Sister Ildebranda ~ 17" Porcelain Nun Doll ~ Paranormal ~ Strange Woman ~ Lurid Past ~ Seeking Icons

Oh, Ildebranda.  She is an Italian woman who was a nun out of necessity.  Lisa's friend in Rome, the one who sends us the really weird vessels like the Stregherian Witches and the weird Roman vessels - she found Ildebranda in an antique shop right outside of Rome.  She knew the vessel was haunted, as she was a very experienced spiritkeeper.  She tried keeping her for a while but the two had some serious personality clashes.  Ildebranda is a wild woman.  Incorrigible, unkempt, corrupt, and "not suitable for domestication" - is what the local Priest wrote on her paperwork.  She was "sentenced" to life in the convent because her family was wealthy, had her family been poor, she would have been sold to a brothel.  Her crimes?  Dancing (tempting men with her body), singing (tempting men with her voice), cooking!! (tempting men with the smells of her food) and "having unnatural friendships with women (no, she was not a lesbian, as so many "forced nuns" were, but she was an outspoken woman who told other women how to stand up for themselves).  After so many complaints by the local men and angry husbands, Ildebranda was hauled into the church and sentenced to the convent.  She was 19.  THIS WAS IN 1962! Not some medieval era!!!  I find it to be shocking that this could happen in 1962.  But women could not even VOTE in Italy until 1945, so I can imagine there were some seriously backward ass areas.  I'm surprised they did not burn her at the stake or accuse her of witchcraft.  Because she is rather strange...  She stayed in the convent for 24 years before she died there.  Ildebranda is a sort of eccentric woman who had a very free spirit and it could not be stifled by life in the convent.  She found every loophole she could find.  She lived a very interesting life.  She would often get in trouble for encouraging other women to break the strict rules of being locked inside the convent.  There were ways around this rule.  Opening the doors and singing would bring people in out of curiosity, and its a nun's job to feed anyone who comes to their doors.  So Ildebranda began a sort of tradition of these "impromptu" dinner parties that would begin with her amazing singing, luring the men and some women inside to eat.  The other nuns, most as starved for human interaction as she was, went along with her.  Of course, they would end up in trouble, but it was worth it.  Occasionally, they would receive a wayward priest into the fold, someone who was in trouble of their own, and Ildebranda always seemed to know.  If someone was sent there for having a sexual affair at their church, she made sure to tempt him into having another one.  She slept with many of the priests.  Then they would get sent away, and another one would come to replace them.  Ildebranda outlived all the older, meaner nuns, and was soon in a leadership position.  One of the wayward priests they had for a short time told Ildebranda about the secret occultism going on in the Vatican, and how certain Icons and reliquaries from certain saints were used in occult rituals of the church itself.  She became obsessed with these relics.  She would write to other convents and ask for these reliquaries, "in the name of the church" and they would send them for her to display in the chapel.  these relics never made it to the chapel, she kept a huge collection of them in a stash spot in her room.  After she died, they found hundreds of "stolen relics" hidden behind the bricks there.  I think it is important to note that many nuns would get pregnant in the convent.  This was an unacceptable fate, and many would end up poisoned or taken to a special "mother" at a different convent, one who was well-versed in herbal alchemy.  When Ildebranda found herself pregnant, she fully believed the icons and reliquaries she had stashed in the wall would solve her problem.  She had told no one, but the priest whom she had been sleeping with noticed her baby bump.  She was poisoned, without her knowledge, and when they dressed her for burial, they found 11 coin-shaped gold icon reliquaries shoved up where the sun doesn't shine.  She had been waiting for the icons to "work".  It's a shame she did not know more about biology.  Ildebranda haunted the walls of the monastery of Marradi for many years.  It is STILL a working convent.  She doesn't tell us how she came to attach herself to the nun doll.    I was supposed to put her in the shop a week or so ago, but she wanted to talk and talk and talk.  And what she really wanted, was for me to find her an Icon of St Gertrude of Nivelles.  Now, I sometimes do have a large collection of Catholic relics and icons, but not lately.  I searched the house and could not find her what she wanted.  She would have been happy with a saint card or a charm, but I had nothing.  Perhaps her new caregiver will find her one?  She has also asked for icons and relics of St. Anthony of Padua, and  St. Kateri Tekakwitha.  She is an interesting collector of Icons, and I am guessing she never had one from these particular saints.  I find her to be so weird and amazing.  And her life was so interesting.  She was just a young girl, being wild and free, and she was basically imprisoned by her own family and society.  She is extremely active and she is smart.  She likes to read.  She can write music during automatic writing sessions, so that is cool and unusual.  She loves bells and divining rods.  She does really well with the spirit box and with EVPs.  She has even used the Ouija without telling us it's "evil" as many of our other nun spirits have said.  We have heard her singing and her voice is like an angel! We hear this multiple times a day in every room she is in.   She has a thing for religious icons and things like reliquaries. Find her the items she is seeking.  She is an interesting woman.  

About the doll, she is a 17" nun doll and she will come with a doll stand and the red rosaries she holds