Testifying to the self

Abstract

In the summer of 1614, scandal erupted at San Zaccaria, the oldest and most aristocratic of the Venetian convents. Laura Querini, a noble nun in her mid-forties, was found guilty of having had sexual intercourse, repeatedly, with a young nobleman in a storeroom situated on the edge of the nunnery. Testifying before Patriarch Francesco Vendramin, the head of the Venetian Church, Laura Querini told her story from the very beginning: I came to this convent as a little girl during the time of plague [1575-77]. .. ; and then I was sent as a boarding-girl to another convent, San Vido on the island of Burano, where I stayed for five or six years until I was accepted as a nun back at this convent-I must have been about fifteen years old. I took my initial vows at the ceremony of clothing; then I made my profession; but I spoke with my mouth and not with my heart. I have always been tempted by the Devil to break my own neck. 1 Laura revealed that she first met her lover-whom she called by the pseudonym of Zuanne Cocco-six years before her fall into scandal. He was introduced to her by a woman called Donna Cipriana, who over the years had supplied the noble nun with a series of 'friendships'. Laura stated that, during the course of these liaisons, 'I never did anything wicked, that is, I never lost my virginity'. 2 But with Zuanne, a young man about twenty years her junior, things were different. Not satisfied by their occasional meetings in the convent parlour, Laura pursued Zuanne with absolute determination: I fell in love with him, and I induced him to love me. I used every means to make him love me, including diabolical methods, that is, spells and superstitious prayers invoking devils, and I paid Donna Cipriana to provide me with these things. 3 Young Zuanne, however, was wary of the risks that he ran. Less than a decade earlier, in 1605, the Venetian government had passed a stern new law, which