ABSTRACT
Early modern parents often determined that one or more of their offspring would enter monastic life, whether or not they had any desire to do so. Usually, the main purpose was to eliminate individuals from the inheritance stream, thus fattening the patrimony that would pass to a single heir. By employing force and fear, elders achieved this objective. When interrogated under oath on an unspecified date not long before his death in April 1710, Francesco Bottati – a notary in Trinità, near Mondovì in the northwestern Italian region of Piedmont – admitted that eight years earlier he had compelled his son Francesco Antonio to become a friar. He now affirmed support for his son’s attempt to return legally to secular life. Francesco Antonio Bottati’s ordeal illustrates several common features of forced monachization. Elders employed harsh words, threats of financial and emotional alienation, physical assaults, and much else to thrust sons as well as daughters into monastic life.
