Outside of special interest pornography, we don’t really associate nuns with queerness but historically speaking we probably should. It’s actually fairly obvious if you think about it; released from the threat of marriage and living in an all female community, a nunnery must have seemed like paradise to queer noble women. Without the burden of a husband, nuns were often free to pursue their own interests (as long as they were of noble birth of course), whether that was music, medicine or subverting the patriarchy through directly channeling Jesus and starting a lesbian sex cult in their abbey. Add to that a general disbelief that women were capable of having sex with each other, despite some vague and wishy washy regulations about unnatural acts, and joining a nunnery begins to sound more and more like going to Smith.
While we don’t have many examples of queer nuns because of the aforementioned “sex requires a cis* man” cultural obsession, here are a handful of the most prominent and badly behaved nuns from the late middle ages and Renaissance.
Abbess Hildegard of Bingen
To be fair all we have on the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen is speculation. But then that’s all we have on anyone who didn’t do something so outrageous that the church forgot its “lesbians don’t exist” policy in order to punish them. With that in mind, if you look at her life and work, there’s a great deal of evidence suggesting some not-very-platonic feelings about ladies.
When not experiencing visions, cheeking the pope and bossing around the Holy Roman Emperor, Hildegard wrote everything from music to plays to a piece of theology actively condemning women who fornicated with each other. I know that seems counterintuitive, but bear with me. Remember that this was a period where the official position was that this was something women could not actually do. For Hildegard to even be aware of it as a possibility suggests she was thinking about it, and may even be a case where “the lady doth protest too much.”
Hildegard also wrote a groundbreaking medical text that relied more on Galen than Aristotle. Radical for suggesting that the birth parent might actually contribute genetic material (“matter”) to their offspring instead of being merely an incubator, Hildegard’s book was rather more sensible than the average text of the time. She still included such terrible advice as regular bleeding or blistering to relieve the body of ill humours (think toxins), but on the whole her advice was less likely to kill you than much of contemporary Western medicine. Oh, and she also included a lovingly detailed categorization of what it was that made women sexy or not according to their humours.
“Sanguine Women: Some women are plump by nature. They have soft and delightful flesh… are lovable in the embrace of love.” – Hildegard of Bingen On Natural Philosophy and Medicine
Hildegard clearly had a type. It’s of note here that while she also described the four humeric types of men, a matching commentary on their relative sex appeal is conspicuously absent. It’s theoretically possible that this disparity came about because of a head-on collision of purity culture and lesbian erasure, but either way the obvious sensual appeal women held for her is undeniable. This is made even more obvious when you delve into her personal life and the management of her nunnery. Hildegard liked to have her nuns regularly perform the morality plays and music that she wrote, which was unusual but not spectacularly weird. What was unique to her establishment was that she had them wear the finest clothing possible for these performances on the flimsy excuse that as brides of Jesus it was their duty to dress up for him. This opinion was both technically heretical and explicitly against the rules of her monastic order but the woman was politically powerful enough that she was allowed to get away with it.
The final compelling bit of evidence that Hildegard was not very heterosexual at all is that she had a special friend in her secretary and second in command Richardis. The two had a close and passionate relationship, and, when she eventually moved on to lead a nunnery of her own, Hildegard sent her a series of letters that read exactly like the angry-sad post breakup letters of the most codependent modern U-hauler. While we have no evidence that they perceived their relationship to be anything more than platonic, let alone acted on it, the emotions are there, raw and real.
Abbess Benedetta Carlini
Someone whose sexual proclivities we do have an abundance of evidence on was the Abbess Benedetta Carlini, whose story is in many ways the dark mirror of Hildegard’s. Like her, she was given over to the religious life at a young age, became an abbess and experienced extraordinary visions. Unlike Hildegard her visions were explicitly erotic and involved the direct channeling of both Jesus and an angelic being known as Splenditello.
Benedetta’s visions started out violent, featuring men trying to kill her, and she and the other nuns were afraid that she was beset by demons. They confined her to a cell and had another nun, Bartolomea, room with her to keep an eye on her. The visions then changed in nature to ecstatic religious ones wherein she was told that Jesus had chosen her to be his wife and the “empress of all nuns.” She manifested stigmata on her body and seems to have possessed some talent for mass hypnosis or inducing group hysteria; the nuns reported that when Jesus or the angels spoke through her her facial features changed to those of a handsome boy.
