Blog
Friday, May 30, 2025 - 09:00
This concludes Wendy Rouse's book on queer people and themes in the American women's suffrage movement. I found this book rich and useful, because while the specific lens Rouse uses is suffragists, there is nothing about these women and their lives that is specific to the suffrage movement, as opposed to being specific to a particular era and context in US history. Studies of 19th century queer women's history sometimes leave the impression that there are two poles: polite, acceptable romantic friendships and Boston marriages, and transgressive female masculinity and "passing women." But both themes are present in the suffrage movement, intertwined and reacting to each other, which this study demonstrates admirably. If you're writing sapphic historical fiction set in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, I'd consider this book essential background reading.
And on a more personal note: second day in a row working on rivisions of my skinsinger stories! I think the rhythm that I'm settling into is working on fiction first thing in the morning, over breakfast. Then a combination bike ride and LHMP reading at a coffee shop. Then some time doing housework and misc. projects. Then yard work when it starts cooling down in the evening. I knew going into retirement that I would be essential to develop a standard schedule, but I'm still sorting out the details.
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Full citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Conclusion
There is a summary of the themes of the book and a discussion of the variety of ways in which queer suffragists engaged with the rising sexological theories regarding same-sex love, in parallel with the various attitudes toward “respectability politics.” Some came to identify as homosexual, others distanced themselves from what they considered “unhealthy” desires. Some defiantly displayed their queerness within the movement, others felt that it was important not to distract attention from common goals.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, most queer women could avoid close scrutiny as there was broad latitude for women’s friendships, but in the post-WWI era, there was an increasing awareness of, and hostility towards, relationships perceived as homosexual.
After the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920, and especially in the context of queer-baiting of the 1940s and 1950s, some surviving suffragists turned on former comrades, or worked to purge evidence of queer elements in the movement, or even purge evidence of their own past same-sex relationships. This has meant that reconstructing the truth of queer elements in the suffrage movement can require triangulation from the more candid records of friends and associates, or from tangential public records. The question of who is reconstructing those lives affects what is reconstructed, as biographers bring their own agendas and prejudices.
The author emphasizes the importance of queer persons and practices to the success of the suffrage movement, while also acknowledging the enormous variation in those lives, practices, and attitudes. The cyclicity and persistence of the themes of “respectability politics” and the “lavender menace” is noted.
Place:
Thursday, May 29, 2025 - 09:00
Another chapter in the America's queer suffragists book. I almost have the next book all written up and ready to go. And--hey!--I worked on a fiction project today! I'm doing revisions on my "skin-singer" stories with the goal of self-publishing them as a collection, combined with a concluding never-before-published novelette. Mind you, I've been saying for years, "This is the year I get the Skinsinger collection out," but for real this time. My goal is to have it available by Worldcon (makes a nice target). In addition to the revisions, I'll need a cover, and working up the formatting, and confirming my understanding of the distribution system I plan to use. Since the previously published stories have already been paid for (and in some cases, are still generating royalties), I'm less concerned about it making money and more focused on using it to learn the ropes.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Chapter 6: Queering Death
This chapter looks at how female suffragist couples commemorated their shared lives (or had them commemorated by friends) after death. Loves that women might not have felt safe expressing during their lifetimes might find an acceptable expression in the context of mourning rituals, such as memorial poetry, shared graves, or the erection of funerary monuments with dedications mentioning both parties. Fellow suffragists might support such mourning in a context where society did not recognize that there was a relationship to mourn.
Rituals around death, funerals, and mourning offered a space in which female couples could co-opt practices that typically were associated with heterosexual marriage, and thus both make their relationship legible and claim the right to be understood as widows.
As usual, the chapter is illustrated with many specific biographical examples.
Conversely, death sometimes was a context in which a romantic/sexual relationship was re-written into “friendship” or “companionship,” either by the media, by surviving friends or family who worried about the deceased’s reputation, or by the surviving partner.
