You're Dead to Me - Benedetta Carlini (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

Greg Jenner is joined in 17th-century Italy by Professor Michelle Sauer and comedian Sophie Duker to learn about notorious nun Benedetta Carlini.From the moment of her birth in 1590, Benedetta – whose name literally means ‘blessed’ – was dedicated to God’s service by her father. As a young girl, she joined a community of religious women, where in her twenties she began experiencing mystical visions. These culminated in a number of miraculous signs and occurrences, including the appearance of the stigmata on her body. But following a papal investigation, shocking secrets were revealed, including her sexual relationship with another nun. This episode charts her life, from the miracles that occurred during her childhood, through her time as a devout nun, and to her ultimate downfall at the hands of the papal investigator.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Hannah Campbell Hewson Written by: Hannah Campbell Hewson, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello and welcome to your dead to me the radio for comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are whipping out our wimples and reciting our rosaries as we learn all about the scandalous 17th century nun Benedetta Carlini. And to help us, we have two very special guests.

In History Corner, she's the Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in English at the University of North Dakota. She's a specialist in medieval studies, especially medieval religion, women's literature and queer theory. And she's the author of several books. It's Professor Michelle Sauer. Welcome, Michelle. Thanks so much, Greg.

It's wonderful to be speaking with you today and to meet Sophie. Yes, you're very lucky.'s very special and in Comedy Corner She is an award-winning comedian writer and actor as well as her fabulous stand-up shows You will recognize her from TV's 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Live at the Apollo, Frankie Boyle's New World Order But of course, you'll remember her from our back catalogue including episodes on Atlantis and Ramsey's The Great. It's Sophie Duker. Welcome back Sophie Hey Special feels like an egg, but I'll take it. No, no, it was meant to be positive.

I'm very thrilled to be special and to be here and to be meeting Michelle Sauer. What about Benedetta Carlini? Is this a name that rings any bells? Church bells? So I don't know, I don't really know anything. That's not quite true. I think I've got the sense that she's some sort of queer icon, but I don't really know anything, that's not quite true. I think I've got the sense that she's some sort of queer icon, but I don't really know much about her. And I've already heard from your intro that she's a sexy nun. Wait, did you say that or did I? I was projecting.

You didn't say that. I didn't say that. You didn't say that. I projected. You said wimple and I was like, hot, that's what happened. How embarrassing. And how embarrassing. It's fine, it's a fantastic insight into your mind there. Yeah, I think Sexy Nun is probably about fair,

but we'll see. So what do you know? This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And you are probably familiar with Nun Life, you know, from totally true documentaries like Sister Act and The Sound of Music.

But you might be less familiar with a small mountain girl called Benedetta Carlini who rose to notoriety in 17th century Italy and then vanished from history until being rediscovered quite recently. But who was the real woman who, in quotes, pretended to be a mystic but was found to be a woman of ill repute? Professor Michelle, let's start with her family background. Who was Benedetta? Where was she born? When was she born? What was her family situation, please?

Benedetta was born on January 20th, 1590 on the night of St. Sebastian in a small mountain village called Villano in Tuscany in Italy. She was the only child of Medea and Giuliana Carlinni. Her father was the third richest man in Villano. So it was a well off family. Sophie, I know you speak French. I want to test your Italian now. Do you know what Benedetta translates to in English? Is it like sexy egg? Benedetta, is it like blessed one? Oh, yeah. Bang on. Yeah. Okay. She did Latin as well. All right. Okay. So yes, blessed Michelle. Blessed, why Blessed? What was the naming reason for that?

Her mother had a very difficult labor and at one point it seemed like both mother and child would die. So her father, who was both rich and devout, prayed to God desperately that they lived and in gratitude, Benedetta was named blessed and her father dedicated her to God desperately that they lived. And in gratitude, Benedetta was named blessed and her father dedicated her to God and promised that she would become a nun. What age does she start to sort of become nun adjacent, Michelle? I mean, I think she's pretty nun adjacent right from the start. By the time she was five years old, she was reciting the litany, saying the rosary on her own.

