CREATIVITY, VISIONS AND HORROR  IN RENAISSANCE CONVENTS

AN ILLUSTRTATED LECTURE BY SARAH DUNANT

By the early years of the 16th century, wedding dowries in renaissance Italy had become so expensive that most respectable or high-class families could not afford to marry off more than one, or at most, two daughters. The rest became nuns, entering convents at puberty and never leaving. Not surprisingly, not all of them went willingly.

Yet, along with stories of enforced incarceration and horror, calls for change and resistance, convents also provided an unexpected space for female creativity: art, scholarship, writing, drama and remarkable choral singing and music. As well, there was the possibility of another kind of fulfilment – and power:  that of ecstatic union with their spiritual husband, Jesus Christ. Behind those walls a great deal was going on. 

This lavishly illustrated lecture names names, enters cells, and tells some extraordinary stories.