Relationships were also commemorated in wills that ensured the right of the surviving partner to their common goods and household. This could become a point of contention with birth families, from whom the deceased might have been estranged, or who were simply given a lower priority than the surviving partner.
Place:
Tuesday, May 27, 2025 - 18:00
Here's the next installment of our queer American women's suffrage movement.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Chapter 5: Queering Space
This chapter looks at a variety of ways that women associated with the suffrage movement “performed queerness” in public. Obviously, not all suffragists took part in the following, but those who did helped create the image of the transgressive “unfeminine” suffragist. The following is something of a catalog of these transgressive activities, which the book describes in connection with specific women who embodied them:
- Masculine dress
- Male-coded activities like drinking, smoking, and engaging in active sports
- Converting women’s clubs into activist spaces in both public and private venues
- Forming women’s clubs that had a multi-racial membership, including featuring Black speakers
- Short (male-coded) hairstyles
- Engaging in romantic and sexual relationships with other women and creating households more expansive than hetero-domesticity (as detailed in previous chapters)
The chapter moves to a discussion of racial issues that breaks the flow somewhat. Many white suffrage organizations and spaces excluded Black women. Black suffragists formed their own organizations, which were typically closely entwined with racial equality activism and general voting rights issues. Black women who crossed boundaries around gender expression and domestic relationships could face double-pushback, accused not only of damaging the public face of suffrage but also that of racial equality. Despite this, lesbian relationships and transgressive gender presentation were as common among Black suffragists as white ones.
Both live theater and the new movie industry were sites used by suffragists to promote and celebrate their views and values. Pro-suffrage speeches were incorporated into performances. Semi-comical songs and skits depicted traditional marriage as drudgery. Gender “impersonation” performances by both sexes sometimes deliberately pointed up “gender as performance” in support of women’s rights. (Anti-suffrage performances were also popular, of course.)
Two specific pro-suffrage plays (British in origin) are discussed: Before Sunrise and How the Vote was Won. The film 80 Million Women Want--? Documented the suffrage movement. In addition to suffrage propaganda, the plays featured “new women” who preferred career to marriage and had close same-sex relationships, although these themes did not always prevail at the conclusion of the scripts.
We return to the catalog of activities categorized as “queering space.” Parades were a powerful visual symbol of claiming public space, sometimes done in the face of official prohibition. But parade organizers sometimes issued “dress codes” to soften their image to the traditionally feminine. Those who defied these restrictions included a “suffrage cavalry” organized and led by Annie Tinker (who habitually wore male-coded clothing).
Returning to racialized examples, we get a mini-biography of Chinese-American suffragist Mabel Ping-Hua Lee and Chippewa attorney Marie Bottineau Baldwin. Historically-Black women’s college Howard University gets a lot of references in this book in connection with both faculty and students, and as a locus of connections and organizing.
Targeted protests and activism in Washington DC, especially by more militant forces associated with the National Women’s Party (NWP) kept the cause at the forefront of government attention, and could be met by forceful and violent police suppression, with methods reminiscent of the British hunger strike/force-feeding episodes that captured public attention.
Place:
Monday, May 26, 2025 - 09:00
I think this chapter is the weakest in terms of framing the topic as "queer" since it's basically "suffragists in the US and Britain talked to each other and sometimes had the same types of interpersonal relationships with each other that they did with their fellow contrytwomen. Also: there was a lot of Pankhurst fangirling.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Chapter 4: Queering Transatlantic Alliances
US and British suffrage movements existed at roughly the same time, but different approaches created a context for sharing tactics and experiences. This chapter looks at how US suffragists learned techniques and created alliances with their British counterparts in the early 20th century. These alliances also included transatlantic romantic relationships. The British movement included a wing focusing on more militant techniques (the “suffragettes”) and some US women hoped to spread these tactics back home, including public speeches and demonstrations that appealed to the public rather than only addressing politicians.
At the same time, the US suffrage elements that wanted to erase visible queer elements in the movement—feeling that “respectability” would have more success—also argued against these more militant approaches. The chapter argues that defying traditionally feminine stereotypes by speaking up in public and risking arrest fall into the definition of “queer” behavior.
