Early Nineteenth-Century Women Interpret Scripture in New Ways for New Times

Reading with our Foresisters: Aguilar, King, McAuley and Schimmelpenninck— Early Nineteenth-Century Women Interpret Scripture in New Ways for New Times

Elizabeth Mary Davis

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Regis College and the Graduate Centre for Theological Studies of the Toronto School of Theology. In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Theology awarded by Regis College and the University of Toronto.

Reading with our Foresisters: Aguilar, King, McAuley and Schimmelpenninck— Early Nineteenth-Century Women Interpret Scripture in New Ways for New Times

Elizabeth Mary Davis

Doctor of Theology

Regis College and The University of Toronto

2019

Abstract

Biblical hermeneutics today is marked by increased attention to women’s experience and voices in interpretation, the illustration of alternatives to the historical-critical approach to create a plurality of interpretation as the interpretive norm, exploration of the social location of earlier interpreters, determination of authority for biblical interpretation, and expansion of hermeneutics to include praxis (a manifestation of embodied or lived theology).

This thesis shows that these elements are not completely new, but they are actually embedded in scriptural interpretation from two hundred years ago. The exploration of the biblical interpretation of four women—Grace Aguilar, Frances Elizabeth King, Catherine

McAuley and Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck—who lived at the same time in the early nineteenth century in the same geographic region and who represent the spectrum of readers of the Bible, concludes that the interpretive works of these four women were prototypical of and anticipated these elements.

To guide this exploration, the thesis appropriates the construct of the hermeneutic triangle, examining the social location of the four women, their texts about the Bible and the hermeneutic by which they interpreted the biblical texts. In so doing, it shows that these women, from very different religious traditions, intentionally used the Bible to bring about social change and intuitively used the Bible to legitimate their authority to do so.

iii

Acknowledgements

Because four women (Grace Aguilar, Frances Elizabeth King, Catherine McAuley and Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck) lived in a time of significant social change, loved their holy books and used what they understood as God’s Word to positively influence social change, I was able to write this thesis. Because one of the women, Catherine McAuley, founded the Congregation to which I belong, I was able to write this thesis.

Because my parents, Michael and Mary Davis, and my sisters and brothers gave me the love, the confidence and the energy to follow my dreams, I was able to write this thesis. Because the members of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy believed in me and in my love for Scripture, I was able to write this thesis. Because Mary Sullivan, rsm, constantly encouraged me to write about our founder’s love for Scripture, I was able to write this thesis. Because the Sisters and staff at Loretto College gave me a warm and welcoming home in Toronto, I was able to complete this thesis.

Because Professor Michael Kolarcik, sj, and the faculty and administration of Regis College trusted in a retired health administrator’s passion for the Old Testament and because Toronto School of Theology professors (including Brian Peckham, sj, and Gerald Sheppard both now deceased) taught me so much, I was able to write this thesis. Because Professor Marion Taylor awakened my interest in women interpreters of the nineteenth century and because she affirmed me throughout this whole journey, I was able to write and complete this thesis.

Because the administrative staff at Regis College and the Toronto School of Theology as well as my editor worked with such diligence and patience, I was able to complete this thesis.

It is said of Woman Wisdom (Ws 7:27-28), “In every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets.” I am deeply grateful for these friends of God and prophets who have walked before me and with me. To each and every one of them, I say thank you, and again thank you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... viii

Introduction ...... 1

The Thesis Statement ...... 2 The Context in which the Thesis is Being Developed ...... 2 Methodology and Approach ...... 4

Chapter 1: The New Situation: Social Location of the Four Women ...... 12

New Situation: Social Political and Religious Context ...... 12 Significant Constitutional Change ...... 13 Dramatic Effects of Legislation ...... 14 Aftermath of the Industrial Revolution ...... 16 Evolution of the Middle Class ...... 17 Movements against the Slave Trade and Slavery ...... 19 The Jewish Enlightenment ...... 21 Loss of Church Influence ...... 25 Spread of the Evangelical Movement ...... 26 Influence of Romanticism ...... 28 Women’s Engagement in Philanthropy, Education and Writing ...... 30 Plurality of Approaches to Biblical Interpretation ...... 41 New Situation: Social Location of the Four Women ...... 45 Grace Aguilar: Facts of Blood ...... 46 Grace Aguilar: Facts of Bread ...... 47 The Community for whom Aguilar Wrote ...... 49 Frances Elizabeth King: Facts of Blood...... 52 Frances Elizabeth King: Facts of Bread...... 54 The Community for Whom King Wrote ...... 57 Catherine McAuley: Facts of Blood ...... 59 Catherine McAuley: Facts of Bread ...... 62 The Community for Whom McAuley Wrote ...... 63 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck: Facts of Blood ...... 66 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck: Facts of Blood ...... 67 The Community for Whom Schimmelpenninck Wrote ...... 70 Interactions among Faith Traditions ...... 72

Chapter 2: The Text: The Interpretive Works of the Four Women ...... 78

The Interpretive Works of Grace Aguilar ...... 79 Aguilar’s Sources ...... 91

The Interpretive Works of Frances Elizabeth King ...... 93 King’s Sources ...... 99 The Interpretive Works of Catherine McAuley ...... 101 McAuley’s Sources ...... 105 The Interpretive Works of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck ...... 111 Schimmelpenninck’s Sources ...... 120 Common Sources ...... 125 Biblical Women: Comparisons among the Interpreters ...... 129

Chapter 3: The Hermeneutic by which the Old is Adapted to the New ...... 145

Scripture Read by the Four Women...... 146 The Bible as the Inspired Word of God ...... 148 The God of the Bible as the God of Love ...... 154 Scripture as Foundational to the Respective Faith Traditions ...... 162 Readers of the Bible ...... 168 Special Meaning for Women ...... 170 Manner of Reading the Bible ...... 176 The Bible and Education ...... 182 The Bible as Impetus for Action ...... 185 Interpretation for Social Change ...... 191 Grace Aguilar ...... 192 Catherine McAuley ...... 197 Mary Anne Schimmelepnninck ...... 200 Frances Elizabeth King ...... 205 Similarity among the Four Women...... 207 Authority to Interpret ...... 209 Grace Aguilar ...... 209 Frances Elizabeth King ...... 212 Catherine McAuley ...... 214 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck ...... 215

Chapter 4: integration for Interpretation Today ...... 218

Attention to Women’s Experience and Voices in Biblical Interpretation ...... 218 Plurality of Interpretation as the Interpretive Norm ...... 220 Exploration of Social Location of Earlier Interpreters ...... 224 Expansion of Authority for Biblical Interpretation ...... 226 Expansion of Hermeneutics to Include Praxis ...... 230

Conclusion ...... 234

Bibliography ...... 237

Grace Aguilar ...... 237 Frances Elizabeth King ...... 242 Catherine McAuley ...... 243 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck ...... 246 Contextual Theology ...... 248 History...... 249 Interpretation ...... 254 Social Location/Cultural Criticism ...... 257

vii

List of Figures and Tables

Figure 1: Hermeneutic Triangle ...... 6

Table 1: Application of Thesis to Hermeneutic Triangle ...... 7

viii

INTRODUCTION

Until you arose, it has, in modern times, never been the case, that a woman in Israel should stand forth the public advocate of the faith of Israel.1 [see Judg 5:7, describing Grace Aguilar]

For a period of more than ten years, was there a mother to the poor, a “Dorcas, full of good works and alms-deeds which she did.”2 [see Acts 9:36, describing Frances Elizabeth King]

She seemed to inherit the great gift bestowed by God on the Prophet Isaias who said, ‘The Lord hath given me a learned tongue, whereby to support with a word him that is weary’.3 [see Isa 50:4, describing Catherine McAuley]

Her countenance, to all who looked upon it, like that of Moses when he came down from the mount, seemed lighted up by the Divine glory.4 [see Exod 34:29 and 2 Cor 3:7, describing Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck]

These biblical images ascribed to four women, who were contemporaries in the early nineteenth century and who dared to interpret independently the meaning of the scriptures, reflect the impact their biblical interpretation made on the communities by whom their works were received. The academy in Britain in the early nineteenth century had nurtured the roots of the historical-critical method of interpreting scripture.5 The synagogue and the Church declared the right to interpret the texts. However, in that same society and in that same time period, there were women’s authoritative interpretive

1 A tribute given by three hundred Jewish women to Aguilar just before her death, recorded in The Jewish Chronicle, July 9, 1847, 178. 2 [John Collinson], “Memoir of the Author,” in Female Scripture Characters Exemplifying Female Virtues by Mrs King with a Memoir of the Author, 12th ed., by Frances Elizabeth King (London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1833), vii. 3 Mary Ann Doyle, “The Annals of the Sisters of Mercy, St. Joseph’s, Tullamore,” in Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy, ed. Mary C. Sullivan (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 67. Doyle was a member of McAuley’s first religious community. 4 Christiana Hankin, Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1858), 542. 5 See introductions to John Sandys-Wunsch, What Have They Done to the Bible?: A History of Modern Biblical Interpretation (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2005), 1–25; and William Yarchin, History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), xi–xxx.

2 voices which were linked to their respective religious traditions but were distinct from those voices in the academy and the church/synagogue.

The Thesis Statement

The thesis of this work is that, by making visible, analyzing and comparing the scriptural interpretation of four women who lived at the same time in the same geographic region and who represent the spectrum of readers of the Bible, it is possible to show that these women, from very different religious traditions, intentionally used the Bible to bring about social change and intuitively used the Bible to legitimate their authority to do so. The interpretive works of these four women are prototypical of or anticipate many elements of hermeneutics now deemed legitimate nearly two hundred years after they wrote: increased attention to women’s experience and voices in biblical interpretation, the illustration of alternatives to the historical critical approach to create a plurality of interpretation as the interpretive norm, exploration of the social location of earlier interpreters, determination of authority for biblical interpretation, and expansion of hermeneutics to include praxis—a manifestation of embodied or lived theology.6

The Context within which the Thesis is Being Developed

To study the interpretive works of these four women in the context of twenty-first century hermeneutics is not to apply anachronistically rules non-existent in the early nineteenth century. Rather, such a study does three things: it makes more visible the writings of these women who lived on the margins of the official tradition (either the academy or the church/synagogue); it legitimates the validity and credibility of their interpretive works, a legitimacy given them in their own time by their receiving communities but denied by the academic and religious authorities; and it strengthens the validity and deepens the

6 Praxis here is understood as reflective and reflected action emerging out of a theology for liberation and transformation. David Tracy defined praxis in this way: "Praxis, of course, is not to be identified with practice. Rather praxis is correctly understood as the critical relationship between theory and practice whereby each is dialectically influenced and transformed by the other." David Tracey, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1975), 243.

3 understanding of these hermeneutical elements today by illustrating their presence in interpretation by contemporaries of Schleiermacher.7

To develop this thesis, the interpretative works of four women will be studied. Grace Aguilar (1816-1847), Frances Elizabeth King (1757-1821), Catherine McAuley (1778- 1841), and Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (1778-1856) lived in Britain or Ireland during the pivotal years of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when the Bible was losing its absolute authority and the roots of historical criticism were taking hold in Britain and Europe.8 Forerunners and founders of historical criticism—Schleiermacher, Eichhorn, Gabler and de Wette—were all contemporaries of the four women. This time period influenced by the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the American and French Revolutions is described by The Cambridge History of Christianity as a period of “Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution.”9

The four women reflect the spectrum of readers of the Bible in their time—a Jewish woman (Aguilar) and three Christian women across the theological and ecclesial expanse of Christianity (King—Church of England, McAuley—Catholic, and Schimmelpenninck—Dissenter: Quaker/Methodist/Moravian). Although they were contemporaries living in the same region, as far as can be ascertained, they did not know each other. They were members of the middle class and, like all women of the time, were prohibited from studying or teaching at the university and from membership in their religious hierarchies. All four had work published related to scriptural interpretation and used literary genres of exegesis, commentary and treatise. However, the literary genres they more frequently used were not these traditional literary genres but poetry, short story, novel, letter, biography, religious tract, midrash, prayers and retreat instruction. Their works were rooted in and faithful to their respective religious traditions. All the

7 Schleiermacher who initiated the development of hermeneutics laid the foundation for the critical awareness and acceptance of these hermeneutical elements in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. 8 See the introductions in Sandys-Wunsch (“Introduction to the Nature and Concerns of Biblical Exegesis”) and Yarchin (“Introduction: History of Biblical Interpretation”). 9 Stewart J. Brown and Timothy Tackett, eds., The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 7, Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

4 women were active publicly in leadership roles. All were involved in social action oriented to social change.

Methodology and Approach

This thesis assumes that “the afterlife of the Bible has been infinitely more influential, in every way—theologically, politically, culturally and aesthetically—than its ancient near- eastern prehistory.”10 Today reception history or impact history is becoming a more accepted form of biblical criticism, described succinctly by Low: “The most basic meaning of reception theory is a move from focusing on the original author(s) of the text to the readers of the text . . . and a sense of the importance of, or the impact that, biblical literature has on society in a dynamic relationship between cultures and biblical texts. The focus becomes not just on readers, but the relationship between the Bible and people, the creative interactions between readers, texts, and cultures.”11

This thesis falls within the domain of reception or impact history to the extent that it traces creative interactions among the text, the reader and cultures within a specific social location. Taylor and Weir speak about reception history and women’s work:

There are three stages in the work of listening to women’s voices from the past in biblical studies. Women’s interpretive writings need to be first recovered, then analyzed, and finally integrated into the history of biblical interpretation. . . . All three tasks—recovery, analysis and integration—continue to be important in the field of reception history.12

In the introduction of her compilation of the oral instructions of McAuley, Sullivan speaks to the “integration” dimension of women’s interpretive writings:

10 John F. A. Sawyer, “The Role of Reception Theory, Reader-Response Criticism and/or Impact History in the Study of the Bible: Definition and Evaluation,” (Paper presented at the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting, San Antonio, Texas, in November 2004), accessed May 23, 2010, http://bbibcomm. info/?page_id=183. 11 Katherine Low, “Pairing Up: Reception History and Gender Theory,” The Bible and Interpretation, August 2013, http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/2013/08/low378015.shtml. 12 Marion Taylor and Heather E. Weir, eds., Women in the Story of Jesus: The Gospels through the Eyes of Nineteenth-Century Female Biblical Interpreters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 2–3.

Resolving any tension one might experience in reading Catherine’s [McAuley’s] instructions today calls for what may be called a fusion of horizons—that is, a mutual listening and critical questioning between Catherine and the present day “hearer” of her instructions. This interchange calls for a generous willingness to dialogue with her and her text; to seek to get beneath the archaic words and concepts she sometimes uses to what they fundamentally say; to ask in what sense or in what way her advice still applies, or now needs correction, amplification or qualification; and to consider whether and to what extent her words continue to speak to what may be truly perennial in Christian and vowed religious life.13

Unlike most reception history studies, this thesis does not focus on one biblical text but on the Bible or Tanak with attention to multiple texts interpreted by the four women. In doing so, it utilizes the hermeneutic triangle and two supporting methodologies, which will be slightly adapted for the thesis: the elements of contextual interpretation14 and the categories within social location.15 Within the field of reception/impact history, there is not yet any defined methodology to determine impact or level of influence of the interpretation of the text on the culture. Therefore, this thesis will describe the intentional ways in which the women used scripture to effect change, naming possible causal effects.

The term hermeneutic triangle is used to help readers understand the diverse elements of hermeneutics and the interaction among those elements: the new situation being addressed, the old tradition or text being recited, and the hermeneutic by which the old was adapted to speak to the new.16 Interacting among these three elements are the interpreter and the community receiving the interpretation (see the diagram below):

13 Mary C. Sullivan, A Shining Lamp: The Oral Instructions of Catherine McAuley (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 22. Sullivan takes the term “fusion of horizons” from Spirituality and History: Questions of Interpretation and Method by Philip Sheldrake (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 173. Sheldrake is following the interpretive approach of Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method (London: Sheed and Ward, 1979). 14 Adapted from Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002), 5–7. 15 Adapted from Mary Ann Tolbert, “The Politics and Poetics of Location,” in Reading from This Place, vol. 1, Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States, ed. F. F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 311–2 . 16 James Sanders, Canon and Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 77–8; and James Sanders, From Sacred Story to Sacred Text (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 87–105. There are various descriptions of the hermeneutic triangle (e.g., the interpretive triangle— author/text/reader, the semiotic triangle—concept/symbol/object, the mediational triangle— symbol/reference/referent). The theologian Dupuis speaks of the hermeneutical triangle as “text/context/interpreter” in Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism by Jacques Dupuis (Maryknoll: Orbis 1997), 13–19. In works of biblical interpretation today, the term is normally used

Usually in biblical interpretation, the hermeneutic triangle holds the Bible or Tanak to be the text. However, this thesis applies the template in a slightly different way. The Bible or Tanak and its interpretation remain the focus, but this adaptation of the hermeneutic triangle helps the reader understand the complex manner in which the Holy Books were interpreted by the women whose works are being assessed. In this appropriation of the hermeneutic triangle, the new situation becomes the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain when the four women lived, the text the women’s interpretive works related to the Bible or Tanak, and the hermeneutic by which the old is adapted to the new the interpretative methods the women used to interpret the biblical texts, the intentional ways in which they used scripture to effect social change, and the authority that they claimed for their interpretation.

The chapters reflect the elements of the hermeneutic triangle. The following table shows the components of the adapted hermeneutic triangle used in the thesis.

without attribution. Sanders’ description of the three elements interacting in the triangle is the most appropriate framework to support the development of this thesis.

Table 1: Application of Thesis to Hermeneutic Triangle

TRIANGLE APPLICATION IN THESIS THESIS ELEMENT CHAPTER • Late 18th and early 19th Century Britain and New Situation/ Ireland Contexts • Social Location of Four Women One • Communities for whom the interpretation is done Text • Works of Four Women and their approach to Two interpretation of Bible/Tanak • Interpretative methods Hermeneutic • Intentional use for social change Three • Authority claimed Impact • Anticipation/prototype of elements of modern Four hermeneutics Interpreter • Four Women In all chapters • Within which the women lived In all chapters Community • For which the women wrote

This introduction sets out the thesis statement, the context within which the thesis is being developed, the overview of the approach and the methodology, and the anticipated contribution to scholarship.

Chapter 1 will focus on the new situation, using the elements of contextual interpretation: personal and communal experience, culture, social location and social change.17 Communal experience, culture and social change will frame the descriptions of Britain in early nineteenth century while personal experience and social location will frame the descriptions of the four women. Varied sources will be used to describe the history of

17 Adapted from Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, 5–7.

Britain in this time period.18 The categories of social location will follow the work of Tolbert who speaks of the politics and poetics of location: the facts of blood (mental and physical integrity, race, gender, ethnicity, familial affiliation, etc.) and the facts of bread (the grounds of authority, national and institutional context, economic and educational status).19 A related element of social location, the community or publics for whom each woman wrote, is also described. One final element of social location will be explored through an assessment of the interaction of each woman with faith traditions other than her own.

Chapter 2 will focus on the text, the interpretive works of the four women. There are published works by all four women, within their lifetimes and after their deaths. Aguilar has the largest body of work including The Spirit of Judaism (1842), Home Scenes and Heart Studies (1843), Records of Israel (1844), The Women of Israel: or Characters and Sketches from the Holy Scriptures and Jewish History (1845), The Jewish Faith: Spiritual Consolation Moral Guidance and Immortal Hope (1846), The History of the Jews in England (1847), Home Influence: A Tale for Mothers and Daughter (1847), The Vale of Cedars: or The Martyr (1850), Woman's Friendship: A Story of Domestic Life (1850), The Mother's Recompense: A Sequel to Home Influence (1851), Essays and Miscellanies: Choice Cullings from the Manuscripts of Grace Aguilar, Selected by her Mother, Sarah Aguilar (1853), and articles in The Occident and American Jewish Advocate. The most important works for this study are The Jewish Faith, The Spirit of Judaism, The Women of Israel, and Essays and Miscellanies. Included as well is the memoir written by her mother, Sarah Aguilar, published in Home Influence.

King has a much smaller body of work: A Tour in France (1802), The Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper on Domestic Happiness (1807), Female Scripture Characters Exemplifying Female Virtues by Mrs. King (1811) and The Rector’s Memorandum Book, being Memoirs of a Family in the North (1814). The four books will be used in the study

18 See the section of the attached Bibliography entitled “History” with particular attention to Brown and Tackett, The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 7. 19 Tolbert, “The Politics and Poetics of Location,” 311–12.

9 with greater emphasis on Female Scripture Characters, The Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper and The Rector’s Memorandum Book. Included will be the anonymous memoir attached to the fifth and subsequent editions of Female Scripture Characters and generally ascribed to her son-in-law, John Collinson.

McAuley’s works were not published in her lifetime although they were extensively circulated throughout the communities of the Sisters of Mercy which she founded in Ireland, England and Scotland. Several critical editions of her letters have since been published including Bolster’s The Correspondence of Catherine Mcauley, 1827–1841,

Newman’s The Letters of Catherine McAuley 1827–1841 and Sullivan’s The

Correspondence of Catherine McAuley: 1818–1841. Soon after McAuley’s death, two collections of her sayings were printed: A Little Book of Practical Sayings, Advices and Prayers of Our Revered Foundress, Mother Catherine Mcauley by Mary Clare Moore and Retreat Instructions of Mother Mary Catherine Mcauley, 1834–1853, by Mary Teresa Purcell. There has been a more recent compilation of her sayings in a book by Mary Sullivan entitled A Shining Lamp: The Oral Instructions of Catherine McAuley. McAuley is also credited with writing a religious tract, Cottage Controversy. Published in Sullivan’s Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy are documents McAuley extensively adapted from other sources for direction to her religious community, “The Spirit of the Institute” and the first “Constitution for the Sisters of Mercy.” Reference will also be made to works by members of her first religious community: Mary Vincent Harnett’s A Catechism of Scripture History Compiled by the Sisters of Mercy for the Use of Children Attending Their Schools; memoirs of McAuley’s life by Mary Clare Moore, Harnett and Mary Clare Augustine Moore written immediately after her death; and the artwork of two of the early Sisters, Mary Clare Agnew and Mary Clare Augustine Moore.

Schimmelpenninck has a significant body of written work: Narrative of a tour taken in the year 1667, to La Grande Chartreuse and Alet by Claude Lancelot: including some account of Armand Jean Le Bouthillier de Rancé . . . reformer of the monastery of Notre Dame de la Trappe: with notes; and an appendix containing some particulars respecting Du Verger de Hauranne . . . , Cornelius Jansenius . . . ; and also a brief sketch of . . .

Port-Royal (1813), Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity, and their Correspondence with Physiognomonic Expression, Exemplified in Various Works of Art (1815), Biblical Fragments (1821), Psalms according to the Authorized Version. With Prefatory Titles, and Tabular Index of Scriptural References, from the Port-Royal Authors, Marking the Circumstances and Chronological Order of Their Composition: To Which is Added, An Essay upon the Psalms and Their Spiritual Application (1825), Select Memoirs of Port-Royal: to which are Appended a Tour to Alet (1835), Principles of Beauty as Manifested in Nature, Art and Human Character (1859), Is the system of Slavery Sanctioned or Condemned by Scripture? To which is subjoined an Appendix, containing two Essays upon the State of the Canaanite and Philistine Bondsmen, and on the Jewish Theocracy,20 (1824) and Sacred Musings (1860). More attention will be paid to Biblical Fragments, Psalms, Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity, Principles, Is the system of Slavery Sanctioned or Condemned by Scripture? and Sacred Musings. Included will be a partial autobiography combined with the memoir written by her cousin, Christiana Hankin, after Schimmelpenninck’s death.

The consideration of the biblical texts used by the four women will include their approach to the Bible, the biblical texts they chose and the ways in which they made reference to passages, the literary genres which they employed to make their interpretation known, sources they used in developing their interpretive techniques (as far as they can be determined), and interpretive sources and techniques common to two or more of the women.

Chapter 3 will focus on the hermeneutic by which the old is adapted to the new. It will outline the versions of the Bible used, the women’s understanding of the Bible as the word of God, the primary image of God which they each held, their understanding of the Scriptures in their respective faith traditions, their determination of who should be the readers of the Bible, the special meaning which they believed the Bible had for women, the appropriate manner of reading Scripture and the intent of the Scriptures as a catalyst

20 This book was published anonymously. In Clare Midgley, Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 (Abingdon: Routledge, 1995), 58, the author attributes the book to Schimmelpenninck.

11 for action. Threaded through all of these elements will be the interpretative methods they favoured.

Having explored each woman’s hermeneutic approach, the chapter will then describe the intentional ways in which all four women used scripture to effect change. It will outline the specific actions for social change in which each of the four women were engaged. To the extent possible, the chapter will describe indications of impact which the four women had in their efforts. The chapter will conclude with an assessment of the authority by which the four women assumed the right to independently read the texts and interpret meaning for their readers.

Following Taylor and Weir’s depiction of the three tasks in addressing women’s interpretation of the Bible—recovery, analysis and integration, chapter 4 will focus on integration. There will be a discussion of the implications of these women’s works for understanding hermeneutics in the twenty-first century. The assessment of their interpretation will be based on present-day concepts including increased attention to women’s experience and voices in biblical interpretation, illustration of alternatives to the historical-critical approach to create a plurality of interpretation as the interpretive norm, the exploration of social location linked to earlier interpreters, the expansion of authority for biblical interpretation, and the expansion of hermeneutics to include praxis—a manifestation of embodied or lived theology.

This final chapter will bring together the elements of the hermeneutic triangle to determine the relevance of the thesis in assuming a distinct approach to biblical interpretation not sustained in the academy or the church/synagogue but anticipating or foreshadowing hermeneutical approaches today used in the academy, the church and synagogue, and the community at large.

CHAPTER 1 The New Situation: Social Location of the Four Women

Sitz im leben, a German phrase roughly translated as "setting in life," refers to the context in which a biblical text has been created, and its original function and purpose in that context. Introduced by classic form critics in the early twentieth century, it led to a better understanding of the meaning and significance of a text through having a better understanding of its original context, function and purpose. This analysis of the social context of the text itself is now being broadened to better understanding the social location of the reader/interpreter of the text in order to better understand the meaning being created from the interaction of the text and the reader.

In this chapter, social location will be explored in the more general context of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in which the four women lived and in the more specific context of the life of each woman. Also included will be the community or publics for whom each woman wrote. The chapter will conclude with an assessment of the interaction of each woman with faith traditions other than her own.

New Situation: Social, Political and Religious Context

The years during which Aguilar, King, McAuley and Schimmelpenninck lived (from 1750 to 1850) were marked by significant political, religious, economic and social change and transition for Britain and Ireland. This time experienced the aftermath of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the American and French Revolutions, the period of “Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution.”21

It is not within the scope or intent of this thesis to give a thorough assessment of the transition and significant social change experienced in this time in Britain and Ireland, nor is it the intent to make sense of the varying and often conflicting perspectives of historians writing about the period. However, it is possible to find consensus on key

21 Brown and Tackett, Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution. 12

13 elements of the transition and significant social change which are important to understanding the social location of the four women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Eleven of these key elements are as follows: significant constitutional change; dramatic effects of legislation on Ireland; aftermath of the Industrial Revolution; evolution of the middle class; movements against the slave trade and slavery; the Jewish Enlightenment; loss of the influence of the established Church; spread of the evangelical movement; influence of Romanticism; women’s public engagement in philanthropy, education and writing; and plurality of approaches to biblical interpretation. These eleven elements are described briefly below.

Significant Constitutional Change

It is difficult to assess the extent of the ideological and economic impact of the American and French Revolutions on the first decades of the nineteenth century in Britain. The ideals of toleration, liberty and equality were especially attractive to the increasingly more powerful middle ranks. The attractive democratic ideals encouraged support for the emancipation of Catholics, Dissenters and Jews. At the same time, the ongoing military struggle with Revolutionary France required both money and army recruits, forcing the British Parliament to improve relations with Ireland.

Two key Acts were repealed in 1828: the Test Act of 1704 which required all persons holding Crown office to receive the sacrament of communion within the established Church, and the Corporation Act of 1661 which required all borough officers to take oaths of supremacy and allegiance and to have received the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England during the twelve months prior to being elected to office. The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 removed most civil restrictions on Roman Catholics in Britain and in Ireland. The Religious Opinions Relief Act of 1846 (or Religious Disabilities Act) expanded the scope of the English Act of Toleration of 1689 and removed the last restrictions against Dissenters and Catholics. This Act also extended to Jews the same rights and freedoms on education, property and the administration of charities. The Jewish Relief Act of 1858 granted full civil and political rights to Jews.

The Reform Act of 1832 (the reform of the electoral system in the United Kingdom) expanded the middle-class electorate, disenfranchising a number of small burghs, and increasing the representation of the counties and larger towns and cities. Together these Acts represented a constitutional change of near revolutionary proportions in the United Kingdom:

A more pluralistic, more democratic political order was being born, one in which conformity to one of the established Churches was no longer a requirement for full political participation in the State, and in which the old connection of the landed classes, the mercantile elite, and established clergy no longer commanded the same authority.22

Dramatic Effects of Legislation on Ireland

The creation of The United Kingdom in 1801 and the emancipation of Catholics in 1829 together had dramatic effects on Ireland resulting in Catholicism and national identity becoming synonymous there.

As a result of the penal laws enacted in the late 1600s, the Catholic Church was technically an illegal organization in Ireland. Catholic lands had been confiscated. Catholics were deprived of the right to own and bequeath landed property, bear arms or educate their children in Catholic schools. Catholic bishops and religious orders had been expelled from the country, and Catholics had to take an oath of allegiance and abjuration in order to vote, sit in Parliament or hold Crown office. However, through the Catholic Relief Acts (1778, 1782, 1793), these penal laws were gradually being withdrawn.23 On January 1, 1801, the Parliaments of Britain and Ireland were united as the United Kingdom with the intention of ending instability in Ireland and subtly promising the imminence of full emancipation.

22 Stewart J. Brown, The National Churches of England, Ireland, and Scotland: 1801—1846 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 168. 23Stewart J. Brown, The National Churches, 19–20; and J. H. Whyte, “The Age of Daniel O’Connell (1800—1847),” in The Course of Irish history, eds. T. W. Moody and F. X. Martin (Cork: Cork University Press, 1967), 248–62.

The result was threefold: growing confidence in the Catholic Church and among Irish Catholics who constituted eighty percent of the Irish population; insistence of the Irish Protestants on “Protestant ascendancy” in order to protect the social and political order of the established Church; and the New Reformation movement of the 1820s intended to wean Irish Catholics from their traditional allegiance and to integrate them, through scripture-based education, into the Protestant establishment of Church and State.24

The latter two movements intensified opposition among Irish Catholics, an opposition which found expression in the Catholic Association, created in 1823. This Association was able to bring together three forces within Catholic Irish society: the landlords, merchants and professional men who had been striving for full emancipation for decades; the majority who were experiencing an ever-increasing and expanding culture of poverty rooted in land hunger, low wages and high taxation; and the clergy who had been awakened to action by the aggressive New Reformation. This organization, led by the charismatic Daniel O’Connell, succeeded in achieving the Catholic Relief Act of 1829. This Emancipation Act which applied to the whole United Kingdom enabled Catholics to enter Parliament, to belong to any corporation, and to hold high-ranking governmental, administrative and judicial offices.

The Catholic Association had success in another area as well. The emergence of the “devotional revolution that made practicing Catholics of the Irish people in a generation and that eventually made Irish Catholicism a worldwide phenomenon in the English- speaking world”25 offered the Irish a substitute symbolic language and a new cultural heritage. In no other European country did the Catholic Church emerge as strong and as unchallenged as it did in Ireland. The result was the growth of political Catholicism in which “religious and national identity would become synonymous.”26 James Doyle (1786–1834), Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, articulated a vision of the Catholic Irish as

24 Irene Whelan, The Bible War in Ireland: the "Second Reformation" and the Polarization of Protestant- Catholic Relations, 1800-1840 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), xvi. 25 Emmet J. Larkin, The Historical Dimensions of Irish Catholicism (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 1244. 26 Whelan, The Bible War in Ireland, 271.

16 a people special in the eyes of God because of all they had suffered and endured for the faith: [This vision] fed the creation of a self-image that would provide both identity and coherence as the Irish diaspora spread in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was central to the creation of the concept of a spiritual empire: the special role of the Irish as the vanguard of international Catholicism in the English-speaking world. The ‘spiritual empire’ thesis was the ideological fuel behind the explosion of the Irish Catholic missionary movement worldwide, which was fed by the ‘devotional revolution’ at home, and particularly by the expansion of religious orders like the Sisters of Mercy and the Christian Brothers into secondary education.27

Aftermath of the Industrial Revolution

The effects of agricultural improvements, the spread of commercialism, the acceleration of urbanization, new forms of factory organization and the rapid growth of industrialization had both positive and negative impacts on Britain.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, there was a rapid growth of manufacturing associated with new technologies and new forms of factory organization in parts of Britain—London, the Midlands, South Wales and the central lowlands of Scotland.

These new forms of productions threatened traditional handicraft skills and patterns of work. The concentration of population in manufacturing towns and villages placed unprecedented strains on traditional systems of poor relief, education and public order. In the countryside, the spread of enclosures was bringing revolutionary changes in agricultural organization, ending centuries-old agricultural practices and disrupting rural communities. These changes in manufacturing and agriculture brought with them unprecedented suffering for large sections of the labouring orders.28

This rapid growth in industrialization was accompanied by a rapid increase in population in Britain from 10.7 million in 1801 to 18.5 million in 1841. Fundamental social shifts provided the environment for religious revitalization, a strengthened middle class and

27 Ibid., 272. 28 Stewart Brown, The National Churches, vii.

17 successive constitutional changes that effectively ended the combined authority of what had been called the three estates: the landowner, the merchants and manufacturers, and the National Church.29

These same social shifts, however, also brought negative effects: social deprivation, social dislocation, profound social inequality and social injustice. Ireland’s industries declined because of competition from large scale industry in Britain, further adding to the political instability in that country. The profound moral, social and economic problems with poverty and destitution provided the impetus and the incentive for involvement in social causes.

These industrial and demographic changes also complicated and reshaped relations between sexes. “Life in cities was less domestic than in the country, and social life was generally becoming more and more public.”30 For women, the strengthening of the middle class provided a more resourceful and respectable environment for increased participation in public life.

Evolution of the Middle Class

The middle class was evolving to become an effective social and political force with real impact on the place of women in society.

Although the term “middle class” would not be used consistently until later in the nineteenth century, it was in the midst of the social and political turmoil of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that the social construct of “middling ranks” became part of the class structure. Social historians have located the transformation of the “bourgeois” society from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century associated with “the emergence of the anonymous exchange market, the development of the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ with its concomitant explosion of printed communication, the

29 Ibid., 86. 30 F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 1–2.

18 effects of the agricultural improvement, spreading commercialization, accelerating urbanization and gradual industrialization.”31 The term “middle” was vague, loose and inclusive and could refer to landowners, lower level gentry, liberal professions, manufacturers and merchants, yeomen, country gentlemen, those between radical and established persons, anyone who preserved “a middle station between the highest and the lowest ranks of society.”32 As Wahrman argues:

The expansion of the jurisdiction of ‘middle class’ in political language to include the private and the feminine as well as the public and the masculine; the infusion of the rising ‘middle-class’ progress narrative into domestic literature; and the consequent bridging of the distance between the uses of ‘middle class’ in these very disparate genres of writing—these were all the beginnings of the 1830s. The “middle class idiom” . . . emphasized the singular role of the ‘middle class’ as the repository of all virtues, the hinge which holds society and social order together, the major prophylactic mechanism required for a healthy body social and body politic.33

The constitutional reforms from 1828 to 1832 had officially marked the beginning of a shift in power from the upper ranks to the middling ranks as the middle group reconfigured society around their professional and investment interests. Supporting this shift were improving literacy rates and a growing print industry with increasingly cheaper books and an explosion of periodicals. Some suggest that the shift was represented in the print media with the image of the “domestic woman” disseminating a new culture of respectability34 and leading to the feminization of culture and civic society as well as the feminization of piety.35

While historians may not agree on the feminization of culture and civic society, the ideas of the times enabled women writers to “to gain strategic access to public, political and professional domains usually considered inappropriate for properly feminine women.”36

31 Dror Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 6–7. 32 Ibid., 71. 33 Ibid., 46. 34 Gary Kelly, Women, Writing, and Revolution, 1790–1827 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 7. 35 Sue Morgan, Women, Religion and Feminism in Britain, 1750–1900 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 1–2. 36 Ibid., 43.

Although they could have been either progressive or reactionary, these women seemed to be inspired by a sense of religious commitment and were convinced that they, despite the inequalities of gender that existed, could do in society what they had been called to do in the home. Rickard concludes, “Such committed individuals were characteristically well educated, middle-ranking women, often single, independent-minded and working for a living, frequently by writing.”37

Aguilar, King, McAuley and Schimmelpenninck came from the middling ranks in the broadly inclusive sense of the term in their time period and in the more restricted sense of the term “middle class” today. They were not members of the impoverished masses or labouring classes although at least two of them (Aguilar and McAuley) did work for a living during part of their adult lives. They did not belong to the aristocracy although King’s father was knighted in recognition of his role as Governor of Massachusetts. Aguilar’s father was a merchant; McAuley’s a carpenter and timber merchant; King’s a manufacturer; and Schimmelpenninck’s a gun factory owner. King’s husband was a vicar/rector, and Schimmelpenninck’s husband was in the tobacco trade.

Movements against the Slave Trade and Slavery

Attention to the Enlightenment ideal of toleration as well as the ideals of liberty and freedom symbolized by the American and French Revolutions combined with Christianity’s focus on moral and social values encouraged movements against the slave trade and slavery. Ironically, Christianity had long sanctioned participation in slavery and the slave trade by Christians and even by clergy. The origins of the movement to end slavery were actually secular:

The [anti-slavery] campaigns represented one consequence of the emergence and expansion of print culture, the ethos of politeness and sensibility, new theories of economic behaviour and new definitions of economic interests, a growing skepticism towards prescriptive authority, and, perhaps most importantly, a

37 Suzanne Rickard, “Victorian Women with Causes: Writing Religion and Action,” in Women, Religion and Feminism in Britain, 1750–1900, ed. Sue Morgan (New York: Palgrave McMillian Ltd., 2002), 143–4.

consequential series of conflicts between colonial and imperial powers from 1775 to 1815, during the ‘Age of Revolution’.38

However, the actual success of the movement needed the impetus of Christianity which was found in the parallel movements of religious revival in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This religious revival focused on seeking religious purity in this world rather than the next and thus required that religion have a greater importance in public and political life as well as private life. For evangelical Christians, “the crusade against the slave trade could be understood as a campaign for liberty, a triumph of the humanitarian sensibility, and a blow against outworn tradition.”39 Quakers were the first group to lead the cause of abolition beginning in the 1780s. They renounced their own involvement in slavery, published and disseminated tracts against slavery, and organized anti-slavery societies. Methodists and Moravians followed their lead and passionately took up the cause. They succeeded in their efforts. In 1807 with the Slave Trade Act, the slave trade became illegal in Britain; with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, slavery ended.

In the earlier years, there had been a dispute about whether the anti-slavery movement should focus on the end of the slave trade or the end of slavery. However, as women began to participate in greater numbers in moral reform, anti-slavery took priority. Women who engaged in the movement ranged from “from feminists who used slavery as a metaphor for their own political status to prominent Evangelical conservatives like Hannah More.”40 When the first Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was set up in 1783, it was exclusively male with leaders such as William Wilberforce opposed to the involvement of women although women provided ten per cent of the funds for the Society. After the Slave Trade Act had been enacted, a new society, the Anti-Slavery Society, began its campaign.

38 Brown and Tackett, Enlightenment, Reawakening, and Revolution, 519. 39 Ibid., 529. 40 Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, Narrating women's history in Britain, 1770–1902 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 58.

Women were allowed to be members but not leaders in that campaign. Women responded by setting up their own societies (seventy-three in all), the Ladies’ Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves, in Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leicester, Glasgow, Norwich, London, Darlington and Chelmsford.41 These societies argued strongly for the immediate, not gradual, emancipation of slaves in the British colonies. Only when women threatened to withdraw their financial support from the Anti-Slavery Society did that Society change its approach to immediate emancipation. These Ladies’ Societies took a particular interest in the fate of enslaved African women who, they emphasized, suffered both physical abuse and moral degradation. They used educational pamphlets, art, petitions and boycotts from sugar.42 In her Autobiography, Schimmelpenninck said that, when she was eleven years old, her interest in opposing slavery was born:

About this time I became interested, during my Dudson visits, in an anti-slavery cause. In the evenings we often read pamphlets on the subject, or examined in detail the prints of slave ships and slave treatment. . . . Both my cousins and I resolved to leave off sugar as the only produce of slave labour within our province to discontinue.43

The Jewish Enlightenment

Jews in Britain sought to become integrated into social life without becoming assimilated. The Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) challenged traditional values, institutions and the very way of life of Jews.

By the end of the eighteenth century, there were 25,000 Jews living in Britain, both Sephardic (with culture and religious traditions rooted in an Iberian past) and Ashkenazi (with centuries of cultural and linguistic development within small German towns and villages). Small groups of Sephardic Jews had lived in England before the Reformation and had been assimilated into the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture. By the end of the

41 John SiMarkin, “The Birmingham Ladies’ Society for the Relief of British Negro Slaves,” Spartacus Educational, September 1997 (updated April 2017). Accessed February 12, 2018, http://spartacus- educational.com/Female_Society.htm. 42 Ibid. 43 Hankin, Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, 151.

22 eighteenth century, things had changed as a number of European Ashkenazi Jews had come to England in search of safety from repressive anti-Semitism in Central Europe.44 Despite the increased numbers, Jews had no legal claims to acceptance or tolerance although they had the privilege of juridical autonomy.

Within their communities, they were free to establish charitable institutions, elect a governing body, define the curriculum of their schools, register their births, marriages and deaths, and adjudicate civil cases in their own courts of law. The communities maintained their power of discipline by the use of excommunication (Herem) made even more essential by the imposition upon them of collective liability. The ghettos and Jewish quarters might have erected barriers between Jews and Christians, but they were never hermetically sealed. On the contrary, financial relations between the two communities were frequent, if not always harmonious. Memoirs and autobiographies, moreover, suggest that at least in some instances there were also cultural and theological exchanges.45

Political emancipation, spurred on by the emancipation of Catholics and dissenting Protestants, was achieved in 1858, an event which challenged Britain’s sense of itself as a Christian nation:

The debates about Jewish emancipation reveal not only contrary attitudes to Jews and constitutional change, but also differing concepts of citizenship. . . . Was Britain above all a Christian nation, no longer legislated exclusively by Anglicans, but nevertheless a nation whose legislature was deeply bound up with Christian morality—or was the British constitution, as Whigs contended, primarily characterized by its ongoing adaptation to protect the liberties of every individual citizen, regardless of religious creed?46

Parallel to the political struggles for Jews in Europe was a cultural struggle rooted in the ideals of the Enlightenment. The Jewish Enlightenment traced its origins to Germany and the work of Moses Mendelssohn. In Britain, that cultural movement became Haskalah. “Haskalah, taken from the Hebrew word sekhel meaning ‘reason’ or ‘intellect’ was, like the European Enlightenments, based on rationality. Haskalah adopted Enlightenment values, encouraged Jews to integrate into secular society, and study secular subjects in

44 Roger H. Martin, Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-Victorian Britain, 1795–1830 (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1983), 174. 45 Brown and Tackett, Enlightenment, Reawakening, and Revolution, 209. 46 Nadia Valman, The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 86–7, 88.

23 addition to subjects written in Hebrew.”47 It was rooted in “the spread of the idea of religious tolerance in state and society, the rise in the standard of living and change in lifestyle that characterized court Jews and the Jewish bourgeoisie, and gradually it broke down some of the barriers that had traditionally separated Jewish and Christian life.”48

Until the late eighteenth century, education among Jews had not stressed learning the vernacular languages or biblical Hebrew. Study of the Talmud and midrashim was most important, and knowledge of the Bible was secondary. One of the dominant themes of the Haskalah was the “restoration of the Bible” to Judaism.

The Haskalah . . . endowed the Bible with the status of a formative book of Jewish culture, at first along with the Mishnah and the Talmud and their commentators, and later replacing and countering them. It also regarded it, under the influence of Romanticism and nationalism, as a distinct manifestation of the authentic spirit of Judaism. The Jewish Enlightenment movement turned the most ancient book in the Jewish literary corpus into the most precious cultural asset as well as into a tool in the hands of modernity.49

A second dominant theme of the Haskalah was the interplay of religious authority and personal authority. Jewish thinkers struggled to find the balance between divine legislation and personal meaning. Abraham Geiger (1810–1874), a German-Jew and a later contemporary of Aguilar, echoed many of the ideas found in Aguilar’s writing. He believed that all educated Jews should take control of their tradition, deciding for themselves what to believe and practice without deferring to the Talmudic learning of their rabbis.50 For Geiger, authority and personal meaning were closely intertwined:

Geiger justifies liturgical reforms, educational policies, historical analysis, textual readings, and gendered politics by appealing to personal meaning and significance. Without personal resonance and inner power, the commandments lose their force and authority. . . . By locating authority within the power of the

47 Lindsay Dearinger, “‘the invisible Spirit alone’: the Romance of Reform in Grace Aguilar’s Theological Writings” (M.A. thesis, University of Central Oklahoma, 2011), 77. 48 David B. Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry’s Construction of Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 5. 49 Yaacov Shavit and Mordechai Eran, The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 35–6. 50 Harvey Hill, “The Science of Reform: Abraham Geiger and the Wissenschaft des Judentum,” Modern Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience 27, no. 3 (1 October 2007):334. Accessed February 16, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjm003.

self, Geiger in no way removes that self from its social location and cultural influences. Indeed, he interweaves personal identity with historical narratives and texts that remain social and political in character.51

For Geiger and other liberal Jewish thinkers of the time, the Jewish tradition was a process of seeking God while living in the world. How then could Jews define their religious and ethnic identity in ways that would allow acceptance in society without destroying their Jewish orientation? Two different responses seemed possible: total assimilation into the non-Jewish culture, or retreat from engagement with the larger European cultural world.52 In Britain, the response was an amalgam of the two extremes. Anglo-Jews, to a degree unprecedented in the rest of Europe, became monolingual, approaching the literary sources of their culture in English.53 The majority maintained their commitment to Orthodox Judaism but moved to accept all biblical law as divine and binding while downplaying or rejecting the rabbinic tradition embodied in the Talmud.54 The results were evolutionary but dramatic as Ruderman explains:

Under the unique circumstances of English life, a particular Jewish culture emerged shaped from specifically English ideas and English social and political organizations and especially from a culture that conversed and published almost exclusively in the English language. Ultimately, this rich blending of English elements with Jewish culture would create its special effect: the diminution of a separatist Jewish community and elite religious authority; the erosion of Jewish literacy and praxis to the lowest common denominator; the translation of Jewish belief into Protestant terms, with respect to both forms of worship and more personal expressions of religious faith.55

There continued to be a tension between Jews and Christians with covert and overt forms of cultural and social rejection.56 This manifested itself in attempts of Christians to convert Jews. The London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews was founded in 1809 with a mission “proper and suitable, to the glory of God, to establish a

51 Ken Koltun-Fromm, Abraham Geiger's Liberal Judaism: Personal Meaning and Religious Authority (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 7. 52 Yarchin, History of Biblical Interpretation, 208. 53 Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment, 9. 54 Steven Singer, “Jewish Religious Thought in Early Victorian London,” AJS Review 10, no. 2 (Autumn 1985): 188. 55 Ruderman, Jewish Enlightenment, 10. 56 Ibid., 17.

Society for the SOLE purpose of exciting the attention of the Jews to the words of eternal salvation.”57 The Society had three areas of activity: weekly lectures for interested Jews; education and employment; and tracts, pamphlets, Bibles and Testaments translated into Hebrew.

Aguilar was an Anglo-Jew of Sephardic descent. Her written works highlight many of the internal and external challenges facing Jews in England in this time period.

Loss of Influence of the Established Church

The established Church in Britain was losing its influence over the State. In the eighteenth century, religion had been a pervasive influence in the lives of people, conditioning attitudes to the State, determining who could or could not vote or hold political office, and forming moral expectations. “The ‘long eighteenth century’ was an era in which faith can be taken for granted, and is perhaps the last period in which this can be done.”58

The established Churches [England, Scotland, Ireland] were fundamental to the constitution of the State; they represented the State in its religious aspect, they gave a religious sanction to the social and political order, they celebrated the faith that bound generation to generation, past, present and future, they taught the people the essentials of the faith and their religious duties, they gave out the sacraments and provided religious discipline.59

However, as the nineteenth century emerged, the Enlightenment ideal of toleration and the French Revolution’s ideals of liberty and freedom began to capture the British imagination. Accompanying these new ideals were rapid growth of industrial towns which placed a burden on the Church’s existing structures, revitalization of Nonconformity, and the growth of evangelism which openly competed with the established churches. Very real divisions in Christian identity appeared: the struggle for Roman Catholic and Jewish enfranchisement; the attendant Catholic revival that marked

57 Martin, Evangelicals United, 179–180. 58 Brown and Tackett, Enlightenment, Reawakening, and Revolution, 1. 59 Ibid.

26 the period; the power of evangelical Protestant movements in their own separation from the Established Church and their deep influence on that Church; and myriad crises in the Established Church itself.60

The old ‘Protestant Constitution’ had gone; the confident hegemony of the established Church was shaken. A Parliament open to rivals of the Church of England, to Catholics and Dissenters, could no longer be deemed ‘a lay synod of the Church of England’. . . . It was no longer so easy unquestionably to accept the natural superiority of the Church of England over its rivals: now a more confident Roman Catholicism and a more militant Protestant Nonconformity posed challenges seldom encountered by the Church since the seventeenth century.61

Aguilar, King, McAuley and Schimmelpenninck, each in her unique way, experienced the transition from a society in which the established Church was deemed to be naturally superior and fully allied with the State to a society in which the same Church changed its focus from political and constitutional affairs to social concerns: religious instruction, pastoral care, social services, social responsibility, and the religious and moral well-being of individuals.

Spread of the Evangelical Movement

Social and political circumstances nurtured the rapid spread of the evangelical movement in the established Church and in the dissenting movements in Britain and Ireland. In England, Protestant Dissent had its beginnings in Puritanism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Like the Catholics and Jews in the same period, these Dissenters were barred from holding municipal office, meeting for communal worship or receiving pastoral care. “With the Toleration Act of 1689, Parliament granted Protestant Dissenters in England and Wales a limited freedom of worship—provided they took oaths of allegiance to the sovereign and registered their places of worship with a bishop

60 Cynthia Scheinberg, Women's Poetry and Religion in Victorian England: Jewish Identity and Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 6. 61 John Walsh, Colin Haydon and Stephen Taylor, eds., The Church of England, c.1689–c.1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 61–2, 63.

27 or magistrate, and their ministers subscribed to the doctrinal portions of the Thirty-Nine Articles.”62

By the late eighteenth century, there were four main groups of Protestant Dissenters— Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists and Quakers. However, the social and political unrest of the 1790s led to the emergence of a new group of Dissenters who would leave an imprint on the established churches and eventually would lead to the establishment of new churches in their own right. These evangelical Dissenters were “warm, conversionist and Biblicist, embracing a heart-felt, Bible-centred gospel message, aimed at eliciting a personal decision for Christ and dubbed Methodists by their opponents.”63 By 1790, this “New Dissent” was felt throughout industrializing cities and towns, carried primarily through itinerant preaching. In 1791, Methodists broke from the established Church:

The growth of evangelical Dissent between 1790 and 1815 in Britain was unprecedented, as tens of thousands experienced conversion. By law, Dissenting congregations were required to register with the local magistrates. Between 1781 and 1790, 1,405 new Dissenting congregations were registered in England. This number rose to 4,245 new congregations between 1791 and 1800, and to 5,434 new Dissenting congregations between 1801 and 1810.64

Evangelicalism, with its emphasis on a conviction that all souls were equal before God, its eager acceptance by the labouring classes throughout Britain, and its focus on the value of religion in the moral regeneration of public as well as private life, became another factor in encouraging and supporting women’s work in the public domain. “Through female influence and moral power, this cultural myth’s new woman would educate the young and illiterate, succor the unfortunate, amend the debased popular culture of lower orders, reorient worldly men of every class, and set the national house in order.”65

62 Brown and Tackett, Enlightenment, Reawakening, and Revolution, 34–5. 63 Ibid., 37. 64 Ibid., 578. 65 Julia Saunders, “Putting the Reader Right: Reassessing Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts,” Romanticism on the Net 16 (November 1999): np. Saunders is quoting Mitzi Myers, “Hannah More's Tracts for the Times: Social Fiction and Female Ideology,” in Fetter'd or Free? British Women Novelists, 1670–1815, ed. Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1986), 265–6.

As a religion of duty, which placed service above doctrine, evangelicalism appealed particularly to women. Religious sensibility and social pity stood much higher in their minds than abstract, frequently arid theology. And if right conduct and moral fervour were thought to be their preserve, it would only be natural for evangelicalism, which put such a premium on manners and morals, to find a refuge in the female breast. As Wilberforce argued in A Practical View, after the Bible perhaps the most influential book of its day, women were more favourably disposed to religion and to good works than men.66

The evangelical movement in Ireland focused on scripture-based education since it was believed that Irish Catholics were deprived of access to the Bible because of illiteracy and the opposition of Catholic priests to free circulation and personal interpretation of Scripture. This movement was supported by a number of Protestant landowning families who sought to communicate the gospel especially to the Catholic tenants on their estates. “Women of the gentry classes were frequently the most active in Evangelical causes, organizing Sunday schools, distributing Bibles and tracts, and visiting the homes of the poor to provide charity and Christian advice.”67

The evangelical movement had a direct impact on the four women studied here. Schimmelpenninck was an evangelical Dissenter, King was a member of the established Church influenced by the movement, McAuley’s work in Ireland was partially energized by the resistance to the movement, and Aguilar responded in various ways to the evangelical attempts to convert Jews to Christianity.

Influence of Romanticism

Romanticism with its core belief in the value of individual experience had significant influence on culture and the arts.

66 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, 9, quoting William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country; Contrasted with Real Christianity (London: T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, 1797), 434, 448. 67 Brown and Tackett, Enlightenment, Reawakening, and Revolution, 104–5. See also Whelan, The Bible War, 62.

Romanticism, developed in Europe as well as in Britain and Ireland in reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the orderliness of the neoclassical style in the arts, insisted on the primacy of imagination in artistic expression. It denoted a time when the intellectual movement changed from a scientific, empirical world to one of feeling and imagination. The spiritual, natural aspect of human existence was emphasized as well as sensitivity to nature. “It came to be felt that to muse by a stream, to view a thundering waterfall or even confront a rolling desert could be morally improving.”68 It was often sentimental in tone:

Romanticism represents an attitude of mind rather than a set of particular stylistic traits and involves the expression of an idea that tends to have a verbal rather than a visual origin. It lends itself more easily to expression through music and literature than through the visual arts, as a sense of the infinite and transcendental, of forces exceeding the boundaries of reason.69

The literary genres which best reflected romanticism were poetry, historical romance, sentimental verse, gardening treatises, travel writing, and the radical weekly. There was a tendency to pleasure in romance, a right to melancholia, and recovery of maternal figures.

Romanticism had an impact on how the arts approached religious subjects:

One of the most complex developments during this period is the transformation of religion into a subject for artistic treatment far removed from traditional religious art. The Enlightenment had weakened, but hardly uprooted, established religion in Europe. As time passed, sophisticated writers and artists were less and less likely to be conventionally pious; but during the Romantic era many of them were drawn to religious imagery in the same way they were drawn to Arthurian or other ancient traditions in which they no longer believed.70

A core belief of Romanticism was the value of individual experience. It expressed the ongoing struggle between individualism and communitarianism, personal agency and

68 Paul Brians, “Romanticism,” Syllabus for Humanities 303. 18th and 19th Century European Classics. Washington State University, Spring 2007, accessed March 10, 2018, https://brians.wsu.edu/category /study-guide/18th-and-19th-century-european-classics/. 69 Ian Chilvers, “Romanticism,” The Oxford Dictionary of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), accessed January 20, 2018, http://www.oxfordreference.com.qe2a-proxy.mun.ca/view/10.1093 /acref/ 9780198604761.001.0001/acref-9780198604761-e-3003. 70 Brians, “Romanticism,” accessed on March 10, 2018.https://brians.wsu.edu/category/study-guide/18th- and-19th-century-european-classics/.

30 social solidarity. This value of individual experience had special impact on the writings of Shimmelpenninck and Aguilar.

Women’s Public Engagement in Philanthropy, Education and Writing

The “moral and spiritual superiority” of women became an image to legitimate the work of women in championing change in their homes and in society. Philanthropy, education and writing were three media through which this work was carried out in the public domain.

