The Nuns of Sant'ambrogio ─ The True Story of a Convent in Scandal

A true, never-before-told story of poison, murder, and lesbian initiation rites in a nineteenth century convent-discovered by the world's leading papal scholar in a secret Vatican archive.

In 1858, Katherina von Hohenzollern, a German princess recently inducted into the convent of Sant'Ambrogio in Rome, wrote a frantic letter to her cousin, a confidant of the Pope, claiming that she was being abused and feared for her life. What the subsequent investigation by the Church's Inquisition uncovered were the extraordinary secrets of Sant'Ambrogio and the illicit behavior of the convent's beautiful young mistress, Maria Luissa. What emerges through the fog of centuries is a sex scandal of ecclesiastical proportions, skillfully brought to light and vividly reconstructed in scholarly detail. Offering a broad historical background on female mystics and the cult of the Virgin Mary, and drawing upon written testimony and original documents, Professor Wolf tells the incredible story of how one woman was able to perform deception, heresy, seduction, and murder in the heart of the Catholic Church.

HUBERT WOLF, born in 1959, is a professor of ecclesiastical history at University of Muenster, Germany. He was honored with the Leibnizpreis of the German Science Society (DFG), the Communicator Prize, and the Gutenberg Prize, and he was a fellow at the historical society in Munich. Translated by Ruth Martin.