Mistress of the Vatican Read Online Free PDF

closely resembled a maximum-security prison.
    Having studied at the Convent of Saint Dominic and boarded sometimes with her aunt, the abbess Giulia Gualtieri, Olimpia understood well what a nun’s life was like. A nun slept alone in a narrow cell, on a hard bed, with an unlocked door through which the abbess could enter at any time to see what she was doing.
    Fraternization was frowned upon as nuns, having devoted themselves to God, were not supposed to have any friends, even among their fellow nuns. Nuns who laughed and gossiped when cooking together or sewing in small groups could be subject to severe punishment. Forbidden to have pets, many nuns adopted the chickens they raised for eggs. Some nuns sent letters to their bishops complaining bitterly that the upstairs convent corridors were ankle deep in chicken turds because other nuns, looking for love where they could find it, kept so many pet chickens.
    Nuns attended prayer service six times a day, and in between prayers they worked—tending the chickens in the henhouse, cooking the communal meals in the kitchen, doing the laundry, sewing, and cleaning. To become closer to God, they sometimes whipped themselves, starved, and spent their nights praying rather than sleeping.
    They were not permitted to go into town. Servants bought supplies, knocked on the wooden window by the convent’s front door, and, when it was opened, placed the items on a turntable that was spun inside. The nun receiving the goods had no contact with the servant, no friendly word, not the merest glance at a worldly person, and the entire transaction was handled exactly as if the convent were a leper colony.
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    M i s t r e s s o f t h e Vat i c a n
    Nuns were not supposed to have even a glimpse of the outside world and its temptations. All convent windows opened onto the inner courtyard, a place of contemplation, and never onto the rowdy street. Some convents even stopped up the ventilation shaft in the privies if it gave the nuns a view of the street below, or the street below, perhaps, a view of the nuns’ behinds.
    Nuns were allowed to meet relatives in the convent parlor, a gathering place where laypeople waited for a religious relative to come to the grille that separated the nuns’ world from the real world. Male visitors were limited to a short list of fathers, brothers, and uncles, but female visitors could be more distant relatives, former neighbors, and friends. An older nun past the age of indiscretion—forty—was instructed to stand nearby and listen to the younger nuns’ conversations in the parlors to make sure nothing inappropriate was said.
    Usually the relatives would bring food and drink and make merry in the parlor, slipping wine and food through the grille to the nun while she, in return, slipped them the delectable convent cakes. Bishops routinely tried to clamp down on such excesses but just as routinely failed. It was, after all, the only fun a nun could have. And the rowdy relatives were not nearly as troubling as another problem in the parlor, which was becoming a favorite pastime of adventurous Italian youths. Boisterous young men—drunk, bored, or on a dare—pretended to be nuns’ brothers, snuck in, and exposed themselves, waving their members and grinning at the shocked virgins behind the grille. The Neapolitans were the worst, some of them making the grand tour of Italy with the express purpose of flashing all the nuns.
    Doctors’ visits to nuns in their cells were viewed with suspicion. Physicians were encouraged to wait in the parlor and speak with patients through the grille without examining them. If the patient was too ill to rise from her bed, he spoke with another nun about her symptoms and prescribed remedies. The only men allowed in the convent with some sense of ease were priests, who were required to hear confessions and celebrate Mass. And sometimes even this resulted in pregnancy, thereby confirming popular beliefs about the incurable lechery