In this time period, there was an understanding that women’s special traits were all associated with family life: moral, modest, attentive, intuitive, humble, gentle, patient, sensitive, perceptive, compassionate, self-sacrificing, tactful, deductive, practical, religious, benevolent, instinctive, and mild. “Women were to provide that sympathy and ‘sweet ordering’ which complemented man’s capacity to create and rule.”71 Power was masculine, public, violent and exerted for immediate ends while influence was feminine, private, mild and meant for the long term.72 Most people in this time period believed that women, either because of their biological function as mothers or because they were excluded from the corrupt marketplace or because they experienced edifying suffering, were spiritually superior to men and “temperamentally better suited to learning [religious] truths than were men.”73

A number of distinct but related factors came together to enable women to build on this image in order to champion change, not only in their homes, but in society. The political development of the middle class, the emergence of evangelism, the rapid explosion of print communications, the increasing dysfunction in society, the shift of the established churches from political influence to social reform, the fears by Church and State of the

71 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, 3. 72 Burstein, Narrating Women’s History, 57. 73Julie Melnyk, Women's Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Transfiguring the Faith of Their Fathers, Literature and Society in Victorian Britain 3 (New York: Garland Reference Publishing, Inc., 1998), xi, quoting Christine L. Krueger, The Reader's Repentance: Women Preachers, Women Writers, and Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1992), 26.

31 uncontrolled spread of ideals such as toleration and liberty, and the emphasis on the need for social and moral order in the aftermath of the American and French Revolutions, all converged to create an environment in which the influence of women could legitimately expand beyond the home into society at large.

Paradoxically, by using to their advantage various gendered social conventions, particularly the convention of female modesty and decorum, it became possible for committed individuals to move out of the ‘proper sphere’ of domestic and private life and make highly public utterances on pressing social problems. The range of social, moral and economic problems was vast and the complex chain often linking these was typically underwritten by poverty, destitution and lack of education.74

In using the social conventions of their day to create new ways of acting, the women of this time were following the footsteps of women from centuries before. In the seventeenth century, the Cistercian Nuns at their abbey in Port-Royal had resisted the Church’s and Louis XIV’s attempts to control their individual conscience by forcing them to condemn Jansen’s writings:

The full rhetorical and literary skill of these interviews [by church authorities hoping to get them to recant their beliefs] is apparent only when we recognize how the nuns tapped into contemporary cultural and political discourses to give their resistance broad public relevance. These were the discourse of feminine obedience, rationality, and order.75

These nuns, in turn, were using rhetorical styles bequeathed to them by Teresa of Avila whose rhetoric was “marked by a formal respect for the ‘natural’ hierarchy of gender at the same time that it allowed women to assert their spiritual and intellectual autonomy.”76

The four women in this thesis used this same paradoxical approach, maintaining fierce loyalty to their own traditions, including a belief in female inferiority, while subtly and authoritatively leading change in church/synagogue and in society.

74 Rickard, “Victorian Women,” 144. 75 Daniella Kostroun, “A Formula for Disobedience: Jansenism, Gender, and the Feminist Paradox,” The Journal of Modern History 75 (September 2003): 501. 76 Ibid., 516.

If the new environment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries seemed conducive to women’s having greater influence on the spiritual and moral tone of society, there certainly was not general agreement that women had any place in society and the public domain. Quotations from contemporaries of the four women reflect the challenges which the women faced in exerting their influence for social transformation through biblical and theological interpretation. The following words are taken from works of influential thought leaders in this time period: John Ruskin (a prominent social thinker and philanthropist), John Gregory (whose book, A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters, was a best-selling female conduct book in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries), and James Fordyce (a Scottish preacher whose Sermons to Young Women were quite popular).

Ruskin: There is one dangerous science for women—one which they must indeed beware how they profanely touch—that of theology. Strange, and miserably strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their powers, and pause at that threshold of sciences where every step is demonstrable and sure, they will plunge headlong, and without one thought of incompetency, into that science in which the greatest men have trembled, and the wisest erred.77

Gregory [directed to women readers]: Read only such religious books as are addressed to the heart, such as inspire pious and devout affections, such as are proper to direct you in your conduct, and not such as tend to entangle you in the endless maze of opinions and systems.78

Fordyce: Religious controversy I do not wish you [women] to read at all. Mere argumentative theology I have never known to improve the temper, or regulate the conduct; but often hurt both.”79

Despite such views on women’s intelligence and right to autonomy, however, three domains allowed women to participate in public life in a legitimate and appropriate

77 John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies: Lecture II – Lilies of Queens’ Gardens (London: Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1883), 98. 78 John Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1774), 15. 79 James Fordyce, Sermons to Young Women, in Two Volumes (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1809), 124.

33 manner: philanthropy, education and writing. These arenas of public activity subtly blurred the boundaries between the domestic and the public. Participation in philanthropy or charitable works was relatively free from the restraints and prejudices often associated with women in paid employment. Education, especially of children, was a natural extension of women’s roles in the home and was especially beneficial as the Church and State sought greater social and moral order. Writing, as long as it was outside the exclusively male genres of sermon and treatise, was an acceptable activity.

Philanthropy

In Britain and Ireland, philanthropy was deemed to be consistent with the qualities of compassion and self-sacrifice most evident in women and with women’s traditional skills and roles in caring for people who were young, sick, elderly or poor. “A distinctive feature of women’s work in nineteenth-century philanthropy is the degree to which they applied their domestic experience and education, the concerns of family and relations, to the world outside the home.”80

Philanthropy gave women in Britain a legitimate participation in public activity. “The charitable experience of women was a lever which they used to open doors closed to them in other spheres.”81 This same experience was true for women in Ireland, “Although limited by society’s expectations to the home in the early years of the [nineteenth] century, middle-class Irish women increasingly made use of their given spiritual and moral influence to justify their entrance into society, especially through philanthropic work.”82

Philanthropic initiatives included “almsgiving, the provision of employment for women and girls, the building of institutions to house the homeless and outcast, the initiation of schemes to make the poor less dependent on charity, the development of programmes to

80 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, 7–8. 81 Ibid., 227. 82Maria Luddy, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1.

34 facilitate moral reform, work in public institutions such as workhouses, hospitals and prisons, and the provision of orphanages.”83

Just as women philanthropists were “overwhelmingly motivated by religious faith and spirituality,”84 so, too, the institutional forms and structures of Christianity and Judaism provided opportunities for the public profile of women in voluntary associations and charitable campaigning, provided the vehicles for female autonomy and group solidarity, and gave women the opportunity to speak. “Religious affiliation offered women ample opportunities for sororial networks through lives bound by shared religious practices in close-knit communities which provided men and women with a complete life-style of emotional, spiritual and physical needs.”85

This group solidarity was expressed in religious congregations of women, the deaconess movement and missionary work. The effects of this significant philanthropic activity were far-reaching in extending the place and influence of women in public life:

Through their extensive contact with charitable organizations women increased their interest in government, administration and the law. Through contact with charity schools, they increased their interest in education. Through the system of district visiting they increased their interest in the problems of poverty and the social services. Through their work as hospital, workhouse, and prison visitors they increased their interest in, among other things, medicine and diet. Moreover, as a religion of action, philanthropy slowly challenged the complacency of women, gave them practical experience and responsibility, and perhaps most importantly, it heightened their self-confidence and self-respect.86

All four women in this thesis were active philanthropists, involved in a spectrum of charitable activities. Together with her brother, King founded and sustained The Society for Bettering the Conditions and Improving the Comforts of the Poor. McAuley’s early philanthropic activity encouraged rich young women to spend a few years before their marriage in teaching and caring for the poor—to that end she build her House of Mercy in an affluent area of Dublin and founded a congregation of women religious.

83 Ibid. 84 Rickard, “Victorian Women,” 141. 85 Morgan, Women, Religion and Feminism, 11. 86 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, 227.

Education

One of the philanthropic works in which all four women were engaged at some point in their adult lives was education. Initially, education was focused in the home, but in this time period “women were becoming increasingly important as educators, for the growing cult of domesticity recognized the importance of children to the family as well as the importance of mother-teachers, who were responsible for the early education of moral sensibilities.”87 Women began to recognize a new and deepened value for education:

Education was a major vehicle through which nineteenth-century religious women could seek to achieve social, moral and political transformation, particularly the establishment of a sober, rational education for women that might better equip them for the vital responsibilities of motherhood and citizenship.88

Those who proposed new ideals of tolerance, liberty and freedom; those who advocated the equality of all souls before God; those who feared new ideas and sought to impose social and moral order; those who wanted to end the social dislocation, injustice and destitution so evident in both industrial town slums and rural areas; those who believed that women were intelligent and capable of transforming society—all recognized that education, education for all sectors of society, was a key resource in achieving their goals.

The established Churches of Britain assumed responsibility for popular education among the labouring poor. The evangelical Dissenters, the established Church, the State, the leaders of women’s groups, all saw education as essential to the transformation which they sought in their societies.

Most parents were anxious to encourage the traits believed to be feminine in the education of their daughters. The variation in female education was vast, ranging from none at all, through what might be picked up in the home or at a Dame, Industrial or Sunday school, to the rigours of academic life at an institution like Cheltenham Ladies’ College opened in 1854. But whatever the opportunities, it was an education usually different in kind from what a boy of equivalent class

87 Donelle Ruwe, ed., “Introduction,” Culturing the Child, 1690-1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi Myers (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2005 in association with the Children’s Literature Association), viii. 88 Morgan, Women, Religion and Feminism, 5.

might expect. First, religion was more pronounced in the training of girls. Secondly, the world of girls was an indoor world, for outdoor games and exercise rarely played such a prominent part in their activities. . . . Thirdly, but not least in importance, girls were likely trained in the care of households. . . . Parents and teachers were to enhance the virtues inherent in female nature, not to lead them down the path to worldliness and vice.89

Education was also an important resource in achieving the benefits of Catholic emancipation in Ireland. It has been said of the members of McAuley’s congregation:

Their educational and devotional activities—their social training of young girls and married women—among many other activities created that disciplined and cohesive Irish Catholicism which brought about the election of Daniel O’Connell to the English Parliament in the early nineteenth century.90

Writing

Women wrote and published their writing in this time period. They wrote hymns, novels, poetry, letters, religious tracts, devotional manuals. Just as women in this time period used the social convention of their female inferiority to assert their autonomy and authority, so, too, women ventured into the forbidden areas of theology, treatise and sermon but in unassuming, subtle and indirect ways. Especially interesting were their private writings—letters and diaries “which provide evidence of women’s resistance to and manipulation of domesticating ideologies, often from within the domestic sphere itself.”91

Theology was “a dangerous science for women.”92 Yet women wrote theology:

These women authors almost never claimed to be writing theology, and naturally, they did not propose overarching, self-consistent theological systems, but they did interpret the nature of God and of Christ, the relationships between God and humans, and Scriptures. . . . Women revised, subverted or rejected elements of masculine theology, in creating theologies of their own.93

89 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, 3. 90 Jo Ann McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 576. 91 Krueger, The Reader’s Repentance, 11. 92 Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, 98. 93 Melnyk, Women’s Theology, xii.

In writing on theological matters, women authors were concerned about the authority of their voices, and, consequently, they often identified their right to read and interpret scripture without male oversight. They found legitimacy in the Scriptures themselves and in a personal experience of “call.” “Charismatic authority, or divine calling from God, was an irrefutable and unquestionable source of power for women which enabled them to circumvent patriarchal ecclesiastical conventions in all sorts of ways.”94

Two dominant themes found in their works were: the centrality of the second Person of the Trinity—a feminized Suffering Saviour with whom women could readily identify, Christ as the Incarnate one as the model for Christians, Christ as the Bridegroom of the feminized Soul, “Christ as Love itself, Love embodied”95; and the centrality of action to theology, the importance of “lived theology”:

This emphasis results from women’s exclusion from traditional theological discourse, the demand that women focus on religion and moral action rather than theology and intellectual contemplation. But it is also a reaction against what these women perceive as the sterility, even the self-centeredness of academic theology. Far from concentrating on the compensations of the afterlife, these women’s theologies focus intently on this world, its problems and joys.96

The evangelical movement strengthened this way of engaging in theological thought and writing, encouraging women to openly use authoritative language of scripture. “In so doing they achieved greater political power, ‘feminizing’ social discourse by representing female authority in terms of spiritual gifts, prophesying against the exploitation of women as sinfulness, and calling on their readers to repent of their misogynistic practices.”97

For women, explicit theological orthodoxy became implicit social rebellion:

Following the models of the female preachers, women writers not only seized the opportunities offered them by evangelical teaching and practice to appropriate

94 Morgan, Women, Religion and Feminism, 14. 95 Melnyk, Women’s Theology, xvii. 96 Ibid., xvii. 97 Krueger, The Reader’s Repentance, 5.

interpretive and literary authority, but also sought to make their feminized social gospel prevail. . . . Women preachers and writers mounted vigorous resistance to domestic ideology on the basis of scripture and evangelical teaching. Scripture could validate myths of ideal domestic womanhood only if its own ideological conflicts were suppressed, for scripture texts might also be adduced in support of sexual, racial and class equality, and to justify revolution. . . . Christian women pointed to the Hebrew judge Deborah, Queen Esther, or Sarah—who laughed at God—as precedents for divinely sanctioned female speech, in opposition to patriarchal authority.98

The connections between theological discourse and social action and the framing of social problems in spiritual terms were frequent, possibly because “Christianity legitimated women’s participation in the political debate while secular philosophy sought to exclude them.”99 Hannah More, by whom all four of the women of this thesis were influenced, used her political alliances and her literary innovations effectively: “insisting on the continuity of private and public virtue against the notion of separate spheres; privileging simple, concrete language over the ornate or abstract; imbuing vulgar dialects with authority; and, most important, recognizing the political implications of the diffusion of narrative authority in the novel.”100

It is not surprising that the Bible played a significant role in women’s writing in this time period:

The influence of the Bible on the female mind is a common theme in the hundreds of nineteenth-century memoirs, diaries and autobiographies that women have left us. . . . Recurring subjects include visiting the poor, Sunday school teaching, mothers’ meetings, sewing garments for the poor, and a variety of other customary practices centered on the home and the church. Such matters may appear humdrum and stark, but for the fervent Christian the routine of domestic labour and charitable duty had its rationale and rewards. . . . Rarely enjoying an education that led to theology, women sought in Scripture what could explain or give meaning to their more mundane existence. To them religion tended to be personal and social, something to be integrated into daily life and acted upon.101

98 Ibid., 5–6, 7. 99 Ibid., 14. 100 Ibid., 14–5. 101 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, 13–4.

In addition to explaining or giving meaning to their mundane existence, the reading and study of the Bible gave women the opportunity and the impetus to re-envision their lives in order to liberate them:

As principal catechists of their daughters, and in middle class families, their female servants, women established their own discursive traditions: they formed communities in which they could entertain the more radical implications of their beliefs and in public they could vilify their critics as “pharisees” and “sinners.” Most important, finding in scripture calls to essentially literary vocations as preachers, prophets, and evangelists, women writers could re-envision women’s lives and represent them authoritatively. These women were revising and subverting the dominant Christian ideology, and thereby reconstructing social discourse.102

Women wrote fiction, moral tales intended to educate their readers to judge for themselves, identifying with the virtuous characters and rejecting the sinful alternatives. Implicit in these tales, often based on “the idea of the labouring classes teaching themselves or even teaching their social superiors,”103 is a belief that the lower classes were an audience worth addressing. As well as the expression of morality, there was also a celebration of the domestic with a focus on every day, familiar scenes of home life.

One type of this genre of moral tales was the moral-domestic novel which, according to Howard, offered “variations on a stock plot in which a piously Christian, philanthropic heroine endures a series of adversities, from bereavement to poverty, with quiet dignity and unshakeable faith, before achieving personal happiness in the home, respectful deference of her community and most importantly the promise of eternal reward.”104 Another type was the conversion novel, which portrayed a beautiful heroine converting from Judaism (sometimes Catholicism) to Protestantism. “She is helped by a Christian mentor often a female religious and domestic exemplar, and usually loses her existing family and friends in the process of converting.”105

102 Krueger, The Reader’s Repentance, 9. 103 Saunders, “Putting the Reader Right,” 20. 104 R. A. Howard, “Domesticating the Novel: Moral-Domestic Fiction, 1820–1834,” Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text 13 (Winter 2004), 67, accessed 27 January 2018, http://www.romtext.org.uk /reports/cc13_n03/. 105 Ibid., 69. Although these novels were usually written by women, the most famous was Ivanhoe, written by Sir Walter Scott.

In all types of these moral tales, it is worth noting that the heroine could be liberated from male control because of her religious zeal; “the morally superior heroine could reject the advice and demands of a father or husband, and even live happily as an old maid in an exclusively female sphere.”106 Yet again women were finding subtle ways of using the conventions of the time to carve out places of authority.

In this period, women also wrote reform tracts and essays. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) demanded political and social equality for women. In 1824, Elizabeth Heyrick wrote an influential educational pamphlet entitled Immediate, not Gradual Abolition in which she passionately argued in favor of the immediate emancipation of slaves in the British colonies. In 1847, the first leaflet on women’s suffrage was published by a Quaker woman, Ann Knight. Women were using their pens as a means of expressing and indeed preaching their different social causes. In so doing, they frequently looked to models and mentors in the Bible. This led Prochaska to observe, “Christ, ‘the heavenly bridegroom’, was not the only guide to conduct in the Bible; the women of Scripture could also shed light on woman’s nature and mission.”107

One of the most effective mediums used by many women in this time period was poetry. “The dominant interests of hegemonic Christian culture, Christian male clerics, critics, and even politicians can be seen in ‘contact’ with the often competing and ‘asymmetrically’ empowered interests of Christian women, as well as Jewish communities, clerics, and politicians, and Jewish women writers—all of whom sought to lay claim to the highest form of literary identity in Victorian England, the mantle of the poet.”108 Poetry became an effective force for change for both women and Jews:

Because both femaleness and Jewishness exist as abstracted and essentialized figures in the construction of Victorian poetry, the moment in which real women and real Jews assert poetic identity is potentially a moment of acute crisis in Victorian culture. . . . The concerns with Jewishness and femaleness are inextricably linked to the historical moment in which a Jewish community and a female literary community came into their own in English history. . . . The threat

106 Howard, “Domesticating the Novel,” 68. 107 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, 15. 108 Scheinberg, Women's Poetry and Religion, 25.

was that both Jews and women could now provide ‘self-understanding’ of the systems which had abstracted and idealized them as sources of poetry, and with this self-understanding, women Jewish poets serve to rupture many of the binary oppositions upon which Victorian culture based its theories of religious and gender identity.109

One of the metaphors used in both women’s and men’s writing in this period was that of separate spheres: public and private. In recent years, historians have challenged the historical reality of such a separation suggesting that, for both men and women, the spatial boundaries were flexible and permeable.110 The historians note that women used the metaphor to negotiate private and public identities, subverting the traditional language of religion and piety:

Only by appropriating dominant ideologies of femininity—female domestic sovereignty, motherhood, women’s moral superiority and the greater compassion of the female sex—did women activists successfully allay their co-worker’s fears as to the impropriety of public roles for women while counteracting male opposition at the same time. Religious language was sufficiently malleable to allow women to create meaningful forms of political and public involvement without compromising their feminine identities: thus the orthodox Christian emphasis on feminine self-sacrifice was transformed into a powerful claim for the regenerative mission of women.111

Use of alternative genres for biblical interpretation also allowed women to do exegesis and theology without appearing to challenge the religious hierarchy or the academy. They did so by using genres that were seen as “acceptably feminine: lyric verse, elegies, devotional literature, aesthetic theory, and educational manuals for teaching children.”112

Plurality of Approaches to Biblical Interpretation

Plurality of approaches to biblical interpretation reflected the paradox: the Bible had lost its hold on many aspects of society and yet it still held authority in the lives of many. The

109 Ibid., 60. 110 Morgan, Women, Religion and Feminism, 9–10; Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy, 1–2; Luddy, Women and Philanthropy, 1. 111 Morgan, Women, Religion and Feminism, 12–13. 112 Natasha Duquette, Veiled Intent: Dissenting Women's Aesthetic Approach to Biblical Interpretation (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2016), 1.

42 late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries experienced a complexity of approaches to the Bible and to interpretation, linked in many ways to the past yet different in many ways from that tradition.113 The fourfold sense of scriptural interpretation which dominated medieval study was rarely used. In its place was another fourfold approach, each one struggling to find its new expression and each one to some degree maintaining the religious significance of the book: the Bible as the source of orthodoxy, the Bible as a guide to life and piety, the Bible as a historical document, and the Bible as an aesthetic work of art.

For the leaders of the established Churches and Judaism, the Bible was the source of orthodox knowledge and doctrine. For Protestants, the Bible alone represented the foundation of the Christian faith with its content clear and self-interpreting. For Roman Catholics, the Bible and Christian tradition together were the sources for authentic Christian faith and theology with all biblical interpretation needing consistency with the Church’s teachings over time. For Jews, Torah was the foundational document of Judaism, and the proper and necessary expression of Jewish life was through the observance of the Jewish law (halakah). However, the Talmud and related rabbinic literature embodied the integration of the Oral and Mosaic Torah and determined the meaning of the Jewish law, often given primacy over the Bible itself.

The Pietist movement in Germany and the evangelical movement in Britain had shifted away from the orthodox focus on dogma and correct teaching to a focus on the Bible as a guide to Christian life. In the Bible, one could find spiritual and moral lessons as well as connections between one’s own life and the lives of biblical men and women. The Bible was a source of wisdom and edification.

The central theme of the Methodist revival—that the simple gospel message was accessible to all who read and heard with an open heart—effectively promoted private scripture interpretation and application, thus granting to the individual the authority to discern God’s will for herself.114

113 See the introductions in Sandys-Wunsch (“Introduction to the Nature and Concerns of Biblical Exegesis,” 1–25) and Yarchin (“Introduction: History of Biblical Interpretation,” xi–xxx). 114 Krueger, The Reader’s Repentance, 24.

The goal was the improvement of the quality of one’s discipleship. Interpretation was, therefore, both subjective and experiential. This approach to interpretation became the dominant approach in most churches and at the popular level.

Elements of both the millenarian enthusiasm for Christ’s return and the Romantic longings for the unity of Christendom can be discerned in the Bible society movement which swept across Europe in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The British and Foreign Bible Society was founded in London in 1804. Its aim was breathtaking in its simplicity and ambition: it would unite Christians of all denominations in the quest to provide every inhabitant of the world with access to a Bible, without note or comment, and printed in his or her native language. As the influence of the Bible reached into every home and heart, it would convert the world’s population to a pure, scriptural Christianity, uniting all peoples in a common faith and bringing an end to war, oppression, and injustice.115

However, the most significant shift in interpretation came with the awareness that the Bible was losing its absolute authority. The Bible was no longer of divine origin but was a human document, a historical document, and just like every other book was written in specific historical and religious contexts, and best understood through the application of scientific and critical disciplines.

The meaning of Scripture was no longer to be found in a network of doctrinal symbols connoted by the words of Scripture, that is, in a symbolic universe, but rather in the physical and historical universe. The criterion for truth in Scripture no longer resided in that symbolic network but in the correspondence between what is written on the pages of the Bible and what is shown to be true in the historical world of human observation and experience.116

In this interpretation, the focus was on the critical study of the history of the texts and attention to the meaning intended by the biblical author. The development of science had resulted in new learning in many dimensions of this historical document: the recovery of ancient languages, cultures and religions; the archaeological finds in Mesopotamia and Palestine-Syria, the discovery and deciphering of the Rosetta Stone, the resulting insights into culture and religion of ancient world in which the Bible was written, further refinements of Hebrew grammar and vocabulary, and more accurate study of texts from

115 Brown and Tackett, Enlightenment, Reawakening, and Revolution, 587. 116 Yarchin, History of Biblical Interpretation, xxiii–xxiv.

44 other living religions (e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism). Arguably, the most important changes in biblical interpretation took place between 1700 and 1800, “when in matters of science, chronology, ancient history, linguistics, geology, geography and other disciplines, the Bible was no longer either the starting point or the criterion.”117

Living at the same time as the four women were forerunners of historical criticism including Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) who established hermeneutics as modern discipline in its own right, rejecting the absolute authority of Scripture and interpreting Bible the same as any other book;118 Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827) who discussed theology separate from philological or exegetical problems, and first used the terms “lower” and “higher” criticism;119 Johann Philipp Gabler (1753–1826) who identified a clear distinction between biblical and dogmatic theology;120 and Wilhelm M. L. de Wette (1780–1849) who was the first scholar to use criticism to present a history of Israelite religion that was radically at variance with the picture presented in the Bible itself.121

The fourth prominent approach to interpretation also envisioned the Bible as a human document, but not a history book. The Bible was seen as an aesthetic work of art, a literary creation using the style of lands and times in which it was written, and studied in light of the modes of thought and literary habits of the people of those lands and times. In this interpretation, the focus was on aesthetic appreciation, the spiritual and mystical character of artistic creativity. The stories of the Bible were of human composition, but, in their beauty, they made the heart more aware of God. This approach was influenced by the spirit of Romanticism of the period with its attention to natural beauty and to creative expression of all kinds (art, music, poetry, drama, literature, philosophy), its focus on liberty and freedom, its revival of interest in the supernatural and mysterious, its conviction that humans learn through intuition and instinct, and its belief that imagination

117 Sandys-Wunsch, What Have They Done to the Bible?, 282. 118 Anthony Thiselton, “Biblical studies and theoretical hermeneutics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. John Barton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 97–99. 119 Sandys-Wunsch, What Have They Done to the Bible?, 247–48. 120 Ibid., 261–62. 121 Ibid., 307.

45 was superior to reason. Two writers from this period who championed this approach were Robert Lowth in his attention to parallelism as the source of charm in Hebrew poetry (Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, 1753), and Johann Gottfried von Herder who, in "Vom Geist der Hebräischen Poesie (1782)," did much to imbue his age with admiration for Hebrew literature.

Embedded in these four very different approaches to interpretation were three sources of tension. For the first time, there emerged a tension between approaches based on faith (the theological) and on reason (the scientific). While in earlier centuries the theologian found ways to balance this tension, now theology and biblical criticism were becoming separate disciplines. This separation extended further in a tension between the ecclesial and the academic, again two domains that had been one in previous centuries. Faculties of theology were still based in a specific religious tradition, but the academic faculty members were no longer the church leaders. In the established churches, the church leaders were holding fast to doctrinal and dogmatic interpretation while academic leaders were moving decidedly to historical criticism. The third source of tension lay in acknowledging the source of authority to interpret, either the person or the believing community. For Jews and Roman Catholics, ultimate authority lay in the believing community, either the rabbinic school or the church’s magisterium. For Protestants, sola Scriptura was the principle of ultimate authority. In each community, however, there was a spectrum of belief on this matter, often more intuitive than formal.

New Situation: Social Location of the Four Women

The eleven characteristics of the time period in which the four women lived set the context for the approach to interpretation taken by each woman. To specify the specific social location of each woman, the framework created by Mary Ann Tolbert will be used. Tolbert uses the term the politics of location and the poetics of location to describe the social location of individual interpreters. The “politics of location” means that individuals speak out of their unique and complex situation of social and personal affiliation and institutional and political status; “all perspectives are constituted out of these same

46 ingredients.”122 Some ingredients, in a particular cultural and historical period, are deemed more or less worthy of trust, reward, power and prestige than others, resulting in group solidarity and political action. The “poetics of location” is involved in analyzing each site of writing, reading or theorizing by investigating the specific historical, cultural, political and social matrix that grounds it. It reflects “the postmodern understanding of language as constitutive of reality, rather than merely reflective of it.”123 Interpretation is recognized, then, as the practice of rhetoric: language creates worlds, constructs the vision of what is good, true and beautiful. “A poetics of location maintains the radical historicity of texts and interpreters, their creative and multiple interconnections, and their powerful constructions of ‘reality,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘justice.’”124

The “poetics of location” acknowledges its own boundaries in the “facts of blood and the facts of bread”:

The “facts of blood” connote the broad areas of physical and mental integrity, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, familial affiliation, etc. from which individually have often formed the basis of definitions of “essence” and the grounds for developing a politics of identity. . . . The “facts of bread,” on the other hand, situate where one speaks, the grounds of authority, national and institutional context, economic and educational status that shape each utterance we make and often determine who will listen to what we say and who will not.125

The “facts of blood” and the “facts of bread” will be determined in this chapter for each of the four women. The impact of these “facts” on their writing and on the reality their writing constituted for their audiences as well as the authority for their writing will be assessed in later chapters.

Grace Aguilar: Facts of Blood

Aguilar was born in 1816 in Hackney, Middlesex, England. She was the oldest of three children with two younger brothers. Her parents were Emanuel Aguilar, a merchant, and

122 Segovia and Tolbert, Reading from This Place, 1:312. 123 Ibid., 315. 124 Ibid., 317. 125 Ibid., 311–2.

Sarah Fernandez, a member of a merchant family and a woman of considerable culture and intellect. Her parents were both Sephardic Jews, descended from the Marranos of Spain and Portugal (crypto-Jews who survived the Spanish Inquisition by pretending to be Catholics while they practiced their faith in secret). Her father was a prominent member (at one time, president) of the Spanish Jewish Congregation of London.

Aguilar was never in good physical health, having from infancy “a delicate frame and feeble health . . . and a naturally fragile constitution.”126 She was almost constantly under the care of a physician, spent childhood summers by the sea, and in 1838 contracted measles from which she never fully recovered.

One observer described her physical aspect in this way: “In person, Grace Aguilar was tall and slight; her manner gentle and persuasive; but when she spoke, she was remarkably earnest; and when she became excited, her full dark eyes were dazzling in their brightness.”127

Aguilar never married. She cared for her mother and father in their illnesses, her father in his dying in 1845 and her brother as he sought financial security. She died in 1847 in Frankfurt, Germany, where she had gone in hopes of regaining her own health. Her last words, spelled out using sign language since she had lost her voice, were, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job 13:15). Her gravestone at her burial place in Frankfurt was engraved with five stars and a butterfly over the epitaph: “Give her of the fruit of her hands; let her own works praise her in the gates” (Prov 31:31).128

Grace Aguilar: Facts of Bread

Aguilar, for all but eighteen months, was educated at home by her mother and her father. She had a broad knowledge of literature, history, Jewish religious texts (her father read aloud Josephus to her), languages, music (piano, harp, singing and dancing), painting and

126 Sarah Aguilar, “Memoir of Grace Aguilar,” in Home Influence: A Tale for Mothers and Daughters, by Grace Aguilar (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1870), ix. 127 Mrs. A. M. Hall, “Obituary: Grace Aguilar,” Art-Union 9 (November 1, 1847): 278. 128 Aguilar, “Memoir,” xvi.

48 needlework. Her mother required that she read sermons and study religion and the Bible. As part of her education, she took a tour of English towns in 1835, visiting Oxford, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Worcester, Ross and Bath. She operated a school for Jewish boys with her mother after they returned to London.

As a child she wrote poetry and drama. Several of her written works were translated into German and Hebrew. Her works were widely circulated in Britain and the United States and are still being reprinted today. In 1869, an eight-volume retrospective edition of her collected works was published and highly acclaimed internationally. Her poetry was published in Christian ladies’ journals. Most of her books were published by her mother Sarah after her death.

Aguilar wrote in multiple genres: theology and apologetics (e.g., The Spirit of Judaism, The Jewish Faith, Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings), midrash (e.g., The Women of Israel), history (“History of the Jews in England” in Chambers Miscellany), biblical biography (e.g., The Women of Israel), poetry (e.g., The Magic Wreath, “The Wanderers,” “Ode on Charity, “A Vision of Jerusalem”), domestic novel (e.g., Home Scenes and Heart Studies, The Perez Family, Home Influence, The Mother’s Recompense, Woman’s Friendship), historical romance (The Edict, The Escape, Records of Israel, The Vale of Cedars and The Days of Bruce), letters (to friends such as Miriam Moses Cohen), and journaling (her personal journal begun when she was seven and continued until her death).

Aguilar was directly influenced by both the Jewish Enlightenment and by evangelical Protestantism, an integration of social realities that is more common in this time period than had previously been recognized:

In England, unlike any other European state, Jewish Enlightenment thought was actually inspired by English Evangelicalism, as Christian religious figures comprised much of the voices of the standard Enlightenment in England. . . . The English Protestant bibliocentricity found in the origins of Reform Judaism in London and mediated through upper-class Anglo-Jewry proved much more influential on the first Reformers than did any Jewish religious thought from

abroad. . . . The Evangelicals’ charge of “rabbinism” was a major factor in the birth of Reform Judaism in England, making Aguilar’s Evangelicalism and Reformist leanings less contradictory than supposed.129

Because of her father’s illness, the family moved to Devonshire in 1828 where she mixed in Christian society and attended chapel. She was influenced by the evangelical Christians she met there, and was praised by the Protestant press for her high moral tone. Her emphasis on spirituality and the primacy of the Bible led some to call her a Protestant Jew. However, she remained faithful to the practice of Jewish ritual and prayer, to the use of the Hebrew language and to the belief in the return of the Hebrew nation to the land of Israel.130

Because of the family’s financial difficulties, Aguilar wrote novels and poetry to make a living.

The Community for Whom Aguilar Wrote

In most of her writings, Aguilar identified the community or group for which her work was intended. In the preface of The Spirit of Judaism (1842), she stated, “To the mothers and daughters in Israel its pages are more particularly addressed, for to them is more especially entrusted the regeneration of Israel.”131 However, she added another public whom she believed would benefit from the work: “One other incentive has urged her to the publication of her work—the hope that it may assist the followers of other creeds in obtaining a truer and kinder estimate of the Jewish religion than, from the scarcity of theological writings amongst the Hebrews, they now possess.”132

Her next publication, Records of Israel (1844), reinforced this same theme of a book intended to give a truer and kinder estimate of the Jewish religion to followers of other creeds and to give members of the Jewish community a greater knowledge of their own

129 Dearinger, “‘the invisible Spirit alone’,” 82, 89. 130 Milton Kerker, “Grace Aguilar, A Woman of Israel,” Midstream 47, no. 2 (February 2001): 35. 131 Grace Aguilar, The Spirit of Judaism, ed. Isaac Leeser (1842; repr., Philadelphia: Sherman & Co., 1853), x. 132 Ibid., xi–xii.

50 history: “They [the records of Israel] are offered to the public generally, in the hope that some vulgar errors concerning Jewish feelings, faith, and character may, in some measure, be corrected; and to the Jewish public, earnestly trusting that the favour shown to the author in the reception and popularity of a former volume, may be granted also to this.”133

From the perspective of the primary intention of this thesis, Aguilar’s most important work is The Women of Israel (1845). Not surprisingly, the same two sets of readers were named with the priority given to Jewish women and youth. Aguilar made note of the fact that, while many were writing about the women of Scripture, there was a marked absence of the Jewish perspective. “The field has, indeed, been entered; detached notices of the women of Israel the female biography of Scripture, have often formed interesting portions of those works, where woman is the subject; but all the fruit has not been gathered.”134 She strengthened this relationship between God and women by highlighting themes more common in evangelical Protestant theology: God loves each one personally, and speaks to each one individually, “to each individual, giving strength to the weak, encouragement to the desponding, endurance to the patient, justice to the wronged, and consolation unspeakable as unmeasurable to the afflicted and the mourner.”135

While she held this to be true for every woman, Aguilar paid special attention to young Jewish women who were tempted to convert to Christianity because they did not find in Judaism the same sense of a God who loved them.

There may be some meek and lowly spirits amongst the female youth of Israel, who would gladly clasp the strength and guidance which we proffer them from the Bible, could they believe that God, the great, the almighty, the tremendous and awful Being (as which they have perhaps been accustomed to regard Him), can have love and pity for themselves, or give comfort and aid to trials, which appear even too trivial to ask, or to excite the sympathy of man. We would lead

133 Grace Aguilar, Records of Israel (London: John Mortimer, 1844), x–xi. 134 Grace Aguilar, The Women of Israel: or Characters and Sketches from the Holy Scriptures and Jewish History, 16th ed. (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1886), 1. 135 Ibid., 7.

them to look earnestly and believingly into the history of every woman in the Bible, and trace there the influence of God’s holy and compassionating love.136

Aguilar’s next work, The Jewish Faith (1846), focused more specifically on Jewish youth, especially young women, “to elucidate for our female youth the tenets of their own, and so remove all danger from the perusal of abler and better works by spiritual.”137 In this book, Aguilar carefully noted that, although Jewish not Christian young people were the intended audience, Christian young women might benefit from reading the work, “Young Christian women have such advantages and privileges in following the religion of the Land, in having teachers and guides without number, male and female— that it would be indeed a presumptuous hope to interest them in the subject under discussion; yet even to them it may not be entirely useless.”138

Aguilar made reference to Christians for two different reasons. On the one hand, she feared the conversionist tendency of Protestants. On the other hand, she believed that people of different religions valuing each other’s faith and practice could only lead to good: “Works then, tending to elucidate the religion of another, must ever be welcome to the candid and liberal mind; and though to my young Christian sisters the following letters may proffer nothing in the way of religious instruction, they will at least prove that the Hebrew faith is not one of spiritless form, meaningless observances, and comfortless belief, which some suppose it, not from wilful illiberality, but from actual ignorance.”139

While this thesis will not be focusing as much on Aguilar’s domestic novels (e.g., Home Influence and The mother’s recompense: a sequel to “Home Influence”), the emphasis on the mother as primary educator of Jewish youth was the intent of these novels: “The moral of the following story the author acknowledges is addressed to mothers only, for on them so much of the responsibility of Home Influence devolves.”140

136 Ibid., 8. 137 Grace Aguilar, The Jewish Faith: Spiritual Consolation, Moral Guidance, and Immortal Hope (1846; repr., Philadelphia: Sherman & Co. 1864), 14, 16. 138 Ibid., 18. 139 Ibid., 18. 140 Grace Aguilar, Home Influence: A Tale for Mothers and Daughters (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1870), vi–vii.

Aguilar did not intend to publish the final work considered in this thesis, Essays and miscellanies (1853). However, after her death, her mother, Sarah Aguilar, had the reflections including “Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings” published. Within this work were an essay entitled “Thoughts on Family Prayers” and a number of family prayers written by Grace Aguilar, prayers more in the tradition of evangelical Protestantism than Judaism. In the essay, she wrote:

The following simple prayers are not intended for children to repeat themselves, but to be read by the father, mother and instructress of a young family, in the presence of all their children, from three years old upwards, earlier if the disposition of the child be such as to allow it to remain attentive during the time the prayer may last.141

In effect, Aguilar’s publics included Jewish women, Jewish mothers and daughters, Jewish youth and children (male and female), and Christians and Christian youth. However, Jewish women were the ones who knew her as their own. Just before her death on July 9, 1847, a tribute was given her by three hundred Jewish women, comparing her to the Hebrew Bible prophet and leader, Deborah (Judg 5:7), “Until you arose, it has, in modern times, never been the case, that a woman in Israel should stand forth the public advocate of the faith of Israel.”142

Frances Elizabeth King: Facts of Blood

Frances Elizabeth Bernard was born on July 25, 1757 at Lincoln, England, one of twelve children of Sir Francis and Amelia (Offley) Bernard. When she was six months old, her father became Governor of the Colony of New Jersey. She, “being unusually delicate,”143 and her eldest sister Jane were left with a cousin of her father’s, Jane Beresford, who instilled in both girls “those good principles of religion and active and succouring charity

141 Grace Aguilar, Essays and Miscellanies: Choice Cullings from the Manuscripts of Grace Aguilar, ed. Sarah Aguilar (Philadelphia: Hart, 1853), 131, 134, 137. 142 Henrietta Szold, “Grace Aguilar,” The Jewish Chronicle, (July 9, 1847), 178, accessed February 23, 2012, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/923-aguilar-grace. 143 Sophia Higgins, The Bernards of Abington and Nether Winchendon: A Family History (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903), 1.221.

. . . which influenced her future life and led her to co-operate with her family in assisting the poor.”144 Bernard had a natural fondness for literature, books were her companions. She excelled in reading, music, French and needlework.

In 1782, she married the Reverend Richard King, the Vicar of Steeple Morden in Cambridgeshire who later became Rector of Worthen in Shropshire. She said that “I am now of an age to have a consequence and a conduct of my own; so if my own mature reason and judgement directs me to any object I shall be steady in my pursuit of it.”145 It seems that the marriage was a happy one with the following dedication in The Beneficial Effects of the Christian temper on domestic happiness:

To the Rev Richard King, M.A. this Little Book, suggested by the pleasing contemplation of the effects of Christianity on a serious and benevolent mind during an uninterrupted union of twenty-five years, is inscribed by his grateful and affectionate wife, F.E. King.146

The Kings had four children: in 1783, twins Henry (who died in infancy) and Amelia; in 1786, Julia Priscilla; and in 1792, Elizabeth (who died in 1801). She also fostered her orphaned nephew (1791-93) and cared for her grandchildren and several young girls who were daughters of friends.

King was described as having a vigorous mind, being affectionate and indulgent yet strictly enforcing authority. She showed great generosity and managed all details of business with cleverness and scrupulous accuracy. She demonstrated hospitable temper, graceful familiarity and lively conversation. She was zealous in promoting the cause of religion and virtue, yet “had a true liberality in allowing for a difference in opinion in others.”147

144 [John Collinson], “Memoir of the Author,” v. 145 Higgins, Bernards of Abington, 3.36–7. 146 Frances Elizabeth King, The Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper on Domestic Happiness, 2nd ed. (London: F.C. & J. Rivington, 1813), iii. 147 [John Collinson], “Memoir of the Author,” vii.

Her husband died in 1810, and she went to live in Gatehead, County Durham to be near her two married daughters. She herself endured months of suffering with fortitude, patience and resignation before her own death in 1821 at Gateshead. Her last words were, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Frances Elizabeth King: Facts of Bread

King was active in her husband’s parishes, superintending a large Sunday School, a Sick Fund, a Clothing Society, visiting the poor in their homes and establishing a parish library. She supported her brother Thomas, who founded the Society for Bettering the Conditions and Improving the Comforts of the Poor. The objects of this Society were described in this way:

To remove the difficulties attending parochial relief, and the discouragement of industry and economy by the present mode of distributing it; to correct the abuses of workhouses, and to assist the poor in placing out their children in the world; in this, and in the improvement of their habitations and gardens; in assistance and information as to the use of fuel, so as to give them more benefit from it; and in adding to and meliorating their means of subsistence, by public kitchens and by other means—much may be done by the union of liberal and benevolent minds— much by the circulating of information, and by personal assistance and influence.148

The one hundred and forty-two reports from this Society extended over nearly eleven years (1797 to 1809) give interesting perspectives on the social issues of the day (e.g., cancer care, care for blind persons, a crusade for chimney-sweeps, care for beggars and widows, reforms for prisons and workhouses) and innovative approaches to resolving them. Many of the reports, which were written by Thomas Bernard or his wife Margaret, showed King’s special interest in care for women and children and in founding schools for the children of the poor.

King’s first written work, completed when she was eighteen but published later (1818), was The Rector’s Memorandum Book, being Memoirs of a Family in the North. It was a

148 Higgins, Bernards of Abington, 3. 229.

55 moral-domestic novel, a fictional account of life in a parish centered on an exemplary Christian heroine who educated the children and nursed the sick in the village. The heroine was in an unhappy marriage but was submissive to her unkind husband, even though she held spiritual superiority over him. She died an early and pious death. The novel was framed in a series of letters and memories from a rector about a family in his parish:

“You must spare me, my dear madam,” said he, “the sorrow of retracing their history, yet I have felt an anxious desire that it should not be lost to the world, as it furnishes an example of female excellence so valuable, I could wish its influence to be extended. . . . Should it ever be the means of conveying comfort to the suffering heart, or raising the pious eye to ‘that better and more enduring substance that fadeth not away,’ —how great my gratification will be.”149

King’s interest in education may have begun while she was still at home since there is a suggestion that she superintended a school established by her mother at Nether Winchendon, Buckinghamshire. The heroine of The Rector’s Memorandum Book educated the children of her village. In the introduction to Female Scripture Characters, she referenced the educational approaches of Sarah Trimmer as well as the Barrington Training School.

One area of her work related to education was the establishment of parish libraries. In one of the reports of the Society, Margaret Bernard described King’s work in this way:

At Steeple Morden, in the county of Cambridge, the poor have been furnished with a circulating library of short tracts of a religious and moral nature. . . . The collection at Steeple Morden consists of the Cheap Repository Tracts, and some few others of a similar kind, and has already, even at the beginning, proved of considerable benefit to the parish. On Sunday afternoon when the business of the Sunday-school is over, Mrs. King, the lady who has founded the library, reads one of the tracts to the children, and to such of the parents as choose to attend. It is then made the subject of conversation, and a few copies of the tract are lent to the

149 Frances Elizabeth King, The Rector's Memorandum Book, Being Memoirs of a Family in the North (London: Messrs. Rivington and J. Hatchard, 1819), 8, 11.

different children, who read it over again in the evening with their parents and neighbours.150

King successfully used the same model in two other parishes. She believed in training “some persons of a class or classes above the very poor to aid in their development, whether in the school or the sick-room.”151

In Female Scripture Characters, King described the importance of care for sick and elderly persons:

Riches indeed cannot be enjoyed under the pressure of affliction, but poverty makes a bitter addition to its sufferings. Oh! let the happy female, distinguished by the invaluable blessing of health, evince her gratitude to the Great Giver of all good by dispensing aid and comfort to all sufferers under this inevitable evil; let her study nursing the sick as a science, assured that the skill of the nurse is more beneficial than that of the physician. The tenderness, the sympathy, the quietness of her attention, her knowledge in preparing the various little articles of nourishment, and her judgement in producing them at proper times, in small quantities, and in a palatable state, have been found inestimable comforts to those who have languished under the affliction of sickness. She should learn to perform common operations, to administer every kind of remedy, and raise herself above any delicacy of feeling, or nervous weakness, that can impede her usefulness. These remarks are applicable to the general nursing of the sick in all ranks; but to the sick poor her duties will be still more extensive.152

In 1802, King and her husband toured France and spent eight months in Paris. Based on this travel she wrote A Tour in France which focused on France’s philanthropic institutions, the dress and customs of the peasants, and French Sunday rituals (which shocked her). Her next two books The Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper on Domestic Happiness (a treatise) and Female Scripture Characters (biographies of biblical women) were written to correct the inadequate treatment of both subjects by “learned divines.” Her fourth book, The Rector’s Memorandum Book, was actually written first but was published last.

150 Mrs. Bernard, “An Account of a Parish Library for the Poor,” in Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor 3 , no. 82 (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1802), in Bernards of Abington by Higgins, 3. 291. 151 Higgins, Bernards of Abington, 3. 293. 152 Ibid., 3.293.

King insisted on the absolute differences between the functions and capabilities of men and women. In Beneficial Effects, she wrote: “Men are by nature superior in strength of mind, judgement and experience; the Almighty Himself hath said, “thy husband shall rule over thee;” and our Saviour has confirmed this law, both in his own doctrines, and by the mouth of His holy Apostles.”153 Later, in Female Scripture Characters, she reinforced that theme:

The example of Jezebel presents a striking comment on the wretched consequences of women stepping over the strong barrier drawn between the male and female characters, and becoming politicians and rulers, and engaging in concerns of state which neither their capacities nor habits of life fit them for conducting. . . . Men are intended for government, politics, public business and enterprise; their strength of mind, education and delegated power in society, all lead to that end.154

The Community for Whom King Wrote

King’s first published book, A Tour in France (1802), has no biblical or even religious reference with the exception of noting that the Church of St. Sulpice was “the most beautiful church in Paris.”155 This book gave no indication of the readers to whom it was addressed.

Her second book, The Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper on Domestic Happiness (1807), written to compensate for the omission in a work by the Bishop of London, was entitled The Beneficial Effects of Christianity on the Temporal Concerns of Mankind. In the third edition of this book, King wrote in the Preface, “She concealed her Name in the first instance, from the natural diffidence of a Female, and a fear of being thought presumptuous in taking up the subject of a Prelate of such distinguished Piety and Learning, as the Bishop of London. She now relies on the candour of the Public, to admit

153 King, Beneficial Effects, 42. 154 King, Female Scripture Characters, 133–4. 155 Frances Elizabeth King, A Tour in France: 1802, 2nd ed. (London: Printed by B.R. Howlett for J. Booth, 1814), 119.

58 as her excuse, an anxious desire to engage the attention of a Class of Females to whom a more learned and enlightened Work would be less interesting.”156

Although this would indicate that the book was written for women, in the text itself King added that she wrote “with diffidence to a discerning Public” and addressed individual sections to parents (“On the Beneficial Effects of the Christian temper between parent and child”), children and younger readers (“On the Beneficial Effects of the Christian temper between parent and child”), brothers and sisters (“On the importance of Christian conduct between brothers and sisters”), wives (“On the Christian duties of a wife”), and husbands (“On the Christian duties of a husband”).

In the text which is most relevant to this thesis and in the form of scripture biography, Female Scripture Characters (1811), King once again compensated for the inadequate treatment of the subject by a “learned divine”:

The Writer of the following pages feels and acknowledges, with pious awe, that she “stands on holy ground;” [Acts 7:33] and that it may have the appearance of presumption in a female, to take up a subject, which has already been so ably handled by a pious and learned divine—the late Rev. Thomas Robinson, of Leicester. But as he has wholly omitted the Female Scripture Characters, with the exception of two [Esther and Mary], and they appear to offer useful instruction and valuable examples to her own sex, she has thrown together a few instructions, for their benefit only; which she trusts they will receive with kindness and candour.157

She reiterated that this book was intended for Christian women, “it is the comprehension, application, and reflection [on Scripture], which can alone produce the end—a holy and religious life. To give some idea of the mode of application and reflection, which the author humbly conceives may make this Divine Volume the means of this blessed end, a few of the Female Scripture Characters are here presented to the perusal of the females of the present day.”158

156 Ibid., v. 157 King, Female Scripture Characters, i. 158 Ibid., 2.

The Rector’s Memorandum Book was presumably written for female audiences as was re- stated at the end of the book, “if it has left one memorandum on the minds of its readers, of the duties and feelings which form that most angelic of all earthly characters, the female Christian in domestic life, great will be their gain, and great the gratification of the Editor.”159

An anonymous author wrote a memoir of the author which was appended to the twelfth edition of Female Scripture Characters. In that memoir, King is compared to Dorcas, a female character from the Acts of the Apostles, “For a period of more than ten years, was there a mother to the poor, a ‘Dorcas, full of good works and alms-deeds which she did’” [see Acts 9:36].160

Catherine McAuley: Facts of Blood

Catherine Elizabeth McGauley, the daughter of James and Elinor (Conway) McGauley, was born in Stormanstown, Ireland, on September 29, 1778 (there is some confusion about the date of her birth, but 1778 seems to be most consistent with other facts). She had one sister Mary and a younger brother James. James McGauley was a relatively successful grazier, carpenter (he built the oaken pulpit for St. Mary’s Church in Liffey Street, Dublin), timber merchant and “gentleman.” Her mother, thirty years younger than her husband, seems to have been the daughter of a timber merchant. James died in 1783, and Elinor moved the family to other addresses in Dublin. She also changed the spelling of the family name to “McAuley.” James seemed to have had an understanding and compassion for the poor, a characteristic not supported by his wife who is reported to have asked in exasperation, “Must my house become a receptacle for every beggar and cripple in the country?”161 McAuley’s mother died when McAuley was twenty years old.

159 King, Rector’s Memorandum, 272. 160 [John Collinson], “Memoir of the Author,” vii. 161 Mary Vincent Harnett, The Life of Rev. Mother Catherine McAuley, ed. Richard Baptist O’Brien (Dublin: John F. Fowler, 1864), 55.

In the years following her mother’s death, McAuley moved several times. The three McAuley children moved first to their uncle’s home. Owen Conway, a practicing Catholic, graciously received and supported his nieces and nephew and cared for the poor and children in need of education. When he began to have financial problems, the three moved to the home of William Armstrong who may have been a relative or family friend. Armstrong provided a good home, but he opposed the Catholic faith and traditions. McAuley’s brother and sister began to follow the Protestant faith, but McAuley maintained her own faith tradition despite resistance. In 1803, she moved to the home of William and Catherine Callaghan as the manager of their household and a companion to Catherine Callaghan, first in Dublin and later in Coolock. Although they did not share McAuley’s faith, the Callaghans allowed her time to follow her religious practices, and they fully supported her work among poor people. On William Callaghan’s death in 1822, he named McAuley as the beneficiary of his estate valued at £25,000.

McAuley was educated at home, first, it appears, by her father who taught her by his religious instructions and by his charities to poor children. She maintained through her life a love of singing and music. After her father’s death, her mother became her teacher:

Catherine . . . was probably tutored at home by her mother and possibly by Mrs. St. George or by a governess. Though she was obviously literate and cultured, no record of her attending a school for girls has been found. Beyond her studies, Catherine did what young girls do: read books secretly at night by the light of a candle in a box, learned to print. . . . She began her lifelong habit of writing verses which was, in her youth, as she later acknowledged, “my pastime, my folly, my play.”162

When McAuley lived with the Callaghans, she met several Catholic priests including Rev Betagh, who directed her reading and study of Scripture, the Fathers of the Church and the writings of the saints. Throughout her childhood and adult life, she transcribed prayers, books and short passages from other books, a practice which was encouraged by the reforming Irish bishops “to bring more discipline into a church that had successfully

162 Mary C. Sullivan, The Path of Mercy: The Life of Catherine McAuley (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 22.

61 weathered the penal era, but had not had the opportunity to introduce, in full, the reforms of the Counter-Reformation.”163

Her approach to education was not simply theoretical. She was concerned with using the most modern techniques available. In 1825, she travelled to France to study their Catholic education system, she supported the National Board of Education in Ireland,164 and she visited the Kildare schools to learn their pedagogical techniques. She commended to her Sisters the Lancastrian method in which a team of monitresses was employed to hear the students’ lessons after they had received instruction from a head teacher.

One of the first Sisters in her community, Mary Clare Augustine Moore, an artist, described McAuley in this way:

She was very fair with a brilliant color on her cheeks, still not too red. Her face was a short oval but the contour was perfect. Her lips were thin and her mouth rather wide, yet there was so much play and expression about it that I remarked it as the next agreeable feature in her face. Her eyes were light blue and remarkably round with the brows and lashes colorless but they spoke. In repose they had a melancholy beseeching look; then it would light up expressive of really hearty fun, or if she disapproved of anything they could tell that too. Sometimes they had that strange expression of reading your thoughts, which made you feel that even your mind was in her power, and that you could not hide anything from her.165

McAuley died on November 11, 1841 at the House of Mercy in Dublin. In the last two weeks of her life, she was bed-ridden. Among her last words recorded in letters written by the Sisters attending her were: “Now fearing I might forget it again—will you tell the Sisters to get a good cup of tea—I think the community room would be a good place— when I am gone and to comfort one another—but God will comfort them.” Another Sister attending her remembered these words, “If you give yourself entirely to God—all you

163 Mary C. Sullivan, “Catherine McAuley’s Spiritual Reading and Prayers,” Irish Theological Quarterly 57, no. 2 (1991): 127. 164Mary C. Sullivan, The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley: 1818–1841 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), 414. 165 Mary C. Sullivan, Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 202.

62 have to serve Him—every power of your heart and mind—you will have a consolation you will not know it comes from.”166

Catherine McAuley: Facts of Bread

McAuley never married, but she became the foster mother of nine children. Her sister Mary died in 1827 and Mary’s husband in 1829, leaving McAuley as the legal guardian of their five children. Her cousin, Catherine Conway Bryn also died young, and McAuley adopted two of her children. She also adopted two orphans (Ellen Corrigan and Ann Rice), possibly in the early 1820’s.

After William Callaghan’s death, McAuley increased her work among the poor, teaching them religious doctrine, reading, industrial crafts and other useful skills. She had several bitter experiences trying to find shelter for abused women and homeless girls in the institutions of the day. Her determination to do something more led her, in 1827, to use her inheritance to build a house for poor servant girls and homeless women on Baggot Street in a fashionable section of southeast Dublin. The charitable works to be carried out at the house were outlined in a letter from McAuley in this way: “The objects which the Charity at present embraces are daily education of hundreds of poor female Children and instruction of young women who sleep in the House. Objects in view—superintendence of young women employed in the house, instructing and assisting the sick poor as may hereafter be approved.”167 McAuley, with her foster children, moved to this House of Mercy in 1829.

Initially, a small group of young lay women joined McAuley in these works of mercy, but opposition developed to this situation. Therefore, McAuley and her colleagues agreed to found an unenclosed religious congregation of women, devoted to “the service of the poor, the sick and the ignorant.”168 At the age of fifty-three, McAuley with two companions (Anna Maria Doyle and Elizabeth Harley) served their novitiate with the

166 Ibid., 243. 167 Sullivan, Correspondence, 41–42. 168 Ibid., 34. This is the traditional phrase used by the Sisters of Mercy to describe their focus in ministry.

