 217, 218, 224–25 Hilary of Poitiers, Saint, 160 Hippocrates, 144n339, 217n695 Holy Trinity. See Trinity hope, 189–92; David on, 189–90 humility, 129, 143–47, 185, 199, 200, 216, 229, 234, 242; of Francis of Assisi, 145; of Jesus, 145– 46; of Mary, 143–44; Thomas Aquinas on, 122n218 hymns: “Jesu dulcis memoria,” 229n757; “Maria Mater gratiae,” 107n171; for Mary’s Nativity, 237n807; “Sacris Solemniis,” 105n156; Trisagion, 254n852; “Veni Creator Spiritus,” 17, 19, 107 Ignatius Loyola, Saint, 198, 210 Ignatius of Antioch, Saint, 106 Index of Prohibited Books, 1, 28, 113n184 L’Inferno monacale (Convent Hell) (Tarabotti), 32–33, 44, 46, 56–57, 59, 117, 199;

Index 281 coercion/trickery in, 6, 9, 31, 33, 113nn183–84; on profession ceremony, 19 Jerome, Saint, 176, 217; “To Eustochium,” 170n460, 174, 175 Jesus Christ, 97n108, 119, 125, 129, 141, 187, 192, 205–6, 216, 228, 253; apostles of, 144, 157–58, 166, 176, 178, 235; birth of, 122–23; chastity of, 153; desert fast of, 217; forgiveness of sinners by, 83; garments made by Mary for, 160, 212; humility of, 145–46; and Joseph, 151, 160, 212; and Mary, 143–44, 151, 160, 165n435, 166, 175–78, 235; obedience of, 148, 149–53; Passion/death of, 98–100, 104, 106–8, 112, 135–36, 153, 166, 169, 182, 183; poverty of, 153–58, 159, 160, 162; Tarabotti’s addresses to, 47–48, 90–108. See also nuns, as brides of Christ Joan of Arc, Saint, 159 John, Saint (apostle), 176; as conflated with evangelist, 108, 200, 228, 235 John, Saint (author of Revelation), 132, 165–66, 178, 238 John Chrysostom, Saint, 50, 119–20, 154, 157, 160, 163–64 John the Baptist, Saint, 119, 160–61, 176, 202n619 John the Evangelist, Saint, 99, 126n242; as conflated with apostle, 108, 200, 228, 235; and eagle, 200n611, 235n798

Joseph, Saint, 151, 160, 212 jubilee years, 100 Julian (“the Apostate”), Emperor of Rome, 167 Julius Caesar, 172, 181, 215 Kendrick, Robert, 21, 50 Lacca, Angela Felice, 35n98 Le lagrime d’Arcangela Tarabotti per la morte dell’Illustrissima Signora Regina Donati (Tears of Arcangela Tarabotti Upon the Death of the Most Illustrious Signora Regina Donati) (Tarabotti), 2, 209n660 Lasso, Orlando di: Le lagrime di San Pietro (The Tears of Saint Peter), 95n98 Leone, Boncio, 38n116 Lettere familiari e di complimento (Letters Familiar and Formal) (Tarabotti), 32, 42 Lidwina, Saint, 159 Liturgy of the Hours. See Divine Office Loredan (Loredano), Giovan Francesco, 37n110, 39–41; and L’Anima di Ferrante Pallavicino, 28n78; letter to Polani by, in CP, 43, 71–72 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio: The Holy Family, or “Mary knitting in the round with four needles,” 160n422, 161 Luca, Giovanni Battista de, Cardinal, 8 Luce monacale (Convent Light) (Tarabotti), 33 Lucretia (legendary Roman noblewoman), 214, 221, 222

