Essene
Essene is about daily life in a Benedictine monastery and the resolution of conflict between personal needs and the institutional and organizational priorities of the community. In the Order, where the focus of life is the relationship of individual work and worship to the community as a whole, the brethren must cope with the same issues that arise in any community: rules, work, worship, values, love, and play.
The White Sister
Angela Chiaromonte is the daughter of a wealthy Italian prince who is killed in a fall from his horse. Though Angela stands to inherit half of a large estate, her older half-sister burns the will and thus inherits everything herself, throwing Angela into poverty. Fortunately, Angela is engaged to marry dashing Captain Giovanni Severi - but he soon is captured by Arabs while on an expedition to Africa. Believing him dead, Angela, dedicating her life to his memory, becomes a nun, unaware that her lover has escaped his captors and is returning to Italy. The dramatic climax takes place against a backdrop of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.