#immodest acts

[amorsole]

thinking straight

[lotus-duckies]

growing up christian in a nutshell

[aliceisaperson]

Ok this is for a very limited audience but I’m reading Immodest acts by Judith C. Brown and I AM LOSING MY MIND, so instead of harassing people in my life with screenshots I’m live-blogging this experience. Some of my favorite things mentioned in the book so far:

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY THOUGHT IT WAS LIKE THE FUCK THE DEVIL SO BAD

The fucking jump to bestiality and then back to really mundane stuff is KILLING ME (also you know for a fact they would have considered a woman having sex on top an “unnatural position”)

“Woman can’t be attracted to other woman because men are too hot”

Anyway if you can, please pick up this book I’m 12 pages in and already having a blast and I haven’t even got to the main meat of the book yet!

[foreignfields]

Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy (1986) written by Judith C. Brown

Benedetta (2021) dir. Paul Verhoeven

[juniperusashei]

Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy by Judith C. Brown - 4/5

Having read Saint Hildegard of Bingen (12th century), the disparity in reactions to female mystics pre- and post-plague is striking (not to mention non-nuns, like Jeanne d’Arc and Margery Kempe in the 14th and 15th centuries.) Benedetta Carlini lived from 1590 to 1661, truly in the Renaissance, so though a lot of her experiences are common with Saint Hildegard, instead of being the Oprah of her day she was scrutinized and discredited (ultimately, never reaching sainthood.) Something Paul Verhoeven’s film holds in common with Immodest Acts is that it maintains that, whether or not Benedetta’s miracles were fabricated, she was a very devout nun. She faked her stigmata wounds, but at the same time, what could compel someone to such extreme self-infliction save for religious frenzy? So ironically, religious lobbyists picketing the film Benedetta has an eerie similarity to what Benedetta herself went through at the hands of the Catholic church: a counter-reformation spirit of quashing mysticism in favor of bureaucracy and order.

The subtitle The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy is interesting because in the grand scheme of things, the lesbian part of this book is not a focus (unlike the film). The highlight of this book though, was actually its introduction, not any of the biographical information. In the introduction, Brown very concisely explains the medieval and renaissance attitudes towards homosexuality: it was seen as more of a sin than rape or pedophilia because the latter two upheld “God’s natural order,” or male hegemony, while homosexuality in both sexes presented a challenge towards it. However, the Catholic church was more concerned with male sexuality, seemingly because they just couldn’t figure out how lesbians even worked. Female homosexuality was so outside of their phallic worldview that they didn’t even think it was possible! This introduction was eye-opening because it talked about issues that affect our society today, not just Renaissance Italy.

As a biography, Immodest Acts suffers because we never get a glimpse of Benedetta’s actual personality. Brown does a good job of explaining the sociopolitical factors that led to these events (for example, mystics being common for backcountry folk but discouraged by the Vatican in light of the counter-reformation) but very little about Benedetta or Bartolomea as living breathing people. To be fair, this is very hard to do when the only sources available are legal records… but when this is the case, for the pure sake of entertainment, I suppose I prefer fictionalized narratives like Verhoeven’s adaptation.

[cannibalspicnic]

Some offense to Paul Verhoeven, but I wish Ken Russell had adapted Immodest Acts. That's the fucked up lesbian nun movie I wanna see.

[jeviensdevoir]

Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven, 2021

Une nonne se découvre des penchants lesbiens et voit apparaître sur elle les stigmates du Christ. Le film aborde les thématiques habituelles et intéressantes de Verhoeven (la pudibonderie de la société, la relation au corps, la manipulation et les relations de pouvoir). Mais le côté visuel cheap gâche un peu le spectacle.

A nun falls in love with a girl. Soon she has the stigmatas from the Christ. The movie is about the usual and interesting thoughts from Verhoeven : the prudishness of society, the relation with our bodies, the games of power). But the overall cheap photography spoils the spectacle a bit.

★★★✰✰

[365daysoflesbians]

DECEMBER 11: Immodest Acts by Judith Brown is published (1986)

On this day in 1986, the book Immodest Acts by Judith Brown was published. The biographical novel follows the story of Benedetta Carlini, a high-profile nun who lived in Italy in the 17th century and has been immortalized as one of the first known lesbian nuns in history. 

Following the release of Immodest Acts, the Canadian playwright Rosemary Rowe penned a play about Benedetta’s affair with Sister Bartolomea titled Benedetta Carlini: Lesbian Nun of Renaissance Italy (x).

Benedetta Carlini was born in 1591 in Pescia, Italy. Her middle-class family was able to afford her a position in the prestigious Convent of the Mother of God. She was made the abbess of the Convent when she was only 30. She was also declared a mystic soon after becoming abbess when she claimed to be having visions of men who were trying to kill her. She was swiftly reported to the papacy, which declared the “men” in Benedetta’s visions to actually be demons.

During the papacy’s investigation of the Convent of the Mother of God and Benedetta’s case, a fellow nun named Sister Bartolemea came forward and declared that Benedetta had molested her while possessed by one of the supposed male demons. Benedetta refuted Bartolemea’s claims, asserting that their relationship had been consensual and ongoing. Ultimately, Benedetta was stripped of her position as abbess and held under papal guard for the rest of her life. She eventually died in 1661 and has since been given the title of one of the first known “lesbian nuns,” a legacy that was reignited with the publication of Brown’s Immodest Acts on December 11, 1986.

-LC