She also experienced miracles as a young girl. She had a nightingale that followed her around, would sing on command, would occasionally sing the lods with her. That's very Disney princess to have a bird on your shoulder singing along. Yeah, a nightingale as well. You don't get those anymore. It's crows and pigeons. They're all over medieval literature, but you know, not in real life anymore. I mean, they exist. So Nightingale good. Any bad animal appearances? There was a mysterious black dog that showed up and growled and slobbered and tried to drag her off. And, you know, eventually it just sort of disappeared when she prayed. So that's obviously a demonic manifestation.

Okay, good. I'm enjoying this. This is fun. Okay. So Sophie, how old do you think the Benedetta was when she was first entering the convent? Okay, so if she's like reciting litanies from five years old, I feel probably quite like a young entrant. I'm gonna go with lucky number 13. That's a good guess. It's a little bit generous. It was nine. Oh, nine. Okay, classic age to take on a trade. So what's the name of the community that Benedetta joined, Michelle? She was born in Vilano, which is a small mountain village. And when it came time for her to join a convent, her father basically just took her down the hill to the next biggest city, which is Pesce. And in Pesce, there were three major convents. These convents were filled to the brim. They were overflowing. And the community that she joined is something called the Theatines.

The Theatines were not actually in official order as of yet. When Benedetta joins, they are still an unofficial community, although they had been sanctioned by the church. A woman named Piera Pogny founded this community in 1590, the year that Benedetta was born. And she had applied to the pope for permission to make this a formal community. It's like a startup convent. It's not quite recognised yet. It's like a young, cool... They're disrupting the sector. They've gone to venture capitalists. Theatrines are disrupting the sector of the female monasteries.

Okay. But what else is going on in the convent, do you think, Sophie? If we are imagining Benedetta as a modern influencer living her hashtag none life, what kind of content are you expecting on the gram? Okay, when you started talking about Benedetta I really thought that she was like, have been a great TikTok baby because it's all like her dad's making her read these litanies, she's got this little bird and stuff like I feel like she would have been creating content from early. And doing unboxing videos.

Yeah, just being like, it's another rosary. Benedetta, I think being a pretty smart kid, I think she'd just be reciting chunks of the Bible, singing stuff, maybe getting the bird involved. Michelle, Sophie's painted quite a charming image there. Nun life was quite hard. Is that fair? It could be pretty hard, especially if you're one of, a lot of orders had something called lay sisters. They're the uneducated ones who did all the hard work, the cooking and the

cleaning. Choir sisters were the ones who were educated and spent their time making silk and sewing and praying and singing. We have a young nun, Benedetta. Her life is sort of on track to be fairly conventional and then at 23 it changes, Michelle. Why 23? Well, you know, we don't really know a lot about her between the ages of nine and 23. Presumably she's doing this conventional thing, except that we have one sort of indication that she is still special. Right away, when she first got to the convent at age nine, she had gone into the convent chapel and was praying in front of the theatine's Madonna statue when the Blessed Virgin Mary sort of manifested within this

statue and leaned forward to kiss Benedetta. But she sort of panicked, freaked out, and then the statue fell as she ran off. But she didn't tell anybody about the almost kiss. None of my Virgin Mary statuettes have ever tried to pass on me. So that is feeling a bit slighted. Another vision Michelle involves quite a sort of Eden-esque vibe. One was was definitely Eden-esque. She was walking in a beautiful garden full of fruits and flowers, many of which wouldn't be growing at the time or place in which she lived. There was a fountain full of scented water. These visions were both beautiful and reassuring because angels would also join her in them.

And she's also mountain climbing. So it is the sound of music. She's climbing every mountain. She's falling every stream She's following her rainbow. She's gonna find her dream She's just a nun walking through the mountains tripping her nut off. It's It's all very PG friendly so far, but then better divisions got quite heavy metal Sophie Oh We've got quite a quick mini quiz for you actually. Which of these visions did Benedetta not claim to have experienced? So five options, here we go. One, she was pursued by handsome young men in iron chains with weapons. Two, Jesus ripped out her heart and she lived without a heart for three days. Three, an angel in a white

robe, gold chain, long curly hair, named Splenditello, brought her a double-edged wand made of flowers and thorns. 4. She married Jesus. 5. An angel told her to go vegan. Which of those? Not true. I think she was told to go vegan. Jesus taking her heart. It poetic, like walking around without a heart for three days. It's relatable content. She's basically Charlie XCX. I think that Splendor-Tello sounds a bit much. Okay, you're rejecting Splendor-Tello and his lovely curly hair. I think he's modeled on you, Greg.

