178 EMWJ Vol. 9, No. 1 • Fall 2014 Book Reviews English Nuns In
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178 EMWJ Vol. 9, No. 1 • Fall 2014 Book Reviews English nuns in exile, and thus provides both the impetus for additional discoveries and a preliminary canon of texts upon which to base future scholarship. Jenna Lay Lehigh University English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800. Part 2 . Vols . 4-6 . Eds . Caroline Bowden, Katrien Daemen-de Gelder, James E . Kelly, and Carmen M . Mangion . London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013 . 1392 pp . $495 . ISBN 978-1-8489-3215-9 . Dorothy L. Latz was one of the first to draw sustained scholarly attention to the writings of English nuns with her 1989 edition “Glow-Worm Light”: Writings of 17th Century English Recusant Women from Original Manuscripts. If Latz’s title suggested that only faint traces remained of the English con- vents on the continent, more recently Caroline Bowden — supervisor of the online prosopographical database “Who Were the Nuns?” and general editor of the six-volume series English Convents in Exile — has uncovered a wealth of little-known material documenting the nuns’ lives. The final three volumes of English Convents in Exile fulfill the high expectations cre- ated by the publication of the first three volumes in 2012, making available a fresh set of rare primary texts (manuscript and print) that will be of vital importance for scholars working on religion and/or women in the early modern period. Volume 4 (Life Writing II), edited by Katrien Daemen-de Gelder, contains the Short Colections of the Antwerp Carmelites. Begun by Prioress Mary Joseph of St. Teresa (Mary) Howard after the 1718 discovery of an incorrupt body in the house’s dead cellar, this manuscript includes obituaries for each nun who professed at this convent from its foundation in 1619 through 1713. As Howard notes, she aimed to memorialize her predecessors and to educate future generations: “I hope. those that shall follow [will]. Continue this work and. preserve the memory of those who goe before since there is always something to be remarked of example and edification for others to imitate” (268). The obituaries consequently Book Reviews 179 emphasize monastic virtues such as obedience, as when Mary of St. Albert (Mary) Trentham patiently endured falling snow for hours while follow- ing a superior’s command to wait for her. The manuscript also provides models of monastic spirituality by incorporating the nuns’ examinations of conscience, descriptions of prayer, and responses to the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. Many of the obituaries include vocations written by the nuns themselves, providing valuable information on their decisions to choose a religious life. At the same time, Short Colections functions as a collec- tive history of the house. The autobiographical and historical writings of the house’s first abbess, Anne of the Ascension (Anne) Worsley, are particularly interesting because of their varying perspectives on the house’s foundation and early years. While a first-person account of her spiritual life emphasizes Worsley’s personal fears and depression during this time, her third-person history of the house’s establishment focuses on her suc- cessful fight to prevent Carmelite friars from relaxing the house’s adher- ence to Teresa of Avila’s constitutions. Short Colections also incorporates material from priests associated with the house, including Toby Matthew’s lively tale of how Agnes Rosendell entered the house by squeezing herself through the “turn” (a device that allowed the house to exchange goods with the world) after her family opposed her desire to be a nun. Besides detailing the house’s rich internal life, Short Colections shows that the nuns interacted with a range of influential figures such as Charles II, Margaret Cavendish, and the Infanta Isabella. Volume 5 (Convent Management) is a highlight of the series due to its focus on the convents’ economic activities and leadership roles, topics that sorely need further scholarly attention. In Part 1, “Finance,” James E. Kelly provides various kinds of financial records from several orders. An initial section on “Income” reveals that the convents relied primar- ily on dowries, alms, and investments for financial stability. The conver- gence between financial and spiritual economies is particularly clear in the account books for alms received, as in the case of Mary of Modena’s donation to the Paris Benedictines in exchange for perpetual thrice weekly masses for her soul and those of her family. “Expenditure” demonstrates how the convents outlaid money for daily necessities, building projects, and investments. The Paris Benedictines’ “Accounts” offer a wonderfully 180 EMWJ Vol. 9, No. 1 • Fall 2014 Book Reviews detailed overview of these expenses, including purchases of “light bread for puden” on August 12, 1741 and a “pitcher for Holly Water” for their chapel on September 26, 1733 (121, 123). A section on financial agents, edited by Richard G. Williams, offers a case study of the way that Mannock Strickland, a counselor-at-law in England, managed the