Sacred Hearts

Categories: Fiction

There has been so much interest in the past few years in women’s stories from history. Sarah Dunant has written some wonderful ones—In the Company of the Courtesan, The Birth of Venus. Here’s another, Sacred Hearts.

Suora Zuana is a nun in the convent of Santa Caterina in Ferrara, Italy, in 1570. She didn’t enter the convent willingly, but there was nowhere else for her to go after the death of her father and teacher, a medical scholar.

But Zuana has come to terms with her destiny, and she now runs Santa Caterina’s infirmary and dispensary. Now she is called on to help another reluctant novice, young noblewoman Serafina, whose rebellion is upsetting the whole convent.

Serafina has brought the convent a dowry and the promise of the most splendid voice their famous choir has ever heard, but her voice is only being raised in furious screaming. She has been torn away from her lover, her old music master, to hush up scandal. The close community of Santa Caterina is unbalanced by Serafina’s fierce rebellion and by the power struggle to control her fate.

The choir mistress wants to feature Serafina’s voice in the convent’s annual public performances. So does the abbess, who knows that fame will bring more girls and dowries to the convent, which will keep it safer during turbulent times when reform-minded factions of the church want to strictly lock up these great houses of women.

The mistress of postulants, on the other hand, wants to tame Serafina—or to use her hysterical piety to make the convent famous for more dangerous reasons.

Zuana is torn by pity for the rebellious girl, but knows that the convent is endangered by her entrance among them. Where does Zuana’s duty lie, especially when she knows the lengths to which her sisters will go to decide Serafina’s fate?

It’s a wonderfully complex portrait of a community of women, exotic but familiar to the modern reader. Those who enjoy historical fiction and women’s stories will find it fascinating.