A Criminal Nun
Marianna de Leyva y Marino (1575 – 1650) was born into a family of rich Milanese bankers. Her mother died while Marianna was an infant, so her father dumped her on an aunt to raise her, and forget about her as he pursued his business affairs across Europe. At age thirteen, her father remembered her long enough to force her into a convent in Monza. Marianna took well to the nunnery, took the name Sister Virginia, and became a role model for younger novices. Things changed in her twenties, when she fell head over heels in love, or lust, with a young aristocratic womanizer named Gian Paolo Osio. A years-long torrid affair ensued.
Osio had a blacksmith make him copies of the convent’s keys, and routinely snuck into Marianne’s room, with the complicity of other nuns and a friendly priest. She birthed two children, one a stillborn, the other a daughter who was adopted by Osio. Marianna alternated between lust gratification, and guilt trips over her sins. At some point, she turned to a desperate expedient that she hoped would turn her irresistible lust for Osio into disgust: she began to eat his feces. As seen below, it did not work.
