Anonymous was woman.

These motets were published decades before any other printed music that is proven to be for convents, but I felt certain they were written for nuns by a fellow nun: a nun princess called Suor Leonora d’Este. [...]

Leonora (1515-75) was the only surviving daughter of Lucrezia Borgia and her third husband, Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara. Lucrezia died when Leonora was only four, of complications after the birth of what was possibly her 10th child. Leonora was raised at the convent of Corpus Domini in Ferrara, where her mother was buried, because there was no woman of her rank to raise her at court. Aged eight, she decided to enter the convent permanently, and became abbess when she was 18. This may seem young for a woman to be in charge, but her mother was appointed Governor of Spoleto at only 19 – perhaps she had inherited her mother’s administrative ability. She may have chosen to become a nun rather than be a marriageable bargaining chip for her father, and so she could do the things she most wanted to do – play and study music – without the distraction of childbearing or politics. She would have learned from her mother’s experience what a mixed blessing it was to be the daughter of a powerful family.

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