Convent Life & Forced Monachization

To understand Tarabotti is to understand monacazione forzata — forced monachization. In seventeenth-century Venice, thousands of women were placed in convents not out of religious devotion but for economic and political reasons. Rising marriage dowries, the practice of limiting inheritance to one son, and the Republic's wish to control the growth of the patriciate made the convent a convenient repository for daughters. After the Council of Trent, strict enclosure turned that placement, for the unwilling, into a life sentence.

Why families cloistered their daughters

A respectable marriage in Tarabotti's Venice required a steep dowry — often tens of thousands of ducats, and by her day, skyrocketing. A convent's "spiritual dowry" was far more modest: families could pay a one-time sum (Tarabotti's father paid 1,200 ducats) or a smaller yearly fee. As Venice's maritime economy declined and noble families shifted their wealth to mainland land, they restricted marriage and inheritance to a single son so estates would not be parceled out. With fewer eligible bridegrooms and a reluctance to marry daughters "down" to non-noble men, families placed surplus daughters in convents to protect both family honor and family wealth.

By the mid-seventeenth century there were some thirty-nine convents on the main island of Venice alone, housing more than 2,500 cloistered nuns — a number that had risen sharply, not from religious fervor but from these social and economic pressures.

The Council of Trent and strict enclosure

The reforms of the Council of Trent (1545–1563) reshaped female monastic life. Its decree on nuns imposed strict enclosure: after profession, a nun could not set foot outside the convent. Convents were physically sealed — doors eliminated or double-locked, windows bricked in or covered with heavy iron grates. The darkness Tarabotti laments was not only metaphor but the literal effect of prison-like architecture. Nuns could meet approved visitors only across the grille of the convent parlor (the parlatorio).

The same reforms, in Chapter 17, actually prohibited forced monachization — requiring that girls be examined before taking the veil to ensure they acted of their own free will. In practice this was nearly impossible to enforce: a girl could rarely exist apart from her family, and was likely to declare her consent even under pressure. Tarabotti bitterly accused Church officials of turning a blind eye.

The rites of passage

For those destined to take vows, a sequence of carefully choreographed ceremonies marked the passage from the secular world to the cloister:

Vestition (the clothing ceremony)

The vestizione marked the transition to enclosed communal life. Trent set a minimum age of fifteen; Tarabotti was sixteen. In a public-then-private ritual accompanied by psalms and music, the postulant processed through the church, her hair — that reminder of secular vanity — was shorn, and she donned the habit and veil, taking a new religious name.

Profession

Profession marked the nun's "death to the world" and rebirth as a bride of Christ, borrowing from both marriage and funeral rites. Covered with a black cloth symbolizing the funeral pall, the novice lay face down on the stone floor, candles at her head and feet, while the litanies were sung over her — "all signs," Tarabotti wrote, "that denote her extinct." She then pronounced her permanent vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. For a forced nun, Tarabotti wrote, this was to utter, "with lips weakened by despair," the sentence of her own burial.

Consecration

The consecration of virgins — known in Venice as the sagra — could occur only after a woman turned twenty-five. A stylized group rite that could last up to six hours, it highlighted the nuns' status as brides of Christ, complete with a ring symbolizing the celestial union.

The convent of Sant'Anna in Castello

Tarabotti spent almost her entire life at Sant'Anna, at the far eastern edge of the Castello district. Founded in the early thirteenth century and taken over by Benedictine nuns in 1305, it was already centuries old and crumbling in her day; a new church was under construction from 1634 until 1659 — for about half her time there. The convent housed around thirty-six choir nuns in her time, owned property on the mainland, and — like its residents — was famously "permeable": despite the rules, there were infractions. Tarabotti herself exploited that elasticity, corresponding widely, publishing her writing, and meeting male literary associates in the parlor, though such visits were officially forbidden.

"For no nun, after her profession, shall it be lawful to go out of her convent, even for a brief period, under any pretext whatever…" — Council of Trent, Decree on Regulars and Nuns (1563)