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Indlæser... Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent (original 2003; udgave 2003)af Mary Laven
Work InformationVirgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent af Mary Laven (2003)
Ingen Indlæser...
Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. Interesting topic but I felt it could have been better. ( ) I've a lot less experience with reading non-fiction - especially for enjoyment, not cruising for essay material - than I do with fiction, so I find myself uncertain about how to encapsulate the things I did and didn't enjoy about this. In general, I felt it had too much focus on presenting the historical record, which in this case was primarily the records of church inspections and investigations of Venetian convents. So there were a lot of "take the interesting case of Sister X", or "here's what the inspector said about Y convent", but I felt frustrated by the close focus. I wanted to be a step further back, looking at broader context, and the wider meanings of these isolated incidents. While the author gave quite a bit of explanatory context, especially for things that directly impacted on the convents and nuns, there was still a lot missing (comparative circumstances in monasteries, for instance). Where the broader stuff was filled in, I enjoyed this tremendously. In the chapters where it was lacking - and especially toward the end, as the author started digging into sexuality in the convents without any real notes of the "regular" practice of sexuality at that time and place - I felt bogged down in voyeuristic detail with any notion of its real meaning. Anyway, I'm off to read more about Venetian society of the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries or so, because there was some wacky stuff going on there, and I am all about the wacky stuff people do to themselves. A short work, at not quite two hundred pages in paperback, but still an excellent and very readable history of female religious in Venice during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Laven is wonderful at balancing her tone between popular history and more scholarly works, tempering a rigorous examination of the sources with compassion and humour. There were times when she could have stood to flesh out some of her points a little more, but having written on the history of female religious myself, and knowing how hard it is to find any relevant documentation, I can't fault her too much on that score—especially since she often acknowledges just how difficult it often is to find out what went on behind closed doors. A great starting point if you have any interest in the subject, and well worth reading even if you haven't. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
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A portait of 16th and 17th century Italian convent life, set in the vibrant culture of late Renaissance Venice. Early 16th century Venice had 50 convents and about 3000 nuns. Far from being places of religious devotion, the convents were often little more than dumping-grounds for unmarried women fron the upper ranks of Venetian society. Often entering a convent at seven years old, these young women remained emotionally and socially attached to their famillies and to their way of life outside the convent. Supported by their private incomes, the nuns ate, dressed and behaved as gentlewomen. In contravention of their vows they followed the latest fashions in hair-styles and footwear, kept lap-dogs and threw parties for their relations. But in the 16th and 17th centuries the counter reformation was to change all that. Threatened by the advance of protestantism, the Catholic Church set about reforming its own institutions. a new state magistracy rapidly turned its attentions to policing the nuns' behaviour relentlessly pursuing transgressors on both sides of the convent wall. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)271.9004531Religions History, geographic treatment, biography of Christianity Religious Congregations and Orders in Church history Orders of WomenLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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