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CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BOLOGNA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2012

LIISE LEHTSALU
LIISE LEHTSALU*
Affiliation:
Brown University
*
History Department, Box N, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USALiise_Lehtsalu@brown.edu
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Abstract

Eighteenth-century convents are little studied, and women's third order houses even less so, despite the growing numbers of the latter. Through a case-study, this article explores the origins and functions of one eighteenth-century third order house in an Italian urban community. Relying on the rich meeting minutes of Santa Maria Egiziaca in Bologna, the article analyses the everyday realities and the changing perceptions of women's religious institutions among the urban elites connected to the house. Santa Maria Egiziaca emerges as neither only a convent nor a shelter, the two institutional types recognized in current scholarship, but rather as both. The diverse goals of the house's administrators and benefactors suggest why third order houses thrived in the eighteenth century when more traditional convents came under increasing criticism and declined.

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Type
Articles
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The Historical Journal , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 939 - 959
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

I

The administrators of Santa Maria Egiziaca in Bologna faced a predicament in the summer of 1713. Laura Morte, who had separated from her husband, asked to enter their third order monastic community for a probation period, the first step towards religious profession. Even though Morte ‘had converted to God with a desire to serve him’, she failed Santa Maria Egiziaca's constitutional requirements for admission. She was still a married woman. But the archbishop of Bologna had referred Morte to the house and the administrators felt compelled to accept her, both because ‘the authority of the archbishop demanded it and because the petition was urgent because of rightful reasons’. A precariously independent woman, Laura Morte embodied the spirit, if not the letter, of the regulations guiding life in Santa Maria Egiziaca, which had been founded as a shelter for penitent prostitutes in 1689, becoming a third order monastic community in 1702. The administrators accepted Morte for the probation period.Footnote 1 In August 1713, a new disagreement arose. When discussing Morte's veiling, the second step towards profession, some administrators demanded a closed ceremony, while others wanted benefactresses there. In the end, however, this disagreement had little significance. Morte was veiled secretly, in the presence of several pre-eminent Bolognese noblewomen, ‘despotically, without the order or even the awareness [of the administrators]’.Footnote 2 In 1718, as Suor Maddalena Illuminata, Morte also professed in Santa Maria Egiziaca, the third and final step that not all women in the house took.Footnote 3

The negotiations between the administrators, the archbishop, and the patrons that shaped the life of Laura Morte were not unique to Santa Maria Egiziaca. Yet, little is known about such deliberations in eighteenth-century convents. Santa Maria Egiziaca was also a third order house, which, despite their long history, remain even less understood than conventional convents. Third orders date to the high middle ages, when lay religious organized communities were bound by simple vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Some of these communities had papal approbation; others were established with episcopal approval. Each third order community was governed by its own specialized constitution.Footnote 4 The Council of Trent (1545–63) imposed enclosure on third order houses for the first time.Footnote 5 Nevertheless, new third order communities that participated actively in their localities’ poor relief and educational institutions continued to emerge. While papal and local authorities did subject many new communities to enclosure by the mid-seventeenth century, the tertiaries successfully organized their institutional structures in ways that allowed continued engagement beyond the cloister. And yet, apart from recent studies on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French third orders, post-Tridentine third orders are mostly absent from current scholarship.Footnote 6

Throughout the eighteenth century, Italian third order houses expanded in number and in population.Footnote 7 In early eighteenth-century Bologna, then the second largest city of the Papal States with a population of c. 65,000, there were twelve third order houses.Footnote 8 In addition, the city and its dioceses also counted thirty-three convents.Footnote 9 This was a period of relative civic stability and continuous population growth in Bologna, guaranteed by a long-standing alliance between its Rome-appointed cardinal legates and the local oligarchy.Footnote 10 Throughout the century, between 5 and 6 per cent of the city's population lived within monasteries and convents.Footnote 11

Despite such significant presence of monastic houses in one of the largest Italian cities of the eighteenth century, current scholarship on early modern Italian monasticism rarely extends beyond the mid-seventeenth century.Footnote 12 Scholars point to a well-documented decline both in new monastic foundations and in existing monastic populations in the later seventeenth century to argue for the diminishing social significance of monasticism in the eighteenth century.Footnote 13 The rise of an enlightened, reason-based society is posed as the cause of monastic stagnation and regression.Footnote 14 The Italian views of monasticism were also informed by the contemporary French debates that considered convents to be of limited social utility.Footnote 15 However, scholars focus on convents inhabited by the aristocracy and on debates pursued by the elite. The eighteenth-century growth of third order houses, noted above, is rarely considered.

The only non-conventual women's institutions considered in current scholarship on post-Tridentine institutions are the shelters for battered wives (malmaritate), unmarried women (zitelle), widows, and prostitutes that emerged in the late sixteenth century. These shelters protected or restored female honour and aimed to reintegrate women into the society through marriage or convent.Footnote 16 In institutional organization, the shelters drew on both lay and religious traditions. Consequently, most scholars recognize ambiguities in the institutional form of custodial houses. Yet, custodial institutions are considered distinct from monastic institutions. Such bifurcation is particularly evident in studies that focus on the evolution of women's institutions. Sandra Cavallo, Sherrill Cohen, and Angela Groppi all underscore a growing homogeneity of women's institutions between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries when previously open and inclusive shelters were transformed into monastic houses. They regard experimentation with institutional forms as characteristic of custodial houses.Footnote 17 Nevertheless, all three clearly distinguish between convents and shelters – a shelter transformed into a convent, an open institution became an enclosed institution. Third order houses are not part of this discussion.Footnote 18

Yet, recalling Morte's case, the administrators, the archbishop, and the patrons participated in negotiations in which the third order house was perceived both as a shelter and as a convent. In fact, the three groups had competing and conflicting objectives for Santa Maria Egiziaca. These objectives shaped the evolution of Santa Maria Egiziaca and testify to the multifaceted position a third order house occupied in eighteenth-century society. Santa Maria Egiziaca accommodated both religious and laicizing objectives of its administrators, patrons, and episcopal authorities.

To understand the meaning of Santa Maria Egiziaca for its administrators, patrons, and the local episcopal hierarchy, this article particularly explores a source that is typically not central to monastic scholarship. The richly detailed meeting minutes, Libro primo, contain the administrators’ discussions of daily events in Santa Maria Egiziaca, as well as some biographical detail on women who entered the house between 1689 and 1760. A close reading of the first half-century of the institution's existence reveals the conflicting aims of administrators, benefactors, and the episcopal authorities during this formative period and evidences a heretofore unknown institutional context.Footnote 19 Since Libro primo was written by the administrators, it offers only sparse glimpse of the suore and does not permit an analysis of their perception of Santa Maria Egiziaca. Nevertheless, the minutes offer a perspective beyond the more commonly studied monastic rules, notarial records, and visitation reports.Footnote 20 The dissonance in institutional purpose and meaning among the administrators, the patrons, and the episcopal authorities emerges clearly in this close study, showing Santa Maria Egiziaca as a nexus of competing governing and patronage objectives.

