Noble Blood - The Nun of Monza, Part 1

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

For plenty of young women in the early modern era, if their families couldn't afford their dowries, they simply shipped them off to a nunnery. That was the case for Marianna, a young girl who rose in the ranks of her monastery as an exemplary nun... until she crossed paths with the rakish nobleman who lived in the estate next door. Support Noble Blood:— Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon— Noble Blood merch— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong,

dance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Hey, this is Dana Schwartz. Just a bit of housekeeping before we begin. If you want to support the show, We have merch and we have a Patreon. Both of those are linked in the episode description. The merch is amazing. I use my mugs pretty much every morning.

And over on the Patreon, there is exclusive merch like stickers. There are episode scripts. And there's also a weekly recap bonus podcast that I do with a friend of mine recapping the television series Rain about Mary Queen of Scots. So if that sounds interesting, head there. And thank you for listening. Having a daughter was expensive business in early modern Europe. From the moment of a girl's birth, one cost in particular would have loomed over her family's head, her dowry.

The dowry was the payment traditionally made upon marriage from the bride's family to the grooms, meant as part of the formal transfer of the bride to her new family and as a starting fund for the couple's new life. In the modern day, it's an outdated, misogynistic practice, but in the early modern period, it was an essential component of the right of passage of marriage. If families could not afford it outright, many young women worked on their own to save up for a dowry. Marriage often meant, among many other things, security, and that was worth every penny. Of course, as this podcast can attest, Marriage was rarely as simple as saving up a few ducats and then finding some nice enough boy to drag to the church.

The dowry market, like any economic market, fluctuated over time. When there were more young women than men in a given area, for example, a larger dowry might be necessary to catch a suitor's attention in a sea of options. During those times of inflation, one can imagine the astronomical call sums required to secure any match, let alone an advantageous one. But difficult as arranging a marriage might be, it was dangerous, not to mention expensive, to let a young unmarried daughter linger in her father's house. In a society that prized the chastity of women above pretty much everything else, an unmarried adult daughter was a sharefire recipe for an illegitimate

grandchild, or even just the rumor of one, and all of the scandal and shame that would come with it. When the population of unmarried women was high, things became even more challenging. Women without families to support them often put pressure on their city's systems of charity, or they were drawn to the relative freedom and potential income they could gain from sex work, which threatened both public resources and in early modern eyes, public morality. For many Catholic families, the only affordable option in an inflated dowry market to still protect the chastity of their daughters was the convent. It was certainly not entirely free to promise your daughter to Jesus Christ.

Many convents charged small dowries to help cover their new wards' upkeep. But it was often substantially cheaper than marrying your daughter to an earthly husband. Even some of the more wealthy and influential families sent their daughters to convents, be it as a temporary means of protecting their chastity like Mary Queen of Scots, or as a more permanent solution when marriage was unaffordable or otherwise unattainable. Scores of women and girls ended up in convents that way, sent away. from their families, sometimes from a very young age, to a new life that, depending on the convent, could either mean relative freedom and comfort, or harsh enclosure and a penitent

lifestyle. In any case, it was a much more restricted life than likely any of the young girls had imagined for themselves. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, many of the women and girls sent to the convents by their families out of financial expediency, did not share the religious devotion we might expect from nuns today. Although those who were sent to convents as children would not be nuns and therefore not technically bound to the church, once they reached marriageable age, many found they had few other options than to take their vows. Some surely found that convent life suited them, but many resented their families for placing them there against their will. Some wished for marriage, others simply to be let out of the walls of enclosure.

Entering a convent was a choice made for them, by their families, by the economic conditions of the time, and by the world in which they lived that prized female chastity above all else. Records from the period see some of these women reclaiming their freedom in ways both big and small. In the convents that allowed it, some sisters took up trades, becoming skilled artisans and earning money for the convent, and if they were lucky, contact with the outside world. A few were drawn to more scholarly or artistic pursuits, occasionally earning fame from within the convent for their contributions. And of course, some even went so far as to appeal to the Pope, begging to have their bows to Jesus annulled.

