Sacred Hearts, by Sarah Durant

This book is a rare historical novel, a page turning drama about life in an Italian convent, compelling and exciting despite the near total absence of men–aside from a Father confessor, some anonymous workmen, and a music teacher in love with a nun entered into a convent in Ferrara against her will. Despite the constrained setting of this novel, inside the convent of Santa Caterina, famous for its singing, the novel itself manages to draw a great deal of excitement in the politics of women engaged in seeking to preserve their independence or fight for greater piety in the time of the Counter-Reformation.

Given what I have said above, it should be rather obvious that this novel is going to appeal mostly to those interested in reading about religious women, which means that most readers will either be women, or religious, or both. The novel, as can be expected, is rather cynical about the religious nature of many of the sisters–regardless of their political interests, and the political aspect of life in the times. The novel itself is written well, even if it does include some occasionally rather shocking commentary on how nuns coped with the forced vows of chastity, and it is clear that the author did a great deal of research concerning life in convents in the 16th century, an area of expertise I must admit that I do not possess.

One of the more shocking aspects of this novel is that nearly 50% of aristocratic women in Italy in the 16th century were sent to convents because dowries had gotten so expensive that even noble families could only afford to marry one of their daughters in style and were unwilling to have any other daughters marry below their station. As a result, convents were often full of women who did not want to be there, which created an atmosphere where the attacks on the virtue of nuns by Protestants led to the constriction of freedom of women in one of the few areas where they were allowed some measure of power by the Catholic Church because of the absence of men.

All of this makes for reading that is both highly political in nature as well as intriguing. It is significant that this is an Italian convent, because the politics within the convent often mirror the greater family-based politics of the late Italian Renaissance, which was crushed by the Counter Reformation and its attack of both the beauty and corruption of the late Medieval Roman Church. One can see in the fight between the two sides a sort of false dilemma between corrupt political machinations, not stopping short of murder, and a harsh and rigid piety that lacks any interest in rationality whatsoever. It is a shame that a balance between the two is so often lacking in life.

The novel itself is full of worthwhile characters, particularly Suora Zuana, the clever and lonely (and deeply scientific) head of the convent’s dispensary, Suora Serafina, the lovesick rebel with a beautiful voice whose presence threatens the stability of the convent, Suora Chiara, the ruthless abbess bred for the convent by her noble family, and Suora Umiliana, the head of the counter-reformation wing, deeply influenced by anti-rational pietism. Compared to these vivid and fierce women, the novel’s few men come off as pale shadows, which is rather ironic when one considers the shadowy existence of cloistered nuns. Still, if one wants to read 400 pages of writing about catfighting nuns fighting to preserve some small space of autonomy for women in 16th century Italy, this is a good read, with even a successful love story to spice it up a little. One can do far worse.