The study of Santa Maria Egiziaca thus problematizes the current bifurcated notion of religious institutions by introducing a third order house. Its institutional history indicates that Santa Maria Egiziaca never fully ceased to be a shelter, even after it was recognized as a third order house. Instead, Santa Maria Egiziaca accommodated the often contradictory views on women's institutions espoused by its administrators and patrons because it was a third order house. To appreciate this dynamic evolution and contested history, we must first consider the institutional history of Santa Maria Egiziaca before turning to an analysis of each of the competing groups and of their particular perceptions of the house. Even as the negotiations between the urban elites underscore the existence of varied views of religious houses, Santa Maria Egiziaca highlights the continued evolution of women's religious houses in the eighteenth century.

II

Three extant sources recount the origins of Santa Maria Egiziaca: Antonio Masini's Bologna perlustrata, Libro primo, and an undated letter to Alessandro Dolfi, the Bolognese Vicario delle Monache (vicar of the nuns).Footnote 21 All three accounts relate a story of conversion. Purportedly, the public sermons of Father Pietro Francesco Costa, a Minor Observant monk, encouraged several poor women and public prostitutes to repent in 1687. The penitents were then offered a shelter, from where some women married while others remained in shelter. In 1689, the women who remained were relocated to Casa del Buonritiro – a ‘house of good shelter’ that was dedicated to St Mary of Egypt (Santa Maria Egiziaca in Italian, the patron saint of prostitutes). All three accounts emphasize that the goal of the new institution was to recover women from sin to a good Christian life – a goal typical to a post-Tridentine custodial house.

The information Libro primo provides about the early inhabitants of Santa Maria Egiziaca also shows that the house first operated as a shelter. Initially, most women left the house within a year of their entering. Eight of the ten women who entered in 1689 had exited by the end of 1690: three to marry, two to enter domestic service, two to recover from illness, and one to live in a religious community.Footnote 22 Seven women entered in 1690; three of them left within a couple of months, three remained in the house, and the fate of one is unknown.Footnote 23 Like the various sixteenth- and seventeenth-century custodial institutions across the Italian peninsula, Santa Maria Egiziaca reintegrated women into society. In fact, the first inhabitants did not perceive of Santa Maria Egiziaca as a monastic community. In 1689, Caterina Marchisi left the house to live ‘in constant awe of God, with frequent sacraments’, presumably in a monastic community.Footnote 24 A year later, another penitent left to enter the Bolognese convent of Convertite.Footnote 25

As mentioned above, three women of the 1690 cohort remained in the house. One of them entered as a custodian; the other two stayed first to take the habit of Santa Maria Egiziaca in 1692 and then to profess in 1708 and in 1723 respectively.Footnote 26 Nobody entered the house in 1691, but the two women admitted in 1692 eventually both professed in Santa Maria Egiziaca.Footnote 27 All seven women who entered between 1693 and 1700 remained in the house and professed to religion.Footnote 28 A dramatic and quick institutional change occurred therefore between 1690 and 1692. After 1692, women began to stay in Santa Maria Egiziaca to lead ‘lives in religion’.

Soon, this institutional change was recognized officially. A 1692 notarized document already referred to Santa Maria Egiziaca as a third order Franciscan community, and claimed that the local archbishop had sanctioned the community.Footnote 29 In 1702, Archbishop Giacomo Boncompagni recognized Santa Maria Egiziaca by bestowing a constitution on the house. ‘This is a Congregation of Penitents dedicated to the service of God [both] with [religious] vows and with religious profession, and with their own constitution … [which] is … canonically approved by His Eminence to resemble other Congregations of Tertiary Ursulines’, declared the document.Footnote 30 Remarkably, the introduction to the constitution claimed that its rules had been practised laudably ‘for a long time’ already.Footnote 31 The document, therefore, not only established Santa Maria Egiziaca as a third order community, but also recognized the transformations that had occurred in the early 1690s. The constitution established a daily routine for communal and spiritual life.Footnote 32 The women were to live peacefully under the guidance of a Mother Superior and a Mistress, both elected from among the tertiaries and either respectively responsible for ensuring constitutional order within the house and for guiding the spiritual edification of the community.Footnote 33 The community was to observe voluntary enclosure. Exiting the house was permitted only to attend religious ceremonies; and on these occasions, the women had to wear a habit that covered them, head to toe.Footnote 34 Any guest to the house had to obtain prior written permission.Footnote 35

Episcopal authorities also included Santa Maria Egiziaca in all three pastoral visits to Bolognese third order communities that they completed in the eighteenth century.Footnote 36 The visitors repeatedly found that the house closely observed its constitution. Indeed, compared to the other communities visited, Santa Maria Egiziaca received the fewest corrective decrees. Even when an ordinance of Pope Benedict XIV, short of constituting full enclosure, had required all Bolognese third order houses to regulate movements in and out of their communities more strictly in 1744, the subsequent visit record on Santa Maria Egiziaca praised the house for its good track record and found it already observing the new rules.Footnote 37 Such assessment probably did not come as a surprise to the pope, who, as Archbishop Prospero Lambertini, had dispatched a letter to Rome in 1736, which read ‘Even though not cloistered, the women [of Santa Maria Egiziaca] rarely exit the shelter where they live the most exemplary lives far from the World.’Footnote 38

Sources internal to the house confirm these visitors’ assessments. Santa Maria Egiziaca occupied several buildings on Via Nosadella in the south-west of Bologna.Footnote 39 In the early eighteenth century, a building programme ensured Santa Maria Egiziaca's architectural likeness to enclosed convents.Footnote 40 A partitioned church was completed by 1706; a year later, access from the exterior to the interior of the new church was restricted.Footnote 41 The tertiaries’ dwellings were first secured in 1711 by the closing of two doorways; in 1727, iron grilles were added to regular curtains ‘for the greater propriety and honesty of the suore’.Footnote 42 At the time, Santa Maria Egiziaca became known for its enclosure. One Suor Girolama, already professed in the third order house of San Giacomo but longing ‘to retire in a place of enclosure’, requested a transfer to Santa Maria Egiziaca on 27 June 1727.Footnote 43 Pious religious women and episcopal authorities alike thus recognized Santa Maria Egiziaca as a well-established third order monastic community.

However, despite the transformations, Santa Maria Egiziaca also remained a shelter. Libro primo records numerous episodes of daily life that testify to the continuation of pre-transformation practices in the eighteenth century. The constitution prohibited the acceptance of widows and malmaritate. It limited the admission of zitelle to two or three women capable of serving the community as Mistresses. Finally, to be admitted, women had to be healthy. Such rules were meant to protect Santa Maria Egiziaca from institutional change.Footnote 44 Yet, women identified as either zitelle, malmaritate, or widows were regularly admitted to the house.Footnote 45Libro primo also records the hosting of women unaffiliated to the house for short periods of time as late as in 1734.Footnote 46 Despite its third order status, Santa Maria Egiziaca thus continued to operate as a shelter and women continued to reside in the house temporarily. Three of the four women who entered in 1702 left without taking the habit or professing; two women left within a year of their admission in 1759 and in 1761 respectively.Footnote 47 Moreover, records on many women remain incomplete. Seventy women in total entered Santa Maria Egiziaca in the period 1701–61; fifty-four of them (77 per cent) took the habit and only twenty-seven professed (39 per cent). Even though the fate of the women who neither took the habit nor professed remains unknown, it must be assumed that most of them left Santa Maria Egiziaca. The total number of women in the house remained constant at around thirty inhabitants.Footnote 48Libro primo diligently records the administrators’ discussions about admissions. Some women's incomplete records must be taken to indicate that the administrators never discussed their veiling or profession. As with the first inhabitants, women continued to come and go in Santa Maria Egiziaca throughout the eighteenth century, staying only for short periods before returning to society.

