Nuns' Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (review)

Convents and nuns have increasingly captured the attention of historians, since convent archives provide an unusually rich documentary source for the lives of early modern women. As symbols of piety and intercessors on behalf of their communities, nuns played a significant role in shaping the political culture of early modern Europe. They had access to, and control of, resources, especially land, that connected convents to the wider world of economic and social networks. Lowe has made a significant contribution to this growing body of literature by studying the cultural productions of nuns themselves, especially chronicles. She combines literary analysis with historical scholarship to show how chronicles were a medium for nuns to express their own understanding of history, a genre usually restricted to male authors.

Lowe studies three convents that produced chronicles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the Augustinian canonesses at Le Vergini in Venice, with a 1523 chronicle; the Benedictine convent of Le Murate in Florence, with a 1598 chronicle; and the Clarissan convent of San Cosimato in Rome, with three versions of its chronicle composed between 1603 and 1613. By focusing on different religious orders within different cities covering more than a century, Lowe is able to break out of the single-city model that characterizes much of Italian Renaissance scholarship. She is also able to show how convent reform elicited a wide range of reactions from nuns—from outright hostility by the Venetian canonesses to the willing acceptance of reform by the Roman Clarissans. Lowe thereby suggests a more nuanced version of the significant turning points in female religious history that has, previously, centered on the Council of Trent's imposition of strict cloister in 1563 and subsequent hostility to this reform.

For the Venetian canonesses, reform came earlier, in 1519, the result of a newly forged alliance between secular and papal authorities. Hostility to these reforms was the motive for writing the convent's history as an independent institution, founded as a symbol of peace between the Holy Roman emperor and the pope in 1177. For the Clarissans in Rome, reform was part of their mission, since they owed their origins to earlier reform movements. Subject to their own order's authority rather than the local bishop's, Clarissan convents often regarded reform as an internal, desirable process rather than an external imposition. Only the history of the Benedictine convent in Florence fits the traditional history of convents in sixteenth-century Italy, its major reform following the Tridentine decrees, which initially provoked the nuns' resistance.

The most successful part of the book is Lowe's careful analysis of the chronicles as literary and historical narratives; her interdisciplinary approach shows how the authors created distinctive voices. The Venetian chronicle is startling in its classical references and outright hostility to the convent's reformers. The author expressed hope "that God in true vendetta will deal with him [her mortal enemy, Ottavio or Ottavio Brittonio] as Queen Alestra did with King Cyrus of Persia, who with her own sword cut off his head and placed it in a vase full of blood, saying 'You thirsted for blood, so drink blood!'" (42). With these juicy episodes, Lowe establishes that nuns' chronicles are no mere routine narratives of institutional successes.

Less effective, however, is a chapter on convent art, where, despite many interesting details, she fails to advance a coherent argument. On the whole, however, Lowe's careful scholarship, along with her effective use of literary and historical analysis, makes this book a valuable addition to Renaissance and Counter-Reformation history.