Urban Transformation after a Scandal: Preserving Social Values in Late Medieval Dubrovnik

Abstract

This research reveals the original medieval forms of the Convent of Poor Clares while contextualising the spatial interventions after the scandalous year 1433 that led to the urban transformation of the broader neighbourhood. The research methodology addressed historical visual sources analysed in the context of the information provided by archival documents, starting with the Ordo from 1433 and including all the City Councils’ deliberations until 1450. Linking these two sets of information resulted in the schematic and hypothetical visualisation of the disposition of the convent’s medieval buildings and the identification of all the changes in neighbouring public and private buildings and spaces implemented to achieve the perfect clausura inside the densely built urban fabric. Along with the prison sentence to be served inside this very convent, the nobility of the Republic of Dubrovnik ensured that the social values were preserved for the future.

1. Introduction

In autumn 1433, a scandal broke in the city of Dubrovnik when it was discovered that a priest and a Clarissan nun had eloped. The reactions from the relevant authorities differed: the archbishop, as the foremost responsible instance, left it to the city government to deal with the problem, which resulted in dozens of recorded City Councils’ deliberations and the issuing of orders regarding the scandalous event. The government was consternated not only because it involved two persons who had promised to consecrate their lives to spirituality but even more so because the two lovers belonged to different social classes; the priest was a commoner, while the nun was the daughter of a prominent noble family. To understand the extent of the scandal and the decisions implemented to prevent similar events in the future, it is necessary to comprehend the society of late medieval Dubrovnik and its values.

The aristocratic Republic of Dubrovnik, which included the city and its surroundings, was governed by its urban nobility. The formation and segregation process of this social class ended in 1332 with the closure of the Major Council that defined the list of noble kindreds for the following centuries [1,2,3]. The male members of these kindreds would automatically become members of the Major Council when they reached legal age. From the pool of the Major Council’s members, the holders of other offices were elected, the most important being the Minor Council and the Senate members. The role of the Major Council was to pass laws; the Minor Council acted as an executive body, whereas the Senate had an advisory role and decided on the most sensitive issues. The structure of the governing bodies remained stable and unchanged until the end of the Republic in 1808 [4,5].

The members of the nobility were constricted to endogamy, with both parents needing to belong to noble kindreds for their offspring to be considered noble, that is, for their sons to be accepted to the Major Council [6,7]. It has to be underlined that other Dalmatian cities also featured similar laws regarding inter-class marriages; however, Dubrovnik was stringent in enforcing territorial endogamy, which restricted the choice of a marital partner to families from the same city. Although it was theoretically allowed to marry a noblewoman or a nobleman from another Dalmatian city or Venice, it was not a common practice since it was in the public interest to keep family ties and wealth within the Republic. Unmarried daughters for whom the families could not provide a suitable dowry spent their lives as nuns in one of the eight city convents [8]. Some convents admitted only noblewomen and were so densely populated that the city authorities instructed the abbesses to stop admitting foreign nuns in 1379 and 1415 (for Poor Clares) and 1422 (for all nunneries) [6,9]. Gradually taking over the management of the admissions to the Clarissan convent, the noblemen sought to provide a secure and socially convenient life for their daughters while keeping the property intact. Therefore, the scandal of a young noble nun eloping with a commoner priest jolted the fundamental value of the Republic—its radically strict social order. This order supported the preservation of wealth and power within the nobility, which it used to secure the freedom of this small aristocratic Republic (that lasted until the time of Napoleon) and ensure the well-being of its citizens [3,4,5,10,11,12,13,14,15].

Following a series of discussions in the Senate on the incarceration of the protagonists of the elopement, the priest Antonius Vučićijević and the nun Pervula, daughter of Ser Nicola de Tudisio, on 22 October 1433, the Senate passed the deliberation on the Poor Clares’ convent—Ordo monasterii poncellarum Sancte Clare Ragusii [16]. Unlike its usual deliberations, which are relatively short and consist of several lines, this one extends to three pages, listing in detail all the construction works that must be implemented to achieve the perfect clausura. Since the works regarded different spaces of the nunnery, this source allows a partial identification of the disposition of the medieval convent buildings. Scilicet, the medieval Clarissan complex, was severely damaged in the catastrophic 1667 earthquake. Afterwards, it was reconstructed and again radically rebuilt in the nineteenth century (when it was repurposed as military quarters). So far, no studies have been conducted on the original medieval forms lost during iterative rebuildings.