Presentation Sisters in 1831, and, on December 12, 1831, professed religious vows as Sisters of Mercy. The vow formula read in part:

I . . . do vow and promise to God perpetual Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, and to persevere until the end of my life in the Congregation called of the Sisters of Mercy, established for the visitation of the sick poor, protection and instruction of poor females.169

Quickly, other young women joined this first group so that, by McAuley’s death Convents of Mercy had been established in Kingstown (1835), Tullamore (1836), Charleville (1836), Carlow (1837), Cork (1837), Booterstown (1838), Limerick (1838), Bermondsey, London (1839), Galway (1840), Birr (1840), and Birmingham (1841). At the time of her death, she was also planning the first Convent of Mercy outside the British Isles in Newfoundland (North America). Within fifteen years of her death, convents of Mercy were established in Newfoundland (1842), the United States (1843), Australia (1845), Scotland (1849), New Zealand (1849) and South America (1856).

The Community for Whom McAuley Wrote

McAuley’s written works include her correspondence of which two hundred sixty-nine letters have been found, several transcriptions of poems which she paraphrased, a statement on “The Spirit of the Institute,” the Constitutions of the Sisters of Mercy (modified from the Constitutions of the Presentation Sisters), a religious tract entitled Cottage Controversy, and two documents written by members of her first religious community remembering her words to the Sisters: A Little Book of Practical Sayings and Retreat Instructions.

Of her two hundred sixty-nine letters, over seventy percent were written to Sisters of Mercy and the rest about Sisters of Mercy.

The number of letters in Catherine McAuley’s extant correspondence increases markedly from year to year, especially as the new foundations outside Dublin begin in 1836, and the second half of the decade unfolds. While there are 12 extant

169 Ibid., 47.

letters in the period 1818–1831, 13 in 1832–1834, and 16 in 1835–1836, starting with the 27 letters in 1837, the yearly number climbs steadily: 37 in 1838, 51 in 1839, 68 in 1840, and 101 in 1841, the year of Catherine’s death. The gradual increase reflects the geographical expansion of the Sisters of Mercy beyond Dublin, developments in the ecclesiastical status of the congregation, and the increasing membership of the religious order—to the whole scope of which Catherine McAuley tried, to the end, to offer her guidance, wisdom, moral support and affection.170

Although the letters were written to individual Sisters, the fact that, in several letters, there was a section marked “Private” suggests that the letters were meant to be read by the community in which the recipient lived.

The Rule and Constitutions is the foundational document of a religious institute in which members pronounce public vows and live a life in common as brothers or sisters. Constitutions embody the charism and theology of the religious community and set down norms to govern its life and activities. McAuley adapted the Rule and Constitutions of the Sisters of Mercy from that of the Presentation Sisters. Among the amendments were insertions of new scriptural passages more suited, McAuley believed, to the work of the Sisters of Mercy. The Spirit of the Institute was intended to describe the purpose for which the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy existed. It was an amended version of a similar document developed in 1609 by the Jesuit theologian, Alonso Rodriguez, to describe “the end for which the Society of Jesus was instituted.”171

A tract that highlights both the social and religious reality of nineteenth-century Ireland and the misconceptions about Catholics and the Bible has been attributed to McAuley. Cottage Controversy, surprisingly avoiding language of prejudice and self-righteousness, presents a series of conversations between Margaret Lewis, a humble Catholic cottager, and Lady P., the Protestant Lady of the manor.172 In a letter to Mary Josephine Warde, dated 18 October 1839, McAuley wrote: “Tell dear Sr. M. Vincent that I am quite disappointed that she never writes me one little note. I fear she will not patronize my next

170 Ibid., 15. 171 Ibid., 459. 172 [Catherine McAuley], Cottage Controversy (New York: P. O'Shea, 1883).

65 work, I dare not venture to dedicate it to her, if she does not give me more encouragement.” To date, most published copies of McAuley’s life or writings conclude that this is a reference to Cottage Controversy. The first reference is from Mary Austin Carroll who believed that it was written by McAuley and who had published the text extant today, indicating the original had been forwarded to her from Ireland.173 Sullivan concludes that the work may have been a transcription of an earlier document written by someone other than McAuley, but no such document has been found.174 At the very least, the early and strong association of the text with McAuley suggests consistency with her thinking.

Mary Clare Moore, a member of the first group of Sisters of Mercy who lived in the convent in Bermondsey, London, prepared from memory A Little Book of Practical Sayings, Advices and Prayers of Our Revered Foundress, Mother Catherine McAuley (1868) which was distributed to all the convents of the Sisters of Mercy. In the same conscious attempt to put to writing the valued words of their deceased founder, Mary Teresa Purcell recorded from her memory and that of others the Retreat Instructions of McAuley.

Mary Anne Doyle, in her writing of the Tullamore Annals, said:

She seemed to inherit the great gift bestowed by God on the Prophet Isaias, who said, “The Lord hath given me a learned tongue, whereby to support with a word him that is weary.” The eloquence that flowed from her lips when instructing the sisters, especially for making their Vows, went straight to their hearts and irresistibly inclined them to practise the perfection of their holy State.175

In 2017, a critical edition of McAuley’s oral instructions was compiled from all existing sources by Mary C. Sullivan and entitled A Shining Lamp: the Oral Instructions of Catherine McAuley.

173 Mary Austin Carroll, Leaves of the Annals of the Sisters of Mercy (New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co, 1884), 238. 174 Sullivan, Correspondence, 123. 175 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 67.

Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck: Facts of Blood

Mary Anne Galton was born in Birmingham, England, in 1778, the oldest child of Samuel Galton and Lucy Barclay Galton. Samuel and Lucy had three daughters and five sons. Both parents were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers). Her father was a businessman who had a large gun-making factory in Birmingham. He was a member of the Lunar Society, an intellectual network with other members including William Herschel and James Watt. In 1785, the family moved to Barr in Staffordshire. During her childhood, regular visitors to her home included James Watt, Joseph Priestly, Thomas Day and Erasmus Darwin. As a child she was ill frequently, and from the age of eleven to eighteen, wore a “Jones’ instrument” to support her spine, effectively preventing her from playing with other children.

In 1806, Mary Anne married Lambert Schimmelpenninck, a Dutchman who was in the shipping trade (including tobacco trade) in Bristol. On 29th September 1806, Samuel Galton and two sons, Samuel Tertius and Theodore, gave the manorial estate to Mary Anne and Lambert Schimmelpenninck as a marriage settlement. There was a difference of opinion with her family about this marriage settlement, and the resulting acrimony was never resolved, a cause of much sadness to Schimmelpenninck. Her niece, Elizabeth Anne Galton, said of her:

My grandfather had three daughters. The eldest Marianne (Mrs. Schimmelpenninck) was very clever and talented, and wrote several clever books, but unfortunately was a great mischief-maker, causing such annoyance and quarrels in the family, and among all their acquaintances from her habit of distorting truth so as to give a false impression, that at last it was settled by her parents and family that all intercourse with her must cease, so that I did not know her.176

She was close friends with the Quaker family of Gurneys of Earlham and kept in close correspondence with them throughout her life. Elizabeth Gurney Fry (a well-known prison reformer) said of her, “She was one of the most interesting and bewitching people

176 James Andrew Keir Moilliet, ed., Elizabeth Anne Galton (1808–1906): A Well-connected Gentlewoman, rev ed. (Northwich: Leonie Press, 2003), 5, 105.

I ever saw.” Fry’s sister, Catherine Gurney, said, “You were one of the principal instruments in bringing me to a knowledge of the Gospel.”177 In the Preface to Sacred Musings, Joseph Baylee said of her, “The works of Schimmelpenninck are well calculated to stimulate devout study, and to point the way to many a profitable path. She had varied gifts and intellectual powers which are seldom allotted to woman.”178

Schimmelpenninck was a friend of Hannah More who sent her the writings of the Port- Royalists, a set of writings which was to have profound impact on her thinking. In 1815, she visited Port-Royal with her husband, and in 1816 she wrote in three volumes Narrative of a tour taken in the year 1667; and also a brief sketch of . . . Port-Royal. The book was republished in 1829 as Select Memoirs of Port-Royal: to which are appended Tour to Alet. This experience, together with acquaintance with Roman Catholics who were regular visitors to her home, led her to a lifelong interest in Roman Catholicism. Although Schimmelpenninck always manifested an interest in religion, she said of her childhood that she “suffered from an indiscriminate theological education.” In 1808 she was baptized by a Methodist minister, and in 1818 she joined the Moravian Church.

In 1837, Schimmelpenninck suffered a stroke from which she never fully recovered. She died in 1856 at Clifton and is buried in the grounds of the Moravian Chapel in Bristol. A monument to her is located in the Cloister at Bristol Cathedral marked with the biblical reference: “I will make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only” (Ps 71:16).

Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck: Facts of Bread

Schimmelpenninck was educated at home by her mother and her father as well as by governesses, a bonne and tutors. From her father she heard tales of Menelaus, Troy, Ulysses and Aeneas. From her mother, she learned about God: the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, Dr. Priestley’s Scripture Cathechism and Barbauld’s Hymns in Prose for Children. Her mother also read from Stretche’s Beauties

177Hankin, Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, 294. 178 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings on Manifestations of God to the Soul of Man (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860), xxviii.

68 of History, Plutarch’s Lives and the History of Barmachides. She said in her autobiography, “While my mother awakened the heart by generous feeling, the instructions of my father continually pointed out the means of service to others or to oneself.”179

Among her other sources of childhood reading were Berquin’s L’Ami des Enfans, Brook’s Natural History, Sandford and Merton (“I loved Henry Sandford for condemning the rich and for helping the poor”180), books from Mr. Newbery’s Library for Children, Sir Walter Scott’s novels, Arabian Nights, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, White’s History of Selborne, Gilpin’s works on the Picturesque, Papers of Sir Roger de Coverley, Addison’s papers on “Imagination,” and an illustrative critique of Milton. She taught herself Anglo-Saxon and was able to read English histories in that language with the aid of a dictionary. Her Swiss bonne taught her French. The tutors taught her art, Latin and dancing. She was also able to read German. She studied Hebrew with Mrs. Richard Smith, a language which she described in this way: “His [God’s] own appointed tongue whereby to convey the revelation of Himself.”181

During her childhood, there was much conversation about the slave-trade, pamphlets on the subject and prints of slave ships and the treatment of slaves. Schimmelpenninck recounted the story of one of her treasures, a cocoa-nut. On a visit to a neighbour’s home, she saw for the first time a black servant who looked to her so sad that she gave him her treasured cocoa-nut. She said, “It was a signal mercy that in the midst of this darkness He vouchsafed to give me clearness both of mind and conscience respecting slavery.”182 In 1821, she authored anonymously an anti-slavery tract, entitled Is the system of slavery sanctioned or condemned by Scripture? When emancipation of slaves was achieved, she said, “How beautifully does the abolition of slavery in the British dominions exhibit the power that accomplishes a work both begun and carried on by God.”183

179 Hankin, Life of Mary Anne SchimmelPenninck, 54. 180 Ibid., 9. 181 Ibid., 144. 182 Ibid., 288. 183 Ibid., 185.

At the age of twenty she stated, “I am resolved most thoroughly to examine and discover for myself whether the Bible be true.”184 A student of the Holy Scriptures, she knew most of the Hebrew psalms by heart. It was not her habit to read commentaries, for she said, “The divine Word is its own best interpreter.” She sought for every possible passage that could possibly throw light on the subject which engaged her. She had charts showing the sources and consequent value of the Catholic and Protestant versions of the Holy Scriptures as well as maps and plans to illustrate the Holy Land, Jerusalem and the Temple. Her books directly related to Scripture include Biblical Fragments (1821), Is the system of slavery sanctioned or condemned by Scripture? (1821), Psalms according to the Authorized Version (1825), and Sacred Musings (1860).

Schimmelpenninck was an aesthetic theorist. Her works related to this area are Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity (1815) and Principles of Beauty (1859). While apparently focused on aesthetics, these texts included biblical hermeneutics using such scriptural passages as Psalm 8 and Isaiah 14 to illustrate the passive and active dimensions of sublimity, in what Duquette calls her “veiled exegetical engagement.”185

Schimmelpenninck had definite ideas about education. She said that a teacher who would efficiently teach “must always, as far as possible, render his instructions palatable to the perceptive faculties, by the use of images formed in the imagination through individuality, form, colour and comparison.”186 She illustrated this principle by comparing a dreary listing of the names of the Judges of Israel with vivid images of “Gideon by his threshing floor, Deborah sitting in state under the palm tree, and ruling all Israel, and Jair with his thirty sons and their milk-white asses.”187 She placed women at the forefront of literary, aesthetic and political innovation. She also took an active part in education, holding classes for young people in her own home.

Schimmelpenninck had clear ideas about the varied classes: “Every class of society has its own glory. The poor, his physical strength; the middle, the power of mental research;

184 Ibid., 295. 185 Natasha Duquette, Veiled Intent, 237. 186 Hankin, Life of Mary Anne SchimmelPenninck, 112. 187 Ibid., 112.

70 the elevated, the charm of manner; the amalgam which fits them as keystones to solidify the arch of society.”188

As death drew near, she meditated on Psalm 148 and Psalm 8 (in Hebrew). She directed that her friends have a “love feast” after her funeral. Her last words were, “Mercy and goodness have followed me all the days of my life,”189 confidently completing the promise of Ps 23:6.

The Community for Whom Schimmelpenninck Wrote

The dedication at the beginning of Biblical Fragments made clear who the intended readers were:

To those British ladies who, of high mental cultivation and Christian profession, justly consider it as an indispensable part of a liberal education both to cultivate a taste for biblical literature themselves, and to inspire a taste for it in the young persons in their own families, the following pages are inscribed.190

In the introductory address to the book, she added, “The following little volume is respectfully offered by the author to mothers, and to young persons of her own sex, with a view to incite them to enter upon this pursuit.” She nuanced who these women are by noting, “It is only to such as assuredly believe the Scripture that this work is addressed.”191

In her next book, Psalms according to the Authorized Version, Schimmelpenninck continued the emphasis on education of young children in the home. In the Preface to this book, she identified the group intended as readers for this text: “Having found the Port- Royal Introduction to the Psalter very useful, in combining with the perusal of the Psalms that of the historic events to which they refer; and having found it furnish a peculiarly interesting and valuable course of family reading to my own household, I thought it

188 Ibid., 408. 189 Ibid., 544. 190 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments (London: Ogle, Duncan & Co., 1821), 1.iv. 191 Ibid., 1.xxx.

71 might likewise prove acceptable to those of other persons, and more especially so to families in which there were many young people.”192

Her interest in the writings from the Port-Royal theologians was strengthened by her visits to the Port-Royal sites resulting in her works, A Tour to Alet (1816) and Select Memoirs of Port-Royal (1835). In the second edition of A Tour to Alet, she wrote, “The Author has the honor of presenting to the public a second, and very considerably enlarged edition of the Tour to Alet. To this celebrated Institution, Christendom is indebted for a greater multitude, both of translations and commentaries on Sacred Writ in the vernacular tongue, than perhaps any one other single religious society ever produced in the same space of time.”193 Again she nuanced what she meant by “the public” when she added, “Although the opinions of the Jansenists are in most points widely removed from her own, and are in some measure distinct from those our national church has retained, the Author flattered herself, that this little work might prove both interesting and amusing, to Christians of various religious denominations.”194

In the fourth edition of Select Memoirs which included the Tour to Alet but expanded the works of the Port-Royalists, she identified the scope of intended readers:

In presenting the fourth edition of the ‘Select Memoirs of Port-Royal’ to the public, the author wishes to express, that she shall indeed rejoice if this little work may be the means of diffusing amongst her Protestant brethren, an acquaintance not only with the truly dedicated individuals, whose biography forms the subject of its pages; but of impressing them with a deep conviction, of the futility of merely notional christianity; and of the importance of not only assenting to divine truth, but of having it implanted by the spirit in the heart and soul. . . . The author would rejoice too if this little work might also be the means of promoting a gospel

192 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Psalms according to the Authorized Version. With Prefatory Titles, and Tabular Index of Scriptural References, from the Port Royal Authors, Marking the Circumstances and Chronological Order of Their Composition: To Which is Added, An Essay upon the Psalms and Their Spiritual Application (London: J. and A. Arch, 1825), vii. 193 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Narrative of a tour taken in the year 1667, to La Grande Chartreuse and Alet by Claude Lancelot: including some account of Armand Jean Le Bouthillier de Rancé . . . reformer of the monastery of Notre Dame de la Trappe: with notes; and an appendix containing some particulars respecting Du Verger de Hauranne ..., Cornelius JAnsenius . . .; and also a brief sketch of . . . Port Royal (London: J. and A. Arch, 1816), iii–iv. 194 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Select Memoirs of Port Royal: to which are appended Tour to Alet (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1835), x.

charity for the very numerous members dispersed in the Roman Catholic church, and other churches, who truly love and hope in the cross of Christ, and are led by the spirit of Christ.”195

Schimmelpenninck had a special interest in the community of women religious at Port- Royal and the accounts of their persecution and eventual dissolution of their convent in 1709. Her belief that their plight was religious persecution was reflected in the epigraph on the title page of Narrative of a tour, “Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Schimmelpenninck had written an earlier book entitled A Theory of Beauty and Deformity (1815). Late in life she asked that this book be withdrawn from the public and be replaced by her Principles of Beauty. The publisher of this book, published after her death, explained her decision in this way, “Her wish, accordingly, as the symbolical meaning of beauty, in all the varieties of its manifestation, burst upon her mind, to with draw from the Public that work which contained only an intellectual system, and to substitute for it one which, while setting forth the same principles, should trace them through their manifold forms fraught with blessing and instruction, up to that eternal source in the Divine mind, from which she saw them to be the direct emanation.”196

Schimmelpenninck’s cousin, Christiana Hankin, in her completion of the autobiography begun by Schimmelpenninck, wrote, “Her countenance, to all who looked upon it, like that of Moses when he came down from the mount, seemed lighted up by the Divine glory” [see Ex 34:29 and 2 Cor 3:7].197

Interactions among Faith Traditions

Together these four women represent a spectrum of readers of the Bible (Jewish, Roman Catholic, Church of England and Dissenter). All four women were committed and loyal

195 Schimmelpenninck, Select Memoirs, v. 196 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty as Manifested in Nature, Art and Human Character, ed. Christiana Hankin (London: Longman, 1859), x. 197 Hankin, Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, 542.

73 members of their respective religious traditions, but all four were in contact with and open to other faith traditions.

Because of the illness of Aguilar’s father, the family moved to Devonshire in 1828 where she mixed in Christian society and attended chapel. She was influenced by the evangelical Christians she met there. Of her communication with Christians, she said, “There is nothing, in my opinion, that enlarges an unprejudiced mind more than in joining with those of another faith in their religious ceremonies.”198 She was charitable to both Jews and Christians; “her voice was a welcome sound in many a poor dwelling and she never enquired whether the alms-asker was Jew or gentile.”199 She recommended works by Christian writers for the Jewish community, “If there be not sufficient of these good books by Hebrew writers, there are many, very many excellent aids to the spirit of religion found in books written indeed for Christians, which to separate from the actual belief might form a pleasing and laudable employment for the benevolent Hebrew whose limited means prevent any more active participation in the charitable acts of his richer and more influential brethren.”200 She was confident in her contact with Christians, “I thank God, He has, in His mercy, permitted me to be so firmly convinced of the truth and holiness of my own belief, that it is a pleasure to me to join with Christians in their religious forms.”201

For Aguilar, distinctions of creeds among religious traditions were to be understood and respected, but it was the spirituality at the heart of every religious tradition that enabled the bond between Jews and Christians to exist, “Spirituality is common to every creed and to every nation who earnestly seeks to know and love the Lord, according to the dictates of the Laws that each believes that He has given, and so observes.”202

She was the only one of the four women to refer to Muslims, “I have thus, I fervently trust, rendered clear my firm belief, that not only Christ and the Christian, but Mahomet

198 Grace Aguilar, Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings, ed. Sarah Aguilar (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1853), 1. 199 Hall, “Obituary: Grace Aguilar,” 298. 200 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 102. 201 Aguilar, Sabbath Thoughts, 1–2. 202 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 15.

74 and the Mahometan, faiths were prophesied with the same clearness and precision by Daniel. . . . Those who, with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their might, worship, and acknowledge that there is, One Supreme, One Beneficent God; and, believing thus, act up to the doctrines of their faith, and the whispers of conscience— those who do this, be they Jew, Christian, or Mahometan, will ever be worthy in the sight of their God.”203

As a descendant of Sephardic Jews, Aguilar did not have a positive connection with Roman Catholics. Yet in one of her texts, she wrote:

It would be wrong to dismiss the anecdote without mentioning it as our belief that all intelligent Roman Catholics of the present day disclaim the propriety of perpetrating such acts of oppression [i.e., the Spanish Inquisition], and as earnestly sympathize with the Jews as any class of the community.204

Of the four women, King was the only one who did not have much contact with other faith traditions. In her first published work, A Tour in France, she did report twice on the impact of attending Christmas Eve Mass at the Roman Catholic Church of St. Sulpice in Paris, “The whole of the night before Christmas-day is spent at mass, and before twelve at night the churches are crowded beyond anything usually seen in England. As the clock strikes twelve, the organ bursts out, and high mass begins.”205

McAuley was formed in families with Catholic, Church of Ireland and Quaker influences. When McAuley was an adolescent and after the death of her father, her family lived with Church of Ireland relatives, the Armstrongs. Later she moved to work with the Callahgans. William Callaghan was a member of the Church of Ireland, and Catherine Callaghan was a Quaker. Later McAuley modelled her school at Baggott Street on the monitorial system advocated by the English Quaker, Joseph Lancaster.206

203 Aguilar, Sabbath Thoughts, 64. 204 Aguilar, Essays and Miscellanies, 309. 205 King, A Tour in France, 119. 206 Sullivan, Path of Mercy, 71.

McAuley’s contacts with the Armstrongs and Callaghans led some to conclude that she herself was a Protestant as was suggested by Mary Anne Doyle’s comments in her memories of McAuley, “Revd. Mother was never a Protestant as has been said. She told me that in some doubt she had recourse to the celebrated Dr. Beatie [a priest who worked in a parish close to the Callaghans, sometimes spelled Betagh] who quite convinced her.”207

While McAuley was adamantly faithful to her own tradition, she had an openness to other faith traditions. She herself recorded being visited by Dr. Edward B. Pusey, one of the dignitaries attending a ceremony of reception and profession of ten Sisters of Mercy in 1841.208 Pusey was a well-known Church of England clergyman and theologian:

We had a long visit from Mr. Pusie [Pusey], professor of Oxford College, whose new opinions have created so much interest. . . . He says that they must get back their title—Catholic—expressed his firm belief in the real presence—says we are a safe sound branch from the old Root, with many encumbrances and superfluous practices—not of importance in any way. The orthodox Greek, another sound branch—and his own, the reformed Catholic branch, the third. He was extremely guarded not to say anything which might offend.209

In another letter McAuley spoke of the Protestant mother of one of the young Sisters, “Mrs. Agnew is a most amiable benevolent woman. . . . She believes much of Catholic doctrine—the Real Presence, prayers for the Dead, etc., etc., but cannot receive the faith entire. . . . I have never met a person who appears more sincere—or less disposed to censure any party.”210

The influence of traditions other than her own can also be seen in McAuley’s transcription and emendation of a poem by Helen Maria Williams (a Dissenter), a poetic

207 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 43. 208 Sullivan, Path of Mercy, 340–2. 209 Sullivan, Correspondence, 415. 210 Ibid., 228.

76 paraphrase of Matt 7:12,211 and another poem by Hannah More (an evangelical philanthropist), “Sensibility: An Epistle to the Honourable Mrs. Boscawen.”212

Schimmelpenninck was the only one of the women to change faith traditions, although she did so within the community of Dissenters. Her parents were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and she grew up as a member of this religious tradition. She gradually became disillusioned with the Society, “The religious Society to which we nominally belonged—Friends—was at that period at the lowest ebb; and we never had the opportunity, which all may now enjoy, of hearing the truth in Christ luminously set forth.”213 However, she attributed her commitment to social action to her training with them, “I have ever valued in the Society of Friends, the combination of their heavenly principles and their business like knowledge of the actual facts of life, by which means principles are brought to bear upon realities, not evaporated in romantic affections or unfeasible schemes, but truly working out their heavenly course through the medium of wise regulation, education, and discipline.”214

In 1808 she was baptized by a Methodist minister, “I accepted his declaration as the Divine will concerning me at that time; and, having received great blessing from the writings of some of the early Wesleyan Methodists, at my request they kindly received me amongst them."215 In 1818, she joined the Moravian Church. Although Schimmelpenninck is buried at the Moravian chapel in Bristol, a monument to her is located in the Cloister at Bristol Cathedral (Church of England).

Schimmelpenninck’s words in the preface of the book, A Tour to Alet, which were quoted above also indicate her openness to other Christian religious traditions, in this instance the members of the Roman Catholic Church.216 She was strongly influenced in her biblical interpretation by the work of the Roman Catholic community at Port-Royal,

211 Ibid., 457–8. 212 Ibid., 233–4. 213 Hankin, Life of Mary Anne SchimmelPenninck, 11. 214 Ibid., 505–6. 215 Ibid, 342. 216 Schimmelpenninck, A Tour to Alet, v.

France. This community was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for its support for and promotion of Jansenism, a theological movement that emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace and predestination.

CHAPTER 2 The Text: The Interpretive Works of the Four Women

Chapter 2 focuses on the text, the interpretive works of the four women listed in the introduction. The consideration of the biblical texts used by the four women will include their approach to the Bible, the biblical texts they chose and the ways in which they cited passages, e.g., with or without citation, weaving familiar phrases into the new composition, confluence of texts, paraphrasing, allusion to biblical persons and events, echoes and mimesis of literary structure.

The term intertextuality has significant meaning for the ways in which these women chose and interpreted biblical texts. First used by Julia Kristeva, the term refers to “the study of how a given text is connected with other texts (broadly understood) outside of itself and how those texts affect the interpretation of the given text. . . .it opens up texts to fresh interpretation by engaging with contexts, themes traditions and ideologies extending well beyond a specific quotation.”217 For Kristeva, any text becomes “a mosaic of quotations” that can transform and be transformed by other texts. She argues that given the complex interaction between texts, readers are inevitably involved in the production of meaning, and so multiple interpretations are not so much the exception as the rule.218

In this thesis, the texts include the Old and New Testament passages as well as the written works of the four women. Intertextuality, the complex interaction among all these texts, includes confluence of texts, allusions and echoes. The confluence of texts, an approach frequently used by three of the women, has often been reduced to “proof-texts” with the understanding that the texts are used solely to support a doctrine or position, giving the selected verses a meaning that may be entirely different from the meaning intended by the original author. However, the confluence of texts can be understood more richly within the meaning of intertextuality as opening up “a space to see the continuing

217 Steve Moyise, “Introduction: Diverse Strategies for New Testament Interpretation,” in Exploring Intertextuality: Diverse Strategies for New Testament Interpretation, ed. B. J. Oropeza and Steve Moyise (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2016), xiii. 218 Ibid., xiv. 78

79 cooperation of these surrounding texts in the production of meaning.”219 Supporting this understanding, the women used a confluence of texts to link their interpretation of Scripture with their lives both as a way of understanding their lived realities and as a catalyst to changing these realities.

The intertextual approach was also used by the four women through allusions and echoes. “An allusion is usually woven into the text rather than “quoted”, and is often rather less precise in terms of wording. . . . If a subtext is well known, the slightest of allusions is sometimes sufficient to evoke its presence.”220 Following the classic work of Richard Hays, an echo is described as “a faint trace of a text and might be quite unconscious, emerging from minds soaked in the scriptural heritage.”221

This chapter will also include the literary genres which the four women employed to make their interpretation known, sources they used in developing their interpretive techniques, and interpretive sources and techniques common to two or more of the women. The Interpretive Works of Grace Aguilar

Aguilar interpreted scriptural texts using diverse formats and approaches. In her first published work, The Spirit of Judaism, she used biblical exegesis and biblical theology. She took the traditional Jewish prayer, the Shemang222 from Deuteronomy 6, and explored verse by verse its implications for the Jewish faith:

Taken as a whole, as the contents of about one-quarter of a page in our daily prayer books, we cannot perhaps be so struck with the impressive solemnity of these verses, as when we regard them, as in reality they are, six verses in the sixth

219 Steve Moyise, “Intertextuality and Biblical Studies: A Review’” Verbum et Ecclesia 23, no. 2 (2002): 425, quoting P. B. Decock, “The Scriptures in the Book of Revelation,” Neotestamentica 33 (1999): 404. 220 Ibid., 418. 221 Ibid. 222 Italian and Catalan do not have an ‘Ayin sound and the Judæo-Catalan and Judæo-Italian pronunciations is [שמע] ‘substituted the ng sound for the ‘Ayin, thus, in those pronunciations, the Hebrew Shema pronounced Shemang. Many nineteenth-century Jews in addition to Aguilar used this spelling for the daily prayer, e.g., Isaac Lesser’s The Jews and the Mosaic Law (Philadelphia, 1833). The "ng" transliteration flows from the Western Spanish-Portuguese pronunciation traditions still held to in Amsterdam and London. These Jews say "shemang yisrael" twice daily.

chapter of Deuteronomy. To feel their full force, we shall do well to turn to the sacred writings and examine each verse alone.223

Aguilar devoted much attention to the name of God used in the first verse, “The Hebrew word rendered Lord in the English of this sentence is in the original that awful and ineffable NAME, which no true Israelite will utter. It is the name peculiar to the Divine Essence, signifying He who was, IS, and ever will be. . . . The original word will allow no second meaning, no complicated signification, it is simply and solely one.”224

Verse 2 focused on three terms, heart, and soul, and might, which Aguilar said were used “more clearly to define the love which God demands, and the proofs which that love includes.”225 She believed that the three terms were meant to be comprehensive, “We cannot know Him, to love Him, as the preceding chapter describes, without employing our intellect, the whole energy of our minds, in the study of His law, not alone of the Pentateuch, but of our religion generally, of all which will assist us in becoming firm and consistent followers of the faith we profess, and enable us to mingle among those of another creed without fearing to imbibe it.”226 She used a confluence of texts to support this position, beginning with the Deuteronomic direction to the king in chapter 17, and adding verses (without citation) from the Psalms and Amos to highlight the importance of reading the Bible.227 She interpreted the phrase “with all your might” to include the added meaning of service, “we cannot love the Lord without the exceeding great desire to serve Him to the very best of our ability,”228 service related to “the right regulation and religious government of individual, social, and domestic life.”229

In verse 3, Aguilar identified two distinct connections between the Law given on Sinai and the approach of Ezra and Nehemiah after the return from Exile. Aguilar also found there the origin of the use of the Shemang as daily prayer. Included in this section was a

223 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 15. 224 Ibid., 16. 225 Ibid., 37. 226 Ibid., 48. 227 Ibid., 53–4. 228 Ibid., 71. 229 Ibid., 94.

81 detailed account of the origins of the Sabbath day linked to the everlasting covenant between God and the people, creation by the word of God, and “a type, though a faint one, of that rejoicing rest and those unfading pleasures which are at the right hand of God for ever more.”230

Verse 4 of the Shemang reflected a constant theme in Aguilar’s works, the responsibility of Hebrew parents for the education of Jewish children with special note of the mother’s responsibility. Aguilar took very seriously the words, “teach them diligently,” saying “It is not enough to talk of the commandments to our children: we must repeat them again and again, till the law and love of their God are in very truth impressed on their yielding mind.”231 She was clear that teaching children was more than teaching the words, “It is not therefore enough only to teach the word of our God unto our children: it is not enough even to make it the object of individual and secret study; not enough even to love Him: if that love dwell in individual hearts alone, and is never made the subject of sweet communion around domestic hearths, or to those friends we love the best.”232

The last verses of the Shemang brought Aguilar to a discussion on the forms and ceremonies of the Jewish religion: “To think continually on all the precepts contained in the preceding verses of the Shemang, was in all probability the origin of this command, to bind them on our hands and eyes, and place them on the doorposts and gates of our dwellings.”233 Aguilar was insistent that the forms and ceremonies made sense only in the context of how one lived, “the very act of robing ourselves in an appointed dress must in a degree prepare the mind to address its Creator.”234 The forms and ceremonies, given in a different time and culture, still identified what was Jewish and must be obeyed, “The emphatic verse [Deut 11:26-28] remains in equal force now as when it was given; addressed to the people of Israel, it must remain valid and immutable, till that people shall cease from the earth. It is not confined either to place or time.”235

230 Ibid., 109. 231 Ibid., 143. 232 Ibid., 144–5. 233 Ibid., 169–70. 234 Ibid., 184–5. 235 Ibid., 188–9.

Having completed the exegesis of each verse, Aguilar then turned to the passage as a whole:

We have now but to notice the beautiful union, observable in the six verses, forming this daily prayer. Each is distinct, and forms a complete study of itself; yet each is so connected with the other, that the whole forms a more complete and summary rule of life, than can be found in any other part of the Bible. . . . Proclaiming the unity of our God, we are daily reminded of our nationality, and all the weighty reflections and responsibilities which that nationality includes.236

For Aguilar, exegesis, theology and lived experience (individually and communally) were integrated, each one supportive and sustaining of the others.

A second vehicle for Aguilar’s interpretation was poetry—sometimes she alluded to a scriptural text in a poem; at other times the entire poem was an interpretation of a biblical passage. Her poems entitled “Sabbath Thoughts” began with a scriptural verse and then gave a spiritual reflection on that verse. For example, in “Sabbath Thoughts I,” the opening scriptural text was Prov 14:10, "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy."237 Two verses giving the spirit of the poem read, “No earthly balm the heart can still, / Which droops to clasp his Saviour's wing,” with a footnote cross-referencing texts from Psalms (Ps 91:4—image of God as winged creature) and Isaiah (Isa 41:26, 60:16 and 63:8—image of God as Saviour).238

Aguilar’s most famous poem, “The Wanderers. Gen. xxi. 14-20,” was a midrash of the story of Hagar in the wilderness with her son Ismael, “‘What aileth thee, oh Hagar?’ thus it spoke: ‘fear not, for God hath heard / The lad's voice where he is,—and thou, trust in thy Maker's word! / Awake! arise! lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand / I will of him a nation make, before Me he shall stand.’”239 This re-telling of the narrative emphasized the emotional pain that Hagar felt as she anticipated the death of her son and the joy that she felt when God spoke to her directly.

236 Ibid., 197–8. 237 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia, 1864), 205. 238 Ibid., 206. 239 Ibid., 246–7.

Aguilar began to write a series of poems entitled “The Jewish Year,” intending one for each Sabbath. According to the publisher Leeser, “Her premature death prevented the accomplishment of the plan.”240 In each poem, she spoke first to the biblical verse and then to its application in her own time. In the first, “The Jewish Year. I. Sabbath Bereshith,” she retold the story of creation as found in Genesis 1, noting the creation of light before the creation of the sun and moon, “And darkness lay upon the mighty deep. / He spake: Let there be light! and there was light; / E'en as He spake, the rushing torrent came. / And darkness fled before th' effulgence bright; / The sun and moon were not— 'twas Heaven's own flame.”241 Near the end of the poem are the words which suggested that creation continues, “And as He placed His image on the earth, / T'adorn, and bless, and sweetly speak of Him, / So in each heart His image will have birth / And breathe of joys that never may grow dim.”242

Aguilar’s poetry illustrates well the words of Scheinberg:

Poetry was one of the most important generic sites in Victorian culture to accommodate this radical and public theological work of women—radical not in the sense that this theological poetry always positioned itself against traditional notions of gender or religion—but radical at the moment poetry provided a sanctioned public forum through which women could voice their theological ideas and participate in the debates about religious, political and gendered identity.243

A third vehicle for Aguilar’s interpretation was her series of narratives in Women of Israel, using two disparate but mutually supporting genres: biblical biography and a form of biblical exegesis in the Jewish tradition known as midrash. Midrash is commonly defined as the process of interpretation by which the rabbis filled in “gaps” found in the Torah. The word "midrash" means, literally, "to investigate" or "to study"; its root meaning is "to seek." Boyarin explains midrash in this way:

Midrash builds its discourse out of textual fragments as a biblical mosaic. This is, of course, a kind of intertextuality. . . the Bible, because of its textual heterogeneity, allows for multiple self-glossing readings of midrash. The

240 Ibid., 263n, comment by editor Isaac Leeser. 241 Ibid., 259. 242 Ibid., 260. 243 Scheinberg, Women's Poetry and Religion, 4.

heterogeneity—the multivocality of the biblical text itself, its hiatuses and gaps, creatively, but not open-endedly, filled in by the midrash—allows it to generate its meanings—its original meanings in ever new social and cultural situations.244

Midrash has become a form of interpretation and commentary used not only by rabbis but also by "ordinary" Jews. Shaked shows the roots of this approach in the time period in which Aguilar lived:

Beginning with the Haskalah period, Hebrew literature effected a change in the explication of Biblical culture and constituted a significant midrashic force, giving it new life for its own generation. These midrashim defined the mastertext and illuminated its contextual ties. What the original midrashim did for the Biblical tradition in the past is paralleled by what the new literature did for enlightenment period. . . . The Biblical Canon became a central source from which Jewish and Israeli societies could each draw its self-identification. By means of specific choices from the Canon, different parties defined their their ideologies, giving each of them a canonical legitimacy.245

Aguilar was clear about the value of the stories of the Bible for guidance but also for self- identification, “We have frequently insisted that the narratives, as well as the precepts, of the Bible are written for our guidance.”246 One proof of this was the difference she found between sacred and profane history, “How forcibly does this little anecdote confirm our reiterated assertion that the Word of our God guides and portrays feeling as well as action, and that all our purest, best, and noblest affections will always find their reflection there. And this is one of the widest distinctions between the Bible and Profane History. The latter narrates events, actions; the palpable and striking parts of man, if we may so express it, but touches not that immaterial and subtle essence of thought and feeling, whence alone all that is palpable and striking comes.”247

In The Women of Israel, Aguilar divided her narratives according to seven periods of the history of Israel and thus of women: (i) the wives of the Patriarchs, (ii) the Exodus and

244 Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 39. 245 Gershon Shaked, “Modern Midrash: The Biblical Canon and Modern Literature,” AJS Review 28, no. 1 (April 2004), 45–46. 246 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 285. 247 Ibid., 298.

85 the Law, (iii) the delivery of the Law, (iv) the monarchy, (v) the Babylonish Captivity, (vi) the Second Temple, and (vii) the Present. In her own words, “For five of these periods, then, we perceive the word of God can be our only guide, and this at once marks our history as sacred, not profane.”248

Several women were special favourites of Aguilar, all giving her hope for women in her time. Of Deborah, she wrote, “The simplicity and lowliness of the prophetess’ natural position, is beautifully illustrated by the term she applies to herself—neither princess, nor governor, nor judge, nor prophetess, though both the last offices she fulﬁlled—‘until that, Deborah, arose, until I arose a MOTHER in Israel’. . . . Mark forcibly, by her conduct, both as prophetess and judge, that in Deborah, even as in Gideon, David, and the prophets of later years, God disdained not to breathe His spirit, but made a woman His instrument to judge, to prophecy, to teach, and to redeem.”249

Although the wife of Manoah was unnamed, Aguilar believed that scripture presented her as “a perfectly free agent,” more important than her husband, “As the mother of the child selected to deliver Israel in part from the Philistines, she was even of more importance in the sight of God than her husband, a fact inferred from the angel appearing both times to her, and only addressing Manoah when addressed by him.”250

Hannah’s story proved that women as well as men went to the house of prayer and joined in worship, “The prayer, or rather hymn, of thanksgiving in which Hannah poured forth her gratitude to her God in a strain of the sublimest poetry and vivid conception of the power and goodness of Him whom she addressed, is a forcible illustration of the intellectual as well as the spiritual piety which characterised the women of Israel, and which in its very existence denies the possibility of degradation applying to women, either individually, socially, or domestically.”251

248 Ibid., 10. 249 Ibid., 210–11. 250 Ibid., 221–2. 251 Ibid., 246–7.

Of Abigail, she wrote, bringing together Scripture and Midrash Seder Eliyahu Rabbah, “We are expressly told that Abigail was not merely a beautiful woman, but of good understanding, which her whole story proves; and yet more, every word of her address to David evinces an almost remarkable knowledge of the ways and the words of the Lord. She is even called by the Ancient Fathers, a prophetess.”252

Aguilar also recognized the presence of women less heroic than those above, yet worthy of emulation. She found an unusual lesson in the story of Solomon and the two harlots, “The term harlot, more than once applied to women in the Bible, had a very different meaning to that in which it is alone used now. It is generally supposed to signify, indiscriminately, an innkeeper or hostess, as in the case of Rahab, or women in the servile classes, independent of servitude in households, but occupying some trades in Jerusalem peculiar to themselves. They had in consequence, neither rank, wealth, nor any of the usual accessories to the royal favour. Yet we find that the very first persons who obtained access to Solomon, after the offerings with which he sanctified his entrance into Jerusalem, were two women of this class.”253

Of the young servant whose conﬁdent reference to the prophet Elisha made possible Naaman’s cure, she wrote, “THAT the Eternal often chooses the weakest and the feeblest, through whose unconscious inﬂuence to spread a knowledge of His ways and works amid the Gentiles, is proved by the mention of the little Israelitish maid (see 2 Kings v. 2, 3, &c).”254

She was strongly condemnatory of Miriam, “Her [Miriam’s] only wish was, to decrease the value and spirituality of those privileges to him [Moses] individually, and elevate herself and Aaron on his descent; emboldened so to do by the excessive meekness and forbearance of Moses, which she knew would shield her from all human reproof. She might, perhaps, have so dwelt upon her own imaginary importance, as really to believe

252 Ibid., 284–5. 253 Ibid., 296. 254 Ibid., 317.

87 what she asserted, and so feel more and more galled at the little account in which she was held.”255

Aguilar wrote of the women who participated in the offerings and work for the tabernacle in the time of the wandering in the wilderness as proof that women have equality with men in both the power and freedom to bring offerings: “Proclamation was made throughout the camp, that every man and woman who had a willing heart should bring an offering unto the Lord, either of gold, silver, or brass, blue, purple, or scarlet, and ﬁne linen, and goats’ hair, and oil, and spices, and sweet incense, and onyx stones, and stones of all kinds” [Ex. 35:20-29].256

Aguilar was certain that the Law of Moses was supportive of women, “from that law does woman in every age, clime, rank, and race, receive her guardianship on earth, and hope of heaven.”257 It related to women in all their roles: mother, wife, daughter, maid-servant, widow, and the fatherless. Aguilar wrote, “Every statute, every ordinance, given by the Lord to Moses, was always introduced by the command, ‘Speak ye to the children of Israel;’ ‘Say ye to the children of Israel;’ or, ‘Hear, O Israel;’ words including the whole congregation, male and FEMALE.”258 She was strong in her reaction to Christian women who believed that Christianity was the first and only religion to bestow privileges on women:

The moral laws to which she [the Christian woman] owes her privileges came from US, and US alone. Who were the apostles and preachers? Who went about, giving the Heathen a knowledge of Israel’s God, though they disregarded the ceremonial law? Who but the HEBREWS, whose whole minds and hearts were imbued, not with new doctrines, but with the Hebrew moral law, which they disseminated in their wanderings?259

The support for women in the Mosaic Law, Aguilar believed to be echoed in the Talmud, “We can find nothing either in the Law or its commentaries, by our really ancient fathers,

255 Ibid., 195. 256 Ibid., 199. 257 Ibid., 124. 258 Ibid., 144. 259 Ibid., 535.

88 to permit the supposition that either in the religious, moral, social, or domestic system, we were to be regarded as of less importance, less responsibility, and of less value in the sight of our God, and of the state, than our brother Man, We were—we are—equals in every spiritual privilege, and every social and domestic law.”260

She used the example of Beruiah, the wife of Rabbi Meir, who was mentioned in several places in the Talmud (B. Ber. 10a; ‘Erub. 53b-54a; B. Pes. 62b) to support her conclusion:

She not only understood the written word, but left three hundred traditions, and is placed amongst the Tanaites, or expositors of the Mishna. Now, how could such an assurance be found in the Talmud, if religious knowledge and opportunities of deep and severe study were, either by a law of the state or public opinion, denied to woman? It is folly to suppose it, even for a moment.”261

In writing about the interpretation of Torah/Pentateuch by Aguilar, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Annie Besant, De Groot notes that all three writers did so to support their resistance of the dominant culture, “Each writer was self-authorized, and in her writing disagreed with the interpretation of Scripture proclaimed in the community in which she had been raised. The three challenged the received tradition as they engaged the laws from the perspective of those on the margins in their efforts to promote justice.”262

Aguilar had three goals in mind in writing the stories of the women of Israel. She first wanted the women to know that they were equal with men—in the eyes of God and in the Laws of Moses, “The women of the Bible are but mirrors of ourselves. And if the Eternal, in His inﬁnite mercy, extended love, compassion, forbearance, and forgiveness unto them, we may believe He extends them equally unto us, and draw comfort and encouragement and faith from the biographies we read.”263

260 Ibid., 543. 261 Ibid., 544. 262 Christiana de Groot, “Nineteenth-Century Feminist Responses to the Laws in the Pentateuch,” in Strangely Familiar: Protofeminist Interpretation of Patriarchal Biblical Texts, ed. Nancy Calvert-Koyzis and Heather Weir (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 105. 263 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 8.

She also wanted women to know that this equality did not simply flow from their roles as mothers or daughters:

They, too, have a station to uphold, and a ‘mission’ to perform, not alone as daughters, wives, and mothers, but as witnesses of that faith which ﬁrst raised, cherished, and defended them—witnesses of that God who has called them His, and who has so repeatedly sanctiﬁed the emotions peculiar to their sex, by graciously comparing the love He bears us, as yet deeper than a mother’s for her child, a wife’s for her husband, having compassion on His people, as on “a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit” [Is 54:6]. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her travail; yea, she may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” “As a mother comforteth her children, so will I comfort thee [Is 66:13].264

And, finally, she wanted Jewish women and Christian women to know that Christianity is not the sole source of female excellence, “Our aim being to evince to the nations and to our own hearts, the privileges, alike temporal and eternal, which were ours from the very commencement—to prove that we have no need of Christianity, or the examples of the females in the Gospel, to raise us to an equality with man—to demonstrate our duties, and secure us consolation here, or salvation hereafter—the word of God must be alike our ground-work and our guide.”265

Another vehicle Aguilar used to interpret God’s word for Jewish women, especially for young women, was the letter. She used letters to frame her book, The Jewish Faith, “The familiar and appealing form of letters is chosen, as more likely to touch the heart and to convince the understanding, than in the graver form of essays or chapters.”266 She also hoped that this book would influence the thinking of Christians, “They [Christians] may perhaps discover, that the foundation of all spiritual religion is the same—that from Judaism and the Bible all their privileges spring—and that if they deny the divinity of the one, that of the other falls to the ground.”267

264 Ibid., 6. 265 Ibid., 9. 266 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 16. 267 Ibid., 18.

The letters were written between two fictional characters, from Inez Villena to Annie Montague whose mother was a friend of Inez. Themes common to Aguilar’s works were present in the letters. Of Jewish belief in immortality, she wrote: “The death of Moses before entering the promised land is the strongest confirmation not only of our immortality, but of its previous revelation and acceptance as an incentive to virtue.”268 Her words “who will deny, that the Hebrew had it [love] first, ay, and direct from God”269 highlight love as the most important attribute of God. This love determined how the Law would be lived: “I cannot describe to you the pain it always inflicts on me, when I read or hear those misunderstood and misquoted words, ‘Eye for eye,’ etc., ever cast in the face of the Hebrew as the pervading spirit of his creed—that Law which was the first to teach love to God and love to man.”270 For Aguilar, not only the Torah but the entire Hebrew Scripture was important: “The same Almighty and Merciful Being who inspired Moses to write those five books, inspired other holy men to write the remainder, and, in consequence, one part is quite as holy and quite as binding as the other.”271

Influenced by her evangelical friends, Aguilar believed that spirituality was an important part of Judaism: “spirituality is common to every creed and to every nation who earnestly seeks to know and love the Lord.”272 She constantly reinforced the importance of the Jewish faith for women: “To women, especially, a religion in which love is the vital essence is imperatively needed.”273 And, finally, in the letters, she reiterated the need for each Jewish person to become grounded in Scripture: “Let us not be content with the Judaism which is apparent in others; but let us study and know what Judaism really is from the word of God, and seek to become scripturally Hebrews.”274

Another vehicle for Aguilar’s interpretation was a compilation of musings and prayers. In a book published after her death, Aguilar named a number of biblical passages which had been misinterpreted by Christian theologians. On Psalm 22, she wrote: “Mr. Anderson

268 Ibid., 310–11. 269 Ibid., 46–7. 270 Ibid., 263–4. 271 Ibid., 64. 272 Ibid., 15. 273 Ibid., 84. 274 Ibid., 444.

91 took for his lecture on Wednesday, the 22d Psalm, as being equally descriptive of the sufferings of Christ, as the 53d chapter of Isaiah; but as I believe, that same chapter is most beautifully and clearly prophetic of the miseries of the Jewish nation in the time of their captivity, I cannot but also believe, if the 22nd Psalm is indeed prophetic, it is typical of the same subject.”275

In the same text are prayers which Aguilar wrote. She began a section on simple prayers to be read by parents to their children with a confluence of biblical verses focused on prayer: “’It shall come to pass, before they call I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear’ (Isaiah lxv. 24). ‘The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him’ (2 Chron. xvi. 9). ‘Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou Shalt glorify me’ (Psalm 1. 15). ‘The Lord is thy keeper’ (Psalm cxxi. 6). ‘Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me, for thus saith the Lord’ (Jer. xlix. 11). ‘Whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth’ (Prov. iii. 12). ‘The Lord is nigh to a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit’" (Psalm xxxiv.18).276

In the essay on the importance of teaching children to pray, she noted, “Both the morning and evening prayers here written, are invariably followed by the Shemang, without which, in my opinion, no form of Jewish prayer is complete.”277

Aguilar’s Sources

Aguilar used the King James Version of the Bible for most of her biblical references in English. She understood Hebrew and used the Hebrew Scriptures often to correct the English translation. For the translation of many of the Hebrew words, she used Parkhurst’s Hebrew Lexicon. She had familiarized herself with a Hebrew-English Bible translation, The Sacred Scriptures, Hebrew and English, by de Sola and Raphall, and used it in the writing of Women of Israel. She also referred to the Apocrypha in two

275 Aguilar, Sabbath Thoughts, 4. 276 Ibid., 143. 277 Ibid., 148.

92 instances: (i) to include the prayers of Esther found only in the Apocrypha not in the original Hebrew narrative;278 and (ii) to tell the story of the martyr-mother in Maccabees (“The books of the Maccabees in the Apocrypha are on all points the exact counterpart of the same history in Josephus, and also of Antiochus Epiphanes in Rollin.”279).

For historical information, she referred frequently to Josephus. She used his names for the Pharaoh’s daughter (Thermusis) and the Queen of Sheba (Nicaulis). Nonetheless, she said of him, “As an author, Josephus is most valuable; we have no doubt of his accuracy with regard to events, but we cannot depend upon either his discrimination or impartiality in the delineation of character, or in the justice and entireness of his conclusions.”280

She used Milman’s History of the Jews, Jahn's History of the Hebrew Commonwealth, Bigland’s Letters on Ancient and Modern History, Bagster’s Comprehensive Bible and Gleig’s History of the Bible and “an admirable American work, History of the Jews, by Hannah Adams, commencing from the destruction of Jerusalem, and accompanying us through our varied destinies till some ﬁfty years ago.”281

For her translation of the Talmud, she named The Hebrew Review, and Magazine of Rabbinical Literature as a source. She also referred to a friend “whose sound knowledge of the Hebrew, both Biblical and Talmudical, and deep research, render his information on the subject indeed invaluable.”282

For references to spirituality, Aguilar acknowledged that there was little in Jewish literature to provide good sources for reading. Instead she turned to Christian sources which she trusted:

Every single line written by Mrs. S. C. Hall, whether it be a story for a little child, or a three volume novel, a tale for Chambers’ Journal, or a sketch of Irish character, is so essentially SPIRITUAL, that without a single syllable unduly

278 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 336. 279 Ibid., 408. 280 Ibid., 479. 281 Ibid., 547. 282 Ibid., 534.

introduced of religion, we know it must be the religion of God’s word which is the mainspring of her being. Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Howitt, Mrs. Southey (Caroline Bowles), Joanna Baillie, are all of the same beautiful class. On the other hand, Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austin, two ﬁrst-rate female writers, are moral, not spiritual, in their works. Among male writers—Howitt, Wilson (whether in prose or verse), James Montgomery, Wordsworth, are spiritual writers: Scott, Campbell, Rogers, and many others, are not, and yet their writings are as moral and pure as their more spiritualised brethren’s.283

Other spiritual works which she quoted included the Preface to Miss Goldsmid’s translation of twelve of Dr. Salomon's Sermons (“If, as an elegant writer observes, ‘men of all creeds would seek not points of difference but points of agreement, how much of the strife and bitterness that deform God's earth would disappear; mutual ignorance it is, that but too often produces mutual alienation’"284) and “Rev. D. A. De Sola's elegant edition of our prayers, the translation and type of which are worthy their exalted subject.”285

The Interpretive Works of Frances Elizabeth King

King sometimes began with the biblical text; on other occasions, she used the biblical texts to support her narratives about biblical women or to support her endorsement of Christianity as the religion which best served both the public good and domestic happiness. The majority of her quotations were taken from the Old Testament books of Genesis, Exodus, 1 Samuel, Job, Proverbs, Psalms, Isaiah, and Ecclesiastes, and the New Testament books of Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, 1 Thessalonians, I Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, I Timothy, 2 Timothy, I Peter, James and Hebrews. Her quotations were always taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

283 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 574. 284 Ibid., 29. Anna Maria Goldsmid (1805-1889) was a translator, lecturer, reformer, pamphleteer, founder of girls’ schools, and advocate of teachers’ colleges. She was a Victorian Jewish advocate of women’s education and Jewish emancipation who also made a name for herself as philanthropist and poet. Her awareness of the lack of Jewish instructional materials probably prompted her to translate the sermons of German-Jewish reformer Gotthold Salomon into English. See Michael Galchinsky, “Anna Maria Goldsmid,” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, accessed January 8, 2014, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/goldsmid-anna-maria. 285 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 99.

In her references to the apocryphal books of Esther, Susannah, Sirach, Esdras, Judith, Tobit, Wisdom and 2 Maccabees, she did not make distinctions between the Apocrypha and the Old Testament except with respect to Esther, “There are two histories of Esther; that in the Apocrypha is said to be a continuation of the one in the other part of the Bible; but it appears to be a record of the same events in a different style, abounding in figurative language, and extremely poetical and beautiful.”286 She referred to the book of Wisdom in her introduction to the Queen of Sheba, “Let us remember, that the wisdom which brought the Queen of Sheba from a far country, is brought home to us; it was the wisdom of him that penned the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the book that bears his name in the Bible.”287

King had the same interpretative goal in both her books: to find in the Scriptures direction for everyday life. For the Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper on Domestic Happiness, her stated goal was to bring from Christianity its “precepts and beneficial tendency into Domestic life” and show “how it might be made the source of our private comforts and enjoyments”288 while that of Female Scripture Characters was to draw from the biblical women “a species of instruction applicable to our own particular duties.”289

She used consistent interpretive approaches including direct quotations attributed to God or Jesus as author, texts woven into paraphrases of biblical narratives, restatement of direct quotations with changed pronouns, allusions to biblical narratives and characters, and confluence of biblical texts.

She often quoted directly with an introductory clause making reference either to God or Jesus as the author, “The Almighty Himself hath said, ‘Thy husband shall rule over thee [Gen 3:16].’” Or another, “Let us diligently and zealously perform the work appointed for us, by our great Master, that at his second coming to take an account of his servants,

286 King, Female Scripture Characters, 150. 287 Ibid., 98. 288 King, Beneficial Effects, xi–xii. 289 King, Female Scripture Characters, 344.