The techniques, however, grew successful. British suffragists, like their US counterparts, had a pervasive element of female partnerships and gender-bending presentation.
As usual, this chapter has a large number of micro-biographies of women who relate to the theme. There is a particular emphasis on personal connections and inspirations involving the British Pankhurst family. While these connections included close friendships and hero worship, the blanket labeling of such connections as “queer” strains the definition somewhat. However the chapter provides essential details on the parallel connections between suffrage movements in the two countries.
Place:
Sunday, May 25, 2025 - 11:00
The last chapter looked at couples, this one expands to "extended families" among American suffragists and the ways in which they can be seen as "queer".
In the mean time, I'm writing up notes for the next book, which investigates the prevalence of cross-gender presentation in the American West, and the process of erasing or "normalizing" those who participated.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Chapter 3: Queering Family
This chapter expands on the previous. While chapter 2 focused on individual romantic/domestic relationships, this one looks at larger non-traditional households that might include couples (or not) as well as un-coupled women. The focus is on mutually supportive arrangements, not simply people sharing an address. These chosen families (to use a modern term) provided emotional, financial, and medical support for each other, as well as mentorship for younger suffragists. They might include biological or adopted children of the members. The author points out that such arrangements both challenged and assimilated to traditional social structures, providing the image of domestic respectability while adapting the model to their own situations.
Such chosen families were especially valuable for those who had separated from their birth families due to their political activism or life choices, such as resisting marriage, pursuing a profession, or wearing not-traditionally-feminine clothing. As usual for this book, many specific illustrative examples are given.
One factor that made it socially acceptable for unmarried women to adopt children was the formation of Children’s Aid Societies, created to place abandoned or orphaned children. This willingness did decrease later, as public suspicion of female couples became more widespread. Such adoptions did meet some resistance from those who charged that they didn’t represent a “proper family.” [Note: And for another view of the dynamics of such adoptions—although depicting Canada rather than the USA—see the facts underpinning the Anne of Green Gables story, where children might be adopted out into situations where they were treated as servants.]
These chosen and blended families sometimes demonstrated their close connections by re-naming the adoptees following familial practices: naming a child after one of the parents or combining the names of both parents.
Young suffragists that had broken with their birth families might “adopt” an older parent/mentor figure, thus establishing family in the other direction. One example of this dynamic also features the biography of trans man Albert Eugene De Forrest, who was supported in his transition by mentor Dr. Alida Cornelia Avery, as well as by his partner in a platonic marriage of convenience. Quotations from 1890s newspapers regarding him show a willingness to accept and use his chosen name and pronouns, with some exceptions. De Forrest’s mentor Dr. Avery initially framed her support in terms of dress reform, and it isn’t clear whether she fully embraced his transition, though supporting De Forrest personally. De Forrest and Avery worked together in a variety of reform movements, including suffrage and temperance. De Forrest briefly married a woman, but a second engagement resulted in arrest and estrangement from his fiancée. Through all this, he was supported emotionally and professionally by a chosen family of activists. (The author points out that his successful outcome to the arrest owed much to white professional-class privilege.)
The discussion moves on to the situation and supportive community experiences of non-white suffragists, such as Dr. Margaret Chung. Chinese-American women faced dual barriers to voting. Dr. Chung also adopted “mannish” clothing for her profession, and the social acceptance of her is seen in how this factor is downplayed in the media of the day, instead emphasizing her support for her extended family—an image she cultivated as well by “mothering” many of her male military patients in the 1930s and 1940s.
These “queer households” also existed in a context of larger queer communities and enclaves. Such communities might be geographically anchored, as in Greenwich Village, or networks centered around specific couples or educational institutions. But moving into the 1930s, single-sex colleges and faculty consisting of unmarried women began to be considered suspect, as medical theories of homosexuality became more prevalent. This shift also affected informal communities built up among faculty members and their students.