Initially, as with Hildegard and her visions, the local church authorities were delighted at the potential of having a saint in their midst. However Benedetta’s behaviour started to escalate in ways that transgressed even the fairly loose limits imposed on ecstatic visionaries. Not only did she report experiencing a death and resurrection, she then went on to stage a marriage between herself and Jesus where he spoke through her, granting her a great deal of temporal and spiritual authority. In the wake of this, a team of investigators was sent to find out if her visions were genuine, satanic or simple fraud.
Though the initial findings declared her genuine, a confession from Bartolomea led to them performing an about turn, declaring her to have been deceived by Satan instead. According to Bartolomea, Jesus would come to Benedetta in the night, seeking, as a normal husband, to have congress with her. Benedetta, as a dutiful bride would let him, but because he had no physical body, a stand in needed to be found. Bartolomea was to provide that stand in. Additionally, when the angel Splenditello possessed her, he would have intercourse with Bartolomea whom he loved.
Its fairly clear that Bartolomea was conflicted about this at best and not at all in a position to give meaningful consent. She describes how Benedetta would throw her onto the bed and get on top of her while using only passive language to describe herself during these encounters and it’s very obvious that she was uncomfortable with it throughout. There’s a tendency among queer and feminist writers to overlook this and depict Benedetta as a delightful character who was victimised by the church, and to a degree this is understandable. We have so few verified historical figures that a lesbian nun carrying out a mystic affair with her lover sounds exciting and brilliant and fun. For her to be just another cult leader using her spiritual authority to compel sex from her followers is incredibly disappointing. We have a duty, though, not to sugarcoat even the most unsavory parts of our history and a part of this is recognising that Benedetta coerced and manipulated Bartolomea into their relationship.
It took the investigative team quite a while to work out what to do with her simply because no penetration had taken place. If penetration of some kind had been involved then they would have been able to convict her of sodomy, a crime usually reserved for men but sometimes applied to women who had used a dildo on each other. However they were unable to prove that penetration had occurred and, because Benedetta maintained that she had believed her visions to be true but was willing to accept that they were instead demonic in nature they were unable to execute her for heresy. Eventually it was decided that she’d committed mere fornication, something that normally carried a light penalty. However, the nuns of her order, presumably rightfully angry (among other things Benedetta had restricted their diet and encouraged self flagellation), decided to condemn her to hermitage instead. Hermitage, sometimes entered into voluntarily, meant being walled into a tiny cell for the rest of your life. An opening was left to allow food and waste to be passed in and out, so it wasn’t quite the same as being buried alive, but people usually didn’t live long like that anyway. Benedetta on the other hand surprised everyone once again by living for another thirty five years in her cell, dying in 1661.
Julie D’Aubigny
Julie D’Aubigny, by contrast, is just an all-around treat. Born to a fencing master and inveterate gambler, he taught her swordsmanship and card sharping from a young age — two things she was incredibly good at. He also had her dressing like a boy because why not? Some accounts claim her father killed any male lover she took and this is why she took to sleeping with women, which apparently he didn’t mind. However considering that at fourteen she was ensconced as the mistress of her father’s boss, as well as in possession of a courtesy husband who had been sent away immediately after the wedding night, this seems doubtful. It seems like the sort of invention men who are threatened by the idea of women sleeping with each other instead of them might create in order to reassure themselves of the potency of their own penis. This is going to be a recurring theme in Julie’s story.
Apparently finding being a rich man’s mistress boring (or possibly bored of the rich man), Julie ran off with another fencing master fairly quickly, and then proceeded to tour the country with him giving public demonstrations of their swordsmanship. On one occasion, when no one would believe she could possibly be a woman and that good with a sword, she straight up took her top off to prove the point. Julie had no fucks to give about anything.
They supplemented their income by singing in taverns and by the time the two of them made it to Marseille Julie had developed her talent enough to join the Marseille opera. While there, she embarked on a career of bedding as many of the other singers as possible before falling in love with a merchant’s daughter whose name we don’t know. The merchant and his wife were less than pleased that their daughter was having an affair with a female opera singer and so had their daughter placed in a nunnery. Normally this was enough to deter unsuitable lovers, but not Julie.