I would love to be Splendor-Tello. I don't have the looks to pull it off. I've got the curly hair and nothing else. It's actually a trick a trick question Sophie all five are true. Oh my god Sorry, that's that's us being very mean there But we thought maybe it would be fun to see if you could tell them apart But no, yeah, she claims all five so she claims her heart's ripped out for three days She claims to be going vegan marrying Jesus splendid Tello comes to her officer a double wand of flowers and thorns and pursued by young men who attack her with weapons and chains. So quite a, quite a ray of visions here.

Yeah. Michelle, Benedetta also started to have the physical signs of holy interactions, what we might call stigmata. From about 1615 forward, she started experiencing intense pain over her entire body. The stigmata are representative wounds on an individual's body that are the same. They correspond with the wounds on Jesus Christ's body. So it would be the hands, the feet, the side wound, and in some extreme cases of stigmata, manifestation of the crown of thorns. These are huge claims to be making. I suppose the obvious question is, were there others in the

convent reporting similar things, Michelle? Is she alone in this? There are no other people in the convent who are reporting this. This is not a typical thing. The stigmata itself is considered an extreme gift that very few saints had ever received. The most famous of these would be Saint Francis of Assisi. And there were a few others that were accepted. Saint Catherine of Siena received the stigmata in her heart, and that was internal and not external. But other than that, it's not common at all. So Benedetta's having these pretty powerful physical and visual visitations and visions. How do you think her fellow nuns were handling that at the dinner table?

It feels like, especially if there's not other people doing it, if it's not part of the company culture to be having visions, then if you kind of state yourself out as having very disruptive and evocative visions, I feel like it probably gets on a few of the nuns' tits. The thing that's intriguing to me, Michelle, is the community sort of give Benedetta a kind of friend to play with, almost as a bit like, all right, you need someone to keep you company. And they give you a young woman called Bartolomeia Crivelli. Is that right? That's right. With these violent visions, they were worried about her. So she gets her buddy. Her buddy Bartolomeia. And Benedetta now sort of steps it up. She starts preaching from

the pulpit, which is a big no-no, isn't it? That's a man's job, right? Huge no, no. Okay. And then in 1619, the other nuns elect her the abbess of the nunnery, Michelle. So then she's not unpopular. She's not unpopular at all. The following year, the community received its official papal permission

to become a closed community, Sophie. Benedetta starts living her best life with her BFF, Spatula Mea, and of course, Splendertello the Angel. Splendertello, can't forget him. But that official stamp of authority then means presumably the church is then looking more closely at what's happening because suddenly the church authorities show up and go, hang on a second, what? There's a woman preaching, claiming mystic visions. We'd better check

this out because we now get an official process of interrogation, Michelle? Yeah. She was starting to make the church nervous, right? Women with too much authority and too much pull, for one thing, made ecclesiastical powers nervous. But just in general, visions were looked at with suspicion more and more. They could be coming from the devil, especially when they involve such bodily sorts of visions. Oh, so the fear here is that she is being visited by Satan, not by an angel? Yes.

Gotcha. Okay. So we get the provost of Pestia, Stefano Cecci, sort of showing up to physically examine the stigmata, the wounds, starts asking questionsia, Stefano Cecci, sort of showing up to physically examine the stigmata, the wounds, starts asking questions, Sophie, it's becoming a bit official. What do you think Bartola Mea does, Sophie, the sort of best friend who's been appointed? So they're like besties at this point. Is she like a waiting mate or are they just like companions? Yeah, a bit of both, is it Michelle? Yeah, she is there to, I guess, help out Benedetta, make sure that she's brought back to Earth after her visions that her body is cared for.

If her heart's removed for three days, somebody has to take care of what's left behind. And Bottelemea says that she had to put the heart back in? Wow! Yes. She is a devoted companion. Not only does she confirm to this inquiry board, to the provost of Pesce, that Benedetta did indeed exist three days without a heart while this exchange with Jesus was going on, but that she herself pushed it back into Benedetta's body. Toby – Sophie, have you ever done that for a friend? Sophie – Wow. Have I ever pushed a heart back in? No, I've held the hair back while they've been sick, but I've never pushed the heart back into the body. I've never

reversed Temple of Doom to friend. Okay so Benedetta has a very loyal friend here and Bartola Mayer is going on the record saying yes the heart came out, I saw it, I put it back in. So that means Benedetta passes the first interrogation, the first investigation, but there will be another because obviously we said that women of ill repute is a phrase that gets used. Why does she pass the first test but a second one is launched, Michelle? What does she do, Benedetta, that's more provocative or claimed to do? Benedetta dies, but then she comes back to life. Whoa!