95 we may joyfully hear his approving sentence, ‘well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many; enter into the joy of thy LORD’” [Matt 25:21].290 In describing the importance of hospitality she wrote, “the hospitality of the present day produces much comfort and good-will amongst ourselves, and some benefit to society in general; particularly where the custom exists, as it does in many families that keep a regular table, of dispensing the remnants of the day’s dinner table to the poor; a custom which fulfills, in a degree, our Saviour’s injunction, ‘When thou makest a feast, call in the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind’” [Luke 14:13].291

She wove quotations from the biblical text into her paraphrases as in this example from the story of Rebekah, “He petitions for a little water from her pitcher; she, with the most marked civility and respect to an unknown stranger, that she may not be deficient in giving him any title that may be his due, replies, ‘drink, my lord [Gen 24:18];’ and she hastened to let down her pitcher, and gave him to drink; and she said, “I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking [Gen 24:19].’”292

Her replacement of the masculine pronoun with the feminine pronoun was common throughout her books. She spoke about the patient sufferer, “who conscientiously performs her duty, rests for support on ‘the Rock of ages,’ ‘who will keep her soul and deliver her; who will not let her be confounded, for she putteth her trust in him’” [Ps 25:20].293 In another instance, when she was encouraging the attention of a daughter for her aging mother, again she used a confluence of texts and inserted a feminine pronoun, “And when age and infirmities press hard upon her; ‘when the keepers of the house begin to tremble; when the grinders cease because they are few and those that look out of the windows are darkened’ [Eccles 12:3]; ‘when she can no longer taste what she eats, or

290 Ibid., 60. 291 Ibid., 296. 292 Ibid., 34. 293 Ibid., 183.

96 what she drinks; or hear the voice of singing men and singing women’” [modified 2 Sam 19:35].294

Perhaps the most characteristic approach which King used for her interpretation was the confluence of quotations from multiple sources to make her point. She usually did not include the citation of the texts. In the instance below, she clarified what Jesus meant when he spoke to Martha about the “one thing needful”:

It is of essential importance to the performance of our worldly duties, as well as our attainment of the “one thing needful,” that we should properly understand the spirit and meaning of our Saviour’s words. “Let them search the Scriptures,” [John 5:39] and they will find that occupation and labour were allotted to man from the earliest moment of his existence; and that the same command of GOD, which enjoins us to “keep holy the Sabbath day” [Exod 20:8], also says, “six days shalt thou labour” [Exod 20:9]. We are all instruments in the hands of our Creator, by which food, comfort, or benefit of some kind is produces to ourselves and society, by GOD’s blessing on the labours of agriculture, “the earth brings forth her increase,” [Ps 67:6] and “the valleys stand thick with corn” [Ps 65:13]. He has commanded us to “be diligent, and to look well to our flocks and herds” [Prov 27:23]; and to every one in every station, He has assigned some worldly business, which it is essential that they should understand and perform. In various texts of Scripture, the blessing and duty of industry is strongly enforced; “whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with all they might”[Eccles 9:10].295

Another example of intertextuality through confluence of verses from both the Old and New Testaments comes from the three lessons that are learned from the story of Susanna:

In summing up the sources of instruction, which arise out of the character we have been reviewing, it will appear that it offers us, in three instances, a valuable example. First, that of patience and trust in God, under the slanderous aspersions of a corrupt and misjudging world. Secondly, that of being careful to “keep our tongue from evil, and our lips that they speak no guile” [1 Peter 3:10—pronoun is changed]: to refrain from slandering and speaking evil of others, remembering the many awful denunciations in scripture against this crime; “Whoso privily slandereth his neighbout, him will I destroy” [Ps 101:5]; and “with what judgment we judge others, we shall be judged ourselves” [Matt 7:2 with pronoun changed]. Thirdly, let it teach us to “look well to our own ways” [Prov 31:27]; to “lead an uncorrupt life, to do the thing that is right; and to speak the truth from our hearts”

294 Ibid., 71. 295 Ibid., 282–3.

[Ps 15:2]. So shall we be safe under the wings of the ALMIGHTY: “his faithfulness and truth shall be our shield and buckler” [Ps 91:4].296

King also referred to biblical characters, sometimes in a verse alluding to them, telling the story and discerning what can be learned from the character. She used the character of Job when describing the miseries of the world, “The sorrows which seem to proceed more immediately from the hand of Heaven are less afflicting, than the unjust accusation, the envious calumny, and the slanderous report. And the heart that rankles with those poisonous passions, and is torn by the ‘vulture furies of the mind,’ envy, hatred, and ill- will, is in a state of more turbulent misery, than the patient Job, when suffering under the most calamitous dispensations of Providence.”297

She used Cain as an illustration of the corruption of the human heart, “From the evil suggestions of envy, hatred, and ill-will, in the heart of Cain, proceeded the atrocious crime of his brother’s murder.”298 She used scripture characters to describe the early years and the death of a character in The Rector’s Memorandum: “by the time of her entering her tenth year, she was become a little Samuel, devoted to her Maker [1 Sam 3]”;299 and “a train of mourners followed her corpse from the village and the neighbourhood; and as in the case of the pious Dorcas, ‘weeping, and showing the coats and garments she had made for them [Acts 9:39].’"300

King used the New Testament as a lens for reading the Old Testament, but she also used texts within the Testaments. She noted, “In order to distinguish the important characters which have at different periods adorned society, it has pleased the ALMIGHTY, in many instances, to connect a miracle, a mercy, or a prophecy, with then event of their birth. We observe this dispensation in the cases of Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Samson.”301 She noted, “A similar history to that of Susanna presents itself in the beautiful story of Joseph, where

296 Ibid., 195–6. 297 King, Beneficial Effects, 4–5. 298 King, Female Scripture Characters, 13. 299 King, Rector’s Memorandum, 25. 300 Ibid., 271. 301 King, Female Scripture Characters, 77.

98 a persecution and false charge of the same nature is brought against him by a shameless and wicked woman.”302

She recommended Sarah as a model to women everywhere, and she did so by using a slight paraphrase of the words of the capable woman in Proverbs 31:

“If she opened her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. If she looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. If her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.” If to all these she add the “fear of GOD;” such a “woman’s price will be far above rubies; she will be above the deceitfulness of worldly favour; above the vanity excited by beauty. The heart of her husband will safely trust in her;” and she will, like Sarah, live beloved, and die lamented.303

King’s description of the meeting of Simeon with Mary, Joseph and Jesus [Luke. 2:29- 32] was another example of intertextuality, consciously interpreting the text in the light of the new time:

This pious hymn we may with strict propriety use in our own behalf; for though we cannot, like Simeon, see our Saviour with our bodily eyes, he is daily presented to the eye of our faith in his holy Gospel; and we acknowledge the blessed effects of his salvation, in our hopes of pardon and everlasting life; we see him as “a lamp unto our feet, and a light unto our paths” and as “the glory and hope of all the ends of the earth.”304

She replaced the key theme of the “light to lighten the Gentiles” [Luke. 2:32] with a verse from Ps 119:105 which reads, “Thy word is a lantern unto my feet, and a light unto my path” together with an often repeated phrase from the Psalms and Isaiah, “all the ends of the earth,” to describe the hope and the salvation of all peoples [e.g., Ps 65:5, 67:7, 98:3; Is 26:15, 45:22, 52:10].

302 Ibid., 185. 303 Ibid., 31. 304 Ibid., 225.

King’s Sources

King used sound resources in her biblical work. She quoted Josephus frequently and used his names for unnamed women such as the Queen of Sheba (Nicaulis)305 and the daughter of Pharaoh (Thermusis).306 She considered him a reliable resource whom she often used to add details not found in the Scriptures, “After the birth of Ishmael, Sarah is recorded by Josephus as being extremely attached to him, treating and distinguishing him as her husband’s heir.”307 Of Rebekah she wrote, “After the disgraceful event we have just reviewed, nothing more is said of Rebekah in the Sacred Writings; but, in Josephus, it is recorded, that her punishment for her deceit, was lasting in its effects.”308

King used several contemporary reference books to support her work. She recommended to her readers Clarke`s Travels in the Holy Land as a work of piety, important information, and high interest. She made reference to Nelson’s Fasts and Festivals, “Their [the Apostles] various tortures and deaths are recorded in a most admirable work, not the less valuable for being well known, ‘Nelson’s Fasts and Festivals,’ in which so much scriptural information and eccesiastical learning is combined with heavenly instruction, that it cannot be too highly prized.”309 Milner’s History of the Church was the source of her work on the persecutions of Christians during the reigns of Diocletian and Maximin. She noted that Milner used the work of the father of the Church, Eusebius, as having a first hand account of these events.310

She quoted from “the learned and enlightened Sir William Jones” who gives a “testimony to the beauty and value of the Scriptures,”311 “a man deeply skilled in various learning; and whose researches have led him to explore the most beautiful records of oriental antiquity.”312 In clear agreement with Jones’ position, she quoted from him, “I have

305 Ibid., 96. 306 Ibid., 49. 307 Ibid., 25. 308 Ibid., 47. 309 Ibid., 202. 310 Ibid., 204–5. 311 Ibid., 113. 312 Ibid., 114.

100 regularly and attentively read these Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion, that this volume, independent of its divine origin, contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been composed.”313

King was also a supporter of the works of women, “Some of the productions of female authors stand high in the scale of literature and divinity.”314 She places first in this class “sixteen volumes of the writings of Mrs. H. More, which, for instruction, amusement, wit, and talents, have no rival.”315 King was friends with More whom she regarded as “a living Christian model of the proper employment of superior intellect for the good of her fellow creatures.”316

The second female author whom King strongly endorsed was Sarah Trimmer, to whom she said “we are indebted for extraordinary labours in the cause of education, scripture knowledge, religion and virtue.”317 Of her, King wrote:

In addition to her [Trimmer’s] deeds of benevolence, she has left many volumes of her writings, containing valuable instruction, particularly in the Scriptures, useful to all ranks, but more especially to the poor, to whose benefit she particularly dedicated her labours. . . . My dear fellow labourers in the vineyard of CHRIST, this example [Trimmer] is set before us all; all that enjoy the inestimable blessing of health may follow her steps; attend then to the inference drawn by our Saviour from a good example, “Go and do thou likewise.”318

She also endorsed the work of Jane West (an English novelist, poet, playwright, and writer of conduct literature and educational tracts) who “has given some valuable works to the publick.”319

313 Ibid., 113. 314 Ibid., 116. 315 Ibid. 316[John Collinson], “Memoir of the Author,” viii. 317 King, Female Scripture Characters, 116. 318 Ibid., 339. 319 Ibid., 116.

101

In support of her moral position, King quoted from many of her contemporary writers: poetry from James Beattie (a Scottish poet, moralist and philosopher), Homer’s Iliad (to compare Sarah with the queen of Phoenicia), Alexander Pope (whose views on the modest and gentle character of women suited hers), George Crabbe (an English poet and clergyman whose views on regrets after friends who have died supported hers), Samuel Richardson (whose novels she viewed with some approbation but caution), Denis Diderot (the French atheist who is reported to have taught his daughter the Bible because “In what book can I find such purer precepts of morality?”320), Samuel Johnson (whose works she recommended that young women read), Joseph Addison’s Spectator, No. 575 (with its beautiful account of the belief in life beyond death), William Cowper (whose poetry about the afterlife she approved), and Hugh Grotius (“one of the most learned men who ever existed”321).

The Interpretive Works of Catherine McAuley

McAuley did not do any formal exegesis of scriptural texts. She interpreted scripture intuitively without critical awareness. However, in her own way, she often used an intuitive exegesis of the biblical texts which she intentionally and authoritatively used to effect social change. She wanted her community to “consecrate themselves to the service of the poor for Christ’s sake.”322 She used scriptural texts in multiple ways to support her two goals for her communities of women religious: ministry for those who had little or nothing, and formation of the women to enable them to carry out this ministry.

This emphasis is evident in her paraphrase of a scripture passage in her adaptation of the Rule of the Presentation Sisters323 for use by her own newly formed community. The second article of that text spoke about following the example of “their Divine Master Jesus Christ, who testified on all occasions a tender love for the poor and declared that

320 Ibid., 115n. 321 Ibid., 265. 322 Sullivan, Correspondence, 282. 323 Each religious institute adopts a Rule as its foundation document subject to approval from Rome and developed on the basis of a previous Rule from a religious institute that shares a similar ministry or way of life. McAuley, the founder of a new institute, completed her initial formation with the Presentation Sisters and adapted their Rule for her community.

102

He would consider as done to Himself whatever should be done unto them (Matt 25:40).”324 The original Presentation Rule had spoken about Jesus’ “tender love for little children” supported by the Gospel reference “whosoever receiveth these little ones in his name, receiveth himself” [Matt 18:5].325 McAuley broadened this narrow emphasis on education of children to include service to poor people by substituting the reference to Matt 25:40.

All her texts were taken from the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, the version approved by the Roman Catholic Church for its members in her time and used in the biblically-based works to which McAuley had access.326 The primary texts she used were taken from the Psalms, Isaiah, the gospels of Matthew, Luke and John, and four of Paul’s letters (1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians and Ephesians). She quoted extensively from Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount (from Matthew) and his exhortations to love (from John and the first letter of John).

In letters to her community, she used direct citations, “Oh, death, where is thy sting?” [1 Cor 15:55],327 but she also modified citations to accommodate the statement she was making, for example, “His ways are not like our ways, nor His thoughts like our thoughts” [Isa 55:8].328 In her use of intertextuality, she alluded to verses in scripture, “Since to the obedient victory is given, may God continue his blessings to you” [Prov 21:28],329 and she echoed scriptural themes, “May God bless and animate you with His own divine Spirit” [Rom 8:14; Gal 4:6].330 She mimicked biblical literary structure by

324 “Rule and Constitutions,” 1:1, in Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 295. 325 Ibid., 262. 326 The Douay (or Douai) Bible was the English translation of the Old Testament completed by Gregory Martin at the English College in Douai, France. The Rheims designation comes from the translation of the New Testament again by Gregory Martin when the English College was located in Rheims, France. Both were based on the Latin Vulgate (the version held to be authentic by the Council of Trent in 1546) and revised by Bishop Richard Challoner in the mid-1700s. This Challoner translation was authorized for use by English-speaking Roman Catholics until the 1960s. See F. F. Bruce, The English Bible: A History of Translations from the Earliest English Versions to the New English Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 113–26. 327 Sullivan, Correspondence, 91. 328 Ibid., 321. 329 Letter to Mary Francis Ward dated early 1839, in The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley: 1827– 1841, ed. Mary Angela Bolster (Cork: Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, 1989), 79. 330 Sullivan, Correspondence, 101.

103 using the endings of Paul’s letters as her way of ending her own letters: “May God preserve and bless you,”331 or “God bless you and send you every comfort and restore you to health.”332

She used a maternal image of God as a source of comfort for her sisters, “God says He will comfort and console us as the loving mother cherishes her child, the greatest example of affection he could give” [Isa 49:15].333 She constantly relied on trust in God’s providence, “Put your whole confidence in God [1 John 3:21]. He will never let you want necessities for yourself or your children.”334

She used scripture to lead the sisters to personally identify with the first followers of Jesus: “With the Apostle a religious must consider herself a stranger and pilgrim on earth, having her conversation in heaven” [Phil 3:20];335 or again, “God has never bestowed all his blessings on one person. He did not give to St. Peter what he gave to St. Paul, nor to either what He gave to St. John.”336

McAuley frequently presented scripture texts in ways that determined how they should be interpreted. She modified a reference from 2 Kings by substituting “I who have called you” for “I that command you” and by deleting the word “men.” Her revision reads: “Let us imagine that God says to us, as we read in Holy Scripture ‘Fear nothing, it is I who have called you, take courage, and be of resolution’” [2 Kgs 13:28], thus highlighting both free choice and inclusivity among her religious sisters. She quoted directly a verse and then gave an application for a religious woman, “‘If I wash thee not,’ He said, ‘you shall have no part with Me,’ [John 13:8] as if He would say: ‘If the instructions I have given you do not correct your erroneous worldly notions and ideas, do not change your

331 Ibid., 116. 332 Ibid., 134. 333 Ibid., 51. 334 Ibid., 115. 335 Mary Teresa Purcell, Retreat Instructions of Mother Mary Catherine McAuley, ed. Mary Bertrand Degnan (Westminster: The Newman Press, 1952), 32. 336 Mary Clare Moore, A Little Book of Practical Sayings, Advices and Prayers of Our Revered Foundress, Mother Catherine McAuley (London: Burns, Oates & Co., 1868), 3.

104 proud spirit and root up and destroy whatever in manner or otherwise is unbecoming the dignity you aspire to, you shall not be My Spouse.’”337

She described the basis for the vow of poverty with the words, “Consider the poverty of Jesus Christ on the Cross, stripped of His clothes, forsaken by His friends, and even by His Eternal Father. He was silent under His other torments, but when that interior support was taken from Him, He cried out, “My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?”338 She rhetorically contrasted what Jesus did not say with what he did say: “Jesus Christ did not say, ‘Come to me, you that are free from faults’ but ‘Come to Me, all you that labor and are burdened and I will refresh you’” [Matt 11:28].339

In her application of scriptural passages to help the young women in their education as women religious, she brought together exegesis, theology and praxis. About John 3:5, she wrote, “As little infants, you must be born anew until Jesus Christ is formed in you. To have Jesus Christ formed in us is to think as He did, to speak as he spoke, and to will as He willed.”340 Mary Clare Moore, in her memories of McAuley, gave an insight into McAuley’s approach to this integration of exegesis, theology and praxis, “Catherine, when instructing the Sisters, loved to dwell on those words of our Divine Lord: ‘Learn of me because I am meek and humble of heart’” [Matt 11:29].341

Her comfortable modifications of the scriptural verses to suit the situations in which she found herself and the messages she was sending to her religious communities reflected the authority she assumed in interpreting Scripture as she felt necessary to achieve the goals she sought: the ministry to which she felt the sisters were called and the formation of the sisters to carry out that ministry.

337 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 116–7. 338 Sullivan, Oral Instructions, 44. 339 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 91. 340 Ibid., 71. 341 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 111.

105

McAuley’s Sources

Although McAuley’s Bible has not been found, there is substantial evidence that she had access to and regularly used texts that were biblically-based. There is, among her possessions, a copy of the book Errata of the Protestant Bible or Truth of the English Translations Examined by Thomas Ward which would imply she had access to a “Protestant” Bible, possibly from her time with the Callaghans. Mary Clare Moore was more forthright in saying “Being thrown so much among Protestants she read assiduously the best controversial works, and went often for instruction to the Very revd. Father Betagh, whose learning and piety made every one revere his words, and who was also an able controversialist.”342

Doyle wrote that, on the day after McAuley and her first two companions were professed, 12 December 1832, the feast of Saint Lucy, “the Little Office of our Blessed Lady was recited by all the Sisters together, and in English, according to the Approbation of the Archbishop previously received.”343 The Office of our Blessed Lady was a shorter version of the Divine Office, which contained psalms, hymns, New Testament canticles (Benedictus [Luke 1:68–79], Magnificat [Luke 1:46–55] and Nunc Dimittis [Luke 2:29– 32]), and lessons and chapters taken from the Bible.344

Mary Clare Augustine Moore noted, “The Archbishop [Murray] ordered that the Office should be said in English, and as long as he lived we were not permitted to say it in Latin.”345 It is not known how long the Sisters continued to recite the Office in English before changing to Latin. There is some insight in a letter written in June 1849 (eight years after McAuley’s death) from Bishop Michael Blake, then Bishop of Dromore (Ireland), to Mary Elizabeth Moore, then Superior of the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy in Limerick (Ireland):

342 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 100. 343 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 60. 344 Ibid., 306. 345 Ibid., 206.

106

As to the question whether in your convent the Latin or the English language should be preferred in reading the choral office, I think it should be decided in favour of the former, where it is understood by the readers, and the practice of the Church with very few exceptions seems to exclude all doubt upon that point - your holy Foundress was, I believe, very desirous to have the Sisters of your (yr) order sufficiently instructed in Latin in order to have the language of the Church said in their choir and indeed until I read your letter I understood that such was their practice. It is probable however that the multiplicity of your active charitable duties may have interfered with her wishes and as prayer should go from the heart, and therefore should be at least in some degree understood, her good sense and her piety may have induced her to temporize a little with regard to the language and in the meanwhile to make sure of the sense and spirit more easily alternate from our ordinary speech.346

The Office was recited three times a day no matter what other events happened. Chapter 11 of the Rules and Constitutions says, “As the Sisters of the Institute must employ a great part of their time instructing the poor, they shall be obliged only to the short Office of our Blessed Lady which they shall daily recite together.347 In a letter to Dr. Walsh in 1840, McAuley outlined the “Daily Distribution of Time,” which included the recitation of the hours of the Office (5:30 To Rise, 6:00 Small Hours, 5:00 Vespers and 6:00 Matins and Lauds). She noted that “Sisters engaged in visitation of the sick are exempt from any choir duty from 10 till 4, but all in Choir at Office and all attend Lectures.”348 As McAuley approached her death, Harnett wrote that “she was also subject to inflammatory attacks, accompanied by extreme soarness [sic] in her mouth, yet she would go on reading the public lectures, and reciting the Office until absolutely incapable of uttering a word.”349

In Cottage Controversy, Margaret and Lady P. discussed the Office in this way:

Lady P.: Is this a prayer book? Margaret: Yes, my lady, the Primer with the office of our blessed lady. Lady P.: Oh, Margaret, all the prayers in this great book to the Virgin! You cannot but offend her Creator.

346 Michael Blake, Letter Journals, vol.6, accessed at the Archives of the Sisters of Mercy in Bessbrook, Northern Ireland. 347 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 306. 348 Mary Ignatia Neumann, ed., The Letters of Catherine McAuley, 1827–1841 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1969), 249-50. 349 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 188.

107

Margaret: It is odd that you should say that, my lady, for almost the whole office is taken from the Bible.350

There were daily readings from A Journal of Meditations for Every Day in the Year, a series of biblically-based meditations collected from ascetical writers and written in Latin by an English Jesuit, Nathaniel Bacon, with an English translation by Rev. Edward Mico. On a blank page at the beginning of her copy, McAuley had written a prayer which began with the words, “Come Holy Ghost, take possession of our hearts and kindle in them the fire of thy divine love”351—words which recalled her reference to the English postulants, “This is some of the fire He cast on the earth—kindling”352 and her references to being inspired by the spirit of Wisdom” [Wis.7:7].353 The original copy is preserved in the Archives in Tullamore and contains the following notation: “This Meditation Book belonged to our Venerated Foundress who left it after her in one of her visits to Tullamore, about the year 1839 or 1840.”354 Doyle said that the Sisters “at 6 o’clock assembled in the chapel within the grate for morning prayer which consisted chiefly of the Act of Oblation . . . followed by a meditation from the Journal ‘till 7.”355

In the Introduction to the Journal of Meditations, the translator noted “the matter is solid and for the most part grounded on Divine Scripture, and fitly accommodated to the rule and practice of the Church, which in several parts of the year doth present unto us the fervent Mysteries of our Saviour’s Incarnation, his Infancy, Life and Doctrine, his Passion and Death, resurrection and ascension.”356

Number XXIII of the colloquies in the Journal is entitled “Imitation of Christ” and is worded as follows: “Look, and make it according to the pattern that was showed thee in the mount. Be ye therefore followers of God, as most dear children. Put ye on the Lord

350 [McAuley], Cottage Controversy, 96. 351 Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, eds., Praying in the Spirit of Catherine McAuley (Chicago: Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, 1999), 53–4. 352 Sullivan, Correspondence, 282 353 “Spirit of the Institute,” in Tradition of Mercy by Sullivan, 91. 354 Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, Praying in the Spirit of Catherine McAuley, 54. 355 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 54. 356 Nathaniel Bacon, A Journal of Meditations for Every Day in the Year Gathered out of Divers Authors, trans. Edward Mico (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1669 and 1984), A3, microfilm.

108

Jesus Christ. I will follow thee, whithersoever thou goest (Exod. 25 c. 40 v. Ephes. 5. 1. Rom. 13. 14. Luc. 9. 57).”357 Given the extensive use of the Journal by McAuley’s community and her commitment to forming the Sisters in the way of Christ, it is likely that her use of the passage from Exodus was influenced by this colloquy, “The words of Scripture are decisive, ‘Look, and make it according to the pattern that was shown thee in the mount.’”358

Two other biblically-based texts favoured by McAuley were the Imitation of Christ and a Paraphrase on the Seven Penitential Psalms. Mary Clare Moore noted:

Her [McAuley’s] method of reading was so delightful that all used to acknowledge it rendered the subject quite new to them though they had perhaps heard it frequently, for she considered it most useful to adhere to a few solid spiritual works rather than to run over many without reflection. The Following of Christ was one of her favourite books, also Blythe’s Paraphrase on the Seven Penitential Psalms.359

The Following of Christ or the Imitation of Christ was written about 1530 by Thomas à Kempis. Of Scripture, Kempis said:

Charity and not eloquence is to be sought in Holy Scripture, and it should be read in the same spirit with which it was first made. We also ought to seek in Holy Scripture spiritual profit rather than eloquence of style. . . . Almighty God speaks to us in His Scriptures in various manners, without regard for persons . . . if you will profit by reading Scripture, read humbly, simply and faithfully.360

Such language reflects McAuley’s own admonitions:

She did not like the Sisters to use long words in speaking or writing, remarking that in the Psalms and other parts of holy Scripture inspired by divine wisdom, there was scarcely a word more than three syllables.361

357 Ibid., 17. 358 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 68, 82. 359 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 116. 360 Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, ed. Harold C. Gardiner (New York: Hanover House, 1834), 37. 361 Moore, Sayings, 28; see also Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 173.

109

Moore said that chapters 30 of Book 3 and 8 of Book 4 were McAuley’s favourites from the Following of Christ.362 The two chapters focus on two theological themes which are threaded through all McAuley’s letters: the providence of God and the following of Christ crucified. In each chapter there was a confluence of quotations with multiple allusions to the Gospels, Deuteronomy and the Psalms with an example as follows:

3:30 – “Comfort in time of tribulation”, “come to Me”, “be comforted in Me”, “Is anything hard or impossible to Me”, Abide and wait for Me”, “do not be troubled and do not fear”, “Trust strongly in Me”, “I know the hidden features of man”, “what I have given I may take away”, “I may soon lift you up again”, “As my Father loves Me, so I love you”, “I have sent them forth into the world . . . to bring forth much good fruit”, “remember well these words I have spoken to you”.363

Blythe’s Paraphrase on the Penitential Psalms begins with three quotations (Ezek 18:21- 23, Is I: 16-18 and Luke 15:7), all focusing on the sinner doing penance and setting the stage for the purpose of the text: “Of all the Forms of Prayer proposed by the Church to the Faithful, there is, perhaps no Set of Devotions more frequently enjoin’d by Directors to their Penitents, by way of lacramental Penance, that the SEVEN PENITENTIAL PSALMS [6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, and 142].”364 The Penitential Psalms was used in Lent, a tradition continued within the communities of the Sisters of Mercy until the mid- 1960s.

Another source for McAuley’s understanding of Scripture was the sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit theologian, Alonzo Rodriquez. Mary Clare Moore wrote, “The first public lecture she [Catherine] read after being appointed Mother Superior was from the tenth Chapter of Rodriquez on Obedience—being an explanation of St. Paul’s words, ‘Obey your prelates and be subject to them, for they watch continually being to give an account for your souls’.”365 Sullivan concludes: “One finds throughout Catherine’s Letters and

362 Moore, Sayings, 35. 363 Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, 148–50. 364 Francis Blyth, A Devout Paraphrase on the Seven Penitential Psalms: Or a Practical Guide to Repentance, 7th ed. (Dublin: Catholic Book Society, 1835), A2. 365 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 108.

110 her Retreat Instructions echoes of the chapter headings, phraseology and emphases of many parts of Rodriquez’s Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues.”366

One example of McAuley’s dependence on Rodriquez was her “Spirit of the Institute,” the work in which she described the essence of the vocation of the Sisters of Mercy. The use of biblical texts to support the propositions was marked in Rodriquez and was echoed in McAuley’s text. In this fairly brief treatise (seven printed pages) are quotations from Ecclesiasticus, Matthew, Psalms, Philippians, Wisdom, Romans, 1 Thessalonians, Job, Deuteronomy, 1 Maccabees, 2 Kings, Acts, and1 Corinthians. While McAuley did not include all of Rodriquez material in the section she wrote, she did include all the scriptural references. Two examples illustrate themes found elsewhere in her writings:

Albertus the Great was wont to say that in divine knowledge a greater advancement was made by piety and prayer than by study, and in proof of this assertion, he alleged the words of Holy Scripture: “I desired to have right knowledge and God gave it to me, I invoked the lord and he filled me with the spirit of Wisdom” [Wis 7:7].367

The first means which the saints have recommended to render us most useful to others is to give good example and live in sanctity. . . . It was for this reason that our Blessed saviour marked the way to Heaven by His example. “Jesus Christ,” says Saint Luke,” began to do and to teach” [Acts 1]. Thus signifying to us that we should do first what we would induce others to do.368

Catherine’s practice of copying the writings of others was characteristic of a time when the purpose was not to plagiarize work for academic purposes but to use the wisdom of the writings to help form the community of which she was the leader. Her practice of rewording the scriptural texts (as noted above) was consistent with that approach.

366 Sullivan, “Catherine McAuley's Theological and Literary Debt to Alonso Rodriguez: The ‘Spirit of the Institute’ Parallels,” Recusant History 20 (1990): 83. 367 “Spirit of the Institute,” in Tradition of Mercy by Sullivan, 91. 368 Ibid., 99.

111

The Interpretive Works of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck

Of the four women, Schimmelpenninck was the only one who consciously identified and followed rules which governed her interpretation of Scripture. Her approach was based primarily on the writings of the theologians at Port-Royal, “The protestant public is perhaps wholly ignorant, that from the time of Henry IV of France, to the end of the reign of Louis XIV, there existed in the bosom of the catholic church a learned and religious society, who distinctly taught the doctrine of justification by faith, and who were assiduously occupied in the universal dissemination of the Scriptures, Still less are they aware that with this persecuted body originated the First Bible Society, and that to them we owe that translation of the Scriptures which is considered above all others—not excepting our own admirable one—the most excellent, namely, the French translation by M. le Maître de Saci, which is that used by the British and Foreign Bible Society and Foreign Bible Society.”369

She outlined the rules of interpretation in a lengthy essay repeated in three of her published works, Biblical Fragments (entitled “Preliminary Observations, Intended To Be Prefixed To A Version Of The Psalms”), Psalms According to the Authorized Version (entitled “Observations originally intended to be prefixed to a Version of the Psalms) and Sacred Musings (entitled “On the Symbolic Language of Holy Scripture”). These rules of interpretation and her sustained use of them throughout all her books illustrate that she read the Scriptures on many levels.

Essential to Schimmelpenninck’s understanding of inspiration and foundational for her method of interpretation was the very manner in which she believed the Bible was written, i.e., a parabolic style, with concrete actions, figures and images serving as metaphors for conveying the truth. This parabolic mode of writing was “the only one by which the book of divine revelation can be made to suit every different stage of Christian experience.”370 She believed that the parabolic style of interpretation came directly from

369 Schimmelpenninck, Select Memoirs, xxix–xxx. 370 Schimmelpenninck, Psalms, 372.

112

God and included words and things: “the types, symbols, figurative personages, histories, and institutions, and in general all the external sense of Scripture, is in fact, a perpetual comment, limit, and counter-check, fixing and defining the spiritual parts; and thus elucidating the theoretic part, by a constant translation into a language of palpable fact and sensible analogies, ever running parallel to it.”371

Her interpretation was christologically-based, “Christ then, the Saviour, is, as he himself declares, the grand end of all Scripture. He is that living temple in whom all the avenues of Scriptural truth terminate.”372

Her exacting attention to the literal interpretation was, as her first rule noted, for the purpose of ascertaining the spiritual interpretation, “That which confers real importance on the inquiry, is the necessity of an accurate literal, as the only definite and solid basis on which to found a rational and enlightened, as well as a devotional spiritual interpretation.”373

Schimmelpenninck believed that the rule of spiritual interpretation of the psalms was based on the writings of the evangelists, especially Matthew, and of the apostles, Peter and Paul, and in Jesus’ own words:

As illustrations, we refer to St. Matthew's application of Isaiah vii. 14. to the birth of Christ; that of Isaiah xl. 3, 4. to John the Baptist; that of Jeremiah's prophecy of the voice of lamentation in Raman, to the murder of the innocents; that of Hosea, out of Egypt have I called my Son, to the return of Christ from that land; that of the Evangelists, of the passage in Zechariah, to the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem; that of St. Peter, of the second and the sixteenth Psalms, to Christ in the Acts. St. Paul's application to Christ, not only of the eighth Psalm, in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but of the whole levitical code in the course of it.374

Referring to Luke 24:44, she concluded, “Our Saviour expressly declares, not only that the Scriptures, by which he meant the writings of the Old Testament, (which were alone

371 Ibid., 365. 372 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 76. 373 Ibid., ix. 374 Ibid., 350–1.

113 then extant) testified of him; but he expressly tells us that Moses, the Psalms, and all the prophets speak concerning him. Now if we consider that by the term ALL the prophets, are meant all the historic Scripture writers, called by the Jews the former prophets; as well as those we call prophets, whom the Jews term the latter prophets; we shall see that this includes the whole canon of Scripture.”375

She found in the words of the psalms themselves further proof that the intended sense was not the historical but the spiritual, what she called David’s reference to dark parables, “David says, in the seventy-eighth Psalm (v. 2), ‘I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old.’ Also in the forty-ninth Psalm (v. 4), ‘I will incline mine ear to a parable. I will utter my dark saying upon the harp.’”376

One example of the application of the rules was her work on the Psalms of which she said in Biblical Fragments, “The Psalms are, in their literal sense, at once a compendium of the historic part of Scripture, a body of perceptive rules, a most touching picture of the human affections, and a collection of the most sublime poetry.”377 She read each Psalm closely and carefully, adding general principles to those listed above: identify the author (“David is assumed to be the author of all the psalms which, in the original Hebrew, bear his name. With respect to those psalms which manifestly treat of events posterior to the time of David, it appeared safest to suggest the probability of their being composed by those who are mentioned, in sacred writ, as invested with the prophetic character at that period”378); and fix the particular occasion on which the psalm was written (“the psalm enrolled in the public service of the Jewish nation, must be supposed to have been composed on some occasion of public interest and notoriety”379). In order the fix the particular occasion, she looked at the text of the psalm, at the title translated from the original Hebrew and Septuagint, and at both text and title compared with the historical books and with geographical research.380

375 Ibid., 352–3. 376 Ibid., 359. 377 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 78. 378 Schimmelpenninck, Psalms, xiii. 379 Ibid., xiii. 380 Ibid., xi.

114

Schimmelpenninck’s exegesis of Psalm 1 illustrates her interpretive approach:

Inauguration Psalm, probably composed by the prophet Samuel at his consecration of David. 1 Sam. xvi. 13. He enumerates to David the blessings of the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord; and prophecies his eternal kingdom, under the type of a tree, planted by the streams of water, whose leaf shall not wither. He contrasts David with Saul, who had walked in the counsel of the ungodly (1 Sam. xv. 21. 24), and had sat in the seat of the scorner (1 Sam. xiii. 8–15. and xv. 8–28) . . . . This psalm has also been supposed to have been used by the four hundred adherents of David, in their sojourn in the cave of Adullam (1 Sam. xxii. 1, 2) . . . . This psalm is without a title in the Hebrew; it in fact itself forms an appropriate title to the whole Book of Psalms.381

Schimmelpenninck accepted the historical truth of the Old Testament but believed it to be a transitory truth, “In the Psalms and in the historic books of the Old Testament, we learn the actual facts that David was oppressed by Saul, that he fled into the wilderness, that he triumphed over his enemies, and fled from his son Absalom: nor are these events to be disputed; but they would very little have concerned us, were this the only truth conveyed.”382 She believed that the Holy Spirit had better things to do than inspire the writers to give these historical facts, “Nor can we easily make a more extravagant, enthusiastic, or fanatical supposition than to imagine that the Holy Ghost should degrade his inspiration to the mere purposes of amusing antiquaries and historians with the fortunes of the kings of Judah; or with a catalogue of the curtains and fringes of the Temple.”383

She also believed that there sometimes was a “double spiritual interpretation” applied to both Christ and the Church:

Nor could these events, in the nature of things, have occupied the pen of inspiration, or have been of any importance to the church, but on the principle of an eternal or spiritual truth couched beneath them in types, and as offering in every line the double but in dissoluble portraitures of Christ, the Son of God, and the church, his inseparably united bride.384

381 Ibid., 49. 382 Ibid., 356. 383 Ibid. 384 Ibid., 357.

115

In addition to this dominant rule of figurative and spiritual interpretation rooted in an accurate literal interpretation, Schimmelpenninck also used other interpretive techniques: confluence of biblical texts, comparisons among texts to fine deeper meeting in each one, and allusions.

She frequently used a confluence of scriptural quotations (usually without citation) to make her point as is shown in this passage showing the human types of Christ as lord, parent, father, brother and friend:

Human caution and circumspection are not the sport of vain terrors; but learn to fear alone the Lord of Hosts himself [Isa 8:13]; and, He being the only fear and dread, all others vanish. Our determination is no longer the servant of idolatrous self-will; but is determined, like St. Paul, henceforth to know nought else but Jesus Christ, and him crucified [1 Cor 2:2]; and to live to him, who died and rose for us [2 Cor 5:15]. Our veneration is henceforth superlatively fixed on that Parent, who, though the mother may forget the sucking child, will not forget [Isa 49:15] his children; and who, like a true and tender Father, bids the bow of peace smile again in beauty, even from the frown of the darkest cloud. Our heart adheres to that Brother, who wished to appease our heavenly Father's wrath, even by the sacrifice of his own blood—to that Friend, who came to us in our need, who sticketh closer than a brother [Prov 18:24].385

Schimmelpenninck used the same interpretative technique in Biblical Fragments as she did in the Psalms According to the Authorized Version, in one instance bringing the Old Testament images into an understanding of the New Testament with allusions to God as shepherd in Psalm 23 and as parent in the provision of manna in the wilderness wanderings:

On that happy sabbath of grace, the soul shall take no more anxious thought for the morrow, —for her life, or what she shall eat, or what she shall drink; knowing that the wine of the kingdom, the blood of the Son of God, and the true bread of heaven, his broken body, are prepared a feast for her in the wilderness; and that they shall, fed on by faith, assuredly preserve her soul to life everlasting. Her good Shepherd, she knows, shall spread, her table in the midst of her enemies; and He, who fed the children of Israel in the wilderness, shall abundantly supply her, day by day, with the hidden manna.386

385 Ibid., 382. 386 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 272.

116

In her last published book, Sacred Musings, Schimmelpenninck spoke of the union between Christ and the Church making reference to multiple images again without citation, “The doctrine of his mystical union is of so much importance, that it is most assiduously set forth in Scripture, under a variety of images: such as the vine and the branches [John 15:5], the head and its members [1 Cor 12; Col 1:18], the foundation and the building [1 Cor 3:9-11], and above all, the Bridegroom and his bride [Eph 5:25-33; Mark 2:19; Rev 21:2].”

She used allusions as in this interesting reference to the sowing and the seed [Matt 13] and Scripture study, “The Christian who is ever studying Scripture, and has but little silent waiting upon God, is like a man daily sowing fresh seed in his field, but who would never water, or weed, or preserve what has been sown. The Christian who is ever waiting on God without scriptural study is like a man who should daily water and dig his garden, but never sow it.”387

In a reflection on a time of faith, she used an allusion to the flight from Egypt, “Many a mixed multitude would leave Egypt were the grapes of Eschol hanging their clusters on the coast of the Red Sea, and had they only to traverse the way to take immediate possession. But no; we must leave Egypt, and we shall find ourselves in the wilderness and there we have to journey alone through an enemy’s country, feeding by faith on the promises, the fulfillment of which is, however, not received until we cross Jordan.”388

Schimmelpenninck gave interesting insights into images of God embedded in names for God: “God revealed Himself to Abraham as the “Almighty God:” the injunction to him was, “walk before me, and be thou perfect” [Gen 17:1]. He revealed Himself to Moses as the self-existent Jehovah: to him the injunction was, to have the heart perfect with Him as the All-sufficient [Deut 4:9, 29; 6:5, 10:12]. To Christians God is revealed as a Father:

387 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 246. 388 Ibid., 255.

117 the injunction is, to exhibit a family likeness; “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect [Matt 5:48].”389

She compared the theology of Ephesians and Colossians saying, “There is a great resemblance between the epistle to the Ephesians and that to the Colossians; yet is there this difference: the Apostle in the Ephesians speaks of the Church as the fullness of Christ, and in the Colossians speaks of Christ as the fulness of the Church.”390

In Is the system of Slavery sanctioned or condemned by Scripture?, Schimmelpenninck set the context for her tract on slavery by noting that both advocates and opponents of slavery used the Bible to legitimate their positions. In painstaking detail, she reviewed the state of slavery in “the Jewish theocracy,” and then compared it with slavery practised by colonists in the nineteenth century, quoting extensively from the Old Testament and the Targums “to form a correct idea of the real state of that servitude.”391 She also used references from the New Testament to support her findings from the Old Testament. She differentiated the two classes of people [Hebrews and strangers] who, though “equally under the protection of the civil law, and equally invited to the protection of the one true God, were yet totally distinct as to their political privileges and their religious observances.”392

In speaking of servants, she made reference to the laws in Exodus (12:44, 45), Leviticus (22:10, 11; 25:40, 53, 39, 44, 45, 47–51), Genesis (17:23, 27) and Deuteronomy (15:18; 24:14). She also used the stories of the prodigal son in Luke 15, the unjust servant in Luke 16, the servants hired over the different hours of the day in Matthew 20 and the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 to describe the status and lives of hired servants. She concluded that the Mosaic Law explicitly and frequently gave commands that hired servants were not to be oppressed. She added support to these legal conclusions from Jeremiah (22:13), Malachi (3:5), Ecclesiasticus (34:20–22) and James (5:4). With respect

389 Ibid., 258–9. 390 Ibid., 256. 391 [Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck], Is the system of Slavery sanctioned or condemned by Scripture? (London: John and Arthur Arch, 1824), 1. 392 Ibid., 2.

118 to acquisition of slaves, she used both Old and New Testaments to show that this practice was acceptable only through voluntary choice or judicial sentence; any other acquisition was termed “man-stealing” and was a crime punishable by death, included in 1 Timothy 1:9, 10 as one of the most hideous and abominable crimes.

Schimmelpenninck devoted a special section to female slaves, showing again how well they were treated in Israelite society by quoting the laws concerning them in Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy supported by many interpretations from the “Mishnic doctors” which she found in Gill’s commentaries.

After her detailed research, Schimmelpenninck concluded “that the law of God assured to slaves, equally with masters, a full participation in every religious and civil privilege belonging to their class. That the state of servitude implied no personal degradation, but that servants and freemen equally formed one social body, the members of which were continually interchanging.”393

She then, in a series of twenty-five statements, showed how the status and life of the Hebrew slave compared with that of the Negro slave.394 Schimmelpenninck concluded her tract comparing the Hebrew slaves to Christians who are redeemed by Christ:

Let us then, henceforth, as all equally the purchased servants of Christ, our kinsman and Redeemer, love each other as brethren of our common Lord; and as he loved us, and gave himself for us, purchasing us with his own blood when we were yet sinners [conflation of Rom 5:8, Titus 2:14, Acts 20:28, and Rev 5:9], so may we English, who profess to be bible Christians, ever practise that system of bonds, the only one which our Lord himself teaches us, viz. that of drawing the Negro Gentile, as well as the instructed Christian world, with the cords of love alone, which the Spirit of Christ our Purchaser, has emphatically described as being the bonds of man [Hos 11:4].395

393 Ibid., 42. 394 Ibid., 42. In making this comparison, Schimmelpenninck quoted extensively from two publications: Zachary Macauley, Negro Slavery: Or, A View of Some of the more Prominent Features of that State of Society, as it Exists in the United States of America and in the Colonies of the West Indies, especially Jamaica (London: Hatchard and Son, 1823); and Thomas Clarkson, The cries of Africa to the inhabitants of Europe, or, A survey of that bloody commerce called the slave-trade, (London: Harvey and Darton, and W. Phillips, 1822). 395 Schimmelpenninck, System of Slavery, 50.

119

In an approach prototypical of today’s theology of creation, Schimmelpenninck was strong in her belief that God was visible in Scripture and in nature: “Under the light of Revelation, the universal face of nature becomes one vast moral mirror, in which the ﬁnger of the Spirit not only points out to man the attributes of the Divine image, but likewise holds it unto him as that in which he may contemplate the capacities of his own moral being.”396

Just as types and symbols were ways in which Scripture was revealed so, too, nature portrayed the divine through types, “As the Mosaic law taught by types, as the prophets, nay, as even our Lord Himself used the material world as a vast magazine of types, showing forth spiritual truth, so man could do no better than follow the Divine model. And as God in revealing His will taught man by unalterable things, not merely by the mutable signs of verbal language, so these servants of God, ingenious in their benevolence, sought to portray Divine truth by emblems, which might furnish, as it were, books of Christian instruction to the people, and in which all who would might learn.”397

However, this use of types in nature required the Scriptures for interpretation, “For Scripture puts into man’s hand the key to the sacramental use of nature. It unfolds the invisible truth reﬂected by the beam of the Sun of Righteousness from the outward visible sign.”398

She concluded that the word of God was similar to the works of God, “Hence the formation of the Bible, the Word of God, is precisely on the same plan as the earth, the work of God; even the exterior is full of beauty and utility: those who only cultivate its surface, will find themselves amply repaid; yet the deeper they go, the more valuable the treasure becomes; and its most valuable riches ever lie at great depths from the surface.”399

396 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 30–1. 397 Ibid., 385–6. 398 Ibid., 50. 399 Schimmelpenninck, Psalms, 375.

120

In the Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity, Schimmelpenninck wrote from a philosophical perspective on aesthetics and the sublime. She used Scripture as a means of illustrating her thinking:

To exemplify this [the Passive Sublime], we need only refer the reader to the eighth Psalm. . . . If the reader will take the trouble of examining this Psalm, he will see that the first distich gives, as it were, the subject in one grand thought, forcibly, but simply expressed, and without impertinent accessories, such as it is truly and in fact, the utterance of the heart, when it is really impressed. . . . The soul dwells on it, and illustrates it in a hundred different ways; seeking analogies from the glory of the heavens to the depths of the sea, to give utterance to the fullness of his heart. In the Active Sublime, on the contrary . . . the march of ideas is abrupt, irregular, and, though grand and magnificent, yet forcibly contrasted, and abounding an apostrophe, antithesis and all the bolder figures of speech. The reader will immediately feel the difference by an example. We also take it from Scripture, and refer to the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, the triumph of the prophet over the fall of the king of Babylon . . . the difference between the magnificent amplified style of the passive sublime, and the abrupt, bold and contrasted imagery of the active sublime.400

Duquette summarizes this indirect use of interpretation:

Rather than polarizing terrible sublimity with loving beauty, Schimmelpenninck splits sublimity into two successive types, the terrible and the contemplative sublime. One could read her biblical scholarship as tracing a movement form the terrible and contemplative sublimity of the Old Testament to the graceful sentiment and sprightly joy of the New Testament; however, the boundaries between her categories are more permeable than that, allowing for an intermingling of sublime terror and beautiful love in both the Old and New Testaments.401

Schimmelpenninck’s Sources

Schimmelpenninck was not apologetic about using often unidentified sources for her work as she wrote at the end of Biblical Fragments:

400 Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity, and their Correspondence with Physiognomonic Expression, Exemplified in Various Works of Art (London: J. and A. Arch, 1815), 374–6. 401 Natasha Duquette, “Anna Barbauld and Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck on the Sublimity of Scripture,” Sublimer Aspects: Interfaces Between Literature, Aesthetics and Theology, ed. Natasha Duquette (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 70.

121

It [Biblical Fragments] consists of facts and customs noted down, or ideas or trains of thought suggested by books, conversation, or in various ways. Thus much she says, that she may be fully acquitted of the charge of plagiarism; but a more explicit reference she has purposely avoided, because so much even of that whose sources are derived from others, consists rather of their result as interwoven in her own mind, in connexion with other things, than the original ideas themselves: and she has so continually differently applied, turned, or refondu, as the French say, and added to the borrowed materials, that, except in a very few instances, she should only subject herself to the charge of unfaithfulness, did she indicate the author whence the original hint was taken.402

Schimmelpenninck was significantly influenced by the exegetical principles of the Port- Royal community, priests and nuns, even though she did not accept all of their doctrinal positions. Among Schimmelpenninck first published books were the Narrative of the Demolition of the Monastery of Port-Royal Des Champs and A Tour to Alet and La Grande Chartreuse. Excerpts from these two books were later included in a third entitled Select Memoirs of Port-Royal. She wrote these books based on first-hand materials, compiled from the contemporary histories, biographies, relations, and letters of the Port- Royalists which she selected during her visit to Europe in 1814. Among other libraries, she visited the Jansenist College at Amersfort, Louvain, where Jansenius and St. Cyran, the fathers of Jansenism, studied; Brussels, the residence of the great Arnauld, and Amsterdam and Paris; where “a large collection of the religious, biographic, and historic works of the Port-Royalists was collected.”403

There were three Port-Royalists from whom Schimmelpenninck adopted the parabolic method of interpretation and whose Hebrew translations of the Psalms she used.404 Louis- Isaac Lemaistre de Sacy, a priest of Port-Royal, was best known for his translation of the most widespread French Bible in the 18th century, known as the Bible de Port-Royal – the first translation of the Bible accessible to the non-Latin speaking general public. Schimmelpenninck described this work, “the celebrated Port-Royal Bible of Sacy, which in so many instances corrects the Vulgate.”405 Jacques-Joseph Duguet found in the Bible many figures, or foreshadowings, a system which he expounded in Règles pour

402 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, xxxiii–xxxiv. 403 Schimmelpenninck, Select Memoirs, xxiii. 404 Schimmelpenninck, Psalms, xvii. 405 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 192.

122 l'intelligence des Saintes Écritures. Jacques-Vincent Bidal d’Asfeld (1664-1735) authored with Duguet, Explication du livre des Pseaumes in 1733.

Schimmelpenninck had a special regard for the nuns of Port-Royal and lamented the way in which they were so cruelly treated. She admired the depth of their study of Scripture. Of them, she wrote:

Besides the great variety of translations and illustrations of scripture, which Port- Royal was the means of diffusing over Catholic Christendom; and besides the assiduous and daily study of scripture indispensably enjoined on all its disciples; a large proportion of the nuns had studied the dead languages, for the purpose of reading the Word of God in the originals. Nearly all of them read the vulgate fluently, and many were perfectly versed in the Greek and Hebrew originals. Nor did they merely content themselves with the perusal of scripture; they were in the practice of learning considerable portions of it by heart.406

When the abbey at Port-Royal was closed by the authorities, the nuns were dispersed to several religious houses. Of Madame de Pepin who was finally established in the monastery of the regular Canonesses of Picpus, in the Fauxbourg St. Antoine, Schimmelpenninck noted, “They still preserve, with pious care a closely written thick quarto work, the fruit of her captivity. This work she had composed upon the Psalms: it is divided into three columns—the first containing the text—the second her own paraphrase—and the third her reflections upon it. During the whole of her ten years’ imprisonment, she always went from the choir to her own cell, to employ herself in the study of the scriptures, which was at once her delight and consolation.”407 Of Mère Angélique de St. Jean, she wrote, “Her learning and talents delighted those who either heard her converse, attended her exhortations as abbess, or read her works. A profound knowledge of scripture, a perfect acquaintance with ecclesiastical history, a familiar knowledge of the Greek and Latin fathers in their original languages, added to her discourses a weight, perhaps never before equalled in any of her sex.”408

406 Schimmelpenninck, Select Memoirs, 232. 407 Ibid., 231. 408 Ibid., 155.

123

The other scripture scholars and theologians Schimmelpenninck read were varied in their perspectives. Of Jerome, she wrote, “There are few spiritually-minded readers who will not read, with great pleasure and interest, St. Jerome's letter on the views with which he entered on his Latin translation of the Scripture, since diffused under the name of the Vulgate.”409 In one of her several references to Augustine, she wrote, “Thus, as St. Augustin observes, the Captain of our salvation has conquered the world, the flesh, and the evil one, with his hand not armed with steel, but transpierced by steel; and the Sovereign, at whose feet the church prostrates herself, is crowned not with a diadem of jewels, but a wreath of thorns.”410 She valued the works of Samuel Horsley, the Church of England Bishop of Rochester, who authored Book of Psalms translated with Notes in 1815. She quoted Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Motte-Guyon (1648-1717), a French mystic and a key advocate of Quietism, whose books were condemned by the Roman Catholic Church.411

For historical information, Schimmelpenninck consulted Josephus who was her source for information about the customs and practices of the biblical period, “Josephus too informs us that, in the courts and galleries of the temple of Herod, were abundance of pillars of the rarest marbles covered with inscriptions of holy things.”412 She referred specifically to his Jewish Antiquities. Other historical sources included Tillemont’s Histoire des Empereurs, Loskiel's North American Mission and Racine’s Abrege de l'Histoire Ecclesiastique. Her scientific authorities were Spence's Entomology and Comte de Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière.

In addition to her King James Bible, Schimmelpenninck made specific reference to the Hebrew Scriptures and de Sacy's Bible. She frequently consulted concordances and lexicons, most especially “that learned, pious, and able critic, Mr. Parkhurst” [Parkhurst’s Concordance] with whom she did not always agree. She also consulted Taylor's Hebrew

409 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 106n. 410 Ibid., 230. 411 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 24. 412 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 102n.

124

Concordance and Buxtorff's Lexicon. She frequently used Hebrew words to emphasize many of her interpretations.

Because of her commitment to the literal interpretation, Schimmelpenninck studied the geography of Palestine and Egypt. For this, she consulted such sources as James Grey Jackson, Account of the Empire of Morocco and the District of Suse; Bruce's Travels to discover the Source of the Nile; a journal of the Society of Antiquaries of London entitled Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity, concerning Mount Ararat; the Geography of Herodotus; Claudius J. Rich’s Memoirs on the Ruins of Babylon; Edward Wells' Scripture Geography: Being A Geographical and Historical Account of the Places Mentioned in the Old and New Testament; Vivant Denon’s Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt during the campaigns of General Bonaparte in that country; Richard Pococke’s, A Description of the East and Some other Countries, Vol. I: Observations on Egypt; Frederick Louis Norden’s Travels in Nubia and Egypt; the charts and observations to the celebrated geographer, Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville; and William Bartram's Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws (to learn more about crocodiles!).

For her detailed work on the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the wilderness to the Promised Land, she acknowledged her dependence on several writers including Father Sicard's Lettres edifiantes et curieuses, ecrite des missions etrangères, par quelques missionaires de la Compagnie de Jesus; Clarke's Notes on the Departure of the Israelites Commentary on the Bible, and Gill's Exposition of the Bible as well as several of the geographies noted above. For other aspects of her work, she also made reference to Henry's Notes, Goode's Translation of the Book of Job, and Job Scott's Journal. Schimmelpenninck also made reference to literary works to support her conclusions: Milton's Paradise Lost [she agreed with his interpretation of Moloch but not Beliel]413, Gambold's hymn "No more with trembling heart I try,” and a selection from the Hymns of the United Brethren, “What is my anchor? if you ask.”

413 Ibid., 245–6.

125

Anna Barbauld (an English poet, essayist and author of children’s literature) had a significant influence on Schimmelpenninck’s life and work. Lankin wrote that Schimmelpenninck “ever retained kindly and grateful feelings towards Mrs. Barbauld, together with a very high estimate of her powers. She considered her style as the purest and best of female prose writers. Through life she never ceased to remember with delight the enjoyment she derived from Mrs. Barbauld's ‘Prose Hymns,’ when read to her by her mother in early childhood; and during her last weeks on earth, she turned again to these associations with undiminished tenderness.”414 Barbauld was still living during Schimmelpenninck’s adulthood, and she spent time with her, “We find that, in 1798, Mary Anne passed a month with Mrs. Barbauld at Hampstead. It seems to have been the first visit she paid beyond the circle of her family connections.”415

Duquette shows how Barbauld and Schimmelpenninck shared a common approach to interpreting Scripture: “Both Barbauld and Schimmelpenninck expressed such confidence in Christ by living out their faith in dauntless social action. They shared an appreciation of the co-existence of harmonious differences in Scripture, nature and humanity. This capacity to not only tolerate but also actively celebrate difference informed their social commitments. . . . [They both] saw the text of the created world, with its diverse plants and creatures in delicate ecological balance, and the landscape of Scripture, with its intermingled reverential terror and wondrous love, in terms of a striking variety of contrasts sustained by God in a harmonious whole.”416

Common Sources

There is no evidence to show than any of the four women knew another. However, all four of them had read and used the work of Hannah More (1745-1833), the evangelical Church of England philanthropist who was engaged in the anti-slavery movement. Aguilar quoted in full a prayer from Hannah More to show that miracles still continue: “But that the sun has shone unremittingly from the day that God created him, is not a less

414 Hankin, The Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, 297–8. 415 Ibid., 7. 416 Duquette, “Anna Barbauld and Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck,” 75.

126 stupendous exertion of power than that the Hand, which fixed him in the heavens and marked out his progress through them, should once say by his servant, ‘Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon’” [Jos 10:12].417

McAuley copied, with some revisions, a poem of Hannah More entitled, “Sensibility: An Epistle to the Honourable Mrs. Boscawen,” a poem which draws moral distinctions between kinds of sensibility.418 She transcribed eighteen of the 386 lines from the original poem and added four of her own composition, replacing More’s illustrations of “petty strife” and “sacred joys” with examples of compassion, “the pitying look – proceeding from the heart / the tear of sympathy, about to start / on these Heaven bade the sweets of life depend / commencing here, a love which ne’er shall end.”419 Mercy and compassion were the hallmarks of the community which McAuley had founded. As she did with many other texts which she transcribed, McAuley did not note the original author.

