Religion for Further Reading

1 Chapter Six: Religion For Further Reading Wide-ranging collections of articles provide a good place to begin if you wish an overview of women’s role in religion. Some of the best include Rosemary Radford Ruether, Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1974); Rosemary Radford Ruether and Eleanore McLaughlin (eds.), Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1979); Richard L. Greaves (ed.), Triumph Over Silence: Women in Protestant History (Westport, CT, Greenwood, 1985); Lynda L. Coon et al. (eds.), That Gentle Strength: Historical Perspectives on Women in Christianity (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1990); W. J. Shields and Diana Wood (eds.), Women in the Church, Studies in Church History, vol. 27 (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990); Judith Baskin (ed.), Jewish Women in Historical Perspective (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1991); Kari Elizabeth Borreson and Kari Vogt (eds.), Women’s Studies of the Christian and Islamic Traditions: Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Foremothers (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic, 1993); Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi (eds.), Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996); Beverly Mayne Kienzle and Pamela J. Walker (eds.), Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998). 2 Two collections focus only on the early modern period, with articles about women in many countries, are Sherrin Marshall (ed.), Women in Reformation and Counter- Reformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1989), and Susan E. Dinan and Debra Meyers (eds.), Women and Religion in Old and New Worlds (New York, Routledge, 2001). Rudolph M. Bell and Donald Weinstein, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000–1700 (Chicago, University of Chicago, 1982), discusses the differing opportunities for male and female sanctity. Nancy Bradley Warren, Women of God and Arms: Female Spirituality and Political Conflict, 1380–1600 (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), looks at the political dimensions of women’s religious activities. Bibliographies and research guides provide another place to look for further information, and include F. Ellen Weaver, “Women and Religion in Early Modern France: A Bibliographic Essay on the State of the Question,” Catholic Historical Review 67 (1981), 50–9; Merry E. Wiesner, Women in the Sixteenth Century: A Bibliography, Sixteenth Century Bibliography 23 (St. Louis, Center for Reformation Research, 1983); Kathryn Norberg, “The Counter-Reformation and Women, Religious and Lay,” in John O’Malley, S.J. (ed.), Catholicism in Early Modern History: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, Center for Reformation Research, 1988), pp. 133–46; Merry E. Wiesner, “Studies of Women, the Family and Gender,” in William S. Maltby (ed.), Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research II (St. Louis, Center for Reformation Research, 1992), pp. 159–87; Merry Wiesner-Hanks, “Women, Gender, and Sexuality,” in Alec Ryrie (ed.), Palgrave Advances: The European Reformations (Aldershot, Palgrave, 2006), pp. 253–72. The 3 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, which began publication in 1984, always contains the most current research. Women in medieval Christianity have been the focus of a number of fascinating studies. Among the most important are Caroline Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1982), and Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food for Medieval Women (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987); Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Jane Schulenberg, Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998); Hildegard Elisabeth Keller, My Secret Is Mine: Studies on Religion and Eros in the German Middle Ages (Leuven, Belgium, Peeters, 2000); Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Lives of the Anchoresses: The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe, trans. Myra Heerspink Scholz (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). Useful collections of articles on medieval women and religion include Derek Baker (ed.), Medieval Women (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1978), and Julius Kirschner and Suzanne Wemple (eds.), Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy (New York and London, Basil Blackwell, 1985). Because so many of the records by or about medieval women concern their religious life, most of the suggestions of general works on medieval women mentioned in the suggested readings for Chapter 1 offer information about religion. Many studies of medieval women and religion focus on nuns and convents. Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators 1298– 4 1545 (Washington, DC, The Catholic University of America Press, 1997) explores ideas about the cloistering of women. Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991), Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London, Routledge, 1994); and Bruce Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890–1215 (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1997), explore the actual situation for monastic women. Analyses of women in organized religious communities in the later Middle Ages are important for understanding changes and continuities in the era of the Reformation. These include Marilyn Oliva, The Convent and Community in Late Medieval England: Female Monasteries in the Diocese of Norwich, 1350–1540 (Rochester, NY, Boydell & Brewer, 1997); Nancy Bradley Warren, Spiritual Economies: Female Monasticism in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200– 1565 (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); and Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2004). Two recent studies of female figures of devotion in the late Middle Ages are Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2000) and Virginia Nixon, Mary’s Mother: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Europe (University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). 5 Late medieval lay women’s religious lives have been explored in Shannon McSheffrey, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420–1530 (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Katherine L. French, ‘To free them from binding’: Women in the Late Medieval English Parish,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 27, no. 3 (Winter 1997), 387–412, and “Maidens’ Lights and Wives’ Stores: Women’s Parish Guilds in Late Medieval England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998), 399–426; Catherine Sanok, “Performing Feminine Sanctity in Late Medieval England: Parish Guilds, Saints’ Plays, and the Second Nun’s Tale,” Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 32, no. 2 (Spring 2002), 269–304; and Nicole R. Rice, “Devotional Literature and Lay Spiritual Authority: Imitatio Clerici in Book to a Mother,” Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 35, no. 2 (Spring 2005), 187–216. Scholarship on women and the Protestant Reformation began with Roland H. Bainton’s three volumes, Women of the Reformation (Minneapolis, Augsburg, 1971, 1973, 1977), which are completely biographical but include information on many little-known women. More analytical early studies that still provide important theoretical frameworks include three articles in a special issue of Archive for Reformation History 63 (1972): Miriam U. Chrisman, “Women of the Reformation in Strasbourg 1490–1530,” Charmarie Jenkins- Blaisdell, “Renée de France between Reform and Counter-Reform,” and Nancy Roelker, “The Role of Noblewomen in the French Reformation”; Nancy Roelker, “The Appeal of Calvinism to French Noblewomen in the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (1972), 391–418; Natalie Zemon Davis, “City Women and Religious Change,” in her Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1975), pp. 65–96; Patrick Collinson, “The Role of Women in the English 6 Reformation Illustrated by the Life and Friendships of Anne Locke,” in G. J. Cuming (ed.), Studies in Church History, vol. 2 (London, Thomas Nelson, 1975), pp. 258–72; Sherrin Marshall (Wyntges), “Women in the Reformation Era,” in Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (eds.), Becoming Visible: Women in European History (Boston, Houghton-Mifflin, 1977), pp. 165–91. The list of suggested readings for Chapter 1 gives many suggestions as to readings on the reformers’ ideas about women. In addition to these, Margaret Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston, Beacon Press, 1989), discusses ideas about the female body and sexuality. John H. Bratt, “The Role and Status of Women in the Writings of John Calvin,” and Charmarie Jenkins Blaisdell, “Response to Bratt,” both in Peter de Klerk (ed.), Renaissance, Reformation, Resurgence (Grand Rapids, Calvin Theologial Seminary,

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