Okay, whoa! one, she's dead. And then Father Paolo Ricordate commanded her in a loud voice to arise and she did. That's all it needs, right? That's all you need. You just need someone. You just need a man to say, get up, come on, sort it out. And you're like, not dead anymore. Not dead. Let's talk about the second investigation because this time around Sophie, it's not the local authorities who are sort of showing up to have an interrogation. The Pope has sent someone.

The Pope! Mr. Pope himself. He sent a nuncio, which is an official figure, a bunch of officials showing up in 1622. They're there for several months. They're outsiders, right? They're not used to the community. They're not used to her. So they're a bit more interrogative. It doesn't go so well this time, Sophie. They're suspicious. Yeah, I'd be suspicious. I feel like Bartolomea sounds like a liability. I feel like she's

adding like little embellishments like, I saw the heart, I pushed it back in. Like, it feels like Benedetta's got quite a lot of charisma, but I'm not sure Bartolomea commands quite the same amount of reverence, no questions asked, as her friend does. So I feel like she's possibly not going to be the weak link in questioning. Where she really started losing people was continuing to preach from the pulpit. It was understandable, maybe, the first few times because she was reporting what Jesus had said in these visions. But continuing to do that wanders into dangerous territory. And who would inspire someone to

continually act in such a manner contrary to God, but the devil. So the local community starts turning against her and suggests that her parents have been possessed by devils. And then all of this sort of comes to a head when the nuncio comes to town. He is very suspicious of things like the heart exchange and the mystical marriage and especially stigmata. And they find satanic signs around the kind of the sort of the general locale of the nunnery. Michelle, what is the evidence gathered against Benedetta? The biggest sign of all of demonic, if not possession, association is that she didn't go vegan anymore. She started secretly eating meat. And in particular, she

had a love of salami and mortadella. And I mean, I can't blame her. Mortadella is delicious. So wow. The nun who loves salami. It's not how I thought she would be described. So Michelle is this, I'm slightly worried where we're going next, but are we going next in sort of, you know, demonic territory of, you know, naughty things? Not quite. Instead, we end up with Benedetta having sex not with the devil, but with her best friend, Bartolomea. No! What? Sophie's back on board.

What? Those two good friends? Yeah. They were just roommates. The roommates? What? More than that, Sophie, Benedetta is claiming that, Lend a Tello is making them do it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. Yeah, I've had that one as well. It's like...

It's that... Like there's someone watching, he's got like curly hair. Uh-oh. Yeah. Uh-oh. Wow. So Michelle, I think the question we have to ask at this point now is, you know, we can all have a laugh about these sort of things, but actually what's quite interesting is there is a sort of moment in that testimony where Bartola Maia sort of says she was sort of made to lie on her back and that brings up ideas perhaps of coercion, perhaps of one person having more power than the other. So

is this a standard, you know, typical lesbian relationship between two consenting women or do we have something more problematic here? I think that it is more problematic, but there's multiple levels of coercion, I think, going on here also. It's not just that Splendotello made them do it for his own benefit, but Benedetta claims that Splendotello really inhabits her body or takes over her body in certain ways so that she herself is actually subject to coercion in a way to then make Bartolomea also go through with this. Yeah, it's definitely a problematic relationship, but it's also problematic for us because it comes to us through the official testimony of Nuncio Papal Legates. It's slightly refracted through. So the phrasing that is used in the official interrogation is called the Immodest

