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, 1976), are good examples of disputes that have arisen over how the reformers’ ideas are to be interpreted.

For debates over clerical marriage, see Gerritdina D. Justitz, “The Abbot and the

Concubine: Piety and Politics in Sixteenth-Century Naumburg,” Archive for Reformation

History 92 (2001), 138–64; Thomas A. Fudge, “Incest and Lust in Luther’s Marriage:

Theology and Morality in Reformation Polemics,” Sixteenth Century Journal 34, no. 2

(Summer 2003), 319–46; Nancy Basler Bjorklund, “A godly wyfe is an helper’: Matthew

Parker and the Defense of Clerical Marriage,” Sixteenth Century Journal 34, no. 2

(Summer 2003), 347–66; Carrie Euler, “Hainrich Bullinger, Marriage, and the English

Reformation: The Christen state of Matrimonye in England, 1540–53,” Sixteenth Century

Journal 34, no. 2 (Summer 2003), 367–94. 7

The ways in which reformers’ relationships with women shaped their theology have been

discussed in Charmarie Blaisdell, “Calvin’s Letters to Women: The Courting of Ladies in

High Places,” Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982), 67–84, and A. Daniel Frankforter,

“Elizabeth Bowes and John Knox: A Woman and Reformation Theology,” Church

History 56 (1987), 333–47; Megan L. Hickerson, “Gospelling Sisters ‘goinge up and

downe’: John Foxe and Disorderly Women,” Sixteenth Century Journal 35, no. 4 (Winter

2004), 1035–52.

For analyses of changes in devotion to female figures, see Ton Brandenburg, “St. Anne

and Her Family: The Veneration of St. Anne in Connection with Concepts of Marriage

and the Family in the Early Modern Period,” in Lène Dresen-Coenders (ed.), Saints and

She-Devils: Images of Women in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (London, Rubicon,

1987), pp. 101–27; Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Schiengorn (eds.), Interpreting Cultural

Symbols: St. Anne in Late Medieval Society (Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1990);

Beth Kreitzer, Reforming Mary: Changing Images of the Virgin Mary in Lutheran

Sermons of the Sixteenth Century, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York,

Oxford University Press, 2004).

The actual effects of the Reformation on women’s religious and family life have been

examined in a number of studies. For analyses that include many parts of Europe, see

Susan Karant-Nunn, “The Reformation of Women,” in Renate Bridenthal, Susan Mosher

Stuard, and Merry E. Wiesner (eds.), Becoming Visible: Women in European History, 3rd

ed. (Boston, Houghton-Mifflin, 1998), pp. 175–202; Merry Wiesner-Hanks, “Women and 8

Men, Together and Apart,” in A People’s History of the Reformation, Vol. 5, ed. Peter

Matheson (Minneapolis, Augsburg Fortress, 2007), pp. 143–67.

For Germany, Lyndal Roper’s “‘The common man,’ ‘the common good,’ ‘common

women’: Reflections on Gender and Meaning in the Reformation German Commune,”

Social History 12 (1987), 1–21, remains the best example of an analysis of the interplay

between Reformation ideas and notions of gender. See also her The Holy Household:

Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989), Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London,

Routledge, 1994), and “Gender and the Reformation,” Archive for Reformation History

92 (2001), 290–302. Susan C. Karant-Nunn, “Continuity and Change: Some Effects of the Reformation on the Women of Zwickau,” Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982), 17–

42, “The Transmission of Luther’s Teachings on Women and Matrimony: The Case of

Zwickau,” Archive for Reformation History 77 (1986), 31–46; Merry E. Wiesner,

“Ideology Meets the Empire: Reformed Convents and the Reformation,” in Susan

Karant-Nunn and Andrew Fix (eds.), Germania Illustrata: Essays Presented to Gerald

Strauss (Kirksville, MO, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 1991), pp. 181–96; Jill

Bepler, “Women in German Funeral Sermons: Models of Virtue or Slice of Life?”

German Life and Letters 44 (1991), 392–403; D. Jonathan Grieser, “A Tale of Two

Convents: Nuns and Anabaptists in Münster, 1533–1535,” Sixteenth Century Journal 26

(1995), 31–48.

For England, see Retha Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation

(Westport, CT, Greenwood, 1983); Diane Willen, “Godly Women in Early Modern

England: Puritanism and Gender,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43 (1992), 561–80; 9

Patricia Crawford, Women and Religion in England, 1500–1750 (London, Routledge,

1993); Christine Peters, Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender, and Religion in Late

Medieval and Reformation England, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History

(New York, Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Erica Longfellow, Women and

Religious Writing in Early Modern England (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,

2004).

For Calvinism in Switzerland and elsewhere, see Jeffrey R. Watt, “Women and the

Consistory in Calvin’s Geneva,” Sixteenth Century Journal 24 (1993), 429–39; Jeffrey R.