Somehow convincing the convent that she genuinely wanted to take holy orders, Julie entered the nunnery with her girlfriend. Around a month in, an elder nun died of natural causes and the two of them saw their chance; putting the dead nun in the girlfriend’s bed they set the nunnery on fire and ran off into the night. Unfortunately for them their cunning plan didn’t actually work, and after a month of living together in hiding, the girl returned to the nunnery and Julie was tried in absentia. Convicted of kidnapping, arson, body snatching and failing to appear before the tribunal, she was sentenced to death by fire. Fortunately for Julie, however, fragile masculinity was to save her life. It was far too embarrassing to admit that a woman had done all of this and so, instead of trying the actual person of Julie D’Aubigny, they tried a fictional genderswapped version instead, meaning that even if they’d managed to catch her the sentence could not have been carried out.
Understandably wary anyway, Julie made for Paris where she was hoping her first lover would use his influence to make the charges go away. Along the road she picked up a new boyfriend through an encounter that sounds like something from a bad piece of fanfic; the young Count d’Albert insulted her, so she challenged him to a duel and stabbed him. The next day, feeling a bit sorry for him, she went to check on how he was doing where, properly chastened, he won her over. Keeping her company all the way to Paris, d’Albert was to be yet another useful noble friend for the rest of her life.
Acquiring the pardon she was after, Julie joined the prestigious Paris opera where she proceeded to sleep her way through half the company and beat the holy crap out of the rest. In particular any young man who was less than polite or respectful to the women of the opera, whether he was cast himself or a member of the audience, wound up either losing humiliatingly in a duel or being beaten up and robbed in a back alley (on one occasion she took the offending man’s pocket watch as a trophy). Her career was interrupted after she attended a matchmaking ball of the upper classes, danced with all of the women and kissed one of them in full public view. Three young men immediately challenged her to a duel and she won all three only to discover that the king had banned dueling in the city of Paris (presumably no one cared when it was just opera singers doing it) and that once again she needed to leave somewhere in a hurry.
After a brief stay in Brussels where she performed on the stage and had an affair with the Elector of Bavaria, she moved on to Madrid, where she worked as a maid before handing in her resignation with style. While dressing her employers hair for a ball she hung a number of radishes in it that were visible to everyone but the unfortunate woman wearing them; by the time her employer was back from the ball she was halfway to Paris where a pardon awaited her.
Once back in the city she rejoined the opera, becoming famous for performing androgynous and masculine parts and going right back to defending her colleagues from lecherous noblemen and having high-profile affairs with noble ladies. Finally, after attempting suicide, brawling on stage and threatening murder, she found the love of her life in Madame la Marquise de Florensac, the most beautiful woman in France. The two women lived together, blissfully happy, until de Florensac died unexpectedly from a fever two years later. Julie was inconsolable and entered a nunnery once again, only to die herself a year later from —according to her biographer — an innate tendency to sin.
Admittedly a depressing end, but even so, you can’t deny that Julie D’Aubigny had an awful lot of fun in her life. And other than the girl whose parents put her into a convent, none of her lovers seem to have faced any punishment. And just think — if Julie could get away with all of that in public, imagine what the women of France must have been getting away with out of sight.
*I am aware the middle ages didn’t have a concept of trans or cis. But we do now and I’m specifying cis so as not to erase and alienate trans people in the now by conflating masculinity with possessing a penis.
Lesbians should also read, if you haven’t already, the book that was published in the 1980’s called Lesbian Nuns. It is first person accounts from queer nuns, from the mid to late 20th century.
Ha, just today at a work happy hour I was telling people all about St. Hildegard thanks to Heather’s “Bitches Brew” workshop at camp.
That was not intended to be a reply to a comment. Whoops.
This comment has been removed as it is in violation of Autostraddle’s Comment Policy. Repeat or egregious offenders will be banned.
lower-class cis lesbians*
Moderators, please remove this comment.
Mods, clean up: Aisle 7?
YESSS !
I’m studying a particular community of nun, and seriously, in the XIXth century, it was the most feminist thing ever. Like, I just read a letter writed by a sister in 1850. She was born in a very poor family, beaten by her father, in very very very rural France. She had to run away to enter religious life, and her father treatened to kill her. After formation time, she became a nurse (but she did the work of a doctor !) in Brazil, also studying farming. If I become an historian (this is not on my plan, but who know), I want to study religious life.
