ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a series of reforms of nunneries implemented in Parma between 1486 and 1525. The most notable change the reforms introduced was to abolish the perpetuity of the abbess's office. The Congregation of Santa Giustina was indeed crucial in the 1486 reform of Sant'Alessandro. The abbess and the nuns voted to adopt strict claustration and observance, to be subject in temporal and spiritual matters to the abbot of San Giovanni Evangelista and to hold annual elections, first of a prioress, while the current abbess was alive, then of the abbess herself. The Narrativa's very simple schema presents the infractions against the Rule as the cause of the nunnery's decline, accompanied by the 'murmurs' of the people of Parma. Conversely, the return to the Rule is the immediate cause of the growth 'of the temporal and spiritual good, with great consolation of the whole city'.