But others found more transgressive ways to escape the confines of the cloister. One in particular, a woman first named Mariana de Levia e. Marino, and then Sister Virginia Maria, later known simply as the nun of Manza, found her freedom in the arms of a lover, or so she thought. This is a story that travels through plague into a convent, past love and brutal murder, into one of the creepiest scandals we've ever covered on this podcast. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. Mariana de Lévia and Marino was just a few months past her 13th birthday,

when her father decided to place her in the convent of Santa Margarita. A big change, to be sure, but that was far from the first time in young Mariana's life that her world had been turned upside down. She was born in Milan, now in Italy, but then a Spanish duchy, in 1575, the first and only child of Martine de Lévia and his wife, Virginia Maria Marino. Virginia Maria was the daughter and heir of one of the wealthiest men in Milan. She had also been married once before, and she was the widow of Ercole Pio, Count of Sasuolo, with whom she had had a son, Marco, and four daughters.

Martine de Lévié, for his part, also boasted an illustrious lineage. He was the great-grandson of the great Antonio de Lever, who had led the army of the Spanish Empire under King Charles V. As a reward for his valor, Charles had granted Antonio the Duchy of Milan upon the death of Duke Francesco II Sforza. Delavia was rewarded also with the fiefdom of Monza, a small city about nine miles northeast of Milan, that, despite its small size, offered considerable revenue. By the time Mariana was born, her father, Martine, had had a significant military career of his own, and he had inherited his great-grandfather's county of Manza as a fiefdom, although he alternated sovereignty with his brother.

With all of Mariana's family's wealth and influence, the little girl seemed slated for a charmed life. Then, all at once, disaster struck. When Mariana was barely a year old in 1576, the plague came to Milan. As plagues do, it tore through the city, causing not only mass death, but also economic devastation as workers and consumers alike died or left. Crops went unattended and trade all but disappeared. Virginia Maria, Mariana's mother, died that year.

We don't know if plague was the cause, although it seems a likely possibility. What we do know is that her death and the events that followed, would irrevocably change the course of her youngest daughter's life. In the midst of her sickness, Virginia Maria had made her last will and testament. She chose to name as her heirs the infant Mariana and her son from her first marriage, Marco, with the vast majority of her estate to be divided equally between the two of them. It certainly seems an odd choice, given that Virginia Maria had four other children, daughters from her earlier first marriage, maybe she assumed they would be taken care of.

Perhaps she thought her daughters might forgive her for choosing to ensure the livelihoods of her son, who would have to start his own household, and her infant daughter, who was further away from the protection that marriage could offer. It was, as you might have guessed, a grave miscalculation. Within just days of their mother's death, Marco's sisters, Mariana's half-sisters, represented by their uncle, went to court to contest the will, arguing that they should have also received fair shares of the estate. The legal battle that ensued defined the early years of Mariana's life, and she'd spend her early years with no sense of stability or certainty.

Mere months after Virginia Maria died, Martin de Léviot left his infant daughter in the care of an aunt, and he went off to Flanders on a long military campaign. Despite her father's absence, the dispute over the will continued, and Mariana spent the next three years in limbo, as the adults in her life argued over assets or just abandoned her altogether as an afterthought. Finally, in 1580, Martine briefly returned home to Milan

to put an end to the inheritance suit. It was clear, however, that his... His goal was not to protect the interests of his only child. In fact, the so-called compromise he reached with his stepdaughters practically amount to theft from Mariana. He gave the Pio children more than half of their mother's estate, and the remaining portion was set aside vaguely for Martine and Mariana, meaning, in effect, just for Martine, since Mariana was a toddler.