Continuity and change characterized the institutional history of Santa Maria Egiziaca. Founded as a shelter, it continued to operate as a shelter through the eighteenth century. The documents from within the house complicate the narrative of transformation that emerges from prescriptive sources. The negotiation among administrators, patrons, and the episcopal authorities – who all had different objectives for the house – determined this particular institutional history. It is to these negotiations that I now turn.

III

Administrators, patrons, and the episcopal authorities approached Santa Maria Egiziaca both with religious and with laicizing objectives. The religious objective saw Santa Maria Egiziaca as a monastic house; the laicizing strategy perceived utilitarian value in the house. The subsequent analysis of the three groups underscores the changing perceptions of Santa Maria Egiziaca – and of other women's institutions – in the eighteenth century.

The administrators of Santa Maria Egiziaca sought to fashion the house into a monastic institution. This group was established by the constitution in 1702 and comprised ‘seven secular persons of outstanding piety and prudence’ who were to ‘contribute to the maintenance of the opera with nothing but their advice and authority’.Footnote 49 The administrators, or the Congregazione dei conservatori, were thus to protect the house and its rules constitutionally as a supervisory body. Nevertheless, in the course of the eighteenth century, the administrators actively shaped Santa Maria Egiziaca as an institution.

A legacy of personal interactions with the house undergirded the administrators' active participation in Santa Maria Egiziaca. All conservatori had been involved with the house since its foundation in 1689. Cesare Bonni's letter, discussed above, mentions a group of twelve men who were ‘to govern, to guard, and to maintain’ the new house.Footnote 50 A comparison between Bonni's letter and the constitution shows that all the ‘new’ conservatori mentioned in the 1702 document were also named by Bonni.Footnote 51Libro primo and various notarized records testify to a continued involvement of the men mentioned by Bonni, and of their heirs, throughout the eighteenth century. Francesco Boschi, a conservatore of forty years and the son of the Paris Maria Boschi mentioned by Bonni, was a creditor of Santa Maria Egiziaca; in 1755, the community owed Boschi over 20,000 Bolognese lire, an amount equivalent to its annual expenditure.Footnote 52 The administrators thus made long-term personal investments – time, effort, and money – in the house. In this, the congregazione acted similar to the administrative bodies of other women's institutions, both monastic and custodial, discussed by Gabriella Zarri and Sherrill Cohen.Footnote 53 The conservatori were not mere supervisors.

Libro primo reveals instead the administrators' omnipresence in the day-to-day affairs of the community. The constitution granted the administrators the right to vote on all women seeking entrance to the house, as well as on the women's progression towards profession; all in-house affairs were in the purview of the Mother Superior and the Mistress.Footnote 54 Despite this, the conservatori oversaw the running of daily household affairs and appointed in-house officials (Mother Superior, Mistress, Vicar, Sacristan, etc.) because they considered the suore lacked the necessary skills and abilities.Footnote 55 In the process, the conservatori self-fashioned themselves as a paternal authority. Libro primo describes a day in 1710 when the administrators interviewed all suore individually on ‘various issues relating to the house and its good governance’. The women were also asked to propose candidates to the office of Mother Superior. The minutes emphasize, however, that the congregazione was not obliged to solicit the women's opinion. Indeed, the answers of individual suore do not appear in Libro primo. The minutes just state that ‘[the suore] put themselves under the guidance of the signori conservatori’.Footnote 56 The administrators legitimized their own active role in Santa Maria Egiziaca through the alleged incompetence of the suore.

Yet, by declaring that ‘all [suore] will accept voluntarily the paternal admonitions and suggestions that are given to them by the congregazione for their own benefit alone’, the administrators erred against the very constitution they were supposed to protect.Footnote 57 Only the archbishop had the right to introduce new regulations in Santa Maria Egiziaca, or to alter the existing ones.Footnote 58 When judging the administrators’ role, it must be remembered, however, that the men, who now called themselves conservatori, had been involved with the community since its foundation, well before the promulgation of the constitution. Instead of blatantly infringing the constitution, these men exercised their pre-constitutional rights ‘to govern, to guard, and to maintain’.Footnote 59 Despite the rapid growth of veilings and professions after 1692 and the adoption of the constitution in 1702, Santa Maria Egiziaca did not become a third order house instantaneously. Institutional transformations allowed for earlier practices to continue alongside new rules. As a result, the congregazione, with its active voting rights and financial decision-making power, occupied a position that allowed it to influence the direction of these institutional transformations.

In the course of the eighteenth century, the administrators placed an increased emphasis on the monastic character of Santa Maria Egiziaca. In 1716, when some administrators wanted the suore to adopt a weekly fast, they argued it was ‘in the fashion of other female religious [houses]’.Footnote 60 A year later, in 1717, the administrators again referred to comparable practices in other religious houses as they allowed the Vicar to substitute the Mother Superior when the latter fell ill.Footnote 61 Moreover, in stark contrast to earlier periods, the congregazione solicited the Mistress's opinion on an admission decision in 1728; and, in 1731, it respected the suore’s collective desire to retain the services of a confessor.Footnote 62 In situations where the administrators had dismissed the suore before, they now sought their views.Footnote 63 With these changes, Santa Maria Egiziaca increasingly resembles the religious houses scholars have discussed as female spheres that enabled women to assume positions of economic and political authority.Footnote 64

The characteristics of the women accepted to Santa Maria Egiziaca also changed. As early as 1706, the congregazione refused to accept new women converted by Father Pietro Costa, the original founder of the community. The administrators said limited space necessitated the rejection; yet, they also denied any future aggregation of these women because of the ‘prejudice [that would result to] the work already done in Santa Maria Egiziaca’.Footnote 65 The rejection of Father Costa's new penitents signified a decisive break with the origins of Santa Maria Egiziaca. Only a handful of women accepted in the early eighteenth century were still identified as prostitutes, or otherwise criminal, even though the administrators continued to refer to many women as ‘poor sinners’ in Libro primo.Footnote 66 By the mid-eighteenth century, the conservatori admitted women who were decidedly unlike the first suore and whose acceptance violated the constitution. The constitution emphasized work; the suore were expected to serve one another and the house without the help of additional servants.Footnote 67 Yet, both servants and cooks were hired in the 1740s; furthermore, in 1756, the administrators accepted a woman as a monaca corista [a choir nun].Footnote 68 A new social and labour hierarchy emerged in the 1740s that was similar to social hierarchies in other early modern monastic houses.Footnote 69 Through the changes to in-house rules and new admissions practices the administrators gradually steered Santa Maria Egiziaca towards established monastic forms. The congregazione emerges as a conservative body, as defined by Sherrill Cohen, that espoused the monastic way of life well into the eighteenth century.Footnote 70

