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Benedetta Carlini (1591–1661) was a Catholic mystic and lesbian nun, who lived in Counter-Reformation Italy during the 16th and seventeenth century
Benedetta was made abbess of the convent, but then reported a disturbing series of visions in which men were trying to kill her. Fearful that Sister Benedetta was being harassed by demonic entities, the other sisters assigned Sister Bartolemea to her cell. Shortly after, the visions ceased.
These came to the attention of the Counter-Reformation Papacy. Although they paid three to four visits to the nunnery, it wasn’t until they interrogated Sister Bartolemea that they found that Benedetta and Bartolemea were lovers. According to Bartolemea, Sister Benedetta would make love to her, and both would experience the mystical epiphanies that Sister Benedetta described.
Bartolemea’s admission was enough to ensure that Benedetta was stripped of her primacy as abbess and then held under guard for the remaining 35 years of her life. She died in 1661, while her former lover, Sister Bartolomea, predeceased her by one year, dying in 1660.