Watt, “Calvinism, Childhood, and Education: The Evidence from the Genevan

Consistory,” Sixteenth Century Journal 33, no. 2 (Summer 2002), 439–56; Karen E.

Spierling, “Making Use of God’s Remedies: Negotiating the Material Care of Children in

Reformation Geneva,” Sixteenth Century Journal 36, no. 3 (Fall 2005), 785–807.

For Scandinavia, see Grethe Jacobsen, “Women, Marriage and Magisterial Reformation: the Case of Malmø, Denmark,” in Kyle C. Sessions and Phillip N. Bebb (eds.), Pietas et

Societas: New Trends in Reformation Social History (Kirksville, MO, Sixteenth Century

Journal Press, 1985), pp. 57–78.

The role of women in the radical Reformation is becoming a focus of much research.

Joyce Irwin (ed.), Womanhood in Radical Protestantism (New York, E. Mellen, 1979), provides extensive examples of (male) Anabaptist ideas. For analyses, see Marion

Kobelt-Groch, “Why Did Petronella Leave Her Husband? Reflections on Marital

Avoidance among the Halberstadt Anabaptists,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 62 (1988),

26–41; Wes Harrison, “The Role of Women in Anabaptist Thought and Practice: The

Hutterite Experience of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Sixteenth Century 10

Journal 23 (1992), 49–70; C. Arnold Snyder and Linda A. Heubert Hecht (eds.), Profiles of Anabaptist Women: Sixteenth-Century Reforming Pioneers (Waterloo, Ontario,

Wilfried Laurier University Press, 1996); and Craig D. Atwood, “Sleeping in the Arms of

Christ: Sanctifying Sexuality in the Eighteenth-Century Moravian Church,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 8 (1997), 25–47. Hermoine Joldersma and Louis Grijp (eds. and trans.), “Elisabeth’s Manly Courage”: Testimonials and Songs by and about Martyred

Anabaptist Women (Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2001), presents original texts and translations.

Studies that focus on the impact of the Reformation on marriage and the family include

Miriam Chrisman, “Family and Religion in Two Noble Families: French Catholic and

English Puritan,” Journal of Family History 8 (1983), 190–213; Thomas Max Safley,

“Protestantism, Divorce, and the Breaking of the Modern Family,” in Sessions and Bebb,

Pietas et Societas, pp. 35–56 (cited earlier), and Let No Man Put Asunder: The Control of

Marriage in the German Southwest (Kirksville, MO, Sixteenth Century, 1984); Martin

Ingram, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England 1570–1640 (Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, 1987); James R. Farr, “The Pure and Disciplined Body:

Hierarchy, Morality, and Symbolism in France during the Catholic Reformation,”

Journal of Interdisciplinary History 21 (1991), 391–414, and Authority and Sexuality in

Early Modern Burgundy (New York, Oxford University Press, 1995); Jeffrey R. Watt,

The Making of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and the Rise of Sentiment in

Neuchâtel, 1550–1800 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1992); Eric Josef Carlson,

Marriage and the English Reformation (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1994); Joel F.

Harrington, Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany (Cambridge, 11

Cambridge University Press, 1995); Robert Kingdon, Adultery and Divorce in Calvin’s

Geneva (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1995); Richard Adair, Courtship,

Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England (Manchester, Manchester

University Press, 1996); Michael F. Graham, The Uses of Reform: “Godly Discipline” and Popular Behavior in Scotland and Beyond 1560–1610 (Leiden, Brill, 1996); Helen

Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy and Practice

(London, Ashgate, 2000); Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Christianity and the Regulation of

Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice (London,

Routledge, 2000); Jennifer McNabb, “Ceremony versus Consent: Courtship, Illegitimacy, and Reputation in Northwest England, 1560–1610,” Sixteenth Century Journal 37, no. 1

(Spring 2006), 59–81.

Changes in engagement and wedding ceremonies have been explored most fully in Susan

C. Karant-Nunn, The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany

(London, Routledge, 1997), and David Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual,

Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, Oxford University

Press, 1997); see also Lyndal Roper, “Going to Church and Street: Weddings in

Reformation Augsburg,” Past and Present 106 (1985), 62–101.

Women’s own religious ideas and actions in religious matters have been discussed in

Sherrin Marshall, “Women and Religious Choices in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands,”

Archive for Reformation History 75 (1984), 276–89; Florence Koorn, “Women without

Vows: The Case of the Beguines and Sisters of the Common Life in the Northern

Netherlands,” in E. Schulte van Kessel (ed.), Women and Men in Spiritual Culture XIV– 12

XVII Centuries: A Meeting of South and North (The Hague, Staatsuitgeverij, 1986), 135–

47; K. E. Christopherson, “Lady Inger and Her Family: Norway’s Exemplar of Mixed

Motives in the Reformation,” Church History 55 (1986), 21–38; Merry E. Wiesner,

“Women’s Response to the Reformation,” in R. Po-Chia Hsia, The German People and

the Reformation (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 148–72; Retha

Warnicke, “Lady Mildmay’s Journal: A Study in Autobiography and Meditation in

Reformation England,” Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1989), 55–68; Paula S. Datsko

Barker, “Charitas Pirckheimer: A Female Humanist Confronts the Reformation,”

Sixteenth Century Journal 26 (1995), 259–72.

