Benedetta Carlini (Radio Edit)

BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

I earned my degree online at Arizona State University.

I chose to get my degree at ASU because I knew that I'd get a quality education, they were recognized for excellence, and that I would be prepared for the workforce upon graduating.

To be associated with ASU both as a student and alum, it makes me extremely proud.

And having experienced the program, I know now that I'm set up for success.

Learn more at asuonline.asu.edu.

A happy place comes in many colors.

Whatever your color, bring happiness home with CertaPro Painters.

Get started today at Certapro.com.

Each Certapro Painters business is independently owned and operated.

Contractor license and registration information is available at Certapro.com.

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Hello, and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 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 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.

Sophie's very special.

And in Covid 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 of the Apollo, Frankie Boyle's New World Order, but of course, you'll remember her from our back catalogue, including episodes on Atlantis and Ramses the Great.

It's Sophie Duca.

Welcome back, Sophie.

Hey, special feels like a neg, 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 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 was projecting?

You didn't say nun say that you didn't say that I projected you said you said wimple and I was like hot that's what happened and how embarrassing

it's fine it's a it's a fantastic insight into your mind there yeah I think sexy nun is probably about fair but we'll 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 well, you're 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 Volano in Tuscany, in Italy.

She was the only child of Medea and Giuliana Carlini.

Her father was the third richest man in Volano, 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 a 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 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 um would occasionally sing the lods with her that's very disney princess to have a bird on your shoulder singing along 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 but okay 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 going to 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 Villana, 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 Pesha.

And in Pesha, 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 an 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 Pagni 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 start-up convent.

It's not quite recognized yet.

It's like a young call.

They're disrupting the sector.

Yeah, they've gone to venture capitalists.

The teens are disrupting the sector of 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 nunlife, 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.

Doing unboxing videos.

Yeah, just being like, it's another rosary.

Benedetta, I think, like being like a pretty, clearly a pretty smart kid, I think she'd just be like 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 Theatin'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 pash on me, so that is

feeling a bit slighted.

Another vision, Michelle, involves quite a sort of Eden-esque vibe.

One 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 forwarding every stream.

She's following her rainbow and she's going to find her dream.

That's beautiful.

She's just a nun walking through the mountains tripping her nut off.

It's all very PG-friendly so far, but then Benedetta's visions got quite heavy metal, Sophie.

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.

Okay.

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.

Four, she married Jesus.

Five, an angel told her to go vegan.

Which of those?

Not true.

I think she was told to go vegan.

Jesus taken her heart.

It's very poetic, but like walking around without a heart for three days.

It's relatable content.

She's basically Charlie X.

I think that Splendatello sounds a bit much.

Okay.

You're rejecting Splendatello and his lovely curly hair.

I think he's modelled on you, Greg.

I would love to be Splendatello.

I don't have the looks to pull it off.

I've got the curly hair and nothing else.

It's actually a trick question, Sophie.

All five are true.

Oh, my God.

Sorry.

Sorry.

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.

Splendatello comes to her, offers her a double wand of flowers and thorns, and pursued by young men who attack her with weapons and chains.

So

quite an array 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.

St.

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 a, 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'd probably get 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.

It's a bit like, all right, you need someone to keep you company.

And they give you a young woman called Bartolomea Crivelli, is that right?

That's right.

With these violent divisions, they were worried about her.

So she gets her buddy.

Her buddy Bartolomeo.

And Benedetta now sort of steps it up.

She starts preaching from the pulpits, 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 she's not unpopular.

Wow.

She's not unpopular at all.

The following year, the community received its official papal permission to become a closed community, Sophie.

So Benedetta starts living her best life with her BFF, Spotlame, and, of course, Splendatello, the angel.

Splendatella, can't forget her.

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, 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 Peschia, Stefano Cecchi, 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 Bartolomeo does, Sophie, the sort of best friend who's been appointed?

So like they're like besties at this point.

Is she like a waiting maid 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, you know, if her heart's removed for three days, that somebody has to take care of what's left behind.

And Bartolomea 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 Pesha, 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.

Sophie, have you ever done that for a friend?

Have you ever?

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 reverse Temple of Doom to friend.

Okay, so Benedetta has a very loyal friend here, and Bartolomeira 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 woman 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,

whoa.

So 1621,

she,

you know, 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.

That's all you need.

You just need a man to say, get up, come on, sort it out.

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 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.

And 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, yeah, 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.

This, 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?

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 and 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.

Wow, the nun who loves salami

is 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 into sort of demonic territory of

naughty things?

Not quite.

instead we end up with benedetta having sex not with the devil but with her best friend bartolomeo no

what

sophie's back on board

what

those two good friends yeah

they were just roommates the roommates what

more than that sophie uh benedetta is claiming that the angel slender tello is making them do it oh yeah yeah yeah no no no, no, yeah.

I've had that one as well.

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 Bartolomeia 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.

And it's all 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?

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.

Splendatello 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.

35 years.

Yeah.

The nuance window.

Time now for the nuance window.

This is a part of 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.

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 call 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 Revaux, who wrote a letter to his sister, an anchorus, cautioned her against teaching young women because she would clearly be enraptured by them and want to kiss them.

St.

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 going to go to a lesbian bar tonight and I am going to ask

the gathered congregation if anyone's ever asked to lit 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 duca in your ears, check out our episodes on Atlantis, Ramesses the Great, Ashanti Ghana, and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

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 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 have 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 Duca.

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 Glen Patterson.

And in The Brighton Bomb, I tell the story of the deadly attack, unravelling the threads that brought all involved, often by heartbreaking chance, to that place and time, 2.54am 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 and many other great history documentaries, search for the history podcast on BBC Sounds.

The Mercedes-Benz Dream Days are back with offers on vehicles like the 2025 E-Class, CLE Coupe, C-Class, and EQE sedan.

Hurry in now through July 31st.

Visit your local authorized dealer or learn more at mbusa.com/slash dream.