Nevertheless, the administrators still considered Santa Maria Egiziaca also as a shelter. In a public letter soliciting donations in 1716, the conservatori introduced the house as an institution of poor prostitutes who were ‘unable to go to the monasteries where one pays the religious dowry’; Santa Maria Egiziaca saved women ‘from the danger of finding themselves anew between the jaws of the infernal wolf’.Footnote 71 Crafting this public letter, the conservatori thus highlighted earlier institutional characteristics that they had rejected in 1706, when they refused entrance to Father Costa's new penitents. The administrators’ behaviour can be considered duplicitous. However, the intended recipients of the letter, and their views on Santa Maria Egiziaca, must also be explored. As a plea – sent to all noble households and parishes in Bologna – the letter was certainly drafted to appeal to prospective patrons. It is evident from the letter that the congregazione expected these prospective patrons to perceive Santa Maria Egiziaca as a shelter, despite the administrators’ own growing emphasis on the monastic character of the house. The letter thus introduces an ongoing negotiation of the role and the function of Santa Maria Egiziaca in Bologna.

The patrons’ views were not unified however. Two different types of patrons were involved with Santa Maria Egiziaca: noble ladies, frequently mentioned individually in Libro primo, and other, mostly non-noble members of the Bolognese citizenry, whose bequests were recorded in notarized records but who figured rarely in the meeting minutes. The gentlewomen's relationship with the house was personal and individualistic.Footnote 72 The constitution, in fact, explicitly mentioned noble patrons and encouraged noble women's limited participation in Santa Maria Egiziaca. First, the constitution firmly stated that ‘neither the preferences of Dame nor any other person, despite their greatness or good merits, should be respected’ to determine the suitability of an applicant.Footnote 73 Beyond this prohibition, the constitution discussed the gentlewomen's physical presence in the house, who, with the administrators’ permission, were allowed to visit the suore, especially if a donation was in prospect; furthermore, some women ‘of great age and piety’ could also assist the congregazione in the latter's supervisory tasks.Footnote 74 The constitution thus envisioned some noble women acting as auxiliaries to the administrators, who always controlled and limited the gentlewomen's presence in Santa Maria Egiziaca.

Yet, the day-to-day realities recorded in Libro primo betray a close personal relationship between the noble patrons and the suore that exceeded the limitations prescribed by the constitution and often subverted the authority of the administrators. A sizable group of women received visitation rights in the early eighteenth century, with most belonging to the highest strata of Bolognese society and many to senatorial families.Footnote 75 Contrary to the constitution, some of these noble women regularly recommended candidates to Santa Maria Egiziaca and participated in the communal life; they rarely gave donations to the house. Their benevolence targeted specific women within Santa Maria Egiziaca.

The noble women recommended candidates who were often highly unsuitable, according to the constitution. Sick and old women, as well as malmaritate, zitelle, and widows, were all either barred or, as already noted, considered very cautiously. Yet, the administrators rarely refused entrance to a woman recommended by a gentlewoman.Footnote 76 On these occasions, the Libro primo always notes the identity of the recommender; and, according to the minutes, it was the patron's involvement that guaranteed the acceptance of the otherwise unsuitable candidate. The administrators held the patron responsible for the newly accepted woman. For example, both Rosa Maria Camilla Moretti, accepted in 1706, and Anna Parisini, accepted in 1707, enjoyed the patronage of Marquise Suplizia Albergati. Both women were sickly. In fact, Moretti left Santa Maria Egiziaca after her initial acceptance to recover in a local hospital, paid for by Albergati, re-entering Santa Maria Egiziaca in 1707. Albergati also assured the congregazione that she would pay all Parisini's medical expenses, as incurred.Footnote 77 While the exact relationship between these three women remains unclear in the extant sources, Albergati's financial guarantees for Moretti and Parisini and her evident concern to find a place for them strongly suggests a personal connection between them. Indeed, the Palazzo Albergati on Via Saragozza was but a few hundred metres from Santa Maria Egiziaca. In placing Moretti and Parisini into a near-by institution, Albergati may have found in Santa Maria Egiziaca a safe alternative to the family's own staff quarters, which by the eighteenth century were increasingly separate from patrician palaces and occupied adjacent rental properties.Footnote 78 Sandra Cavallo and Laura McGough have shown that patrons in contemporary Turin and Venice founded and supported institutions which accepted their own household members.Footnote 79 In Santa Maria Egiziaca, noble benefactresses recommended roughly one quarter of all women who sought entrance to the house; these benefactresses also routinely contributed to the maintenance of the women they recommended.Footnote 80 Santa Maria Egiziaca held a utilitarian value for its patrons: it afforded a safe abode for the likes of aging servants or other household members.

Santa Maria Egiziaca, moreover, also provided a space for some of the noble ladies themselves. The gentlewomen participated in the communal life of the house and acted as mediators between the suore and the administrators. Six noble women and two laundresses appealed to the administrators in 1715, demanding the discharge of a custodian. The administrators believed, however, that the suore had instigated the petition and that the secular women acted as go-betweens.Footnote 81 The administrators were also concerned that the benefactresses became involved in fights between the suore.Footnote 82 Combined, these snippets present Santa Maria Egiziaca as a space of interactions and personal relationships between the patrons and the suore; furthermore, they suggest a female community that extended beyond the group of women living within the house.Footnote 83 The personal relationships between the patrons and their protégées continued once the candidate had found a place within the house. Indeed, plausibly in order to maintain these relationships, the gentlewomen occasionally attempted to subvert the administrators’ control over their access to Santa Maria Egiziaca.

On 13 June 1721, Suplizia Albergati, who had helped several women to enter the convent, petitioned the congregazione for a private entranceway to Santa Maria Egiziaca. In her petition, Albergati indicated that Archbishop Boncompagni consented to her request, but the administrators rejected it.Footnote 84 The matter did not end there, however. Five years later, in June 1726, the administrators received another letter, this time from the archbishop himself. Boncompagni repeated Albergati's request and gave it his implicit approval. The administrators declined again, but this time they recorded their objections to such a doorway, which ‘could be of great inconvenience to the house, a disturbance to the monache and a risk of some very probable inconvenient evil’.Footnote 85 The minutes also display the administrators' great unease about the whole affair. In fact, the congregazione soon supplicated an unnamed authority close to the archbishop to plead with the latter. They wanted the archbishop to know that while the administrators were ‘desirous of obeying his every wish’, they asked him to also understand their objections to the doorway.Footnote 86

