A Convent Tale: A Century of Sisterhood in Spanish Milan (review)

Renée Baernstein's book about the Angelic nuns of the convent of San Paolo Converso in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Milan can satisfy a broad audience including scholars of Renaissance nuns, college teachers and students of history, and non-academics with an interest in social and political history, women's history, and the history of religion. The book is enjoyable to read because Baernstein's writing is clear, precise, and accessible, while approaching a level of literary artistry that is uncommon among historians. The author deftly draws the reader into the fascinating relationships the nuns sustained with one another inside the convent and with their families and a network of contacts on the outside. She describes a microcosm of vital, competing characters with both shared and conflicting motivations during a period in which political, religious, and social leaders rose and fell from influence with dizzying frequency. Her account is thoroughly grounded in research that is documented straightforwardly and accessibly, including even a chronology of events that impacted the life of the convent from 1494 to 1635. Further useful supplementary materials include a generous quantity of illustrations (thirteen) that provide a sense of the physical aspects of the nuns' lives, like the architecture and frescoed decorations that enclosed them. A well-labeled architectural plan helps readers visualize the paths traveled by nuns in the convent as they fulfilled the daily tasks and prayers that Baernstein describes. The black and white illustrations of the church's exterior and of painted decorations from its interior are not of high quality but are certainly legible, while the maps reproduced in the book are too small to be legible.

The introduction provides an ambitious overview of contextual topics like Catholic Reform, Counter-Reformation, Spanish domination of Milan, and the nuns' various allegiances, along with thoughts about the author's methodological approach. In each of five chapters that treat important events in the convent's history from 1535 to 1635, Baernstein lends vitality to her account by focusing on an essential character in the narrative. In the first, she offers an analysis of the convent's establishment in the climate of pre-Tridentine Milan via the life of its foundress, Ludovica Torelli. In the second, we follow the fate of Paola Antonia Negri, a mystic and "undoubtedly the most famous Angelic who ever lived" (p. 58) as the Angelics of San Paolo first allied with and then distanced themselves from her to maintain the convent's strong position. The third chapter shows us the convent from the outside, through the reign of Archbishop Carlo Borromeo, who favored the convent while also ensuring its strict enclosure. The fourth chapter recounts the convent's status and fame under the leadership of women from the Sfondrati family who were great strategists, using their connections outside the convent to increase its size and finances, its fame (particularly for musical performances), and its facilities (with structural renovations and frescoed decorations). The final chapter describes the decline and fall of the convent, ironically beginning with the apparently auspicious election of Niccolo Sfondrati as pope, and the reign of Agata Sfondrati, perhaps the convent's most charismatic abbess and greatest artistic patron.

Baernstein's very successful choice to pursue this history through the lives and deeds of its most exciting characters is illuminated by her autobiographical preface and the last paragraph of the epilogue. She is aware and even transparent with her readers about the motivations and aims of her methods. A mark of the book's success is that it raises a reader's interest in the activities of other contemporary nuns. How did the Angelics' actions and achievements compare with those of other nuns in Milan, and in convents containing the daughters and sisters of the...