Disposable daughters and intransigent clergy
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I had read about the book in a review in the paper, and though I am not a big non fiction reader, this subject was unusual enough to tempt me. Mary Laven takes the reader back to 15th and 16th century Venice, when it was capital city of its own empire and pretender to the Pope's throne. It was a city filled with convents, where dowries to marry daughters with were so steep that most placed several girls in convents instead. The book deals with how these girls coped with their forced vocations, and how the clergy handled their rule breaking. It is a thorough description of a small topic, though hampered by the lack of papers and writings available, both from the nuns' viewpoints and their families. It was well written, and a pleasant read, but lacked diaries from the convents etc, though this is due to lack of material. The self censorship of the clergy and nuns mean a large amount of the book consists of reading between the lines, and this was somewhat frustrating. The simultaneous lack of power of these women and their control by the clergy, and the higher level of autonomy they had compared with married women was certainly food for thought.
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