Suplizia Albergati's quest ended there, unsuccessfully. The affair, however, illustrates the different perceptions of Santa Maria Egiziaca among the administrators, patrons, and episcopal authorities. The doorway would have allowed Albergati unlimited access to the suore and to the house, without the interference of the administrators. It would have underscored the existence of a female community inside Santa Maria Egiziaca, as well as facilitated the patrons’ use of the house for personal and familial needs. However, the doorway would have also violated the enclosure that Santa Maria Egiziaca followed, albeit voluntarily, and that both the pastoral visitors and transfer suore had commended. Santa Maria Egiziaca would have become an open community, lacking a clear distinction between the convent and the world outside. Any such development would have contradicted the congregazione's emphasis on Santa Maria Egiziaca as a monastic institution. Unsurprisingly, the administrators decisively opposed the doorway, thereby failing to fall in behind either a notable patron or the archbishop. Yet both resignation and pragmatism permeated the conservatori's self-justification for allowing the gentlewomen to meddle in Santa Maria Egiziaca. ‘Because the penitents live from donations, one needs to close their eyes on various occasions in order not to displease the ladies and other benefactors, who by their charitable deeds think to have bought the right to command in case things are not done in their way.’Footnote 87

A tally of the gentlewomen's actual donations belies the administrators’ grudging submission. These donations further confirm the gentlewomen's personal approach to Santa Maria Egiziaca and underscore the tensions between patrons’ objectives and the administrators’ strategy. Only seven of the twenty-four women licensed to visit Santa Maria Egiziaca donated to the house, or rather to some of its inhabitants.Footnote 88 All seven helped one or more women to enter Santa Maria Egiziaca, but only three of them left donations to Santa Maria Egiziaca, the institution: Catterina Zambeccari Caprara left 500 lire, a silver candelabrum, and a painting in 1720;Footnote 89 Diana Tanara Campeggi bequeathed credit shares in 1737 and personal items in 1747;Footnote 90 finally, Maria Maddalena Musi degli Antonij, a woman without a noble status, designated Santa Maria Egiziaca her universal heir in 1743.Footnote 91 Three noble women not included in the visitors’ list also left legacies: Anna Grati Fantuzzi bequeathed 200 lire to a specific suora in 1720;Footnote 92 Lucrezia Orsi Ercolani donated 900 lire and an annual provision of foodstuffs that were intended to facilitate the admission of two women in 1767;Footnote 93 finally, also in 1767, Elisabetta Paleotti Magnani left a legacy to provide for the women she had already recommended to the house, as well as to allow a new candidate to enter every six years.Footnote 94

Other than Musi degli Antonij's bequest, discussed further below, these donations were specific and personal. They bequeathed personal items and foodstuffs, or made provisions for new women to gain access to Santa Maria Egiziaca. The two bequests by Diana Tanara Campeggi exemplify this pattern. Campeggi had donated credit shares and land to Santa Maria Egiziaca in 1737; in return, she requested the celebration of daily masses on her behalf.Footnote 95 Ten years later, in her will, Campeggi altered the bequest considerably. She now left the suore (rather than Santa Maria Egiziaca as an impersonal institution) furniture from her own household, some barrels, and many of the interior fittings of her personal chapel. Campeggi also singled out three suore to whom she left an annual gift of linens. Finally, Campeggi altered the pious request of her 1737 donation. She released Santa Maria Egiziaca from the responsibility to celebrate daily masses for her soul. Instead, Campeggi's personal chaplain was charged with the duty and was assigned a salary for it; Santa Maria Egiziaca remained responsible for the celebration only when the chaplain was absent from Bologna for longer than a month.Footnote 96 Campeggi thus shifted her benevolence from the institution to individual suore. Like Suplizia Albergati's request for a doorway, these donations underscored a personal connection between the patrons and the women of Santa Maria Egiziaca. But unlike the doorway request, donations – a well-established relationship marker between patrons and religious institutions – allowed these women to express this connection without censure from the administrators.

Yet, the majority of the women on the visitors’ list left no bequests to Santa Maria Egiziaca, or to the women therein. They did donate to other institutions, however. Elena Pepoli Aldrovandi and Anna Grassi Albergati were both licensed to visit the house; yet, no record of their direct involvement with Santa Maria Egiziaca remains.Footnote 97 Instead, the former left several legacies to the Discalced Carmelites in Bologna and asked to be buried in their church and the latter made frequent donations to third order Dominican nuns and the Franciscan convent of Corpus Domini.Footnote 98 The accounts of Anna Grassi Albergati show donations to two convents, Corpus Domini and Santi Vitale et Agricola, and to a nun in San Lorenzo.Footnote 99 Legacies to the poor, donations to convents and monasteries, and burials within monastic churches were all established elements of early modern pious patronage. Despite the administrators’ efforts to encourage such patronage by actively shaping Santa Maria Egiziaca into a monastic institution and by granting the noble women a place within the house, Aldrovandi and Albergati found other outlets for their religious patronage. Santa Maria Egiziaca represented primarily a shelter for the noble women, a venue for personal donations that supported these women's laicizing objectives towards the house and, perhaps owing to the administrators’ monasticizing efforts, offered a safe and well-regulated abode for their protégées.

The noble women were a distinct minority among Santa Maria Egiziaca's benefactors, however. Non-noble patrons comprised 70 per cent of all patrons. About 40 per cent of non-noble patrons belonged to the Bolognese citizenry; many were notaries, lawyers, medical doctors, or merchants. Clergymen composed about 20 per cent of these patrons. The socio-economic origins of the final 40 per cent of the non-noble patrons remain unknown; however, a reasonable guess sees these patrons as part of the citizenry as well. While women accounted for about 40 per cent of the noble benefactors, among the non-noble patrons, women contributed about 30 per cent of all donations. The typical patron of Santa Maria Egiziaca was, therefore, not female and noble but rather male and from the ranks of the citizenry or the clergy.

Patrons therefore usually resembled one of the administrators, rather than one of the gentlewomen, and approached Santa Maria Egiziaca as a monastic institution rather than as a shelter.Footnote 100 Four non-noble patrons, three women and one man, designated Santa Maria Egiziaca as their universal heir.Footnote 101 Ludovico Barbieri – a public notary and a member of the Bolognese College of the Notaries – left Santa Maria Egiziaca his universal heir in 1741. Barbieri demanded that an engraved stone be erected on the wall of Santa Maria Egiziaca's church.Footnote 102 The lapidary memorial established a strong visual bond between Barbieri and the house, while its call for prayer underscored the pious nature of the bequest. Maria Musi degli Antonij may have designated Santa Maria Egiziaca as her universal heir, as noted above, and asked the community to intercede for her soul – a request expressed frequently in pious legacies – but she also left legacies to several religious institutions in Bologna and asked to be buried in the convent of Corpus Domini.Footnote 103 Musi degli Antonij's will, while clearly considering Santa Maria Egiziaca a religious institution, therefore also reflects the uncertainty that characterized the pious bequests to the house. Santa Maria Egiziaca was rarely the only institution benefiting from such legacies; instead it was one of many, and often the one mentioned last. Moreover, Santa Maria Egiziaca was often named as a substitute, benefiting from a legacy only when the first recipient could not accept the donation. The patrons also often named substitutes to the legacies they left to Santa Maria Egiziaca, citing a fear for the house's suppression or ‘mutation’ as the reason.Footnote 104 These patrons thus acknowledged the possibility of institutional transformation and they sought to guarantee the continued care for their souls in case such transformation did occur. Despite his uncertainties, however, the typical patron perceived Santa Maria Egiziaca as a religious institution and named it as a recipient of his pious legacies.

