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A Washington Post Notable Book
In 1858, a German princess, recently inducted into the convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome, wrote a frantic letter to her cousin, a confidant of the Pope, claiming that she feared for her life. A subsequent investigation by the Church’s Inquisition uncovered the shocking secrets of a convent ruled by a beautiful young mistress, who coerced her novices into lesbian initiation rites and heresies, and who entered into an illicit relationship with a young theologian. Drawing upon written testimony and original documents discovered in a secret Vatican archive, The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio is the never-before-told true story of how one woman was able to practice deception, heresy, seduction, and murder in the heart of the Catholic Church.
- Sales Rank: #234853 in Books
- Published on: 2016-01-12
- Released on: 2016-01-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.98" h x .96" w x 5.19" l, 1.03 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 496 pages
Review
“Astonishing . . . much more than a true-crime thriller about murderous lesbian nuns. It’s also a very serious study of how the church deals with scandal.” —The Washington Post
“In 1998, Pope John Paul II opened the secret archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—better known to you as the Inquisition—to outside researchers. The following year, German historian Hubert Wolf found something that, as they say on the Internet, will blow your mind.” —Lev Grossman, Time
“Deftly balances . . . juicy history with a raft of serious (yet accessible) research into the intricacies of Vatican bureaucracy, the underlying philosophical disputes among various key Roman Catholic figures, and the complex political landscape of mid-nineteenth century Italy.” —The Boston Globe
“A learned yet fascinating account. . . . [Wolf] has an enviable handle on the palace intrigues motivating all the players.” —Salon
“The scandal that Wolf discovered in a secret Vatican archive, in 1999, would have left a true-crime writer salivating. . . . [He] reconstructs what went on inside the convent based on transcripts from the trial and intercepted letters. . . . There is . . . something remarkable about a poor, uneducated nun who brings the Jesuits to their knees while remaking herself as a goddess.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A huge story of strange times. . . . Exciting reading.” —The Columbus Dispatch
“I learned more about the Catholic Church from this book than anything I had read previously. . . . That the author is also an ordained minister and professor of ecclesiastical history only lends support to his claims. . . . Wolf unravels a tale of religious madness and psycho-sexual power trips that is just waiting to be turned into a film by Milos Forman.” —Shyam K. Sriram, PopMatters
“The discovery of the century straight from the Vatican archives. An absorbing story of abuse, murder, and false morals.” —Kurier (Germany)
“This sordid tale of sexual indecency, false saints, and murder within a 19th-century convent in Rome has all the trappings of a good thriller. . . . [Wolf] adds detailed historical context and careful explanations to elevate this tale beyond sensationalism into a more serious study of a fascinating real-life melodrama.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)
“The gloomy intrigue that [Hubert Wolf] reveals in this extraordinary book, in which murders mingle with forbidden love in all the senses of the word, seems to verify the most overstretched commonplaces of the convent literature, from Diderot’s La Religieuse to de Sade’s Juliette.” —Le Monde (France)
“The true story of an Italian nunnery in the nineteenth century contains all the ingredients of a thriller: the Inquisition, sex, poisoning, conspiracy, and hypocrisy.” —Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag (Switzerland)
“An eye-opening story. . . . Wolf has expertly recovered and retold this scandalous tale in all its gory, as well as bureaucratic, detail.” —Kirkus Reviews
“The way Hubert Wolf deduces insightful conclusions from the doubtlessly spectacular incidents in the nunnery is nothing but masterly.” —Die Zeit (Germany)
“Mysticism, sex, theology, murders . . . . It has all the ingredients of a good whodunit.” —La Vie (France)
About the Author
Hubert Wolf, born in 1959, is professor of Medieval and Modern Church History at the University of Muenster, Germany. He was honored with the Leibniz-Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Communicator Award, and the Gutenberg Prize, and he was fellow at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Prologue
“Save, Save Me!”
