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| Monza's nun, Giuseppe Molteni, 1847, Museum of Pavia. |
Henrietta Caracciolo was born on February
17 th in 1821. Her life was an extraordinary life
that seems to be a novel, one of those
written by some her contemporary to
denounce and exemplify the status
of women but, on the other hand,
does not take a cue from an emblematic example but from her life, her biography, a life
story lived on the skin, like that of many heroines, and this word was never
more fitting if not
for her.
She born in
Naples by Don Fabio
Caracciolo, son of
the Prince of Forino, Marshal
of the Neapolitan army, and by the
noblewoman Teresa Cutelli, in one of
the "first and most substantial families of Naples" [1]. She lived a fairly
quiet existence between Bari
, Naples
and Reggio Calabria, apart
from a break of a few years when her father loss his job. When her beloved
father dies of infection to internal organs, her mother wishes to
remarry, so started the procedure to let Henrietta
to get in the convent, without she was aware of it. It implements what a
"forced" nun a few centuries before, the Tarabotti, identifies
as the greatest betrayal, that of ones parents.
Henrietta seeks shelter from the maternal decision and despairing and crying she obtened from her mother the
promise that she will stay in the convent only a few months and
then could come back to home.
So Henrietta finds himself bound and, as in the "best" tradition, was collocated in a convent where
were already present her paternal
aunts, at the Convent of San
Gregorio Armeno in Naples, following the
Benedictine tradition, because: "(...)
they gave me the name of Henrietta , name of
a nun paternal aunt: one of the innumerable offerings
to the order of St. Benedict, in which
my ancestry was consecrated
". [2]
Henrietta undergoes what the society had
as an ordinary habit worn on the skin of women, in
fact her older sisters were
married but she, with
two love gone wrong and no dowry after the death of her father, will be the only one to be,
the fifth of seven
daughters, a forced nun, even the malformed Josephine,
now lame after
a disastrous fall, will get married.
Henrietta is the victim of a
practice that in theory was already
condemned by the Counter-Reformation
of the sixteenth century but that in the
practice had not actually had any
effect on the much more established
habits in use in the culture of the
society of pre-Italic demonstrating a unified habit of costume even
before the unified process of Italy as a nation.
Henrietta, at least initially, left the convent, determined not to take the vows inspite of the insistence of all the other nuns and of the
abbess, her aunt, of the prelates
and the confessors, and took
refuge in the home of a brother
in law where, however, she learns
from her older sisters, who got married in Reggio, that their mother is about to remarry in Reggio and
wants to take her there to join a convent in Calabria, and moreover that her boyfriend courting
another girl . So Henrietta at this point, is alone, without support and
without a place
to go, achieved by the gendarmes
who accuse her of insubordination
to the will of her mother, to
follow them to the embarkation point for
Reggio, then she is forced
to return to the convent and take vows: "My
sacrifice was consumed
by that time: I saw myself as a victim". [3]
So in 1841, Henriette takes her final
vows and
finds herself unwillingly nun but
if "I had made to the
community the sacrifice of my person not already one of my
reason, which is an inalienable right" [4] now
"dead is the
past, extinct the future for me, and memories are just a vain dream, and hopes a crime "[5]" it was supposed for me not to have a mother, neither sisters, no relatives, no friends,
no whatsoever
substance; I had abdicated even my
personality"[6].
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| Monza's nun, Mosé Bianchi, 1867, Museum of Monza. |
The first
impact in
the convent was of
the worst, she educated
and lover
of the arts and literature, finding
herself to live in claustration, with rough, uncultivated, semi-illiterate nuns: "most of them are
young, or at
least not old, and all, as I said, belonging to
the most significant, if not always the richest, families of the former capital.
But I had the
opportunity to observe, since the first day I entered the convent, that the intellectual and moral point of those nuns did not respond to
the loftiness of 'their birth ". [7]
Her
existence, we said it, seems like a novel, and
so even Henriette, like any self-respecting heroine, had her bad: the
archbishop of Naples, Riario Sforza, to which she
devotes an
entire chapter, the seventeenth, of her Memoirs.
With the
election of Pope Pius IX, Henrietta thought to have a glimmer of hope in solving her condition, asking for clemency directly to the Pope who did not seem contrary to her
demands except
that the
archbishop of Naples, Riario Sforza would not release the authorization that would allow Henrietta to start a
new life, even in
contravention of papal preferences.
During the riots of '48, for the independence of Italy,
Enricchetta takes courage and start to read, even in a loud voice in the
convent, "revolutionary"
newspapers, careless of the fame that is given to her of being involved in
secret societies and a revolutionary.
She appeals once again to the Pope for her freedom, informing him that otherwise she would have taken advantage of the freedom of the press to publicize her condition of forced nun. So the Pope gave her the authorization to go to a conservatory, of Constantinople, but the
archbishop Sforza, becoming aware of his defeat, forces her to leave at the convent her family assets, and the precious silverware.
At the Conservatory of Constantinople,
the nun found an environment
that isn’t open and
conciliatory, and in which she had to abandon all hope of being able to cultivate her readings and
so she had to concentrate herself exclusively
on the biographies of the saints and martyrs of the Church, discovering how the female
figures had contributed, revealing those fundamental but also the lack of an official
acknowledgment by the Church about this importance.
