The Rhetoric of Mary: Early Modern Italian Convents and the Architecture of Virginity Isabel Teramura

The Rhetoric of Mary: Early Modern Italian Convents and the Architecture of Virginity

Isabel Teramura

The Council of Trent, convening during the years 1545-1563, aimed to evaluate and establish the values of the Catholic CounterReformation in response to the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. Among its many reforms, the topic of enclosure for cloistered women was left until the last sessions and discussed hastily. The resulting declarations were vague and left much room for interpretation. However one major decision was the renewal of the Bull Periculoso of 1298, which called for the strict enclosure of nuns. 1 Largely, the rhetoric of the Protestant Reformation advocated for the dissolution of convents, which were cast as corrupt and unfounded in scripture. 2 In Italy, however, the post-Reformation period generally saw Catholic aristocratic convents reinvigorate the practice of enclosure. Strictly cloistered life was a massive shift for the life of cloistered women, who often had social roles as teachers, doing charity work, 3 or begging and trading in the city. 4 The spiritual work of nuns turned inward. Convent architecture from this period exemplifies this reclusive spirit: the buildings were transformed by the construction of walls, gates, grilles, doors, covered passages, and courtyards. The transition of aristocratic cloisters from open to closed spaces was motivated by a desire to hide visibly; nuns were withdrawn from public spaces into buildings which visually gestured at their purity. I argue that this architectural transformation speaks to an ideology of visible seclusion drawn from the Protoevangelium of Mary.

The story of the birth of Mary, found in the protogospel of

19 James, narrates the conception, birth, and childhood of Mary. The narrative emphasizes the piety of Mary’s parents, who promise to deliver Mary to a temple after her infancy as an expression of gratitude to God for giving them a child. The Protogospel of Mary confirms the relationship between purity and seclusion. The narrative underlines the purity of the mother of Jesus, marking her body and soul as different from those of regular women. Enclosure and seclusion both proliferate through the text on two levels. First, we see the enclosure of bodies within walls, and secondly we see the enclosure of the purity of the soul within the borders of the body. For

example, when Mary’s mother Anna finds out that she is pregnant, she is sitting in an enclosed garden. During her pregnancy, she confines herself to her room. She declares, “As the Lord my God lives, you will not walk at all on this ground until I have taken you up to the Temple of the Lord.” She then “made a sanctuary in her bedroom and did not allow anything impure or unclean to pass through her lips.” 5 The narrative focus on Mary’s physical separation from the exterior world underlines her ability to retain her holy status; her seclusion is preserved through her isolation from the exterior world. The new architectural aesthetics of Post-Tridentine convents echo this rhetoric; the construction of boundaries and visual obstructions broadcast an image of female purity contained by unbreached borders.

However, it is important to note that the convents affected by the counter-Reformation were largely aristocratic convents; while women from patrician families were enclosed by architectural renovations, poorer women remained in “open” convents. As is often the case, documents and artefacts which are best preserved and given historical legitimacy often concern the more privileged parts of any culture. Thus, it is important for me to note that my paper is concerned specifically with the impact of periculoso and the Catholic reformation on aristocratic cloistered women. I argue that the rhetoric surrounding female claustration which emerged during the 15th and 16th centuries is an expression of class as well as gender. I will

be focusing primarily on aristocratic convents in Florence, Naples, and Palermo. These particular convents saw many modifications during the seventeenth century, and are of particular interest as their changing designs allow for the historical interpretation of the values which lie behind them.

The aristocratic convents which I am studying in this paper existed side by side with “open” conservatories. During the 17th century, Italian convents were increasingly filled with aristocratic nuns. Many noble families strategically chose a cloistered life for their daughters, as the “dowry” to become a bride of Christ was sig

nificantly smaller than that of a regular marriage. Patrician families would devote their daughters to convents alongside significant financial support. Daughters committed to convents would usually bring a monthly allowance and some other valuable assets with them to the convent. Often, these assets were channelled towards extensive renovations which embellished the interior while simplifying the exterior. 6 The aim was to remove any visual, physical, or psychological sign of the nuns from the exterior of the building to sever any connection to the exterior public. As a rule, convent architecture was markedly plain: the buildings were distinctive in their use of exterior architectural features which denied visual, mental, and physical entrance to outsiders. By extension, the nuns within had a restricted relationship with the outside world.