The chapter now moves on to how “free love” philosophy could shape ideas of family and community among feminist and suffragist circles. Such communities walked a tightrope between suffrage activism and being viewed as giving the movement a bad image. The communities themselves might manage their public image to avoid undermining the political movement.
Place:
Saturday, May 24, 2025 - 16:00
If the content in this chapter feels very modern, maybe we need to reanalyze how "modern" the idea of chosen/found family is!
As a separate aside, I'm planning to crank up the content on the Lesbian Historic Motif Project's Patreon account, including special content about new projects that will be for paid patrons only.
In particular, I'm thinking of providing "behind the scenes" progress reports on the LHMP book. If you're interested in this and other premium content and have a dollar or so to spare every month, consider signing up.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Chapter 2: Queering Domesticity
This chapter looks at the personal lives of some prominent suffragists. It was not uncommon for such women to have been married to men at some point, and they might leverage their status as a widow to deflect concern about domestic partnerships with women. These arrangements disrupted heterosexual norms regardless of whether the women involved considered them to represent a specific “identity.”
Carrie Chapman Catt was twice married, and her second husband agreed to let her do suffrage work. During that marriage, she traveled with and sometimes lived with Mary Garrett Hay, with whom she lived permanently after her husband’s death.
“Queer domesticity” among suffragists also encompassed singlehood and sharing living space without romantic partnership. But this chapter focuses on women in “Boston marriages.” The nature of the partnerships within Boston marriages could be varied—professional, creative, romantic, platonic, sexual, or combinations thereof. The common factor is a long-term committed pairing who shared a home and were viewed by their community as a couple. At the same time, such women might strategize how to present themselves as normative, in order to act more effectively in the political realm.
Simply choosing not to marry was a queer act, especially when motivated by feminist principles, but was available only to those with economic independence. The “new woman” who was identified as a type starting around the 1890s was college-educated, oriented toward a career, and—necessarily at that time—not married. This made them vulnerable to accusations of being anti-family, and were targets not only of anti-suffrage forces but also of eugenicists. This could be countered by framing singlehood as a personal sacrifice (for the sake of the movement). But some embraced a positive rejection of marriage as being an inherently unjust institution, claiming the title “Mrs” without a husband, and advocating against double-standards for married and unmarried women. Such views put them at risk of being marginalized by their fellow suffragists. Others chose singlehood after an unsuccessful marriage.
Alternatives to the nuclear family were common in Black communities, relying on networks and extended family relationships. Angelina Grimké provides an illustrative example. With her father working abroad, she lived with various relatives while attending school and developed a romantic friendship with fellow student May Burrill, with whom she exchanged passionate correspondence, although they later separated. She had several other crushes on both women and men while boarding with a family while continuing schooling. Grimké’s poetry illustrates her passions for women, which may have motivated her decision not to marry. But these passions were generally kept out of her correspondence and published work. Grimké’s political activism was a family affair, working on racial equality with Black relatives and on suffrage inspired by her (white) Grimké aunts. She generally lodged with relatives and never found a permanent partner.
Alma Benecke Sass and Hazel Hunkins may or may not have been lovers at Vassar and when their itinerant lives intersected later (both were traveling activists), but Hunkins felt the need to defend their habit of sleeping in the same bed, and their later correspondence is filled with longing for their time together. Neither married and they lived in all-woman environments when traveling. Their heyday in the 1910s and later was an era when advice literature for girls and young women was beginning to warn against co-sleeping, physical affection, and causal touching—warning of unspecified dangers. Their friendship and support continued despite differences over Hunkins’ more radical activities.
Non-normative domestic lives among suffragists also included overlap with free love advocates, and some of these, such as Margaret Foley, had relationships with both women and men.
Some women, such as Black suffragist and racial activist Alice Dunbar Nelson, used marriage strategically to create the image of heteronormative domesticity, which she used rhetorically to frame suffrage activism as a type of “housekeeping.” But her marriage lasted only 4 years and she had sexual relationships with both men and women, including a long-term, if sometimes stormy, partnership with fellow educator Edwina B. Kruse. Her diaries detail multiple affairs with women through 2 further marriages.