Wow, raise your hand if the feature photo here is totally making you miss The Toast’s Two Monks
MALLORY ORTENBERG I WILL BUY THE TWO MONKS ON PATREON PLSSSS
NEW COLUMN HERE: TWO QUEER NUNS
I miss The Toast something fierce. Especially Femmeslash Fridays. And their Horoscopes. :(
WOULD WRITE 100%
I was thinking of the Vicar of Dibley. Do I get a consolation prize?
Yes, and my <3, always
I’m nominating you as my favorite crush, FYI. ;)
I shall do my best to earn it, m’lady
Just keep dominating the comment awards and you’re a shoe-in. :D
I’m starting to ship the 2 of you together
OMG I read the title and intro text and literally thought Mallory would write something like this. I miss them (and her tweets which strangely disappeared after the election. another sign of the apocalypse, imo) so so much. I need the comfort of the Toast since our country lost its collective mind last week.
The section on Julie D’Aubigny reminded me of this:
http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/julie-daubigny
Holy shit! I thought I was the only person to have read about Benedetta Carlini. I had always read her a Bartolomea’s relationship as abusive and it has always rubbed me the wrong way that the book I read on the case didn’t address that at all and just categorized it as a piece of lesbian legal history. So glad to see it acknowledged here.
I thought it was really important to go into that part of it yeah. Too many people are so keen to find positive representation in the past that they’ll overlook or ignore things they shouldn’t to find it.
For sure! I think people kind of become detached from history as being real if that makes any sense? It comes to us as stories and people kind of respond to it in the way they do to fiction where a person can be reclaimed or simplified as a character or a role rather than a person. I guess I think that’s where the error comes in.
On a less serious note; one of my (straight, lady) friends kept asking me when I was going to get to “the good part” when I told her I was reading about lesbian nuns. I told her that there were footnotes so there wouldn’t be one.
Haha that’s perfect! I feel like I should write a novel about some now as I’ve done all this research but I have like three other novels and the history book to work on first.
Absolutely. It should totally have long winded descriptions of quasi erotic visions about the feminine aspects of Christ while protagonist is taking communion or something.
I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS POST MY WHOLE LIFE. I’ve long been interested in the history of queer women and the nunnery, but googling “lesbian nuns” never, ever delivers the kind of results queer historians are looking for…
Some more famous lesbian and bisexual nuns(or almost-nuns)-
Liane de Pougy(Belle Epoque courtesan, dancer, actress, writer) had affairs with Natalie Clifford Barney, Mathilde de Morny (famously Colette’s girlfriend), Emilienne d’Alencon and Valtesse de La Bigne. In old age she became a nun.
Marie-Louise Habets was a nun and then left the convent, becoming Kathryn Hulme’s long-term partner, and her story became Hulme’s book The Nun’s Story, then an Audrey Hepburn film.
Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers was a nun and pop singer under the name ‘soeur sourire’. Her story became a Debbie Reynolds film. She left the convent and had a long-term relationship with Annie Pécher.
Josephine Baker had about six affairs with women, and at one point decided to become a nun, but changed her mind after a week!
Sarah Bernhardt went to a convent school and wanted to be a nun initially, but then became a famous tragic actress and had several affairs with women, including the artist Louise Abbema.
Coco Chanel and Misia Sert(arts patron of among others Ravel and Chanel) were both convent-schooled, and Chanel was inspired by churches and nuns for her designs. They bonded over this shared background and had an affair and long friendship, and both had other female lovers.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz!!!!! My favorite nun of all time and maybe, possibly a lady-loving lady herself.
Perdite, señora, quiero
de mi silencio perdón,
si lo que ha sido atención
le hace parecer grosero.
Y no me podrás culpar
si hasta aquí mi proceder,
por ocuparse en querer,
se ha olvidado de explicar.
Que en mi amorosa pasión
no fue desuido, ni mengua,
quitar el uso a la lengua
por dárselo al corazón.
Ni de explicarme dejaba:
que, como la pasión mía
acá en el alma te vía,
acá en el alma te hablaba.
Y en esta idea notable
dichosamenta vivía,
porque en mi mano tenia
el fingirte favorable.
Con traza tan peregrina
vivió mi esperanza vana,
pues te pudo hacer humana
concibiéndote divina.
