Rules Restricting Convent Parlatorio Visitations, Cesena, 1690
This unique broadside presents a literal “window” into the sole space of engagement between cloistered nuns and persons living outside the convent walls, such as visiting family members and friends or members of other religious orders. A convent parlatorio (parlor) was often set off from a publicly accessible room, or hall, by a grate that permitted visitors to see and speak with cloistered nuns. Some grates were formed by small apertures through a single door, while others covered entire walls from floor to ceiling. A given convent’s rules governing these audiences might be strict, in some cases limiting interaction only through a tiny grate in a single door. More liberal orders often had large, widely spaced grillwork through which both conversation and articles—licit or illicit—could be passed. An entire genre of convent parlatorio painting emerged in eighteenth-century Venice created by artists such as Francesco Guardi, Giuseppe de Gobbis, and Pietro Longhi, who saw in the contrast between worldly and cloistered life much that was evocative and even dramatic.
The present single-sheet broadside enumerates rules clearly designed to reform apparently lax behaviors within the episcopal See of Cesena. It was issued by the very highly positioned Polish cardinal Jan Kazimierz Denhoff (1649–97), whose armorial decorates the top of the broadsheet, lending it the unambiguous imprimatur of ecclesiastical authority. Denhoff was the primary representative of the interests of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Vatican and held several important positions in the papal curia, including a seat on the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.
Just recently appointed bishop of Cesena in 1687, Cardinal Denhoff proved eager to reform the monastic houses under his supervision. This particular edict begins by referring to general ecclesiastical laws aimed at restricting cloistered nuns’ access to communication with the outside world. Even those who in the past had been granted an episcopal license to talk or write to nuns were now forbidden to do so save with the written permission of the “Mother Abbess,” and then only with a female “Auditor” (Ascoltatrice) present. The only official exceptions were for immediate family members: that is, parents, siblings, and first or second cousins.
Inutili discorsi (useless discourses) that took place in any convent parlatorio were dealt a clear schedule of increasingly harsh punishments; offending nuns would be subjected to a term of two months’ solitary confinement after a third infraction. Deference, however, was paid to the discretion of the Madre Abbadessa (Mother Abbess) with respect to anyone directly under her command, including sister nuns. Violations by educande, young girls resident in the convent who had not yet taken formal vows, could result in their being returned to their families. The bishop’s stern commands were, in nearly every case, bent on a rigorous diminution of importunate visitors from “outside the walls” who might disturb a sister’s “holy retreat” or interrupt her “assiduous application of religious exercises.”
The bishop’s fifteen separately enumerated edicts also expressly prohibited sneaking a chat with a nun in church or in the confessional. Under pain of excommunication, all nuns’ written correspondence beyond the walls of the cloister were first read by the abbess. All policing “Auditors” assigned to chaperone a visit had to “carry out their office with diligence and fidelity” and “with warning that all these discourses be brief and honest.” Interestingly, Bishop Denhoff seems also to have anticipated the importance of whistle-blowers should any relaxation of these rules be allowed; to this end he expressly barred abbesses from opening any letters between the nuns under her jurisdiction that were direct communications between the sisters of the house and their ecclesiastical superiors within the See of Cesena.
Despite this particularly strict set of commandments, convent parlors nonetheless functioned as vital liminal spaces between the spiritual realm of members of the regular clergy and the secular realm of the Roman Catholic laity. There, fully cloistered nuns could reunite with family and friends, marking milestones and important anniversaries in their lives, sharing news and stories, and even conducting business. The parlor could also serve as the locus of ceremonies and liturgical observances that heralded the transition of newly professed women into monastic life, which could be celebrated by the entire community, religious and lay. The occasional verse tradition of the investiture sonnet might be read aloud within the space of the parlor, and even followed in some cases by a feast enjoyed on either side of the grillwork that separated the two groups. The parlor could also be the site of musical and theatrical performances, sometimes delivered with the full approbation of religious authorities, and sometimes without.
—Kelsey Champagne, Earle Havens
Bibliography
Silvia Evangelisti, “Cloistered Spaces,” in Nuns: A History of Convent Life, 1450–1700 (Oxford University Press, 2008), esp. 50–51; Giancarla Periti, In the Courts of Religious Ladies: Art, Vision, and Pleasure in Italian Renaissance Convents (Yale University Press, 2016); Craig A. Monson, Nuns Behaving Badly (University of Chicago Press, 2010), esp. 12–15; Marilyn Dunn, “Spaces Shaped for Spiritual Perfection: Convent Architecture and Nuns in Early Modern Rome,” in Helen Hills (ed.), Architecture and the Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, 2003), esp. 160–61;. Sharon Palumbo, “Sul confine tra il paradiso e il secolo: La decorazione del parlatorio nel monastero di Santa Chiara a Sulmona,” Il Capitale Culturale: Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage 23 (2021): 333–67.