The convent was established in the late thirteenth century, adjacent to the city walls and close to its western gate, along the main street called Stradun (Platea in the archival sources) (Figure 1), and beside the first church of the civic patron, St Blaise [17,18]. After the construction of the new church dedicated to the holy patron in a more prominent location during the second half of the fourteenth century, the convent’s church became known as St Clare [17,18,19]. The convent was abolished only at the end of the Republic [17,18,19,20], and the complex has been hosting various institutions since. The architecture of the conventual complex, as preserved after the consequent rebuildings, is typical of the Mendicant Orders (Figure 2, Figure 3 and Figure 4). The church, which dates back to around 1300, from the earliest phase of the convent, is a sizeable single-nave space with a rectangular apse and open timberwork. A square cloister from the post-earthquake reconstruction is located south of the church, featuring arcades on the ground floor and single upper storeys pierced with windows. Instead of a closed upper storey, the north wing, which is adjacent to the church, has another arcaded porch on the first floor. The Late-Renaissance form of the Ionic capitals of the upper arcade suggests that this porch dates back to the period preceding the 1667 earthquake. The west wing protrudes between the church and the city walls, almost reaching the city gate. The east wing is joined by a city block comprising several tiny houses in a row.

2. Sources and Methods

The present research aims to reveal the convent’s original medieval forms and contextualise the spatial interventions after the scandalous year 1433 that led to the urban transformation of the broader neighbourhood. The research methodology first addressed historical visual sources: crucial information was gathered from two maps, the Habsburg Cadastral Map from 1837 (from the State Archives in Split, Croatia) [21] (Figure 5) and the map compiled at the beginning of the seventeenth century (from the State Archives in Turin, Italy) [22] (Figure 6), and then from a veduta (cityscape) depicting the city before the 1667 earthquake kept in the Society of Friends of Dubrovnik Antiquities (Figure 7 and Figure 8) (its copy held in the Franciscan friary is better preserved but less accurate) [23,24]. Additionally, a design drawing from 1532/1533 depicting the eastern façade of the convent and its church was consulted [25]. Photographs dating from c. 1900 (published as postcards) are valuable sources for the spaces that connected the nunnery to the public space [26] (Figure 9). These visual sources were analysed in the context of the information provided by the archival documents, starting with the Ordo from 1433 and including all the City Councils’ deliberations until 1450. The spaces recorded in these documents were linked to those depicted in visual sources to define the form of the medieval convent and to discern the spatial transformation that took place in the decade following the scandal. The same methodology was applied to the surrounding public space and private residential buildings.

All other historical visual sources were also reviewed but not utilised because of their unreliability. Local historiographical texts, travelogues, and praises of the city also did not provide detailed descriptions of the convent, undoubtedly due to the authors’ forbidden access to the clausura. The only known textual sources that reveal detailed information about the layout of the spaces inside the convent date to the first half of the fifteenth century: the City Councils’ deliberations, beginning with the Ordo. No similar archival source has been found or published to reveal the other changes during the convent’s long history.

The uniqueness of the Ordo and related deliberations is due to the scandal that the government had to deal with. Late medieval archival documents in Dubrovnik were always produced to record changes. In the given period, the Councils also demanded changes in other city convents. Those were, however, minor interventions in specific parts of the complexes, not providing enough detail to reconstruct these convents’ layouts [9]. The immensity of the scandal in the Poor Clares’ convent provoked numerous changes recorded in the Ordo in detail, providing crucial information for this article. So far, no similar research has been conducted on the convent’s layout after the fifteenth century.

3. Results

This research resulted in a map that provides a schematic and hypothetical visualisation of the Convent of Poor Clares’ layout around the mid-fifteenth century and the location of all the neighbouring buildings and spaces subjected to the transformation (Figure 10). The spatial interventions that included changes to the ecclesiastical, public, and private buildings and spaces are contextualised within the social values of the late medieval Republic of Dubrovnik, providing a comprehension of the governmental, i.e., City Councils’, mechanisms used to preserve social order by regulating the urban fabric.