King was one of the subscribers to More’s Shipham Sickness Club. She frequently endorsed More’s works as valuable for reading: a burlesque comment on novels in “Two wealthy Farmers” and her admirable tale of “The Two Shoemakers” both found in Cheap Repository Tracts as well as the preface to her remarks on Dupont’s speech made in the French National Assembly concerning anti-religious public schools (King quotes a large section from this preface on Christian charity and support for poor persons by those who have more420). In commenting on Jezebel’s inappropriate behaviour, she quoted More’s poem, “But woman, born to dignify retreat, / Unknown, to flourish, and unseen, be great;/ To give domestick life its sweetest charm, / With softness, polish and with virtue warm;/ Fearful of praise, unwilling to be known, / Should seek but Heaven’s applauses, and her own.”421

Schimmelpenninck met Hannah More through the links between the More family and her husband, Lambert Schimmelpenninck. Her biographer wrote, “It was whilst the sorrows

417 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 158. 418 Sullivan, Correspondence, 457, 458. 419 Ibid., 458. 420 King, Female Scripture Characters, 342–3. 421 Ibid., 134.

127 we have detailed were pressing upon Mrs. SchimmelPenninck, that the writings of the Port-Royalists were first made known to her. She one day unexpectedly received a parcel from Mrs. Hannah More, containing some few volumes of the Port-Royal writers. They seemed providentially sent to meet the inmost wants of her heart and spirit, in this season of outward trial and perplexity.”422 Later, More responded in a letter to Schimmel- penninck, “I am glad to see you have so much contributed to make Port-Royalism known in this country. Even religious readers are in general ignorant of the treasures of religion and learning possessed by these devoted people.”423 In writing about Schimmel- penninck’s work against slavery, her biographer noted, “By unwearied counsel and sympathy, and by the use of her ready pen, she gave most efficient support and help to the abolitionists of Bristol. We have abundant testimony how highly her labours were estimated. Hannah More writes of her ‘excellent tracts’ on this subject, one of which seems to have excited a more than common degree of interest.”424

At least two of the women valued the work of Helen Maria Williams (1762-1827), a religious dissenter, and used it for their own purposes. McAuley abbreviated a poem of Williams entitled “Paraphrase” which expands the meaning of the words taken from Mt 7.12, “Do unto others as you would they should do unto you.”425 McAuley’s version of the poem uses fourteen lines from the original) and began with the words, “Precept divine! to earth in mercy given.” It was handwritten by McAuley possibly in Bermondsey, London, and given to the community there. McAuley changed the masculine words of the original, slightly oriented the poem to the first person and removed the punctuation. The focus on mercy mirrored McAuley’s intended use of Scripture to form her community of women for ministry to poor and sick people—an intention made evident in the fact that the community in Bermondsey placed the poem in the Hospital of St. Elizabeth which they founded in Great Ormond Street in 1856.426

422 Hankin, The Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, 361–2. 423 Ibid., 363. 424 Ibid., 365. 425 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 233–4. 426 Ibid., 233.

128

As noted above, Schimmelpenninck was significantly influenced by Williams in her theory of sublimity articulated in her two works, Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity, published in 1815 and Principles of Beauty published after her death in 1859.

All four women used non-traditional genres to communicate their biblical interpretation although they occasionally used more traditional formats. In doing so, they avoided receiving censure for or prohibition of their work. Duquette argues that this deception by Dissenting women writers was deliberate:

In response to the perceived impropriety of a woman publicly voicing her original perspectives on scripture, theology, and ecclesial community, Dissenting women such as Barbauld, Wheatley, Williams, Baillie, and Schimmelpenninck deployed tactical moves and countermoves to ensure their scriptural exegesis and theological analysis was preserved for posterity. They intentionally placed their biblical hermeneutics and theological aesthetics within the mediums most palatable to an audience resistant to the idea of a public woman theologian. . . . These Dissenting female poets and theorists veiled provocative hermeneutical claims and calls for social action in aesthetic forms of discourse viewed as more acceptably “feminine” modes of expression.427

The analysis above shows that this was true for Schimmelpenninck as well as for the three other women who were not Dissenters.

Among the genres and forms used by the four women were exegesis, theology, poetry, narrative, midrash, letter, biblical biography, musings, prayer, fiction, moral novel, instruction, religious tract, commentary, aesthetic theory, tour narrative, memoir, apologetics and history. In using such diversity and scope, the four women exemplified what Taylor and Weir describe as “a variety of interpretative approaches including reading texts canonically, theologically, experientially, and critically.”428

427 Duquette, Veiled Intent, 2. 428 Taylor and Weir, Women in the Story of Jesus, 3.

129

Biblical Women: Comparisons among the Interpreters

All four women wrote about biblical women, two in actual books completely dedicated to biblical biographies (Aguilar’s Women of Israel and King’s Female Scripture Characters). Of biblical biographies, Styler writes:

In the nineteenth century, collective biography allowed women a way into Bible hermeneutics at a time when formal Bible exegesis was denied them . . . . Within its bounds, the female writers were able to act as Bible interpreters with considerable freedom since no male intermediary stood between the biographer and her scripture. And biography allowed much interpretive potential.429

The only woman to whom all four women referred was Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Each called her by a slightly different name—Aguilar, “the Virgin,” King, “the Virgin Mary,” Schimmelpenninck, “Mary, the Mother of Jesus,” and McAuley, “the Blessed Virgin Mary.” The faith tradition of each woman marked her approach to Mary.

Aguilar wrote indirectly of Mary. In the Vale of Cedars, Queen Isabella’s references on several occasions to “the Virgin” or “the holy Virgin”430 were a distinctive mark of Roman Catholicism of the Queen who ironically was presented in a favourable way in a novel condemnatory of that religion. In the second instance, Aguilar explored the “Prophecies of Isaiah” in an essay which was reprinted in Essays and Miscellanies and in Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings.431 She used the text of Is 14:7 to show how “Christian divines” misinterpreted the text to prophesy the coming of the Messiah. She gave the “Jewish explanation of the chapter”432 showing how the Hebrew word means “young woman” not “virgin” and likely referred to the wife of Isaiah who gave birth before “the usual time.”433 She used historical texts from 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles as well as later verses from Isaiah to support her interpretation.434

429 Rebecca Styler, “A Scripture of Their Own: Nineteenth-Century Bible Biography and Feminist Bible Criticism,” Christianity and Literature 57, no.1 (Autumn 2007): 68. 430 Grace Aguilar, The Vale of Cedars: or The Martyr (1850; repr., New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1872), 220, 226, 227, 228. 431 Aguilar, Essays and miscellanies, 55-67; Aguilar, Sabbath Thoughts, 26–9. 432 Aguilar, Essays and miscellanies, 55. 433 Ibid., 57. 434 Ibid., 59.

130

King and Schimmelpenninck highly regarded Mary, but were cautious about giving her too much acclaim. King, including her as one of the women in King’s Female Scripture Characters, described her as “the nearest earthly connection of our Holy Redeemer, that ‘blessed among women,’ the ‘highly favoured of the Almighty,’ who was called to the honour of being the ‘mother of our Lord.’”435 She described the Magnificat as Mary’s song of praise in which “she expresses her gratitude for the high honour and blessed distinction to which she had been raised, from a low estate; she celebrates, in beautiful inspired language, the mercy and goodness of God, in his care of his faithful servants, and the fulfilment of his promise to his chosen people.”436 She named Mary as a prophet, “The meeting between Mary and her cousin Elizabeth illustrates God's grace and power over the minds of these holy women; both were supernaturally impressed with the spirit of prophecy.”437

Schimmelpenninck was “deeply attached to many Catholic writings,”438 but one teaching of that faith which prevented her from becoming Catholic was “the honour paid to the Saints and to the blessed Virgin . . . so indiscreet as to approximate to the honour due to God alone.”439 Despite the inappropriate attention given by Catholics, Schimmelpenninck believed that Mary was especially blessed, “the angel Gabriel called her ‘blessed amongst! women as having found favour with God’,”440 and she called her, “this most eminent saint, this most favoured and most devoted person.”441

As would be expected given her Roman Catholic tradition, McAuley paid much attention to Mary. She had chosen as the date for the opening of the house on Baggot Street, September 24, 1827, the feast of Our Lady of Mercy. “Nor can we think it was without a special providence of God that a day was chosen which in a special manner placed the house and subsequently our holy Order under the protection of His immaculate Mother and caused them to be named from the most amiable of her attributes by which she most

435 King, Female Scripture Characters, 216. 436 Ibid., 219–20. 437 Ibid., 220. 438 Hankin, Life of Mary Anne SchimmelPenninck, 415. 439 Ibid. 440 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 2.254. 441 Ibid.

131 resembles Him whose mercies are above all his works.”442 In the Rule and Constitutions to guide the first and subsequent communities of Sisters, Chapter 16 was entitled “Our Devotion to Our Blessed Virgin Mary’” and began:

As this congregation is immediately under Her special protection and as she is under God its principal Patroness and Protectress, the Sisters shall always have the warmest and most affectionate devotion to her, regarding Her in a special manner as their Mother, and the great Model they are obliged to imitate, that by Her intercession and Powerful protection, they may be enabled to fulfill the obligations of this Holy Institute, and implant Jesus Christ in the hearts of the poor, whom they are charged to instruct.443

The Sisters were encouraged to “solemnize Her [Mary’s] festivals with spiritual joy and devotion and impress upon the minds of all whom they can influence, the greatest respect and love for Her.”444 In her instructions to the Sisters, McAuley said, “The Rosary [a prayer using fifty repetitions of the “Hail Mary”] is a most powerful means of obtaining every grace. If we do not obtain them, it is probable we do not say it as we ought. The ‘Hail Mary’ in particular should be said with the greatest fervor, begging the Holy Virgin to assist us now and at the hour of our death.”445 Each September the Sisters recited the Act of Oblation and Consecration to the Blessed Mother of God as well as the Thirty Days’ Prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

All three Christian women saw Mary as a model for imitation, especially in her humility. King quoted Matt 12:50 to show that Mary was an “adoring and faithful disciple of Jesus.”446 Jesus’ words showed that it was in the power of all Christians to attain Mary’s exalted title of Mother of Jesus, “Whoso doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.”447 Having considered Mary’s presence at the foot of the cross and with the disciples after the ascension, she concluded

442 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 48. 443 Ibid., 310. 444 Ibid. 445 Sullivan, Oral Instructions, 137. 446 King, Female Scripture Characters, 229. 447 Ibid., 217.

132

In the Scripture account of her [Mary], we see sufficient to love, admire, and copy, in her character; and we have the most important authority for our respect for her, since the Lord, “who seeth the heart,” distinguished her as so highly favoured by Himself. And let us observe what was the leading trait in her character, what was the uniform stamp attached to every action of her life:-It was that important corner-stone of Christianity, humility. The holy virgin seems the first consistent example of its exercise in society; and it appears to be the remarkable part of her character, that made her the chosen of God, the mortal instrument of giving to the world a self-denying crucified Saviour.448

In both volumes of Biblical Fragments, Schimmelpenninck wrote about Mary, each time applying her interpretative technique of the parabolic sense or spiritual sense which was the true interpretation and used types or symbols to reveal the hidden truth. In the first volume, she interpreted the marriage at Cana (John 2:1–10) as a “double type” with “Jesus himself, in this transaction, representing his own divine nature, and the bridegroom shadowing forth his sacred humanity.”449 In this exegesis, the marriage represents the spiritual union of Christ and his church. And Mary, the mother of Jesus, was “a type of the Jewish church of God . . . which was, till the resurrection, the true one, that church who had received the promises, who was present at the marriage, but who, alas! Was not herself the person married.”450

Both King and Schimmelpenninck were troubled by Jesus’ use of the title “Woman” for his mother at the wedding feast of Cana. King noted that Jesus’ use of the title “Woman” was not a disrespectful rebuke “although he “checks her indeed in interfering with His divine power”; rather it was “the word by which females were always addressed, and answering to our term of lady, or madam.”451 In the second volume of Biblical Fragments, Schimmelpenninck gave a much more detailed exegesis of the title used both in the wedding feast of Cana and at the time of Jesus dying on the cross, “the most heart- searching and trying occasions to the heart of a mother” at the times when she was most called to “hope against hope.”452 Schimmelpenninck concluded that, by using the “comprehensive scriptural epithet Woman,” Jesus integrated the “whole of the angelic

448 Ibid., 231. 449 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 1:238. 450 Ibid., 240. 451 King, Female Scripture Characters, 229. 452 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 2:260.

133 salutation; as the whole of Elizabeth’s congratulation and Zachariah’s song.”453 He “pointed her to the remembrance of the promise and designated her as being emphatically THE woman.”454 In so doing, Jesus addressed his mother “by that which was her appropriate and distinguishing title; a titles of the highest and most super-eminent dignity ever bestowed upon any mere creature; and at the same time, did he revive her heart, by presenting to her faith the strongest and richest cordial of consolation.”455 She believed that this title brought together and centered in Mary “all the promises of the Scripture, all the types of the law, all the prefigurations of prophecy, all the stupendous expectations of the promised glory of Messiah . . . all the force of the magnificent salutations of the angel, of Elizabeth and the Magi.”456

Having given this literal explanation, Schimmelpenninck followed her rules of interpretation by giving the parabolic, spiritual or universal sense of the texts with Mary as the type of “the spiritual woman, the Church, the spouse of Christ.”457 She went even further and stated that the Church of Christ is the spiritual Eve, the spiritual Mary, Miriam, the daughter of Anna, the woman whom Solomon beheld by faith, the king’s daughter, the faithful and virtuous wife of Proverbs, the glorious woman clothed with the sun, the true mother of all living—all “typified by Mary, the mother of Jesus.”458

For McAuley, Mary was a model for the life of a woman religious, “Take the Blessed Virgin Mary for your model in this degree of obedience, and in the three virtues which particularly characterized her: humility, resignation to the will of God, and an entire abandonment into His hands.”459 And again, “We ought often to reflect on the manner in which the Blessed Virgin replied to the Angel when he announced to her the mystery of the Incarnation. She did not say one unnecessary word or ask a single unnecessary question.”460 Imitating occasions in Scripture when persons took a new name to denote a

453 Ibid., 263. 454 Ibid., 263. 455 Ibid., 264. 456 Ibid. 457 Ibid., 266. 458 Ibid., 266–8. 459 Sullivan, Oral Instructions, 53. 460 Sullivan, Oral Instructions, 147.

134 change in their relationships with God, each Sister on being received into McAuley’s community took a new name as a sign of her new life as a woman religious; some form of the name of Mary [Mary, Marie, Maria, Marian, Marion] was always incorporated in that new name. This custom continued until the reforms of religious life in the 1960s.

The three Christian women each referred to the story of Martha and Mary to reinforce their own beliefs. McAuley deliberately re-interpreted the story of Martha and Mary found in Luke by using images from Matthew, “The functions of Martha should be done for Him as well as the choir duties of Mary. . . . He requires that we should be shining lamps giving light to all around us. How are we to do this if not by the manner we discharge the duties of Martha?” (Luke 10:38–42 and Matt 5:16).461 In this interpretation, she was faithful to a longstanding Christian tradition of the balance between contemplation and action, each one supporting and enlivening the other. Rachel and Leah from the Old Testament and Martha and Mary from the New Testament were often the images presented as finding this balance.

King’s interpretation of the story of Martha and Mary was similar to McAuley’s. She frequently referred to two phrases from the story in Luke 10:41–42 (“being careful and troubled about many things” and “the one thing needful”): “On the value of scientifick pursuits, and the advantages of learned professions, I forbear to descant; wishing to address myself most particularly to females on the nature of their employments, and how they might proceed in all their duties, without being “careful and troubled about many things,” and without neglecting ‘the one thing needful’” [modified phrases taken from Luke 10:41–42].462

Schimmelpenninck’s interpretation differed from the interpretations of McAuley and King. She focused in two different ways on Mary’s role in listening to and reflecting on the gospels. About women in general she said, “We next proceed to the reflections suggested by the impressive admonition delivered by our Saviour to the anxious and busy

461 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 155. 462 King, Female Scripture Characters, 291.

135

Martha; and it is of essential importance to the performance of our worldly duties, as well as our attainment of the ‘one thing needful,’ that we should properly understand the spirit and meaning of our Saviour’s words. Let not the indolent and careless suppose, that, in neglecting their worldly business, and casting off all thought for the comfort and accommodation of those around them, that they are obeying this precept of their LORD.”463 In another comment, she noted, “The sceptre of woman is the hope of the gospel; she does not rule by power and reach of intellect, like the man, but by gently and sweetly pointing to the gospel standard to which she herself submits and by leading to the feet of Jesus, where she herself sits.”464

In a letter applying for reception into the Moravian Church in 1818, Schimmelpenninck compared her own experience with the experiences of Martha and Mary, “I had, indeed, long believed in Jesus, but, like Martha, I had too often been busied about many things, though all, as I thought, relating to His service. I now began to feel that I most needed, like Mary, to sit quietly at His feet, and my heart yearned after companions who, in common with other Christian brethren, feed on the Bread of Life, but eat it unmixed with the chaff of human speculation."465

However, consistent with the interpretations of McAuley and King, Schimmelpenninck saw goodness in the character portrayals of both Martha and Mary and used them to illustrate two phases of Beauty as designed by the Creator:

Both these phases of Beauty have equally their type in the works of GOD; and hence both may equally look to Him for blessing. . . . Both types in His natural creation are equally the work of the same Father’s loving hand; and as in His church the call of Martha and of Mary are both sanctiﬁed and both blest by Him, and as they primarily set Him forth, the one in His six days’ labour, the other in His sabbatic rest, so do they equally express His goodness and mercy in the bountiful gifts which He affords, and in the farther gift of the talents, activities, and industry, useful to elicit their various and recondite value.466

463 Ibid., 299–300. 464 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 278. 465 Hankin, Life of Mary Anne SchimmelPenninck, 367–8. 466 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 109.

136

Aguilar and King both wrote books about women in the Bible. Aguilar’s Women of Israel included individual named women (Eve, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel, Jochebed, Miriam, Caleb’s daughter Achsah, Deborah, Naomi, Hannah, Michal, Abigail, Rizpah, Huldah and Esther), individual women unnamed (the wife of Manoah, the wise woman of Tekoah, the wise woman of Abel, the prophet’s widow, the Shunammite and the little Israelitish maid), groups of women (mothers of Israel and tabernacle workers), and laws related to women. King’s Female Scripture Characters focused solely on individual women or women in groups of two: Eve, Sarah, Rebekah, Thermusis (daughter of Pharaoh), Ruth, Hannah, Queen of Sheba, Jezebel, Esther, Judith, Susannah, the Mother and her Seven Sons, The Virgin Mary, Elizabeth and Anna, Martha and Mary, and Dorcas.

Each woman’s decision to write her book was rooted in a different premise with both similarities and differences in the qualities the two interpreters found in the same women. Aguilar noted the presence of some narratives about biblical women but lamented, “all the fruit has not been gathered: much yet remains, which, thrown together, would form a history as instructive as interesting, as full of warning as example, and tending to lead our female youth to the sacred volume, not only as their guide to duty, their support in toil, their comfort in affliction, but as a true and perfect mirror of themselves.”467

She was deeply concerned about the influence of Christianity on women promoting itself as “the sole source of female excellence," convincing women that “their present station in the world: their influence, their equality with man, their spiritual provision in this life, and hopes of immortality in the next. Nay more, that the value and dignity of woman’s character would never have been known, but for the religion of Jesus.”468 In response, she challenged Jewish women to “arise, and prove the truth of what we urge by their own conduct, their own belief, their own ever-acting and ever-influencing religion, prove without doubt or question that we need not Christianity to teach us our mission, prove that our duties, our privileges, were assigned us from the very beginning of the world,

467 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 1. 468 Ibid., 2.

137 confirmed by that law to which we still adhere, and will adhere for ever, and manifested by the whole history of the Bible.”469 Aguilar believed that the Bible must again become for Jewish women “the book of life to the female descendants of that nation whose earliest history it so vividly records.”470

She found in the stories of biblical women proof of “God s holy and compassionating love.”471 Believing biblical women to be mirrors of women of her time, she recognized their virtues as well as their faults and failings, “The women of the Bible are forcibly portrayed, not for us to follow them exactly, for that we could not do, but from their conduct in their respective spheres to guide us in ours; from the approval or reproof, bestowed directly or indirectly upon them, to teach their descendants what is acceptable in the sight of our heavenly Father, and what is not; and of this we may rest assured, there is no contradiction to puzzle us in the Word of God.”472

But she also believed that the women of the Bible made visible the spirituality of Judaism and, therefore, women of her time had a special responsibility to lead in making Judaism a spiritual religion for everyone, an essential dimension in securing Judaism’s future, “If she looks into the records of her ancestors—if she remembers Leah, Deborah, Naomi, Hannah, Abigail, the Shunammite, Huldah, and Esther—must she not feel that spirituality was the natural attribute of the Women of Israel in the PAST? and if she carefully studies the prophets, she will find that such will be their attribute in FUTURE; and there she will read, that until it is attained by man as well as woman, Israel must remain exiled and captive, far from Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem’s God.”473

King also wrote her book because of a lack of appropriate attention to female characters in the Bible. As noted above, she was inspired to do so by a book by the former Bishop of Leicester and London, Scripture characters: or, A practical improvement of the principal

469 Ibid., 5. 470 Ibid., 7. 471 Ibid., 8. 472 Ibid., 76. 473 Ibid., 574.

138 histories in the Old and New Testament, which had included only two women.474 Like Aguilar, she believed that the women of the Bible were mirrors of the women of her time, “Human nature is in no picture so correctly portrayed, as in the characters of Scripture; we see ourselves as in a glass; we contemplate the very beings, in virtues, defects; and feelings with which we daily associate; actuated by the same motives, and under the dominion of the same passion, we see in others, and feel in our own hearts: we find sentiments and opinions expressed, which come home to ourselves; and sorrows detailed which continually assail us in similar forms.”475

As did Aguilar, King recognized that the biblical women had both virtues and failings, “The female characters of Scripture are most of them particularly striking and impressive, more so than any other history; and present either patterns of female virtues, or awful warnings against female vices: let us then survey this interesting picture for our own benefit; let us study, and endeavour to copy their virtues; and, in the contemplation of their faults, let us search our own hearts for similar defects.” She went further than Aguilar, however, in concluding that every women of the Bible was flawed in some way, “In the best of human examples something imperfect mixes itself; where we find most to copy and admire, we see something to disapprove and shun.” Jesus Christ alone, the Sun of Righteousness [Mal 4:2], was the only scriptural character who presented “without spot or blemish” [1 Pet 1:19; Eph 5:27].476

The reasons for Aguilar’s and King’s decisions to write about biblical women are well illustrated in their approach to each character. It is instructive to compare their interpretations of some of the women they both chose.

Eve: Aguilar believed that Eve was created equal to Adam, “Formed like man in the immortal likeness of the Lord, equal in responsibilities to God and care for creatures.”477 She did name her as “the first transgressor,” but noted that both transgressed and the

474 King, Female Scripture Characters, i.. 475 Ibid., 2. 476 Ibid., 344. 477 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 13.

139 transgressions of both “produced consequences which demanded that not only themselves, but their seed should return to dust.”478 The lesson for women and men was twofold: each one must take responsibility for his or her own actions, “our own acts must be our witness or our condemnation,”479 and each one must “acknowledge with grateful and adoring faith, that the same love which guided, blest, and pardoned them, is still extended unto us.”480

King found in Eve, “a character replete with matter for reflection, instrtuction and humiliation.”481 She believed that “It is indeed a lamentable degradation to the female character to reflect, that it was in the heart of the woman that the first notions to disobedience arose.”482 For her the narrative had two lessons, one negative and one positive. Negatively, “it gives a history, the most important to human beings, of the origin of all evils, the foundation of all sin: and it presents a most humiliating reflection to females, that it was the disobedience of a woman that entailed vice and misery on mankind.”483 Positively, “In the history of Eve, we read of the original institution of marriage. The ALMIGHTY ordained it for the mutual comfort of two human beings; and placed them together in the most intimate of all connexions.”484

Sarah: Aguilar presented Sarah as “the beloved partner of Abraham,” and “a subject of reverence and love to her female descendants.”485 She saw in the story of Sarah and Hagar an example of God’s love, “Much of the Eternal’s love and pity towards His female children is manifested in her simple life, and also in the life of her bond woman, Hagar, which is too closely interwoven with hers to be omitted.”486 And she saw the relationship between Sarah and Abraham as one of equality, “The beautiful conﬁdence and true affection subsisting between Abram and Sarai, marks unanswerably their

478 Ibid., 25. 479 Ibid. 480 Ibid., 33. 481 King, Female Scripture Characters, 3. 482 Ibid., 4. 483 Ibid., 3. 484 Ibid., 14. 485 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 36. 486 Ibid., 35.

140 equality; that his wife was to Abram, friend as well as partner.”487 She also pointed out that Sarah was the first woman of the Bible whose death and burial are mentioned.

King found a mixture of character in the story of Sarah, “She appears to have possessed many of those domestick virtues so appropriate in a woman: she is recorded as a good and obedient wife; and is recommended as an example to wives by St. Peter. Sarah is recorded by Josephus, as well as by the sacred historian, to have been a woman of extraordinary beauty and attraction.”488 However, she believed that her beauty and attraction became a temptation to her to err. With respect to the story of Sarah and Hagar, she said, “Both were to blame, as in all family dissensions is the case. Hagar was wrong in forgetting her subjection and obligations to her mistress; and Sarah, in not allowing for the force of those temptations to which she had subjected her, by raising her out of her proper sphere.”489 She compared Sarah’s response to God’s promise of a child with Mary’s response and found Sarah lacking, “Instead of receiving the promise with faith and gratitude, like the Virgin Mary, to whom a more improbable event was prophesied, Sarah laughed in contempt and disbelief, and added to her sin a flat denial of this act of folly.”490

Naomi and Ruth: For Aguilar, the book of Ruth was misnamed because, “as Ruth does not properly belong, by birth and ancestry, to the women of Israel, Naomi must be the subject of our consideration.”491 However, she commended Ruth, believing that the book did “express the women of Israel’s appreciation and love of the gentle Moabitess.”492 Ruth became more than a daughter in God’s sight because, “her acceptance of, and obedience to, the Law, were entirely voluntary; not merely received from education and as heritage.”493 She also found in the story of Ruth another proof that God is love, “Would we have our daughters Ruths, we must be Naomis; we have no right, no

487 Ibid., 40. 488 King, Female Scripture Characters, 21. 489 Ibid., 24. 490 Ibid., 25-6. 491 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 223. 492 Ibid., 234. 493 Ibid., 235.

141 pretence, to demand more than we evince, as well as give. God is Love—Love, proved alike in word and deed, must be the Guardian Angel of our homes!”494

King interpreted the story of Ruth with a very different emphasis but similar lessons. She agreed that the book was beautifully written and even encouraged her readers to read the original before reading her commentary on it. She saw the book as an instructive picture of family affection and filial respect, “Contemplate the example before you, in the excellent Ruth. She deserted her country and kindred, and clave to her mother with the most ardent affection; she laboured for her support; she paid the most implicit attention to her wishes; she behaved to her with uniform respect: and this, not to the mother who gave her being, and endured the labours and trials of nursing and rearing her, but to the mother of her husband, who had no natural claim to her filial duties.”495 Like Aguilar, she commended both Ruth and Naomi, seeing in their actions a useful lesson to mothers and daughters, “It speaks highly in praise of both parties; in that of the mother-in-law, who had this, by her kindness, good temper, and accommodating manners, suited herself to youth: and to the younger female, who could discriminate aged excellence, and give her affections from motives of gratitude, principle, and respect.”496

Hannah: Aguilar and King both were strong in their praise of Hannah but interpreted the intent of the story quite differently. Aguilar first noted that the practices of Hannah and Peninnah were proof that “women as well as men were to appear in the house of the Lord, and join in His worship.”497 She found in Hannah’s hymn of thanksgiving with its sublime poetry and vivid conception of the power and goodness of God “a forcible illustration of the intellectual as well as the spiritual piety which characterised the women of Israel.”498 She also noted that the story showed the Israelite women experienced “perfect freedom and equality, even in the marriage state.”499 The primary lesson for Jewish women, however, was found in Hannah’s style of prayer, “We would only

494 Ibid., 240–1. 495 King, Female Scripture Characters, 75. 496 Ibid., 63. 497 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 246. 498 Ibid., 247. 499 Ibid., 252.

142 beseech our young sisters to accustom themselves sometimes in their private hours, to pray and to praise from the heart, not always to depend on printed words. . . . The history of Hannah is all-sufficient for us to be convinced, that such individual and heartfelt prayers are not only legal, according to the laws, but acceptable to the Lord.”500

King focused her interpretation on Hannah’s role as mother of Samuel. She noted that God often chose to connect the birth of an important character with “a miracle, a mercy, or a prophecy,” and this happened with the birth of Samuel.501 She saw in Hannah “a very amiable and interesting example; must to praise and imitate, and nothing, in appearance, to condemn or avoid.”502 However, the most important lesson from the story was Hannah’s act of pious heroism in dedicating her son to God from his infancy, “all mothers are required to dedicate their children, in heart and mind, to the service of GOD; and like Hannah, to teach them early to bow their infant knees in prayer, and to make the awful truths of religion and its various duties their first and earliest impression.”503

Jezebel: in her consideration of Jezebel, Aguilar included her daughter Athaliah. Her first note was finding some comfort in the fact that “neither was of Israel, and that such awful crimes stained not the women whom the Lord so blessed.”504 She told their story for no other reason than to warn women that, “in the creeping horror of the evil and the sin to which woman can attain, the prayer for help and strength, and freedom from temptation, may arise more frequently from our hearts.”505 Yet she used their example as yet another proof that women in Israel in that time period had both power and freedom in order to be able to do what they did.

Like, Aguilar, King also recognized that Jezebel was an evil character whose “hideous picture of depravity is the more revolting, as it exhibits the portrait of a female.”506 She was not surprised to find a woman of such evil, giving examples of similar situations

500 Ibid., 254. 501 King, Female Scripture Characters, 77. 502 Ibid., 84. 503 Ibid., 86. 504 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 327. 505 Ibid., 328. 506 King, Female Scripture Characters, 120.

143 from her time. Unlike Aguilar who saw Jezebel as positive proof that the women of Israel had power and freedom, King found in Jezebel two causes for her behaviour: “first, her ignorance of true religion, which is the only check to vice, and incentive to virtue; and the luxury in which the worldly prosperity and power attached to her exalted situation, enabled her to indulge.”507 For her, Jezebel was a “a striking comment on the wretched consequences of women stepping over the strong barrier drawn between the male and female characters, and becoming politicians and rulers, and engaging in concerns of state, which neither their capacities or habits of life fit for conducting.”508

Mother in Maccabees: Aguilar and King both recognized that the book of Maccabees was apocryphal yet they believed that it contained important lessons from the ancient writers. Aguilar, who followed Charles Rollin in naming her Hannah, believed that “The mother was marvellous above all, and worthy of honourable memory.”509 From the narrative Aguilar deduced three key lessons. The mother, by her actions, witnessed to an important doctrine, that of belief in immortality which came first from Judaism not Christianity. Secondly, Aguilar saw reflected in the mother the role of women in influencing their children, “A mother in Israel could be herself no warrior, but she could raise up warriors—she could be no priest, but she could create priests—she could not face the battle’s front, or drive the idolatrous invader from God’s Holy Land—she could not stem the torrent of persecution and of torture; but she could raise up those who would seek the one, and by unshrinking death, bear witness to the fruitless efforts of the other.”510 Finally, the story reinforced Aguilar’s belief that the women of the Hebrew Bible were valued and influential, “Be the narrative itself truth or tradition, it matters not; the ancient fathers would never have given woman that inﬂuence and elevation in tradition, which had not its foundation in truth—would never have made her occupy that position in tradition which the ordinances of the law forbade.”511

507 Ibid., 123. 508 Ibid., 133. 509 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 406. 510 Ibid., 409. 511 Ibid., 411.

144

King also named the mother but she followed Josephus in calling her Salmona.512 She agreed with Aguilar that this woman was heroic, “The subject of contemplation now before us presents such an extraordinary instance of pious heroism in a female, that, though not coming under the description of a character from want of name and varied matter, it presents instruction too valuable to be passed by.”513 However, her interpretation of the narrative focused on the act of martyrdom that the mother suffered. She believed that “martyrdom was the glorious crown of those days,”514 the days of the Maccabees and the first few centuries of Christianity. She agreed with Aguilar that the story was based on a belief in the doctrine of immortality, “In the vision of our future heavenly state, which was vouchsafed to St. John, in the Revelations, chap. vii ver 13, he sees blessed saints arrayed in white robes, and he asks, ‘Whence came they?’ ‘They are those which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’”515 King found in the narrative a lesson for people of her time, “While we contemplate the tortures of the mother and her seven sons, so heroically borne, even from attachment to a Mosaick law; let us pause for a moment, and ask ourselves whether our ardent love for our holy religion would enable us to suffer with equal heroism in its defence.”516

512 King, Female Scripture Characters, 197n. 513 Ibid., 197. 514 Ibid., 201. 515 Ibid., 210. 516 Ibid., 208.

CHAPTER 3 The Hermeneutic by which the Old is Adapted to the New

The focus of chapter 3 is the hermeneutic by which the old is adapted to the new. It outlines the versions of the Bible used, the four women’s understanding of the Bible as the word of God, the primary image of God which they each held, their understanding of the Scriptures in their respective faith traditions, their determination of who should be the readers of the Bible, the special meaning which they believed the Bible had for women, the appropriate manner of reading Scripture and the action-oriented intent of the Scriptures. Threaded through all of these elements will be the interpretative methods they favoured (e.g., a theological presupposition of the Bible as God’s Word, a focus on spiritual and moral lessons, the belief that the Holy Spirit enlightened and taught through the living Word, proper understanding achieved only in the context of prayer, faith and spirituality; a focus on narratives and persons, a belief that the New Testament is the completion of what was begun in the Old Testament, the spiritual sense as the sense intended by God, an assumption that interpretation involves reading, reflection, comprehension and action; and an expectation that the Bible is to be taught by parents to children).517

Having explored the hermeneutic approaches of the four women, this chapter then describes the intentional ways in which all four women used scripture to effect change. It will outline the specific actions for social change in which each of the four women were engaged: Aguilar—integration of Jews in British society and inclusion of Jewish women in the study of Torah, King—improvement of the lives of poor persons especially women and children, McAuley—education of Irish Catholics especially poor children and young women as part of the strategy for restoring the identity and power of Irish Catholics, and Schimmelpenninck—inclusion of the struggle for social justice as sublime (the ideal of humanity) and involvement in the anti-slavery movement. Within the field of reception/ impact history, there is not yet any defined methodology to determine impact or level of

517 See echoes of this listing in Marion Ann Taylor and Heather E. Weir, Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006), 15–6. 145

146 influence of the interpretation of the text on the culture. To the extent possible, the chapter describes indications of impact which the four women had in their efforts. The chapter concludes with the identification of the authority by which the four women assumed the right to independently read the texts and interpret their meaning for their reading communities.

Scriptures Read by the Four Women

Aguilar, King, McAuley and Schimmelpenninck represent the spectrum of readers of the holy books known as the Bible. For Aquilar, this Bible was Tanak, the complete Hebrew Bible, not solely the Torah, “This is the Bible, the whole Bible, not the Mosaic books alone.”518 For the three Christian women, the Bible included the Hebrew Bible (in their words, the Old Testament) and the New Testament. For McAuley, the Bible also included the Deuterocanonical Books.

Three of the four women, Aguilar, King and Schimmelpenninck, used the King James Version of their holy books. Aguilar did so because, in her time, there was not an English version of Tanak. While she herself knew Hebrew, most of the Hebrew community for whom she was writing did not. She feared the Christian translations of the Old Testament, “The English Bibles are translated by the Christian divines, and though the text is generally correct, the heads of the chapters are very likely to mislead. There are also some passages which mysteriously written in English may appear capable of a double meaning.”519 However, given that there still was not an English translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, she felt that it was more important that the Bible be read, “A strictly moral education is not sufficient for the real improvement of the Hebrew poor. They need religion, simple, heartfelt, yet ever guiding religion; and this can only be obtained by teaching them their English Bibles.”520 She went even further and recommended that parents use some works about the Bible written in English by those Christian writers

518 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 31. 519 Ibid., 176. 520 Ibid., 102.

147 whom she identified as having avoided the Christological interpretation of the Old Testament:

The greatest mischief that can be done to the interests of the Jewish religion is to keep (as too many do) our children from reading the English Bible, on the plea, that the way in which it is translated, will do them more harm than good. . . . To those Jewish parents really interested in their tasks, Trimmer's explanation of the Old Testament for the use of schools, and Burder's Oriental Literature, would prove invaluable assistants, very few portions of these relating to the doctrines of Christ.521

The King James Version was the accepted English version for all Protestant churches and, therefore, the accepted version for both King and Schimmelpenninck. However, Schimmelpenninck was open to all versions, drawing charts which showed the sources and consequent value of the Catholic and Protestant versions of the Scriptures. She frequently made reference to the Hebrew Scriptures and to de Sacy's Bible de Port-Royal.

For McAuley, the Bible was the Douay-Rheims Version approved for use by Roman Catholics of her time. While a Bible which she used personally has not yet been discovered, there are two Bibles in existence (both the Douay-Rheims Version) which had been used by members of her early communities: Mary Frances Warde and Mary Joseph Croke.

The three Christian women, either implicitly or explicitly, interpreted the Hebrew Bible (their Old Testament) as a precursor to the New Testament. Aguilar acknowledged that Christians shared the revealed word of God with Jews but reached an opposite conclusion, “Christianity in all, save its actual doctrine of belief, is the offspring of Judaism.”522 She described the bond shared by those who “acknowledge the same Book and the same foundation”523 with the words:

The Protestant religion, in its morality, its reverence for the Old Testament, its acknowledgment of the Jews as the chosen people of the Lord, its spirituality, its abhorrence of all image-worship, comes nearer the spirit of the Jewish religion

521 Aguilar, Essays and Miscellanies, 146–7. 522 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 18. 523 Ibid., 15.

148

than any other creed; even whilst in its actual doctrines, that of a trinity, a dying Saviour, an inﬁnite atonement, and original sin, it is most widely opposed; but actual creed, absolute doctrines of belief, are of far less moment in a multitude, than the spirit of a faith.524

All four women read and interpreted portions of the Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical Books. King knew the books of the Apocrypha and made reference to them without distinction from the other scriptural books of the Old Testament except in her references to Esther (see the note above).525 She included three women from the Apocrypha among her female scripture characters without even mentioning that the women came from the Apocrypha: Judith, Susanna and the Mother of the seven sons in Maccabees.

Aguilar also saw value in the Apocrypha, seeing them not as inspired holy books but as commentary on the Bible-record of the same events. In her chapter on Esther, she noted about the added sections of that book:

We have the authority of the oldest Jewish writers; if her [Esther’s] prayer in the Apocrypha be written by them. That the Apocrypha is not divine, we are quite aware, but as the writers of the Talmud do not disdain to quote from the “Wisdom of Solomon,” as a good moral essay, not as divine, we may perhaps be permitted to regard the remaining chapters of the book of Esther in the same light.526

The Douay-Rheims Version used by McAuley and the Bible de Port-Royal used by Schimmepenninck contained the Deuterocanonical Books which were regarded as Scripture. The Bible as the Inspired Word of God

All four women accepted without question the Bible as the inspired word of God. In an ironic way, this belief that the Bible was one text with one divine author allowed the women to ascribe universal status and divine authority to their own interpretation. Speaking about their biblical biographies, Styler says, “While modern scholars tend to attribute female social roles to particular historical contexts, the literalist biographers read

524 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 562–3. 525 King, Female Scripture Characters, 150. 526 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 336.

149 them as divinely approved, universal models which they could follow in their own day.”527

Aguilar took for granted that all the biblical writers were inspired, “Every page of the Bible breathes the voice of God.”528 Her stated purpose in writing The Spirit of Judaism was “to explain the words of the Bible, to prove those words are not the words of finite man, but the inspiration of a merciful Father, whose omniscience . . . permitted and inspired His chosen servants to compile a volume which would be the ladder between earth and heaven.”529

King concurred with Aguilar that all the biblical writers were inspired and that the inspired word was meant to guide the lives and actions of the believers. She believed that the writers of the Scriptures were directed by God, “our reflections are arrested by the important question to ourselves, whether our faith is always humbly and implicitly given to every promise vouchsafed us by the Almighty, through his Divine Messenger in the Holy Scriptures?”530 In the first words of her Female Scripture Characters, she quoted 2 Tim 3:16–17, “we are admonished, that ‘all Scripture is given by inspiration of God; and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.’”531

McAuley did not analyze or question the inspiration of Scripture, but took this fact as given, that the intention of the inspired word was to direct action. She said in her instructions to the novices, “Do you faithfully comply with His holy inspiration? In time of pain and affliction are these your words: ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!’ [Jb 1:21] . . . ‘Not my will but thine be done’” (Luke 22:42).532 One of her companions wrote of her, “She did not like the Sisters to use long words in speaking or writing, remarking that in the Psalms and other parts of Holy

527 See Styler, “A Scripture of Their Own," 71. 528 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 32. 529 Ibid., 31. 530 King, Female Scripture Characters, 26. 531 Ibid., 1. 532 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 178.

150

Scripture inspired by divine wisdom, there was scarcely a word more than three syllables.”533

Of the four women, only Schimmelpenninck consciously added depth and nuance to the understanding of inspiration—of the Bible itself, of the biblical writers, of the readers and interpreters of the Bible, and of all creation. She began her book, Biblical Fragments with the words, “it always assumes as granted, that the Bible is given by inspiration.”534 She described the Bible as a “venerable and sacred book, inspired by the Spirit of God, penned by the saints of God.”535 In Sacred Musings, she wrote of John. 2:1–11, “The same God who laid the foundation and raised the superstructure of external nature, the work of His hand, was also the author of the Scriptures, the inspiration of his Spirit. Christ created the one, St. John i.3; the Spirit of Christ, the Comforter, inspired the other.”536

In Principles of Beauty, Schimmelpenninck found in Scripture the highest form of the Sublime (the first style of Direct Beauty), “With deep reverence, then, we turn to the light-creating Word, as the highest instance of the Active Sublime, (Y’hi or) “Let there be light.” . . . And O my soul! do thou deeply remember and lay it to heart, that if the highest instances of true sublimity are to be found in the Holy Scriptures, it is because they alone really convey the most weighty and important of all utterances.537

For Schimmelpenninck, not only was the Bible inspired by the Spirit, but the reading and interpretation were also inspired by the same Spirit, “it is because he [the Holy Spirit] is both a divine teacher, and the church's appointed teacher, that the more closely we adhere to his words, the more exactly we establish the literal sense, with the more light, accuracy, force, and truth shall we be able to elicit the real spiritual sense; and with the

533 Moore, Sayings, 53. 534 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, xxxii. 535 Ibid., ix. 536 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 240. 537 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 219–20.

151 more ease shall we unfold it in its various bearings, whenever the Spirit of God shall give us an understanding heart to understand those Scriptures.”538

She succinctly stated, “The study of the Bible is a constant action and reaction of the Spirit of God upon the human mind, heart, and faculties.”539 She encouraged readers and interpreters to pray for the guidance of the Spirit as they carried out their research, seeking “for the guidance of his Holy Spirit, who is both able and willing to lead the sheep of Christ into the knowledge of all-saving truth.”540 In her last book, Sacred Musings, she reinforced this message, “Individuals, at different periods, may receive different lights on the same passage, and at successive epochs of spiritual illumination, may attain different degrees of insight into truths which lie couched under the same figure of expression.”541

Schimmelpenninck’s understanding of the parabolic style had three corollaries: the Scripture was so rich in its expression that it could be suited to the level of education, experience and education of the person; the interpretation of one generation would become the base for the interpretation of the next generation; and this would also hold true for a single individual as they grew in education and experience.

With respect to one generation building on the interpretation of the previous generation, she wrote, “It having pleased God in every case to exhibit a long series of types and symbols, before he unfolded any abstract truth itself; that doctrine became recognised as soon as ever it was exhibited in express words by his messengers: and thus the revelation of one age received its attestation by giving the key to unlock the institutions of the preceding one.”542 Aguilar shared a similar belief when she wrote, “We cannot too often dwell upon the truth that the same gracious God who manifested Himself through

538 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 29–30. 539 Ibid., 65. 540 Ibid., 72–3. 541 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 242. 542 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 43.

152 prophets and miracles to our ancestors is ours still, and has granted us a record of His words and works, to give us strength, and hope, and comfort.”543

In Schimmelpenninck’s understanding, what was true for each generation was also true in the life of an individual, for “as a man grows in spiritual knowledge and in spiritual research, fresh and more enlarged views of the Divine mind expand around him on every side.”544 She used language anticipating a more modern approach to the interaction between the word and the reader, “Every advance in the Christian life throws a new light on the whole Scripture, and discovers a fresh stratum of divine truth; every change of situation or circumstance throws to the child of God fresh streams of light on particular parts. . . . The Bible becomes to the believer, not a mere dead letter, like the works of man, but a constant living reciprocal action from God, and his own heart and mind” [italics added].545

In an interesting antecedent to the understanding of cosmology in the twenty-first century, Schimmelpenninck extended the understanding of inspiration beyond Scripture into the natural world, “By being composed in the parabolic style, each passage offers, as it were, various strata of true exposition, suited to the various stages of Christian knowledge and experience: and thus the word of God's Spirit without always tallies faith the manifestation of God's Spirit within. In this respect the Word of God may be compared to the works of God.”546 She believed that, just as reading and interpretation of Scripture was inspired by the Spirit, so the Spirit inspired people to see the reﬂection of the Divine character from His external works, what she termed to be “shattered emblems of his Father and of his God.”547 She added, “Man under the teaching of the Spirit gradually discerns order and wisdom amidst the chaos, benignity amidst the power.”548

543 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 315–6. 544 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 241–2. 545 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 54. 546 Ibid., 50. 547 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 125. 548 Ibid., 33.

153

In her final book Sacred Musings, Schimmelpenninck summarized, “The same God who laid the foundation and raised the superstructure of external nature, the work of His hand, was also the author of Scriptures, the inspiration of His Spirit.”549 In essence, she believed that all temporal things reflected the divine: “To the Christian, all the earth reflects heaven. All which is visible is the type of that which is invisible; arid temporal things, touched by the alchymy [sic] of Scripture explanation, become at once holy and spiritual.”550

She concluded that both the written word of God and the universal face of nature were understood in the light of Revelation and would lead to moral behaviour:

And thus, whilst the revealed written word of God unfolds His character, declares His will, and lays down His precepts; whilst it pronounces their sanctions, and promulgates the high destiny to which His creature man is invited; the widespread volume of His works, the universal face of nature, is another manifestation of the same character; a collaboration of the truth therein revealed to the spiritual, through the medium of the natural, senses. And hence, under the light of Revelation, the universal face of nature becomes one vast moral mirror, in which the finger of the Spirit not only points out to man the attributes of the Divine image, but likewise holds it up to him that he may contemplate the capacities of his own moral being.551

Aguilar agreed with Schimmelpenninck’s conclusion, adding two comments which are almost prophetic in light of theology today: the continuing creation of the universe, and the other-than-human creatures who also share in God’s promise:

All those mighty worlds, those revolving systems, which are to us but the stars and planets of the night, have been created, and may be still creating by the Lord. All are under His guidance and control, equally with our earth, and their inhabitants, of whatever nature they may be, equally responsible to Him. It has been said, they may be worlds in which our souls must move and act before supreme felicity can be attained; and if they are, they do not deny the promises of the Bible.552

549 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 240. 550 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 61. 551 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 30–1. 552 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 435–6.

154

The God of the Bible as the God of Love

For these four women, the God who was revealed through the written word was first and foremost a God of love. In Aguilar’s words, “The religion our Father desired Moses to teach, is a religion of love, and in love only should be taught, as in love received.”553 She spoke passionately about this relationship which was always initiated by God:

Who loves us, who tends us, who bears with our iniquities, and chides us, in such long suffering compassion as God does? In the words of Moses "what nation hath God so near to us as we have? Will not our whole history proclaim His deep, unchanging, and unfailing love? Will not the written evidence of Moses, nay even of those before him—Abraham, Joseph, and of David, Isaiah, Malachi, all unite in proving that God is love? Nay, has He not Himself proclaimed it in those blessed words with which He describes Himself to Moses, when He passed by before him—" The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin?" [Exod 34:6-7]554

This description of God from Exodus 34 was frequently repeated by Aguilar in The Spirit of Judaism, Women of Israel and The Jewish Faith. For Aguilar, the relationship initiated by God was rooted in the Bible and had two dimensions: between God and the people, and between God and the person, “Sent as a message of love to our own souls, as written and addressed, not to nations alone, but as the voice of God to individuals whispering to each of us that which we most need; thus it is we should first regard and venerate it [the Bible].555 Each person has a responsibility in the relationship to teach their hearts to love God, “by dwelling upon His infinite perfections; by lingering on the pages of His blessed word, till by prayer and faith we can realize the Bible as a message of love and mercy; not merely addressed to a nation, but to each of us individually and apart.”556

The image of God as a mother comforting her children was used frequently by Aguilar, “For SO deep, so intense, exhaustless, is a mother's love, that its figure is frequently used to demonstrate the love borne to us by our Father in heaven; His love alone exceeds it.

553 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 408. 554 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 36. 555 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 1. 556 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 40.

155

‘Can a mother forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, she may forget, but I will not forget thee.’”557

To each person’s responsibility to love God, Aguilar added the responsibility to love others. She believed that following the Law was to be done in love despite the far-too- frequent charge against Jews of the opposite, “We have allowed them to persist in this charge, when every Hebrew ought so to feel the stigma, as to rise up and prove its falsity, by revealing the real spirit of his Divine Law—that Law which was the first to teach love to God and love to man; and such forgiveness, that not even a grudging thought should remain; and such care for the poor, the fatherless, the widow, and the stranger, as none other ever did.”558 The living of the Law in love because God first loved was reiterated by Aguilar in her well-known poem, “A vision of Jerusalem, while listening to a beautiful organ in one of the gentile shrines”:

If they their own iniquity in humbleness confess, And all their fathers’ trespasses, —nor seek to make them less [Levit. xxvi. 40.]; If they my judgments say are right, and penitently own They reap the chastisement of sin, whose seeds long years have sown [Levit. xxvi. 41.]: 'Then will I all my vows recall, and from them take my hand, My covenant remember, and have mercy on their land” [Levit. xxvi. 42, 45.]. So spake the Lord in boundless love to Israel His son [Exod. iv. 22, 23.]; But can we, dare we say, these things we do, or we have done?559

Aguilar was aware that Christians believed that Jesus was the primary image of God’s love. She was adamant that the image was first made visible in the Hebrew Bible, “Surely we, even more than the Nazarene, have cause to feel, —"We love Him because He first loved us" [1 John 4:19]. . . . This is the God the Nazarene emphatically calleth love; this is their God and OUR God, for it is from us—from us alone—from the revelation He vouchsafed to us, that they have learned in part to know Him.”560 Even Jesus’ use of the name of Father for God and his teaching that God is love came from the Jewish texts

557 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 133. See also Aguilar, Women of Israel, 6, and Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 197. 558 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 263–4. 559 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 221–2. 560 Ibid., 36.

156 which declared that God: “designated Israel as His son, His first-born, proclaimed himself our ‘Father’.561

Not unexpectedly, the three Christian women saw God’s love made visible in the person of Jesus. King was aware that love, or charity as she more frequently named it, was considered an essential virtue in the Old Testament. However, exactly as Aguilar feared, King concluded, “It remained for Christianity to exalt it [love] into a divine science, to dignify it as a heavenly virtue, and to unite it, with all that goodwill, humility, forbearance, gentleness, and compassion, which arise out of the Christian covenant, and which so enhance its value in the sight of our Maker.”562 She replaced “God” by “Christ” in quoting from 1 John 4:11, “beloved if Christ so loved us how ought we to love one another.”563 Using the first letter to the Corinthians, she summarized this virtue in theoretical terms:

In the 13th Chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, is a divine summary of these blessed virtues. —Charity, which, in the original, signifies Love, is there the general term for Christian graces; and we are told that every other virtue, without Charity, profiteth us no thing:—This Charity, or Christian love, though necessary in all social intercourse, forms a particular part of our domestic duties; and without it, no happiness or affection can subsist.564

Of great importance for King’s interpretation was the living out of that love in everyday action, “Therefore, my beloved brethren let us love one another: for he that loveth his brother hath fulfilled the law” [I John 4:20-21].565 Love was meaningless unless it was translated into action the example for which comes from Jesus himself, “Our blessed Saviour, by whom it was perfected, is at once our teacher, our example, and our recompense, in its performance.”566

561 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 46–7. 562 King, Female Scripture Characters, 312. 563 Ibid., 277. 564 King, Beneficial Effects, 35–6. 565 King, Female Scripture Characters, 69. 566 Ibid., 312.

157

She used several examples from the New Testament to illustrate this message of love in action: in her chapter on Dorcas in Female Scripture Characters and in the stories of the widow’s mite, the Good Samaritan, the rich man and Lazarus, the rich young man and the ten lepers. She found in the gospel of Matthew the specifics of how these lessons were to be realized in her own time:

In the awful picture of our last tremendous judgment, drawn by his masterly hand, in the 25th chapter of St. Luke [sic, St. Matthew], we see those blessed of his Father for whom his kingdom was prepared from the foundation of the world; they are those, “who, when they have seen the poor and hungered, have fed them; thirsty, and given them drink; strangers, and taken them in; naked, and have clothed them; sick, and have visited them; in prison, and have come unto them.” And it is to stimulate and encourage us in the performance of these duties, that our Saviour condescends to put himself in the place of the poor; that we may consider our acts of charity as done for his sake.567

She stated strongly her belief that charity embraced instruction in the Scriptures:

We will now canvass that branch of charity, the example of which is exhibited by our Saviour, in becoming “an instructor of the ignorant, and a teacher of babes.” Let us consider ourselves as we really are, his chosen disciple; and imagine that we hear (as we do in the Gospel) the question put to St. Peter, “Lovest thou me.” Should we not, with pious ardour and holy affection, reply to him, “Yea, LORD, thou knowest that I love thee”? Let us then observe the proof required of that love, “Feed my lambs.”568

Like King, McAuley assumed without further comment that God was a God of love and that love was made manifest in the person of Jesus. Therefore, the Christian had a threefold responsibility in loving as Jesus loved, that is, to love God, to serve persons who were poor, and to love one another. About loving God, she said conflating two scripture passages, “May God bless and animate you with His own divine Spirit that you may prove it is Jesus Christ you love and serve with your whole heart” [Matt 22:37, Deut 11:13], echoing two other passages [Rom 8:14, Gal 4:6].569

567 Ibid., 321. 568 Ibid., 333. 569 Sullivan, Correspondence, 101.

158

She was clear in her direction that words and conviction alone were not enough. She quoted Jesus’ words just before he died, “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12), pointing out that, “Another motive which should induce us to be faithful in the practice of the virtue of charity is that our dear Redeemer at His Last Supper commanded us to do so. Nothing should make us esteem this virtue so much as the consideration that it was His last and we may say his dying injunction to His apostles, no less than three times repeated.”570 She repeated this saying on a number of occasions, seeing it as Jesus’ last will and testament to the disciples.

Like King, McAuley, in speaking about the Sisters’ response to the needs of the poor, made reference to Matt 25:40 in the second article of her Rule and Constitutions, “He would consider as done to Himself whatever should be done unto them.”571 Again like King who spoke of charity shown in becoming “an instructor of the ignorant, and a teacher of babes,” McAuley was convinced that the most important work of charity was education.572

McAuley emphasized the connection between charity and mercy, interpreting in two instances the text from Eph 2:4–5, “But God, (who is rich in mercy,) for his exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ, (by whose grace you are saved).” In the Sayings, she was quoted in this way, “The charity of God would not avail us if His mercy did not come to our aid,”573 and in Retreat Instructions, “There is a great difference between charity and mercy, for although Jesus Christ has done everything that charity could dictate, if His mercy is not exercised, how few will be saved!”574

The third implication of God as love is the need to love one another. For McAuley, this was expressed in the love she expected the sisters to show to one another. In the Rule and

570 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 59. 571 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 295. 572 Ibid., 295, 297. 573 Moore, Practical Sayings, 5. 574 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 163.

