In a shocking attack on Good Friday, film company MUBI will launch Benedetta across Ireland and the UK, a film which horribly insults Our Lady and her Son.
Here is the story.
- The film’s Director, Paul Verhoeven, read a 1986 non-fiction book written by Stanford historian Judith C. Brown called Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. The nun is Sister Benedetta Carlini, Abbess of the Theatine convent in Pescia. (early 1600’s)
- Verhoeven’s movie, Benedetta, is “loosely adapted” from Brown’s book. ~ SlantMagazine. com
- Brown’s book is based on “a file containing short transcripts, letters and summaries of documents no longer extant.” ~ Encyclopedia. com
- “The documents concerning Sister Benedetta consisted mostly of transcripts of a series of inquests, carried on between 1619 and 1623 …to determine whether the nun…was a true divine visionary or the victim of a “diabolical obsession.” ~ NYTimes book review
- “Moreover, the 1622 and 1623 interviews document the dissatisfaction of the abbey’s nuns, who, according to Bell, wished to unseat Carlini.” ~ Encyclopedia. com
- “The testimony of several nuns…Carlini had not only faked her stigmata and flirted with a priest, but engaged in a same-sex relationship with Bartolomea Crivelli, another nun.” ~ Encyclopedia. com
- “Instead of eliciting accusations of sodomy, the affair was quietly resolved: Carlini, agreeing to charges of possession, was removed as abbess.” ~ Encyclopedia. com
- Sister Benedetta admitted that “everything she had believed and done had been because she was under the influence of the devil.” ~ MonstrousRegimentofWomen. com
- In the end, Sister Benedetta Carlini, “According to the investigators …began living the life of an ‘obedient nun’ under a new abbess…” and “…on 7 August 1661, an unnamed nun wrote ‘Benedetta Carlini died at age 71 of a fever and cold pains after eighteen days of illness. She died in penitence, having spent thirty-five years in prison.’ ” ~ MonstrousRegimentofWomen. com