Act. So what is the outcome of this investigation, Michelle, the second investigation from the Pope's man. Michelle Bolling-Kelley So the final investigative visit was in November of 1623. There's no more evidence of stigmata or of a mystical wedding ring. Benedetta is no longer seeing visions. Splendotello has left her. Benedetta agrees that she had been deceived by the devil and lived very obediently under a new abbess. We don't really hear from her again, although the convent records basically indicate that she died when she was 71 years old, that she had been ill for 18 days. But this diary also reveals one interesting fact. She had been imprisoned in solitary confinement

for 35 years. So it appears that her recantation and her reformation to live the good life under a new abbess was for naught. Oh Sophie, that's a bit of a vibe shift on the episode there, isn't it? Yeah. It's so sad! Sorry. Oh, 35 years! The Nuance Window! Time now for The nuance window. This is a part of the show where Sophie and I set down

our needles and sit in silent contemplation for two minutes while Professor Michelle takes to the pulpit to preach something that we need to know about Benedetta Carlini. So my stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes. Take it away, Professor Michelle. I really wanted to talk a little bit about medieval lesbians. In the introduction to her book, Immodest Acts, about Benedetta Carlini, Judith C. Brown says, had the material belonged to a later epoch, the sexual allegations against Benedetta

would not have been all that rare. But what about medieval lesbians? Looking for medieval lesbians, one of the things about studying them is that it allows for participation in the creation of social and sexual histories and forefronts the female experience in a field that continues to be dominated by white straight men and even the term homosexual has been co-opted and used only to describe male same-sex encounters. So it's good on the one hand that we have Benedetta Carlini. That of course has been co-opted and used only to describe male same-sex encounters.

So it's good on the one hand that we have Benedetta Carlini. Bad, of course, because of the situation. But good because the scant handful of documented lesbians are generally documented for being caught. Benedetta Carlini was on trial, oddly enough, mostly for preaching, and the immodest act came out. We can find medieval lesbians and joy in medieval lesbian activities in such places as mystic texts where female saints called Jesus their mother, then suckle from his side as breastfeeding before crawling into the open vaginal shaped wound. One such woman was

Catherine of Siena. She describes climbing Christ's body that has been clearly transformed into a feminized creation as he possesses her and presses her to his breast and the opening there. We know that the church and theologians were concerned about the possibilities of women being with other women in a sexual manner. Elred of Raveaux, who wrote a letter to his sister in Anchorus, cautioned her against teaching young women because she would clearly be enraptured by them and want to kiss them. Saint Augustine wrote a similar letter to his sister. So there are deep concerns about these women. Therefore, we know that they exist, that they're out there.

And we really need to keep looking more completely into this history so that we don't foreclose the possibilities of a long history of women who loved other women. There's such a scant amount of evidence and testimony, but when it does pop up, it's really visceral and like those images of like licking Jesus's heart. It's very intense and very lesbian. I think that, you know, I am, I am going to go to a lesbian bar tonight and I am going to ask the gathered congregation, if anyone's ever asked to lick their heart, which I think is probably quite likely given East London. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you, Professor Michelle. Listener, if after today's episode, you want more duke in your ears, check out our episode on Listener, if after today's episode you want

more duke it in your ears, check out our episodes on Atlantis, Ramesses the Great, Ashanti Gana and the Chevalier de Saint George. What about catalogue? And if you've enjoyed hearing about the naughty nun, why not listen to our episode on the profane popes of the early medieval papacy. Those guys were, they were extra. Let's just put it that way. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends, subscribe to your dead to Me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. But all that's left for me to do is say a huge thank you

to our guests in History Corner. We had the magnificent Professor Michelle Sauer from the University of North Dakota. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you. It was awesome. And in Comedy Corner, we had the sublime Sophie Duker. Thank you, Sophie.

Bless you, Greg. Bless you, Michelle. Thank you, Sophie. Bless you, Greg. Bless you, Michelle. Thank you very much. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we investigate more historical friendships in inverted commas. But for now, I'm off to go and offer Satan some of my salami.

Bye! In 1984, an IRA bomb planted under a bath in Brighton's Grand Hotel came close to killing Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. It was the biggest direct assault on a British government since the gunpowder plot. From BBC Radio 4, I'm Glenn Patterson, and in The Brighton Bomb, I tell the story of the deadly attack, unraveling the threads that brought all involved often by heartbreaking chants to that place and time 2.54 a.m. on the morning of the 12th of October and I reveal how the police only just averted a follow-up bombing campaign

aimed at England's beaches To hear The Brighton Bomb and many other great history documentaries search for the history podcast bombing campaign aimed at England's beaches. To hear the Brighton Bomb and many other great history documentaries, search for the History podcast on BBC Science.