WOMEN OF NAPLES
Enrichetta Caracciolo di Forino
Enrichetta Caracciolo di Forino was born in Naples on 17 February 1821, the fifth of the seven daughters of the Bourbon marshal Fabio Caracciolo and Teresa di Benedetto of the Cutelli counts, a gentlewoman from Palermo. Enrichetta was sent to a convent very early: in 1840 at just 19 years old, in fact, she was forced by her mother to take vows at the cloistered convent of the Benedictine nuns of San Gregorio Armeno. The reasons for this choice were due to the premature death of his father and the consequent economic debacle of the family. It also seems that Enrichetta already showed a rebellious soul towards conventions and could represent an obstacle to her mother who was organizing her second marriage. Enrichetta described her troubled memoirs (1864) in the volume “Mysteries of the Neapolitan cloister”. They are pages in which he recounts the painful life in the cloistered convent, the desire to live freely, joining the political movements for the unification of Italy and the definitive laying down of the veil in 1860 with the entry into Naples of Giuseppe Garibaldi. This volume was widely distributed and soon achieved enormous success, thanks to the literary quality of its author. Enrichetta spent about twenty years in a convent during which she developed a strong feeling of anticlericalism. Starting from 1849 Enrichetta came into contact with the circles of the revolution by hiding “a bundle of revolutionary cipher papers, a dagger and a pistol”, which a brother-in-law had entrusted to her. In the convent she read the forbidden texts and was pointed out as revolutionary and against the monarchy, increasingly distant from the Church and close to conspiratorial networks. He managed to leave the convent, but with some difficulties, in 1849 when he obtained permission from his mother to leave the monastery to go and be treated with baths and effectively entered the anti-Bourbon conspiracy. She returned to Naples clandestinely where in six years she changed 18 homes and 32 maids and adopted other meticulous countermeasures to throw off the police. In 1851 she was arrested, Enrichetta refused food, attempted suicide and managed to survive by resisting a year of isolation. Meanwhile, while improving her relationship with her mother, who tried to find a way for her to leave the convent, the Archbishop of Naples Sisto Riario Sforza decided to take away the allowance of her dowry as a nun. Enrichetta freed herself from the bond of vows only on 7 September 1860, the day Garibaldi entered Naples and had the opportunity to shake their hands during the mass –held in the Cathedral– of thanksgiving for the escape of Francis II of Bourbon Two Sicilies. It was at this moment that the second part of her life began and she married Garibaldi of German origin Giovanni Greuther in an evangelical rite. She became the author of some texts, such as “An unpunished crime: historical fact of 1838” (1866), the “Proclamation to Italian Women” in which she encouraged women to support the national cause. In 1867 she took part in the Neapolitan women's committee to support Salvatore Morelli's bill for women's rights. Despite her great political and civil commitment to women's rights, her membership of Freemasonry and many other associations, her journalistic work, her literary and associative activity, Enrichetta was forgotten by the new Italian government and, widowed in 1885, she died in Naples on 17 March 1901.
Convent of San Gregorio Armeno
Some nuns of the Order of Saint Basil, who fled Constantinople after 726 due to the iconoclastic persecution of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, arrived in Naples and took refuge in the deaconry of San Gennaro all'Olmo. They decided, with the support of Bishop-Duke Stephen II, to found a first monastery nearby naming it after the holy bishop of Armenia, Saint Gregory. In 1025 Sergio, Duke of Naples, joined the monastery with that of San Pantaleone: the two convent structures were connected via an overpass which still characterizes the road of San Gregorio Armeno today. The new monastery, which embraced the Benedictine rule, welcomed the girls of the city's noble families. After less than a century there were around 80 nuns, including novices and lay sisters. The monastery did not have its current form, but rather presented itself as a citadel in which the nuns had independent, fenced homes, in which they lived with the lay sisters who served the ladies, and some young family members who entered the monastery from the earliest age. Towards the end of the sixteenth century things changed, the new Tridentine rules wanted a true cloistered life for the nuns and above all a regime in which a true community life was created. To implement these transformations it was necessary not only to change consciences, but also to dismantle existing architectural structures. The abbess Lucrezia Caracciolo inaugurated the path of change: a new building was built, with rooms overlooking a loggia overlooking the cloister, all enclosed by a high wall and railings; the church from the center of the monastery was moved and had an external opening to allow people to attend religious services while the nuns could attend hidden behind thick jealousies or from the choir tightly closed to the outside, a place more suitable for elderly or sick nuns. The new monastic regime was not accepted by all, some nuns left the convent, where instead other sisters from the suppressed monasteries of Sant'Arcangelo a Baiano, Santa Maria Donnaromita and Santa Patrizia arrived (together with the relics preserved in their monasteries). The complex is among the oldest and most rich in works of art and among the best preserved in the city. What is observed today is the appearance given to it at the time of the Counter-Reformation, thanks to the impressive renovation works strongly desired by the abbess Lucrezia Caracciolo and entrusted to Giovan Battista Cavagna who fully respected the counter-reformed dictates, demolishing the primitive structures, causing thus the loss of the Byzantine remains. The monastery still retains, with its very high walls and railings, its ancient character of very strict seclusion. The cloister, which is accessed after the church bell tower via a long staircase leading to the monastery, is in an exceptional state of conservation and was opened to citizens in 1922 when the enclosure was abolished. Begun in 1572 by Giovan Vincenzo della Monica, it houses a splendid fountain in the center with marble statues by Matteo Bottigliero from 1733, depicting the ’ “Meeting of Christ with the Samaritan woman at the well”. This space, once reserved for monastic life, today offers an enchanting testimony of Neapolitan convent architecture. A peculiar characteristic of this convent is the imposing water network designed to use the water coming from the Carmignano conduit and the rainwater in full autonomy; on a wall frescoed with the image of San Bartolomeo the five keys that regulated the gushing of water into the fountain in the center of the cloister are depicted. On the left of the entrance you can access the “nuns' choir” which has carved stalls from the 16th century. From here you can pass to other rooms of the monastery, including the so-called “nuns' corridor”, with small altars enriched over time by works of art from every era (which brought as dowry girls belonging to illustrious families who took vows) which constitute an exceptional “devotion museum” perfectly preserved; among these rooms the “abbess's sitting room”, a rococo jewel, stands out. Along the western side of the cloister, in front of the Hydra chapel, are the refectory and the old oven, which the nuns could use to prepare their famous desserts.