“Shortly after eight o’clock on Monday, July 25, the Archbishop of Edessa—sent by the Lord—finally came to me. There was no time for waiting; this was the one and only time to get saved. To him, I had to reveal everything and had to implore him to help me escape the convent as swiftly as possible. It all went well: my prayers were fulfilled, and I was understood.” These dramatic words were set down by Princess Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in a com- plaint she submitted to the pope in summer 1859. They were written barely five weeks after her escape from the convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome—or rather, after her cousin, Archbishop Gustav Adolf zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, managed to secure her release—and they describe the sensational conclusion to her adventure inside the walls of a Roman Catholic convent. It was an adventure for which she had narrowly avoided paying with her life.
She had been humiliated, isolated from her fellow nuns, cut off from the outside world, and—since she was party to the convent secrets and therefore regarded as a danger—somebody had tried to silence her. They had even made several attempts to poison her. At half past three in the afternoon on July 26, 1859, after almost exactly fifteen months, she finally left Sant’Ambrogio della Massima. Her life as Sister Luisa Maria of Saint Joseph, a nun in the Regulated Third Order of Holy Saint Francis in Rome, had begun so promisingly. And now here she was, being saved in the nick of time, rescued from imminent danger of death.
In her written complaint, the princess gave her failure as a nun and her thrilling escape from the convent a typically pious interpretation, casting it as salvation by Christ the Lord. This somehow made the experience bearable for her. But the final dramatic episode, and the preceding months she had spent under the constant fear of death, would come to define her whole life. After July 26, 1859, nothing would ever be the same again. Her plight had been genuinely existential: her life really was threatened in Sant’Ambrogio. Even years later, she was still traumatized by the attempts to poison her. This is all brought vividly to life in her Erlebnisse (Experiences), a book written by her close collaborator Christiane Gmeiner in 1870, more than a decade after the terrible events in Rome. According to this auto-biographical source, Katharina had managed to smuggle a letter out of the convent during the night of July 24, 1859. This was handed to Archbishop Hohenlohe in the Vatican.
The princess waited in a state of great anxiety until she was called into the parlor at half past seven in the morning. Fearful and almost breathless, the princess hurried downstairs to the archbishop, to whom she called out in great agitation: “save, save me!” At first, he did not understand her, and was almost afraid his cousin had run mad, but by and by she managed to convince him that she was mistress of her senses, and that her fear was not unfounded. Now he understood her pleas to leave the convent, and he promised to do everything in his power to arrange this as soon as possible— though the first appointment he was able to make was not until the following day.
The words are Christiane Gmeiner’s, recounting in the third person what the princess had told her in her own words.
Katharina von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen’s account sounds like a story from the depths of the Middle Ages, and confirms many of the common clichés and prejudices about life in Catholic convents and monasteries. But this story takes place in the modern world of the mid-nineteenth century. And the setting isn’t a secluded mountain convent at the world’s edge, but the center of the capital city of Christianity, little more than half a mile from the Vatican—home to the representative of Jesus Christ on earth.
What really happened in Sant’Ambrogio? Were these poisonings simply the fantasy of a highly strung aristocrat, or were they genuine attempts on Katharina’s life? She was a princess of the house of Hohenzollern and a close relative of Wilhelm I, the man who would later become king of Prussia and the German emperor. So how did Katharina come to take her vows in such a strict religious order in the first place—and why in Rome?
Excerpted from The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio by Hubert Wolf. Copyright © 2015 by Hubert Wolf. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Most helpful customer reviews
58 of 61 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating Reading
By Sasha Q.
This book is an amazing, behind the scenes look at the inner workings of an Italian convent during the 19th century. The author (and the translator) did a great job of giving the reader a thorough background of the political climate (secular and some non-secular) during this time period, which helped tremendously to put the story in context. The beginning of the book is a little dry, but given that this is historical non-fiction, I can understand the author's need to properly set the stage.