¡Oh, cuán loca llegué a verme
en tus dichosos amores,
que, aun fingidos, tus favroes
pudieron enloquecerme!
¡Oh, cómo, en tu sol hermoso
mi ardiente afecto encendido,
por cebarse en lo lucido,
olvidó lo peligroso!
Perdona, si atrevimiento
fue atreverme a tu ardor puro;
que no hay sagrado seguro
de culpas de pensamiento.
De esta manera engañaba
la loca esperanza mía,
y dentro de mí tenía
todo el bien que deseaba.
Mas ya tu precepto grave
rompe mi silencio mudo;
que él solamente ser pudo
de mi respeto la llave.
Y aunque el amar tu belleza
es delito sin disculpa
castígueseme la culpa
primero que la tibieza.
No quieras, pues, rigurosa,
que, estando ya declarada,
sea de veras desdichada
quien fue de burlas dichosa.
Si culpas mi desacato,
culpa también tu licencia;
que si es mala mi obediencia,
no fue justo tu mandato
Y si es culpable mi intento,
será mi afecto precito,
porque es amarte un delito
de que nunca me arrepiento.
Esto en mis afectos hallo,
y más, que explicar no sé;
mas tú, de lo que callé,
inferirás lo que callo.
I was just going to mention Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz!!!! So happy to see someone else already did. I think it was pretty confirmed she was a lady loving nun, well as much as you can unofficially confirm something like that. But she pretty much became a nun because on the time period she was born that was her only option to be able to study and not marry a man.
My favorite poem from her, and that I may have sent to more that one gal pal is “Divina Lysi mía.”
“Así, cuando yo mía
te llamo, no pretendo
que juzguen que eres mía,
sino sólo que yo ser tuya quiero”.
I love her too though I don’t know that much about her. I didn’t find anything suggesting she was queer but I didn’t spend that much time on her, can you recommend anything?
She wrote love poems to the viceroy’s wife Maria. One says ‘Loving you is a crime for which I will never atone’.
Well this was a treat.
I’d love to read more about these ladies! Does anybody have book recommendations?
Hello naughty reader its regrets time! For Benedetta try Immodest Acts by Judith Brown and then read everything else she’s ever written for it is excellent. For Julie, Kelly Gardner has a novel I haven’t read yet but for which the research is sound https://kellygardiner.com/fiction/books/goddess/ She’s also briefly mentioned in Faderman’s Surpassing the Love of Women as she was the subject of a satyrical novel that Faderman touches on (this is also an excellent book). Its hard to find things on Julie as she was largely forgotten for a long time until she suddenly got internet popular a few years ago.
Now, Hildegard *cracks knuckles* Sabina Flanagan wrote a good biography called A Visionary Life. I recommend reading her own works though, especially the medical text and the theological ones which have some really trippy things about the sexuality and gender of God in them.
Julie D’Aubigny, swooooon. I don’t know whether I want to be her or do her. Probably both.
Both is good.
This was the most comforting and distracting piece I’ve read since 11/09. Thank you for what was clearly a lot of research!
I think that’s the best compliment I could get so thank you!
GOOOOOOOOOD SHIT. I LOVE nuns. thank you god bless wow i’m gonna paste this on my wall
I’m intrigued to see what else is on your wall, Alaina. XD
Pics please!
Analogies abound in China, at least. There is a reason why back in the day, Chinese Buddhist nuns and Daoist priestesses headed up the list of reviled women’s professions – the “Three Aunties and Six Matrons” (三姑六婆). Nuns were sometimes forbidden by Confucian mores from consorting alone with householding women in the women’s chambers. But then, being a route to autonomy, education, and community authority as a nun or priestess was enough to provoke anxiety for many, regardless.
It’s not like women in their home quarters didn’t occasionally get into “polishing mirrors” anyway. Every once in a while, some moralist in government would take it upon himself to eradicate the “rash of deviant conduct” of women getting married to each other in this or that district, especially whenever it became common and approved by their communities… And yet, it keeps happening. Funny, that.
I’d love to know more about this, can you recommend some reading?
Thank you! I’ve been looking forward to this article for a while.
Raise your hand if you’re suddenly finding yourself half in love with a swashbuckling bisexual opera singer from three centuries ago.
