Nuns of Lucca: Limiting their reading & education. 1 copy worldwide.
[Nuns] / [Reading]. Fabio Colloredo. Decreti per le monache che si contengono nel sinodo dell’illustriss., e reverendiss. monsig. Fabio di Colloredo arcivescouo di Lucca, e conte &c. Tradotti in lingua toscana, coll’appendice di alcune costituzioni, e decreti apostolici, e delle S. congregazioni di Roma, per uso, ed istruzione delle monache della città, e diocesi di Lucca. In Lucca: Per Domenico Ciuffetti, 1736. 4to in 8s [21.4 x 15.5 cm], 30 pp., [1] f. blank, with woodcut arms on title page, woodcut head-piece, initial and tail-piece. Bound in contemporary marbled paper. Minor edge wear to wrappers. Minor internal toning, manuscript notes pasted to verso of final blank.
Very rare (1 copy worldwide: Biblioteca Statale, Lucca) first and only edition of this 1736 booklet of decrees and regulations addressing recent concerns about nuns in Lucca. Generally, the rules are about cracking down on the porousness of the cloister and limiting nuns’ contact with the outside world.
Discussed are limiting visits by female laypersons, strictly forbidding children from the convent, and stopping priests coming to the convent without prior permission.
Keeping nuns from interacting with the public extends to regulating what they read, receiving & writing or letters, and educational instruction: Forbidden were “shameful conversation and immodest actions of those who live outside the cloister with the nuns and other maids and women who live within it, even if they are done by means of letters, or by giving or showing books … No person shall teach the nuns or other female residents of the monasteries the arts of writing, arithmetic, painting, or any other art, not even music or Gregorian chant, without Our written permission or that of the Vicar General. This permission will not be granted unless the instruction is given only at the grates [of the parlatorio] or in another place designated for this purpose, not at the monastery doors or in any other place, and not even for only a short time. Furthermore, we ordain, and by virtue of holy Obedience, command that none of the nuns or female students read books of any kind, even sacred and pious ones, that are given to them or sent to them by any person, however pious and religious, unless they have first been seen and permitted by the Ordinary Confessor of the monastery” (pp. 10-11).
A short (somewhat incongruous) section states that under no condition may Jews speak with nuns (p. 15).
Appended are various 17th- and 18th-century official letters, decrees, briefs, resolutions, declarations, and constitutions touching on these issues.
OPAC/SBN/ICCU, OCLC and KVK locate only the copy at the Biblioteca Statale (Lucca).
*IT\ICCU\LUAE\011180