Nuns! Priests! Sex! Murder!
Where is Ken Russell when you need him? This is a movie! To wit: ‘Nuns using visions of God to persuade novices to have sex, threesomes with priests, the poisoning of a fat German princess, a prominent theologian shacking up with a vicaress, young nuns murdered, fetuses removed from an abbess, and cardinals, the Jesuit Superior General, and the Pope all enthralled by a beautiful and charismatic fraudulent saint—it’s enough to put The “Decameron” to shame. The hard-to-believe story that contains all of these juicy nuggets—the 1858 scandal at the convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome—is the subject of Hubert Wolf’s rigorous and stunning new book, “The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal.” Translated by Ruth Martin, it is a hybrid of high and low perfect for the modern reader—racy and yet simultaneously erudite.’