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| Enrichetta Caracciolo as in the cover of Her "Memories" |
Meanwhile, the archbishop Sforza continuing his fight against Henrietta
and he succeed to intercept some of her writings that she was able to put them
out of the Conservatory with the complacency of a housekeeper. These writings
were brought to the Pope to convince him not to give in to the rending demands
of Henrietta and of her mother, who divorced in the meanwhile by her
second husband and now was repentant of the injustice suffered by Enrichetta.
Only in 1849 Henrietta finally was able to get out of the conservatory to
be treated to the nerves, with her
mother, but the permission for the following year was denied by the archbishop, Vicar of
Naples, Riario Sforza.
At this point, the mother of Henrietta, Teresa, applied herself to
"save" her daughter making her escape and take her refuge in Capua
under the protection of its bishop who however died only a few days later but
with the help of a friend, a priest too, Henriette had the allowed to go and
live with her mother, just following the rule of the Canonichesse of St. Anne.
She was even managed to take back the income of her monk dowry who had seized
by Riario Sforza, making her live exclusively thanks to her parental help and
support.
In 1851, the archbishop, strong of his influence on Ferdinand II, arrested Harietta and led her to the Church
of Saint Mary full of Grace in Mondragone where Henrietta attempted suicide,
first by refusing food, and then stabbing herself in the chest. Because of her
weakness due to the lack of nutrition, however, her injury was not enough to
take her to death, and so she survived for an entire year resisting the
seclusion, but when she was even prevented
to go to the bedside of her dying mother, aided by relatives and aunts,
she turned once again to the Curia for help. She appealed in fact to the Sacred
Congregation for to have a permission to go to Castellammare Bath for health
care. This time she went through it, in fact, now even the Curia was annoyed by
the persecution, to this point clearly
personal, of the Riario against Caracciolo and it was able to find a
basic misunderstanding in the archbishop’s letter to consent Henrietta to
treatment herself.
From here Henrietta found a new life: "On November 4, 1854, after
three years and four months in cruel captivity, I saw the light of the
day". [8]
In the meanwhile she was back to Naples in
disguise, to help the willing of the unifying
Italy:
"What did I do in Castellammare in the while? [...] Thinking, then, that
you would found a little place for my contribution in Naples, I thought of disregarding of all
danger for me, as I could offer my services to the movement which need them
"[9 ].
She hidden herself, changing home and service staff as you change the
tablecloth to escape the spies of the Bourbons and of her historic enemy who was waiting his revenge, the archbishop Sforza.
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| The Cloister of San Gregorio Armeno's Church in Naples. |
By now she was really in touch with the Liberals and with the fathers of
united Italy.
So in 1860, during
the Te Deum to
celebrate the escape of King
Francis II of the Two Sicilies,
in the presence of Garibaldi "[...] I left the black veil from the head, and put it on an altar, I made a note of restitution
to the Church, which had given me
it twenty years ago. VOTUM
FECI, GRATIAM ACCEPI "[10]
(I took votes, and now I take my mercy) .
Thus began a new life for Henrietta, her true
life, but no less adventurous and
fascinating.
She married John Greuther,
choosing the Protestant rite after the denial of the
Catholic Church, and she begins
to tell, thanks to the press,
her extraordinary existence scratched by the monastic vows.
In 1864 it will be the turn of her first opera, her memoirs that were translated in six languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Hungarian and Greek
and had a resounding success even in Italy with no
less than eight reprints, which also
earned her the praises
of Manzoni and Garibaldi.
Two years later, in
1866, It is her second book
"A crime unpunished: the historical fact of 1838" in which she recounts the
murder of a schoolgirl by the
priest who the girl had rejected.
She wrote over the years: "Miracles" in 1874, a
collection of poems against superstition, and the drama "The Strength of Honor," which was also
represented in theatres. In 1883, a drama in five acts "A episode of Mysteries of
the Neapolitan Cloister ", based on her memoirs, was published.
She wrote also numerous articles as
correspondent for
the newspaper " La tribune" of Salerno," the journal of Naples
"and" the Nomad" of Palermo.
She was a prominent member of several associations
including the “Banner
of the Charity”, the “Association of the youth studious
of Naples”, the “Society for the Emancipation of Women” of Lorino, so that in 1866 on the occasion of the motions of the Third War of the Italian Independence she appealed
directly to women, by publishing
the "Proclamation to the Italian Woman" for
mobilizing women to the national cause.
Her support to the Italian politic will be always broad and
unconditional, supporting, through the Committee of the Neapolitan female, with
her sister Giulia Cigola, the bill of Salvatore Morelli, in 1867 "For the
legal reintegration of women" in which he asked participation in the
political and administrative vote for women, a bill which, however, was not
even allowed to read.
Unfortunately, , despite Henrietta had mobilized and dedicated herself to
the cause of Italy, she didn’t receive
recognitions, in fact, Garibaldi left Naples to go to Capri, before
signing a decree by which he wanted to
appoint Henrietta inspector of schools of Naples and the same did the Minister of the education, De Sanctis,
who even if had promised her a job, then
disowned her. So as usual the history of
women, unluckily as we know, is another thing from the History.
So Henrietta lived the last years of her life in her hometown, now a widow and without
her family's assets that the archbishop
Sforza had kidnapped and that was never found, forgotten by her people but at least finally free. But we love remember her, like she would: "[...] And
the name of Citizen, which gave to everyone
does not contain any distinction,
it became to me the right and only title
[...]. [...] Citizen so call me, and if you
want to add a distinction just say that
citizen who provoked and promoted the Plebiscito of women in Naples "[11].
And in Naples, in her city,
she died in March on 17th, in 1901, aged 80.
