Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 314 – Benedetta Carlini, Lesbian Nun

Saturday, May 17, 2025 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 314 – Benedetta Carlini, Lesbian Nun - transcript

(Originally aired 2025/05/17 - listen here)

The definitive biographical work on Benedetta Carlini by Judith C. Brown cheerfully labels her “a lesbian nun.” Even setting aside the usual discussion of the applicability of the word “lesbian” to describe specific historic individuals, Benedetta’s story is complex to categorize. But it is absolutely clear that it is the story of a woman who engaged in sexual activity with other women within the context of a convent. So perhaps we should avoid quibbling.

The story, as I say, is complicated but also disturbing and a bit sad. It offers us an extremely detailed account of Benedetta’s life and activities, but can’t necessarily explain how Benedetta understood her own life and identity.

Benedetta Carlini was brought to the convent at Pescia (Italy) in 1599 at the age of nine, having been dedicated to the convent at birth. She was highly literate, intelligent, and articulate, which may help explain her unusually rapid rise in the convent hierarchy. By 1619, when she was only 30 years old, she had been named abbess of the convent. The other thing that helped was that she had also begun reporting mystical visions and experiences. The church authorities took mysticism rather seriously and began an investigation to determine whether Benedetta’s reports were genuine and of divine origin, rather than something more problematic. In the end, they got a bit more than they bargained for.

Being earmarked for the convent at birth was not that unusual, nor was the relatively young age at which Benedetta entered the institution. Based on her later reports, her childhood had been relatively happy and privileged. An only child, her largely-religious education was provided by her father. Stories with mystical resonance accumulated around her early. A mysterious black dog menaced her, then disappeared, assumed to be the devil in disguise. A nightingale sang and fell silent at her command, staying by her for two years and believed to be a guardian angel.

But at the convent, she wasn’t considered to be anything special. Entrance into one of the several convents at Pescia involved negotiations of status and affiliation. A dowry was required, just as it was for marriage, and some convents had strict rules about the eligibility of their candidates, whether in terms of family connections or town of origin or what skills the girls brought to the convent. Such social politics bred corruption, which in turn generated reformers, and it was the latter impulse that inspired the community that Benedetta joined. It was not, initially, a proper convent, but conducted itself as such under female leadership and was in the process of applying to become a regular order. That application was approved in 1619 and Benedetta was elected their first abbess.

Her election was most likely related to the reports of her mystical visions, which were a significant financial asset for the institution. Young Benedetta was outwardly conventional, but it later came out that she had repeated experiences that she interpreted as divine communications. The statue of the Virgin nodded at her during prayers and leaned over to kiss her. It wasn’t until years later—right around when the community was expanding in preparation for their status change—that Benedetta began reporting her visions to her superiors. She imagined herself transported to a garden where an angel told her to purify herself. She found herself surrounded by wild beasts who were driven away by Jesus. In a way, these visions were compatible with instructions to visualize key religious scenes and symbols during meditation. And the details of her visions were aligned with conventional imagery she would have seen in books and paintings. She reported worrying that her visions might be sent by the devil, but concluded that they were guiding her to be a better, more spiritual person. She began having visions in public, where she would be seen to go into a trance and speak unintelligibly. Her confessor instructed her to disbelieve her visions, which sent her into a profound psychosomatic crisis manifesting as pains and spasms.

Two years later, her visions began taking the form of imagining physical attacks by young men who tried to persuade or force her away from the convent. Because of this, Benedetta was assigned a fulltime companion to keep an eye on her and the leaders of the convent began to think how the presence of a holy visionary might be useful to the institution. The local community heard of her experiences, when she had visions of the Madonna and guardian angels during a public religious procession.

And then, while meditating on the crucifixion, Benedetta received stigmata (wounds) on her hands, feet, and chest. And this was witnessed by her companion, Bartolomea Crivelli, who shared her room. Stigmata are a big deal. And unlike her visions, these signs were visible to other people. It was shortly after this that Benedetta was elected to be abbess.

Unusually (for a woman), Benedetta was allowed to preach sermons, but only when speaking in a trance in the voice of her guiding angel. Next, her visions took an even more dramatic turn when Christ appeared to her as a handsome young man, accompanied by Saint Catherine and other figures, and explained that he had come to take her heart. Whereupon the vision reached into Bendetta’s side and she felt a great pain, then he showed her the steaming heart that he’d taken from her before placing the heart in his own chest. Benedetta’s companion was a witness to all this via Benedetta’s narration of what the vision of Christ said to her.

Three days later the vision of Christ returned, with a great retinue of saints, and asked Benedetta to disrobe so he could place his own heart into her, in exchange for the one she had given him. After that, Christ gave her strict instructions on living a pure life in order to protect his heart. At this point, a new character is introduced who will be significant. Benedetta is assigned the guardian angel Splenditello, who appeared as a beautiful boy. The vision of Christ instructed Benedetta to prepare for a wedding ceremony with him, giving highly specific and detailed instructions for the decorations and rituals. The convent and her confessor supported her in carrying these out.