Noble and non-noble patrons’ divergent patronage strategies highlight the two groups' different but concurrent perceptions of Santa Maria Egiziaca. The non-noble patrons accepted, albeit rather carefully, the administrators’ strategy to transform Santa Maria Egiziaca into a monastic institution. The noble women, on the other hand, rejected Santa Maria Egiziaca as an established religious house and approached it as a useful shelter instead. The third order Santa Maria Egiziaca was a negotiated space – both a monastic and a custodial institution, but neither one nor the other exclusively.

While the sources on the episcopal authority's interactions with Santa Maria Egiziaca are limited, the extant documents show that the episcopal hierarchy also participated in this negotiation. As mentioned above, Libro primo shows the archbishop referring several women to Santa Maria Egiziaca. All six recorded referrals occurred between 1702 and 1735 and applied to women who were not, constitutionally, ideal candidates. The referred women were either widows or separated from their husbands and they were above the age limit of twenty-five years. Other than Laura Morte, whose story opens this article, none of the women recommended by the archbishop professed in Santa Maria Egiziaca.Footnote 105 Nevertheless, the authority and power of the episcopal hierarchy rendered it impossible for the administrators to reject any of these women. When deliberating Domenica Reggi's application, who was one of the six women recommended by the archbishop, the administrators ‘calculated well’ the fact that both the archbishop and Elisabetta Belloni, an influential benefactress, had recommended Reggi.Footnote 106 Much like the noble patrons, the episcopal authority could use Santa Maria Egiziaca for its own ends to find a place for women in precarious situations, even if these women violated the constitution.

According to the constitution, however, the archbishop was the only authority with the right to change the rules governing Santa Maria Egiziaca.Footnote 107 Episcopal support for women who violated the constitution effectively undermined the rules within the document. Such recommendations were confined to the first decades of the eighteenth century, however; no records remain of referrals after 1735. Prospero Lambertini, and his successors, did not continue Giacomo Boncompagni's earlier practices, nor did Lambertini support noblewomen's interactions with the house in the way Boncompagni had championed Suplizia Albergati's petition. The early eighteenth-century episcopal hierarchy, therefore, contributed to the negotiated institutional form of Santa Maria Egiziaca by simultaneously both granting a constitution and undermining the rules therein. In fact, Archbishop Boncompagni's stance helped Santa Maria Egiziaca to become the negotiated space it was. In the end, however, the episcopal authority clearly considered Santa Maria Egiziaca a third order house, as demonstrated by the glowing pastoral visitation records discussed above. The episcopal hierarchy agreed with the administrators’ vision for Santa Maria Egiziaca; the noble benefactresses alone continued to approach the house as a shelter.

IV

Santa Maria Egiziaca thus evoked divergent, even opposite, expectations among its administrators, patrons, and the episcopal authorities, as reflected by the negotiations between these three groups that marked the institutional history of the community in the eighteenth century. On the one hand, the administrators sought to transform Santa Maria Egiziaca into a monastic institution. They exercised long-term control over the house and formed a small, closed group that treated Santa Maria Egiziaca as a private enterprise. This group's long-term effort to fashion Santa Maria Egiziaca after other monastic houses underscores the continued relevance of the monastic form in the eighteenth century. Patrons who belonged to a socio-economic stratum similar to the administrators also approached Santa Maria Egiziaca as a monastic institution by leaving pious legacies to the house. The female noble patrons, on the other hand, rejected Santa Maria Egiziaca as a monastic institution. Their pious legacies befell other, more established, convents in town. Santa Maria Egiziaca provided, instead, a utilitarian space for these women and their protégées, much the same way as it did for the episcopal authorities in the early eighteenth century.

These negotiations in Santa Maria Egiziaca exemplify a wider eighteenth-century debate. Mita Choudhury describes the eighteenth-century convent as ‘an institution whose internal makeup and place in the larger society continued to evolve’.Footnote 108 Choudhury refers to French convents that responded with institutional change to the negative socio-political discourse on monasticism and its functions in eighteenth-century France. Yet, Santa Maria Egiziaca proves the veracity of Choudhury's assessment also beyond France. Various perceptions of Santa Maria Egiziaca coexisted and changed over time. The house held multiple significances for the people involved with it. Furthermore, third order houses like Santa Maria Egiziaca existed not only in Bologna, as noted above, but were common across the wider Italian peninsula and beyond.Footnote 109 The negotiations in Santa Maria Egiziaca thus highlight the need to re-think the current historiographical bifurcation of women's institutions, at least for the eighteenth century. Third order houses that had the capacity to enact successfully multiple functions and to hold multiple significances to their contemporaries must bear on any categorization.

This article has also demonstrated that contemporary perceptions of Santa Maria Egiziaca evolved. Santa Maria Egiziaca therefore begins to provide wider clues about the success of third order houses in a century of general convent decline. The age of reason did not supplant a former age of religion, but rather was characterized by negotiations between religious and laicizing perspectives.Footnote 110 Third order houses such as Santa Maria Egiziaca – new institutions, still in their formative stages of development – were productive sites of such negotiations. Indeed, the noble women's laicizing approach to Santa Maria Egiziaca positively reflects on the recent characterizations of the eighteenth century as the age of ‘enlightened Catholicism’ that emphasized practicality, usefulness, and social activity.Footnote 111 A third order house, that was not an enclosed convent but was still a recognizably monastic space, embodied the changing eighteenth-century discourse on women's institutions, religion, and piety. Now a more comprehensive study that includes a cross-section of eighteenth-century third order houses is needed to build upon these preliminary conclusions, to see whether the recipe for Santa Maria Egiziaca's success in its first half-century is echoed in the wider expansion of third order houses in the eighteenth century.

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Caroline Castiglione, Evelyn Lincoln, Robert Self, the Fall 2011 graduate workshop at Brown University History department, and the Historical Journal's anonymous readers for their comments.

References

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2 Ibid., fo. 74v.

3 Ibid., fos. 20v–21r.

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18 Zarri suggests that third orders were involved with the new custodial institutions, all the while clearly distinguishing between custodial institutions and the third order houses that staffed them (Recinti, pp. 474–5).

19 Santa Maria Egiziaca was suppressed in 1810. Detailed sources for the second half of the eighteenth century are lacking but the extant visitation and notarial records are comparable to the earlier period.

20 Most scholars do refer to similar administrative books of minutes or books of memories (ricordi) but use them to supplement prescriptive sources; the books of memories written by nuns have been used to analyse the nuns’ perceptions of convent life. For examples see Ferrante, ‘Honor regained’; Lowe, K. J. P., Nuns' chronicles and convent culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar.

