“With tender words you caress my little breasts”: Turns out, medieval nuns invented sexting
Lesbian nuns have always been here
Mark
“As a sapphic Catholic, this is my Super Bowl,” says Gasp! The Pod host Hailey on the show’s latest episode. Very fortunately for Hailey and for everyone who loves tales of horny nuns (who doesn’t!?) her latest guest, Cherry Letter Club creator Yen, is am erotic medieval lesbian nun scholar of the first order.
And before you say “wait, what are you talking about?” Yes, there is indeed a thriving genre of lesbian nun erotica dating back to the 12th century, and people are just now starting to discover it.
How about we take this to the next level?
Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today
If you know anything on this topic, a few names probably spring to mind. The mystic 12th century abbess Hildegard von Bingen is a heavy hitter, along with 16th century nun Benedetta Carlini, who saw no shortage of good times up in the convent she called home. And we can’t forget notorious transmasc ladykiller Antonio Erauso who busted out of a convent in the 1500s!
Nuns (as well as saints) being lesbians isn’t surprising, but the fact that we have so much extant work from so many extremely randy religious women is pretty shocking, especially when you consider just how graphic they got in letters to one another.
Though according to Yen, it’s not that crazy. “Nuns wrote down a lot of stuff,” they explain. “They were also in completely women-led, women-run spaces with very little men present.” This aspect of the convent appealed to sapphics, as well as the fact that in a society where few had access to education, joining a sisterhood provided purpose, literacy, and a much better life than you’d get by letting yourself be married off to the first gentleman caller who came along.
Which is how we get the Tergernsee love letters, which give us a glimpse into the relationship between two Bavarian lesbians during the 12th century. “When I recall the kisses you gave me, and how with tender words you caress my little breasts” one nun wrote to another, “I want to die because I cannot see you.”
In a word, mood!
Love letter from one twelfth-century nun to another nun. We read it in class on Tuesday and
"[I] sigh for you at every hour, at every moment, like a hungry little bird."#medievaltwitter pic.twitter.com/LUv2bqoA6X— Dr. Erik Wade — CEASEFIRE NOW (@erik_kaars) December 5, 2018
“These besties were just touching their tits together…as you do with your bestie,” Yen jokes.
Yen first got put on to the queer nun hype via Kirsty Loehr’s book A Short History of Queer Women, which goes all the way back in time to talk about the lesbian nuns who, against all odds, figured out a way to get down and dirty in verse…and in other places.
The Tergernsee letters are, of course, far from the only example. The aforementioned Hildegard von Bingen was a prolific writer of sexy letters, most of which were addressed to her girlfriend, fellow nun Richardis. Some, however, were addressed to the Pope after said girlfriend was about to be reassigned to another abbey.
“Why have you forsaken me like an orphan?” She wrote to Richardis. “I so loved the nobility of your character, your wisdom, your chastity, your spirit, and indeed every aspect of your life that many people have said to me: What are you doing?”
But that was nothing compared to the steamy sonnets Mexican nun Sor Juana wrote to her lady love, the Spanish countess aria Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga, in the 1600s:
“Can you wonder my love sought you out?
Why need I stress that I’m true,
when every one of your features
betokens my enslavement?”
Again…been there, girl. In another poem where she begs her girlfriend not to leave, she writes:
“My breasts answer yours
magnet to magnet
Why make love to me, then leave?
Why mock me?”
She also wrote that “loving you is a crime from which I’ll never repent.”
As we can see, even if these nuns had a feeling that their love wasn’t going to be looked upon kindly by the church, they weren’t about to check themselves in their private love letters. “That you’re a woman far away is no hindrance to my love,” Sor Juana wrote, “for the soul, as you well know, distance and sex don’t count.”
It doesn’t get much gayer than that!
But gay nuns (as well as trans clergy members) as a phenomenon are obviously not limited to medieval times. If you’ve read The Decameron or seen any of the nunsploitation movies of the 60s, they’re all over the place. There’s even a real life case of a lesbian nun cult gone wrong in the 1850s. But there’s a special frisson to these letters from so many centuries ago. When you consider how risky it was to proclaim your same-sex love in print during a time when women were locked up in a convent and told to worship God for the rest of their lives, you realize how important these relationships must have been to these women. They risked everything for their love, and won.
They’ve remained important—and consistent—through the 20th century and beyond, as attested to by the groundbreaking book “Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence” which tells the story of modern nuns find love in the least sexy place possible: the cloisters.
lesbian nuns: breaking silence (recommended by a friend, great read!)
by u/LongLeafFine in LesbianBookClub
Hooking up with your fellow nuns is a time-honored tradition, despite how hard scholars have tried to erase or explain away these sapphic echos from the past. Fortunately, real scholars know a love letter when they see one. Relationships might break up, love might fade, but saucy 16th century sapphic poetry is forever.
Related
We need to talk about the many gay bombshells in the Kouri Richins case
Sign up for the Queerty newsletter to stay on top of the hottest stories in LGBTQ+ entertainment, politics, and culture.