4. Discussion

4.1. Visual Sources and the Convent in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

The Cadastral map compiled in 1837 (Figure 5) illustrates the perimeter of the convent that resembles the contemporary one described above: the west wing protrudes almost to the city gate, and the east wing is joined to the city block by a tiny building, closing the street between them at its southern end.

In the scholarly literature, this unusual junction was ascribed to the intervention of the Austrian government in the early nineteenth century [27]. This opinion was based on the fact that, after the Great Earthquake, the city was rebuilt following its medieval layout, as had been defined by the Statute, i.e., the compilation of the municipal laws, composed in 1272, with novelties added in 1296 [27,28,29,30,31]. The Statute regulated the placement and width of existing and future streets and, accordingly, the perimeter and size of the blocks. The City Councils had protected open public spaces for centuries, thus protecting the urban layout. Therefore, it is plausible that the closure of the public street, followed by the construction of the building on the site, was possible only after the fall of the Republic. However, the “Turin map” [22] (Figure 6), discovered thirty-three years after Beritić published his study, attests that the convent and the block were already joined. Therefore, it can be concluded that the street was created after the Great Earthquake when the convent was rebuilt, and its size was reduced.

However, this raises the question of the interpretation of the map from Turin: What was the reason for such a junction of a city block with the convent, and when did it occur? The year 1296, when the regulations on the part of the city east of the convent were passed, should be considered a terminus post quem non. The regulations defined the urban raster, prescribing the number, placement, and width of streets and blocks, which remain unaltered today. The reason for joining the block must have been passed before 1296 and followed the decision from 1290 to trust the Poor Clarissan nuns with raising the orphans [6,32]. The nuns were entrusted with the duty until 1432, when the public orphanage (domus misericordiae) was established just a few blocks away [33,34,35]. Having rooms for the orphans in the east wing, separate from the rest of the convent, must have been a pragmatic decision. After the orphanage was relocated, the dwellings must have remained on the convent’s property due to tradition, possession rights, and the need for space in the well-populated nunnery.

Unfortunately, while the “Turin map” offers details of significant public buildings, such as the cathedral and the patron’s church, and the Mendicant friaries, the nunneries—including the Poor Clares’—are depicted only by their perimeters. It seems that the map remained unfinished since the blocks in the southern part of the city are bordered with pale lines, unlike the others, whose perimeters and details are depicted with black lines. However, even if the map had been finished, the question would remain as to what its purpose and sources were and whether the map makers were provided with information on the nunneries.

The drawing from 1532/1533 provides the outline design of the church of St Roch, which was planned to be built east of the convent [25]. Eventually, the church was erected elsewhere, but the drawing offers a street view of the eastern façade of the convent and its church. The rectangular apse had simple semicircular-arched windows secured with iron lattices—two on its eastern and one on its northern façade. The northern part of the east wing of the convent had two similar windows, close to the apse, that probably belonged to the sacristy. The southern part of that wing occupied the city block, as depicted on the “Turin map”. The visible part of its northern façade had no openings.

The visual source depicting the inside of the convent is the veduta (cityscape), kept in the Society of Friends of Dubrovnik Antiquities [23] (Figure 7 and Figure 8). A critical study of this cityscape, through the analysis of several specific buildings, found it reliable in depicting important buildings and most of the city blocks, except a few that are utterly distorted due to the shortening of the inept perspective. The important buildings’ details have been represented with diligence, whereas they are rendered schematically for other buildings. On the cityscape, the convent occupies the same area as it does on the “Turin map.” Its major part is the central courtyard. The church is in the north wing, parallel to the main street. A building with a visible upper floor and roof is depicted north of the church, probably illustrating the northern part of the west wing, protruding almost to the city gate. South of the church and attached to it is a building with a porch, which must have served as an area for sheltered communication between the dormitory and the parlatory in the sacristy. The upper porch, whose Ionic capitals suggest that it was constructed in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, is not visible. The west wing is depicted as lower than the northern one, but it must have had an upper floor since its roof reaches the height of the city walls. On the outer side of the city walls, to the west, is the Puncijela Tower (Figure 3), which derived its name from the corrupted term pulcelle for the Poor Clares. The tower was constructed after the Major Council granted permission for the Poor Clares in 1305 to build it on the convent’s land [36] (Figure 3). To the south and east, the courtyard is separated from the public space by a high wall. Since the cityscape is damaged, the south wing is not discernible. The southern part of the east wing, occupying the city block and enclosed by a high wall, is visible. It seems it consisted of certain law buildings leaning towards the wall, leaving some open space between them.