Allowing the case to continue to linger would certainly not have benefited Mariana, but Martine was almost certainly more concerned with just closing the case so that he could return to his military campaigns. Over the years, his family's prestige had begun to wane, and he wagered that he could better restore it by serving the Spanish king, who was now Philip II, Mary Tudor's husband, as opposed to squabbling over his dead wife's affairs or, well, providing for the future of his lineage. His baby was a girl, after all, not an heir that in any way would have mattered to him.

The inheritance debacle feels definitive, and it is certainly very telling about all parties involved, but this was not the moment that Martine Delivia consigned his daughter to the cloister. For a while, it seemed like he was indeed planning to a while. arrange a marriage for Mariana. A letter from 1586 sees him discussing her prospects and floating a potential dowry of 7,000 lira, which was nothing to sneeze at, but I should note it paled in comparison to the 50,000 that he had been promised from his late wife's family when they had gotten married. The final blow to Mariana's future came a few years later. in 1588, when her father, Martine, remarried.

His new wife lived in Valencia, nearly 800 miles from Milan and from Mariana. By now, it had been over a decade since the wandering military man had shared a roof with his daughter, and the prospect of paying a dowry would have loomed large as Mariana got older. His new marriage, on the other hand,

brought with it the promise of career promotion, more income, more influence, and of course, male heirs. Here, he must have thought, was a perfect opportunity to start fresh and save a little money in the process. Martine brought his only child to the monastery of Santa Margarita, a small Benedictine convent in his own county, Monsa, in late 1588. A few months later in early 1589, he briefly returned to settle the matter of Mariana's inheritance once and for all. He promised her a 6,000 lira deposit to be delivered to the convent through an intermediary that would accrue an annual income of 300 lira. We don't know if Martin actually saw his daughter on that 1589 visit, but we do know

that Mariana never saw her father again after that, and that she never received her inheritance. Although records show she did receive some income from the convent's revenues. The scholar Luigi Zerbi estimates that out of an approximate 40,000 lira Mariana was owed in total, her father stole nearly 28,000. On August 26, 1591, Gasparé Visconti, the Archbishop of Milan, made the short journey to Monsa to witness the consecration of four nuns who had completed their novitiates and were preparing to take the profession. These girls each had spent several years deep in prayer, reflection and manual labor, and were getting ready to make a lifelong commitment to the convent.

Among these novices was one Sister Virginia Maria, a young girl of about 16, whose late mother's given name had just happened to make. for a perfect religious name. Despite these circumstances of her arrival at Santa Margarita, Mariana, whose given name we will continue to use for clarity's sake, made an excellent nun. She took her vows in September 1591 and soon garnered a reputation in Manza for her admirable conduct. The famed priest and historian Giuseppe Ripamonte who lived in Manza around this time and who would love later write a good deal about Mariana's life, described her character during these early years

as, quote, modest, circumspect, most affable, suffused with an enviable candor, a friend to everyone, as educated in literary disciplines as a well-mannered, obedient, not at all spiteful young girl could be at the time, an example of perfect social behavior. In addition to praise, Mariana also garnered power from the convent. Although she had taken the profession, her wayward father soon delegated his duties to her as sovereign of Monsa. She took over in 1596 at 20 years old. Records show her issuing edicts, ordering arrests, and offering pardons, among other official duties. In December 1596, for example, she prohibited fishing in a stretch of river that ran next to the Francine. Siskan convent of Santa Maria, granting the convent's friar's exclusive use of the area.

