The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal

Author Hubert Wolf is a professor of ecclesiastical history at the University of Muenster, Germany. As a scholar, he has unprecedented access to the vaults of historical documents housed in the Vatican. The Nuns of Sant’Ambrgio is an incredible true story about the strange goings-on in their convent. A mystic nun with a direct connection to God is an anathema to the Catholic Church, which has a doctrine that there must be an intermediary to such access, namely the Pope. The nuns of Sant’Ambrogio were founded by a mystic nun who was condemned by the church and sent away from the convent to be imprisoned without further contact. Nuns vow strict obedience to their order and the dictates of the Church. These nuns were indeed wayward, as the rich German Princess Katharina von Hohenzollern was to discover when she entered their convent. The Princess’s cousin was a confidant of the Pope and relayed Katharina’s tales to him of fornicating, lesbian nuns who poisoned and murdered to maintain their control. As titillating as this subject is, a more fascinating story of the Church’s political intrigues and jockeying for power emerges. The scholarly work is well footnoted and indexed.