During the 18th century Christianity in Bilad al-Sham underwent dramatic transformations. Underpinning these changes was the confluence of an aggressive Latin missionary movement, the rise of a prosperous local Christian bourgeoisie and a religiously-grounded intellectual renaissance. Latin missionaries and a new generation of local Catholic clerics attempted to “modernize” Christianity and to transform it from a diffuse religious culture to a disciplined and disciplining religious faith. Both groups saw women as key to this process. They were the mothers who would raise Christian children, and they were the conduits for bringing the new religion into the most intimate aspects of society. Simultaneously, these competing visions of “modern” Catholicism created a space within the religious landscape of the Levant allowing some (overwhelmingly Aleppan) women to construct and advance their own alternative notions of Christianity. A key episode in this long history centered on Hindiyya al-‘Ujaimi, an Aleppan Maronite visionary woman who occupied the heart of a political and religious maelstrom traversing the better half of the 18th century. Through her vivid and erotic visions of Christ, Hindiyya gained renown as a living saint among most of the Maronite clergy and populace who saw her as symbol and tool for an effervescent “Eastern” Christianity. Latin missionaries, the Vatican and some local opponents regarded her at best as a deluded woman, but more frequently as a fallen woman who dabbled in satanic witchcraft, and who—like the “strange traditions of the East”—had up-ended the gender hierarchy within the Church. After a brief survey of the story of Hindiyya, this paper will focus on the Vatican inquisition of Hindiyya in the 1770s. In particular, it will analyze the narratives of passion, sexuality, demonic possession and exorcisms which came to the fore during the deposition of nuns, priests and bishops. The paper will take us from the eroticism of Hindiyya’s spiritual and physical union with Christ, to the purported midnight liaisons within the convent, to the emergence of a religious fraternity in Aleppo whose central rituals involved sexual practices. These scintillating tales illustrate how sexuality was publicly construed as part of social relations but also as a manifestation of anxieties about the changing religious and secular worlds. Thus, rather than a private enclosure of “virgin” women, I approach the convent as both a lens that refracts the tensions of the larger society, even as it shapes ideas about religion, sexuality, and gender roles.