159

Constitutions, chapter eight was fully devoted to “Of Union and Charity” and began with the words:

“Love one another as I have loved you.” This was the special command of Jesus Christ to His Apostles, and in the accomplishment of this Divine Precept, inseparably united as it is with the grand precept of the Love of God, consists, according to the Apostle, the plentitude of the Law. This mutual love, our Blessed Saviour desires, may be so perfect as to resemble in some manner the Love and Union which subsists between Himself and His Heavenly Father.575

McAuley wrote, “We will cordially love one another [John 13:34] / since that is the mark of election.”576 In the final words of a poem which describes the journey to found a new ministry and convent in Galway, McAuley wrote, “if the number full I find / united in one heart and mind [Acts 4:32] / I’ll bless my store.”577

An interesting interpretation of McAuley was the reference to love as making sense of the sufferings which her early communities experienced. She expressed their sufferings as a reflection of Jesus’ own sufferings on the cross, borne because of love, “to purify and render the foundation solid and according to his own heart established on the Cross” [allusions to Gal 6:14, Gal 2:19-20].578

Schimmelpenninck also believed that the God of love was made known through the person of Jesus. In speaking about God’s love made present in Jesus, she used several love-related images of God and Jesus placed in the context of the Trinity:

Our veneration is henceforth superlatively fixed on that Parent, who, though the mother may forget the sucking child, will not forget his children; and who, like a true and tender Father, bids the bow of peace smile again in beauty, even from the frown of the darkest cloud. Our heart adheres to that Brother, who wished to appease our heavenly Father's wrath, even by the sacrifice of his own blood, —to that Friend, who came to us in our need, who sticketh closer than a brother. Our heart is united to that heavenly Bridegroom with whom the believer being united is one spirit.579

575 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 303. 576 Sullivan, Correspondence, 174. 577 Ibid., 267. 578 Ibid., 118. 579 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 59.

160

Like King, she spoke strongly about the fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ, the one who loved us, “Thus we find, that when the veil is taken from our hearts, the song of Moses is, by a true interpretation, the same as the song of the Lamb; and from the beginning, the object of the love, praise, thanksgiving, and adoration of the church, has ever been one and indivisible; even Him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.”580 She used the allusion to Elijah’s miracle on Mount Carmel as a type to reinforce the difference between human love and divine love, “The miracle of Elijah might be almost transferred, in a figure, to our own time. How has every different scheme of philosophy, of education, or of human reason, and of religion, sought to draw down that fire from heaven, which might animate the human clod, and kindle the sacrifice of the human heart with the steadfast and active flame of light and fervent love!”581

Again like King, Schimmelpenninck used the quotation from the first letter to the Corinthians to identify the rewards that came from loving God, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of the natural man to conceive those good things which God hath prepared for those that love Him!” [1 Cor 2:9]582

What is most distinctive in Schimmelpenninck’s interpretation of love, however, is her constant linking of “love” with “light,” consistent with her Quaker background.583 In Biblical Fragments, she wrote, “the apostle prays for his churches to increase in knowledge as well as in grace; in light as well as in love.”584 She used a beautiful reference to Shekinah in the context of the Trinity, “we now understand why olive wood doors should form the entrance to the chambers where Shekinah dwells, and is revealed; showing that the light, the teaching, and softening of the Holy Spirit must form an access to the chamber of the heart, in which Christ dwells; and that it is only through the Spirit, and by his light and love, we can discern him.”585

580 Ibid., 113–4. 581 Ibid., 157. 582 Ibid., 282. 583 “Light of God,” “Light of Christ,” “Light within,” “inward light” and “inner light” are phrases commonly used within the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) as metaphors for Christ's light shining on or in them. 584 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, xxvii. 585 Ibid., 45.

161

Schimmelpenninck connected this theme of light and love with Christ and the Church, expanding on her understanding of light in this context, “This we shall best do by ever keeping in view the end of faith, and the object of faith, Christ and his salvation . . . thus uniting in every passage, a view to doctrine and a view to experience; thus combining light and love, instruction and unction, information concerning him, and a pouring out of our own souls to him.”586

Like King and McAuley, Schimmelpenninck spoke about education as a work of love, “Can we expect our youth to spend their week with the fierce Diomed, the inflexible Achilles, the barbarous Neoptolemus; and, on Sunday, to sit down and learn of him who was meek and lowly in heart, who bade us love our enemies, bless those that curse us, do good to those that hate us, and pray for those who despitefully use us?”587

Like the other three women, Schimmelpenninck insisted that love must be translated into action, “where faith is real it must work by love.”588 Using the image of fire, she described the links between the love of God and the love of people, “May we, like the Jews, receive the demonstration! and may He ever be avouched for our God, who baptizes every soul that comes to Him with the Spirit and with fire, shedding abroad in their heart the double love of God and man!”589

Just as King and McAuley used Matthew 25, so, too, Schimmelpenninck used two texts from Matthew 25 and one from Matthew 5 to reinforce this point of God’s compassion and love alive in people:

Then shall He say unto them: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me [Matt 25:34-36].” “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord [Matt 25:21].” O blessed

586 Schimmelpenninck, Psalms, 404. 587 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, ix–x. 588 Ibid., 143. 589 Ibid., 158.

162

are the merciful, rich in compassion and Divine love, for they shall obtain mercy [Matt 5:7].590

Schimmelpenninck also believed that all creation revealed the love of God, “Are all the treasures of natural history and natural philosophy, or all the magazine of resources furnished by science, less prized, because they are endeared to us as proofs of the love of God, as well as interesting, on account of the consummate skill and wisdom they display?”591 In Principles of Beauty, she used a paraphrase of Psalm 23 to illustrate this revelation to the humans person who “sees in GOD a loving and merciful Saviour, a shepherd who will not permit him to want, who maketh him to lie down in green pastures, who leadeth him beside still waters, who restoreth his soul, who carrieth His lambs in His bosom. . . . He has learned that GOD is love, and his heart rests in that love.”592

Scripture as Foundational to the Respective Faith Traditions

Not unexpectedly, it is in their canonical interpretation of Scripture as foundational to their faith traditions that the understanding of the four women varies most significantly.

In avowing that the Bible was the founding text of the Jewish people, Aguilar was affirming two facts: (i) that Judaism comes from the Word of God, and (ii) that the “Book of Life” belonged first to the Jewish People before it became the Scriptures of Christians. She recognized that belief in the centrality of the Bible was essential to her conviction about integrity of the faith of her Jewish diaspora community: “It is impossible to peruse the holy Scriptures without the conviction striking home to every Hebrew mind, that we may worship and love the Lord our God, as fervently, as steadily, as acceptably to Him in our captive state, as in Jerusalem.”593 Indeed being outside the land of Israel added an additional responsibility, “It should be the pride of every Hebrew to obey the laws of

590 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 259–60. 591 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, xii–xiii. 592 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 34. 593 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 243.

163

Moses implicitly, so unfailingly, as to give unanswerable evidence to all around that his religion is indeed divine.”594

As noted in chapter 2, education among Jews did not stress learning the vernacular languages or biblical Hebrew in the early 1800s. Study of the Talmud and midrashim was most important, and knowledge of the Bible was secondary. Theologians like Aguilar, writing during the Jewish Enlightenment of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, began to restore attention to the Bible as formative of Jewish culture in the new time. Aguilar wrote, “Were the Jewish religion studied as it ought to be by its professors of every age and sex; were the Bible, not tradition, its foundation and defence; were its spirit felt, pervading the inmost heart, giving strength and hope, and faith and comfort: we should stand forth firm as the ocean rock, which neither tempest nor the slow, still, constant dripping of the waters can bend or shake.”595 She wrote quite critically and strongly about this matter in The Spirit of Judaism, her first published work:

But the great evil under which the Hebrew nation is still suffering, IS not so much the denial as the neglect of this precious word. We are in general perfectly satisfied with reading marked out as our Sabbath portions. The other parts of the Bible rest utterly unknown. . . . Others again, earnest in the cause, yet mistaken in the means, search and believe the writings of the Rabbis, take as divine truths all they have suggested, and neglect the Bible as not to be compared with such learned dissertations.596

594 Ibid., 246. 595 Ibid., 21. 596 Ibid., 51–2. Aguilar’s publisher, Isaac Leeser of Philadelphia, corrected her on this matter, “Again I must remark that Miss A has relied too much on the calumniators of the Jewish character as authority. If there are any who place the Rabbis above the Bible, they are unknown to me.” Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 52n. Aguilar responded initially in a private letter to Miriam Moses Cohen, “I wrote him [Leeser] a private letter of expostulation, with a public one intended for [inclusion] in the Occident explaining away entirely, the charge against my little work—to which I have received no reply whatever.” “Letter 8, Grace Aguilar to Solomon Cohen,” November 1, 1844, in Michael Galchinsky, “Grace Aguilar’s Correspondence,” Jewish Culture and History 2, no. 1 (1999), 20, accessed January 24, 2018, doi: 10.1080/1462169X.1999.10511924. Her spirited editorial in the Occident includes the words, “Is it not then both strange and somewhat anti-Jewish, that the press of my own nation, instead of encouraging, should depress, and instead of gladly hailing a fellow-labourer in the literary path, burden her with such unjust charges as must tempt her, in weariness and sadness, to cease working for those, whom, with heart and soul, were she but encouraged, she would serve?” Grace Aguilar, The Occident and American Jewish Advocate 2, no. 7 (Tishry 5605, October 1844).

164

Aguilar did respect the works of the ancient writers; she simply did not see them as having the same place in Jewish religion as the Bible. She said:

The holy men who originally raised the protecting casket around the beautiful jewel of their faith, never either preached or intended that their ordinances were to be considered divine or spiritual. It was to preserve the purity, the spiritual purity, of their Law unsullied, when circumstances must otherwise have crushed it (we are writing humanly, not alluding to the Divine Guardian, who would always have preserved us from annihilation), not to take its place and be considered in the same unalterable and changeless light with which we look on the Law of God.597

Much of Aguilar’s writing was focused on showing the Jewish people that the Scriptures were first given to them and were complete as written without the need for the New Testament. She also wanted to show Christians that their New Testament was completely based on the Hebrew Scriptures, thus countering the Christian appropriation of the Old Testament as a source of typological prophecy for Jesus and Christianity. Aguilar stated unequivocally that the Bible bears in itself “undeniable witness of the glorious revelation being the heritage of Israel from the very beginning, and so was universally known to the seed of Abraham long ages before the Christian era.”598

She wished to dispel several myths about what Christianity claimed to have taught Judaism: immortality, proper esteem and respect for women, and the love God has for humanity. Of immortality, she said, “How, then, can we, dare we, by indifference and silence, by living as if we had no thought or hope beyond this earth, give a colouring to the mistaken idea that all our knowledge of and belief in immortality is derived, unconsciously to ourselves, from our intercourse with Christians?”599

Over and over again, throughout the work The Women of Israel, she made the point first introduced in the preface to the book, that women believed Christianity to be the sole source of female excellence and the value and dignity of women, “The women of Israel must themselves arise, and prove the truth of what we urge by their own conduct, their

597 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 531. 598 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 415. 599 Ibid., 408.

165 own belief, their own ever-acting and ever-influencing religion, prove without doubt or question that we need not Christianity to teach us our mission prove that our duties, our privileges, were assigned us from the very beginning of the world, confirmed by that law to which we still adhere, and will adhere for ever, and manifested by the whole history of the Bible.”600

Aguilar believed that Hebrew was the language which best expressed the intended word in the Bible: “The sacred language is the silver link which, uniting them [the Jewish people] to each other, separates them from other nations, and makes them feel that they are indeed the witnesses of the Lord.”601 She knew, however, that women and poor people could not read Hebrew. Therefore, believing that the Book of Life belonged to all Jews, she strongly encouraged having copies of the Bible in the vernacular. Her ultimate goal was focused on “Hebrew parents bringing up their children in the fear of the Lord, and according to the law of Moses, the Bible read, studied, alike in English, as in our own language.”602

King, McAuley and Schimmelpenninck, in their belief that in the New Testament was found the completion of what had been begun by God in the Old Testament, were representative of the myth which Aguilar was attempting to disprove. King accepted without analysis or even question that, while, in the Old Testament, the people of Israel were the chosen people, the New Testament was the fulfillment of all that was in seminal form in the Old Testament with Christians now the chosen ones, “In each period of the world, the Almighty has graciously appropriated a particular race of people to his own service. Previous to the promulgation of the Gospel, the Jews were this favoured people. Let us humbly hope and believe that Christians are now his selected flock.”603

King, quoting the song of Zachariah (Luke 1:79), stated confidently, “We now enter on that enlightened period when, ‘through the tender mercy of God the day-spring from on

600 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 5. 601 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 178–9. 602 Aguilar, Essays and Miscellanies, 254. 603 King, Female Scripture Characters, 205.

166 high visited us; —to give light to them that sit in darkness; and to guide our feet in the way of peace.’”604 The person of Jesus was the source of that confidence, “Besides the ten commandments given to the Jews, we have the divine code of Christian laws dispensed to us, by our blessed Saviour, in his Sermon on the mount, and in the various parts of the gospel; and the duties enjoined by his holy and inspired Apostles, in their Epistles.”605

Just as Aguilar was attempting to correct the mistaken belief that Christianity and the New Testament completed the Old Testament, so, too, McAuley was defying the stereotype that Catholics could not and did not read the Bible. In intentionally using her interpretation of the Scriptures to focus, direct and encourage her fledgling community, McAuley showed that that Catholics did read the Bible although she held firmly to the belief that the Catholic magisterium provided guidance to Catholics in this reading. This was well illustrated in the Cottage Controversy:

Lady P.: We should depend on the holy Bible, and not on the voice of men or tradition, as you Roman Catholics term it. Margaret: Sure it is in the Protestant Bible that Thomas has [Thomas, Margaret’s husband, had become a Catholic on marrying her]—nothing can be plainer—how, when our blessed Saviour, rose from the dead, and came into the room where the disciples were, though the doors and the windows were shut, standing in the midst of them; that when he had saluted then and said, “My peace be with you,” he breathed on them, saying “Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins ye forgive, they are forgiven.”606

McAuley herself did not write about the New Testament as the completion of the Old Testament. However, Mary Vincent Harnett who was one of McAuley’s first sister companions stated as the purpose of her Catechism of Scripture History:

The object in view in compiling this Catechism was to give the children not only an accurate knowledge of the principal events recorded in holy Scripture, and a clear idea of the time in which each of these occurred, but also to familiarize them

604 Ibid., 215. 605 Ibid., 10. 606 [McAuley], Cottage Controversy, 33.

167

with the prophecies relating to our Divine Lord, and thus to lead them to regard the Old Testament as a figure and a foreshadowing of the New.607

Harnett quoted Jesus’ own words to support this belief, “All things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me" (Luke 24:44).608 She repeated what others said of Jesus, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write, Jesus, the son of Joseph of Nazareth" (John 1:45).609

Schimmelpenninck’s formal, research-based approach to interpretation was premised on the belief that the understanding of Christ was the key both to the Old and New Testaments, “For, as the great object of a Christian faith is really held out in every part of Scripture, so will Christ, that glorious object, be best and be most truly, as well as most gloriously discerned, by a most literal and exact translation and exposition.”610

Although she valued the Old Testament, she had no doubt that it was fulfilled in the New Testament and specifically in the presence of Jesus Christ. About the people of the Old Testament, she wrote, “The Old Testament saints were regenerate, but not temples of the Holy Ghost, which was not given until Christ was glorified. . . . They knew nothing of abiding in Him, though they heard of walking before Him; nothing of the conversation being in heaven.”611 She explained further:

But we must bear in mind, that Christ is, in actual truth, the fulfilment of the law, the accomplishment of prophecy, and the key of David: and that it is in Him alone, consequently, that the dark parables in which the psalmist spoke can be unlocked; and in him alone, that the types of the ceremonial law, the mysterious figures of the poetic prophets, or the historical personages of the historic ones, can be understood in their real and primary meaning.612

607 Mary Vincent Harnett, A Catechism of Scripture History Compiled by the Sisters of Mercy for the Use of Children Attending Their Schools (rev. Edmund O'Reilly; London: Charles Dolman, 1852), iv. 608 Ibid., 179. 609 Ibid., 196. 610 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 29. 611 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 259. 612 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 70.

168

Readers of the Bible

Given that they believed that Scriptures had set the moral standard for everyone in public life and in private life, all four women affirmed that the Scriptures were intended for all believers no matter what their age, station in life, financial status or educational attainment.

Aguilar was influenced by evangelical Protestantism in her emphasis on individual spirituality, on the relationship in love between God and the person. The description of God initially given by God to Moses in Exodus 34 was repeated many times by her, “We shall find innumerable verses telling us, that the Lord Himself proclaimed His attribute as ‘merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and sin.’”613 The Bible was not intended only for the educated members of the Jewish community. Indeed, Aguilar was insistent that “The Bible cannot be dearer to the philosopher, the poet, or the student, than it is to the poor unlettered peasant, who perhaps can read no other book. Their simple faith should read a lesson to the proud in heart, the mighty in knowledge, who pass it by as unworthy of their regard.”614

King also understood that, although the Bible was written a long time ago, it was intended for all subsequent believers, “For whatever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom 5:4).615 She quoted from her Church of England tradition, “The blessed LORD who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, may grant, that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them; that by patience and comfort of His holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed

613 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 7. 614 Aguilar, Spirit of Israel, 60–1. 615 Ibid., inscription on cover page.

169 hope of everlasting life, which He has given us in our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ.”616 This imperative was meant for all Christians regardless of their class or role in life:

For it is a great error to suppose that wealth alone furnishes the means of charity; the most valuable deeds are those which spring from benevolent exertions, pious feelings, and tender compassion. The poorest cottagers may perform acts of charity to each other; for they may become the kind nurse in sickness, the suggester of holy hope and religious consolation, the careful attendant of a little orphan family, the prop and support of declining age, the peace-maker in family differences, the reader and expounder of GOD’s Word, and other pious books, to those who have not enjoyed similar advantages of instruction.617

McAuley formed a community of women religious with a specific goal: “a most serious application to the Instruction of poor Girls, Visitation of the Sick, and protection of distressed women of good character.”618 Like King and Schimmelpenninck, she interpreted Matthew 25 as direction for all who followed God’s word in the way of Jesus:

Mercy, the principal path pointed out by Jesus Christ to those who were desirous of following Him, has in all ages of the Church excited the faithful in a particular manner to instruct and comfort the sick and dying poor, as in them they regarded the person of our Divine Master, who has said, “Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to Me.”619

Schimmelpenninck strongly agreed, “The peculiar mode in which the Scripture is constructed marks its divine origin; being, unlike all other books, addressed to all the faculties of man. It is, therefore, calculated to interest all men, and that at all times, and under all circumstances. Hence, the Scripture is a book equally interesting to all ranks of men, and to all ages, because it is addressed to the fundamental organization of man, and not to peculiar and adventitious local habits or prejudices.”620 The wealth of knowledge contained in the Scriptures was meant for all people as attested by the biblical characters themselves:

616 King, Female Scripture Characters, 3. Here King is quoting the prayer which is the Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent in The Book of Common Prayer (1662). The prayer was written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. 617 Ibid., 309–10. 618 “Rule and Constitutions,” 1:1, in Tradition of Mercy by Sullivan, 295. 619 “Rule and Constitutions,” 3:1, in Tradition of Mercy by Sullivan, 297. 620 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 65.

170

It is, indeed, true . . . that the most unlearned as well as the most learned, that the most profligate as the most moral, may receive this saving knowledge. It was possessed by Amos, the gatherer of sycamore fruit, as by Isaiah, the prince; by the thief on the cross and Mary Magdalene, out of whom were cast seven devils, as by the Virgin, who was declared to be blessed amongst women, or by Daniel, who kept his integrity in the courts of Babylon and Persia.621

She added, “But the mine of Scripture is inexhaustible; and from the time at which it was first opened, till the time when faith shall be exchanged for sight, not one labourer who works therein, even from the most robust to the most feeble, will remain unrewarded by a participation in its wealth.”622

Special Meaning for Women

One group of readers of particular importance for the four interpreters were women. Aguilar made it her mission to show that God spoke to women as well as men in the Scriptures, that women and men were spiritually equal, and that women had the dual privilege and responsibility of being “mothers of Israel and daughters of the Lord.”623 She went to the book of Nehemiah to give strong evidence that this was so:

Nor was this solemn covenant entered into by the males of Israel alone. Their wives and their daughters are distinctly and emphatically named (see Nehemiah x. 28), as amongst those who had voluntarily separated themselves from the people of the land unto the law of their God, "every one having knowledge and understanding." And in chap, viii., which so impressively and affectingly describes the reading of the law by Ezra, in the presence of the whole congregation of Israel, the women are also expressly mentioned. "And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding." . . . Had the women of Israel not been accustomed to join in religious exercises, or to feel themselves of no importance in the congregation of the Lord, it is not likely, that after so long an interval of captivity, when the national ceremonies were compelled to be suspended, we should ﬁnd them so eagerly ﬂocking to listen to the reading of the law, bringing their children with them to join in the confession and humiliation for national sin, and to enter, heart and soul, into a covenant to walk in the law of Moses.624

621 Ibid., xxv. 622 Ibid., 28. 623 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 543. 624 Ibid., 374.

171

These women of the Bible were not simply historical figures but had relevance for women in her time, “It was not to a race so perfect, so gifted, so hallowed, as to be free from all the present faults and failings of the sex that the Lord vouchsafed His love. No, it was to woman, even as she is now.”625

She strongly believed that Jewish women in Britain had come to a new time in their lives, “They are free now not only to believe and obey, but to study and speak of their glorious faith.”626 She found in the example of Huldah a poignant lesson of encouragement and support for women in accepting this reality. Because she dwelled in the college, Huldah showed that she had “a mind anxious and enquiring after the study of the law, and a heart yearning to obey every statute therein commanded.”627 God’s choice of her to be a prophet proved that “her spiritual privileges and intellectual powers were on a perfect equality with those of man.”628

This new place for women in Judaism was meant for all women, not simply those who were more intelligent or gifted. In Women of Israel, she actually compared strong women with the timid Esther as proof that God calls all women to spiritual equality. She noted, “the very want of this quality [energy and promptness under danger and trial] is consoling, proving, as it does, that the most timid, the most essentially feminine, may be permitted to accomplish great ends, and become instruments in the Eternal’s hand for the welfare of His people.”629

Aguilar believed that, although women had the primary responsibility for teaching the Scriptures to their children (“mothers in Israel”), they also were “daughters of the Lord” who must have “a solemn conviction of our individual responsibility, and urge us on to such spiritual and intellectual improvement as will mark us, in the eyes of the whole world, as worthy descendants of the ﬁrst-born of the Lord.”630 They are called to be

625 Ibid., 8. 626 Ibid., 570. 627 Ibid., 322. 628 Ibid. 629 Ibid., 363. 630 Ibid., 327.

172

“witnesses of that faith which first raised, cherished and defended them, witnesses of that God who called them his.”631

Related to this dual responsibility was Aguilar’s strong commitment to show that Christianity was not the first or only religion to grant women spiritual equality with men. Judaism, first in the Bible and later in the Talmud and other religious writings of the Rabbis, taught that women and men are equally “worthy descendants of the first-born of the Lord.”

About the Talmud, she noted, “We find that, instead of contradicting, every statute given by Moses relative to mothers, wives, daughters, widows, and maid-servants in Israel, is confirmed by the Talmudic precepts, and so simplified that it is impossible even for wilful misconception to mistake their meaning.”632

King believed that Scripture was intended for men and women with the same expectations for both, “We have no reason to believe that Religion is of any sex. . . . No part of Scripture furnishes any authority for the distinction; and we have just ground to believe that, in the sight of our Maker, the crime is just as great in the one as in the other.”633 She recognized the absence of inclusive language, “The most important duty which He [their Heavenly Father] requires of them is, that they love one another. He graciously founds their love to himself on this basis; for He even rejects the love of those who do not love their brother also. The word ‘brother’ here implies, under the scripture term, all human beings.”634

Despite her stated belief that women were inferior to men, King gave strong credit to women. She named Mary and Elizabeth as prophets.635 She gave names to women who

631 Ibid., 6. 632 Ibid., 539. 633 King, Beneficial Effects, 40. 634 King, Female Scripture Characters, 68. 635 Ibid., 220.

173 were nameless in the Bible: Thermusis, the daughter of Pharaoh,636 Nicaulis, the Queen of Sheba,637 and Salmona, the mother of the seven sons.638

In McAuley’s letters, her sayings, her retreat instructions, her “Spirit of the Institute” and her Rule and Constitutions, McAuley was writing for her sisters in religion. Her writings were for women, and she was forming these women to respond to the needs of women as outlined in the description of the ministry characteristic of the Sisters of Mercy, “most serious application to the Instruction of poor Girls, Visitation of the Sick, and protection of distressed women of good character.”639

McAuley used the powerful image of women as the fire Christ cast on the earth. In the original verse from Luke, Jesus says (Luke 12:49), “I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled?” McAuley took Jesus’ words and stated desire, and she brought them into her time when Jesus’ will was being done, the fire was kindling, indeed very fast. She wrote about five young women who were joining her community, ‘”this is some of the fire He cast on the earth—kindling” [Luke 12:49];640 and “It is very animating to see five persons most happily circumstanced, leave their family and country, to enter on a mission contrary to our natural inclinations, but the fire that Christ cast upon the [earth] is kindling very fast.”641

In Recovering Nineteenth-century Women Interpreters of the Bible edited by De Groot and Taylor, the author of this thesis wrote of McAuley:

In the scriptural references woven into her written communications with her sisters living throughout Ireland and the British Isles, in her biblically based descriptions of the purpose and nature of the Sisters of Mercy, and in her assumption of authoritative leadership in interpreting Scripture for her community, this nineteenth-century Irish woman intentionally used the Bible to shape a community of women motivated by the life and teachings of Jesus and

636 Ibid., 49. 637 Ibid., 96. 638 Ibid., 197. 639 “Rule and Constitutions,” 1:1, in Tradition of Mercy by Sullivan, 295. 640 Sullivan, Correspondence, 226. 641 Ibid., 270.

174

dedicated to the service of “the poor, the sick and the ignorant.” McAuley’s interpretation of Scripture, undertaken to influence the lives of women so that they would in turn influence the world around them, was indeed a moment when wisdom and mercy met and made a difference. 642

Schimmelpenninck had decided opinions about the role and responsibility of women which were rooted in the Scriptures. She outlined them in an essay entitled, “On the Destiny of Women,” included in her last book, Sacred Musings. Women’s primary role was that of being a helper, “If we turn to the Scriptural account of woman’s creation, we find, Gen ii 18, ‘And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.’ A key text to the condition, character and duties of woman. The condition of helper is, then, her true condition, for God created her for it.”643

This traditional view is nuanced by Schimmelpenninck’s other comments. Caring for those who are sick, educating children and managing the household are the special tasks of women, “A calm, wise and cheerful nurse is a gift of inestimable value. Let every mother consider the Shunammite nursing her son, the widow of Nain following hers.”644 On educating children, she said, “What may be considered as woman’s special business—the training of children. A woman should be able to implant in the minds of boys a true view of history and of the constitution of their own country and its laws, to train them to be good citizens, to understand the Christian foundation of public duties to which they may be called, and to take a Christian and enlightened view of the construction and mechanism of the political and social edifice.”645 And of managing her household, she made reference to the capable woman from Proverbs 31, “In this derived strength [the Gospel hope] only can she fulfil her post as intercessor for her whole household, or show that sympathy by which she unlocks the hearts of others, and gets at

642 Elizabeth M. Davis, “Wisdom and Mercy Meet: Catherine McAuley’s Interpretation of Scripture,” in Recovering Nineteenth-century Women Interpreters of the Bible, ed. Christiana De Groot and Marion Ann Taylor (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 79. See also Elizabeth M. Davis, “‘Gott, de Herr, gab mir die Zunge eines Jüngers’: Catherine McAuleys Schriftdeutung,” in Fromme Lektüre Und Kritische Exegese Im Langen 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Michaela Sohn-Kronthaler and Ruth Albrecht (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer-Verlag, 2014), 89–99. 643 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 272. 644 Ibid., 290. 645 Ibid., 291.

175 their troubles, in order to take them up one by one and lay them before the Lord. ‘The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her,’ Prov. xxxi. 11.646

When it came to the relationship between a woman and her God, however, Schimmelpenninck gave women a more independent place: “Woman, though created a help meet for man, has her own direct relationship to God. Thus we read, Gen. iii. 8; ‘They heard the voice of the Lord God.’ Never may the woman forget that little word, they. It is the privilege of the woman, as well as the man, to hear the voice of the Lord. To hear it not as second-hand, but directly for herself. Oh that she may never forget her privilege, or, like unhappy Eve, hide herself from that voice, but rather draw near to it.647

Like Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, the woman must take time to listen to and reflect on the gospel, “The sceptre of woman is the hope of the gospel; she does not rule by power and reach of intellect, like the man, but by gently and sweetly pointing to the gospel standard to which she herself submits and by leading to the feet of Jesus, where she herself sits.”648 Like Anna, as she grows older, she waits and prays, “And in another cool of eve, when the sun of life declines, and the autumnal cool comes on, when the serious demand is heard, Where art thou. Oh that she might, like Anna, be found waiting day and night in the temple for the consolation of Israel.”649

In describing people who illustrate Beauty in the Kingdom of God, Schimmelpenninck wrote a powerful tribute to women again threaded through with multiple biblical references and allusions:

Such are the Beautiful of the Kingdom of GOD. Of such are healers and helpers; Christian women, who know and who fulﬁl the high calling of domestic life; cheerfully taking up the little cross of the passing hour, “hoping all things, believing all things, enduring all things;” followers of Him who was meek and lowly in heart, who went about doing good, who came to seek and to save that which was lost, to bind up that which was broken, to heal and strengthen that which was sick; those who break not the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking

646 Ibid., 298. 647 Ibid., 296. 648 Ibid., 278. 649 Ibid., 297.

176

flax, but who nourish and cherish them, as Christ the Church, remembering them as members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. This style bears that Divine signature which is at once the warrant, the glory, and the strength of those unostentatious and devoted helpers in this fallen world, who, deeply feeling that they have much forgiven, also love much; the loving, actively quiet, silent woman; the wise and tender mother, who fosters under a gentle, but holy and enlightened rule; the affectionate and self-denying daughter, who brings domestic sunshine to cheer and to brighten the winter of age to her declining parents; the indefatigable and self-sacrificing Sisters of Mercy, like holy angels, encamping round the desolate death-bed of the poor; the devout and tender nurse, whose prayers and close commune pour holy unction on her patient ministrations; the devoted and much enduring instructress of unheeding or wayward youth, who amidst sad recollections, perhaps, of brighter days and her own childhood’s home, submits from the heart, and takes up her daily, lonely cross, hoping against hope, and, amidst her thankless toil, looking for her reward to GOD, who seeth in secret, and not to the cold eye of man; the sympathising friend, lending a patient ear to sorrows she cannot cure; and whilst faithfully probing, yet ever remembering that she also is in the body, compassionating the captive even of sin, as having been herself in bonds.650

In this quotation, she made reference to the Sisters of Mercy, the group of women religious founded by Catherine McAuley.

Manner of Reading the Bible

For all four women, the scripture passages must be read, reflected upon, comprehended and applied before the work is complete. They all believed that the Bible is only properly understood in the context of prayer, faith and spirituality.

The Jewish tradition had a long history of the importance of reading and study of the Bible, a tradition which was being neglected in Aguilar’s time. Aguilar supported this tradition, in her words, “an earnest and prayerful study of the Holy Scriptures,”651 and believed that it was as important to women as it was to men. She found in Huldah and Abigail a support for this belief, “The study of religion, then, was evidently not prohibited to the women of Israel; and therefore we know not by what authority such

650 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 257–8. 651 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 25.

177 blessed study can be denied to us now.”652 She encouraged women to read the whole of the Bible (i.e., the Jewish Bible) in the fifty-two weeks of the year, not simply the daily portions. In her words, “Only experience can tell the extent of comfort found in the simple act of perusing two chapters of the Word of our God every day (one when preparing for rest at night, and one in the morning), it brings us in such close and trusting communion with our God.”653

She believed that the study of God’s precious Word must be done “heartfully and prayerfully.”654 She recognized that only in the prayerful study of the Bible could be found the wisdom of following the way of God in times of both light and shadow. ”A more intimate study of the holy Scriptures would convince us, that though indeed most spiritually blessed, their mortal lives (the people of the Bible specially favoured by God) were not more exempt from labour, and all the sorrows proceeding from human emotions, than our own.”655

On several occasions she used the interesting phrase, “we must study the word of God and ourselves,”656 if people were to achieve this wisdom. She believed that the Eternal “has taught us, in inﬁnite compassion, what we must DO, and how FEEL, to be acceptable in His sight; not in the law alone—for if we study only that in our captivity, we shall be appalled by the ordinances we cannot now perform—but in His prophets and the Psalms, which, as rules of conduct and of feeling, will give us all we need.”657 She extolled the virtues of Jochebed from whom was learned, “They must so lead that graver years may conduct them to that only study, the blessed word of God, which alone can give peace to their spirits, rest to their minds, and convictions to their hearts—alike in their private hours and their communings with the Nazarene world. This is now the

652 Ibid., 285. 653 Aguilar, Essays and Miscellanies, 161. 654 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 174. 655 Ibid., 44. 656 Ibid., 49. 657 Ibid., 153.

178

Hebrew mothers’ task, which may be blessed to their offspring as Jochebed’s was to Moses.”658

Aguilar used the story of the daughters of Zelophehad to reinforce this message, “This is the spirit of the law concerning us most nearly now, and which every young daughter in Israel should lovingly remember, that young, lowly, weak as she is, and dependent as she may be, she has yet the glorious privilege of devoting herself to the service of her God.”659 Her most succinct statement on this matter read (italics used by Aguilar), “Would we be Israelites indeed, we must study the doctrines and adhere to the forms as well as be infused with the spirit of our faith.”660

Closely linked to Aguilar’s belief in the spiritual dimension of the Bible, rooting the loving relationship between God and humans, was her belief that the study of Scripture would be complete only when grounded in prayer and faith:

The Bible must be our constant study. Nor will that be of itself sufficient. The Bible is the reflection of that fountain of light dwelling with God on high, and prayer alone will give us the emanating ray, which will illumine the darkness, in which to natural man that blessed book is plunged. Faith indeed is the golden key to unlock its stores, for without faith its pages are in truth sealed; – and prayer will strengthen that faith, and teach us through that book to know the Lord, ourselves, and our duties.661

She believed that only a Jewish religion which was truly rooted in spirituality could be a witness to others, “In the countries so often quoted, the more a Hebrew respects his creed, the more he is respected; the more spiritually enlightened he is in the doctrines, the ordinances, the commands of his own religion, the more will he ﬁnd himself appreciated and valued by the spiritual-minded of even opposing creeds.”662 Indeed she felt strongly that a failure to do so would be the fault of the people themselves: “But now, if we do not labour heart and soul to make manifest that our religion is the most spiritual, most life-

658 Ibid., 134–5. 659 Ibid., 173. 660 Ibid., 564. 661 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 51. 662 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 570.

179 breathing, comfort-giving religion of any, over the known world, the fault is with us and us alone.”663

While King accepted that Scripture was given by God and was inspired, she was adamant that women and men had to work to make Scripture effective in their lives. Her Female Scripture Characters was intended to be a source of advice in how this was to be done:

But to make it [Scripture] profitable, we must study its doctrines; we must apply its reproofs and correction to ourselves; and we must draw instructive inferences from its precepts and examples. In reading the Holy Scriptures, which few, it is to be hoped, entirely neglect, we are very apt to mistake means for ends; and to consider the Scripture reading as the duty performed: whereas it is only the means of our duty; it is the comprehension, application, and reflection, which can alone produce the end—a holy and religious life.664

Even with this intention in mind, however, King still insisted that reading of the texts themselves was essential before the person moved to read about the texts, “I should recommend to my readers to peruse the original history in the Bible, before they proceed with the following reflections upon it.”665 She was also reasonable in recognizing that, while every Christian must reflect on scripture, not every Christian has the same amount of time available to them to do so. Therefore, she had a recommended alternative for those who did not have the time, “All may not find time to read a chapter in the Bible; but all can, in one moment, possess their minds of a single valuable text for the day’s reflection; and when the heart is thus primed with a divine subject of meditation, if wicked thoughts or anxious fears assail them, the instructive text is referred to, and with the authoritative voice of its holy Author, it will command ‘the evil spirit to come out of them.’”666

Given King’s unquestioned belief in the Bible as inspired by God, it is not surprising that she believed that it could only be understood in the context of prayer, faith and spirituality. Using a confluence of scriptural references, King made the point well:

663 Ibid., 569. 664 King, Female Scripture Characters, 1–2. 665 Ibid., 61. 666 Ibid., 286.

180

If he [the Christian believer] has been denied those advantages, a more valuable gift has been in his power, he has “distributed to the necessity of the Saints,” [Rom 12:23] and administered to their spiritual good; he has given instruction to the ignorant, and comfort and religious hopes to the distressed; he has nursed the sick, and assisted the helpless;—“has visited the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and kept himself unspotted from the world.” [Jas 1:27] At the concluding scene of life, such a Christian may say, with humble trust in his Saviour, “I have fought the good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith.” [2 Tim 4:7]667

Again she said, “For we are told, that as we judge others, we shall be judged ourselves; and with what measure we mete, it shall be measured to us again: that if we forgive not men their trespasses, neither will our Heavenly Father forgive ours [Matt 7:1,2,15]. In that divine prayer, left us as a model for our devotions, we ask forgiveness of our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.”668 She believed that Christian behaviour was modelled by Christ and the apostles, “Opposed to this vice [pride] is the virtue of humility, the least understood, and the most difficult to attain, of all the virtues required of a Christian; yet it is strongly and repeatedly enforced by our Saviour and his Apostles, and almost all Christian perfection rests upon it.”669 On the title page of Female Scripture Characters, King copied the verse from Rom 5:4 which summarized her position on the context for Scripture, “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.”670

McAuley did not speak about reading the Bible daily. However, three times a day, no matter what the circumstances, the community of Sisters prayed together in English the biblically-imbued Office of our Blessed Lady. Each day they took time to reflect on the Journal of Meditations for Every Day.

McAuley’s approach to understanding the Bible was based on the Roman Catholic teaching that revelation came through both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition with

667 King, Beneficial Effects, 107–08. 668 Ibid., 58. 669 Ibid., 67. 670 King, Female Scripture Characters, title page.

181 the interpretation of each entrusted to the teaching office of the Church. In Cottage Controversy, the Catholic Margaret describes for the Church of Ireland Lady P. those who fulfilled the teaching office of the Church, “They who studied his law from morning till night, kept themselves constantly in his divine presence, who had all the words of our blessed Saviour fixed in their hearts, who did not care for anything in the world but what would give glory to God and who were always rejoiced to suffer for his love.”671

Schimmelpenninck was confident that the writers of the New Testament set the direction for this approach to the interpretation of Scripture. She acknowledged that Christ was not literally named in the Old Testament. However, given that Christ himself had said the law, the Psalms and the prophets spoke about him, there must then be a spiritual interpretation which gave the true understanding, “But as, in the literal sense, Christ is not spoken of in the law, nor in the former prophets, the historians of Israel; nor yet in the latter prophets, its instructors; and as he is nowhere expressly named in the Psalms; we must, therefore, be assured that there runs throughout the whole of Scripture a real, spiritual interpretation, which is not a mere pious adaptation; but which is, in every case, the true, substantial, spiritual sense of each passage.”672

For Schimmelpenninck, the spiritual sense was most important, “Spiritual interpretation is the grand means established by God to preserve scriptural truth from adulteration.”673 However she was adamant that “Our interpretation complies with the rule of Scripture explanation, in that it is not of any private interpretation.”674 For Schimmelpenninck, following the Port-Royalists, the spiritual sense could only be understood through the literal sense, “It is, however, only on an accurate and strict exposition of the letter of the Scripture text, that every other sense, however spiritual, must be grounded; otherwise it sinks into a mere edifying adaptation, instead of presenting the solid and true spiritual interpretation intended by the Holy Ghost.”675

671 [McAuley], Cottage Controversy, 33. 672 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 33–4. 673 Ibid., 47. 674 Ibid., 267. 675 Ibid., 29.

182

In her belief that nature also revealed the character of God, Schimmelpenninck found types in nature verified by Scripture to serve as warnings against evil behaviour, “Does not the inspired Word speak of the dumb dog who cannot bark; the deaf adder, who listens not to the voice of the charmer; the sow, who returns to her wallowing in the mire; the roaring lion, who goes about seeking whom he may devour; the mule and horse, who must be kept in with bit and bridle? And to what end are they so spoken of, but as the inspired sanction to their use, as the key to a whole set of types created in merciful warning?”676 The Bible and Education

Each of the four women not only interpreted scripture but taught it. They were passionate about the need for formal study and teaching if the word of God and the resulting action from hearing that word were to be properly understood.

Aguilar believed that, while the formal study of the Bible was the responsibility of every Jewish woman and man, the first teaching about Scripture came from parents, primarily from the mother. In the preface of The Spirit of Judaism (1842), Aguilar strongly endorsed mothers as the first educators of children, “Yet to them [women], and them only, are the earliest years of man committed; from their lips must the first ideas on all subjects be received; and on them yet more particularly devolves the task of infusing that all-important but too often neglected branch of education, religion.”677 As the first educators, the mothers must teach Scripture, “To speak of God, to teach the child His will, to instil His love into the infant heart, should never be looked on as a daily task, nor associated with all the dreaded paraphernalia of books and lessons. The Bible alone should be the guide to, and assistance in, this precious employment.”678

She insisted that the Scriptures themselves gave this direction, “We cannot read the Book of Life without perceiving how intimately the spirit of religion was to mingle with other

676 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 183–4. 677 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, x. 678 Ibid., 146.

183 instructions, how completely it was to be the first, the most precious of all studies.”679 Aguilar also noted that children include youth as well as younger members of the family. In the preface to one of her domestic novels, she wrote, “On them [mothers], more than on any other, depends the well-doing and happiness, or the error and grief, not of childhood alone, but of the far more dangerous period of youth.”680

King also placed responsibility for formation in Scripture on parents. She attributed Susannah’s righteousness to her parents’ teaching of Scripture, “She is represented as being a woman of great beauty and delicacy, and of exemplary piety and virtue; and we are told, that, ‘her parents were righteous and had taught their daughter according to the law of Moses.’”681 She agreed with Aguilar that responsibility was to be carried primarily by the mother:

It also particularly belongs to a woman to secure “the one thing needful” [Luke 10:42] to all the members of her family: at her hands will be required the souls of her children and her servants. Let her, therefore, by precept and example, establish and illustrate its importance; let her daily instruct her family, and read and explain the Scriptures to them; let her regularly assemble them for morning and evening prayers, and lead them to the altar of GOD to commemorate the sacrifice of CHRIST.682

King had a wise approach to the mother’s method of teaching the Scriptures, “Much may be done by a pious and judicious mother in giving her children a fondness for this Divine volume; not by forcing it upon them as their task reading, or making it a means of punishment or discipline; but by rendering it familiar and interesting to them, by conversing upon it, explaining it, and extracting its fine passages and beautiful histories, as applicable to different duties and similar circumstances in passing life.”683

679 Ibid., 170. 680 Aguilar, Home Influence, vi–vii. 681 King, Female Scripture Characters, 180. 682 Ibid., 294. 683 Ibid., 113.

184

Chapter 2 of the Rules and Constitutions which McAuley presented to Rome for approval for her religious institute was entitled “Of the Schools.” The fifth article of that Chapter reads:

The Sisters shall feel convinced that no work of charity can be more conducive of good to society, or more conducive to the happiness of the poor as the careful instruction of women, since whatever be the station they are destined to fill, their example and advice will always possess influence, and wherever a religious woman presides, peace and good order are generally to be found.684

McAuley’s institute had as its very reason for being “the Instruction of poor Girls, Visitation of the Sick, and protection of distressed women of good character.” She extended the role of the mother as educator to women who ran schools “with all zeal, charity and humility, purity of intentions and confidence in God.”685 While she did not speak directly to education in the Bible, she did speak of their responsibility to teach children “to offer their hearts to God, adore His Sovereign Majesty, return thanks for all His favours . . . direct all their thoughts, words and actions to God’s glory, implore His grace to know and love Him, and to fulfill His commandments.”686

Schimmelpenninck’s passion for education in Scripture is manifested in every one of her works. The opening chapter of Biblical Fragments, entitled “Introductory Address,” is a condemnation of the failure of parents to provide education in the Bible while providing them with a worldly education:

How many make it a part of their children’s education, to read that poetry or perform that music, the sentiments of which they would, in another other form, blush to hear their daughters take upon their lips, whilst they allow them to remain in profound ignorance of that book which is emphatically the book, which not only every man, but every woman should study—THE BIBLE!687

Earlier in that chapter she noted:

684 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 297. 685 Ibid., 296. 686 Ibid., 296. 687 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, xviii.

185

How lamentably often does it occur, that religious parents conduct the education of their children . . . as if that book [the Bible], which has God for its subject, immortality for its object, eternity for its scope, infinity for its space, and truth infallible for its substance, were alone too mean to claim their attention: and as though that work, which contains the theology, the philosophy, the history, the poetry, the natural history of the world, for some thousands of years, were the only book, on which the exercise of human faculties and intellect could find no scope.688

Paraphrasing the Shema from Deuteronomy (6:4–9), she said, “Yet, surely, if the words of our Lord were of a truth in their hearts, they would teach them diligently to their children, and would talk of them when they sat in the house, and when they walked by the way, and when they lay down, and when they rose up.”689

The Bible as Impetus for Action

For all four women interpreters, the Bible was a source of direction for the way in which “moral, social and domestic duties”690 were to be carried out.

For Aguilar as a Jewish woman, the Bible was the Law which guided the actions of every day, “We have but to study the Book of Life, and every history of our nation: and we shall not fail to perceive that the religion Moses taught was intended to unite the thought of God with our every action.”691 For her, the strength of the Jewish religion was the interaction between the spirit and the form, “So is it evident, the religion of no Hebrew is perfect, unless the form be hallowed by the spirit, the SPIRIT quickened by the FORM. When this is done, when we behold the union of religion and morality, as the God of heaven intended; when all that is here comprised is indeed obeyed.”692

In her first work, The Spirit of Judaism, Aguilar explored the depths of the Jewish prayer of everyday, the Shema (the Shemang). Of this prayer, she said, “The repetition of it is

688 Ibid., ix. 689 Ibid., xxii–xxiii. 690 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 3. 691 Ibid., 159. 692 Aguilar, Essays and Miscellanies, 255.

186 renewing the covenant between our soul and her Creator twice in every day; —it marks us as individually His own—separates us from every other nation, every other religion in the world.”693 This time of prayer might be in supplication, in confession and repentance, in praise and thanksgiving or in the study of the Scriptures, but was always intended to support the belief that “the moral, social, and domestic duties stand forth clear and spotless even as they came from Him.694

At the heart of King’s interpretation was the belief that the Scriptures were given by God for Christian learning and direction in public and in private life. The application of the Bible’s precepts and doctrines was every Christian’s responsibility as exemplified by the heroine in the Rector’s Memorandum, “The sacred source of Divine instruction was her daily study; and she had formed from it a little code of Christian duties, by which she every night examined the actions of the day.”695

King believed that, just as the Ten Commandments were given to the Jews, “we have the divine code of Christian laws dispensed to us, by our blessed Saviour, in his Sermon on the Mount, and in the various parts of the gospel; and the duties enjoined by his holy and inspired Apostles, in their Epistles.”696 She reiterated this belief, “From Him we have received that blessed rule of Christian equity; that bond of peace in society, to do to others, exactly what we might reasonably expect (Matt. xi. 29. Matt. v. 44. Matt. vii. 12.) others to do to us; by His precepts, we are directed to (Matt. vii. 1–5.) pull the beam out of our own eye, before we presume to look at the mote in our brother's eye; and are taught, that as we judge others, we shall be judged ourselves; and, that with what measure we mete, it shall be measured to us again.”697

Female excellence was defined by King as coming directly from the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, “that beautiful chain of Christian duties, dispensed by our blessed Saviour and His Holy Apostles: the blessings annexed to suffering for righteousness'

693 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 10. 694 Ibid., 3. 695 King, Rector’s Memorandum, 40. 696 Ibid., 11. 697 King, Beneficial Effects, 6–7.

187 sake, of which those who are merely buffetted for their faults, have no hope; the benedictions pronounced on the mourner, the humble, the meek, the merciful, the peace- maker; and the conditions annexed to our forgiveness of injuries.”698

For King, there was no doubt that the divine code outlining Christian duties had at its core the virtue of charity which she defined quite broadly. The source of this commitment came from Jesus, “It [divine charity] formed the chief business of his life, and is the principle to pick of his exhortations. ‘To the poor his Gospel was preached;’ for the sick and afflicted his miracles were performed; and the indigent and distressed of the lowest ranks were the particular objects of his regard.”699

Once again King used the parable from Matthew 25 to outline the scope of what she considered to be charity, adding an additional interpretation to Jesus’ words in that chapter, “His description there divides our deeds of benevolence to others into the several parts of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, and comforting those in prison and in distress; and his example adds to the list, teaching the ignorant, and healing the sick, as far as our finite powers will enable us.”700

Not only was this the responsibility of every Christian, it was also to be shown in action, again by the teachings of Jesus, to all persons not just those of one’s own religious beliefs, “Another species of charity is defined in our Saviour’s parable of the good Samaritan, that of shewing compassion to the sick, the helpless, and the stranger; and marks the enlarged goodwill by which the Christian doctrines enjoin, by extending our benevolence to distress in every shape which presents itself to our view, without regard to sect, persuasion, or affinity: all human beings are our neighbours, all that are in distress of every kind are objects of our benevolence, if thrown by Providence in our way.”701

698 King, Rector’s Memorandum, 24. 699 King, Female Scripture Characters, 312. 700 Ibid., 322. 701 Ibid., 314.

188

Although she believed that women should be confined to domestic duties, as noted above, she saw these duties as properly belonging to public domain in “instructing the ignorant, administering consolation to the afflicted and medicines to the sick.”702 These “acts of benevolence and charity” were described in this way:

She became the nurse of sickness and infancy; the companion and comforter of the aged and distressed; reading to them, conversing with them, and pointing out their only source of hope and consolation. Her schools became very extensive; and from a method lately brought to perfection, making the elder children the teachers of the younger, she made scholars and school mistresses at the same time; and what seemed surprising to me, though the children of my parish had no other means of instruction, at the period I now mention, there was not a child above eight years old, that could not read in the Testament.703

King herself lived the way which she interpreted in the Scriptures. With her brother, Thomas Bernard, she was instrumental in establishing the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor which for her was a significant resource in carrying out the works of charity, “They [Reports of the Society] may very properly be termed Receipt Books for Charity; for every kind of charity that can be thought of is there arranged and methodized into a system, not upon theory, but practice; the thing is done, its tried effects and its actual benefits, are there detailed, presenting at once precept, example, and experience.”704

King found in the Scriptures interesting psychological insights into the reasons why people acted in the way they did. She challenged both Rebekah and Isaac in their treatment of their children, “The partiality of both parents was selfish, injudicious, and unjust, and led to serious evils to themselves and their children. . . . It deprived them of the greatest of all earthly blessings, the union of a happy family; their only two children became inveterate enemies, aliens to each other, and wandering exiles from their parental home; lost to their parents, their friends, and their country.”705 She found in the Book of Ruth good advice for step-mothers and their daughters, “It speaks highly in praise of both

702 King, Rector’s Memorandum, 141. 703 Ibid., 38. 704 King, Female Scripture Characters, 336. 705 Ibid., 40, 43.

189 parties; in that of the mother-in-law [Naomi], who had this, by her kindness, good temper, and accommodating manners, suited herself to youth: and to the younger female [Ruth], who could discriminate aged excellence, and give her affections from motives of gratitude, principle, and respect. A useful lesson to step-mothers and their daughters.”706

McAuley found in the person of Jesus in the Gospels the purpose for her foundation of a community of women religious, “If we make this object the end of all our actions, representing to ourselves Jesus Christ in every person we instruct, relieve, comfort, assist, direct, or converse with, if these words of Jesus Christ were deeply impressed on our minds—“Whatsoever you do to the least of these My brethren, you do it to Me”—oh! What a powerful motive would it not be for us to do all our duties in a perfect manner.”707

McAuley was not satisfied with the reading of Scripture for itself, but she concluded that the words must be translated into action, “We find those who can enumerate very particularly all that Jesus Christ said and did, but what does He care for that? He said and did so, not that we should recount it in words, but shew Him in our lives, in our daily practice (Matt 23:1-12).”708

McAuley’s community, in order to be effective, must “labour to impress humility and meekness by example more than precept—the virtues recommended most by our Saviour and chiefly by example.”709 On several occasions, she referred to the life and maxims of Jesus, “The life and maxims of Jesus Christ should be as a book always opened before us from which we are to learn all that is necessary to know, as a glass in which we will clearly see our defects, and as a seal whose image we are to impress on our hearts;”710 and again, “The study of a Religious should be the life and maxims of Jesus.”711 In the book which gathered her sayings, we read, “Be always striving to make yourselves like

706 Ibid., 63. 707 Sullivan, Oral Instructions, 82. 708 Moore, Sayings, 25. 709Sullivan, Correspondence, 283. 710 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 88, 103. 711 Ibid., 23.

190 our Blessed Lord; endeavour to resemble Him in some one thing at least, so that any person who sees you or speaks with you may be reminded of His sacred life on earth.”712

McAuley also made reference to other characters from Scripture and the tradition. McAuley referred to a text from Matthew, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Mt 6:33)713 From the Christian tradition, she concluded, “The first means by which the saints have recommended to render us most useful to others, is to give good example and to live in sanctity.”714

Schimmelpenninck was strong in her belief that the Scriptures were not meant only to be read and studied in theory, “It is far easier to give to the truths of the Bible the right place in our creed than to experience their power in renovating the life.”715 The Scriptures set the moral standard by which Christians lived:

And as the Gospel was to be preached, beginning at Jerusalem; so may all intellectual truths be taught, beginning at the Bible: and all true taste may be elicited, as well as all passions corrected, on the moral standard presented by the Bible. Surely, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, we may well be urged to lay aside every weight, and to look unto Jesus, and to Jesus only.716

She believed, with the Port-Royal theologians, that “The successive phases of Divine truth are presented to the religious mind, and often in the following order;—Good works and human responsibility; the doctrines of the Cross and sovereign grace; and experiential union with God issuing in an exalted mysticism.” It was the good works which defined the witness of the Christian, “Believers have not only the command, Matt. V.16 [Fn. ‘Let your light so shine before men, that seeing your good works they may glorify your Father which is in heaven.’ Matt.v.16]: but when the tree is good, the fruit must be good likewise; for by its fruits ye may know them.”717

712 Moore, Sayings, 16. 713 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 32. 714 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 99. 715 Schimmelpenninck, Sacred Musings, 238. 716 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, xvii. 717 Ibid., 143.

191

Aguilar was convinced that the Bible not only offered direction on the way to walk before God, but also gave support and encouragement to live that way. For the Jewish people the Bible was the book of life, “the voice of God speaking to each individual, giving strength to the weak, encouragement to the desponding, endurance to the patient, justice to the wronged, and consolation unspeakable as unmeasurable to the afflicted and the mourner.”718 She wrote that Jewish women in England had the freedom “to look themselves within their Bibles, and read there the foundation for all which we have sought humbly, yet most heartfully, to bring before them. To find in that ceaseless fountain of living waters, not alone their privileges as women of Israel, but all of strength, comfort, peace, immortal hope, and earthly guidance, which as weak, frail women, they so imperatively need.”719

In McAuley’s interpretation as well, not only did the Scripture set the purpose and guidance for praxis, but it also gave strength and encouragement to those who followed the way:

And in order to excite and animate us in our daily occupation, let us imagine that God says to us, as we read in Holy Scripture “Fear nothing, it is I who have called you, take courage, and be of resolution” [2 Kgs 13:28] for in the execution of the duties to which I have called you, you are safe, and may confidently say with holy David, “Though I should have to walk in the midst of the shades of night, I will fear nothing because thou are with me”[Ps. 22:4].720

Interpretation for Social Change

The four women interpreters, born in the same time period but coming from distinctly different religious traditions, were not welcomed into or permitted to be part of their own religious authority structure or the academy. Their reason for interpreting the Bible was not to support the theological and ecclesiological structures of their time or to advance the academic study of Scripture. But, for these four women, the Bible was far more than a source of direction for the way in which “moral, social and domestic duties” were to be

718 Aguilar, Spirit of Judaism, 7. 719 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 570. 720 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 98.

192 carried out. Their reason for interpreting the Bible was to influence and, even more, effect social change in a time when their world was marked by intense social change. Each woman focused on different domains of change, but each one intentionally used the fruits of her scriptural interpretation to make a significant difference in the environment in which she lived. To adapt McAuley’s words, they were “God’s/Christ’s fire kindling— very fast.”