The veduta also provides important information on the buildings and spaces surrounding the convent. The painting is severely damaged in its lower-left portion, where it depicts the part of the city south of the Convent of Poor Clares (with the city hospital, some private houses, and Saint Mark’s and Saint Andrew’s convents), with only several roofs and façades discernible. It is better preserved in sections depicting the urban fabric east and north of the convent. East of the convent, there are city blocks with houses in rows, separated by narrow streets stretching from south to north and three wider, perpendicular ones. The Great Fountain is located north of the convent—a rounded building with a domed cistern erected from 1437 to 1447 [37]. The convent’s outer courtyard wall stretches from the city walls to the Fountain, including the building (i.e., the northern part of the west wing) and the open space north of the church. It had a rounded arched opening leading to Stradun. A photo from the year 1900 shows its northern side, revealing a simple semicircular-arched portal [26] (Figure 9).

From this analysis, it can be concluded that in the first half of the seventeenth century, the convent consisted of several buildings around the central courtyard: the church to which the north wing with the porch was attached; the tower; the west wing that stretched north of the church; the east wing, occupying the city block and consisting of low houses with some open space between them; and the open space north of the church, separated from the main street by a high wall.

4.2. Archival Sources and the Convent in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century

The 1433 Ordo [16] was the first of forty-one deliberations passed until 1450 aiming at the convent’s spatial isolation. Ordo prescribed all the work that was to be performed, while the deliberations that followed concerned its implementation.

Firstly, the west wing, where the dormitory was situated, had to be isolated from the city walls and their walkways. A wall had to be erected two and a half metres high between the dormitory’s northern and southern gables [38,39]. Additionally, a two-metre-high stone wall had to be constructed above the hanging arches, where the wooden fence was used to protect the walkway on top of the city walls. These hanging semicircular arches, built on the inner side of the wall, are preserved only in the portion of the northern stretch of the city walls [36]. The Ordo prescribed that the wall upon them had to stretch from the western city gate southwards up to the small gate at the end of the street that divided the convent from the hospital. These two walls aimed to prevent communication between the soldiers and the nuns.

Secondly, all the dormitory windows looking to the north, south, west, and east had to be closed with iron lattices and (opaque) glass, except those looking to the garden to the east. This indicates that the dormitory occupied the whole western wing, including the part north of the church and a room on the tower’s first floor. The only windows allowed were those looking at the courtyard with the garden. The convent kitchen and toilet occupied the ground floor of the tower. Their windows also had to be closed with iron lattices and glass. The hole through which the kitchen water was drained had to be reduced so that no person could look through it, and it had to be secured with an iron lattice. The same had to be applied to the toilet hole since “it was large enough so that a man could easily enter the convent”. The windows of the infirmary and the cellar, looking towards south and east, also had to be secured with iron lattices and glass on both the ground and upper floors. This proves that the west wing had two storeys, and the infirmary and the cellar were located in its southern part. Furthermore, the cellar had to be enlarged, occupying the room for servants, which had to be demolished and arranged elsewhere. It is not clear whether there was just a room for servants on the ground floor of the west wing or a separate house, probably wooden, that had to be demolished so that the extension of the cellar could be constructed towards the east. However, the cellar had to have two doors, one from the public space and another leading to the convent. The first had to be walled up for most of the year. Only during the grape harvest (from 15 August until 29 September) did the door leading to the convent have to be walled up, and the other door opened so that laymen could carry in grapes. Meanwhile, the nuns needed to store enough wine in the convent for a month and a half. Walling up the doors was the only secure way to prevent unwanted communication with the nuns and unsupervised entrance to the convent. A hole, seventeen to thirteen centimetres large, had to be opened next to the door leading to the convent so that firewood could be imported since it was forbidden to cut the wood in the convent. Whenever the hole was not in use, it had to be closed with a small door, whose keys would be guarded by the abbess. She also had to hold the keys to the three doors leading to the dormitory. The locks for these doors seem to have been introduced only after the scandal broke. Unfortunately, the source does not reveal their locations.