282 Index Lucullus, Lucius Licinius, 117 Luke, Saint, 239 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1, 28 madness/insanity: as perceived in Jesus, 177; sensuality/idleness and, 165, 219; Tarabotti’s references to herself in language of, 99, 106, 116 Maidalchino, Francesco: Tromba evangelica (Evangelical Trumpet), 41 manual work, 211–15 Marinella, Lucrezia, 36–39; paratext in works by, 38–39; plagiarism accusations against, 39; poems written for CP by, 36, 43–44, 75, 258. See also entry below Marinella, Lucrezia, specific works by: Arcadia felice (Happy Arcadia), 39n118; La Colomba sacra, poema eroico (The Holy Dove: Heroic Poem), 36, 38; De’ gesti eroici e della vita maravigliosa della serafica Santa Caterina da Siena (Of the Heroic Deeds and the Marvelous Life of the Seraphic Saint Catherine of Siena), 38; La Nobiltà ed eccellenza delle donne e i diffetti e mancamenti degli uomini (The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men), 36, 37; Vita di Maria Vergine imperatrice dell’universo (Life of the Virgin Mary, Empress of the Universe), 36–38, 39;

Le vittorie di Francesco il serafico. Li passi gloriosi della diva Chiara (The Victories of the Seraphic Francis. The Glorious Steps of the Divine Clare), 38 Martin of Tours, Saint, 198 Mary, 36, 168n453, 197, 235–40; birth of, 86; as bride of Christ, 165n435, 235; at Crucifixion, 107, 166, 169; defeat of Satan by, 93n91, 215n683; devotion to, 36, 123n224; erudition/leadership of, 37–38, 57–58, 122–23; as guiding wind/star, 120, 215, 234; importance of, to Venice, 37; as intercessor/mediatrix, 2, 58, 83–84, 107–8, 214–15, 235–38, 239; Jesus and, 143–44, 151, 160, 165n435, 166, 175–78, 235; Marinella’s life of, 36–38, 39; modesty/ humility of, 37, 143–44; as mother of God, 82, 86, 103, 107, 122–23, 143, 151, 189, 202, 221–22; needlework/ knitting by, 160, 161, 212; as Queen of Heaven, 97, 236–37, 240; as resting place of Trinity, 237n807; virginity of, 82, 103–4, 106, 107, 122–23, 164, 166, 167–68, 174, 175–78, 199, 202, 221, 222, 235–36 Mary Magdalene, 87, 94n95, 106–7, 109n178, 177, 217n694 Mary of Bethany, 109n178 Mary of Egypt, Saint, 217 Medioli, Francesca, 56 meditation. See contemplation and meditation

Index 283 men: chastity of, 1, 57, 170–78; and forced monachization, 8, 31, 56–57, 59, 113, 199; Marinella on, 36, 37; Tarabotti on, 23, 34, 44, 47, 55, 56–59, 81, 94, 112–13, 115, 120, 122–23, 129–30, 132, 167, 170–78, 189, 199. See also Paternal Tyranny Merlo, Giovanni: map of Venice by, 13, 14 Michiel, Pietro, 41n130 monachization, forced, 1, 3, 6, 8–9; Church’s views on, 8; complicity of families/nuns in, 8–9, 31, 33, 128; vs cost of marriage, 3, 6; vs free will, 31, 35, 48, 150; in Inferno monacale, 44, 46, 56–57, 117, 199; as male construct, 8, 31, 56–57, 59, 113, 199; Paternal Tyranny on, 48, 56, 113n184, 128n249, 132n275, 152; prison/hell of, 1, 6, 8–9, 19, 31, 33, 44, 46, 112–13, 117, 128, 141, 152 Monson, Craig A., 8, 21 music, 27, 95n98, 180n111, 197n590; at clothing ceremony, 16–17; as performed by guests, 22n57, 43n142. See also choir; hymns; polyphony; singing Musso, Cornelio: Il secondo libro delle prediche, 51 N., Mother (correspondent of Tarabotti), 36 needlework/fiber arts, skill in: of Lucretia, 214; of Mary, 160, 161, 212; of nuns at Sant’Anna, 12, 23

