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Intro
A crowd gathers at the Capuchin church in Madrid to hear the famed monk Ambrosio speak. There, the cavalier Lorenzo meets and develops feelings for young, virtuous Antonia. He decides he must marry her. Antonia has recently returned to Spain with her mother, Elvira, following the death of Elvira’s husband, son of a marquis. The old marquis disapproved of his son’s marriage to Elvira and has since disowned Elvira and her daughter, though he continued to support them financially. However, the old marquis has recently died, and so Elvira has returned to Spain to ask the marquis’s son to continue the payments. Lorenzo happens to know the marquis’s son well and offers to put in a good word for Elvira and Antonia.
At the monastery later, Ambrosio reflects on his pious reputation and basks in vanity. Later, he intercepts a letter from one of the nuns, Agnes. Ambrosio reads the letter, which is from Agnes’s lover, Raymond, and details the couple’s plans to elope. Agnes reveals to Ambrosio that she is pregnant with her lover’s child. She begs him not to inform the prioress of her sins, but Ambrosio refuses, and the prioress vows to unleash a most severe punishment on Agnes.
When Agnes’s brother—Lorenzo—later comes to speak with Agnes, the prioress of the convent insists that Agnes has fallen ill and can’t see any visitors. Lorenzo is suspicious of the prioress’s claims but can’t prove that she is lying. While at the monastery, Lorenzo has a chance encounter with Raymond and learns of his relationship with Agnes. Though Lorenzo initially curses Raymond for taking his sister’s virtue, having believed petty lies his aunt the baroness told him about Agnes’s lover, he changes his mind after hearing Raymond’s side of the story and resolves to find Agnes and help orchestrate her and Raymond’s elopement.
Meanwhile, Ambrosio faces challenges of his own when his young mentee, a novice monk named Rosario, reveals himself to be a woman named Matilda. Matilda explains that she is in love with Ambrosio and disguised herself as a young boy in order to get close to him. Ambrosio tries to suppress his lust for Matilda, but he soon succumbs to temptation, having sex with her and breaking his vow of celibacy.
Later, Elvira asks to speak with Lorenzo. She thanks him for agreeing to put in a good word with the old marquis but prohibits him from courting Antonia until the old marquis has approved of the engagement.
Lorenzo and Raymond continue their efforts to free Agnes. The men regularly visit the convent, desperate to speak with Agnes. Each time, the prioress insists that Agnes is too sick to receive visitors. Lorenzo eventually writes to the cardinal duke of Lerma and receives special permission to release Agnes from her duties as a nun. When he tells the prioress about this, she reveals that Agnes has died. Raymond, overcome with grief, falls ill. Lorenzo, meanwhile, is convinced the prioress is lying.
Meanwhile, Ambrosio struggles with conflicted feelings over his recently broken vows. He feels considerable guilt and shame over his sexual encounter with Matilda, but he finds that his sin has unleashed inner desires he is no longer able to suppress. This is especially true after he meets Antonia, who has come to the monastery to ask Ambrosio to pray for Elvira, since Elvira has fallen gravely ill. With Matilda’s help, Ambrosio schemes to bring about Antonia’s ruin. Despite his vow never to leave the confines of the monastery, Ambrosio wraps his head in his cowl to disguise himself and heads to Elvira’s apartment. Though he does so under the guise of praying for Elvira, his ulterior motive is to seduce Antonia. After his initial visit, Ambrosio returns to Elvira’s apartment daily, making discreet passes at Antonia. Though Antonia is too innocent to understand Ambrosio’s intentions, Elvira catches on and prohibits Ambrosio from visiting again.
Determined to do whatever it takes to have Antonia, Ambrosio accepts Matilda’s offer to use sorcery. Matilda takes Ambrosio into the monastery’s crypt and calls upon the devil to help them. She manifests a branch of enchanted myrtle, explaining that it will put Antonia into a deep sleep, allowing Ambrosio to have sex with her. When Antonia awakes in the morning, she’ll know she was violated but won’t know who is responsible—allowing Ambrosio to act on his lust while preserving his devout reputation.
Later that night, Ambrosio sneaks into Elvira’s apartment with the enchanted myrtle, which puts Antonia under a spell, just as Matilda told him it would. But Elvira walks in on Ambrosio before he has raped Antonia. In a panic, he suffocates Elvira to death after she threatens to tell everyone about his sins. He manages to leave the apartment and return to the monastery undetected.
Lorenzo continues to investigate Agnes’s strange disappearance with the help of Raymond’s loyal page, Theodore. Eventually, an elderly nun named Mother St. Ursula discreetly passes them a note detailing the prioress’s supposed murder of Agnes. Mother St. Ursula wishes to see the prioress held accountable for her murderous schemes, and she requests that Lorenzo and Raymond arrange to bring troops to the upcoming procession that will be held at the convent to honor the festival day of St. Clare.
Antonia, meanwhile, is overcome with grief following her mother’s death, which everyone has assumed was the result of natural causes. Ambrosio continues his quest to have Antonia and begins to visit the grieving girl. Unaware of Ambrosio’s crime, Antonia gratefully accepts his comfort. With Matilda’s help, Ambrosio slips Antonia something that temporarily mimics the effects of death, allowing him to have Antonia’s apparent corpse buried in the convent’s crypt.
Meanwhile, Lorenzo arrives at the procession for St. Clare with troops, as Mother St. Ursula instructed him to do. Mother St. Ursula announces the prioress’s crimes to the gathered crowd, who responds with outrage, murdering the prioress before descending on the convent in retaliation.
Meanwhile, Ambrosio has taken advantage of the day’s festivities to sneak into the crypt in anticipation of Antonia’s awakening. Antonia emerges from her artificial “death,” she is at first relieved to be in Ambrosio’s company, assuming he will help her. Her hope soon fades when Ambrosio reveals his true intentions to keep her prisoner in the crypt so that he can use her however he pleases. Ambrosio proceeds to rape Antonia. When she attempts to escape, he stabs her. Lorenzo and his troops have also found their way into the crypt. They stumble upon Ambrosio and Antonia before Ambrosio can flee. One of Lorenzo’s men takes Ambrosio prisoner, and Lorenzo is able to briefly hold his beloved in his arms before she dies.
Lorenzo also finds Agnes imprisoned deep within the crypt, holding the decaying remains of her baby in her arms. Though traumatized and malnourished, she manages to make a full recovery. She and Raymond are reunited and eventually marry. Lorenzo develops feelings for Virginia, the young nun who nurses Agnes back to help, and they later marry.
Ambrosio and Matilda are brought before the Inquisition for their various sins. After Ambrosio is found guilty, Matilda convinces him to sell his soul to the devil in order to avoid being burned at the stake. Ambrosio does so, and it’s then that he comes face to face with Lucifer, who conveys to him a series of unsettling truths: Matilda was a demon Lucifer sent to tempt Ambrosio. Also, Ambrosio is the son of Elvira and the brother of Antonia—meaning that in addition to being guilty of the sins of sorcery and murder, Ambrosio has also committed incest and raped his own sister. Before sending his soul to hell to suffer for all eternity, Lucifer carries Ambrosio high into the sky and drops him onto some sharp rocks. Ambrosio remains alive for six days as his mangled body is eaten by insects and his eyes are plucked out by eagles.
