Sister Marcellina (in the world Carolina SOLIMANDO) was an Italian Bizzocca (term to indicate a beguine in Central Italy) of San Marco in Lamis (Foggia). Carolina was the last “monneca de casa or sbrezzocca“. Although they were called “house nuns” in reality these semi-religious figures lived more as beguines than as nuns. When they were not well-off, they devoted themselves to various jobs to live, to prayer and to mortification and sometimes also to works of catechesis and charity. Carolina was a seamstress and “kept the girls who learned to sew“. They dressed like nuns until the bishop of Foggia, Mgr. Farina did not forbid it. However Carolina, known as Sister Marcellina, name that is also written on her gravestone in the cemetery, “managed to continue to dress for her use only because her dress was very simple and without any monastic call, even if it was long to the feet and had a long veil ”(p13, Gabriele Tardio). We like to remember Sister Marcellina and her little innocent (perhaps?) dressing insubordination
Gabriele TARDIO, Donne eremite, bizzoche e monache di casa nel Gargano occidentale, Testi di storia e tradizioni popolari, maggio 2007
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To know beguines and beguinages of yesterday and today