Grace Aguilar

In The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer, Michael Galchinsky asserts that Aguilar “was recognized by Christians and Jews alike as the writer who best defined the Anglo-Jewish response to the challenge to enter the modern world.”721 Her biblical interpretation was focused on three goals: to see the Jewish people integrated into English society without being assimilated by that society, to better the status of women within Judaism, and to help reshape Judaism to be more inclusive of a focus on Torah, spirituality and personal experience. Of the first point she said:

We should not be content with mere amalgamation with the Gentiles in society; but, without relinquishing the social position which an age of superior civilisation and reﬁnement has assigned us, we should still retain our nationality—still, before man and before God, remain Israelites indeed; and thus compel respect towards our faith, and remove not only the prejudices excited by ignorance, but check the zealous efforts of conversionists by convincing them, that our constancy, as our religion, must be indeed of God, and therefore no effort of man can turn us from it.722

On her death, Mrs. S. C. Hall, a Christian writer, wrote a long eulogy which was included in full in her Pilgrimages to English Shrines. One excerpt from that eulogy gives a sense of Hall’s admiration and respect for Aguilar and confirms the extent to which she achieved her first goal:

To those who really knew Grace Aguilar, all eulogium falls short of her deserts; and she has left a blank in her particular walk of literature, which we never expect

721 Michael Galchinsky, The Origin of the Modern Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996), 135. 722 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 325-6.

193

to see ﬁlled up. Her loss to her own people is immense; she was a golden link between the Christian and the Jew; respected and admired alike by both, she drew each in charity closer to the other; she was a proof, living and illustrious, of Jewish excellence and Jewish liberality, and loyalty, and intelligence. The sling of the son of Jesse was not wielded with more power and effect against the scorner of his people, than was her pen against the giant Prejudice.723

Concerning the second goal, Aguilar wrote:

We have scanned every statute, every law, alike in the words of Moses, and in their simplifying commentary by our elders; and the result of such examination has been, we trust, to convince every woman of Israel of her immortal destiny, her solemn responsibility, and her elevated position, alike by the command of God, and the willing acquiescence of her brother man.724

Before Aguilar left for Germany on what would be her final journey, a group of young Jewish women wrote a tribute to her and gave her an elegant silver inkstand. In their tribute, they confirm her success in her second goal of bettering the status of women within Judaism. They name Aguilar “a woman in Israel,” a title she herself had ascribed to all women of Israel, echoing Jgs. 5:7:

Dear Sister . . . Until you arose, it has, in modern times, never been the case, that a woman in Israel should stand forth, the public advocate of the faith of Israel; that with the depth and purity which is the treasure of woman, and the strength of mind and extensive knowledge that form the pride of man, she should call on her own to cherish, on others to respect, the truth as it is in Israel. You, Sister, have done this, and more. You have taught us to know and appreciate our own dignity; to feel and to prove that no female character can be more pure than that of the Jewish maiden,—none more pious than that of the woman in Israel. You have vindicated our social and spiritual equality in the faith; you have, by your excellent example, triumphantly refuted the aspersion that the Jewish religion leaves unmoved the heart of the Jewish woman.725

And about her final goal, Aguilar wrote:

If we would but look more into our Bibles than around us—would but have the moral courage to break from the trammels of custom, and stand forward as the

723 S. C. Hall, “The Grave of Grace Aguilar,” in Pilgrimages to English Shrines (London: Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., 1843), 164. 724 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 566–7. 725 Quoted in full in Hall, Pilgrimages to English Shrines, 169.

194

followers and upholders of the spirit of the Prophets, as well as of the Law; would we but feel and declare that the Judaism of the Bible is the religion of God, not the Judaism of the world: how different would be the intellectual and spiritual aspect of the religion of the Jews.726

In discussing the superiority of Jewish education in a report in 1870, the Commissioner of Education numbers Aguilar—the only woman on his list—among the greatest scholars produced by Judaism, including Josephus, Maimonides, Judah Halevi, Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Disraeli, Moses Montefiore, and Rabbi Isaac Leeser.727

Michael Galchinsky, who has written extensively on Aguilar’s writings, said of her:

When she died in 1847 at the age of thirty-one, Grace Aguilar enjoyed a reputation as a poet, historical romance writer, domestic novelist, Jewish emancipator, religious reformer, educator, social historian, theologian, and liturgist. A Jewish woman in Victorian England, Aguilar produced a body of work that appealed to both Jews and Christians, women and men, religious traditionalists and reformers. Distributed throughout the British Empire, Europe, and the United States, her books—which record the ambivalent encounter of a British minority with the majority culture—were translated into French, German, and Hebrew. She developed new and hybrid literary genres, helped to build the Anglo-Jewish subculture, advocated Jews’ emancipation in the Victorian world, and insisted on women’s emancipation in the Jewish world.728

Aguilar was one of the nineteenth-century interpreters chosen by Taylor and Weir, editors of Let Her Speak for Herself, to speak about biblical women (Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, and Leah and Rachel). They noted her influence on Christian and Jewish writers on both sides of the Atlantic.729 In Taylor and Choi’s Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters, Cynthia Scheinberg wrote about her:

726 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 444. 727 J. Noah, “Hebrew Education,” in Report of the Commissioner of Education Made to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year 1870 With Accompanying Papers (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1870): 359–70. 728 Michael Galchinsky, “Grace Aguilar,” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, accessed January 8, 2014, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/Aguilar-Grace. 729 Cynthia Scheinberg, “Grace Aguilar,” in Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis, ed. Marion Ann Taylor and Heather E. Weir (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006), 10.

195

Grace Aguilar, born in England, was one of the most famous Jewish women theologians and Jewish writers in nineteenth-century England, America and much of Europe. In her short life she produced writings on Jewish topics in genres including biblical commentary, fiction, poetry and theology. Though minimal critical attention has been paid to her work, literary or theological, much of her writing offers a clear precedent and connection to other European Enlightenment approaches to Judaism, as well as later feminist Jewish approaches to Jewish texts.730

Ronda Angel Arking notes, “It is her way of framing social and theological issues that defines her as a progressive traditionalist; a woman who, within the framework of traditional Judaism and gender roles, sees opportunities for spiritual development of men and women alike. She promotes questioning and personal biblical interpretation, as well as the evolution of the halakhic process to address contemporary realities.”731

De Groot names Aguilar together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Annie Besant among protofeminist interpreters when she writes, “[They] were engaged in resisting the dominant culture, and all three interpreted the laws in the Pentateuch to support their position. . . . In each of their writings, the author made explicit that she read the laws of the Pentateuch from the vantage point of a disenfranchised group in her society and was committed to pursuing justice for that oppressed group.”732

The term, “relational theology,” has been used to describe right relationship between God and creation and, flowing from that, right relationships among creatures, focused on love, respect and identity. In assessing Aguilar’s participation in “relational theology,” Langton says:

Aguilar’s particular interfaith project should be categorized as an ‘appreciative relational theology’ in that it sought to portray ‘the other’ in a way that

730 Cynthia Scheinberg, “Grace Aguilar,” in Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide, ed. Marion Anne Taylor and Agnes Choi (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 31– 2. 731 Ronda Angel Arking, “’A Spirit of Inquiry:’ Grace Aguilar’s Private Spirituality and Progressive Orthodoxy,” in Conversations: The Journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals 13 (Winter 2015/5775), accessed January 23, 2018, https://www.jewishideas.org/article/%E2%80%9C-spirit- inquiry%E2%80%9D-grace-aguilar%E2%80%99s-private-spirituality-and-progressive-orthodoxy- 0#comment-0. 732 de Groot, “Nineteenth-Century Feminist Responses,” 105.

196

encourages mutual understanding and respect. But Aguilar was more than simply a reform-orientated Jew with a burning desire to convince Christians of the respectability of Judaism. She was developing an ideological framework that aimed to prevent conversion and to justify why one should remain a Jew, that presented a robust critique of Christianity’s distinctive doctrines, and that granted it a positive value-judgement, even to the extent of encouraging a sense of identification with, and emulation of, it.733

Fay calls Aguilar a bridge writer, a borderer:

Grace Aguilar belongs to that group of women writers sometimes called “bridge writers,” whose publications during the 1830s and 40s bridged the gap between the Romantic and Victorian eras and ideologies in much the same fashion as those women poets who turned out verse in such quantity at the end of the eighteenth century bridged the gap between the Enlightenment and Romantic movements. But Aguilar bridges another, more significant gap, that between the Anglo and the Jewish communities, Anglo and Jewish readerships. . . . Aguilar is more than a bridge writer; as a progressive, she understood that Jewish emancipation necessitated both reform within the community and the development of a culture of exchange between the Anglican and the Jew. . . . Not just a bridge writer but a borderer, she was a woman sitting on the edges of things.734

Aguilar’s books were widely read during her lifetime and after her death. The Spirit of Judaism had three editions and nine printings; Records of Israel went through five printings; The Women of Israel was published in at least eleven editions and fifty-nine printings; The Jewish Faith was published in at least three editions and ten printings; and Sabbath Thoughts and Sacred Communings had at least six printings.735 “The two most prominent Anglo-Jewish periodicals, the Voice of Jacob and the Jewish Chronicle, began publishing Aguilar’s poetry in 1841. . . . Some of her shorter works appeared in popular women’s journals like The Keepsake, Friendship’s Offering, and La Belle Assemblée.”736 A memoir written by her mother, Sarah Aguilar, was included in the published volume of

733 Daniel R. Langton, “The Gracious Ambiguity of Grace Aguilar (1816-47): Anglo-Jewish Theologian, Novelist, Poet, and Pioneer of Interfaith Relations,” Melilah Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies, 8 (2011): 27. 734 Elizabeth Fay, “Grace Aguilar: Rewriting Scott Rewriting History,” in British Romanticism and the Jews, ed. S.A. Spector (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 215–6. 735 These data and those for the subsequent numbers of editions and printings were taken from the World Catalogue accessed on February 15, 2018 at http://www.worldcat.org/. 736 Dearinger, “Recentering Victorian Jewish Education,” 13.

197

Home Influence. A new edition of her The Women of Israel was published in 2011, edited by Mayer I. Gruber who wrote the introduction and commentary.737

Catherine McAuley

McAuley’s experience as a Catholic woman in a time of significant social and ecclesial change in Ireland mirrored Aguilar’s in terms of its depth and its intensity. Her concern flowed from two social realities: she saw the extremes of wealth and poverty in Dublin and throughout Ireland and the resulting vulnerability for women and children, and she was aware of the opportunities presented by the legal emancipation of the Irish to provide education to give people the capacity to make the most of their new freedoms. She chose to establish a community of women, initially a lay group and later a religious institute, to respond to both realities. In that regard, she used her interpretation of scriptural texts to support her three goals for her community: ministry among people in need, formation of the women to enable them to carry out this ministry, and encouragement for the women to continue in the ministry despite the obstacles they faced.

The reason for being of her religious institute was outlined in the first article of the Rule and Constitutions which she authored:

In undertaking the arduous, but very meritorious duty of instructing the poor, the Sisters whom God has graciously pleased to call to this state of perfection, shall animate their zeal and fervor by the example of their Divine Master Jesus Christ, who testified on all occasions a tender love for the poor and declared that He would consider as done to Himself whatever should be done unto them (Matt 25:40).738

With respect to the formation of the women, she wrote: “It is not sufficient that Jesus Christ be formed in us; he must be recognized in our conduct . . . ‘let us love not in word nor in tongue but in deed and in truth’” (1 John 3:18).739 Davis wrote about McAuley in Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters, “For McAuley, scriptural

737 Grace Aguilar, The Women of Israel, Two Volumes in One with a New Introduction and Commentary, ed. Mayer I. Gruber, Jewish Studies Classics 2 (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2011). 738 Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 295. 739 Purcell, Retreat Instructions, 71.

198 interpretation was primarily about what is named today ‘praxis’ (reflective and reflected action following from a theology for liberation and transformation). She sought to influence her sisters to have ‘the same mind that was in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 2:5).”740

Acknowledging the challenges her religious sisters faced in living their vows of obedience, McAuley wrote, “By practice it will not only become easy but delightful, for Jesus Christ has said, ‘My yoke is sweet and My burden light’” (Matt 11:30).741

The centrality of scripture in McAuley’s teaching was reflected in the written and artistic works of the first members of her community. Mary Vincent Harnett authored the Catechism of Scripture History, a “penny catechism” intended for use in the schools of the Sisters of Mercy.742 Given the presumed attitude to the Bible by Catholics in this time, it is remarkable that this Catechism was ever written, and, even more, that it was extensively used and published both in Dublin in 1852 and in the United States in 1854.743

McAuley’s interpretation of scripture is also reflected in the visual art of the early sisters. Mary Clare Augustine Moore used scriptural scenes and allusions in her illustrations deemed to be among the best of nineteenth-century illumined works. Two examples reinforce the social change championed by McAuley. In the illumination of the Rule and Constitutions, in the “M” of the word “Mercy,” there are two parallel images: the Good Samaritan and two Sisters of Mercy walking towards the city.744 In a Nativity scene, Mary and Joseph and the baby in the manger are shown with three wise women (Sisters of Mercy) in place of the Magi. Mary Clare Agnew was inspired by the work of the

740 Elizabeth Davis, “McAuley,” in Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide, ed. Marion Anne Taylor and Agnes Choi (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 353. 741 Moore, Sayings, 51, 144. 742John P. Marmion, “The Penny Catechism: A Long Lasting Text,” Paradigm 26 (1998): np, accessed February 2, 2009, http://faculty.education.illinois.edu/westbury/paradigm/Marmion3.html. 743Mary Vincent Harnett, Catechism of Scripture History (rev., M. J. Kerney; Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co., 1854). 744 The text which is illuminated comes from article 3.1, entitled “Of the Visitation of the Sick.” It reads in part, “Mercy is the principal path marked out by Jesus Christ for those who desire to follow him.” That article ends with the reference from Matt 25:45, “Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to Me.” See Sullivan, Tradition of Mercy, 297.

199

Sisters of Mercy in the poorest parts of Dublin to illustrate the spiritual and corporal works of mercy in a book published with commentary in four languages.745

Immediately after her death, McAuley’s letters and other writings continued to guide and motivate the Sisters as they established missions carried out today in forty-four countries. Her influence has extended over almost two hundred years, over the lives of approximately thirty thousand women who have been Sisters of Mercy during those years, and over the millions of people whose lives the Sisters have touched in their ministries in health care, education, parish work, social services, justice, ecology, housing, administration, catechetics and communications.

Among the Sisters of Mercy today are a number of well-known scripture scholars including Carmel McCarthy, an Old Testament scholar from Ireland, and Elaine Wainwright, a New Testament scholar from Australia.746 On the current mercyworld website is a list of more than fourteen hundred published books and articles written by or about Sisters of Mercy.747 There are more than one hundred thirty-nine places (schools, school buildings, hospitals, aged care facilities, child care centres, shelters for abused women, drives, avenues and parks) named after McAuley in both developed and developing countries (that number is exclusive of many more names with the word “Mercy” taken from the ministry of the Sisters of Mercy). In 1990, McAuley was declared “Venerable” by Pope John Paul II.748

745 Corporal and spiritual works of mercy are a Catholic tradition of charitable practices based in Scripture and dated to the early Middle Ages. The spiritual works are to admonish the sinners (Luke 15:7), instruct the ignorant (Mark 16:15), counsel the doubtful (John 14:27), comfort the sorrowful (Matt 11:28), bear wrongs patiently (Luke 6:27f.), forgive all injuries (Matt 6:12), and pray for the living and the dead (John 17:24). The corporal works, based in Matt 25:31–46, are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned and bury the dead. 746 Mercy Research Commission, Mercy International Association, “A listing of Sisters of Mercy who are active researchers around the world,” unpublished. 747 Mercy International Association, “Bibliography of Books and Articles,” http://www.mercyworld.org /heritage/list-bibliography.cfm?loadref=46&search_category=&search_keywords=&cursor=1401. 748 In the Roman Catholic Church, after a deceased Catholic has been declared a Servant of God by a bishop and proposed for beatification by the Pope, such a servant of God may be declared venerable during the investigation and process leading to possible canonization as a saint. Before a person is considered to be venerable, that person must be declared as such by a proclamation, approved by the Pope, of having lived a life that was "heroic in virtue.”

200

There have been three critical editions of McAuley’s letters including Bolster’s The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley, Newman’s The Letters of Catherine McAuley and Sullivan’s The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley. Three collections of her sayings were printed: A Little Book of Practical Sayings by Mary Clare Moore; Retreat Instructions by Mary Teresa Purcell and A Shining Lamp: The Oral Instructions of Catherine McAuley by Mary C. Sullivan.

Documents she wrote for her religious community, “The Spirit of the Institute” and the first “Rule and Constitutions of the Religious Sisters of Mercy,” are published in Sullivan’s Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy. Several biographies have been written beginning with several manuscripts written by the members of her first religious community immediately after her death (in the 1840s: Mary Ann Doyle, The Derry Large Manuscript; Mary Ann Doyle, The Annals of the Sisters of Mercy, St. Joseph’s, Tullamore; Mary Clare Moore, A Life of Catherine McAuley: The Bermondsey Manuscript; in the 1850s; Mary Vincent Harnett, Memoirs of the Life of Revd. Mother Catherine McAuley; and in the 1860s: Mary Clare Augustine Moore, A Memoir of the Foundress of the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland: The Dublin Manuscript), Life of Rev. Mother Catherine McAuley by Mary Vincent Harnett (1864), Life of Catherine McAuley by Mary Austin Carroll (1866), Catherine McAuley: The First Sister of Mercy by Roland Burke Savage (1949), Mercy unto Thousands: Life of Mother Mary Catherine McAuley by Mary Bertrand Degnan (1957), Catherine McAuley: Venerable for Mercy by Mary Angela Bolster (1990), and The Path of Mercy: The Life of Catherine McAuley by Mary C. Sullivan (2012).

Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck

Aguilar and McAuley were responding in the midst of social change which was happening to their respective peoples who were finding their way out of oppression into a new way of being part of society. These two women took a leadership role in helping shape that social change.

201

Schimmelpenninck’s approach was very different. She had an affinity for the Romantic ideals of spirituality, focus on personal experience, and the influence of aesthetics (initially instilled by her mother) combined with an interest in how to influence change through linking social, economic, scientific and cultural thinking, and catalysing action on issues critical to the common good (instilled by her father and his fellow members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham). Duquette writes of her, “Schimmelpenninck’s emphasis on the serenity of the contemplative sublime is in harmony with Quaker spiritual values, and her penchant for precise categorization reflects the world of scientific discourse within which she was raised.”749

Schimmelpenninck’s action for social change was rooted in “religious and aesthetic reform in the area of biblical literacy and religious taste, generally, and of feminine edification and spiritual strengthening in Christ, specifically.”750 The goal of this religious and aesthetic reform was “a deeper knowledge of Christ and an extension of such understanding outwards through ameliorative action in the world.”751 In her biblical interpretation, Schimmelpenninck was able to find mutual balance between the contemplative and the active, manifested in two very distinct ways: in her focus on aesthetics, particularly “the sublime,” and in her engagement in the anti-slavery movement.

In the early nineteenth century, there was an active debate on the meaning of “the sublime”, the quality of greatness in humans, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. Edmund Burke, a leading philosopher who wrote extensively on “the sublime,” concluded that the sublime and the beautiful are mutually exclusive and marked by the dual emotional quality of fear and attraction. This dualism was directly challenged by Schimmelpenninck. She believed that the source of sublimity lay in moral, subjective characteristics, whether displayed by the actions of human beings or symbolized in the physical qualities of God's creation. Duquette says of

749 Natasha Duquette, “‘Motionless Wonder’: Contemplating Gothic Sublimity in Northanger Abbey,” Persuasions On-Line 30, no 2 (Spring 2010), np, accessed on January 28, 2018, http://www.jasna.org/ persuasions/on-line/vol30no2/duquette.html. 750 Duquette, Veiled Intent, 238. 751 Ibid., 240.

202 her, “Schimmelpenninck’s nuanced definition of sublimity, moving from a primary stage of bracing terror to a secondary stage of peaceful contemplation enables movement through terror into prayer and active love. This movement leads to her eventual definition of the courageous struggle for social justice as sublime.”752

In Schimmelpenninck’s work on sublimity can be found an echo of the understanding of and attention to diversity today: “As Beauty consists in the reﬂection of the Divine character to the heart of man from the material creation, so we may expect to ﬁnd as many distinct styles of Beauty, as there are distinct species of perfection in GOD, susceptible of external manifestation through the medium of material expression.”753

Duquette shows how Schimmelpenninck added to Kant’s understanding of the sublime, “Schimmelpenninck’s reflections on the contemplative sublime do overlap with Kant’s early thoughts on the noble sublime, within which Kant includes the sublimity of female friendship. Schimmelpenninck, however, adds the idea of dauntless action to the quiet wonder, peace, and friendship of Kant’s noble sublime. She constructs the feminine fortitude key to such action not as an individual stoicism but as a dauntlessness that arises from the bonds of mournful, spiritual, community.”754

In a study of the history of English aesthetics, the German scholar, Kathinka Huebner summarizes Schimmelpenninck’s approach to her classification system in Theory on Classification of Beauty and Deformity, “Schimmelpenninck applies her classification of beauty and deformity equally to art and nature, including humans, and provides a wide range of examples taken from such diverse spheres as landscape, architecture, music,

752 Natasha Duquette, “‘Dauntless Faith’: Contemplative Sublimity and Social Action in Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck’s Aesthetics,” Christianity and Literature 55, no. 4 (Summer 2006): 513. 753 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, 21–2. 754 Duquette, “Motionless Wonder,” n7. This concept of a mournful, spiritual community was embedded in the works of writers of this time period such as William Wordsworth whom Fosso describes as “a reformist during a time of social and political crisis, for whom mourning promised to bind together his disaffected countrymen and disjointed world.” Wordsworth speaks about “a spiritual community binding together the living and the dead.” This is reflected in shared mourning for tragic events in our time, creating a community of mourners who gather together. See Kurt O. Fosso, Buried Communities: Wordsworth and the Bonds of Mourning (Albuny: SUNY Press, 2012), 130, 27.

203 facial characteristics, voice type, literary style, fictive characters in literature, animals and plants.”755

Schimmelpenninck is one of the authors included in a book entitled Sublimer Aspects: Interfaces between Literature, Aesthetics and Theology which explores how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century aesthetics strongly influenced not only the theology but also the practice of Christianity by the late nineteenth century.756 This exploration happens in twelve essays which examine interfaces between literature, aesthetics, and theology from 1715-1885. The essays consider the theological import of writers such as Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Voltaire and Immanuel Kant as well as “women writers whose work is now experiencing a revival” including Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, Anne Brontë, Frances Ridley Havergal, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Adelaide Procter.

As foundational to her engagement in social justice for slaves, as noted above, in a tract entitled Is the system of Slavery sanctioned or condemned by Scripture?, Schimmelpenninck traced the history of slavery in the Old Testament supported by texts from the New Testament. Her attention to this matter did not end with the biblical interpretation. She was passionately involved in the anti-slavery movement and was an active member of the Ladies’ Societies both in London and Birmingham which took a particular interest in the fate of enslaved African women who, they emphasized, suffered both physical abuse and moral degradation.

In Recovering Nineteenth-century Women Interpreters of the Bible edited by De Groot and Taylor, Lissa M. Wray Beal wrote about Schimmelpenninck:

Examination of her interpretation of the Psalms reveals deeply held assumptions and the hermeneutical practices informed by these assumptions, which place her in the pre-critical interpretive stream. Not unaware of the new historical-critical approaches, she rejects them, reaching back into Roman Catholic thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and Reformation commitments to form her

755 Kathinka Huebner, Über das Schöne und das Deformierte: Systematische und historische Darstellung der ‘Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity’ von Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (Köln: Hansjörg Mayer, 1969), 64. 756 Duquette, “Anna Barbauld and Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck,” 62–79.

204

hermeneutical stance. These influences were joined by her own Dissenting commitment to individual interpretation, contemplative spirituality, and thoroughly evangelical social action.757

Wray Beal also wrote the entry describing Schimmelepnninck’s work in the Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters, “The work of some contemporary scholars demonstrates some continuity with the theological reading exemplified in Schimmelpenninck’s work. Beyond her biblical interpretive work, Schimmelpenninck’s published authorship in other areas is also being discovered. An available republication of Select Memoirs of Port- Royal, her commentary on her travels to Port-Royal, demonstrates renewed interest in her ecumenical writings. Her Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity and the outworking of those principles in her lifelong social action is also the subject of ongoing scholarly research.”758

Schimmelpenninck’s books were widely read in her lifetime. Her book, Select memoirs of Port-Royal, was published in five editions. Biblical Fragments went through at least four printings. The Psalms according to the Authorized Version went through at least three printings. After her death, her partial autobiography was completed by a memoir written by her cousin, Christiana Hankin, and published in two volumes as Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck (1858).

A marble monument was erected in 1856 in Bristol Cathedral in memory of Schimmelpenninck who was described as an “anti-slavery writer.”759 The monument is in a cathedral of the Church of England although Schimmelpenninck did not belong to that faith tradition and was buried in Bristol at the Moravian Chapel. The words on that monument are written as follows:

757 Lissa M. Wray Beal, “Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck: A Nineteenth-Century Woman as Psalm- Reader,” in Recovering Nineteenth-century Women Interpreters of the Bible, ed. Christiana De Groot and Marion Ann Taylor (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 81. 758 Lissa M. Wray Beal, “Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck,” in Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide, ed. Marion Anne Taylor and Agnes Choi (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 436–40. 759 Canon Andrew Tremlett, the Keeper of the Fabric at Bristol Cathedral, Bristol, England, provided the photograph of the monument from which the words were obtained. The information came via e-mail on June 9, 2009.

205

I will make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only. Ps 71:16

Sacred to the beloved memory of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck To rich gifts of genius and acquisitions of study consecrated to the service of God Her writings bear public and abiding testimony But the graces of her character could be appreciated only in private life. Led in early childhood to seek after God She was brought from doubt and darkness to the light of the Gospel When nourished continually by the divine word She imparted to many the treasures of wisdom With advancing age the fair endowments of her mind and nature Suffered no decay but shined forth more brightly to the glory of the giver. Full of years Rejoicing in God her Saviour she rendered up her spirit And her last breath was praise. She was born at Birmingham 25th November 1778 She entered into rest at Clifton 29th August 1856 In joyful and unclouded hope of eternal reunion This tablet is erected by grateful love.

Frances Elizabeth King

The first three women all belonged to groups who had been strongly disenfranchised but were now entering a period of emancipation with restoration of their civic rights. As a member of the Church of England and as the daughter of one of the last governors of Massachusetts, King’s experience of social action was quite different from theirs. Yet like them, King also used her biblical interpretation as a source of leadership in social action. She did this in two ways. First by her biblically-based books, she sought to strengthen the status of women in her world by emphasizing their significant role in forming the men who controlled the public domain. Secondly, she reiterated the leadership responsibilities of women in public when it came to matters relating to education of children, care of sick people and care of older people:

Though few women are called upon to rescue a foundling infant, every one may, in a manner, copy the example of Pharaoh’s daughter; she may save the children of the poor, from the miseries of ignorance and idleness, by giving them the means of instruction, and establishing in them early habits of industry; she may do more than save a temporary life; she may, by implanting in their minds religious knowledge and moral principles, redeem their souls from eternal destruction; and

206

by teaching them useful employments, secure them, in after life, from poverty and misery. The care of young females is a woman’s exclusive duty; not only instructing them as children, but regulating their morals and conduct as young women; finding them employment, and saving them from bad company and corrupt example.760

King not only wrote about the role of women in the home and in society. She was active in her husband’s parishes, establishing a parish library, superintending a large Sunday School, a Sick Fund, a Clothing Society and visiting the poor in their homes. Her own engagement in these duties is best reflected in The Society for Bettering the Conditions and Improving the Comforts of the Poor which, together with her brother, King founded and sustained. It was said of her, “Fanny King furnished the subject of one of Mrs. Bernard's contributions, and it will be seen that some years later a Ladies' Branch of the Society owed much to her pen as well as to her powers of organisation.”761 King was one of the nineteenth-century interpreters chosen by Taylor and Weir to speak about biblical women (Sarah and Rebekah). Of her they wrote:

As an informed and careful reader of the Bible, King used sophisticated resources such as Josephus and several biblical commentaries undoubtedly borrowed from her husband’s theological library. She was sensitive to issues of language and translation. Unlike Trimmer, King did not avoid the moral issues raised by the story but rather faced them, drawing lessons from them based on her nineteenth- century understanding of morality and ethics. Consequently, readers have no difficulty observing King’s strong sense of her own agency as a female interpreter, theologian, and preacher.762

A Tour in France was published in at least two editions, The Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper on Domestic Happiness in at least 6 editions with ten printings. Her Female Scripture Characters was initially presented in periodical form and subsequently published in at least twelve editions in London, Boston, New York and Philadelphia. It became a school textbook.”763 An anonymous memoir of King was attached to the fifth and subsequent editions of Female scripture characters.764

760 King, Female Scripture Characters, 57–58. 761 Higgins, Bernards of Abington, 3. 246. 762 Taylor and Weir, Let Her Speak for Herself, 113. 763 Ibid., 112, n10. 764 [John Collinson], “Memoir of the Author,” v–x.

207

Similarity among the Four Women

It might be expected that the three Christian writers, King, Schimmelpenninck and McAuley, would have more in common with each other than with Aguilar who was Jewish. A reading of all their works shows this not to be true. Aguilar and McAuley have more in common arising from the political realities of their communities. Aguilar and Schimmelpenninck are more alike in their more detailed attention to exegesis and rules of biblical interpretation and in their connection with evangelical Protestantism. King and Aguilar have more in common in their detailed attention to the female characters of the Bible. Aguilar and McAuley have more in common because they had never married and both were engaged in formal education of children. McAuley and King both raised orphaned children.

Fay described Aguilar as a “borderer”, “a woman sitting on the edges of things . . . writing from the heart outward into the world, writing in order to demonstrate the permeability of edges.”765 Indeed all four women were “borderers,” boundary walkers in their scriptural interpretation and resultant social action. McAuley placed her House of Mercy in the wealthiest part of Dublin in order that poor people would be visible to rich people and that the young women who came to the house for instruction and protection would have employment opportunities in the area. Schimmelpenninck used biblical interpretation to bring together aesthetics and social action by creating a new category of sublimity, the contemplative sublime, characterized by loving social action. King walked the boundary between the home and the society, ostensibly saying that women’s place was in the home and then, through her scriptural biographies, her novel and her treatise on Beneficial Effects of Christianity, showing how women in their formation of children in the home prepare them to shape public life and how they should in the public domain be leaders in creating organizations dedicated to educating children, caring for sick people and supporting old people.

765 Fay, “Grace Aguilar,” 216.

208

Duquette’s ascription of “veiled intent” to Schimmelpenninck’s work can also be applied to all four women. McAuley created a community of women religious because her initial intent of having rich young women participate in the education of poor children and the instruction of young women was subject to accusations from both lay people and clergy. Among the criticisms were meddling of the “unlearned sex” in the work of the clergy, the group were not a recognizable religious congregation yet were following many conventual customs, and the support they were receiving would deflect support from the Sisters of Charity which was a religious congregation founded in 1815.766 In the interests of keeping her work stable and sustainable, she agreed to found a religious congregation subject to Rome. Yet she functioned decisively and authoritatively, setting her own directions and determining how her sisters would be formed and where they would minister.

Aguilar was able to offer “a remarkably innovative conception of female spirituality that allowed her to cross and re-cross the boundaries between the Jewish and Christian religious cultures she inhabited,” a way which Langton styles as “gracious ambiguity.”767 On several occasions, King wrote that men were superior to women and that women’s place was in the home. Yet her two most important books were consciously written to supplement the inadequate work of a Bishop of London and a leading scholar from Cambridge. She agreed that women’s place was in the home unless they were engaged in founding or serving in organizations dedicated to children, sick and poor people.

All four women used new genres or forms for their biblical interpretation, veiling “provocative hermeneutical claims and calls for social action in poetic and aesthetic forms of discourse, which were viewed as more acceptably feminine modes of expression.”768

766 Sullivan, The Path of Mercy, 86–8. 767 Langton, Gracious Ambiguity, 1. 768Teresa Barnard, ed., British Women and the Intellectual World in the Long Eighteenth Century (Burlinton: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2015), 9. The editor is summarizing the key point of chapter 6 written by Natasha Duquette, entitled “Veiled Exegesis: Dissenting Women’s Aesthetic Approach to Theological Hermeneutics and Social Action,” 108–128.

209

The comparison among the four women shows that they were much more alike than their varying faith traditions and their loyalty to these traditions would suggest. All four women were deliberately using scripture and scriptural interpretation to effect social change. And all four women used Scripture to legitimate their right to do so.

Authority to Interpret

The Bible was the source of each of the four women’s conviction of her own authority to teach, to write and to interpret scripture.

Grace Aguilar

Aguilar wrote with confidence knowing that her authority came from the Scriptures because God had called women to be prophets and judges, God required that women as well as men be instructed in the Law, God had chosen strong and gifted women as well as weak and timid women to be instruments of good, and God had given women the right and indeed the responsibility to study the Scriptures and to act as witnesses to its teaching. She wrote about the prophet Huldah, “The example of Huldah is sufficient for them [women] to rest content that the study of the law, and all religious observances, as well as the piety of the heart, are now equally incumbent on them as on men, and equally acceptable before God: and that Israel is the only nation in the whole world in which women sufficiently gifted to perform the offices of Prophetess and Judge have been found.”769 Using the authority of the ancient fathers founded on the Scriptures, she identified the primary mission of the women of Israel as education, “If we do not labor heart and soul to make manifest that our religion is the most spiritual, the most life- breathing, comfort-giving religion of any over the known world, the fault is with us, and us alone. We need no longer be Jews because our fathers were. In the synagogue our religion is taught; in our households the Bible is our companion; our daughters as well as our sons are instructed as our Great Lawgiver himself commanded.”770

769 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 325. 770 Ibid., 569.

210

The example of Esther showed that the woman did not have to be extraordinary to carry out God’s work, “Every woman should take it to her own heart, and remember, with holy joy and thankfulness, that the preservation of her people, which that day recalls, was, under the Eternal, the work of a woman not stronger, not more gifted than herself. God might equally have worked by other means; but that He did choose so weak and frail an instrument, is right, indeed, to be a source alike of consolation and rejoicing unto us; and strengthen each and all of us in the hope that we, too, may become instruments in His hands for good.”771 The opportunities of living in a country which showed respect to the Jewish people now made it possible for women to “upraise the holy cause” of the Jewish religion by the superiority of their conduct:

Her duty is to make home happy; her mission, to influence man, alike in the relative duties of mother to her son, wife to her husband, sister to her brother, and, in her own person, to upraise the holy cause of a religion, which, from its pure spirituality and long concealment, is by the multitude misunderstood, vilified, and charged with such false accusations that only acts can remove. Something more is needed for the elevation of our faith, than even making it known through books (though that may accomplish much). We must prove the superiority of our guiding law, by the superiority of our own conduct, as women of Israel, in our own houses. To obtain this superiority is to become more SPIRITUAL; for in that single word every feminine grace and Jewish requisite is comprised.772

Most telling was a prayer Aguilar had composed to be said before reading the Bible. It illustrated her confidence that her comprehension of Scripture came directly from God:

Father Almighty! Thou from whom all knowledge and wisdom come, without whose blessing and assistance, our efforts after understanding and righteousness are of no avail, we humbly and earnestly beseech Thee to open our eyes and hearts; that Thy precious word may not be to us as a sealed book, but that we may mark, learn, fully comprehend, and inwardly digest all that Thou in love didst inspire good and faithful men to write, for our benefit and instruction while in this world, for happiness and salvation hereafter. Give us childlike hearts and simple faith to read and love, O Lord. Guard us from the vain sophistry of man, and permit us all to read with sincere humility, Thy words, leaving that which, in this present imperfect state we may not understand, to Thy love and wisdom to explain here after, "for with Thee is the fountain of life, and in Thy light we shall

771 Ibid., 367. 772 Ibid., 570–1.

211

see light." O let Thy blessing be amongst us, our Father, and guide us unto Thee. — Amen.773

This confidence was evident in her words in the introduction to the Women of Israel, “Beginning, then, from the very beginning, some degree of order is requisite in the arrangement of our subject;”774 and in her conviction that women had received from God, “high privileges which as children, retainers and promulgators of His holy law, are ours, over and above every other nation, past or present, in the history of the world;”775

In her introduction to The Jewish Faith, she had no doubt about her ability to make up for the lack of Anglo-Jewish literature in order to “remove all danger from the perusal of abler and better works by spiritual Christians.”776 She was indeed a Hebrew theologian about whom she made reference in her preface to The Spirit of Judaism, as she outlined all the challenges that faced such a theologian, but concluded that she had to do this theological work: “The author of the following work is well aware of all this; and yet so powerful within her is the hope that it may be permitted to find some response in the gentle minds of her own sex, to awaken one lethargic spirit to a consciousness of its own powers, its own duties, to lift up one heart in increased devotion to its Creator, and benevolence to its fellow-creatures: that still she sends it forth, trusting it to Him whose blessing can alone render it, in His own good time, of service to His people.”777

Dearinger has an interesting insight into the source of Aguilar’s authority to interpret Scripture:

Aguilar adopted midrash, a tool of the rabbis, in order to explore women’s spiritual experiences, but, as a woman, was free to interpret Judaism in a way that men, who are bound to view Judaism within the framework of the rabbinic literature that she and the Reformers devalued, were not. Since women were not allowed access to these texts, they were free to interpret the religion however they wanted, and to encourage other women to do so as well. At a time when male

773 Aguilar, Essays and Miscellanies, 156. 774 Aguilar, Women of Israel, 9 775 Ibid., 10. 776 Aguilar, The Jewish Faith, 16. 777 Aguilar, The Spirit of Judaism, x.

212

Reformers were trying to break free from the “trammels of rabbinism,” Aguilar used the spirit of Reform to encourage freedom in interpretation.778

Frances Elizabeth King

Despite her stated belief that women were inferior to men, King wrote with confidence and authority as she corrected the work of noted male theologians. Her second book, The Beneficial Effects of the Christian temper on domestic happiness (1807), was written to compensate for the omission in a work by Beilby Porteus, Bishop first of Chester and then of London, entitled The Beneficial Effects of Christianity on the temporal concerns of mankind. She commended Porteus for having written his book, “The learned Prelate has proved from historical facts, that the improvements in society, and the amelioration that has taken place in the condition of the different classes of men, are manifestly derived from the benign and benevolent spirit of the Gospel, and not from Philosophy, as it has been repeatedly asserted.”779

However, she was disappointed that the author did not complete the work as he should have done, extending it to domestic life:

It is therefore to be lamented, that, in addition to the able statement of the public benefits of Christianity on the temporal concerns of mankind, the pious Prelate had not carried its precepts and beneficial tendency into Domestic life; and shewn, how it might be made the source of our private comforts and enjoyments. . . . Convinced that this subject, even amongst Christians, has not had sufficient attention paid to it; and that much benefit might be derived from its being placed in a just point of view; the Author has been induced to throw together a few thoughts, which may be considered rather as a collection of materials for the work, than the work itself.780

Her next book, Female Scripture Characters Exemplifying Female Virtues by Mrs. King, was written to supplement the work entitled Scripture Characters, or a Practical Improvement of the Histories in the Old and New Testament, decrying the fact that the

778 Dearinger, “‘the invisible Spirit alone’,” 104. 779 King, Beneficial Effects, x. 780 Ibid., xiv–xv.

213 latter included only two females, Esther and Mary, while other female characters “appear to offer useful instruction and valuable examples to her own sex.”781

In a traditional prayer from her religious tradition, King prayed with confidence that God would inspire her to carry out her work, “that the blessed LORD who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, may grant, that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them; that by patience and comfort of His holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which He has given us in our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ.”782

In several instances, King alluded to the work of Paul as a model for her interpretation. In the introduction to Female Scripture Characters, she apologized for her own inadequacies in the same manner and words in which Paul apparently apologized for his own failings. Both apologies were, in actual fact, a defense of authority to preach the Gospel:

She deeply feels and laments her own wants, in the instruction and example of the Sacred Volume, to be as great as that of the generality of her readers, and more so than many; and humbly hopes and believes, that the arrangement of her thoughts on these awful subjects, will be as valuable to herself as anyone to whom they are addressed; more so, in one point of view, from the dread it excites in her mind, that, while she presumes to “preach to others, she may be herself a cast-away:” [ see 1 Cor 9:27 “lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway”] and she entreats the prayers of the reader, united to her own, that the opportunities they have both enjoyed of gaining divine instruction, may never hereafter rise up in condemnation against them. [See 2 Cor 3:5–9 “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”]783

The confidence and authority with which King wrote was evident in the conclusion to her Female Scripture Characters, “We have now, my kind and patient readers, surveyed the last female character of any note, which presents itself in the Scriptures; and we have

781 King, Female Scripture Characters, iii. 782 Ibid., 3. Here King quotes the Collect for Second Sunday in Advent in The Book of Common Prayer (1662) written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. 783 King, Female Scripture Characters, ii.

214 drawn from them a species of instruction applicable to our own particular duties; and have gained some idea of the kind of reflections and inferences which we may draw from the characters omitted, and from all the inestimable precepts of the Sacred Volume.”784

Catherine McAuley

Writing immediately after McAuley’s death, Mary Ann Doyle, a member of her first community, said, “She seemed to inherit the great gift bestowed by God on the Prophet Isaias who said, ‘The Lord hath given me a learned tongue, whereby to support with a word him that is weary’” [Isa 50:4].785 This biblical image comparing the learned disciple and McAuley placed McAuley in the line of prophets and teachers of the Old Testament. It reflected the impact her biblical interpretation made on her community and showed how her first community of women religious so highly regarded her authority. This sense of the Bible as legitimating McAuley’s authority was reiterated in the tract, Cottage Controversy, in one of the conversations between the two women as they spoke about Mary, one of the most important influences in McAuley’s first community:

Lady P.: Speak truly, are you not taught to believe that she (Mary) has the same power as Christ himself? Margaret: Sure, the Blessed Virgin never thought it, for when she said, “All generations shall call me blessed,” she added; “Because he that is mighty has done great things for me.” She did not say she was to be called “blessed” on her own account [Luke 1:48-49].786

Scriptural references legitimated McAuley’s directions to her trusted companions. In acknowledging the early deaths of the first sisters, she said, “Without the Cross the real portion of the Crown cannot come” [Rev 2:10].787 Despite the crosses, she emphasized joy in doing God’s work,” If He looks on us with approbation for one instant each day, it will be sufficient to bring us joyfully on to the end of our journey” [Ps 94:1].788

784 Ibid., 344. 785 Doyle, “Annals,” 67. 786 [McAuley], Cottage Controversy, 43–4. 787 Sullivan, Correspondence, 259. 788 Ibid., 332.

215

Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck

Schimmelpenninck was confident that each person could interpret Scripture if they were open to the Spirit:

We ought, then, in all our biblical researches, assiduously to seek, through the merits of Christ, for the guidance of his Holy Spirit, who is both able and willing to lead the sheep of Christ into the knowledge of all-saving truth; and who is especially promised to take of the things of Christ, and show them to us; thus pointing out that true spiritual sense of every Scripture, which is their end, their spirit, and their life.789

In addition to the inspiration of the Spirit, Schimmelpenninck asserted that the writers of the Scriptures (both Old and New Testaments) gave direction for interpretation:

We are not left to form the rule of interpretation according to our own discretion; but that the inspired writers of the New Testament have established the point; both by the method which they themselves uniformly adopt in their own continual references and explanations of Old Testament passages; and likewise by the express directions they have given to the church on the subject. So that we have both the express precept and its illustration afforded by the continual example of the inspired writers, on which to ground the rule of spiritual interpretation.790

In explaining a passage from Revelation referring to the number of the beast (13:18), she said, “We interpret these numbers on the same principle of explanation of which an inspired prophet has actually given the example; nor should any other be admitted that has no such solid ground to stand on.”791

Schimmelpenninck wrote with authority and confidence, believing that she walked in the way of the apostle:

Hence the apostle prays for his churches to increase in knowledge as well as in grace; in light as well as in love, and he speaks of some who perish for lack of knowledge. The following little volume is respectfully offered by the author to

789 Schimmelpenninck, Biblical Fragments, 72. 790 Ibid., 30. 791 Ibid., 267–8.

216

mothers, and to young persons of her own sex, with a view to incite them to enter upon this pursuit.792

She was certain that she had the skills to lead others into understanding the Scripture, “Nevertheless, though the spirit of religion be one, and that the fundamental truth of religion be one, and within the reach of all the children of God; yet its application to its various recipients, must be through the medium of those trains of thought, habits of life, and affections of the heart, with which they are respectively familiar.”793

She believed that her authority was rooted in her approach to the parabolic style, “If Christians at once stated the truth clearly, viz. that the Old Testament is a revelation of God, declared in types, in parabolic figures, and parabolic actions, to which the plain revelation of the New Testament gives the key,—they would not only avoid giving a great handle to Deists, but they would also relieve the perplexities of many humble and real believers, whom yet the apparent frivolity of these things stumbles.”794

Schimmelpenninck was meticulous in her study of detail in the Scriptures. She was aware that she was and saw in her work a source of authority in the midst of many unreliable readers of Scripture:

The psalms, and the historic records of the periods in which they were composed, are handed down to us in different books of Scripture; and it requires no small portion of patient research to compare them together, and to detect the frequently minute indices, apparently scattered in the text, and often requiring the aid of a reference, both to the geography and customs of the Jews, in order to elicit clear and conclusive information on the subject. Possibly God, whose wisdom thought fit to withhold a more full light, lest the historic sense becoming more obviously prominent, unadvised readers might be tempted rather to rest in the literal, than be insensibly drawn to pass on through the dead letter to that living word which is alone the spirit and the life; and that many might then be so unfortunate, whilst they diligently perused Scripture yet to become historians rather than Christians.795

792 Ibid., xxx. 793 Ibid., xxvi. 794 Ibid., 67. 795 Schimmelpenninck, Psalms, x–xi.

217

Again she noted, “They [the Port-Royal authors] terminate their Key to the Psalter by the observation, ‘We leave it to persons accustomed to this species of research, to judge how far this arduous task has been faithfully executed;’ to which may we be permitted to add, that such persons only are competent fairly to form that judgment; and perhaps those who, like ourselves, have several times actually gone through the whole, referring each psalm to the chapters and verses pointed out, will best be able to appreciate the care and fidelity with which the research has been conducted.”796

796 Ibid., xx.

CHAPTER 4 Integration for Interpretation Today

This thesis, by showing that the interpretive works of these four women legitimates the validity and credibility of the women’s interpretive works, anticipates key hermeneutical elements accepted today, and strengthens the validity and understanding of these key elements in twenty-first century hermeneutics. Following Taylor and Weir’s depiction of the three tasks in addressing women’s interpretation of the Bible—recovery, analysis and integration797—chapter 4 focuses on integration by exploring the question, “How are the interpretive works of these four women a prototype of biblical interpretation, how do they anticipate biblical interpretation in the twenty-first century?”

There are at least five ways in which this thesis will answer these questions and thus add to existing scholarship: increased attention to women’s experience and voices in biblical interpretation, the illustration of alternatives to the historical critical approach to create a plurality of interpretation as the interpretive norm, the exploration of social location linked to earlier interpreters, the extension of authority for biblical interpretation, and the expansion of hermeneutics to include praxis—a manifestation of embodied or lived theology.

Attention to Women’s Experience and Voices in Biblical Interpretation

The lack of visibility of women interpreters has been noted by many. One needs only to consult recently published books on biblical interpreters to conclude that women interpreters before the mid-twentieth century (with the possible exception of Cady Stanton’s group in the later 1800s) did not exist. Recently, however, works have begun to highlight women from the early nineteenth century who were barred from the academy and from religious leadership but who dared to interpret scripture in a public manner. Examples of such books include Selvidge’s Notorious voices: feminist biblical interpretation, 1500-1920; de Groot and Taylor’s Recovering Nineteenth-Century

797 Taylor and Weir, Women in the Story of Jesus, 1. 218

219

Women Interpreters of the Bible; and Taylor and Weir’s Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis. An international research colloquium, the first on this theme, was held in 2008 in Graz, Austria, entitled Departing for modernity vs. clinging to the outdated: Women’s biblical hermeneutics in the context of the 19th century. A collection of the writings from that colloquium was published in 2014 in German, Fromme Lektüre Und Kritische Exegese Im Langen 19. Jahrhundert, and re-published in Spanish in 2018.

Added to these women’s voices is a work by Timothy Larsen, A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians. Larsen explores the Bible’s dominance, presence and reach in Victorian culture by “offering detailed, textured accounts of lives, words and thought of a range of Victorians from E. B. Pusey to Annie Besant, from Florence Nightingale to C. H. Spurgeon, from Catherine Booth to T. H. Huxley, from Grace Aguilar to Charles Bradlaugh, from Elizabeth Fry to Cardinal Wiseman, and more.”798 This collection is remarkable in both the scope of traditions and the true integration of women interpreters.

The four women, who come from the same time period but from different religious traditions, represented the spectrum of readers of the Bible in the early nineteenth century. These women interpreters were barred from the legitimate arenas of biblical interpretation, both the academy and the religious hierarchy in the church and synagogue. Neither of these systems valued their works, but their works were preserved by other women, either individually or in communities. Aguilar’s mother published many of her works after her death. McAuley’s letters and other writings were preserved by her religious communities in their archives. Schimmelpenninck’s female cousin preserved her partial autobiography and wrote her life’s story.

However, a close reading of their works shows the extent to which their interpretations influenced their immediate communities and sometimes well beyond them. Aguilar’s work has been studied most broadly, both as theological work and as literature. Langton

798 Timothy Larsen, A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1.

220 echoes many when he calls her “Anglo-Jewish theologian, novelist, poet and pioneer of interfaith relations.”799 While McAuley’s works have only recently been critically assessed, the outcome of her work is evident in the forty-four countries in which thousands of Sisters of Mercy live and minister and in the hundreds of thousands of partners in Mercy who minister with them. Schimmelpenninck was best remembered for her advocacy against the slave trade and slavery, becoming in 1825 one of the founding members of The Female Society for the Relief of British Negro Slaves. She was also one of the contributing voices in articulating the meaning of “the sublime” in aesthetics in the early nineteenth century, thereby influencing the theology and the practice of Christianity throughout the nineteenth century.

Plurality of Interpretation as the Interpretive Norm

For the past two hundred years, historical criticism with its attention to the original meaning of the biblical text in its original context has been the dominant approach to biblical interpretation. All hermeneutical approaches to the Bible are judged against this standard. Current scripture scholars have been educated in this approach. However, a change is gradually occurring, “Scholars are drawing greater attention to the rhetorical basis of truth as it is constructed both through the way language is used in the texts and through the way it is used by the interpreter.”800

Today plurality of interpretative approaches inclusive of historical criticism is closer to becoming the accepted norm:801 historical (e.g., source, form, redaction, rhetorical), literary (e.g., narrative, semiotic, reader-response, post-structuralism, midrash), social scientific (e.g., sociological, anthropological, ethnographic, ecological), cultural- hermeneutical (e.g., liberation, social location, feminist, womanist, postcolonial, canonical),802 and, most recently, reception history. As Newsom argues:

799 Langton, “Gracious Ambiguity,” title. 800 Yarchin, History of Biblical Interpretation, xxix. 801 Ibid., xxix–xxx. 802 Carol Newsom, “Probing Scripture: The New Biblical Critics,” The Christian Century 118, no. 1 (January 3–10, 2001): 21.

221

If anything ties together the various strands of new approaches to biblical interpretation, it is a concern for the relationship of language, meaning and power. More historically oriented literary and social methods increasingly examine the ways in which issues of conflict and access to power can be traced in the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. And cultural hermeneutics, though not uninterested in historical reconstruction, also focuses on the ways in which access to the power to interpret the text and construe its meaning serves to empower those who have traditionally been marginalized.803

One glance at the table of contents in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation published in 2013 illustrates the scope of voices spoken and heard in today’s world of biblical interpretation. In addition to the various forms of criticism, the Encyclopedia has articles on forms of interpretation: African American, African, allegorical, Asian American, Catholic, Central and South American, Chinese, Conservative Jewish, Cuban, diachronic, disability, Eastern Orthodox, ecological, evangelical, feminist, formalist, Gnostic, Greco-Roman, ideological, Japanese, Korean,na(o), Mormon, LBGT, liberation, Lutheran, Masoretic, Orthodox Jewish, Patristic, Pentecostal, phenomenological, postcolonial, postmodern, psychological, Islamic, Rabbinic, reconstructionist, Reform Jewish, Reformed Christian, structuralist, synchronic, theological, Wesleyan and womanist.804

There is no longer an intention to find “one meaning”; rather each text is deemed to be multivalent and is best interpreted through a multiplicity of approaches using a variety of sources and constrained by a complexity of norms. There is a decreasing interest in giving priority to “one interpreter.” The voices of those who have been traditionally marginalized are beginning to be heard.

The focus on the works of these women, who were living at a time marked by the dramatic rise of German historical criticism, shows that plurality of interpretation, while not accepted as legitimate at that time, was already a reality in the early nineteenth century. McAuley paid no conscious attention to exegesis while Schimmelpenninck gave

803 Ibid., 28. 804 Steven L. McKenzie, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

222 rigorous attention to the rules of interpretation in the style of Port-Royal. Aguilar used biblical exegesis and examined biblical theology while King used biblical texts to support her narratives about biblical women or to support her endorsement of Christianity as the religion which best served both the public good and domestic happiness. The four women sought legitimate meaning in the text which enabled them to bring about desired social change.

All four women used varied literary forms to communicate the outcomes of their interpretation. Aguilar used the greatest diversity of forms: verse by verse exegesis of a specific text (e.g., The Shemang), poetry (e.g., Sabbath Thoughts taking a text and interpreting it, or A Vision of Jerusalem alluding to verses from Leviticus and Exodus), midrash (e.g., The Wanderers being a midrash of the story of Hagar or The Women of Israel, covering the seven periods of the history of Israel with stories of named and unnamed women, individuals and groups), letter (e.g., The Jewish Faith a collection of letters between two fictional characters, an older woman seeking to prevent a younger woman from being converted to Christianity), novels (e.g., Home Influence, The Vale of Cedars, and The Mother’s Recompense all using fiction to illustrate the role of the mother as biblical interpreter in the home), history books (e.g., Records of Israel and The History of Jews in England reinforcing primary attention to the Bible rather than the Talmud), musings (e.g., Sacred Thoughts in which she interpreted texts misinterpreted by Christian theologians), and prayers (simple prayers which could be read by parents for their children).

King had the least diverse forms for her work which had a specific goal of finding in Scripture direction for everyday life. Her first written work, The Rector’s Memorandum Book, was a moral-domestic novel. Her first published book, Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper on Domestic Happiness, was a lengthy theological essay. Her second, Female Scripture Characters, was a series of narratives weaving quotations from biblical texts into paraphrases. Both works are characterized by a confluence of quotations from multiple biblical sources to make her point, a form of intertextuality which takes the New

223

Testament as a lens for reading the Old Testament and uses texts within each Testament to read other texts.

McAuley’s interpretation had an unequivocal, intentional focus for her biblical interpretation: to support her two goals for her communities of women religious: ministry in education and care of the sick; and formation of the women to enable them to carry out this ministry. Therefore, her interpretation was embedded in the Rule and Constitutions which governed the life of her religious institute (a formal document approved by Rome), in her instructions to the communities of women she formed (usually written in letters to these communities), in prayers and in her sayings which were collected by the women in her communities, and in a fictional tract which was a dialogue between a Catholic peasant and a Church of Ireland lady of the manor.

Schimmelpenninck, like Aguilar, had a diverse body of interpretation. Her tour narratives related to her visits to Port-Royal with its significant influence on her approach to interpretation. In Biblical Fragments, she used the Port-Royal rules of interpretation to devise more specific rules for the exegesis of the psalms, with exacting attention to the literal interpretation in order to ascertain the spiritual interpretation. She also wrote a commentary, the Psalms According to the Authorized Version, in which she applied these rules for each psalm. She used the term “dark parables,” meaning the hidden meanings in both the Old Testament and the New Testament works for which one could find their intended meaning through the spiritual interpretation, often occurring at a later stage of reading. Parabolic interpretation meant that there was a gradual exposition of the meaning of Scripture over time. Like King, she often used a confluence of quotations to make her point. She saw an interesting parallel between the formation of Earth and the work of God and the reading of the Bible and the word of God, each one revealing more treasures the more deeply they are explored.

In the works of all four women were multiple ways of citing passages of Scripture: citation with formula, citation without formula, weaving of phrases into the new

224 composition, paraphrasing, allusion to persons and events of the past, confluence of texts, echoes and mimesis of biblical literary structure.

