By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking Monastic Vows in Early Modern Europe

7. Degrees of Separation

187  Chapter 7 Degrees of Separation If adolescents were willing in the first place to enter monastic life, or rapidly resigned themselves to doing so, placing them in religious houses presented few problems. When they expressed reluctance or outright aversion to doing so, relatives had to employ coercive techniques aimed at reducing them to obedience. These measures were designed to inculcate fear and desperation by demonstrating to the young people selected for monachization that they no longer had a place in the family. Almost always, forcers achieved their objective. Progressively alienated from their kin and without further access to financial and emotional support from relatives and friends, adolescents destined for monasteries and convents lacked any possibility of making their own way in the world. To young women raised in prosperous (often aristocratic) households,as all prospective nuns were,the prospect of earning a living as a craftswoman,market woman, domestic servant, or prostitute was inconceivable. Although the social spectrum from which prospective male religious came was broader, almost none of them had the training and experience necessary to enter decently paid employment. For members of both sexes, begging on the streets hardly constituted a realistic possibility. Sooner or later, these young people came to realize that since they could not survive on their own,they had no alternative to vesting and professing as religious. 188 BY FORCE AND FEAR We have already encountered numerous examples of the ways in which forcers worked to alienate adolescents from their families and thrust them into religious houses. Let us now examine these in more detail, beginning with emotional alienation (often achieved partly through physical abuse), proceeding to trickery, and then moving to geographical distancing. Straightforward Emotional Distancing: Teodora Ferriol On the least extreme end of the spectrum of psychological alienation stands the case of Teodora Ferriol of Valletta. After her father died around 1688, when she was fourteen,she and her siblings passed under the control of their mother,Florinda Cumbo,and her brother-in-law,the Knight of Malta Francesco Ferriol. They soon made it clear to Teodora “that there were many children, and the [family’s sources of] income did not suffice [to provide for] all of them.”1 When Cumbo asked a religious whether compelling her daughter to enter a convent was permissible, he replied in the affirmative. “A ship is safer within than outside of the port,” said he, using a metaphor with particular resonance on an island.2 After Cumbo’s slave Teresa failed to persuade Teodora that she must enter a convent voluntarily, her mother— according to several witnesses, “an inflexible woman [impervious to] any sort of pleas and persuasions”3 —began to ratchet up the psychological pressure. If the young woman refused to enter San Pietro,the Benedictine house chosen for her,4 her mother repeatedly threatened that “she would no longer regard her as her daughter and would treat her as a slave.”5 That last word was no farfetched simile: as mentioned earlier, this trial and others from Malta are full of slaves and former slaves. Although Teodora was not subjected to physical coercion beyond occasional slaps in the face,she mustered little resistance to her mother’s pressure. 1. Pos. 332 (16 and 29 March 1710), Meliten., Ferriol, Summarium ([Rome]: De Comitibus, 1710), A1v (testimony of Domenico Ferriol, former slave of Ludovico Ferriol, Teodora’s father, 2 March 1708). How many Ferriol children there were is not clear: Florinda Cumbo referred to several unmarried daughters. Ibid., C8r (testimony of Florinda Cumbo, n.d.) Two sisters, one living and the other dead, are mentioned in the cause papers. 2. Ibid., A4r-v (testimony of Anna Maria Ferriol Testaferrata, Teodora’s married sister, 2 March 1708). 3. Ibid., B7v (testimony of Suor Maddalena Tonno and others, n.d.). 4. Teodora’s mother and uncle probably selected this house because two of her paternal aunts, Cleria Maria and Diana Ferriol, were nuns there. Ibid., A6r (testimony of Suor Cherubina Tabone, 2 March 1708). 5. Ibid., A3v-4r (testimony of Teresa, Florinda Cumbo’s slave, 2 March 1708). DEGREES OF SEPARATION 189 She made only one counterproposal: that a sister accompany her into the convent. Her mother agreed, but Teodora doubted that she would follow through on her promise.6 Then she shut herself up in her room, refused food and medicine, and declined to inspect the clothing and equipment purchased for her monachization.7...