Benedetta, recently released in theaters, tells a compelling story. The woman on whom the play is based was a nun of the theatines in Pescia during the era of the Italian Catholic Counter-Reformation. Was mysticism, had visions where, for example, she married God, and ended up falling out of favor after a process in which she was identified as “Lesbian nun”. In the film of the always lascivious Paul Verhoeven Benedetta comes out practicing various sexual acts with his former partner in love, Bartolomea.
The film is an almost direct adaptation of the biography by Judith Brown, a Stanford University historian who discovered the particular life of the mystic in the state archives of Florence while researching the economic history of the region and the rule of the Medici. . Not only have the events narrated in this book been nuanced by other historians, but Verhoeven has taken some licenses for the best cohesion and impact ever. We are going to collect some data on what we know or think we know about the life of this figure.
Life and miracles
The first steps of his biography (1590-1661) are similar to those described in the film. He came from a family that, without becoming noble, had possibilities. They put her in the convent when she was 9 years old. When he entered, the theatine convent I had not yet received the approval of the Pope, But the women who lived there were governed by very rigid, Augustinian religious norms. In 1610, when the convent began to be prosperous, they received permission from Rome to establish itself as a collegiate body.
Benedetta managed to be the abbess of the order around 1620, at the age of thirty, something unheard of. It is believed that she always showed signs of being a dutiful and orderly nun, but she saw visions since she was little, and said that she was sometimes possessed by an angelic entity. At that time the visions, possessions and these vivid spiritualities they cannot be understood with today’s prism.
However, Judith Brown considers that, according to what appears from the writings of the time and immediately subsequent investigations, the fall and imprisonment of Benedetta was due to her ambition and selfishness. During his trance states he spoke with the voices of angels and sometimes with that of Jesus. His sisters said that at times he even took on the appearance of a handsome young man while speaking with those voices. Indeed, and as we see in the movie, said he received the stigmata in one of his sessions with Jesus, stigmas that later, when the process against her began, some nuns would say that she had infringed them herself. The thing was not there, but, in her time as abbess, she organized a wedding in which she would symbolically marry the son of God, and also, in the course of a possession, Jesus spoke through her mouth, evidencing the superiority of his “wife” and threatening to punish those who did not obey her.
Also, as in Verhoeven’s tape, this mystique was a source of political interests. While at first local church officials saw as a source of power and publicity to have a woman who performed miracles and could even be a saint, at that time the church hierarchy had moved away from fostering personal mysticism and was more in favor of suppress ecstasy. There were three or four visits to the convent by the ecclesiastical authority, but only in the last one were the sinful sexual testimonies found in Benedetta’s life.
There was no sodomy
For a series of acts that could pass as possessions or the harassment of the devil, the Theatine sisters confined Sister Bartolomea in her cell, to keep her company. The two would have a love affair that would last about two years, pleasuring each other several times a week. They kissed and rubbed their genitals, but there were no instruments involved. It was Bartolomea who confessed everything, Benedetta never did or admit it. According to the accounts of one historian, her lover said that she adopted the personality of a male angel, Splenditello, when he “sinned mightily” with her. That angel could be this or a devil in disguise.
In any case, it is believed that they only practiced “lesbianism”, which was not punished, and not the so-called “sodomy”, then “act of penetration between women with some phallic object”. It was a practice that was found in the biographies of other women of the time, and, although the sentences of the trials varied greatly from one region to another, normally this act was associated with capital punishment: drowning, bonfires …
It is because of the dramatic force of the pyre and its association with the martyr Joan of Arc that the Dutch director included that scene in the script. Considers it a “Historical truth”given the number of lesbian women who died from it. So the thing about the dildo of the statue of the virgin is a license. Does that mean that Verhoeven put up that scene to cause controversy? “No, and you won’t believe me. People think I’m a provocateur, but you can’t anticipate the final reaction to a scene. When we recorded the famous moment with Sharon in Basic Instinct, we didn’t think it was anything special, neither we nor the editors. Twenty years later, people are still talking about that scene. “
Regarding whether Benedetta was a “lesbian” or not, there are historians, such as Lillian Faderman, who believe that it cannot be defined that way, since we place the label on it from the point of view of the sexual identity that we have today.
Following the confession, Benedetta lost her position as abbess and was kept under surveillance for the remaining 35 years of her life. He died in 1661.