nuns: discord/treachery among, 96– 97, 98, 143, 193, 237, 254; displays of luxury/vanity by, 26, 160; as soldiers/warriors, 87, 116, 117–18, 119, 136, 141, 149, 173, 178, 210–11, 216, 232–33; as “unwilling”/ prisoners, 1, 8–9, 12, 19, 27, 33, 44n143, 59, 60, 123, 128, 128, 139, 152. See also entry below; Tarabotti, Arcangela, at Convent of Sant’Anna nuns, as brides of Christ, 47–50, 75, 78, 117–18, 120, 124, 126–62, 168–73, 174, 178–96, 200, 201–16, 220–43; at consecration, 19–20, 44, 88n64, 164n433, 168, 172, 173, 179–87, 234, 241–43; at profession, 17, 18, 19, 71, 87, 138, 155, 167, 178–79; “Soliloquy to God” and, 45, 81–108, 111–13. See also Song of Songs obedience, 26–27, 116, 185, 214, 229; of Abraham, 115, 118, 122; of Jesus, 148, 149–53; as spiritual vow, 19, 22, 123, 138, 148, 149–53, 163, 211 Oddoni, Guglielmo (printer), 41–43; letter to readers by, 34, 41, 51, 68 Orsi, Guid’Ascania, 35 Ovid: The Art of Love, 51, 92; Fasti, 155; Metamorphoses, 51 Pallas (Athena), 68, 73; as guardian of virgins, 170, 171 Pallavicino, Ferrante, 28 Panizza, Letizia, 33, 51, 56

284 Index Paradiso monacale. See Convent Paradise; “Soliloquy to God” paranymphs / paranymphas, 20, 202, 235 paratext: of CP, 38, 43–44, 67–79; in Marinella’s works, 38–39 parlatori (parlors), conventual, 9, 12; of Sant’Anna, 14, 15, 173, 209n660; of San Zaccaria, 15 Paternal Tyranny (Tarabotti), 14–15, 39n117, 44, 59, 113n185, 182n520; on forced monachization, 48, 56, 113n184, 128n249, 132n275, 152; Oddoni on, 34, 68; posthumous publication of, 31, 113n184. See also La semplicità ingannata (Innocence Deceived) Paul, Saint, 55, 119, 128, 130–31, 138, 139–40, 141, 148, 190, 227; on charity, 192, 195, 196, 197, 198; on chastity, 46; death of, 167; on faith, 186; on fasting, 217; on grace, 232; humility of, 144; on money, 156n402, 158; on prayer, 209; on virginity, 170; on women’s hair, 134n282 The Paved Road to Heaven. See La via lastricata per andar al cielo Pax (Roman divinity), 141; depiction of, 142 Pecini (Piccini), Giacomo (engraver): frontispiece of CP (after Ruschi), 40, 62 Pelagia the Penitent, Saint, 217 Pers, Ciro di: first poem in CP by, in praise of Corner, 43, 69; poems by, as preserved at Sant’Anna, 27–28, 30; second poem in CP by, 74

Peter, Saint, 242; as considered to be first pope, 58, 67, 69n6, 123; as invited to walk on water, 107, 158; as prince of apostles, 155, 198; on Satan as lion, 181n515, 255n858 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), 2, 51; Canzoniere, 92, 195, 217; Triumph of Love, 243; Triumph of Time, 195 Piatti, Santo, 12 Pighetti, Giacomo (author’s brotherin-law), 39, 41, 53; encomium to Tarabotti by, 43, 70–71 Pighetti, Lorenzina (née Tarabotti; author’s sister), 39 Pisani, Lorenzo, 33n88 Pitorius, Peregrinus: Opobalsami romani censura, 42 plagiarism, accusations of, 39, 53, 55 Plato, 187; Laws, 158, 219; Republic, 205; Symposium, 127, 154, 228; Timaeus, 126 Polani, Betta, 43, 71n9 Polani, Giovanni, 43, 52–53, 55; Loredan’s letter to, in CP, 43, 71–72 Policretti, Gioseppe, 38n116 polyphony, 21–22, 208–9. See also choir; singing Portigliotti, Giuseppe, 55–56 poverty, 116, 145n349, 229, 253; spiritual vow of, 19, 123, 148, 153–60, 162, 163 Prisca, Rechierio, trans., Riflessioni politiche et morali sopra le vite de’ re di Francia (Political and Moral Reflections on the Life of the King of France), 42n134 Priuli, Lorenzo, Patriarch of Venice, 14, 16

