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Crime

These Vicious Crimes Will Make You See the Medieval Period in a New Light

vicious crimes

Scary Sister Virginia

Criminal - The arrest of the Nun of Monza, by Giovannia Migliara
The arrest of the Nun of Monza, by Giovannia Migliara. Antico

In 1606, a nun threatened to expose the affair between Sister Virginia and her lover. So Osio murdered her, with the complicity of his nun mistress. She threatened the other nuns that they’d get the same if they blabbed. To cover their tracks, the lovers spread a story that the murdered nun had ran off. However, rumors began to spread about iffy goings on at the Monza convent. So Osio began to murder more people to quell the rumors. His victims included the blacksmith who had made him copies of the convent’s keys, and an apothecary who had supplied Marianne with herbs to end a pregnancy.

It didn’t work, and eventually word reached the governor of Milan, who ordered an investigation. Osio, Marianne, and their complicit enablers were arrested in 1607, and tortured to reveal what they knew. Osio escaped, and was sentenced to death in absentia. He met his end soon thereafter by an acquaintance. Marianne was sentenced to life in solitary confinement, bricked up in a small cell, four feet by nine. She stayed there for fourteen years, until she was deemed reformed and released, to spend the rest of her life in a convent.

Written by

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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