What We're Listening To: Cathy

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant.

In Italy in the late 1500's to 1600's, almost half of the noble women were placed in convents due to dowery inflation. This story, while fictional, is based on this fact. It is the engrossing story of one such convent, Santa Catarina in Ferrara, in the year 1570 and one of those reluctant novices, Serafina. Her fight against the incarceration involves the dispensary mistress, Suora Zuana, the abbess Madonna Chiara, the novice mistress Suora Umiliana, and the oldest nun, saintlike Suora Magdalena. Relations amongst the nuns, between the nuns and the Church, and between the nuns and Italy's ruling families are all affected by the struggle of Serafina. The author quotes a letter written by a nun in Bologna in 1586 to the pope: "Many of us are shut up against our will and deprived of all contact with the outside world. Living with such strictness and abandoned by everyone, we have only hell in the world and the next." This book is dedicated to these women. I couldn't resist.