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NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 18:08:09 -0500
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d
Subject: Hopper Fodder: 15th Century Italian Nunneries!
From: "Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@speakeasy.net>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:07:06 -0700
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By poring over contemporary letters, diaries, and legal documents,
historians have established that Venetian nunneries were the most
liberated in Europe. In the 1400s, the skyrocketing cost of dowries
meant that many of the city's noblest families were obliged to place
their teenage daughters, regardless of their wishes, in convents. Few
of these developed a spiritual calling. It was openly accepted that
the top convents were a "safety valve" for Venice's surplus of
well-born single women, who could go on to enjoy a level of sexual
freedom unique for the time.
The nunneries were run like luxury boutique hotels. Novices were given
duplicate keys so they could come and go as they pleased from their
palatial apartments, which were filled with artwork and overlooked the
Grand Canal. Wearing the most fashionable, low-cut dresses, they would
entertain male visitors with wine-fuelled banquets, then invite their
beaux to spend the night in their rooms. They took romantic gondola
rides with admirers to private picnics on the islands of the Venice
Lagoon, and went on poetic moonlit walks in the secluded gardens. The
most passionate eloped -- presumably with men who were not obsessed
with dowries. The mature-age abbesses rode the city in luxury
carriages with their pet dogs and oversaw their girls' activities with
a maternal eye. If a nun fell pregnant, she would simply give birth in
the privacy of the convent and the pass the child off as an orphan
abandoned on the doorstep.
Read it all. It's fabulous!
http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article09190701.aspx
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
http://www.pendorwright.com/
"You know how some people treat their body like a temple?
I treat mine like issa amusement park!" - Kei