By all accounts, she was as beloved as a feudal lady as she was a well-behaved nun. She was also working her way up within the convent, earning the roles of sacristan, which meant that she was responsible for the convent's sacristy, where vestments and other sacred objects were kept. And she also got the job as supervisor of the saint. secular girls housed in the convent. It was through that role as supervisor that Mariana first met Jean-Palo Osio. The illustrious Osio family had been a staple in Lombardy, the region in which both Milan and Monsa are situated for centuries, but by this time the branch of the family

living in Monsa had begun to develop a less-than-illustrious reputation. Born in 1572, John Paolo Oetio was no exception. Charismatic, libertine, and prone to violence, he was every bit whatever you're thinking, if I say 16th century rake. Despite all that, he had a good relationship with the convent of Santa Margarita, frequently hiring servants from the convent to run errands for his household. This relationship was born mostly out of proximity, his property abutted the convent so closely that someone standing in the convent garden could see into his home quite easily and vice versa. Although she almost certainly would have met her neighbor earlier or at least known of him, Mariana's first documented encounter with John Paolo was in the fall of 1597, and it was

less of a meat-cute and more of a bad omen for things to come. One day, as she, she was walking through the convent's garden, she came upon Jean-Palo alone with one of her pupils flirting. He had, it turned out, been taking advantage of the closeness of his property to the convent by climbing a tree so that he could spy on the secular girls, and he was attempting, in this case, to start an affair with one of them. The actual extent of his success in the matter isn't clear from the record, although in the this period the circumstances, there being alone, unsupervised in a convent, were damning enough.

The girl was quickly dealt with, as she was a secular who had not yet made any vows, she was able to be removed from the convent by her horrified mother, and she was married off within weeks. For her part, Mariana gave John Paolo such a scolding that he reportedly left the convent that day, hanging his head in shame. News of Mariana's, quote, great rebuff of John Paolo traveled quickly through Monza, the 16th century equivalent of the juiciest celebrity gossip. And a few days later, the story developed a new and significantly darker twist. When John Paolo murdered Giuseppe Moltena, a man who had worked in the service of

the Delevia family as a tax agent. Some believed that he had committed that murder out of anger at Mariana, an act of revenge for her rebuke. Others whispered that it was actually jealousy, that Mariana had been having an affair with Maltano, and John Paolo had wanted her all to himself. These are not impossible motives, although Mariana would later deny any impropriety with a deceased, but the the actual reason for the killing likely had little to do with Mariana herself. I mean, it was sort of a tangential connection in the first place. It seems that John Paolo had been conspiring with another of the Delavia financial advisors

to skim off the top of the family's books, hoping that it wouldn't be noticed by the absent Martine or the enclosed Mariana. And he and his inside man had plotted the murder together. either to prevent being found out or to maximize their own profits. This theory is supported by the fact that only a few weeks after the murder, that second financial advisor was fired by the Delevia family and promptly replaced. John Paolo reportedly tried to appeal to Mariana, who was not only a member of the family that he may have been trying to defraud,

but who also held his fate in her hands as the sovereign of Monsa. The story goes that shortly after the murder, Mariana happened to be passing through the room of one of her fellow sisters that had a view into the Osio Garden. John Paolo, seeing Mariana in the window, caught her attention and shouted up, asking to send her a letter, presumably to explain himself,

to proclaim his innocence, or may be made. to beg for her favor. Mariana, scrupulous as ever, was enraged. Not only had this man once seduced her student and then gone on to commit a heinous murder, but here he was, not even in hiding, but strolling about his garden and asking her to abuse justice. She immediately ordered his arrest. John Paolo fled Manza and was sentenced in absentia to exile. John Paolo remained in exile for about a year, while his friends and family, as well as the Mother Superior of the convent, and even members of Mariana's own family, pressured her to give him grace. She relented in 1598,

and Jean-Palo was officially granted pardon and allowed to return to his residence in Monza. When he returned, Marianna's anger had seemingly cooled. Perhaps she took the concept of giving grace to heart. that wasn't all, and here's the biggest plot twist so far. Apparently, the scrupulous, modest nun looked out her window one day at her murderous playboy neighbor, and all of a sudden, fell in love. Could you ever see anything more beautiful? Years later, one of Mariana's fellow nuns would recount having heard Mariana make that remark, presumably while resting her cheek on her hand and between dramatic lovelorn sighs while sitting at her window after catching a glimpse of John Paolo in his garden. Somehow, and I wish I knew more so I could tell you more, the debauchrous nobleman had managed to charm