The only change required in the east wing was the destruction of a solaro. The term (Latin solarium) refers to a part of the building that is exposed to the sun [40]. These small terraces used to be constructed on the tops of roofs, usually, but not exclusively, of wood. It had to be dismantled to disable any communication outside of the clausura. The new house for the servants was to be constructed in the courtyard, on the site of the wood storage. These buildings may have been located in the east wing, which was perceived as suitable for the side rooms after the orphanage was transferred.

Furthermore, the source reveals that the convent had a chapel for nuns next to the church. This chapel might have been located along the western wall of the church, close to the dormitory. The chapel was connected to the church through an opening secured with a grid (parlatory), and the church organ had to be placed more than four metres away from that grid [38,39]. The sacristy, which has been preserved, is placed south of the apse. It also had a parlatory window, which had to be secured with an iron lattice. On the street side, the sacristy, even today, features two windows that were ordered to be closed with glass.

From this analysis, it can be concluded that in the first half of the fifteenth century, the convent consisted of the church and the west wing, which had two floors, with the cellar and infirmary in its southern part; the tower’s ground floor housed the kitchen and the toilet, and its first floor served as the dormitory, while its upper parts were integrated into the defence system; the chapel, with a parlatory, was probably west of the church; the sacristy, also with a parlatory, was south of the apse. Side rooms were planned to be arranged in the courtyard, probably in the east wing, which plausibly remained empty after the relocation of the orphanage (Figure 10).

The Ordo was concluded with the rules on men entering the convent: workers were allowed only after the procurators obtained a permit from the Minor Council, with instructions on entry and the way the workers would carry out their tasks; a chaplain was allowed to visit a sick or dying nun for confession and communion, but during the visit, he had to be accompanied at all times by the abbess and older sisters; in cases of death, two or three friars were allowed to enter to organise the burial. In cases of disobedience, the Ordo did not prescribe the punishment, which was usual in all other deliberations, but left the decision to the Rector and the Minor Council, meaning that the sentence was expected to be highly severe [41,42].

The twenty-seven deliberations that followed were passed to schedule the works listed in the Ordo [43], to decide on funding (since the city covered the costs of materials and workers’ labour) [44], and to purchase building materials and tools from other public construction sites [45]. Another nine deliberations resulted from problems that emerged during the works: in 1435, a convent’s building, or a part of it, collapsed [46]. The new situation required the appointment of a skilled supervisor of the workers [47] and the election of officials, who were all trusted noblemen, to manage the work [48]. The sources do not reveal which building collapsed but only order that another stone wall be dismantled due to its constructive instability [49]. The new problems prolonged the works and demanded extra caution to prevent unwanted and unauthorised visitors to the convent: every day, two noblemen from the Major Council were elected to guard the entrance to the convent from the morning to the end of the second hour of the night, which was around 10 p.m. [8,50]. They were allowed a break for lunch and dinner under the condition that one of them always remained on guard. After 10 p.m., during the night, they were replaced by night guards who regularly walked the main street, but now four of them had to stay by the convent’s entrance. It is not known how long this deliberation remained in force. Only in 1449 was a new one passed, not listed in the Ordo, regarding access to the convent from outside the city walls: the entrance to the space between the walls and the barbicans had to be walled up from both sides of the Puncijela Tower to isolate it from any laymen, especially soldiers [51].