Index 285 prodigal son, parable of, 106 profession, ceremony of, 17, 18, 19, 87, 148, 185; prostration of nun at, 19, 87, 101n131; vows taken at, 6, 9, 16, 17, 19, 71, 87, 138, 155, 167, 178–79, 191 psalms, 84–88, 190, 241; of clothing ceremony, 16–17; recitation/ singing of, 22, 178, 209–11. See also David Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, 92n84, 94n95, 137, 186 Publia, Deaconess of Antioch, 167 Purgatorio delle malmaritate (Purgatory of Ill-Married Women) (Tarabotti), 32–33 Pythagoras, 204–5 Ravisius Textor, Joannes: Officina, 51 Ridolfi, Carlo: Vita di Giacopo Robusti detto il Tintoretto (Life of Giacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto), 41 Ripa, Cesare: Iconologia (Moral Emblems), 51 Robert of Molesme, Saint, 144 Robusti, Giacopo. See Tintoretto Robusti, Ottavia and Perina (Tintoretto’s daughters), 12, 41 Rule of Saint Benedict, 19, 87, 98, 118–19, 122n218, 149, 202 Rusca, Claudia, 21n55 Ruschi, Francesco (painter), 12, 40 S., Countess, 22n57; anonymous introductory poem by, 43n142, 76 sagra. See consecration, ceremony of San Benedetto, Convent of, 35n98

Sant’Anna di Castello, Convent of, 9–16, 43; age/disrepair of, 12, 12n17; artwork/ ornamentation of, 12, 40; bricking up of windows in, 14–15; canal-side exterior of, 10; cells of, 16; chapter meetings of, 26, 29; commercial activity in, 23; creative pursuits at, 27; daily life/rituals of, 16–28; devotional activities of, 21–23; documents from archives/records of, 3, 4–5, 24–25, 27–28, 30; interior courtyard of, 11; location of, 11; on map of Venice, 13, 14; musical guests at, 22n57, 43n142; parlatori of, 14, 15, 173, 209n660; pastoral visits to, 14–15, 16; properties owned by, 23; as “purgatory”/prison, 28, 44n143; revenues/expenses of, 23, 24. See also choir; Divine Office; fasting San Zaccaria, Convent of: nun dressed for choir at, 7; parlatorio of, 15 Scaligero, Bartolomeo, 12 Scholastica, Saint, 58, 123 La semplicità ingannata (Innocence Deceived) (Tarabotti): address to God in, 45n145; on Mary, 58; publication of, 1, 31, 34, 113n184. See also Paternal Tyranny Seneca, 92–93, 141–42, 157, 219; Epistles, 138, 156, 158; Phaedra, 133n281; wife of, 221 silence, 201–7, 214

286 Index singing, 208–11, 214; Saint Bernard on, 209–10. See also choir Socrates, 81n19, 142n329, 205 “Soliloquy to God,” 45; Tarabotti’s note following, 46–47, 111–13; text of, 81–108; Valier’s sonnet for, 109 Song of Songs, 50, 125, 144; “I held him and I will not let him go” (3:4), 88, 121, 139; “I languish with love” (5:8), 91, 101, 127, 129, 169, 181, 228, 239; “Let him kiss me” (1:1), 127, 146; “One is my dove” (6:9), 107, 235; “Open to me, my sister” (5:2), 134, 180; “Thou hast wounded my heart” (4:9), 48–49, 134, 154 Sperling, Jutta, 6 Stephen, Saint, 124–25 Sulam, Sarra Copia, 41n130, 187n546 Tarabotti, Arcangela: birth/family of, 2–3, 6, 39; congenital limp of, 3, 6, 136n291; forced monachization of, 1, 2–3, 6, 8–9; spiritual dowry for, 3, 4, 5. See also entries below Tarabotti, Arcangela, at Convent of Sant’Anna: as choir nun, 3, 19, 26, 29, 41; freedoms enjoyed by, 15, 28, 39; friends/correspondents of, 15, 33–34, 39, 41–42, 43, 53, 54; health issues of, 21, 46, 81, 91, 96, 237; internal discord/treachery experienced by, 96–97, 98, 143, 193, 237, 254; monetary issues of, 23, 25; and resistance to religious life, 19, 20–21, 44–47, 81–108;

