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Writings on the Sisters of San Luca and Their Miraculous Madonna

Edited and Translated by Danielle Callegari and Shannon McHugh

The Bolognese nun Diodata Malvasia was presumed to have authored only one work, The Arrival and the Miraculous Workings of the Glorious Image of the Virgin (1617). In her recently discovered second manuscript chronicle, A Brief Discourse on What Occurred to the Most Reverend Sisters of the Joined Convents of San Mattia and San Luca (1575), her writing demonstrates active resistance to Tridentine convent reform. Together, Malvasia’s works read as the bookends to a lifelong crusade on behalf of her convent.


142 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2015

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
A Note on the Translation 31
A Brief Discourse on What Occurred to the Most Reverend Sisters of the
Joined Convents of San Mattia and San Luca from the Year 1573 (1575) 33
The Arrival and the Miraculous Workings of the Glorious Image of the
Virgin Mary Painted by Saint Luke, through the Year 1616 (1617) 67
Appendix
Poems by Malvasia in the Arrival, in Italian and English 121
Dedicatory Letter from Santi Riccetelli, Cronica di tutto il successo
[Chronicle of All That Occurred] (1574) 126
Dedicatory Letter from Leandro Alberti, Cronichetta della gloriosa
Madonna di San Luca, accresciuto da un Reverendissimo
Religioso [Short Chronicle of the Glorious Madonna of
San Luca, Augmented by a Most Reverend Religious] (1579) 127
Bibliography 129
Index 137

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