Mariana. She had even been willing to give him another chance after he had started off by three, throwing a letter over the wall separating his garden from the convents, a first attempt at flirting that must have seemed cute until she opened the letter to reveal a note so sexually explicit that she recoiled in disgust. Undeterred, John Paolo had then enlisted the help of a local priest and friend of his, Paolo Aragone. Father Paolo reminded John Paulo that he was trying to start an affair with a nun. He was not, perhaps, ethical enough to advise John Paolo to pursue someone else, but he was certainly wise enough to advise a change in tactic. The priest wrote a new letter for Jean-Paolo to throw over the wall, this one contrite and chaste and romantic, and that letter

sealed the deal. Once they got over the first few minor hurdles, you know, the fact that she had caught him in the garden with another girl, the murder, the exile, and then the sexually explicit letter in the convent garden, the affair must have felt like a chivalric romance. There was Mariana enclosed in her tower, and here was her prince, calling up to her with promises of not only romance, but freedom, furtive glances and gifts, passed through intermediaries accompanied by secret letters thrown over the garden wall. Although Mariana was surely smitten by John Paolo and by father Paolo's continued ghostwriting,

at first Mariana declined to take their relationship further. She was a nun after all and she had made vows of chastity. As an enclosed nun in particular, she maintained that neither of them could violate the boundaries of enclosure. She couldn't leave, and he couldn't enter, a stalemate that likely fueled Mariana's romantic fantasy, and May John Paolo all the more determined to break her resolve. He continued to press the issue, and Mariana finally gave in August 1599. Coincidentally, not long after her father died,

she agreed to a secret nighttime meeting in the confessor's parlor. A local blacksmith, a copy of a key to the parlor, which had been given to him by Sister Atavia, a friend of Mariana's. Sister Atavia then threw the new key over the garden wall into the Osseo property so that John Paolo could enter unseen. The moment Mariana laid eyes on John Paolo in the parlor through the grill separating them, she was overcome by emotion. A desire, perhaps unlike anything else, she had ever felt in her young life, muddled by the sinking guilty feelings of realizing she had gone past a point of no return. Her emotions were so strong, in fact, that she immediately took ill. She remained indisposed for several months and told John Paolo she could not see him anymore.

He, meanwhile, continued to bombard her with gifts and letters. By Christmas, Mariana both recovered and relented, and the affair began in earnest when she allowed John Paolo to sneak into her room. Soon they were meeting two or three times a week for secret forbidden trists in the convent. As the affair progressed, the web of people who became complicit in it

also grew larger and more complicated, between the blacksmith-making keys, father Paolo writing letters and a handful of Mariana's fellow nuns helping to sneak John Paolo in and out of the convent. Soon those fellow nuns would have another job, helping Mariana conceal a pregnancy. Mariana gave birth to a stillborn boy in 1602. She was devastated, not only by the loss of her child, but also by an overwhelming sense of guilt that hit her all in. at once. By now, she and John Paolo had been brazenly carrying on their affair for over a year. She had violated her vows again and again, and now she had to rely on her fellow nuns to sneak

her baby's body out of the convent. She had to end the affair. Despite her feelings of guilt, however, and despite her resolve to end the affair for good, she still felt herself drawn to John Paolo. Later, Mariana would claim that she had tried to rid herself of her feelings using the magical practice of corophagia, believing that she had been struck with a love sickness that was the result of a curse. She somehow got her hands on, pardon me, Jean-Palo's dried feces, and consumed it as a medicinal in a series of broths and teas, in a desperate attempt to break the spell. When that didn't work, she contemplated throwing herself into the well on the convent grounds. Reportedly, she hesitated upon seeing an image of the Virgin nearby, and Sister Octavia then found her and talked her off the ledge.