I definitely encourage everyone to keep on reading, as once the German princess's story is told, the book reads like a true thriller, where fact is definitely stranger than fiction. An isolated, self-contained community like a convent or a monastery can lend itself to severe abuse of power and corruption, and unfortunately, Sant'Ambrogio Convent and its members fell victim to the psychopathic machinations of one particular nun in power. What makes this story so shocking is the setting, and that many of the nuns truly believed they were doing the right thing (in the name of heaven), as they had taken vows to strictly obey their superiors, without question, even though they were actually all on a journey to hell and real evil. Unbelievably, a nun, Maria Luisa, is certainly the equal to any notorious cult leader of our time. Especially those who use the power of faith and spirituality to control their followers (as most of them do).
Anyone interested in the history of the Catholic Church would really enjoy this book, but it is written so well, I would also recommend it to those who enjoy true crime or even historical fiction thrillers. The book reads easy, like fiction, but is simply astounding because the story is actually true. A great read, all around.
37 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
Truth is stranger than fiction
By Phelps Gates
What a fascinating book! The Vatican has been opening up some of its archives in recent years and remarkable stories have been coming to light. This book deals with the events at a convent in Rome in the late 1850's, which have been suppressed for more than 100 years, and it would be an understatement to describe them as jaw-dropping. The National Enquirer looks tame compared to the revelations here. Hubert Wolf is perhaps the leading scholar working in the church archives in recent years, and the scholarship in this book is truly prodigious. But (surprisingly) the book is completely accessible to the non-specialist reader, who can cheerfully ignore the 100 pages of notes and references. The author assumes virtually nothing about the reader's knowledge, and takes care to explain exactly what the political and religious issues were: the battle between the Papal States and the Risorgimento, the conflict between conservative and liberal wings in the church, and so on. The book literally reads like a page-turner of a novel, and it's all true! There's a new surprise in each chapter, including a remarkable suggestion about how the scandal related indirectly to the phrasing of the doctrine of papal infallibility (Pastor aeternus, 1870). And kudos to Ruth Martin, the translator, who did an excellent and highly readable job. Enthusiastically recommended to anybody with an interest in Italian or religious history, or just a prurient interest in nuns and priests spectacularly misbehaving.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
One of the best non-fiction books most people won't read
By Leslie J. Kelsay
"No one expects the written Inquisition." Time magazine found this book, now available in translation from the German, an interesting read--and I did too. Although the book appears to have solid academic and theological credentials, I read as an uninformed lay person and a Protestant at that, so the church history and processes were completely new to me. It helps if you keep front and center that neither Europe nor the Catholic Church in the mid-19th century were anything like they are today. We're talking pre-papal infallibility!
Don't worry this will be too dry. You've got political intrigue, both secular and religious, Catholicism versus the Protestants, conflicting opportunities and relative positions of male and female religious, double identities, heresy, miracles, visions, cult formation, letters from heaven, enough lascivious behavior to shock TMZ, multiple murders/attempts--and a beautiful, radiant psychopath of a novice mistress. The account of how the novice mistress came to rule the convent has all the techniques and hallmarks of development of cults in the 21st century--effective methods will remain in vogue.
When we get to the work of the Roman Inquisition itself, there are a few aspects that are a wee bit "inside baseball." It can be difficult keeping the nuns straight with all the Maria Luisas and Luisa Marias. But it's worth the effort as Wolf explores the individual and institutional dynamics that contributed to this dangerous cult, interfered with the judicial procedures and impacted how the episodes are reflected in church and secular history 150 years later. And that impact is not inconsequential.
In the Victorian era, there was practically a sub-genre of "escape from the nunnery" novels that were titillating but not too. In the 20th century, another take on "inside the convent" saw publication of horror stories of abuse designed to discredit the Catholic Church. This is neither. Full points to the author and to the translator as well, who must also have an extensive knowledge of European history and Catholic judicial process to bring this work to light.
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