Italian mystic and nun (1590–1661)
Benedetta Carlini (20 January 1590 – 7 August 1661) was an Italian Catholic nun who claimed to experience mystic visions. As abbess of the Convent of the Mother of God, at Pescia, she had a sexual relationship with one of her nuns, Sister Bartolomea. These came to the attention of the Counter-Reformation papacy, determined to subordinate potentially troublesome mystics if they showed any signs of heretical spirituality. Although they paid three to four visits to the nunnery, it was not until they interrogated Sister Bartolomea that they found that Benedetta and Bartolemea had engaged in sexual relations. Bartolomea gave testimony that Benedetta engaged in frottage with her while possessed by the spirit of a male demon known as Splenditello. Benedetta was stripped of her rank and imprisoned.
The case of Benedetta was described in the 1985 nonfiction book "" by Judith C. Brown, later fictionalized in the 2021 film "Benedetta".
Early life.
Benedetta Carlini was born on 20 January 1590 (St. Sebastian night), in the remote mountain village of Vellano, located in the Apennines, northwest of Florence. Her father was Giuliano, a rich and devout man who owned his house and several other properties in Vellano and a small farm nearby. Her mother was Midea Carlini (born Midea d'Antonio Pieri), a sister of the parish priest. Benedetta was an only child in her middle-class Italian family; Giuliano provided in his will that after his own and his wife's death, his house should be turned into an oratory dedicated to the Mother of God.
Midea's labour was very difficult, painful and dangerous both for her and her daughter, both of whom survived. Giuliano had decided to name the girl Benedetta—meaning "blessed"—and dedicate her to God's service. Soon after her birth, her family retired to her father's farm in the mountains, where she was nursed by her mother and not a wet nurse.
Benedetta's father educated her himself, an unusual choice in Renaissance Italian society, in which most girls took lessons from their mothers and were not very literate. Her education and upbringing were religious. At the age of five, she knew the litany of the saints and other prayers by heart. Under her father's tutelage, Benedetta would take the rosary and recite the litany several times a day. At the age of six, Benedetta learned to read and knew some Latin.
Her mother instructed Benedetta to recite five Pater Nosters and eight Ave Marias every day, seemingly directing Benedetta toward female guides—the Virgin Mary, a statue of whom had been acquired especially for Benedetta, and St. Catherine of Siena, whose mystical marriage with Christ was celebrated as a feast day at their home.
One day a black dog tried to drag Benedetta away, but her screams frightened it; by the time her mother came, the dog had disappeared. Benedetta and her parents interpreted this incident as the work of a devil disguised as an animal.
In spring 1599, Giuliano decided to fulfill the vow made at the birth of his daughter and bring Benedetta to a group of religious women in Pescia.
Convent.
In 1599, Benedetta joined a group of unmarried women who wanted to lead an ascetic life; the group did not live in a regularly enclosed convent, and were not recognised religious sisters. The group lived in a retreat in a private house, where women led a communal life engaged in prayer, spiritual exercises and the production of raw silk. This community had been formed nine years earlier (in 1590) by Piera Pagni, the widow of a prominent Pesciatine. One of her kinsmen, Antonio Pagni, founded an independent religious congregation for men in 1588. He had obtained a degree in canon law at the University of Pisa; he was joined by Father Paolo Ricordati and several other priests and laymen. Because of their reputation for saintliness, local people soon began to call them Theatine fathers. However, they called themselves Fathers of the Holy Annunciation, and they were not members of the Theatine Order of Clerics Regular founded in 1524 by St. Cajetan Thiene. Fathers of the Holy Annunciation agreed to back a female community founded by Piera Pagni and provide spiritual direction to the women in it. Paolo Ricordati was their father confessor. Thus, local people began to call Piera Pagni, and her subordinates "Theatines", although the Theatine Order of Clerics Regular was a male religious order.
In 1599, there were three official monasteries in Pescia: San Michele (founded in the 12th century), Santa Chiara (founded in the 1490s) and the recently formed Santa Maria Nuova. However, due to the rapid growth of Pescia, the Valdinievole province and the religious revival, there was not enough space for all who wished to become nuns or monks. Many girls were refused entrance to these institutions and had no place to go. Convents required novices to pay an expensive subscription. "Brides of Christ", like brides of laymen, were accepted only with dowries. Dowries of wellborn Prescia brides amounted to 1500 scudi, and a place in a prestigious female convent like Santa Chiara cost around 400 scudi, when a skilled worker earned not more than 55 or 60 scudi a year. A semi-monastic community founded by Piera Pagni required only about 160 scudi, which Benedetta's parents were able to pay.
In the last half of the 16th century, many religious communities like this appeared, offering an alternative to many women who could not or did not want to join already established convents. Some of the most devout and successful female religious orders, the Ursulines among others, started from such modest origins. Women with strong religious vocations often preferred such groups to well-established convents. These convents were often considered to be corrupt because many nuns had not joined them by choice; they had been sent there by relatives or had been driven there by a hopeless situation. The life of discarded daughters of aristocratic families in the convents was, in many ways, also indistinguishable from the life of the upper classes on the outside.