4.3. Urban Transformation as the Result of the Changes in Surrounding Spaces and Buildings

In 1437, the most ambitious project in Dubrovnik in the first half of the fifteenth century was completed: the aqueduct was constructed after the plan and under the supervision of the Engineer Onofrio della Cava from Naples [37,52,53,54]. It was followed by the construction of two fountains: the Great Fountain on the western end of the main street (Figure 11) and the Small Fountain on its eastern end. Their construction was again entrusted to Onofrio and his collaborator, Pietro di Martino from Milan. The verses of the Humanist Ciryacus of Ancona praising this achievement, engraved on the Great Fountain, marked its completion [55,56,57]. The citizens received free running water, flowing abundantly. The affluence enabled a direct water supply to the buildings that the Republic found of particular importance—the Rector’s Palace and the Franciscan and Dominican friaries—for which purpose additional pipes were laid. In 1447, the Senate decided that water should be likewise given to the Poor Clares for their well-being [58]. This water was supposed to flow from the pipes on the outer side of the city walls, being added to those supplying the horses’ trough. However, two years later, the Minor Council passed the deliberation that the water flowing from one of the sixteen Great Fountain’s pipes, placed on the back side of the Fountain, had to be assigned to the nuns [59]. The implementation of this deliberation, as discernible from all the visual sources (each revealing some details), shows that it was not just one section of the Great Fountain dispensed to the convent. Indeed, a quarter of the Fountain and its water was dispensed to the nuns. The reason for such a decision was not based on the amount of water required but on how access to it was arranged. As described above, a high wall was built stretching from the city walls eastwards, reaching the Fountain. South of the Fountain, another wall was constructed, leaving a quarter of the Fountain’s sixteen sections inside the front courtyard of the convent [26] (Figure 8, Figure 9 and Figure 10).

In this way, the city reserved a part of the public space in favour of the convent, which was an exceptional decision in medieval Dubrovnik. It was precisely the public space that the Councils vigorously protected. In the case of any construction in the city, the Rector and all the members of the Minor Council attended the site to approve the perimeter of the future building and to ensure that no public space was going to be occupied [27,60]. With this decision, the convent gained access to the water, and the nuns acquired extra space: an additional courtyard north of the church. This city donation reflects the awareness of all the Councils’ members that the enclosure and the isolation of the nuns had to be levelled by providing them extra space to ease life in seclusion, which was rarely a consequence of their choice. After all, the nuns were their daughters or sisters.

Although the nuns were now away from the sight of citizens on the other side of the convent’s walls, as well as that of soldiers on the fortification’s walkway and of all those passing by the kitchen and toilet outside of the city walls, still the members of the Councils did not think that the nuns were completely protected. Indeed, they were genuinely concerned about the outcome of any communication between a nun and any man, whether he was a cleric or a layman. Therefore, they ordered the windows of surrounding houses overlooking the convent to be closed with iron lattices and glass or walled up. The Ordo prescribed it, pointing to a house belonging to the Benedictine convent of St Andrew, located nearby on the slope of the hill and overlooking the Poor Clares’ convent (Figure 10). Four additional deliberations also demanded that the owners of three neighbouring houses close their windows [61]. The request made no distinction regarding the social groups the owners belonged to. One of them was a commoner, living there with his wife, and others were noblemen from respected kindreds of Sorgo and Bona. The Sorgo family even had to close windows belonging to their sala domus, the most representative room in the house. This practice was not new since, already in 1414, before the scandal, an owner of the house south of the convent was demanded to close all the third- and fourth-floor windows looking to the north and to put iron lattices on those looking eastwards so that no person could protrude their head through the window to look towards the north, that is, to the convent [62]. However, after the scandal, the implementation of that practice was taken more seriously.

The consequence of all the above deliberations was that this part of the city transformed. Dubrovnik, like all the eastern Adriatic cities in the late Middle Ages, had three distinctive characteristics: firstly, the urban area was limited inside the ramparts; secondly, the urban layout was defined and protected by municipal laws; and thirdly, edifices were built of stone and, consequently, highly durable. Therefore, after the initial regulation of 1272, the urban transformation rarely included tearing down an existing building or disrupting the defined city layout. It merely comprised functional adjustments within the existing urban fabric. However, in the case of changes in Dubrovnik after the Clarissan scandal, the scale of the adjustments was such that it was possible to define them as urban transformation. It included interventions in ecclesiastical, public, and private buildings and, even more, in public spaces. Out of love for their daughters and sisters and a desire to provide them with the most comfortable life possible, noblemen decided to sacrifice a significant part of open public space that was extremely valuable and always insufficient in the densely built urban fabric inside the ramparts. It encompassed a large part of the representative space at the very entrance to the city, featuring the Fountain that was praised as a grand achievement of the small Republic, symbolising all the other attainments as well. It also encompassed the streets east and south of the convent, turning them into “blind” streets by closing the windows, depriving the tenants of the houses of communication with the outer world, and forcing them to renounce their living comfort significantly. The city walls (as already mentioned) were fitted with a two-metre-high wall for preventing the soldiers from communicating with the nuns.

