Why a Booktrail?
Destination: Ferrera Departure Time: 1570s
If you want to really journey back in time to life in a convent and the role of women in society at the time of the Italian Renaissance then this is the booktrail for you.
Sacred Hearts
What you need to know before your trail
This is a sumptuous novel set in the Italian Renaissance where the sisters of Santa Caterina live in a fictional convent
This novel opens with the newest novice sixteen-year-old former noble, Serafina. Due to her rebellious nature, Serafina is rather too much of a liability to marry off and is instead forced to take the veil.
Her beautiful singing voice is off huge attraction to the convent yet Serafina is desperate to escape.
Zuana was once a defiant nun like Serafina and ends up taking her under her wing under her wing to try and ease Serafina’s transition from court to convent. But the atmosphere and life at the convent is changing in ways they may not have foreseen.
Travel Guide
Religious Ferrara
Within the covent, the woman had one life on the inside and another one outside the walls. Their life within the convent was a strict routine and illustrates a lot about the religious life and the culture of the time.
The city of Ferrara is so near to them yet so far and the fact that a cloister of women lived in such a place and were effectively forced into marriage was a shocking discovery –
“By the second half of the sixteenth century, the price of wedding dowries had risen so sharply in Catholic Europe that most noble families could not afford to marry off more than one daughter. The remaining young women were dispatched – at a much lesser price – to convents…Not all of them went willingly.”
Convent Sant’Antonio in Polesine
The political and religious turmoil at the time make for some fascinating and yet disturbing reading but this really does grab you by the throat and drag you back in time. This is apparently the convent on which the author based her novel Sacred Hearts, is even more special. She explains in her book that it was originally a thriving Benedictine convent for noblewomen, it now sits serene and secluded at the edge of the city wall, home to just 17 elderly nuns.
Where Next?