In all the occasions when Christ is speaking through Benedetta, he is praising her and promoting her virtues, but when Benedetta is speaking as herself to her companions, she constantly worries that she is being deceived by the devil and protests that she is not worthy. Thus she has plausible deniability against suspicions that the whole experience is an act to gain attention and status. But after the marriage ceremony, some people started to voice doubts and concerns that some of what she voiced was bordering on heresy. An investigation was instigated and Benedetta was relieved of the office of abbess.

I’ve gone into a lot of detail about the build-up and context of Benedetta’s mystical experiences to set the scene for the sexual aspects. The church was always a bit nervous about mystics—especially female mystics—who slipped outside the bounds of convention and hierarchical control. But mysticism was an inherent part of the church and it was necessary to believe that Christ and the saints could appear to people, that miracles could happen, and that some fortunate few would be blessed with physical signs of divine approval. Investigations of the sort Benedetta underwent were how the fuzzy boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable manifestations were drawn. If the investigation had turned up nothing more extreme than visitations from a heavenly bridegroom and stigmata, it’s likely that the matter would have been approved and Benedetta might have ended up a saint. But there was more.

First Benedetta’s stigmata were examined, as the only concrete evidence. When her hands and head were washed of the blood, small wounds were found that bled freely and she reported that they pained her, but not as much on Sundays. Through several more visits, the wounds were seen to be healing, and Benedetta communicated while in trance that Christ had chosen the convent as his own special place and that the investigators and church officials were to take special care of it. After coming out of the trance, Benedetta said she was unaware of what she had written and said in Christ’s voice.

After this, the stigmata were observed to be bleeding again, and at one point, while being examined and questioned, Benedetta was allowed to step out of the room and then returned with wounds on her head bleeding freely. (The head wounds represent the effects of the crown of thorns.) Benedetta reported that Christ was angry with the people of Pescia for doubting her.

This first investigation lasted 4 months, with over a dozen individual sessions, most of which were either recorded or can be reconstructed from notes. The shape of the investigation is fairly ordinary in the context of claims of sanctity and visions. When Benedetta spoke in her own voice, her ideas and opinions were orthodox and repeated the investigators’ concerns that she might be deluded or imagining things. But within these conversations came hints that Benedetta’s relationship with her fellow nuns might involve a bit more conflict than her prior election might indicate. Just ordinary disagreements and punishments, but perhaps enough that some of the nuns wouldn’t mind seeing Benedetta taken down a peg or two. Benedetta’s companion, Bartolomea Crivelli, was questioned and at that time her testimony supported the events as Benedetta related them.

The investigation concluded with a judgment that there was nothing amiss and that Benedetta’s experiences were credible. She was reinstated as abbess and it looked like that would be an end of things.

For the next two years, Benedetta worked as an able administrator of the convent, as well as continuing her role as resident mystic. Then—perhaps in reaction to news of her father’s death—Benedetta began to prophecy her own death and even experience some sort of event interpreted as death and revival. Her rhetoric around this event included threats that the convent and town could only be saved through her presence and intervention, which stirred up fear and resentment. To top it off, the standard three-year term as abbess was coming to a close and there was a serious movement to elect a different woman for the next term. Benedetta’s fame might be useful to the convent, but her autocratic control and rhetoric was beginning to grate.

What happened next is a bit confused, but the upshot was that a new investigation was opened, this time by the papal nuncio rather than the local authorities. The evidence and testimony were examined again, this time perhaps more critically, and a variety of contradictions and unorthodoxies were poked at. This time, the investigators concluded that her visions were demonic in origin. Several of the nuns came forward with testimony that they had witnessed Benedetta manufacturing evidence of supposedly “spontaneous” bleeding of statues and such. That when Benedetta claimed that Christ would kiss her forehead and leave a golden star as a mark, a nun had spied on her and seen her create the star and stick it on herself using wax. Two other nuns reported having spied on Benedetta and seeing her enlarging her stigmata with a needle. The golden ring that appeared on her finger to mark her marriage to Christ was found to be painted on using saffron.

Perhaps the nuns had previously been too intimidated to report these things. Perhaps they had genuinely believed in Benedetta at first but then began to notice the tricks involved. Perhaps Benedetta grew careless—and there’s also the question of Benedetta’s mental health and to what extent she initially believed in her visions and only later felt the need to reinforce the evidence artificially.

And then the papal nucio’s investigators heard some very unexpected testimony from Benedetta’s companion, Bartolomea.

