The Monk: A Romance

Three days after Antonia’s death, it is the night of the Festival of St. Clare, the most important celebration for the Convent of St. Clare. The streets throng with people eager to witness the elaborate religious processionals that mark the festival. The crowd admires the beautiful parade of nuns, relics of the saint, and—most impressively—a jeweled throne carried through the air. On this sits the most beautiful woman in Madrid, selected each year to represent St. Clare in the procession.

Don Lorenzo, Don Raymond, armed men, and religious officials representing the Spanish Inquisition wait outside the convent with an arrest order for the prioress. When the prioress emerges, the group moves to arrest her, and she calls on the crowd to defend her. Mother St. Ursula appears and, taking the jeweled throne for herself, promises the crowd to reveal the prioress’s crimes.

The crowd listens as Mother St. Ursula describes the prioress’s treatment of Agnes. Following her discovery of Agnes’s pregnancy and plan to elope, the prioress insisted that Agnes be punished using the oldest and most severe rules of the order, which require that Agnes be imprisoned and starved to death. The other nuns refused to enact this punishment.