57 Facts About Benedetta Carlini

Benedetta Carlini was an Italian Catholic nun who claimed to experience mystic visions.

Bartolomea gave testimony that Benedetta Carlini engaged in frottage with her while possessed by the spirit of a male demon known as Splenditello.

Benedetta Carlini's father was Giuliano, a rich and devout man who owned his house and several other properties in Vellano and a small farm nearby.

Benedetta Carlini was an only child in her middle-class Italian family; Giuliano provided in his will that after his own and his wife's death, his house should be turned into an oratory dedicated to the Mother of God.

Benedetta Carlini's father educated her himself, an unusual choice in Renaissance Italian society, in which most girls took lessons from their mothers and were not very literate.

Under her father's tutelage, Benedetta Carlini would take the rosary and recite the litany several times a day.

At the age of six, Benedetta Carlini learned to read and knew some Latin.

In 1599, Benedetta Carlini joined a group of unmarried women who wanted to lead an ascetic life; the group did not live in a regularly enclosed convent, and were not recognised religious sisters.

Benedetta Carlini had obtained a degree in canon law at the University of Pisa; he was joined by Father Paolo Ricordati and several other priests and laymen.

Whereas before Benedetta Carlini had accepted miracles as being in the nature of things, now she was astounded and awed by this action of the Virgin, which testified to the mighty power of God.

In 1610, the community of Benedetta Carlini acquired a farm in the commune of Fucecchio for 1750 scudi and became quite economically successful and self-sufficient.

Some of Benedetta Carlini's visions had occurred in the presence of witnesses, who had observed that during prayer she had gone into a trance-like state in which she gesticulated and made incomprehensible sounds.

Benedetta Carlini could keep herself from having visions, but she had great difficulty in receiving some sort of travail.

Benedetta Carlini thought that this mysterious illness was the sign of divine favour that Paolo Ricordati had asked for.

Benedetta Carlini expected recognition of others for being the recipient of extraordinary grace and was to be sadly disappointed.

Nothing had changed, and for two years, Benedetta Carlini suffered in the quiet obscurity of a monastic communal life of prayer, fasts, and manual work.

One of them even asked Benedetta Carlini to be his bride, and when she refused, he tried to take her with brute force.

One night, instead of enduring the visions, Benedetta Carlini called other nuns for help.

Benedetta Carlini walked in an ecstatic trance, seeing the angels of Pescia paying homage to her and scattering flowers along her path as if she were the image of St Dorothy, the patron saint of Pescia, which was being paraded in its annual procession through town.

Three months after the resettlement, on the second Friday of Lent, Benedetta Carlini received the stigmata.

Benedetta Carlini saw a crucifix and bright rays from wounds of Christ to her head, hands, feet and side of the chest.

Benedetta Carlini saw Christ looking like a handsome young man with long hair and a long red robe.

Benedetta Carlini was accompanied by St Catherine of Siena and other figures.

The young man explained that he was Jesus and had come to Benedetta Carlini to take her heart.

Benedetta Carlini supported that Jesus had taken her heart and returned three days after to put another heart in her body.

Benedetta Carlini issued detailed instructions on the decoration for the chapel.

Benedetta Carlini doubted if this was genuine Jesus or some diabolic illusion and hesitated to tell Father Ricordati all the details of her vision, but three days later she revealed it.

Benedetta Carlini wondered about the public nature of the event, and the work it required because Jesus didn't usually reveal himself in such a public fashion.

Benedetta Carlini quickly wrote a note to Father Ricordati to obtain his permission.

Benedetta Carlini instructed nuns to get on their knees and to do as she instructed.

Benedetta Carlini's voice was scarcely audible and her words could not be made out.

Benedetta Carlini replied that she did not want to consent, as she was not sure whether he was Jesus or the devil.

Benedetta Carlini spoke in a tone that seemed to the other nuns more beautiful than her usual voice.

Benedetta Carlini's contemporaries were well aware that because women were denied a place in the social and public discourse of their age, they thought to make their voices heard in other ways.

Benedetta Carlini was relieved of her duties as abbess until further notice, and Felice di Giovanni Guerrini came to this duties.

On Benedetta Carlini's head were many bloody marks, which bled into the towel when washed with warm water.

The provost ordered Benedetta Carlini to cut her hair and wash her head to make the wounds more visible.

Benedetta Carlini was allowed to leave the room briefly to rearrange and close her garments before returning for further questioning.

Benedetta Carlini offered to pray for his mercy herself and to be the instrument of the town's salvation by spending her time in Purgatory until the day of judgment.

Benedetta Carlini told her to continue to love him always and to arrange for processions to placate him.

When Benedetta Carlini was called to the examination room, she had an ordinary, inexpensive gold ring on the fourth finger of her right hand.

The ecclesiastical examiners were eager to probe further, but Benedetta Carlini was feeling too ill to answer.

Finally, the provost of Pescia Stefano Checchi and other investigators had concluded that Benedetta Carlini's visions were genuine visions and neither dreams nor fantasies, and their religious content conformed to church dogma and practice.

Benedetta Carlini would urge the nuns to treat their abbess with greater tenderness than before because her days on earth were numbered.

Benedetta Carlini arrived immediately and commanded Benedetta in a loud voice to return to the living, which, to everyone's astonishment, had the desired effect.

When Benedetta Carlini revived, she told the assembled that she had seen angels and demons, Purgatory and Paradise, her father and several other deceased people.

Benedetta Carlini lacked the extraordinary personal virtues that would make her a role model for other good Christians.

Also, investigators discovered that Benedetta Carlini likely had a hereditary demonic obsession.

Benedetta Carlini eventually found a small brass box containing diluted saffron in Benedetta's desk.

When Bartolomea would come over, Benedetta Carlini would grab her by the arm and throw her by force on the bed.

Benedetta Carlini was not an abbess anymore and lived the life of an obedient nun under the care of a new abbess.

Benedetta Carlini died in penitence, having spent thirty-five years in prison.

Benedetta Carlini should be let out only to hear mass and to follow the other nuns to the place where they disciplined themselves with their whips.

Ann Matter, a feminist religious scholar, has an alternative perspective on the case of Benedetta Carlini, and wrote about it in the Journal of Homosexuality in 1990.

Benedetta Carlini compared and contrasted two autobiographical accounts from Benedetta Carlini and another 17th-century Italian Catholic mystic, Maria Domitilla Galluzzi of Pavia.

Matter has written extensively on Galluzzi in other contexts, and Brown's study of Benedetta Carlini occurs in greater depth than that of her counterpart.

Paul Verhoeven has directed a film loosely based on Benedetta Carlini called Benedetta released in 2021.