The “Boston marriage” was the most classically queer arrangement among suffragists. On the one side a radical rejection of patriarchy, these relationships were sometimes also strongly conforming to traditional images of domestic femininity, and a denial of sexual aspects to their relationship. Such women took a wide range of openness with respect to their private lives, even while presenting publicly as a committed couple.
This tension between desiring an intense, exclusive relationship while presenting it as a type of friendship could fracture some couples. The image of asexuality was a defense against criticism when they were—to all appearances—married.
For women not in heterosexual marriages, framing their public service as a type of maternal care was another defense. The privilege enjoyed by wealthy white activists could also take the form of policing the movement of radical elements, and discouraging the participation of Black women in order to seek the support of racist whites. One couple who took the opposite tack—actively supporting the inclusion of Black suffragists—was Nora Houston and Adele Goodman Clark, who also leveraged their image as “eccentric artists” to defuse scrutiny of their domestic partnership.
Place:
Friday, May 23, 2025 - 11:30
Continuing the coverage of Public Faces, Secret Lives about queer presence in the US women's suffrage movement.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Chapter 1: Mannish Women and Feminine Men
Opposition to suffrage was largely fueled by fears that if women engaged with the male-coded world of politics, it would be to the detriment of female-coded concerns and activities. Home life would suffer. This ideal of “separate spheres” was never more than a stereotype, especially among the working classes. But all manner of social woes were pinned on the upending of the “natural order” in which women were excluded from public life.
The extreme version of this disruption was the specter of mannish women and feminine men. Suffragists were not the only women targeted by this view, and not all women who were breaking gendered rules did it as a political statement. But the conjunction came to be viewed as a weak point in the movement’s message.
Pop culture push-back against women who adopted male-coded dress or behavior included warnings that they made themselves unmarriageable, and even direct accusations of lesbianism. This last had roots in the imagery promoted by sexologists of the “mannish” lesbian. Much of the supposed identification and criticism of such women focused on physical appearance, but a desire for independence, education, and social freedom were also identified as symptoms of “degeneracy.” Such views were especially pernicious when applied to Black women, who were already subject to racialized stereotypes of hypersexuality and criminality.
At the other extreme, suffragist leaders were sometimes labeled as sexless, using epithets like “Amazon,” “hermaphrodite,” or “third sex” for supposedly rejecting a traditional domestic role. A more neutral term for women exploring freedom and independence (and eschewing marriage) was “new women.”
Mainstream suffragist leaders, rather than dismissing these images, tried to highlight those members of the movement who embodied traditional roles, citing children and husbands, and emphasizing the value of suffrage to middle-class married women.
The mirror concern was that if women invaded masculine spheres, men would automatically become feminized. Men who directly supported suffrage were mocked.
Suffragist messaging turned gendered insults back on their opponents, arguing that it was anti-suffrage women who were the real “manly” women. Conformity to normative feminine ideals was clung to as a protection against anti-feminist sentiment.
[Note: The chapter reiterates these points with a great deal of supporting data from media and correspondence of the time. I’m not going to summarize that level of detail.]
This strategic promotion of the image of the affluent, white, femininely-beautiful, married, maternal suffragist also sidelined the presence of non-white activists, who were sometimes entirely excluded from parades and imagery. Black suffrage organizations launched separate campaigns, focusing not only on gaining Black women the vote, but protesting Jim Crow efforts to deny it to Black men.
Place:
Tuesday, May 20, 2025 - 09:22
Back to my focus on US-related history for a bit. This current book is lovely and useful, as the author's goal was to track down and document all sorts of details of individual lives that speak to the thesis "The American women's suffrage movement was thoroughly queer."
