Books by Craig A. Monson

When eight-year-old Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana (1590-1662) entered one of the preeminent convents in Bologna in 1598, she had no idea what cloistered life had in store for her. This title retells the story of Vizzana and the nuns of Santa Cristina to elucidate the role that music played in the lives of these cloistered women.

Some nuns in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy strayed far from the paradigms of monastic life. In this book, the author resurrects forgotten tales and restores to life the long-silent voices of these cloistered heroines. The nuns of early modern Italy, it shows, set the standard for religious transgression in their own age - and beyond.