Exploration of Social Location of Earlier Interpreters

Accepting the plurality of interpretation means that there is no longer any possibility of “universal and objective interpretation.” Indeed, there has been a shift in attention to the interpreter with an understanding that the interpretive task is directly influenced by the social location of the interpreter (Ricoeur’s “world in front of the text”). Interpreters are engaged in the construction of meaning which is not embedded solely in the text but results from the interaction of reader and text. This has led to a focus on understanding social location with related themes of context, ethical studies, cultural studies, autobiographical studies and reception history.

Bevans writes:

There is no such thing as “theology”; there is only contextual theology: feminist theology, black theology, liberation theology, Filipino theology, Asian-American theology, African theology and so forth. . . . Theology that is contextual realizes that culture, history, contemporary thought forms are to be considered, along with scripture and tradition, as valid sources for theological expression. And so today we speak of theology as having three sources or loci theologici: scripture, tradition and present human experience—or context.805

That human experience or context itself has two dimensions: the experience of the past (recorded in scripture and preserved and defended in tradition) and the experience of the present, that is, context (individual and social experience, secular or religious culture, social location and social change).806

Much work has been done on the social location of authors of biblical books (e.g., Robbins’ work on Luke-Acts) and on the social location of interpreters today (e.g., articles in the three volumes of Segovia and Tolbert’s Reading from this Place). Although

805 Bevans, Contextual Theology, 3–4. 806 Ibid., xvi, 5.

225 some work has been done on the social location of early interpreters (e.g., Rogerson’s W.M.L. de Wette, founder of modern Biblical criticism: an intellectual biography or his The Bible and criticism in Victorian Britain: profiles of F.D. Maurice and William Robertson Smith), it is still far from an accepted practice to focus on social location when considering the works of interpreters from an earlier time.

The study of the social location of these four women (see chapter 2) emphasizes the extent to which the social locations of these interpreters played a significant role in shaping their biblical interpretation and in determining the purpose for their interpretation.

The concerns about the place of Jews in British society, the place of women in the world of Judaism, the beginnings of the Jewish Enlightenment with its focus on the return to the Bible as well as the interplay of religious and personal authority, the connections between Jews in Britain and in North America, the movement focused on converting Jews to Protestantism, the rise of evangelical Protestantism and its focus on spirituality, the influence of Romanticism with its valuing of personal experience, the rising influence of the middle class, and the emerging role of women writers and poets were all influential factors in the biblical interpretation done by Aguilar.

King was influenced by the moral challenges of Britain’s increasingly secular and commercialized society, the loss of the authority of the Church of England, the increasing poverty in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, the rising influence of the middle class, the image of the moral and spiritual superiority of women, the increasing engagement of women in philanthropy and education, and the emerging role of women writers and poets.

McAuley’s mode of and reason for biblical interpretation was significantly shaped by the changing political climate in Ireland with the creation of the United Kingdom, the repeal of the Penal Laws and the emancipation of Catholics; the increasing synchronicity between being Irish and being Catholic, increasing poverty in the aftermath of the

226

Industrial Revolution, the rise of evangelical Protestantism and its focus on conversion of Irish Catholics, the rising influence of the middle class, the increasing engagement of women in philanthropy, and the emerging role of active religious communities of women in education and care for the sick.

The rising influence of the middle class, the increasing engagement of women in philanthropy, Romanticism with its significant influence on culture and the arts, the spread and increasing influence of the Dissenting movement, the anti-slave trade and anti-slavery movements, closer connections across Europe, and the emerging role of women writers all influenced Schimmelpenninck’s biblical interpretation in her three areas of interest: the anti-slavery movement, a focus on other ways of social action and philosophical attention to sublimity.

Expansion of Authority for Biblical Interpretation

Linked to the shift to the interpreter is the emerging attention to authority: who can and who should interpret. Traditionally, religious leaders were the accepted authorities with respect to the interpretation of the Torah/Bible, especially interpretation written or taught. With the advent of historical criticism, the professionalization of interpretation resulted in interpreters located in the university, fluent in biblical languages, enculturated in the world of academic biblical studies and immersed in the confines of secondary literature produced only by the professional interpreters and read by their colleagues and students. Other scholars and religious leaders accessed such literature somewhat sporadically and selectively to support their work of theology, spirituality, ecclesiology and ethics.

The renewed recognition of the power of the Bible to shape culture and to influence personal and communal experiences, the acknowledgment of embodied or lived theology as credible theology, the awareness of the power of social location not only in the writing of scripture but in the construction of meaning in the reading of scripture, and the identification of not two but three sources of theology (scripture, tradition and experience) have all challenged this professionalization of interpretation. Liberation

227 theology and interpretation have highlighted the absence of the experiences of the oppressed in both the articulation of theology and the work of interpretation and have insisted that the starting point for reading and interpreting the Bible should be the experiences of poverty and oppression.807

Feminist exegesis and interpretation have extended such an approach to explicitly include the experiences and voices of women.808 Such experiences are firmly rooted in women’s everyday lives and practices and are aided by “a critical awareness of breaking through the dichotomy or dualistic thinking about the sacred and the profane, an investigative and renewed interest in the meaning and scope of the sacred, and recognition of the importance of studying everyday life as a category that makes it possible to perceive the interconnectedness between the religious and the sacred.”809 Inherent in this approach is attention to new forms and expressions of interpretation by “ordinary” persons.810 Legitimacy and credibility are now being given to the question, “Where and in which daily life experiences do ordinary people find the sacred?”

In more recent hermeneutical works, attention is being paid to new forms and expressions of interpretation by “ordinary” persons expressed well by West:

What finally passes as critical and ordinary readings closely reflects the global structures of dominance that defines, exports, and markets what is worthy of study and what is not. The so-called critical theories and methods of reading the Bible are thoroughly systematized cultural models of the West. These models are created and sustained by thousands of trained scholars through privileged institutions of financial donors, publishers, professional societies, universities, colleges and seminaries. “Ordinary readers” represents those who read from different cultural perspectives, those whose reading techniques are unrecognizable

807 Newsom, “Probing Scripture,” 25. 808 Danna Nolan Fewell, “Reading the Bible Ideologically: Feminist Criticism,” in An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and the Application: To Each Its Own Meaning, ed. Steven L. McKenzie and Stephen R. Haynes (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 270. 809 Angela Berlis and Anna-Marie J. A. C. M. Korte, “Introduction,” in Everyday Life and the Sacred: Re/configuring Gender Studies in Religion, Studies in Theology and Religion 23, ed. Angela Berlis and Anna-Marie J. A. C. M. Korte (Leiden: Brill Academic Pub, 2017), 2. 810 See Gerald West and Musa W. Dube, eds., “‘Reading With’: An Exploration of the Interface between Critical and Ordinary Readings of the Bible,” Special issue, Semeia 73 (1996).

228

to the Western trained reader, and those whose standards are still defined and seen through the structures that subordinate and marginalize differences.811

Lategan reinforces this same theme:

The ordinary reader remains a pivotal point in the process of interpretation and in the balance of power which accompanies this process. Whatever the authority of the dominant tradition may be, it can always be challenged from the perspective of the reader. But furthermore, in order to vindicate its claim to universal validity, the biblical text is dependent on the appropriation of readers with different orientations in different contexts. The ongoing process of interpretation safeguards the role of the reader, but also the promise of innovative, healing, liberating and restorative readings.812

Flowing from these shifts in thinking is an extension of the literary and artistic genres through which interpretation is articulated.813 This thesis explores the works of “non- traditional” interpreters, women who were neither academics nor religious leaders in the formal sense of those roles as authorized in their time period. Rather, they were “ordinary” persons whose biblical works in non-traditional genres were published and read by communities for whom they became instruments for social change. In fact, they were truly teachers and religious leaders whose interpretation of the holy books of their faith integrated exegesis, theology and praxis in ways that made a difference in their society.

It is not only possible and legitimate for persons outside the academy and religious leadership to interpret scripture, but it is necessary that the producers of the art and science of interpretation be expanded to include this wider group if scripture is to be a positive, transformative force in society today and into the future. In Barton’s words, “knowledge is socially situated, insisting that we should not just ask what the text meant or means, but who is reading the text and with what interests. Only then can the Bible be

811 Gerald West, “An Introduction: How We Have Come to ‘Read With,’” Semeia 73 (1996), 12. 812 Bernard C. Lategan, “Scholar and Ordinary Reader—More than a Simple Interface,” Semeia 73 (1996): 254. 813 Stephen Prickett, “The Bible in Literature and Art,” in The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. John Barton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 160–78. In works such as Gary Anderson’s The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), the traditional historical-critical method is expanded through interpretation using Michelangelo's frescoes, iconography, and Milton's Paradise Lost.

229 an instrument of social and political change rather than a means of entrenching the status quo.”814 Interpretation seeks to answer the question, “What does this text mean?” while hermeneutics asks additional questions, “Who is interpreting the text? How do we interpret the text? For what purpose are we interpreting? For what group or community are we interpreting?” It has been said, therefore, that hermeneutics has less to do with biblical interpretation than with biblical interpreters; it is the study of the relationship of the text to the contemporary scene.

Each of the four women assumed her own authority to write, teach, preach and interpret the Scriptures. Aguilar wrote with confidence knowing that her authority came from the Scriptures because God had called women to be prophets and judges, God required that women as well as men to be instructed in the Law, God had chosen strong and gifted women as well as weak and timid women to be instruments of good, and God had given women the right and indeed the responsibility to study the Scriptures and to act as witnesses to its teaching.

Despite her stated belief that women were inferior to men, King wrote with confidence and authority as she corrected the work of two well-known male theologians, quoting Scripture to legitimate her doing so.

McAuley’s authoritative and confident interpretation permeated her biblically-based instructions as she directed and motivated her first community members. The religious tract, Cottage Controversy, illustrated the depth of theology understood by two women, the respect they showed each other, and their knowledge of the words of the Bible as well as doctrines regarding its authority; biblical interpretation was subtly but convincingly presented as a legitimate work for women.

Schimmelpenninck’s words on her death-bed give the sense of her authority to preach and interpret scripture: “I wish . . . to discharge my trust as an author, in its full extent, to

814 Barton, “Introduction,” In The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, ed. John Barton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3.

230

Him who gave it. And I believe that trust to have been to aid in the interpretation of the symbolic teaching of God in His visible creation, and to show to others what He has taught me of the manner in which we may make everything around us instinct, as it were, with the anointing of that Spirit which has been bestowed upon ourselves; how we may imprint on our own domain of taste and domestic scenery, those very same characters of beautiful moral expression which God has written on the face of nature.”815

Expansion of Hermeneutics to Include Praxis

Although a modern understanding of hermeneutics can be traced back to the early nineteenth century and Schleiermacher, two scholars from the mid-twentieth century have had significant influence on the understanding of hermeneutics today. Gadamer says that interpretation is a moral conversation with a classic text, a conversation shaped from the beginning by practical concerns about application that emerge from the interpreter’s present culture and its questions.816 Ricoeur speaks about the “world in front of the text,” about “text-as-action.”817 The interpretation of the ancient text and the interpretation of life correspond and are mutually adjusted (the text and the mirror). Important in hermeneutics, then, in addition to interpretive methods, are the social location of the interpreter, the authority claimed by the interpreter, the context of time and place in which interpretation is produced and received, and the purpose for which the interpretation is done and used. The thesis of this paper highlights the possibility of such a hermeneutical approach implicit in an earlier age and demonstrates the difference the intentional use of scripture can make in effecting positive social change.

The modern theological concept of “praxis” is understood as, “the critical relationship between theory and practice whereby each is dialectically influenced and transformed by

815 Schimmelpenninck, Principles of Beauty, xi. 816 Horst Dietrich Preuss, Old Testament Theology, trans. Leo G. Perdue (Louisville: Westminster, 1995, 1996), 346. 817 Richard Briggs, “What does Hermeneutics have to do with Biblical Interpretation?,” Heythrop Journal 47, no. 1 (2006): 67, 69.

231 the other.”818 Schüssler Fiorenza, championing the goal of biblical interpretation as change and transformation, says:

A critical rhetorical feminist method and hermeneutical process is best understood as wisdom-praxis. Wisdom’s spiraling dance of interpretation seeks to serve public the*logical deliberation and religious transformation. It is not restricted to Christian canonical texts but can be and has been explored successfully by scholars of traditions and Scriptures of other religions. Moreover, it is not restricted to the biblical scholar as expert. Rather, it calls for transformative and engaged interpreters who may or may not be professional readers. Biblical research and scholarship must be done in the interest of all wo/men and engender a radical democratic societal, cultural, religious and personal transformation.819

Another way of expressing the same concept is that of lived or embodied theology. In the words of Gerald West, “the dialogue between text and context enables participants to find and forge lines of connection between their embodied theologies and the Bible. Because the Bible is a sacred text and because Christians locate themselves in relation to it, establishing such lines of connection can be enormously empowering.”820

West identifies six key steps in the dialogue: embodied theologies arise out of the communitarian life world of the community; the discourses of biblical study make more conscious the shared knowledge of its life world; this encourages the critical component of questioning and probing; the interaction between contextual and textual questions promotes a process of communication allowing for open argument; this makes possible an encounter between traditions (biblically transmitted tradition and local group tradition) in the context of a social environment shaped by severe negative imbalances in material resources and access to power; and the encounter between the personal and the communal establishes potential links between the cultural, social and personal elements of the life world.821 West quotes Cochrane who states, “A public theology that does not

818 David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1975), 243. 819 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Changing Horizons: Explorations of Feminist Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 284–5. 820 Gerald West, “Articulating, Owning and Mainstreaming Local Theologies,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 122 (July 2005): 28. 821 West, “Articulating, Owning and Mainstreaming Local Theologies,” 34.

232 take the perspective of local communities of the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized seriously loses its seminal source of insight and correction.”822

Aguilar, King, McAuley and Schimmelpenninck were intentionally using their biblical interpretation to bring about social change; they were actively engaged in embodied or lived theology. Aguilar’s biblical interpretation was oriented to two interrelated activities: the undermining of Christian missionary efforts to convert Jews and the persuasion of Christians to respect Judaism leading to Jewish emancipation in England; and the challenge to the Jewish community to develop a pietistic form of spirituality and to reform its attitudes towards women. Together the two activities would help shape a defined Anglo-Jewish identity.

King, although a member of the dominant church and dominant social class, was aware of the negative impact of the Industrial Revolution on the lives of people, especially women and children. She consciously used her biblical interpretation to give women voice, to strengthen the place of women in the society, and to “better” the lot of women and children living in poverty or isolation.

McAuley, living in Ireland as the Penal Laws were waning and as Catholic emancipation was emerging, knew the importance of education for poor people and for women if poverty were to be uprooted and if women were to take their place as leaders in the society. Her biblical interpretation was foundational to the establishment of a religious institute of women and to the ongoing formation of that community far beyond Ireland and far beyond her own lifetime. Her influence remains as the Sisters of Mercy globally focus their ministry on ameliorating poverty and strengthening the leadership of women in effecting a world of peace and justice.

Schimmelpenninck’s advocacy against the slave trade and slavery was nurtured in her early life as a Quaker in a family which welcomed liberal and critical thinking. Her

822 Ibid. West is quoting James R. Cochrane, Circles of Dignity: Community Wisdom and Theological Reflection (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 124.

233 biblical interpretation served as both a catalyst for this advocacy and a source of wisdom and strength for its success. Her interpretation also enabled her development of a philosophical understanding of sublimity which legitimized the necessity of social action in all civilized and sophisticated society.

CONCLUSION

John Riches speaks about the emergence of an interpretive strategy “which sets the Bible alongside the experience of the reading community, seeing both as texts to be interpreted, ‘reading with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other’.”823

He goes on to say:

This enables interpreters to find different meanings in the same biblical texts, as they resonate differently with the accounts of human experience which they bring to them. At the same time these different meanings acquire authority in so far as they are able to address such experience and enable reading communities to make sense of and to find ways of responding to the demands which are made on them. . . . It is perhaps not accidental that such readings of Scripture from experience should have their roots in situations of severe oppression and hardship.”824

The interpretive works of the four women in this thesis add four more voices from the early nineteenth century, four more women’s voices, to confirm that such a conclusion is not accidental. These works give witness to women’s engagement with the texts. They deliberately and creatively model “a variety of interpretative approaches including reading texts canonically, theologically, experientially, and critically; they expand the scope of what used to be considered appropriate genres for biblical interpretation.”825 The four women intentionally use the Bible and their biblical interpretation to bring about social change. They intuitively use the Bible and their biblical interpretation to legitimate their authority to do so. In so doing, they anticipate many elements of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics and embodied or lived theology as they are understood today.

In the spirit and the intent of reception history and criticism, this thesis has diligently carried out the three tasks of recovery, analysis and integration. The recovery of the

823 John Riches, ed. The New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 4, From 1750 to the Present, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 754. 824 Ibid. 825 Taylor and Weir, Women in the Story of Jesus, 2. 234

235 works of the four women has been deepened by the exploration of the social location of each woman in her own time and in her own circumstances.

The analysis of their works has been strengthened by the comparisons among the four women in their choices of scriptural texts as well as their adherence to the teachings and the perspectives of their respective religious traditions balanced by their daring to become leaders in using their biblical interpretation to bring about social change in the midst of their own realities. By adding the comparisons to the analysis, the thesis has enabled the women to be engaged with each other, in terms of the content and themes of their works and in terms of the genres they used to communicate their vision, their messages and their challenges to their communities. Sometimes, they agreed with each other. Sometimes they completely disagreed. And sometimes, the strength of the comparison was to show the uniqueness of what each one was doing.

The task of integration has focused on their anticipation of hermeneutical approaches normative today but only slowly emerging in their time. By giving the four women the opportunity and the space to engage with each other, the thesis gives readers today further insights into hermeneutics today and challenges them, in turn, to participate more intentionally in engagement with these hermeneutical strategies.

It is fitting that the opening words of this thesis—the voices of the communities with whom each of the four women lived and worked—now become the closing words. These communities recognized and celebrated the interpretive gifts of the women in their own time and gave voice to that recognition by comparison with biblical figures. Jewish women recognized in Aguilar another Deborah (Jgs 5:7) who stood forth as a “public advocate of the faith of Israel.”826 King’s family member saw in her a “Dorcas, full of good works and alms-deeds which she did (Acts 9:36).”827 McAuley’s community of women religious believed her to be a prophet in the way of Isaiah to whom God had

826 The Jewish Chronicle, July 9, 1847, 178. 827 [John Collinson], “Memoir of the Author,” vii.

236 given “a learned tongue, whereby to support with a word him that is weary” (Isa 50:4).828 Schimmelpenninck’s biographer recognized her wisdom, intelligence and persistence when she saw in her very presence a likeness to “Moses when he came down from the mount, seemed lighted up by the Divine glory” (Ex 34:29).829

Deborah, Dorcas, Isaiah and Moses came alive once again through the interpretative ways of Grace Aguilar, Catherine McAuley, Frances Elizabeth King and Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck. In this thesis, the four women have come alive once again. The thesis celebrates with gratitude the difference that these four women made in their own time and the continuing influence they will have on this time as their voices once again resonate in a world in need of healing and hope.

828 Mary Ann Doyle, “The Annals,” 67. 829 Hankin, Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, 542.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Grace Aguilar

Primary Sources

Aguilar, Grace. “Editorial Correspondence: The Records of Israel.” The Occident and American Jewish Advocate 2, no. 7 (Tishry 5605, October 1844).

———. “History of the Jews in England.” 1847. In Essays and Miscellanies: Choice Cullings from the Manuscripts of Grace Aguilar, edited by Sarah Aguilar, 237–285. Philadelphia: Hart 1853.

———. Home Influence: A Tale for Mothers and Daughters. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1870.

———. Home Scenes and Heart Studies. 1853. New York: D. Appleton, 1873.

———. “Grace Aguilar to Mrs. Solomon Cohen.” In Moses Papers, #2639. Southern Historical Collection. The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

———. The Jewish Faith: Spiritual Consolation, Moral Guidance, and Immortal Hope. 1846. Philadelphia: Sherman & Co., 1864.

———. The Mother’s Recompense: A Sequel to Home Influence. 1851. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1916.

———. Records of Israel. London: John Mortimer, 1844.

———. Selected Writings, edited by Michael Galchinsky. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2003.

———. The Spirit of Judaism. 1842. Edited by Isaac Leeser. Philadelphia: Sherman & Co., 1853.

———. The Vale of Cedars: or The Martyr. 1850. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1872.

———. Woman's Friendship: A Story of Domestic Life. 1850. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1853.

———.The Women of Israel: or Characters and Sketches from the Holy Scriptures and Jewish History. 16th ed. London: Groomsbridge and Sons, 1886.

237

238

———. The Women of Israel: Two Volumes in One with a New Introduction and Commentary, edited by Mayer I. Gruber. Jewish Studies Classics 2. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2011.

Aguilar, Grace, and Sarah Aguilar. Essays and Miscellanies: Choice Cullings from the Manuscripts of Grace Aguilar, Selected by her Mother, Sarah Aguilar. Philadelphia: A. Hart, Late Carey and Hart, 1853.

Cohen, Rachel. “From Grace Aguilar's Diary.” B’Nai Brith Magazine 44, no. 3 (1929): 109-10.

Dugdale, Michael. Aguilar Papers. Jewish Virtual Library. Last modified 2000. Accessed May 16, 2009. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/grace-aguilar.

Goodman, Annette. “Grace Aguilar: A Note.” The Jewish Chronicle Supplement 27 (June 1930): 6–8.

Hall, S. C. Pilgrimages to English Shrines. London: Hall, 1843.

Isaacs, A. S. The Young Champion: One Year in Grace Aguilar’s Life. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1913.

Secondary Sources

Abrahams, Beth Zion Lask. “Grace Aguilar: A Centenary Tribute.” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of London 16 (1952): 137–48.

“Aguilar, Grace.” In The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography, edited by Jennifer S. Uglow, Frances Hinton, and Maggy Hendry, 9. 4th ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

“American Women Mark the Death of British Author Grace Aguilar.” Jewish Women’s Archive. Accessed February 3, 2011. https://jwa.org /thisweek/nov/23/1847/grace- aguilar.

Arking, Ronda Angel. “‘A Spirit of Inquiry:’ Grace Aguilar’s Private Spirituality and Progressive Orthodoxy.” Conversations: The Journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals 13 (Winter 2015/5775). Accessed May 12, 2017. https://www.jewishideas.org/article/%E2%80%9C-spirit-inquiry%E2%80%9D- grace-aguilar%E2%80%99s-private-spirituality-and-progressive-orthodoxy- 0#comment-0.

Ashton, Dianne. “Grace Aguilar and the Matriarchal Theme in Jewish Women's Spirituality.” In Active Voices: Women in Jewish Culture, edited by Marie Sacks, 79–93. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

239

Baskin, Judith R. Jewish Women in Historical Perspective. 2nd ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.

Brown, Malcolm. “The Jews of Hackney Before 1840.” Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 30 (1987):71–89.

Burstein, Miriam Elizabeth. Narrating Women's History in Britain, 1770–1902. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004.

———. “‘Not the Superiority of Belief, but Superiority of True Devotion’: Grace Aguilar’s Histories of the Spirit.” In Silent Voices: Forgotten Novels by Victorian Women Writers, edited by Brenda Ayres, 1–27. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2003.

Coulson, John. Religion and Imagination. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.

Curran, Stuart. “Romantic Poetry: The I Altered.” In Romanticism and Feminism, edited by A. K. Mellor, 185–207. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850. London: Hutchinson Education, 1987.

Dearinger, Lindsay. “Recentering Victorian Jewish Education: Grace Aguilar’s Call for Reform in The Spirit of Judaism.” The Victorian 1, no. 1 (August 2013): 1–30.

———. “‘the invisible Spirit alone’: the Romance of Reform in Grace Aguilar’s Theological Writings.” M.A. thesis, University of Central Oklahoma, 2011.

Endelman, Todd M. Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656–1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Erickson, Lee. The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the Industrialization of Publishing, 1800–1850. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Fay, Elizabeth. “Grace Aguilar: Rewriting Scott Rewriting History.” In British Romanticism and the Jews: History, Culture, Literature, edited by Sheila A. Spector, 215–34. New York: Palgrave, 2002.

Feldman, Paula R., and Theresa M. Kelley, eds. Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995.

Galchinsky, Michael. “Engendering Liberal Jews: Jewish Women in Victorian England.” In Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, edited by Judith R. Baskin, 208–226. 2nd ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.

240

———. “Modern Jewish Women’s Dilemmas: Grace Aguilar’s Bargains.” Literature and Theology 11, no. 1 (1997): 27–45.

———. The Origin of the Modem Jewish Woman Writer: Romance and Reform in Victorian England. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.

Hall, A. M. “Obituary: Grace Aguilar.” Art-Union 9 (November 1, 1847): 278.

Harris, Daniel A. “Hagar in Christian Britain: Grace Aguilar’s ‘The Wanderers.’” Victorian Literature and Culture 27, no. 1 (1999): 143–69.

Hyman, Paula. Gender and Assimilation in Modem Jewish History: The Roles and Representations of Women. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995.

———. “Gender and the Shaping of Modern Jewish Identities.” Jewish Social Studies 8, no. 2/3 (2002): 153–61.

Kerker, Milton. “Grace Aguilar, A Woman of Israel.” Midstream 47, no. 2 (February 2001): 35.

Kiron, Arthur. “An Atlantic Jewish Republic of Letters?” Jewish History 20 (2006): 171– 211.

Klass, Traci Michele. “Writing” Home: Grace Aguilar and the Jews. Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 2005.

Klein, Kathrine. “An(Other) Scribbler: Grace Aguilar’s Anglicized Jewish Woman.” eSharp 6, no. 1 (Autumn 2005): 1–16.

———. “Grace Aguilar's ‘Edict’: Empowering Domesticity in ‘The Edict: A Tale of 1492’.” eSharp 9 (Spring 2007): 1–16.

Kostroun, Daniella. “A Formula for Disobedience: Jansenism, Gender, and the Feminist Paradox.” The Journal of Modern History 75 (September 2003): 483–522.

Kuzmack, Linda. Women’s Cause: The Jewish Women’s Movement in England and the United States 1881–1933. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990.

Langton, Daniel R. “The Gracious Ambiguity of Grace Aguilar (1816–47): Anglo-Jewish Theologian, Novelist, Poet, and Pioneer of Interfaith Relations.” Melilah Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies 8 (2011): 1–29.

McGann, Jerome. The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

241

Mellor, Anne K., ed. Romanticism and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

Moncion, Laura. “The Jewish Question and the Woman Question: Constructions of the Jewish Woman in Victorian London.” Historical Discourses: The McGill Undergraduate Journal of History 27 (Winter 2013): 107–31.

Noah, J. “Hebrew Education.” In Report of the Commissioner of Education Made to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year 1870 With Accompanying Papers, 359–70. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1870.

Piciotto, James. Sketches of Anglo–Jewish History. 1875. Edited by Israel Finestein. London: Soncino Press, 1956.

Ragussis, Michael. Figures of Conversion: “The Jewish Question” and English National Identity. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995.

Ruderman, David. Jewish Enlightenment in an English Key: Anglo-Jewry's Construction of Modern Jewish Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Scheinberg, Cynthia. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Hebraic Conversions: Feminism and Christian Typology in Aurora Leigh.” Victorian Literature and Culture 22 (1994): 53–72.

———. “Grace Aguilar (1816-47).” In Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide, edited by Marion Anne Taylor and Agnes Choi, 31–32. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012.

———. “Measure to yourself a prophet’s place: Biblical Heroines, Jewish Difference and Victorian Women’s Poetry.” In Women’s Poetry, Late Romantic to Late Victorian: Gender and Genre, 1830–1900, edited by Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain, 263–91. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.

Spector, Sheila A. “Introduction: The Politics of Religion.” The Jews and British Romanticism: Politics, Religion, Culture, edited by Sheila A. Spector, 1–13. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Szold, Henrietta. “Grace Aguilar.” In The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present, vol. 1. New York: Funk & Wagnells, 1901.

———. “Grace Aguilar.” In The Jewish Chronicle. July 9 (1847): 178. Accessed February 23, 2012. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/923-aguilar-grace.

242

Taylor, Marion Ann, and Heather E. Weir. “Sarah: The First Mother in Israel,” “Hagar: The Wanderer,” “Rebekah: Mother of Two Nations,” and “Leah and Rachel: Founder of the House of Israel.” In Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth–Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis. 121–37, 191–93, 268–79, and 343–60. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006.

Todd, Janet. The Sign of Angellica: Women Writing and Fiction 1660–1800. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

Umansky, Ellen M., and Dianne Ashton. Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality: A Sourcebook. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

Valman, Nadia. “Aguilar, Grace (1816–1847).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–11. Accessed January 15, 2008. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/odnb/ 9780192683120.001.0001/odnb- 9780192683120-e-217.

———. The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

———. “Semitism and Criticism: Victorian Anglo–Jewish Literary History.” Victorian Literature and Culture 27, no. 1 (1999): 235–48.

———. “Women Writers and the Campaign for Jewish Civil Rights in Early Victorian England.” In Women in British Politics, 1760–1860, edited by Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson, 93–114. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.

West-Burnham, Jocelyn. “Victorian Religion and its Influence on Women Writers. A Study of Four Women: Grace Aguilar, Harriet Martineau, George Eliot and Mary Kingsley.” Ph.D. diss., Open University, 2000.

Frances Elizabeth King

Primary Sources

King, Frances Elizabeth. The Beneficial Effects of the Christian Temper on Domestic Happiness. 2nd ed. London: F.C. & J. Rivington, 1813.

———. Female Scripture Characters Exemplifying Female Virtues by Mrs. King with a Memoir of the Author. 12th ed. London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1833.

———. The Rector's Memorandum Book, Being Memoirs of a Family in the North. London: Messrs. Rivington and J. Hatchard, 1819.

243

———. A Tour in France: 1802. 2nd ed. London: Printed by B.R. Howlett for J. Booth, 1814.

Secondary Sources

Bernard, Francis. The Papers of Francis Bernard, Governor of Massachusetts, 1760–69, edited by Colin Nicolson. Boston: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2007.

Higgins, Sophia Elizabeth. The Bernards of Abington and Nether Winchendon: A Family History, vol 1. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903.

———. The Bernards of Abington and Nether Winchendon: A Family History, vol. 3. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1904.

Martin, Mary Clare. "Frances Elizabeth King." In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–11. Accessed January 15, 2008. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/odnb/ 9780192683120.001.0001/odnb- 9780192683120-e-217.

“Obituary: Mrs. [Frances Elizabeth] King.” Gentleman's Magazine. 132, no. 1 (1822): 90–91.

Taylor, Marion Ann, and Heather E. Weir. “Sarah: The First Mother in Israel,” and “Rebekah: Mother of Two Nations.” In Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth- Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis, 112–19 and 258–64. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006.

Catherine McAuley

Primary Sources

Bolster, Mary Angela RSM, ed. The Correspondence of Catherine Mcauley, 1827–1841. Cork: Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, 1989.

[McAuley, Catherine]. Cottage Controversy. New York: P. O'Shea, 1883.

Moore, Mary Clare. A Little Book of Practical Sayings, Advices and Prayers of Our Revered Foundress, Mother Catherine Mcauley. London: Burns, Oates & Co., 1868.

Neumann, Mary Ignatia, ed. The Letters of Catherine McAuley 1827–1841. Baltimore: Helicon, 1969.

244

O'Brien, Susan. “McAuley [McGauley], Catherine Elizabeth [name in religion Mary Catherine] (1778?–1841), Roman Catholic nun.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–11. Accessed January 15, 2008. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/odnb/ 9780192683120.001.0001/odnb- 9780192683120-e-217.

Purcell, Mary Teresa, and Mary Bertrand Degnan, eds. Retreat Instructions of Mother Mary Catherine Mcauley. 1834–1853. Westminster: The Newman Press, 1952.

Sullivan, Mary C. A Shining Lamp: The Oral Instructions of Catherine McAuley. Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017.

______. Catherine McAuley and the Tradition of Mercy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

______, ed. The Correspondence of Catherine McAuley: 1818 –1841. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004.

———. “The Instructions and Sayings of Catherine McAuley.” Paper presented at Meeting of Mercy Association in Scripture and Theology, Burlingame, California, June1, 2005.

Secondary Sources

Bacon, Nathaniel. A Journal of Meditations for Every Day in the Year Gathered out of Divers Authors. 1669. Translated by Edward Mico. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1984.

Blake, Michael. Letter Journals, vol.6. Archives of the Sisters of Mercy. Bessbrook, Northern Ireland.

Blyth, Francis. A Devout Paraphrase on the Seven Penitential Psalms: Or a Practical Guide to Repentance. 7th ed. Dublin: Catholic Book Society, 1835.

Burns, Helen Marie, and Sheila Carney. Praying with Catherine McAuley. Companions for the Journey. Winona: Saint Mary's Press, 1985.

Carroll, Mary Austin. Leaves of the Annals of the Sisters of Mercy. New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co, 1884.

———. Life of Catherine McAuley. New York: D.& J. Sadlier, 1890.

Davis, Elizabeth M. “Catherine McAuley (1778–1841).” In Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide, edited by Marion Anne Taylor and Agnes Choi, 352–354. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012.

245

———. “Wisdom and Mercy Meet: Catherine McAuley’s Interpretation of Scripture.” In Recovering Nineteenth-Century Women Interpreters of the Bible, edited by Christiana de Groot and Marion Ann Taylor, 63–80. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007.

Dean, Joseph Joy. Devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus: containing exercises for Confession, Communion, and the Holy Mass, with numerous other prayers and reflections suited to the devotion, and an account of its origin, progress, and excellence. Dublin: R. Grace, 1841.

Degnan, Mary Bertrand. Mercy unto Thousands: Life of Mother Mary Catherine McAuley, Foundress of the Sisters of Mercy. Westminster: Newman Press, 1957.

Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. New York: Orbis Books, 2001.

Harnett, Mary Vincent. A Catechism of Scripture History Compiled by the Sisters of Mercy for the Use of Children Attending Their Schools. Revised by Edmund O'Reilly. London: Charles Dolman, 1852.

———. The Life of Rev. Mother Catherine McAuley, Foundress of the Order of Mercy. Edited by Richard B. O'Brien. Dublin: John F. Fowler, 1864.

Lelen, J. M., ed. The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1946.

Marmion, J. P. “The Penny Catechism: A Long Lasting Text.” Paradigm 26 (October 1998). Accessed February 23, 2006. http://w4.ed.uiuc.edu/faculty/westbury /Paradigm/ Marmion3.html.

McNamara, Jo Ann. Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Muldrey, Mary Hermenia. Abounding in Mercy: Mother Austin Carroll. New Orleans: Habersham, 1988.

Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Form of Ceremony for the Reception and Profession of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Dublin: J Byrn, Printer, 1834.

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, ed. Praying in the Spirit of Catherine McAuley. Chicago: Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, 1999.

Sullivan, Mary C. “Catherine McAuley and the Characteristics of Higher Mercy Education.” The MAST Journal 16, no. 2 (2006): 18–26.

246

———. “Catherine McAuley’s Spiritual Reading and Prayers.” Irish Theological Quarterly 57, no. 2 (1991): 124–46.

———. “Catherine McAuley’s Theological and Literary Debt to Alonso Rodriguez: The ‘Spirit of the Institute’ Parallels.” Recusant History 20 (1990): 81–105.

———. The Path of Mercy: The Life of Catherine McAuley. Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012.

Thomas à Kempis. The Imitation of Christ, edited by Harold C. Gardiner. New York: Hanover House, 1834.

Mary Ann Schimmelpenninck

Primary Sources

Hankin, Christiana., ed. Life of Mary Anne SchimmelPenninck. 2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1859.

Schimmelpenninck, Mary Anne. Biblical Fragments. London: Ogle, Duncan & Co., 1821.

———. Is the system of Slavery sanctioned or condemned by Scripture? London: John and Arthur Arch, 1824.

———. “Letter from Mary Anne Galton Schimmelpenninck to Catharine Gurney, May 28, 1850.” In The Gurneys of Earlham, by Augustus J. C. Hare, vol. 2, 352. London: George Allen, 1895.

———. Narrative of a tour taken in the year 1667, to La Grande Chartreuse and Alet by Claude Lancelot: including some account of Armand Jean Le Bouthillier de Rancé . . . reformer of the monastery of Notre Dame de la Trappe: with notes; and an appendix containing some particulars respecting Du Verger de Hauranne, Cornelius Jansenius; and also a brief sketch of Port Royal. London: J. and A. Arch, 1816.

———. Principles of Beauty as Manifested in Nature, Art and Human Character, edited by Christiana Hankin. London: Longman, 1859.

———. Psalms according to the Authorized Version. With Prefatory Titles, and Tabular Index of Scriptural References, from the Port Royal Authors, Marking the Circumstances and Chronological Order of Their Composition: To Which is Added, An Essay upon the Psalms and Their Spiritual Application. London: J. and A. Arch, 1825.

247

———. Sacred Musings on Manifestations of God to the Soul of Man. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860.

———. Select memoirs of Port Royal: to which are Appended Tour to Alet. London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1835.

———. Theory on the classification of beauty and deformity, and their correspondence with physiognomonic expression, exemplified in various works of art. London: J. and A. Arch, 1815.

Secondary Sources

Duquette, Natasha. “Anna Barbauld and Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck on the Sublimity of Scripture.” 62–79. In Dauntless Spirits: Sublimity and Social Consciousness in the Poetry of Ann Radcliffe, H. M. Williams, and Joanna Baillie. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007.

———. “‘Dauntless Faith’: Contemplative Sublimity and Social Action in Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck's Aesthetics.” Christianity and Literature 55, no. 4 (June 22, 2006): 513–538.

———. “‘Motionless Wonder’: Contemplating Gothic Sublimity in Northanger Abbey,” Persuasions On–Line 30, no. 2 (Spring 2010). http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/ on–line/vol30no2/duquette.html.

———. Veiled Intent: Dissenting Women's Aesthetic Approach to Biblical Interpretation. Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2016.

Hoyle, Lydia Huffman. “Nineteenth-Century Single Women and Motivation for Mission.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 20, no. 2 (1996): 58–64.

Huebner, Kathinka. Über das Schöne und das Deformierte: Systematische und historische Darstellung der ‘Theory on the Classification of Beauty and Deformity’ von Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck. Köln: Hansjörg Mayer, 1969.

Midgley, Clare. Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780-1870. Abingdon: Routledge, 1995.

Moilliet, James Andrew Keir, ed. Elizabeth Anne Galton (1808–1906): A Well-connected Gentlewoman. Northwich: Leonie Press, 2003.

Neeley, Kathleen L., A. Bashore, and Joseph Priestley House. “Esteem, Regard, and Respect for Rationality: Joseph Priestley’s Female Connections.” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry 30, no. 2 (2005): 77–90.

248

Smith. Harry John. “Propertied Society and Public Life: The Social History of Birmingham, 1780–1832.” D.Phil. diss., University of Oxford, 2013.

Wray Beal, Lissa M. “Mary Anne SchimmelPenninck (1778–1856).” In Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters: A Historical and Biographical Guide, edited by Marion Anne Taylor and Agnes Choi, 436–40. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012.

———. “Mary Anne SchimmelPenninck: A Nineteenth-Century Woman as Psalm- Reader.” In Recovering Nineteenth-Century Women Interpreters of the Bible, edited by Christiana de Groot and Marion Ann Taylor. 81–98. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007.

Wilson, Linda. “Constrained by Zeal: Women in Mid-Nineteenth Century Nonconformist Churches.” Journal of Religious History 23 no. 2 (1999): 185–202.

———. “No Stranger to the Closet: Women and Personal Devotions in Nineteenth- Century English Nonconformity.” Yearbook of the European Society of Women in Theological Research 7 (1999): 145–62.

Contextual Theology

Bevans, Stephen B. Models of Contextual Theology. New York: Orbis Books, 2002.

Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. New York: Orbis Books, 1991.

Brown, Delwin, Sheila Greeve Davaney, and Kathryn Tanner, eds. Converging on Culture: Theologians in Dialogue with Cultural Analysis and Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Burke, Peter. “Context in Context.” Common Knowledge 8, no.1 (2002): 152–77.

Cortez, Marc. “Context and Concept: Contextual Theology and the Nature of Theological Discourse.” Westminster Theological Journal 67, no. 1 (2005): 85– 102.

———. “Creation and Context: A Theological Framework for Contextual Theology.” Westminster Theological Journal 67, no. 2 (2005): 347–362.

De Mesa, José M. “Contextual Theologizing: Future Perspectives.” East Asian Pastoral Review 40, no. 3 (2003). In Theses on the Local Church: A Theological Reflection in the Asian Context, FABC Papers 60, 54. Accessed March14, 2010. http://eapi.admu.edu.ph/eapr003/mesa.htm.

249

Frank, John R. “Reforming Theology: Toward a Postmodern Reformed Dogmatics.” Westminster Theological Journal 65, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 1–26.

Kim, Kirsteen. “Missiology as Global Conversation of (Contextual) Theologies.” Paper for the IAMS Assembly in Malaysia. Mission Studies 21, no. 1 (2004): 39–53.

Olson, Dennis T. “Biblical Theology as Provisional Monologization: A Dialogue with Childs, Brueggemann and Bakhtin.” Biblical Interpretation 6, no. 2 (1998): 162– 80.

Reader, John. Local Theology: Church Community in Dialogue. London: SPCK, 1995.

Schreiter, Robert. Constructing Local Theologies. New York: Orbis Books, 1985.

———. The New Catholicity: Theology Between the Global and the Local. Faith and Cultures Series. New York: Orbis Books, 1997.

Tanner, Kathryn. Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.

Tracy, David. Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology. New York: Seabury, 1975.

Vincent, John. “The Challenges and Responsibilities of Contextual Theology.” Reviews in Religion & Theology 4, 1 (February 1997): 7–13.

History

Addinall, Peter. Philosophy and Biblical Interpretation: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Bartlett, Thomas. The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question, 1690– 1830. Savage: Barnes & Noble Books, 1992.

Bradley, James E. Religion, Revolution, and English Radicalism: Nonconformity in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Brians, Paul. “Romanticism.” Syllabus for Humanities 303. 18th and 19th Century European Classics. Washington State University, Spring 2007. Accessed March 10, 2018. https://brians.wsu.edu/category/study-guide/ 18th-and-19th-century - european-classics/.

Brown, Richard. Church and State in Modern Britain, 1700–1850. New York: Routledge, 1991.

250

Brown, Stewart J. The National Churches of England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1801–1846. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Brown, Stewart J., and Timothy Tackett, eds. Enlightenment, Reawakening, and Revolution, 1660–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Burstein, Miriam Elizabeth. “Protestants Against the Jewish and Catholic Family, c.1829 to c.1860.” Victorian Literature and Culture 31, no. 1 (2003): 333–57.

———. Narrating Women’s History in Britain, 1770–1902. Burlington: Ashgate, 2004.

Byrne, Lavinia. The Hidden Voice: Christian Women and Social Change. London: SPCK, 1995.

Connolly, S. J. Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1780–1845. Dublin: Four Court Press, 2001.

Cantor, G. N. Quakers, Jews, and science: religious responses to modernity and the sciences in Britain, 1650–1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Chilvers, Ian. "Romanticism." In The Oxford Dictionary of Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed January 20, 2018. http://www.oxfordreference.com.qe2a-proxy.mun.ca/view/10.1093/ acref/9780198604761.001.0001/acref-9780198604761-e-3003.

Claydon, Tony, and Ian McBride, eds. Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650–c.1850. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Duncan, Kathryn, ed. Religion in the Age of Reason: A Transatlantic Study of the Long Eighteenth Century. New York: AMS Press, 2006.

Fordyce, James. Sermons to Young Women, in Two Volumes. London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1809.

Fosso, Kurt. Buried Communities: Wordsworth and the Bonds of Mourning. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. Accessed June 4, 2018. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291874693_Buried_communities_Words worth_and_the_bonds_of_mourning. Gibson, William. Church, State, and Society, 1760–1850. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

———. Religious Identities in Britain, 1660–1832. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.

Gregory, Jeremy, and Jeffrey S. Chamberlain, eds. The National Church in Local Perspective: The Church of England and the Regions, 1660–1800. Rochester: Boydell Press, 2003.

251

Gregory, John. A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters. London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1774.

Haakonssen, Knud. Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Herlihy, Kevin, ed. Propagating the Word of Irish Dissent, 1650–1800. Portland: Four Courts Press, 1998.

Hill, Harvey. “The Science of Reform: Abraham Geiger and the Wissenschaft des Judentum.” Modern Judaism: A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience 27, no. 3 (1 October 2007): 329–49. Accessed March 12, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjm003.

Howard, R. A. “Domesticating the Novel: Moral–Domestic Fiction, 1820–1834.” Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text 13 (Winter 2004). Accessed February 12, 2018. http://www.romtext.org.uk/reports/cc13_n03/.

Jennings, Judi. Gender, Religion, and Radicalism in the Long Eighteenth Century: The ‘Ingenious Quaker’ and Her Connections. Burlington: Ashgate, 2006.

Kelly, Gary. Women, Writing, and Revolution, 1790–1827. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Kelly, James, and Dáire Keogh, eds. History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000.

Keogh, Dáire. The French Disease: The Catholic Church and Irish Radicalism, 1790– 1800. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1993.

Koltun–Fromm, Ken. Abraham Geiger’s Liberal Judaism: Personal Meaning and Religious Authority. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Krueger, Christine L. The Reader's Repentance: Women Preachers, Women Writers, and Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Larkin, Emmet J. The Historical Dimensions of Irish Catholicism. New York: Arno Press 1976.

———. The Pastoral Role of the Roman Catholic Church in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1750– 1850. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2006.

Larsen, Timothy. A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

252

———. “The reforming project of English evangelical dissenters.” Fides et Historia 33, 1 (Winter 2001): 109–120.

Larson, Janet. “Lady Wrestling for the Victorian Soul: Discourse, Gender, and Spirituality in Women’s Texts.” Special Issue, Religion and Literature 23, no. 3 (1991): 43–64.

Leach, Camilla. “Religion and Rationality: Quaker Women and Science Education 1790– 1850.” History of Education 35, no. 1 (2006): 69–90.

Low, Katherine. “Pairing Up: Reception History and Gender Theory.” The Bible and Interpretation. August 2013. Accessed February 12, 2018. http://www.bibleinterp.com /articles/2013/08/low378015.shtml.

Luddy, Maria. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

———. Women in Ireland, 1800–1918: A Documentary History. Cork: Cork University Press, 1995.

Magray, Mary Peckham. The Transforming Power of the Nuns: Women, Religion, and Cultural Change in Ireland, 1750–1900. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Maher, Michael. Irish Spirituality. Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1981.

Martin, Roger H. Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-Victorian Britain, 1795–1830. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1983.

Melnyk, Julie, ed. Women’s Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Transfiguring the Faith of Their Fathers. Literature and Society in Victorian Britain 3. New York: Garland Reference Publishing, Inc., 1998.

Moilliet, James Andrew Keir, ed. Elizabeth Anne Galton (1808-1906): A Well-connected Gentlewoman. Northwich: Leonie Press, 2003.

Moody, T. W., and F. X. Martin, eds. The Course of Irish History. Cork: Cork University Press, 1967.

Morgan, Sue, ed. Women, Religion, and Feminism in Britain, 1750–1900. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002.

Mullett, Michael A. Catholics in Britain and Ireland, 1558–1829. London: Macmillan Press, 1998.

253

Mursell, Gordon. English Spirituality: From 1700 to the Present Day. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

Ostriker, Alicia. “A Word Made Flesh: The Bible and Revisionist Women’s Poetry.” Special Issue, Religion and Literature 23, no. 3 (1991): 9–26.

Prochaska, F. K. Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.

Rickard, Suzanne. “Victorian Women with Causes: Writing Religion and Action.” In Women, Religion and Feminism in Britain, 1750–1900, edited by Sue Morgan, 139–57. New York: Palgrave McMillian Ltd., 2002.

Rogerson, John. Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany. London: SPCK, 1984.

Ruskin, John. Sesame and Lilies: Lecture II—Lilies of Queens’ Gardens. London: Hazell, Watson and Viney, 1883.

Ruwe, Donelle. “Introduction.” In Culturing the Child, 1690-1914: Essays in Memory of Mitzi Myers, edited by Donelle Ruwe, 2–14. Lanham: Scarecrow Press in association with the Children’s Literature Association, 2005.

Saunders, Julia. “Putting the Reader Right: Reassessing Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts.” Romanticism on the Net, no. 16, November 1999, quoting Mitzi Myers, “Hannah More’s Tracts for the Times: Social Fiction and Female Ideology.” In Fetter'd or Free? British Women Novelists, 1670-1815, edited by Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1986.

Scheinberg, Cynthia. “Introduction: Re-Mapping Anglo-Jewish Literary History.” Victorian Literature and Culture 27, no. 1 (1999): 115–124.

———. Women’s Poetry and Religion in Victorian England: Jewish Identity and Christian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Shattock, Joanne. Women and Literature in Britain 1800–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Singer, Steven. “Jewish Religious Thought in Early Victorian London.” AJS Review 10, no. 2 (Autumn 1985): 181–210.

Smyth, Jim. The Making of the United Kingdom, 1660–1800: State, Religion and Identity in Britain and Ireland. New York: Longman, 2001.

Thomas, John. “The meaning of ‘style’ in traditional architecture: the case of Gothic.” The Journal of Architecture 5, no. 3 (2000): 293–306.

254

Virgin, Peter. The Church in an Age of Negligence: Ecclesiastical Structure and Problems of Church Reform, 1700–1840. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1989.

Wahrman, Dror. Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Walsh, John, Colin Haydon, and Stephen Taylor, eds. The Church of England, c.1689– c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Watts, Ruth. “Some Radical Educational Networks of the Late Eighteenth Century and their Influence.” History of Education 27, no. 1 (1998): 1–14.

Wheeler, Michael. The Old Enemies: Catholic and Protestant in Nineteenth-Century English Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Whelan, Irene. The Bible War in Ireland: The “Second Reformation” and the Polarization of Protestant-Catholic Relations, 1800–1840. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.

Yates, Nigel. Eighteenth-Century Britain: Religion and Politics, 1715–1815. New York: Longman, 2008.

———. The Religious Condition of Ireland, 1770–1850. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Interpretation

Amador, J. D. H. “Feminist Biblical Hermeneutics: A Failure of Theoretical Nerve.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66 (1998): 39–57.

Barton, John. The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Berlis, Angela, and Anna-Marie J. A. C. M. Korte. “Introduction.” In Everyday Life and the Sacred: Re/configuring Gender Studies in Religion, edited by Angela Berlis and Anna-Marie J. A. C. M. Korte, 1–14. Studies in Theology and Religion 23. Leiden: Brill Academic Pub, 2017.

Bray, Gerald Lewis. Biblical Interpretation: Past & Present. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996.

Briggs, Richard. “What does Hermeneutics have to do with Biblical Interpretation?” Heythrop Journal 47, no. 1 (2006): 55–74.

255 de Groot, Christiana. “Nineteenth-Century Feminist Responses to the Laws in the Pentateuch.” In Strangely Familiar: Protofeminist Interpretation of Patriarchal Biblical Texts, edited by Nancy Calvert-Koyzis and Heather Weir, 105–119. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009.

Fewell, Danna Nolan “Reading the Bible Ideologically: Feminist Criticism.” In An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and the Application: To Each Its Own Meaning, edited by Steven L. McKenzie and Stephen R. Haynes, 268–82. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999.

Frei, Hans. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.

Hinga, Teresia M. “‘Reading With’: An Exploration of the Interface between ‘Critical’ and ‘Ordinary’ Readings of the Bible: A Response.” Semeia 73 (1996): 277–84.

Lategan, Bernard C. “Scholar and Ordinary Reader—More than a Simple Interface.” Semeia 73 (1996): 243–55.

McKenzie, Steven L., ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Moyise, Steve. “Intertextuality and Biblical Studies: A Review.” Verbum et Ecclesia, 23 (2002): 418–31.

———. “Introduction: Diverse Strategies for New Testament Interpretation.” In Exploring Intertextuality: Diverse Strategies for New Testament Interpretation, edited by B. J. Oropeza and Steve Moyise, xiii–ix . Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2016.

Newsom, Carol. “Probing Scripture: The New Biblical Critics.” The Christian Century 118, no. 1 (January 3–10, 2001): 21–8.

Nolan, Albert. “Work, the Bible, Workers and Theologians: Elements of a Workers’ Theology.” Semeia 73 (1996): 213–20.

Patte, Daniel. “Biblical Scholars at the Interface between Critical and Ordinary Readings: A Response.” Semeia 73 (1996): 263–76.

Preuss, Horst Dietrich. Old Testament Theology. 2 vols. Translated by Leo G. Perdue. Louisville: Westminster, 1995–96.

Sanders, James. Canon and Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.

256

———. From Sacred Story to Sacred Text. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987.

———. “The Modern History of the Qumran Psalms Scroll and Canonical Criticism.” In Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov, edited by Shalom M. Paul, et al., 393-411. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

———. “The Scrolls and the Canonical Process.” In Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, edited by P. Flint and J. VanderKam, vol. 2, 1–23. Leiden: Brill, 1999.

Sandys-Wunsch, John. What Have They Done to the Bible?: A History of Modern Biblical Interpretation. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2005.

Schneiders, Sandra M. The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.

Selvidge, Marla J. Notorious Voices: Feminist Biblical Interpretation, 1500–1920. New York: Continuum, 1996.

Shaked, Gershon. “Modern Midrash: The Biblical Canon and Modern Literature.” AJS Review 28, no. 1 (April 2004): 43–62.

Shavit, Yaacov, and Mordechai Eran. The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to The Book of Books. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007.

Styler, Rebecca. “A Scripture of Their Own: Nineteenth-Century Bible Biography and Feminist Bible Criticism.” Christianity and Literature 57, no. 1 (Autumn 2007): 65–85.

Taylor, Marion Ann, and Heather E. Weir, eds. Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth- Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006.

———. Women in the Story of Jesus: The Gospels through the Eyes of Nineteenth- Century Female Biblical Interpreters. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016.

Thiselton, Anthony C. New Horizons in Hermeneutics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992.

———. Thiselton on Hermeneutics: The Collected Works and New Essays of Anthony Thiselton, edited by John R. Hinnells. Burlington: Ashgate, 2006.

Weems, Renita J. “Response to ‘Reading With’: An Exploration of the Interface Between Critical and Ordinary Readings of the Bible.” Semeia 73 (1996): 257–61.

257

West, Gerald O. “Articulating, Owning and Mainstreaming Local Theologies: The Contribution of Contextual Bible Study.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 122 (July 2005): 23–35.

West, Gerald O. Reading Other-Wise: Socially Engaged Biblical Scholars Reading with Their Local Communities. Semeia Studies 62. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007.

West, Gerald O. and Muse Dube. “An Introduction: How We Have Come to ‘Read With’.” Semeia 73 (1996): 7–17.

Yarchin, William. History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.

Social Location/Cultural Criticism

Anderson, J. Capel, and J. L. Staley, eds. “Taking It Personally: Autobiographical Biblical Criticism.” Special Issue, Semeia 72 (1995).

Blount, B. K. Cultural Interpretation. Reorienting New Testament Criticism. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

Carney, Thomas F. The Shape of the Past: Models and Antiquity. Lawrence: Coronado Press, 1975.

Childs, Brevard. “Interpreting the Bible amid Cultural Change.” Theology Today 54 (1997): 200–11.

Donaldson, L. E., ed. “Postcolonialism and Scriptural Reading.” Special Issue, Semeia 75 (1996).

Fewell, D. Nolan, and G. A. Phillips, eds. “Ethics, Bible, Reading as If.” Special Issue, Semeia 77 (1998).

Fiorenza, Elisabeth S. Changing Horizons: Explorations of Feminist Interpretation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013.

———. Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.

Gordon, J. Dorcas. “Feminist Method as a Critical Tool for Preaching in the 21st Century.” TST Homiletics Seminar 1, no. 2 (Summer 2007).

Kuan, Kah-Jin Jeffrey. “Reading with New Eyes: Social Location and the Bible.” Pacific School of Religion Bulletin 83, 1 (2003).

258

Patte, Daniel. “When Ethical Questions Transform Critical Biblical Studies.” Semeia 77 (1997): 271–285.

Robbins, Vernon K. “The Rhetorical Full-Turn in Biblical Interpretation and its Relevance for Feminist hermeneutics.” In Her Master’s tools? Feminist and Postcolonial Engagements of Historical-Critical Discourse, edited by Caroline Vander Stichele and Todd Penner, 109–27. Atlanta: SBL and Leiden: Brill, 2005.

———. “The Social Location of the Implied Author of Luke-Acts.” The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for Interpretation, edited by Jerome H. Neyrey, 305–32. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991.

Rohrbaugh, Richard L. “‘Social Location of Thought’ as a Heuristic Construct in New Testament Study.” JSNT 30 (1987): 103–19.

Segovia, F.F. Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000.

Segovia, F.F. and Mary Ann Tolbert, eds. Reading from This Place. Volume 1: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

———. Reading from This Place. Volume 2: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in Global Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

Shattock, Joanne. Women and Literature in Britain 1800–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

West, Gerald. “Articulating, Owning and Mainstreaming Local Theologies.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 122 (July 2005): 23–35.