In 2016, Craig A. Monson, Washington University
in St. Louis, published Habitual
Offenders: A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in
Seventeenth-century Italy with the University of Chicago Press. From
the publisher:
In April 1644, two nuns fled Bologna’s convent for reformed prostitutes. A perfunctory archiepiscopal investigation went nowhere, and the nuns were quickly forgotten. By June of the next year, however, an overwhelming stench drew a woman to the wine cellar of her Bolognese townhouse, reopened after a two-year absence—where to her horror she discovered the eerily intact, garroted corpses of the two missing women.
Drawing on over four thousand pages of primary sources, the intrepid Craig A. Monson reconstructs this fascinating history of crime and punishment in seventeenth-century Italy. Along the way, he explores Italy’s back streets and back stairs, giving us access to voices we rarely encounter in conventional histories: prostitutes and maidservants, mercenaries and bandits, along with other “dubious” figures negotiating the boundaries of polite society. Painstakingly researched and breathlessly told, Habitual Offenders will delight historians and true-crime fans alike.
Praise for
the book:
"Monson's
Habitual Offenders is an enthralling amalgam of sex, violence, and scholarship.
At the center of the story are the abduction and murder of two reformed
prostitute nuns in Bologna in April of 1644. From this relatively banal event,
the ramifications spread ever more widely, involving priests, nobles, cardinals,
a king, and finally the pope himself. The most harrowing chapter of the story
describes in detail the judicial murder of a prisoner by the illegal use of
enhanced interrogation techniques. Plus
ça change. . . ." –Frederick Hammond
"A box
overflowing with exquisite linens and lace, a faux-marble cupboard with a cat
painted on the side, and a red leather, reliquary crucifix whose ‘top’ had to
be rescued from the convent sewer: Monson’s latest foray into the archives
plunges readers into an early modern world that pullulates with signifying
objects. Their meanings unfold in the long series of investigations that follow
on the murder of two remarkable women, former prostitutes become nuns whose
flirtatious acumen as laundresses kept an admiring clientele crowding the
convent gate. In reconstructing their story, Monson delivers cut-to-the-quick
truths about survival strategies for individuals and families, both great and
small, caught in networks from Bologna, through Venice and papal Rome, reaching
as far as Mazarin and the king of France." –Alison K. Frazier
“Monson is both a careful historian and a
compelling narrator, helping us delve deeply into the daily lives of
seventeenth-century Italians from all regions and walks of life. What emerges
is a page-turner of a whodunit made especially compelling by Monson’s
extraordinary and subtle ability to convey the diverse personalities of his
many historical subjects and to plunge his reader into the world of early
modern Italian culture.” –Andrew Dell’Antonio
Further
information is available here.
