Search results for "Three Sisters"

Unwilling Vows and Judicial Strategies: Sister Anna Maddalena Valdina

2018

In 1640 Anna, daughter of the prince of Valdina, was put into a convent in Palermo along with three sisters. She was seven years old and would remain there until 1699. She first asked her father and then her brother to leave the monastic state to which she was forced for patrimonial reasons and to which she never resigned herself. Her story is inscribed within the phenomenon of the so-called forced monacations, to which the Council of Trent had tried to remedy. On the death of her brother, in 1693, Anna, about sixty years old, asked the archbishop of Palermo to grant the nullity of her religious profession and her return to the lay state. Thus began a very severe judicial dispute that trigg…