Discourses of desire: sexuality and Christian women's visionary narratives

This article compares and contrasts two autobiographical accounts by seventeenth-century Italian religious women: Benedetta Carlini of Pescia, and Maria Domitilla Galluzzi of Pavia. Both were visionaries, highly regarded by their communities, but subject to suspicion and close scrutiny by ecclesiastical authorities. The trial records of Benedetta Carlini relate a series of sexual contacts with her young assistant, while no overt sexual expression is evident in the life of Maria Domitilla Galluzzi. This article questions the relationship between the categories of scholars and the sexual self-understanding of figures in their own historical context. It suggests that "lesbian nun" is too simplistic a dichotomy, and that in comparison to the life of Maria Domitilla, Benedetta Carlini's sexuality revolved around an elaborate organic connection between the spiritual and the sensual.