The final result of these changes was the urban transformation that granted the nuns free and undisrupted use of their courtyard, the only open space in their strict enclosure.

4.4. Preserving Social Values in Late Medieval Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik Councils’ deliberations were always written down in the shortest possible form, never revealing any more detail than necessary for their implementation and never recording the discussion. Therefore, not much is known about the scandal itself.

The nun in question was Pervula, daughter of Ser Nicola de Tudisio, whose two brothers decided on her destiny after their father’s death [8,63,64]. In that way, the brothers did not have to share the inheritance with their sister. The priest was Antonius Vučičijević from Ston, a small town in the Republic of Dubrovnik. The relationship probably developed during secret conversations at night, of which there is no firm evidence, but the deliberation Contra presbiteros from 1427 indicates it was a common practice [65]. It is one of several deliberations that regulated order and safety in the city during the night, forbidding walking without a candle. The light stated a person’s presence and illuminated their face to identify them. However, keeping discipline in the city required passing the same deliberation repeatedly: this one was recorded in 1424, 1439, 1445, and 1447 [66,67]. A special one was passed in 1427, addressing only priests. It states that if the night guards discovered a priest, or a few of them, walking the city streets after midnight without a candle and honourable company, they should be treated as laymen and imprisoned. In the morning, they were to appear in front of the Rector, who would take their statement, and then they would be sent to the archbishop to decide on the penalty. Both the city and ecclesiastic authorities agreed on the procedure. It seems that the priests, probably the young ones, used to wander the city at night looking for fun, and perhaps, conversations with a nun who lived in a rather loose enclosure led to a love affair. What is known from the sources is that Antonius was accused of the abduction of Pervula [8]. The Senate, however, decided to punish them both. It raises doubts about whether Pervula willingly ran away or was abducted and whether the official records were altered to downplay the shame that fell on the whole Republic and especially on its nobility.

The Senate decided on Pervula’s punishment in May 1434 [68]. The most severe punishment—public humiliation [41,69]—was not imposed in this case because that would further emphasise the shame the scandal caused in the society. Instead, the second most severe, i.e., the prison sentence, was chosen. Although there were women’s prisons alongside the men’s, in the Rector’s Palace, Pervula did not serve her sentence there. For this purpose, a particular room was ordered to be built in the convent courtyard, with only one small window looking into the servants’ dwellings. The window served as a means of delivering Pervula food, wine, and communion and exchanging other necessities as well. Most of the time, it had to be closed with a shutter, whose keys were kept by the abbess. In this way, serving a prison sentence in the convent provided an example and a warning to all other nuns not to dare to break their vows.

5. Conclusions

Between 1433 and 1450, a total of forty-one deliberations were passed, whose implementation resulted in the transformation of the urban landscape and the isolation of the Convent of Poor Clares in the densely built urban fabric. It encompassed changes to the convent’s buildings, which resulted in spatial seclusion, making any unsupervised communication impossible; changes to private buildings, which caused discomfort to tenants by depriving them of the use of their windows; changes to public buildings, which left soldiers in walkways on top of the city walls and barbican passages unable to see the convent’s spaces; and, finally, changes to public spaces, donating a significant part of open public space to the convent. These deliberations ensured the spatial isolation of the nuns but also contributed to easing their lives in the clausura. The deliberation on the prison sentence to be served inside this very convent was the final one by which the nobility of the Republic of Dubrovnik tried to ensure that social values and order were preserved for the future.

Philippus de Diversis from Lucca, the Rector of the Dubrovnik school, clearly expressed what the Convent of Poor Clares meant to the citizens and how they perceived it. In his book Situs aedificiorum, politiae et laudabilium consuetudinum inclitae civitatis Ragusii, written in 1440, he praised the city, its governance, its laws, and its buildings [70,71]. In his writing, he describes the Poor Clares’ convent as the city’s most beautiful and largest one, where noble virgins from Dubrovnik were entirely devoted to God: et unum aliorum omnium pulcherrimum et amplissimum devotissime virginis sanctae Clarae, discipula quae fuit sancti Francisci ubi solum nobiles Ragusinae virgines Deo dedicantur ut plurimum.