21 A. Masini, ‘Aggiunti’, in Bologna perlustrata (1666) (2 vols., Bologna, 1986), ii, p. 47; Libro, fo. 2r; Biblioteca Archiginnasio (BA), Archivio Gozzadini (Gozz), 168, fasc. 24, ‘Ristretto del Modo, che è stato erretto il Munistero delle Suore Penitenti di Santa Maria Egiziaca’.

22 Libro, fos. 2v–6r.

23 Ibid., fos. 5r–7r.

24 Ibid., fo. 3r.

25 Ibid., fo. 6r.

26 Ibid., fos. 5r–7r.

27 Ibid., fos. 6v–7r.

28 Libro, fos. 7r–9v.

29 Ibid., 8/7045, num. 33 (2 May 1692).

30 ASB, Dem, SME, 18/7055, Constituzioni (Constituzioni), p. 35. The Ursulines are mentioned as a model also elsewhere in the constitution. This suggests that when sanctioning Santa Maria Egiziaca, the archbishop deemed the house similar to other new third order houses. Extant sources show no official connection between Santa Maria Egiziaca and the Ursulines. On Italian Ursulines see Mazzonis, Q., Spirituality, gender, and the self in Renaissance Italy: Angela Merci and the Company of St. Ursula (1474–1540) (Washington, DC, 2007)Google Scholar.

31 Constituzioni, p. 2.

32 Ibid., pp. 14–25.

33 Ibid., pp. 26–31.

34 Ibid., pp. 10–11.

35 Ibid., p. 12.

36 AAB, VP, 53, Visita Lambertini, 1734; ibid., 57, ‘Libro Delle Visite fatte alle Terziarie della Città, e Diocesi di Bologna Dell'Anno 1744’; ibid., 86, ‘Relazione della Sacra Visita … dell'Anno 1772 … ’.

37 Ibid., 57, ‘regole, ed ordini’.

38 ASB, Dem, SME, 12/7049, num. 11 (29 Dec. 1736).

39 Santa Maria Egiziaca first bought a house on Via Nosadella in 1692, after renting there since 1689 (ibid., 20/7057, ‘Testamento di Antonio Masini’). Adjacent buildings to the first house were purchased in 1706/7, 1708, and 1729 (Libro, fos. 50v–51v, 57r, 96v–97r). Via Nosadella also housed Santa Elisabetta, a Franciscan tertiary community, and Santa Maria degli Angeli, an Augustinian convent (Fanti, Abiti e lavori). Zarri has noted the concentration of convents in specific Bolognese neighbourhoods by the seventeenth century (‘I monasteri femminili’, p. 155).

40 On post-Tridentine convent architecture see Hills, H., Invisible city: the architecture of devotion in seventeenth-century Neapolitan convents (New York, NY, 2004)Google Scholar; Zarri, Recinti, pp. 117–24.

41 Libro, fo. 53r.

42 Ibid., fos. 68r, 94r.

43 Ibid., fo. 93v.

44 Constituzioni, pp. 5–6.

45 Catterina Moretti, whose probation was disrupted by illness, was re-accepted after hospitalization in Ospedale della Morte in 1708 (Libro, fos. 58r–58v); Maria Cattarina Padoani, who had a violent father, was accepted in 1710 with an understanding that the acceptance violated the constitution (fo. 67v); Maria Catterina Trotti spent extra time with her ‘loved ones’ before entering the house in 1712 (fo. 73r); Giuglia Alibani entered in 1718, despite the administrators’ objection to her old age (fo. 83r).

46 Ibid., fo. 101r.

47 Ibid., fos. 10r, 12r, 13r, 26r–v.

48 ASB, Dem, 24/7061, Beati Misericordes identifies thiry-eight “mouths to feed” in 1716; AAB, VP, 57, ‘Santa Maria Egiziaca’ indicates twenty-seven women in 1744; Libro, fos. 52r, 92r, 110v, testify to on-going struggles to limit the population.

49 Constituzioni, pp. 38–9.

50 Bonni named Father Pietro Costa, a herbalist Camillo Turlaia, a printer Giacomo Longhi, clerics Ignazio Brizzi, Ludovico dell'Horto, Giovanni Battista Vecchietti, and Antonio Porta, noblemen Pietro Fava and Tomaso Sturoli, as well as Paris Maria Boschi, Lorenzo Lapi, and Alessandro Grandi (BA, Gozz, 168, fasc. 24).

51 Constituzioni listed Brizzi, dall'Horto, Porta, Sturoli, Fava, Turlaia, and Grandi (p. 41).

52 ASB, Dem, SME, 13/7050, num. 24 primo (Mar. 1755). Francesco Boschi joined the congregazione on 10 May 1717 (Libro, fo. 82r). The expenses of Santa Maria Egiziaca amounted to 25,461 Bolognese lire in 1748, the last complete year of surviving accounts. The aggregate debt of the community was 22,274 Bolognese lire in 1748 (ASB, Dem, SME, 24/7061, Spese, et Entrate (Spese), 1748).

53 Zarri, Recinti, pp. 112–14; Cohen, Evolution, ch. 5.

54 Constituzioni, pp. 29–35, 39.

55 Libro, fo. 52r.

56 Ibid., fo. 68r.

57 Ibid., fo. 66v.

58 Constituzioni, p. 39.

59 BA, Gozz, 168, fasc. 24.

60 Libro, fo. 79v.

61 Ibid., fo. 82v.

62 Ibid., fos. 95r, 98v.

63 The partially surviving Spese from 1723 to 1753 include a monthly allowance to the Mother Superior – another evidence for greater self-management after 1723. However, since earlier accounts do not survive, it cannot be known if this allowance existed already before 1723. Libro primo never mentions it.

64 Evangelisti, Nuns, chs. 2–3.

65 Libro, fo. 51v.

66 Elisabetta Santoli was imprisoned for the ‘extortion of good people’ before entering Santa Maria Egiziaca in 1712 (Libro, fo. 72r); Luisa Negrini, a ‘true penitent’, entered in 1736 (fo. 102r). Maria Maddalena Posterla (accepted in 1704), Bartolomia Maranelli (accepted in 1705), and Pietra Gherardi (accepted in 1709) had all been recorded in Camplonus meretricum, a tax registry for public prostitutes (ASB, Ufficio delle Bollette, Camplonus meretricum, 1700–1710). The registry stops in 1710.

67 Constituzioni, p. 32.

68 Libro, fos. 106r, 111r, 113v.

69 Monache coriste and monache converse (lay nuns) paid different dowry amounts and performed different tasks within a convent. Evangelisti, S., ‘To find God in works? Female social stratification in early modern Italian convents’, European History Quarterly, 38 (2008), pp. 398–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Cohen argues that continued esteem for traditional monastic forms in the seventeenth century encouraged many administrative bodies to transform custodial institutions into monastic houses (Evolution, p. 106).

