Sister Bartolomea Riccoboni

An extraordinary voice comes through in this history and necrology (essentially obituaries) by Sr. Bartolomea, a nun living in the Corpus Domini convent of Venice. Her chronicles of the founding of the convent and the trials of the years of the three popes offer a unique perspective on history, and her brief accounts of the lives and deaths of her sisters and others provide vivid portraits of holy life. The editor's introduction is good. The series introduction is feminist twaddle and should be skipped by those not in need of an ipecac.… (meer)

This is a really fascinating example of a convent chronicle and necrology—a record kept by a Venetian nun, living at the end of the 14th/beginning of the 15th centuries, of her community's history and the pious deaths of the nuns who lived there. Not only does this show us medieval female religious documenting their own history and actively involved in shaping their own identity, we also see them interested and engaged in both ecclesiastical and secular politics. Sister Bartolomea tells us frustratingly little about her background, and I would love to have seen more about the day-to-day life of the convent, but what we do get is wonderful—an elderly sister, hobbling along to choir with the use of a cane; another sister preparing medicinal syrups for the others to drink. Bornstein's translation is clear and accessible, and makes this a wonderful source to use, particularly in an undergrad class.… (meer)