The denial of visual access to the convent, however, was itself an obvious signifier of the enclosure of women within. We see this in the architectural traditions surrounding nuns’ segregated choirs in churches. Specifically in Neapolitan architecture, these were separate spaces where the choir nuns—the professed nuns who had paid a dowry—viewed the church service 7 . These choirs were typically located above the entrance of the church so that the nuns looked directly towards the altar. These spaces were covered by elaborate mesh grilles which prevented anyone from seeing or even anticipating the nuns’ presence. Helen Hills studies several instances in 17th century Neapolitan churches where the nuns’ choir was located on

21 the opposite end of the church, above the altar. This position established more distance between the choir and the lay people below, however it was also put visual emphasis on their separation by putting them into plain view. 8

Indeed, having a daughter in a convent was often socially profitable for many aristocratic families; investing both their assets and the bodies of their daughters in the institution of the convent cultivated an image of familial piety. Accordingly, the elements of architectural enclosure often attracted the public eye while denying it access. For well-connected aristocratic families, this connection to

the church was a source of social power and political influence. 9 These convents held the daughters of Italian patrician families, and by extension, were responsible for guarding the social reputation of these families. These daughters had been entrusted to the care of a convent rather than the care of a husband, but this did not remove the burden of regulating the nuns’ behaviour and exposure to the public. Saundra Weddle states in her article “Women's Place in the Family and the Convent: A Reconsideration of Public and Private in Renaissance Florence” that during the Italian Renaissance, young women’s behaviour was controlled in order to prevent any shame or dishonour her free behaviour would bring to the family. She states, “it was not enough for a woman to behave virtuously; she had to be believed to behave virtuously.” 10 While this analysis refers to the fifteenth century, I believe that these values are still clearly articulated in seventeenth century conventual architecture, and moreover speak to the ideological context surrounding the treatment of cloistered women in the seventeenth century. By placing their daughters in convents and paying a dowry, aristocratic families were paying to ensure the safekeeping of their daughter’s chastity. More importantly, they were guaranteeing her reputation for chastity. With this in mind, we can understand the significance of these boundaries erected around convents: they were protecting not only the virginity of the women within, but also the reputations of their extended families outside.

Mary spends the entire story under the care of one person or another who ensures that she will not be corrupted by the wrong type of social influence. She lives with her parents until the age of three; then lives in the temple until she is forced to leave after menarche at the age of twelve; at which point she is given to Joseph for safe keeping. No matter where she lives, the boundary of the space she inhabits is strictly monitored to ensure that only the right people are allowed access. One overt example of this standard is the interaction between Mary and Joseph where Joseph sees that Mary is pregnant. His immediate reaction is not to blame her for the preg

nancy but rather to take it on as a personal failure to protect her from the threatening sexuality of unwanted outsiders. He declares, “‘For I received her from the Temple of the Lord God as a virgin, but I did not watch over her. [...] Who has done this wicked deed in my home and defiled the virgin?’” 11 Joseph’s statement indicates that Mary’s virginity is a state which can only be secured when she is not in contact with others; accordingly, the exposure to other people without his supervision leads to her virtue being compromised. Mary’s purity, in effect, is predicated upon her enclosure within the boundaries of Joseph’s home. The episode forwards an ideology of containment wherein female virgins are at risk of being ‘defiled’ if they are exposed to the public, and should be maintained intact within the borders of the home.

