Overview
Discovered in a secret Vatican archive, this is the true, never-before-told story of poison, murder, and lesbian initiation rites in a nineteenth century convent.In 1858, Katherina von Hohenzollern, a German princess recently inducted into the convent of Sant'Ambrogio in Rome, wrote a frantic letter to her cousin, a confidant of the Pope, claiming that she was being abused and feared for her life. The subsequent investigation by the Church's Inquisition uncovered the extraordinary secrets of Sant'Ambrogio and the illicit behavior of the convent's beautiful young mistress, Maria Luissa. What emerges through the fog of centuries is a sex scandal of ecclesiastical proportions, skillfully brought to light and vividly reconstructed in scholarly detail by one of the world's leading papal historians. Offering a broad historical background on female mystics and the cult of the Virgin Mary, and drawing upon written testimony and original documents, Hubert Wolf tells an incredible story of deception, heresy, seduction, and murder in the heart of the Catholic Church.
Full Product Details
Author: Hubert Wolf (Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Muenster)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 16.20cm
, Height: 3.10cm
, Length: 24.00cm
Weight: 0.854kg
ISBN: 9780198732198
ISBN 10: 0198732198
Pages: 496
Publication Date: 26 February 2015
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
astonishing story History Today an extraordinary and fascinating book New Shiny Books microhistory at its best Tablet It has taken Hubert Wolf's... skill as a historian to retell their story and let his readers contemplate a moving case study of the crimes, follies and tragedies of humankind. Literary Review Makes for fairly amazing reading ... Wolf has not held anything back. The result is an account that reads a bit like a crime novel. Chris Clark, University of Cambridge
Makes for fairly amazing reading ... Wolf has not held anything back. The result is an account that reads a bit like a crime novel. Chris Clark, University of Cambridge
Author Information
Hubert Wolf is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Muenster in Germany, and has been awarded a number or prizes, including the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Communicator Prize, and the Gutenberg Prize. An internationally renowned scholar of the history of the papacy, his other books include Pope and Devil: The Vatican's Archives and the Third Reich.
