Mistress of the Vatican Read Online Free PDF Page A

benefiting other families?
    A father had very limited choices as to what to do with his daughters. And the reason was this: throughout history, women’s lusts were considered insatiable, in contrast to the lethargic sexual desires of men. The daughters of Eve, if they were allowed to run free, would rape all the men and dishonor their families. After all, it was a woman who had gotten everyone thrown out of Paradise, and her daughters had to be locked up to keep society pure and wholesome. Oddly, no one ever came up with the idea that if a community truly wanted to become pure and wholesome—and less violent—it might consider locking up the men and handing the keys to the women.
    A girl, kept under the stern eye of a father, would be handed over to a husband, who would fix an equally stern eye upon her. Or she would be walled up in a convent, where the abbess and bishop would make
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    M i s t r e s s o f t h e Vat i c a n
    sure she got into no trouble and had no chance to escape. It was unthinkable for a woman to live alone, independent of men, unless she was a widow over forty, in which case she was thought to be so shriveled up that her private parts had turned to dust.
    Looking at the gratifying patrimony squirreled away through years of hard work, Sforza decided there was no choice—all three girls would have to go into a convent so that his son would inherit an impressive estate. Although convents required dowries from the brides of Christ, Je-sus in his infinite mercy was satisfied with one-tenth the amount demanded by flesh-and-blood sons of leading families.
    It was the perfect solution for Sforza. His daughters would be honor-ably taken care of with very little dowry. Moreover, there was a spiritual benefit to having close relatives in monasteries or convents. Those who had been shut in would pray for those who had shut them in. And their prayers were guaranteed to be heard. The saints and the Virgin interceded first for the religious—the name commonly used for nuns and monks—before turning their ears to the selfish clamor of the worldly. The prayers of three daughters winging their way to heaven for decades to come would surely be heard by some saint, perhaps by the Mother of God herself, who would take action, ensuring success for Sforza and his son in this life, and easier access to heaven in the next.
    Saint Peter, it was believed, would allow the religious to enter the pearly gates of heaven with barely more than a glance at their habits and a satisfied nod. It was the worldly he was on the lookout for, and these he would question rigorously. Turned away with only a tantalizing glimpse of Paradise, many would be forced to seek out that other place. For this reason, many of the most noble, wealthy, and worldly sinners insisted on being buried in the habits of nuns or monks, perhaps with the hope of fooling Saint Peter as they hurried by, the nun’s veil or monk’s cowl pulled over their faces, racing for the gates before the stern gatekeeper realized who they really were.
    Though male and female religious were believed to have equal access to heaven, the life of a nun was far less interesting than that of a monk. Monks, though most lived in monasteries, were sometimes allowed to perform pious works in towns and cities, helping the poor and tending
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    Eleanor Herman
    the sick in hospitals. Many monks were sent on missions to convert the natives of China, India, and the Americas. Male religious were also encouraged to make pilgrimages to holy sites, especially Rome and Je-rusalem.
    While the religious clergy were generally given to lives of contemplation, members of the secular clergy—priests—were extremely active in the community, baptizing, burying, and celebrating Mass. Priests could hope to become bishops, cardinals, even pope. But a nun could only remain a nun, with no place in the world. Lascivious creatures that they were, nuns were taken out of the community and guarded in what