Taking note of the publication number (479) it occurs to me that I should start thinking of what publication to schedule for #500. I do so love my round numbers. And since I'll be stepping up the pace on the Project, that number will come around sooner than I expect. I did another UC Berkeley library day last week and downloaded a bunch of articles from JSTOR. At best estimate I have about 175 downloaded articles that I haven't blogged yet, though some will no doubt go in the bin "not relevant." It took me a while to realize I needed to track those in the database as well, so that I'm not constantly tracking down articles that I've already looked at. The database is up to 1100 titles. Some day I hope to start reducing the percentage of "to do" items out of the total, but today is not that day.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Rouse, Wendy L. 2022. Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 9781479813940
Publication summary:
For anyone who wishes to write sapphic fiction set in the American suffragist era—whether your characters are participating in that community or not—this book is absolutely essential. It provides many varied and concrete examples of women’s lives that can in some way be classified as “queer” which will expand your understanding of the possibilities and their reception.
From a structural point of view, the book’s arguments feel very repetitive, but its strength is in “bringing the receipts” with multiple specific biographical examples for each topic. Usually, for a work like this, I’d add blog tags for each specific individual mentioned, but that would rapidly become unmanageable in this case (in addition to the problem of categorizing each individual as to where they fall on the queer map).
Introduction
Part of the overarching theme of this study is the tension between “respectability politics” and the essential reliance the suffrage movement had on women willing to disrupt social norms, specifically including norms of sexuality and gender presentation. The resonances with the “lavender menace” confrontations of the 1970s are inevitable (and noted specifically in the conclusion).
As the author points out, the suffrage movement was very queer, as well as more diverse than popular mythologizing often admits. The author notes that she will use “queer” as an umbrella term to avoid getting bogged down in details of identity definitions. [Note: Though I think she does occasionally get overly expansive in what gets classified as “queer.”]
The early embrace of dress reform movements by leaders of the suffrage movement, such as Stanton, Stone, and Anthony was abandoned to avoid associating the public mockery of “bloomers” and similar reform styles with suffrage. At the other end of the scale, some prominent suffragists such as Dr. Mary Edwards Walker adopted masculine dress as part of their rejection of strictures on women’s lives, and were persecuted for it, both within and outside the movement. Walker’s social privilege and personal history as a Civil War surgeon who had been awarded the Medal of Honor only slightly mitigated the attacks on her, and she recorded the toll it took to remain true to her principles, especially the attacks and snubs from fellow suffragists. Early histories of the suffrage movement were written to exclude Walker and other queer figures, as well as erasing the participation of non-white and non-elite women.
Queer suffragists adopted a variety of strategies, from Walker’s outright defiance, to a careful separation of public and private lives, to deliberately cultivating a conservative, conventional femininity.
Many prominent suffragists were in same-sex couples, varying from social partnership to friendship to romance to sexual relationships. But despite the documentary evidence of their personal correspondence, these relationships were usually flattened into “friend” or “secretary” in the public record. The book lists many same-sex romantic couples, but will focus primarily on the lesser known ones.
Despite the silence of the public record, these relationships were common knowledge at the time and could be used to disparage the movement as a whole. Black queer suffragists experienced a triple threat which made them especially concerned about outward “respectability”, such as Alice Dunbar Nelson, who emphasized her status as the widow of a notable poet, while engaging in romantic relationships with both men and women during the period of her suffrage activities.
Advocates of “free love” such as Victoria Woodhull argued against sexual double-standards that penalized women, but hit a wall when criticizing the hypocritical sexual behavior of supposedly “moral” leaders such as Henry Ward Beecher. The backlash then associated the suffrage movement in general with free love. Leaders and historians of the movement openly recorded ejecting those they felt were too radical.
The introduction closes with the plan of the book, describing what each chapter will cover.
Place:
Saturday, May 17, 2025 - 07:00
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.
