(Especially if you’re the kind of reader I am, where you have to check every footnote.) It follows Sister Benedetta Carlini from childhood to death, who was at times considered a mystic and Jesus’ wife, and other times a fraud and worse besides. This means that it’s not exactly a fast read, but that’s not because the writing style is difficult to read it’s just dense with facts. Brown is clearly a historian, and this book is packed with footnotes (well, endnotes) and historical context.

Immodest Acts is nowhere near as salacious as the title would have you believe. I ended up with Immodest Acts, which is probably a book I wouldn’t have chosen to be top of my reading pile, but I was delighted to get a chance to read, after it’s been languishing on my shelves for years! Anna M calls it “Reading Roulette”! This one has selected by numbering my unread shelves and having my roommate randomly choose a number, and then doing the same with some of the books on that shelf. Finally, I have finished school and caught up on my review copies! Which means that I have been able to select completely random things to read next. I always had a stack of school books and review books I had to get through first.

The author, a Stanford historian, provides the historical background necessary to fully understand Carlini's story Brown has written a book for the general reader rather than the scholar, a book already making news.Between being an English major (recently graduated!) and a book blogger, it has been years now since I’ve been able to just pick a book to read because I was in the mood for it. Carlini lost her position and was imprisoned for 35 years, but this was light punishment for what were considered serious crimes apparently it was decided that she had been deluded by the devil and hence was not entirely responsible for her sins. Not only did the authorities discover that the abbess had faked the stigmata she claimed were miraculously induced, they uncovered evidence of her lesbian affair with another nun. This honor was largely due to the mystical visions that had made her famous: visitations from the Virgin Mary, a guardian angel and Christ himself, who ''married'' Carlini in a ceremony that caused much talk in the convent and prompted the investigations that led to her downfall. Benedetta Carlini was elected abbess of a northern Italian convent in 1620, an achievement for a woman only 30 years old. Discovered in the State Archive of Florence, ecclesiastical papers concerning a homosexual nun shed interesting light on a subject for which there is seldom documentation.

Immodest acts judith brown