Just as Mary’s seclusion is fiercely maintained by her protectors, aristocratic convents employed strict rules and regulations to ensure that no unwanted visitors would compromise the purity of the establishment. These rules articulated the ideology of containment demonstrated by the architecture of the building. Very few people were granted access to the building, and those who entered had to abide by strict boundaries which eliminated all unnecessary contact with the nuns. Space and activity on the part of both visitors and nuns was extremely controlled, so both populations only saw certain highly curated facets of the other. For example, in 1658 the Archbishop of Palermo declared that convents should not accept

23 visitors while the nuns were eating. A century earlier, in a more severe attitude, Pope Pius V decreed in 1570 that any person who violated the principles of conventual enclosure, either intruders or the nuns, would be punished with excommunication. 12 CounterReformation attitudes to enclosure demanded the strict regulation of public access to cloistered space. Cloistered women were limited in their engagement with outsiders, and contained within highly delineated social and physical boundaries. The social isolation of cloistered women speaks to an ideology which holds purity to be dependent upon enclosure.

Indeed, a large part of Mary’s perceived piety is rooted in the purity of her environment within her enclosure. From an early age, she is treated with special care according to the spiritually significant role she was born into, passing from one closed space to another. When she enters the Temple of the Lord, she is “cared for like a dove, receiving her food from the hand of an angel.” 13 The only food she can consume is fed to her by angels; the only care she can receive is from the hands of priests. Her physical experience of the world is filtered through a standard of purity. Likewise, aristocratic nuns were confined to a physical space which eliminated any physical conditions which could threaten the purity of the nuns within. For example, in the convent of Santissima Annuziata della Murate in Florence the only part of the convent which was open to lay people was the parlour, located on the bottom floor, which limited public access to the cloistered spaces above. 14 These features acted together to remove any possibility of encountering the outside world; nuns moved through certain sections of the city using these parallel routes which eliminated any possible contact with the lay people who lived next to them. The policing of boundaries was not limited to the walls of the building, but existed between different populations within the convent. In Florence, Archbishop Allessandro de’ Medici declared the appropriate design for a communion grate—where a nun and her confessor would speak—should be smaller than a palm, and have a thick enough barrier of stone that

any sight of or physical contact between the priest and the communicant would be impossible. 15 The inhabitant of an aristocratic convent existed within a space which had been engineered to eliminate any possible contact with unwanted elements; the design reinforced the doctrine of complete withdrawal into conventual life.

Seventeenth century Neapolitan and Palermitan convents safe-guarded the virginity of their aristocratic inhabitants through strictly regulated boundaries. The costly and prominent walls, grilles, passageways, and portals demonstrated that the convent was an impregnable space. In a culture where women bear the weight of their

families’ reputation, these extensive architectural constructions were necessary to the security of noble families’ social status and prestige. They functioned as a visual confirmation of their daughters’ purity and piety, for all to see. By extension, it was also unquestioned. Helen Hills remarks that the virginity protected by convents was guaranteed “not by an undignified physical inspection of the aristocratic female body, the search for the signaculum, the broken or unbroken hymen, but by enclosure—the careful sealing of the architectural clothing of those sacred bodies.” 16 Just as aristocratic nuns’ enclosure proved their innocence, so did Mary’s. Any doubts of her impurity are immediately disproven by acts of God; her holiness and virginity are proved to skeptics, not by physical tests but holy testimony on her behalf. When Mary’s condition is found out by the priests of the Holy Temple, they determine Joseph and Mary’s innocence through the consumption of the “water of refutation.” 17 The most pertinent example is Salome’s test of Mary’s virginity; not believing that Mary could give birth and remain a virgin, she checks that Mary’s hymen is intact. Salome suffers from a burning hand as punishment for her intrusion into Mary’s body, declaring “...I have put the living God to the test, and see, my hand is burning, falling away from me.” 18 Her purity is guaranteed by her holiness and protection from God; any physical examination is a statement of faithlessness.

