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Among their blameworthy excesses, pride of place must go to enclosing innocent women within convent walls under apparently holy (but really wicked) pretexts. Men dare to endanger free will, bestowed on men and women alike by Divine Majesty; they force women to dwell in life-long prisons, although guilty of no fault other than being born the weaker sex.
Arcangela Tarabotti -
When women are seen with pen in hand, they are met immediately with shrieks commanding a return to that life of pain which their writing had interrupted, a life devoted to the women's work of needle and distaff.
Arcangela Tarabotti
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Stricken by a guilty conscience, some men will say that I speak with excessive temerity about all men in general. They are greatly mistaken. If they behave justly, they will be protected from my attacks and those of others. I separate the just from the wicked (who are the subject of my discourse), since not all men are bad and not all women are good.
Arcangela Tarabotti -
Cain, perpetrator of fratricide, was in my opinion a perfect example of the followers of Lucifer I speak of. In imitation of the traitor of traitors, they seek out the most maimed creatures within their own households and consecrate these to the Lord
Arcangela Tarabotti -
I might exhort religious superiors as well to inquire more diligently whether the vocations of young girls are dictated by a heavenly spirit or rather a kind of human spirit deserving the title of infernal.
Arcangela Tarabotti -
Their conduct leads one to believe that they truly imagine that happiness lasts forever in this temporary, precarious life.
Arcangela Tarabotti -
Men see to satisfy their every craving and show by their deeds that they believe that after death there is no pleasure and that the Lord does not see them.
Arcangela Tarabotti -
I bear holy envy of the religious life of true nuns, called by the Holy Spirit to follow their vocations: giving good example and performing holy deeds for the glory of God in the highest […] and encouragement of devout souls desirous of walking along the path of perfect virtue. These nuns deserve to enjoy the virginal crown in Heaven
Arcangela Tarabotti
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God did not grant one and the same will, one and the same desire, one and the same motivation to each and every woman… He takes pleasure in creation’s variety
Arcangela Tarabotti -
Only hell itself bears a likeness to the suffering of these enforced slaves of Christ. Over the fate of Hell, Dante says, are inscribed the words ‘Abandon every hope, who enter here.’ The same could be inscribed over the portals of convents
Arcangela Tarabotti