71 ASB, Dem, 24/7061, Beati Misericordes quoniam ipsi Miserecordiam consequettur.

72 Both Cavallo in Charity and power, and McGough, L. in ‘Women, private property, and the limitations of state authority in early modern Venice’, Journal of Women's History, 14 (2002), pp. 32–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discuss the social and cultural functions of women's patronage. Strocchia, S. in ‘Remembering the family: women, kin, and commemorative masses in Renaissance Florence’, Renaissance Quarterly, 42 (1989), pp. 635–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cohn, S. K. Jr in ‘Women and the Counter-Reformation in Siena: authority and property in the family’, in Women on the streets: essays on sex and power in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore, MD, 1996)Google Scholar, provide a more general discussion of gendered pious and family legacies.

73 Constituzioni, p. 6.

74 Ibid., pp. 27–8, 39.

75 In 1704, visitors’ licences were given to Catterina Aldrovandi, Catterina Caprara, Marchesa Monroli Fava, a signora Isolana, Marchesa Suplizia Cattanei Albergati, Livia Melara, Francesca Albergati Ghisilieri, Pantasilea Volta Ghisilieri (Libro, fo. 50r); in 1708, to Teresa Zambeccari Tanari (fo. 55v); in 1711, and again in 1722, to Elena Pepoli Aldrovandi, Catterina Zambeccari Caprara, Marchesa Silvia Davia Manzoli, Maria Francesca Lupari Isolani, Marchesa Suplizia Cattanei Albergati, Livia Alberici Melara, Francesca Albergati Ghisilieri, Pantasilea Ghisilieri Volta, Ergia Ghisilieri Fava, Teresa Zambeccari Tanara, Artimisia Caprara Orsi, Rosalia Albergati Gozzadini, Ginevra Fava Sampieri, Marchesa Diana Tanari Campeggi, Marchesa Anna Pasi Albergati, Marchesa Anna Grassi Albergati, Elisabetta Belloni, Francesca Cartelli, Paola Cattellani Danzi, Maria Madalena degli Antonij, Maria Madalena Rannuzzi (fos. 68v, 88r).

76 A forty-one-year-old zitella Angela Tomba was denied admission in 1711 in spite of Livia Melara's recommendation. This is the only rejection of this kind recorded in Libro primo (Libro, fo. 69r).

77 Libro, fo. 55r.

78 Waddy, P., Seventeenth-century Roman palaces: use and the art of the plan (New York, NY, and Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 196–7, 311–12Google Scholar. The majority of the Bolognese noble palaces, including the Albergati palace, were modified in the seventeenth century; the architects in charge of these modifications travelled frequently between Rome and Bologna. See Cuppini, G., I palazzi senatorii a Bologsna: architettura come immagine del potere (Bologna, 1974)Google Scholar.

79 Cavallo, Charity and power, p. 157 n. 18; McGough, Gender, sexuality, and syphilis, p. 134.

80 Compiled from Libro and the Spese (1723–53).

81 Libro, fo. 79r.

82 Ibid., fo. 65r.

83 Chojnacka discusses cross-stratum female solidarities in late sixteenth-century Venice in Working women, ch. 6.

84 Libro, fo. 86v.

85 Ibid., fo. 92v.

86 Ibid., fo. 92v.

87 Ibid., fo. 74v.

88 Ibid., and Spese; ASB, Dem, SME, 6/7043–14/7051, Instromenti; ibid., 20/7057, Miscellanea; ibid., 25/7062, Repertorio. Also ASB, Aldrovandi Marescotti, 626 and 35; ibid., Albergati, Miscellanea 34; ibid., Ghisilieri, Ramo Principale, 22; ibid., Grati Fantuzzi, Miscellanea Grati Fantuzzi 3.

89 Ibid., 20/7057, Miscellanea.

90 ASB, Dem, SME, 12/7049, num. 12 (7 May 1737); ibid., 13/7050, num. 13 (24 Nov. 1747).

91 Ibid., 12/7049, num. 24 (31 Oct. 1743).

92 Ibid., Grati Fantuzzi, Miscellanea Grati Fantuzzi 3, num. 63 (3 Feb. 1730) and num. 60 (2 June 1730).

93 Ibid., Dem, SME, 13/7050, num. 38 (17 Jan. 1762); ibid., 14/7051, [unnumbered] (21 Nov. 1767).

94 Ibid., 14/7051, [unnumbered] (18 Apr. 1767).

95 Ibid., 12/7049, num. 12 (7 May 1737).

96 Ibid., SME, 13/7050, num. 13 (24 Nov. 1747).

97 Anna Grassi Albergati's brother, Paris Maria Grassi, paid for a woman's entrance to the house in 1734 (Spese, 1734). ASB, Albergati, Carteggi 3, mazzo G contains letters between the brother and the sister that testify to a close relationship between the two.

98 Ibid., Aldrovandi Marescotti, 35, num. 14 (18 Aug. 1742/ 18 Feb. 1743); ibid., 626, Elena Aldrovandi, Ricevute.

99 Ibid., Albergati, Miscellanea, 34, Anna Grassi Albergati, Dare et Avere 1719.

100 Compiled from ibid., Dem, SME, 6/7043–14/7051, Instromenti; ibid., 20/7057, Miscellanea; ibid., 25/7062, Repetorio; and Spese.

101 The greater proportion of women in this group agrees with McGough's ‘Women, private property, and the limitations’ in which she argues that women used pious legacies to assert agency and defy lineage demands.

102 ‘Lodovico Girolamo Antonio Maria Barbieri, testator, charges the penitent suore of Santa Maria Egiziaca, his heirs, with the twice-daily recital of De profundis, both for his own soul and for the soul of his wife, Maria Cremonta Camoncoli.’ ASB, Dem, SME, 12/7049, num. 17 (23 Mar. 1741).

103 Ibid., 12/7049, nums. 24 and 25 (31 Oct. 1743).

104 Ibid., 6/7043–14/7051, Instromenti; ibid., 20/7057, Miscellanea.

105 Libro, fos. 11v–12r, 71r, 74r, 84r–4v, 85r, 102r.

106 Ibid., fo. 85r.

107 Constituzioni, p. 39.

108 Choudhury, Convents and nuns, p. 6.

109 My initial research in communal and diocesan archives in Bologna and Milan indicates that female third order houses existed in major towns and dotted the countryside of eighteenth-century northern and central Italy. I am unaware of any detailed studies discussing these Italian institutions. See n. 6 for recent research on similar institutions in France.

110 Recently, Jeremy Gregory has argued forcefully for the continued salience of religion in the eighteenth century. Gregory, J. ‘Introduction: transforming “the Age of Reason” into “an Age of Faiths”: or, putting religions and beliefs (back) into the eighteenth century’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32 (2009), pp. 287–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Religion: faith in the Age of Reason’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2011), pp. 435–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 Gross, Rome in the age of Enlightenment, introduction and ch. 8; O. Hufton and F. Tallett, ‘Communities of women, the religious life, and public service in eighteenth-century France’, in M. Boxer and J. Quataert, eds., Connecting spheres: European women in a globalizing world, 1500 to the present (Oxford, 2000); Lehner, U., ‘What is “Catholic Enlightenment”?’, History Compass, 8 (2010), pp. 166–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.