I hate to be a hipster, but I’ve been in love with her for years. :D
Trendsetter
ITS A PROBLEM
I *totally* associate nuns with queerness! I have friends from Catholic countries have Spinster Aunts who became nuns. Did you know that they make them travel in threes?
I *totally* associate nuns with queerness! I have friends from Catholic countries with Spinster Aunts who became nuns. Did you know that they make them live and work in sets of three?
I did not but I’m not surprised and it seems like a natural follow on of some fairly ancient rules. I’ve been wanting to write a follow up article about modern clergy and queerness because there are very strict rules about queer people being unfit for holy orders but allegedly rampaging queer subcultures in some seminaries.
I have been waiting for this post! I have been doing independent lesbian nun research and also playing the boardgame Nuns on the Run (no relation to the film) in anticipation.
This list is great and I hope it can be added to because there is a lot more nunnery action to be included, I feel.
I think you’re right. I have suspicions about the Venetian nunneries which were basically frat houses for rich girls anyway but I couldn’t find any evidence that the glass sex toys really existed.
One of my favorite american sister is Sr Blandina Segal, who was badass in the West. Billy the Kid bowed before her :
http://sisterblandinasegale.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blandina_Segale
Oh man, I got more excited than I expected when I saw Hildegard at the top of the list. I am the assistant librarian (among other things) at a history/rare books library, and have always noticed the book quoted in the article (Hildegard of Bingen : on natural philosophy and medicine) at the end of a shelf. It’s a landmark for orienting myself in the collection. Anyway, glad to see that interesting lady getting some attention.
I did my undergrad thesis on her so I may love her an unreasonable amount. But she’s amazing and you should look up and listen to her composing if you have the chance (its my study playlist).
What about Sant’Ambrogio in Rome? That one is well documented in a book released this year, though it’s a crazy story of lesbian initiation rites (undoubtedly coerced), an abbess who believed her vaginal fluid was sacred liquor, etc.
By the time I hit about 3000 words I decided maybe no more nuns should be included lol
This is by far my favourite Autostraddle article. Like most, I am now in love with Julie D’Aubigny. I want an adaptation of her life in some media form (created by queer women and/or queer people, of course)
I love all the comments with resources and info about other queer women. I’m excited to read it all!
Well one of my sources wrote one! https://kellygardiner.com/fiction/books/goddess/ I haven’t had time to read it yet but she seems to have done better research on Julie than a lot of the stuff out there who have leant more to the sensationalist moralising biographer’s version.
I want to make a movie about her but also I have never made a movie and I am very young.
But it is my goal. We’re gonna do it.
I LOVE GAY NUNS so much, I had no idea there was this much information about actual gay nuns all this time???? I’m mostly really happy that history has preserved Julie d’Aubigny’s life story so we can all be inspired by it today.
I HAVE to recommend my favourite webcomic to y’all now, it is called Unconvent (unconventcomic.com) and it is 100% about gay nuns. The nuns. They are gay. They are lesbianing all over the place. In Brazil. In the 18th century. There is sign language and blushing. I could not let this amazing article and all its gay nun fans go without this plug.
I’m not even a webcomics person but this is GORGEOUS. Thanks for the recommendation.
ISN’T IT!!!!!?????? I’m so happy you like it! Gay nuns for everybody :D The person who makes it is my best friend, so I will pass on the love! :>
Cecil, this is my new favorite thing ever. OMG I love you and I love your best friend. :D
There are a couple of fascinating related (academic) books I read for my research that people might enjoy:
Velasco, Sherry M. Lesbians in Early Modern Spain. Vanderbilt University Press, 2011.
Soyer, François. Ambiguous Gender in Early Modern Spain and Portugal: Inquisitors, Doctors and the Transgression of Gender Norms. Brill, 2012.
Julie D’Aubigny – do I want to be her, or do I want to bed her #toogaytofunction
Julie D’Aubigny: og bisexual badass and #goals
Don’t forget how Hildegard may have been the first person to describe the female orgasm.
“When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman’s sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.”
I mean, I know it’s in the context of heterosexuality, but still. How you know so much about the female orgasm, Hildy?
(source: http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/med/hildegarde.asp)
Speaking of lesbian nuns…
http://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2017/02/27/brilliant-17th-century-nun-brought-life-netflix