ABSTRACT
In 1531, Gian Pietro Carafa (1476-1559), bishop of Chieti and future Pope Paul IV, wrote to his sister Maria Carafa (1468-1552) concerning the strategy she had adopted for expanding and developing the newly founded Neapolitan convent of Santa Maria della Sapienza where she was the prioress:
Some letters have been written to me in which I saw little light of God and little Christian truth … because all the letters were full of nothing but your poverty, the necessity of building the convent, and of the need to receive many daughters so that they might bring money to spend on the building … And I protest that if you search for something other than only the Crucified Christ, I shall no longer want you as my sister. And if you want to make the convent large, and gather there a great number of young women in the way of today’s world, I promise you, that within a short time, you will regret it.1
