Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy

This well-illustrated and innovative book analyses convent culture in sixteenth-century Italy through the medium of three unpublished nuns’ chronicles. The book uses a comparative methodology of ‘connected differences’ to examine the intellectual and imaginative achievement of the nuns, and to investigate how they fashioned and preserved individual and convent identities by writing chronicles. The chronicles themselves reveal many examples of nuns’ agency, especially with regard to cultural creativity, and show that convent traditions determined cultural priorities and specialisms, and dictated the contours of convent ceremonial life.

• Makes an original approach to the intellectual and imaginative world of sixteenth-century Italian nuns • Employs a wide range of unpublished material from Venice, Florence and Rome • Illustrated with many images from the literary and artistic heritage of sixteenth-century Italy

Introduction; Part I. History Writing and Authorship: 1. The creation of chronicles: contents and appearance; 2. The authors of the chronicles; Part II. Historical and Cultural Context: 3. The convents and physical space; 4. Nuns and convent communities; 5. Rules and traditions; Part III. Chronicles and the Culture of Convent Identity: 6. The chronicles and ceremonial life; 7. Cultural creativity and cultural production; 8. Convents and art; Conclusion.

‘… splendid in its objectivity, allowing its primary sources to speak for themselves … Professor Lowe is much to be commended on the thoroughness of her study. This is historical writing at its best: focused, colourful, vibrant.‘ Art Newspaper

‘K. J. P. Lowe‘s Nun\'s Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy is a truly impressive work that reflects the wide range and depth of its author\'s knowledge of Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italian culture. Lowe does a fine job of bringing these neglected writings to life, and into a context which invites further imaginative engagement with these nun‘s lives.‘ Reformation

\' … important and richly nuanced …\'. Journal of Ecclesiastical History