A Convent Tale: A Century of Sisterhood in Spanish Milan.

A Convent Tale: A Century of Sisterhood in Spanish Milan. By P. Renee Baernstein (New York and London: Routledge, 2002. xxii plus 270 pp.).

Once consigned to the margins of ecclesiastical and social history, early modern religious women have become vital players in recent historical scholarship. This slim volume continues that trend and extends it to a potentially broader audience. The book tells the intriguing story of the Milanese convent of San Paolo Converso between its foundation in 1535 and the waning influence of its dominant aristocratic family, the Sfondrati, by 1635. During this tumultuous century, the community "evolved from a marginalized experiment to an exclusive home for the city's most prominent women." (144) Baernstein uses the Angelic convent of San Paolo as a platform from which to view striking changes in the social and religious landscape, such as elite formation in Spanish Milan and the arc of Catholic reform before and after Trent. Relying primarily on narrative sources such as letters, biographies, and visitation records, the author conveys a vivid sense of the personalities involved in this historical drama. The book's signal contribution is the depiction of San Paolo nuns as fully developed, three-dimensional players who sustained thick ties to family and class even after. Tridentine decrees forced the enclosure of their community. Nonetheless, Baernstein seems reluctant to tackle larger issues, such as how and why female monasticism became a defining feature of early modern Italy, or to use the convent's distinctive experience to open new angles of vision on significant social processes.

Following a sketchy introduction, Baernstein embarks on a more substantive examination of San Paolo in its early years. Founded by the young, wealthy widow Ludovica Torelli in 1535, the convent of San Paolo issued from the yeasty religious experimentation of the early sixteenth century. Twice-widowed by age twenty-eight, Torelli fashioned a social alternative to family by endowing a religious community comprised of three branches: the Angelic nuns of San Paolo, an order of male priests later known as the Barnabites, and a short-lived confraternity for married couples. This religious family, collectively called the Paulines, represented a brave new world. The socially diverse group of Milanese women who gathered around Torelli in the 1530s and 40s shared her burning interest in combining active and contemplative missions, exempt from enclosure. Marching through the streets of Milan alongside their male colleagues, the Angelics performed acts of public penance; their public roles also extended to more traditionally female activities, such as governing hospitals and houses for repentant prostitutes. To these social missions the Angelics added regular group prayer and liturgical performances. Baernstein lays bare the group's unusual characteristics, as Italian women like Torelli sought to develop hybrid forms of religious life suited to their circumstances and spirituality. She astutely positions Torelli and her followers in the interstices between convent and family, showing how different nuns knitted together their natural and monastic families and illuminating the complex choices confronting pious women in moving from lay to religious status. Yet despite their innovations, the Angelics traveled a well-worn path. As early as the thirteenth century, Italian women had constructed similar alternatives to traditional monasticism, which met with similar ends. A more searching comparison with other female religious communities in late medieval Italy, as well as a deeper anchor in the context of Spanish Milan itself, would clarify San Paolo's distinctive piety, social arrangements, and eventual transformation by Counter-Reformation initiatives.

Chapter Two recounts the watershed years of 1550-52, as the Paulines came under the scrutiny of the reinvigorated Roman Inquisition. In the 1540s a new guiding light for the order had emerged: the "Divine Mother" Paola Antonia Negri, who interwove the spiritual power stemming from ecstatic visions with more dangerous claims to authority over Barnabite priests. Prompted by complaints from Venetian authorities, Roman inquisitors launched a full-scale investigation of the Paulines in 1551. The resulting inquiry forced the lifelong incarceration of Negri, along with the reinvention of the Barnabites in more conservative form and the full enclosure of Angelic nuns. After 1552, "the Angelics ceased to be missionaries, governors of charitable institutions, and penitential examples of religious zeal." (72) Baernstein handles the intricate source material here with both rigor and flair, although the nuns' secular supporters remain curiously silent within her narration.

Lacking internal evidence for the period 1552-64, the story resumes with the "revolution" implemented by the saintly Milanese archbishop, Carlo Borromeo, between 1564 and 1584. Convent reform became a test case for Borromeo's expansive claims to full authority over all spheres of religious life. Using pastoral visitations as a disciplining tool, Borromeo succeeded in tightening physical enclosure and liquidating weaker convents, yet failed almost completely in loosening nuns' ties to their families. While nuns resisted encroachments on their traditional privileges to varying degrees, their real triumph lay in the sustained privatization of convents, especially those instrumental to local elites. San Paolo was a model convent in this respect. The new cohorts of nuns populating its precincts turned their attention inward; instead of undertaking apostolic missions, they built private cells, embellished the convent church, and elaborated liturgical performances. It was on this new terrain of sacred art and music that nuns staged future battles with ecclesiastical supervisors.

Chapter Four takes up the rise of the Sfondrati "dynasty" from 1565 to 1590. Paradoxically, it was during the Borromean reform that the Sfondrati fully annexed San Paolo into its service. Part of the new elite emerging from the Italian-Spanish encounter, the Sfondrati nuns monopolized convent offices, governed the house in secretive fashion, and trafficked heavily in external family business. Baernstein is at her best in teasing out the internal conflicts generated by this regime and in articulating different religious models that persisted even among aristocratic nuns. This chapter fluently documents how Sfondrati nuns and their menfolk collaborated to advance each other's interests and careers. Although the interweaving of family and ecclesiastical resources has become a staple of early modern Italian historiography, Baernstein gives a rich, fine-grained depiction of these practices seen from inside convent walls.

The family's fortunes peaked with the election of Niccolo Sfondrati as Pope Gregory XIV in December 1590. The final chapter traces Sfondrati influence from this exuberant event to their subsequent downfall by 1635. The new pope showered the convent with special favors; Sfondrati nuns exercised power still more incautiously, beginning an ambitious building and performance program without adequate funding. By 1600 conspicuous consumption and deficit financing marked both the convent and aristocratic Milan. Under this beautiful Baroque surface, resentment continued to brew among the nuns. By 1623 the Sfondrati nuns' religious backers in Rome had died, leaving them vulnerable to convent rivals who favored a more ascetic religiosity. Baernstein skillfully untangles the complexities of dueling convent factions, with their contrasting spiritual and personal styles. The ensuing epilogue takes the story of San Paolo and other female religious communities haltingly forward in time.

Baernstein's vibrant rendition of this convent tale makes for good reading. Yet the author's reluctance to probe deeply into difficult issues renders this study less challenging. Moreover, her attempt "to steer a middle way between an over-powering structuralism and the romantic lure of free agency" (20) in situating religious women often results in reductive readings of historiographical positions. A more probing analysis and deeper contextualization would help realize this story's full potential.

Sharon T. Strocchia

Emory University