and spiritual relationship with Corner, 20–21, 88n161, 89–91, 100–1 Tarabotti, Arcangela, as writer: Augustine’s influence on, 44–47; Dante’s influence on, 32–33; and issue of Latin errors, 23, 41, 51–52, 55, 60–61, 68, 112–13; Marinella compared to, 36–39; on men, 23, 34, 44, 47, 55, 56–59, 81, 94, 112–13, 115, 120, 122–23, 129–30, 132, 167, 170–78, 189, 199; plagiarism accusations against, 39, 53, 55; pseudonyms of, 31, 32; source material used by, 50–52. See also specific works by title; specific topics and themes Tarabotti, Camilla (author’s sister), 3n3 Tarabotti, Stefano (author’s father), 3; “spiritual dowry” and supplement paid by, 3, 4–5 Teresa of Avila, Saint, 50n154 Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 105n156, 112n182, 122, 140n323, 186n542, 194n579, 204n628, 225n729 three, as perfect number, 163. See also Trinity; virtues, theological; vows, spiritual Tiepolo, Giovanni, Patriarch of Venice, 8, 20n50 Tintoretto, 12; Ridolfi’s life of, 41 Tintoretto, Domenico: Crucifixion, 12 La tirannia paterna. See Paternal Tyranny tonsure, 17, 109, 139n317; Tarabotti on, 26, 37n109, 45–46, 48–50, 101, 133–35

Index 287 Trevisan, Maria Celestina, abbess of Sant’Anna di Castello, 26 Trinity, 107, 197, 200, 202, 214; as described in “The Archangel,” 254–55; divine union of, 149, 240; Mary as resting place of, 237n807 Trisagion (hymn of Eastern Orthodox Church), 254n852 Ursula, Saint, 58, 123 Valeriano, Giovanni Pierio: Hieroglyphica, 51 Valier, Bertucci: sonnet for “Soliloquy to God,” 109 Vendramin, Francesco, Patriarch of Venice, 15, 16 Venice: and controversy of Corner’s appointments, 20n50; convent life/family politics in, 2–9; and debate over soul’s immortality, 187n546; importance of Mary to, 37; map of, showing Convent of Sant’Anna, 13, 14; opera in, 209n660; polyphony in, 22n58; Tarabotti’s publishing career in, 31–34, 39–44. See also Accademia degli Incogniti; Marinella, Lucrezia; Sant’Anna di Castello, Convent of “Veni Creator Spiritus” (hymn), 17, 19, 107 vestition, ceremony of, 16–17, 26. See also tonsure La via lastricata per andar al cielo (The Paved Road to Heaven) (Tarabotti), 33, 158n408, 224n725

Villamena, Francesco: engraving of nun’s profession ceremony by, 18 Virgil, 220 virginity, 57, 124–32, 162, 163–81; of Mary, 82, 103–4, 106, 107, 122–23, 164, 166, 167–68, 174, 175–78, 199, 202, 221, 222, 235–36; Pallas as guardian of, 170, 171; of saints/ apostles, 165–66, 167, 176, 178. See also chastity Virgin Mary. See Mary virtues, theological: charity, 192–200; faith, 186–89; hope, 189–92 vows, spiritual, 19, 112, 123, 147–49, 153, 163, 167, 172, 189, 200, 213, 220; chastity, 19, 123, 148, 153, 162, 163–81, 220; obedience, 19, 22, 123, 138, 148, 149–53, 163, 211; poverty, 19, 123, 148, 153–60, 162, 163. See also individual vows; profession, ceremony of Weaver, Elissa B., 27, 56 “world, flesh, and devil,” 93, 108, 150, 180 Xenocrates, 172, 205 Zanette, Emilio, 56 Zeno, 205 Zoroaster, 137