For two years, about three times each week, after the two of them had retired to their chamber for sleep and disrobed, Benedetta would summon Bartolomea saying she needed her, and when Bartolomea came to her, Benedetta would grab her and pull her down onto the bed. “Embracing her, she would put her under herself and kissing her as if she were a man, she would speak words of love to her. And she would stir on top of her so much that both of them corrupted themselves.”

This was so startling to the investigators that the scribe’s handwriting—previously very neat—became sloppy and full of crossed-out errors.

Questioned further, Bartolomea reported that Benedetta told her their sexual encounters weren’t a sin because it was the angel Splenditello who was responsible. Splenditello promised Bartolomea that if she would be his beloved, some day she would see the same mystical visions that Benedetta did. Sometimes, instead of Splenditello, it was Christ himself speaking and acting through Benedetta.

The investigators were far more skeptical than Bartolomea had been. (Though we must keep in mind that Bartolomea had strong reasons to present herself both as an unwilling participant and as credulous about exactly who was having sex with her.) Bartolomea expanded on her unwillingness: sometimes she had refused to come and Benedetta had climbed into her bed. Sometimes Bartolomea succeeded in eluding her and then Benedetta would masturbate to orgasm.

Why had it taken so long for Bartolomea to come forward? The answer was a jumble of believing the voices that she hadn’t sinned, and being too ashamed, and having no confidence that her confessor would believe her or do anything about it. (The priest who served as confessor to the convent was one of Benedetta’s consistent supporters.) Bartolomea’s credulity had already been established during her witnessing to the heart removal and replacement. So it’s quite possible that she was ready to believe that an angel was responsible for the assault, while at the same time being uncertain enough to feel shame.

And perhaps, at some level, she enjoyed the sexual encounters. She reports that “both of them corrupted themselves,” i.e., had orgasms. And while it doesn’t negate the coercive aspect, it may be that pleasure and the enjoyment of being loved—whether by an angel or by a beloved abbess—contributed to her hesitation.

On Benedetta’s side, she clearly acted out of some degree of sexual desire, whether sublimated through a genuine trance state in which she believed she was channeling an angel, or whether she was deliberately using that cover story. (And keep in mind that this is during the same period when other nuns witnessed Benedetta manufacturing her physical symptoms.)

Physical relations between nuns—though rarely recorded overtly—were not unheard of. Convent rules often included restrictions to avoid the opportunity for private sexual encounters and penitential manuals clearly allowed for the possibility. Romantic correspondence and love poetry between nuns includes clearly erotic language. So the fact of Benedetta’s desires falls within familiar parameters, what’s unusual is the cover story she created for acting on them. It may have been the only way she could think of to get past her culture’s assumptions about gender roles, as well as the chastity required of her as a nun.

With this as the conclusion to their report, the investigators handed it off to the papal nuncio for action. For whatever reason, he was hesitant. He sent another visitation, who found that all physical signs of Benedetta’s experiences had vanished and she reported no longer seeing any visions, angels, or other apparitions. She agreed that she had been deceived by the devil and was now living as an ordinary nun, obedient to a new abbess. Her alignment with the conclusions of the investigation gave her an out for forgiveness and a new start.

How much of a new start? There is no formal record of the nuncio’s conclusions and actions, but a record from the convent much later reported Benedetta’s death at age 71 after serving 35 years in prison—i.e., having started her imprisonment 3 years after the final report from the investigation. Imprisonment may have been the most lenient option in front of her. Female sodomy was technically punishable with death by burning, though the number of recorded instances of that penalty are almost certainly a small fraction of the possible instances. There is evidence suggesting that Bartolomea experienced no penalty at all.

So how do we feel about Judith Brown’s labeling Benedetta a “lesbian nun?” To be sure, the book’s title is probably deliberately sensationalized. It seems reasonable to conclude that Benedetta experienced erotic desire for a woman and acted on that desire. Her partner may, in some attenuated way, even have reciprocated. Whether this desire was specific to a female object or whether a female object was a target of opportunity is not knowable—after all, her exposure to men was extremely limited. But it’s also clear that Benedetta experienced something reasonably labeled mental illness, though perhaps one encouraged by the anxieties and ecstasies of the hot-house religious environment she was thrust into at a young age.

From the point of view of historic research into same-sex erotic experiences, perhaps the most valuable aspect is Bartolomea’s report of her physical experiences. Benedetta kissed her. She climbed on top of her in bed and “stirred on top of her” until they both experienced orgasm. Benedetta put her face between Bartolomea’s breasts and kissed them. She took Bartolomea’s hand and placed it on her genitals then made Bartolomea insert her finger into her, and she put her own hand on Bartolomea’s genitals and inserted her finger. She would kiss her while doing this. She would make Bartolomea sit by her while they were studying and kissed her and put her hands on her breasts.

For those who argue the difficulty of identifying acts as “lesbian” without having a clear and specific vocabulary for them, or that women could have no conception of how to perform same-sex acts without having words for them, this record indicates that desire will find a way.