Arcangela Tarabotti (1604-1652) was an Early Modern (1559-1814) Italian mystic born to Stefano Tarabotti and Maria Cadena. Her given name was Elena Cassandra and she was one of eleven children, the eldest of six daughters. She was born with a deformity rendering her lame, and her father, determining that her prospects for marriage would be poor, put her in the Sant'Anna convent in Venice in 1617. She took the name Arcangela when she became a nun in 1620, becoming consecrated in 1629 and spending the rest of her life with the Benedictine nuns of Sant'Anna. Since women were not given formal education, Tarabotti's life in the convent gave her opportunity to develop her mind and to use her gifts of anger and writing. She was angry at being forced into a vocation (meaning a life of religious service in her time) for which she had no calling. This practice was called monachization - the forceful placing of a child into a convent or monastery. Tarabotti's most radical work addressing monachization was Paternal Tyranny (Tirannia paterna) and was published posthumously in 1654 under the psedonym Galerana Baratotti. Her rhetoric in this work is a scathing attack of patriarchy. She calls the men, like her father, who entrap people in convents and monasteries, "followers of Lucifer" because they "seek out the most maimed creatures in their own households and consecrate these to the Lord" - in effect offering not the perfect but the imperfect offering of sacrifice to God (Tarabotti 766). Tarabotti expresses fear of eternal damnation in her writings because she was living a vocation to which she was not called. (270 words)

By This Photo was taken by Wolfgang Moroder.

Sources:

Moroder, Wolfgang. “Chiesa Di Sant Anna Rio Di Sant'Anna Venezia.” Category:Sant'Anna (Venice), Wikimedia Commons, 19 Apr. 2016, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sant%27Anna_(Venice)#/media/File:Chiesa_di_Sant_Anna_Rio_di_Sant'Anna_Venezia.jpg. Accessed 8 Jan. 2022.

Ray, Meredith Kennedy. “Tarabotti, Arcangela (1604-1652), Venetian Nun and Writer.” Italian Women Writers, University of Chicago Library, 2007, https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/IWW/BIOS/A0048.html.

Tarabotti, Archangela. “From Paternal Tyranny.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner, Third ed., C, W. W. Norton, New York, NY, 2012, pp. 765–767.