26. The Nun and Her Lover
After getting dumped into a convent, things went well for Marianna – at least for a while. She took the name Sister Virginia and became a role model for younger novices. In her twenties, however, she fell head over heels in love, or lust, with a young aristocratic womanizer named Giovanni Paolo Osio. A years-long torrid affair ensued. Osio commissioned a copy of the convent’s keys, and with the complicity of other nuns and a friendly priest, routinely snuck into Marianne’s room. She birthed two children, one a stillborn, the other a daughter who was adopted by Osio.
Marianna alternated between gratifying her lust and guilt-tripping over her sins. At some point, hoping to turn her irresistible lust for Osio into disgust, she began eating his feces. It did not work. Then, in 1606, a nun threatened to expose the affair. So Osio and Marianna murdered her and threatened the other nuns with the same if they tattled.
