Plot
Sister Elizabeth, the mother superior of a medieval convent, has visions of Mary Magdalene and a skeletal dead nun. Father Henry, the abbot, and his servant Richard are summoned by the convent's abbess to help with the hysteria spreading among the order.
Elizabeth recounts the confessions and fantasies of the nuns, flagellating herself and becoming excited as she does so: Sister Sarah masturbates; Sisters Mary and Helena flagellate one another and then have sex. Sister Catherine is violated by Fathers James and Peter. Finally, Sisters Jane, Teresa and Helen engage in three-way sex and violate Sister Ann after tying her to a cross. Elizabeth writhes violently in her cell and, as she dies, is tormented by visions of a crucified woman and Christ's beating Sacred Heart.
Mother Elizabeth and an (imagined) demonic Mary Magdalene (who has relapsed from sainthood, back into the sex worker the church once claimed she was) debate desire and chastity within what seems to be a heavenly antechamber. Mary remarks to Elizabeth that, as her convent is full of repressed female desire, the Mother Superior too is enveloped within this voluptuous fold. Elizabeth details four fantasy vignettes. These are interspersed with conversations between the convent's former abbess, a priest, Abbess Elizabeth, an odd dead zombie nun and an actress Eileen Daly playing the spirit of Catechism..
The sex scenes conform to standard pornographic sequencing. They each start simply and culminate in erotic release at the end. There are scenes of the full lesbian sexual gamut, which extends from episodes of individual nuns' self-stimulation to non-monogamous lesbian sex to a final nun-centered crucifix-bondage scene, with copious use of the whip and the rope.
A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service and contemplation, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent. The term is often used interchangeably with religious sisters who do take simple vows but live an active vocation of prayer and charitable work.
Many religious communities have the term Sisters of Charity in their name. Some Sisters of Charity communities refer to the Vincentian tradition, or in America to the tradition of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, but others are unrelated. The rule of Vincent de Paul for the Daughters of Charity has been adopted and adapted by at least sixty founders of religious institutes for sisters around the world.
The Magdalene Sisters is a 2002 drama film written and directed by Peter Mullan, about three teenage girls who were sent to Magdalene asylums, homes for women who were labelled as "fallen" by their families or society. The homes were maintained by individual religious orders, usually by the Catholic Church.
Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, or Martha and Mary Conventof Mercy in the Possession of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna is a women's convent in Moscow.
Venus in the Cloister or The Nun in her Smock, known in the original French as Vénus dans le cloître, ou la Religieuse en chemise (1683) is a work of erotic fiction by the Abbé du Prat, which is a pseudonym for an unknown author. Candidates for whom this might be include Jean Barrin and François de Chavigny de La Bretonnière.
Women as theological figures have played a significant role in the development of various religions and religious hierarchies.
Nunsploitation is a subgenre of exploitation film which had its peak in Europe in the 1970s. These films typically involve Christian nuns living in convents during the Middle Ages.
La Religieuse is an 18th-century French novel by Denis Diderot. Completed in about 1780, it was first published by Friedrich Melchior Grimm in 1792 in his Correspondance littéraire in Saxony, and subsequently in 1796 in France.
Benedetta Carlini was an Italian Catholic nun who claimed to experience mystic visions. As abbess of the Convent of the Mother of God, at Pescia, she had a sexual relationship with one of her nuns, Sister Bartolomea. These came to the attention of the Counter-Reformation papacy, determined to subordinate potentially troublesome mystics if they showed any signs of heretical spirituality. Although they paid three to four visits to the nunnery, it was not until they interrogated Sister Bartolomea that they found that Benedetta and Bartolemea had engaged in sexual relations. Bartolomea gave testimony that Benedetta engaged in frottage with her while possessed by the spirit of a male demon known as Splenditello. Benedetta was stripped of her rank and imprisoned.
The Abbess: A Romance is a gothic novel by William Henry Ireland first published in 1799. The text was modelled upon Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796).
Mother Mary Bonaventure Browne was a Poor Clare nun, abbess, and Irish historian.
Women in Church history have played a variety of roles in the life of Christianity—notably as contemplatives, health care givers, educationalists and missionaries. Until recent times, women were generally excluded from episcopal and clerical positions within the certain Christian churches; however, great numbers of women have been influential in the life of the church, from contemporaries of Jesus to subsequent saints, theologians, doctors of the church, missionaries, abbesses, nuns, mystics, founders of religious institutes, military leaders, monarchs and martyrs.
Women play significant roles in the life of the Catholic Church, although excluded from the Catholic hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons. In the history of the Catholic Church, the church often influenced social attitudes toward women. Influential Catholic women have included theologians, abbesses, monarchs, missionaries, mystics, martyrs, scientists, nurses, hospital administrators, educationalists, religious sisters, Doctors of the Church, and canonised saints. Women constitute the majority of members of consecrated life in the Catholic Church: in 2010, there were around 721,935 professed women religious. Motherhood and family are given an exalted status in Catholicism, with The Blessed Virgin Mary holding a special place of veneration.
Elizabeth Tyldesley (1585–1654) was a 17th-century abbess at the Poor Clare Convent at Gravelines.
Leopoldina Naudet was an Italian Roman Catholic of both French and Austrian origins. She was a religious sister of the Congregation of Dilette of Jesus and the foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Verona. Naudet served in the court of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor and after his death served his daughter Maria Anna who became an abbess and professed religious alongside Naudet and her sister.
Benedetta is a 2021 biographical psychological drama film co-written and directed by Paul Verhoeven, starring Virginie Efira as Benedetta Carlini, a nun in the 17th century who joins an Italian convent while a young child and later has a lesbian love affair with another nun, while seeing religious visions.
Margaret Radcliffe with the name in religion of Margaret Paul (1582–1654) was an English nun who briefly served as abbess of the English Convent of Poor Clares, Gravelines, and was also the founding superior of English convents in Brussels and Aire.
St. Agatha is a 2018 American horror film directed by Darren Lynn Bousman and starring Sabrina Kern and Carolyn Hennesy. It premiered at the Overlook Film Festival on April 20, 2018.