A community that Benedetta joined had adopted the Rule of Saint Augustine. Originally a letter that Augustine of Hippo addressed to a group of nuns led by his sister, who were experiencing difficulties in the governance of their convent, the Rule does not regulate in detail all aspects of monastic life. It provides a set of spiritual counsels within which more specific rules could be accommodated by individual communities. It touched on such topics as the need to lead a communal life with no private property, the observance of prayers, the mortification of the flesh through fasts, the need for modest dress, and so on. This was accepted by many female convents and quasi-monastic communities. For the members of these groups, the Fathers of the Holy Annunciation created a hierarchy of authority. "They have among themselves a female superior under whom they govern themselves, a teacher of the novices, and other customary offices as if they were full-fledged nuns".
As soon as her father left her in a community house, nine-year-old Benedetta kneeled in front of the statue of the Madonna and said, "My most sweet Mother, I have left my carnal mother for you, I beg you to take me as your daughter." Not long after this, Benedetta prayed there again, and the statue fell over. As a young novice, she was frightened, but thought this was a miracle, showing that the Mother of God wanted to kiss her. Whereas before Benedetta had accepted miracles as being in the nature of things, now she was astounded and awed by this action of the Virgin, which testified to the mighty power of God.
Benedetta's first years in this Catholic retreat were unremarkable. Twenty years later, other community members remembered that she was always very obedient and exemplary in all her actions, took communion twice a week and never did anything worthy of rebuke. If anything supernatural was happening to her during that time, only Benedetta herself knew about it.
In 1610, the community of Benedetta acquired a farm in the commune of Fucecchio for 1750 scudi and became quite economically successful and self-sufficient. The group's annual revenues came to 300 scudi, of which half came from the silk work done by its members and the rest from their dowries and from this farm and others. Thus, the following year, they received permission from Rome to organize a general chapter and accept new girls. After that, the community started constructing a new convent building, which was completed in October 1613. In April 1618, the nuns asked the secular authorities for permission to enlarge the convent enough to accommodate up to 30 sisters; though they had just 18 sisters, they were confident of the future growth of their numbers. The project they proposed would cost 4,000 scudi, part of which was for dismantling a section of the city wall to make way for the building. Despite the difficulties, the construction was approved and began soon after.
Visions and spiritual experiences.
In 1614, just before the Pescia Theatines received permission to build their convent, Benedetta, now a young woman of 23, reported to her mother superior and father confessor about her supernatural visions. The first had occurred one morning while she was praying. Suddenly, she felt herself to be in a beautiful garden with many fruits and flowers. In the centre was a fountain with scented water, and next to it was an angel, holding a signboard with gold letters: "Whosoever wants to take water from this fountain, let him purge his cup or not come nearer." Because she did not understand the meaning of this inscription, she asked the angel. He explained, "If you want to know God, lift all earthly desires from your heart." On hearing these words, Benedetta felt a strong urge to take leave of the world, but, instead, the vision ceased, and with great inner wrenching, she returned to the normal world of the senses. Afterwards, she felt great happiness and a stronger desire than ever to be good. In the next visions, she saw a man dressed in great splendour who saved her from wild lions, scorpions and boars and said he was Jesus and the animals were demons. Another time, a young boy appeared and told her to climb the Mount of Perfection, which was very difficult and, the boy said, would be impossible without a true guide, her father confessor.
Some of Benedetta's visions had occurred in the presence of witnesses, who had observed that during prayer she had gone into a trance-like state in which she gesticulated and made incomprehensible sounds. During these episodes, her altered state of consciousness had made it impossible for her companions to receive answers to their questions about what was happening to her.
Particularly visual forms of mental prayer were widespread spiritual practice in pre-modern Europe. Visualization of people, places and events in the life of the Holy Family was recommended in prayers manuals by Luis de Granada, St. Charles Borromeo and others, which Benedetta occasionally read.
Benedetta's own reactions to her visions were mixed. At the time, there was less concern as to whether a "vision" was a product of imagination or mental illness; more concerning were whether these messages were diabolical or divine in origin. Her father confessor, Paolo Ricordati, initially told her to disbelieve anything she saw as not to give the devil grounds on which to work his tricks, to try to repress the onset of visions and to "pray to God that He send her travails instead of ecstasies and revelations, since it seemed to her that this would be safer against the deceits of the devil." Benedetta did as he said. She could keep herself from having visions, but she had great difficulty in receiving some sort of travail. Only in 1615, her prayers were answered, and she began to experience such intense pains over her entire body that she was paralyzed by them. The physicians could neither diagnose it nor determine what to do. None of the remedies eased Benedetta's pain. She thought that this mysterious illness was the sign of divine favour that Paolo Ricordati had asked for. She expected recognition of others for being the recipient of extraordinary grace and was to be sadly disappointed. Nothing had changed, and for two years, Benedetta suffered in the quiet obscurity of a monastic communal life of prayer,