finances of the Louvain Augustinians and Brussels Dominicans. In Part 2, “Governance, Leadership and Authority,” Caroline Bowden presents documents that reflect the roles played by abbesses, prioresses, and councils. Prescriptive texts — such as “About a Superior” by Prioress Mary Margaret Brent of the Antwerp Carmelites — offer guidance on the qualities expected of supe- riors. In a more reflective mode, Abbess Mary Knatchbull of the Ghent Benedictines describes the difficulties she faced in founding a filiation at Boulogne. Several texts document how abbesses dealt with internal and external threats to their authority, as in the disputes among the Gravelines Poor Clares and the Paris Conceptionists. Finally, both Part 1 and Part 2 contain excerpts from the council notes of the Paris Augustinians, which, taken together, provide a useful record of how financial, administrative, and spiritual concerns intersected with one another. For example, in 1696 the council “rejected with indignation” a proposal that the house might benefit from a tax paid by patrons of theaters and opera houses, finding the idea “very unbeseeming & unworthy of the Monastery” (383). Volume 6 (The Convents and the Outside World) provides a fitting conclusion to the entire series by covering the convents’ interactions with America, England, and the continent, largely during the eighteenth cen- tury. In Part 1, “Polemics,” Emma Major supplies a range of texts showing contemporary attitudes toward nuns, which often reflect a warped version of the monastic ideals discussed elsewhere in the series. For example, a sec- tion on seventeenth-century polemic, edited by Michael Questier, contains Thomas Robinson’s Anatomie of the English Nunnery at Lisbon (1622), which alleges that an unscrupulous confessor used the monastic virtue of obedience to seduce nuns. This trope reappears in selections from English translations of European polemical texts such as The Amorous Friars (1780), yet sentimentalized depictions of nuns in Addison’s Spectator (1711) and popular novels (Catharine Selden’s English Nun, 1797) offer a more positive view of cloistered life. Part 2, “American Connections,” Book Reviews 181 edited by Caroline Bowden, focuses on contact with the American colonies and, later, the nascent United States. Most of this section centers on the Hoogstraten Carmelites’ establishment of an American convent in Port Tobacco, Maryland. In a fascinating account of the founding nuns’ jour- ney from the Low Countries to the United States, Clare Joseph (Frances) Dickinson memorably records the trials caused by illness, poor food, and the ship captain’s “Stingy dirty dispositions, his ill breeding, want of attention &c” (181). Other texts range from instructions on how to build the nuns’ beds to a spiritual manual brought from the motherhouse in Hoogstraten. Part 3, “The French Revolution, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Return to England,” edited by Carmen M. Mangion, contains firsthand accounts of how the French Revolution affected Augustinian, Benedictine, Carmelite, and Poor Clare communities. These texts share striking commonalities, such as the nuns’ attempts to maintain a conventual identity even after losing outward markers such as religious clothing. Theresa Joseph (Mary Ann) Johnson, for instance, connects the Paris Benedictines’ stay in prison to the monastic vow of poverty: “here we found real poverty” (317). This section also contains texts written by the French authorities, including their interviews of the nuns. The volume concludes with a much-needed index of all six volumes. As with the first three volumes of this series, the editors retain original spelling, pagination, and cancellations even while accommodating modern readers by expanding contractions and simplifying punctuation. Meanwhile, annotations and brief introductions helpfully situate the texts within historical and monastic contexts. Inevitably in an undertaking of this magnitude, typographical and other small errors occur through- out. While volume 5 has some misnumbered footnotes, the edition of Robinson’s Anatomie in volume 6 occasionally confuses long “s” with “f ” and “I” with “l.” Graduate students and scholars are an obvious audience for these volumes, but with adequate guidance some selections would be suitable for use in advanced undergraduate courses. The final three volumes of English Convents in Exile make a major contribution to scholarship on early modern women’s lives, religious views, and writings. This invaluable reference belongs on the shelves of academic and research libraries everywhere since it will be of interest to scholars in 182 EMWJ Vol. 9, No. 1 • Fall 2014 Book Reviews the fields of history, literature, religion, and women’s studies. Much as Latz’s work was a starting point for the past two decades of scholarship on the English convents, so Bowden’s English Convents in Exile should inspire many dissertations, monographs, and articles on this long-neglected subject. Jaime Goodrich Wayne State University Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers. Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores. A Bilingual Edition and Study .