Early modern convents were made up of intricate bounda-

25 ries and borders which served to segregate the inhabitants within it by sex and by piety. Architecture, which often seems innocuous, functioned as a physical expression of conventual laws through the use of grilles, doors, passageways, windows, choirs, and dormitories. These features were physical limitations to the movement and sight of the nuns who were bound within these spaces, as well as the lay people who remained outside. More significantly, these physical limitations had serious psychological effects on those who encountered them. Any possible interaction whether visual, physical, or mental, was prevented by the design of the convent’s physical space. The extensive attention paid to the security of the convents makes them equal parts fortress and convent. In the case of the aristocratic convents of Naples, Florence, and Palermo, they were effectively strongholds for the daughters of the Italian elite; an alternative to marriage which held the same, if not greater, indication of honour and piety.

This societal celebration of aristocratic families’ donation of their daughters to convents is rooted in an association between convent life and the life of Mary. Both the aristocratic women and the Virgin Mary were valued by their families as symbols of piety. This reflects the early modern Italian value system which strongly linked a family’s reputation to the behaviour of its daughters. Thus women’s behaviour was extremely regulated. Both Mary and the cloistered women were subject to social and familial regulation which attempted to maintain their purity, their value, by isolating them from the corruption which lay outside of their cloister. Both women served as symbols of virtue for those who surrounded them, a role which had immense pressure. This tension is exemplified in the behaviour of Mary’s guardians and the financial investment in convent architecture. Considering this ideological framework, the material conditions of seventeenth century aristocratic Italian convents indicate a shared ideology of enclosure which goes above and beyond the reforms to conventual enclosure proposed in Periculoso, recalling the rhetoric used in the life of the Virgin Mary. Mary serves as the

ultimate example of traditional female virtue, secluded and protected from any corrupting external influence. These convents used exceptional methods of spatial and social control in order to maintain the reality, but more importantly an image of purity which parallels that of Mary’s.

1 Helen Hills. "The Veiled Body: Within the Folds of Early Modern Neapolitan Convent Architecture." Oxford Art Journal 27, no. 3 (2004): 275. 2 Carly Daniel-Hughes. “Protestant Reformation: Closing Convents, Exalting Marriage.” Lecture, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, March 5th 2019.

3 Helen Hills. "Cities and Virgins: Female Aristocratic Convents in Early Modern Naples and Palermo." Oxford Art Journal 22, no. 1 (1999): 33. 4 Silvia Evangelisti. "Monastic Poverty and Material Culture in Early Modern Italian Convents." The Historical Journal 47, no. 1 (2004): 7. 5 (KUPDQ %DUW' DQG =ODWNR 3OHäH “The Proto-Gospel of James (Or, Infancy Gospel of Mary).” In The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), 43. 6 Hills, “Cities and Virgins,” 37. 7 Ibid., 48. 8 Hills, “Cities and Virgins,” 49.

9 Evangelisti, “Monastic Poverty and Material Culture in Early Modern Italian Convents,” 2. 10 Saundra Weddle. “Women’s Place in the Family and the Convent: A Reconsideration of Public and Private in Renaissance Florence.” Journal of Architectural Education 55, no. 2 (2001): 64. 11 (KUPDQ DQG 3OHäH “The Proto-Gospel of James (Or, Infancy Gospel of Mary),” 55. 12 Helen Hills. "The Veiled Body: Within the Folds of Early Modern Neapolitan Convent Architecture." Oxford Art Journal 27, no. 3 (2004): 277. 13 (KUPDQ DQG 3OHäH “The Proto-Gospel of James (Or, Infancy Gospel of

Mary),” 55. 14 Weddle, “Women’s Place in the Family and the Convent,” 57. 15 Hills, “The Veiled Body,” 289. 16 Hills, “The Veiled Body,” 276 17 (KUPDQ DQG 3OHäH “The Proto-Gospel of James (Or, Infancy Gospel of Mary),” 59 18 Ibid., 65.

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