Hearing Is Believing: Clarissan Architecture, ca. 1213-1340

Abstract

The implications of strict enclosure for the architecture of women religious have rarely been examined, even though the legislation often specifies a variety of barriers, screens, and wheels to protect and separate communities of women from the outside world. This essay examines the architecture of several Clarissan convents in Italy in order to study the character, location and evolution of the nuns' choirs over the course of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. I will propose that the increasing importance of eucharistic devotion in the late thirteenth century generated a new type of church and choir plan that is exemplified in the monumental convent church of Sta. Chiara in Naples.

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