Throughout this time, Jean-Pao never ceased his campaign of what we might now call love bombing, continuing to send letters and gifts with entreaties to resume the affair, even as Mariana entered a period of intense prayer and penance. She continued to reject him for months, even sending him away at one point on a pilgrimage to Rome and Loretto, hoping he might come to his senses about the affair too. After months of endless pushing, Mariana gave in again, whether because she genuinely missed Jean-Paolo

or because he truly just broke down her resolve, We'll never know. Who among us hasn't gone back to an ex who's bad for us? But in any case, the affair started back up, and within months, Mariana was pregnant again. After nine months of pretending to have a spleen disease to explain the swelling, she gave birth to a daughter on August 8, 1604, whom she named Alma Francesca Margarita, before giving her to her trusted fellow nuns, to deliver. liver to John Paolo under cover of night. Somewhat contrary to character, John Paolo actually

turned out to be quite a loving father. He brought Little Alma to Milan to have her baptized openly, with a noble godfather befitting her station, and he chose to keep her close in Mansa, despite the rumors that were beginning to swirl. He formally recognized her as his daughter in 1606, giving her all the inheritance rights and public status of a legitimate child. He never named Mariana as the mother, instead naming a woman named Isabella Demetta. By that time, however, few believed him, especially given the unusual frequency of Little Alma's visits to the Santa Margarita monastery. In fact, by this time, the truth was obvious to just about everyone in Monsa. In addition to Alma's suspiciously frequent visits, as many as three or four

times a week, according to some sources, several nuns would later testify that many times they saw Mariana sneak out of the monastery, violating her sacred vow of seclusion over to the Osio estate to spend the night with her daughter and her lover. It was really only Mariana's noble status, coupled with John Paolo's trademark violent streak, that kept people from saying anything at the time, or from reporting them to the ecclesiastical authorities. But by the summer of 1606, the delicate balance Mariana and John Paolo had managed to maintain over the years

finally began to crumble, all thanks to a young girl named Caterina Delacassini. Caterina was a teenager, and a secular in the convent who had not taken any vows as of yet. In fact, word around the convent was that she wouldn't be allowed to because of her rebellious obstinate character and alleged thefts from the monastery's pantry, both behavior unfitting of a nun.

She, like Mariana and many others before her, had been placed at Santa Margarita against her will. But unlike Mariana, Katarina seemed completely uninjointed, interested in assimilating into convent life, or even pretending to, often threatening to escape and disrespecting just about everyone she could. Recently, her behavior had begun to great on Mariana, who still held authority over the secular's and was therefore responsible for Katerina. In late July 1606, Mariana hit her breaking point when Katerina soiled the bed of Sister Danyamera, the organist of the monastery, whose talents had always delighted Mariana.

Unfortunately, I have no details about what it meant that Katerina soiled that poor woman's bed, but whatever it was, as punishment Mariana convinced the mother superior and the monastery's confessor to have Katerina imprisoned in the woodshed in the convent garden while they figured out what to do about her out-of-control behavior. Katerina, in true teenage fashion, was incensed at what she considered unfair treatment by Mariana and her allies. She had just been disrespectful, and she was locked in a woodshed. Meanwhile, after everything Mariana herself had been doing for years,

she not only was walking free, but continued to enjoy high status. Then, Katerina remembered that in just a few days' time, the vicar, Monseigneur Pietro Barca, would be coming to the convent for the monastery's elections, and she saw an opportunity. Katerina threatened Mariana, saying that if she didn't release her, when the Monseigneur arrived, she was going to tell him everything, about the affair, about little Alma, about every sinful detail of the ways Mariana had broken her sacred vow. Even if he had already known about it vaguely, as did many people in Monta at the time, he wouldn't be able to ignore a report made to him directly.

