Living Like Ladies: Conventual Patronage

Abstract

Abstract Inside Naples’s grandest convents, nuns could live like ladies and behave like aristocratic barons. This chapter explores the social and economic arrangements that made this possible and shows how nuns used these resources to found convents and patronize art and architecture. Conventual incomes varied enormously. Many were rich, and some were very rich indeed. Property owners in their own right, convents received income from land leases (canoni), government bonds (luoghi di monte), perpetual bequests (legati perpetui), tax farms (arrendamenti), indirect taxes (gabelle), rents, real and personal estate, and charges for boarders (educande). Moveable property was their most important source of income. In 1642 it represented 79.5 percent of the income of S. Giuseppe delle Eremitane, 66.7 percent of that of S. Maria Donnaregina, 63.1 percent of S. Giovanni Battista’s income, and 61.4 percent of the Consolazione. Most convents owned substantial property within the city and beyond, including vineyards and mills. Real estate provided 53.9 percent of the total income of S. Andrea and 48.3 percent of that of S. Gregorio Armeno in 1642. Most convents rented out shops and houses in the city, often clustered around the convent itself, as at SS. Marcellino e Festo and the Consolazione. Rents, or property appropriated because of rent failure, constituted important financial resources. Significant income came, too, from bequests, especially frequent from nuns and their families.