The Monk by Matthew G. Lewis, terrible book and one of the peaks of the Gothic novel, was released in March 1796, immediately attracting the interest and amazement of audiences and critics ...
However, since its appearance the work was criticized as corrupt and blasphemous by the sectors more attached to the sacrosanct moral and religious values, sparing angry epithets condemned by the libertine, impious and godless. The Coleridge praises his own imaginative power, but adds that the work exudes a moral poison that literary successes are aggravating. H. P. Lovecraft considered "a masterpiece of nightmare whose general court gothic elements are seasoned with a host of macabre aspect."
The novel introduces us to a Spanish monk named Ambrosio, who has been a deeply virtuous becomes tempted by the devil in the guise of Matilde maid. Finally, Ambrosio, sentenced to die at the hands of the Inquisition, escaped punishment at the expense of selling his soul to the devil.