The punishment for such brazen, repeated crimes would be much more severe than simply being stuck in a woodshed for a few nights. Where the affair had at first felt like freedom to Mariana, now it was as though the walls were closing in on her. If Catarina followed through on her threat, Mariana would lose everything. In a panic, she gathered her four closest confidence from the convent, sisters Atavia, Benedetta, Candida Colombo, and Sylvia, and had them send a message to John Paolo. The night before the election, the six of them snuck into the woodshed to try to talk some sense into Katarina. As the nuns would later tell it, they tried first to reason with her, but the stubborn girl stuck to her guns.

According to Mariana's later testimony, the girl rebuffed any attempt at negotiating. Even crying out, I don't want to hear your chatter anymore, but I want to be your ruin and that of your lover. And tomorrow morning, you all will come here to this place where I am. The threat of imprisonment hung in the dark, dank air of the makeshine. cell where they all stood. At that, it was Jean-Paulo who had heard enough. He grabbed a wooden board that had an iron rod running through it, which he had taken from the monastery's workshop, and struck, with one blow to the head, then another and another. Jean-Palo killed Catarina, as Mariana and the other nuns looked on in horror. The nuns and the nobleman stood

over the body of the young girl as the reality of what they had done settled in. Perhaps in between suggestions for how to hide the body, they attempted to justify their crime. Katerina was unruly and indignant, and she was going to reveal Mariana and John Paolo's many, many indiscretions to the Monsignor, destroying not only their individual reputations, but likely the reputation of the convent as well. She would have ruined everything. Well, as it would turn out, she still could. That's the first part of the salacious and tragic story of the nun of Monsa.

But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about the novel that would make her one of the most famous nuns gone bad in history. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. and then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationship. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive. scientist and hosts of the podcast a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become

when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live. with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The story of Mariana de Lévié Marino and her affair with John Paolo Osseo

might have been relegated to the annals of curious local history, if not for the 19th century author Alessandro Mansohn, who read the proceedings of Mariana's later trial and was captivated by her complex and at times contradictory character. His 1827 novel, translated in English as The Betrothed, is often named as the most famous and widely read work in the Italian language other than Dante's divine comedy. And the one character in the story is based on Mariana.

The Betrothed tells the story of the young lovers Renzo and Lucci. who, after having their wedding thwarted by an evil baron, who has his own eyes set on Lucia, go on a series of adventures and run into a series of obstacles as they try to outsmart the baron and have their love legally recognized. Their travels take them to Monza, where they come upon a nun named Gertrude, who, over the course of several chapters and through a series of flashbacks, reveals the story of her Torrid affair with a nobleman, an evil man who had made her an accomplice

in his murder of another nun, and who would, later in the novel, force Gertrude to aid in the kidnapping of the young Lucia, and who would, later in the novel, force Gertrude to aid in the kidnapping of the young Lucia, who throughout the book never seems to be able to catch a break. Manzoni's novel allowed Mariana's story to take on new life, and the Nun of Monza became a staple of Italian literature well into the 20th century.

It has been adapted to film with varying levels of faithfulness to the historical facts, at least seven times since 1962, inspiring comedies, several historical dramas, and erotic drama, and most recently, a modern thriller complete with a gun-toating nun-during nun. detective. Unfortunately, if that sounds incredibly interesting to you, most of these adaptations are in Italian. It's the earlier films, however, namely the Italian historical dramas that came out of the 1960s, where we see one of Mariana's more interesting modern influences. As it turned out, Mariana's story, that of a young girl placed in a convent against her will who fell prey to temptation, offered a perfect opportunity to explore the tension between sexuality and romance and religious enclosure,

and the violent that might ensue when that tension came to boil. That plot structure gained popularity, especially in Italy through the 1970s, and became one of the standard templates for a popular genre of film, still popular today, especially in American horror movies, that has come to be known as nonsploitation. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio, and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz,

with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noami Griffin and Rima Il-Ka Ali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.

I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. guaranteed human.