Show Notes
In this episode we talk about:
- The historic and religious context of Benedetta’s life
- Benedetta’s sexual encounters
- Sources mentioned
- Brown, Judith C. 1984. “Lesbian Sexuality in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Sister Benedetta Carlini” in Signs 9 (1984): 751-58. (reprinted in: Freedman, Esteele B., Barbara C. Gelpi, Susan L. Johnson & Kathleen M. Weston. 1985. The Lesbian Issue: Essays from Signs. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-2256-26151-4)
- Brown, Judith C. 1986. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-504225-5
- Holler, Jacqueline. 1999. “’More Sins than the Queen of England’: Marina de San Miguel before the Mexican Inquisition” in Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World, ed. Mary E. Giles. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. ISBN 0-8018-5931-X pp.209-28
- Matter, E. Ann. 1989. “My Sister, My Spouse: Woman-Identified Women in Medieval Christianity” in Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, eds. Judith Plaskow & Carol P. Christ. Harper & Row, San Francisco.
- Watt, Diane. 1997. “Read My Lips: Clipping and Kyssyng in the Early Sixteenth Century” in Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender, and Sexuality, ed. Anna Livia and Kira Hall. New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510471-4
- This topic is discussed in one or more entries of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project here: Benedetta Carlini
Links to the Lesbian Historic Motif Project Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com/lhmp
- Blog: http://alpennia.com/blog
- RSS: http://alpennia.com/blog/feed/
- Twitter: @LesbianMotif
- Discord: Contact Heather for an invitation to the Alpennia/LHMP Discord server
- The Lesbian Historic Motif Project Patreon
Links to Heather Online
- Website: http://alpennia.com
- Email: Heather Rose Jones
- Mastodon: @heatherrosejones@Wandering.Shop
- Bluesky: @heatherrosejones
- Facebook: Heather Rose Jones (author page)
Major category:
LHMPFriday, May 9, 2025 - 05:26
Coming to you live from Kalamazoo where I'm attending the annual medieval history congress. I decided not to live-blog the sessions this year. (It's become more complicated as the policy has shifted to recommending getting active permission to love-blog papers.) But I may do a sum-up post from the train as I'm returning home.
Major category:
LHMPFull citation:
Brown, Judith, C. 1986. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Oxford University Press, New York. ISBN 0-19-504225-5
This is a detailed study of the life of 17th century Italian nun Benedetta Carlini, and of the investigation into her mystical visions and experiences which also ended up uncovering her sexual encounters with another nun. Since I initially reviewed this work in preparation for a podcast episode on Benedetta, I’m going to give a brief overview of the structure of the book and then include a lightly edited version of the podcast script to provide the substance.
Introduction
Although the title of the book features the sensational phrase “lesbian nun,” the book works up to that revelation slowly, building a far more complex picture of Benedetta’s life and experiences that that single phrase implies. The introduction explains how Brown came across the records that lay document the subject, and provides a broad understanding of the historic context of f/f sex in the European middle ages and Renaissance.
Chapter 1: The Family
This chapter follows Benedetta’s early life and family context, especially as it relates to why and how she was dedicated to a convent at age 9.
Chapter 2: The Convent
This chapter goes into detail about the context of convents in Pescia and the founding of the institution that Benedetta was placed in (which was not yet formally approved as a convent at that time).
Chapter 3: The Nun
This chapter traces Benedetta’s mystical/religious experiences (as later documented during testimony)
Chapter 4: The First Investigation
This chapter documents the context and content of the initial (local) investigation into Benedetta’s claims to mystical experiences, resulting in an acceptance of the truth of her claims.
Chapter 5: The Second Investigation
This chapter follows the testimony and results of a second investigation two years later, initiated at a higher level, which came to the conclusion that Benedetta’s experiences were diabolical in origin, rather than divine, including the testimony of Benedetta’s companion regarding their sexual encounters.
Epilogue
Fragmentary evidence regarding Benedetta’s eventual fate is provided.
Appendix
Extensive excerpts from the investigation records are provided (in English translation), including full details of the testimony regarding sexual relations.
Contents Summary (from the podcast script)
This 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 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.
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. 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.
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 encounnters 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.
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.
There is no formal record of 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.
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