A few Protestant women are receiving close study, along with scholarly editions and

translations of their works. On Marie Dentiere, see Marie Dentière, Epistle to Marguerite

de Navarre and Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin, The Other Voice in Early Modern

Europe, ed. and trans. Mary B. McKinley (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004).

On Argula von Grumbach, see Peter Matheson, “Breaking the Silence: Women,

Censorship and the Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Journal 27 (1996), 97–109, and “A

Reformation for Women? Sin, Grace, and Gender in Argula von Grumbach,” Scottish

Journal of Theology 49 (1996), 1–17, and Argula von Grumbach: A Woman’s Voice in the Reformation (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1995).

On Katherine Zell, see Elsie Anne McKee, Reforming Popular Piety in 16th Century

Strasbourg: Katherine Schütz Zell and Her Hymnbook, Studies in Reformed Theology

and History, Princeton Theological Seminary 2, no. 4 (Fall 1994), and “Katherina Schütz

Zell: Protestant Reformer,” in Timothy J. Wengert and Charles W. Brockwell (eds.),

Telling the Churches’ Story: Ecumenical Perspectives on Writing Christian History 13

(Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 73–90; Merry E. Wiesner, “Katherine Zell’s

‘Answer to Ludwig Rabus’ as Autobiography and Theology,” Colloquia Germanica 28

(1995), 245–54. Elsie Anne McKee, Katharina Schütz Zell (Leiden, Brill, 1999), includes

one volume of biography and interpretation (Vol. 1: The Life and Thought of a Sixteenth-

Century Reformer) and one of edited texts (Vol. 2: The Writings: A Critical Edition).

Katharina Schütz Zell, Church Mother: The Writings of a Protestant Reformer in

Sixteenth-Century Germany, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, ed. and trans.

Elsie McKee (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006), includes translations of many

of her writings.

Studies of the special opportunities offered to Protestant women through martyrdom

include Carole Levin, “Women in the Book of Martyrs as Models of Behavior in Tudor

England,” International Journal of Women’s Studies 4 (1981), 196–207; John Klassen,

“Women and the Family among Dutch Anabaptist Martyrs,” Mennonite Quarterly

Review 60 (1986), 548–71; Ellen Macek, “The Emergence of a Feminine Spirituality in

the Book of Martyrs,” Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988), 63–80; Jenifer Umble,

“Women and Choice: An Examination of the Martyr’s Mirror,” Mennonite Quarterly

Review 64 (1990), 135–45; Elaine V. Beilin (ed.), The Examinations of Anne Askew,

Women Writers in English 1350–1850 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996);

Theresa D. Kemp, “Translating (Anne) Askew: The Textual Remains of a Sixteenth-

Century Heretic and Saint,” Renaissance Quarterly 52, no. 4 (Winter 1999), 1021–45;

Thomas S. Freeman and Sarah Elizabeth Wall, “Racking the Body, Shaping the Text:

The Account of Anne Askew in Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’,” Renaissance Quarterly 54,

no. 4, Part 1 (Winter 2001), 1165–96; Susannah Brietz Monta, “The Inheritance of Anne 14

Askew, English Protestant Martyr,” Archive for Reformation History 94 (2003), 134–60;

Nikki Shepardson, “Gender and the Rhetoric of Martyrdom in Jean Crespin’s Histoire

des vrays tesmoins,” Sixteenth Century Journal 35, no. 1 (Spring 2004), 155–74; Megan

L. Hickerson, Making Women Martyrs in Tudor England (London, Palgrave, 2005), and

“Ways of Lying”: Anne Askew and the Examinations,”Gender and History 18 (April

2006), 50–65.

Turning to the Catholic Reformation, women in religious communities have received an

enormous number of studies. These include broad overviews of female monasticism,

such as Patricia Ranft, Women and the Religious Life in Premodern Europe (New York,

St. Martin’s, 1996). Ruth El Saffar, Rapture Encaged: The Suppression of the Feminine

in Western Culture (London, Routledge, 1994), explores the darker side of monastic life,

and JoAnn Kay McNamara, Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia

(Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1996), stresses women’s agency in monasticism and includes several chapters on the early modern period.

General studies of convent life in the period include Craig Harline, The Burdens of Sister

Margaret: Private Lives in a Seventeenth-Century Convent (New York, Doubleday,

1994); P. Renée Baernstein, A Convent Tale: A Century of Sisterhood in Spanish Milan

(New York, Routledge, 2002); Mary Laven, Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and

Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent (New York, Penguin, 2004); and Elizabeth

A. Lehfeldt, Religious Women in Golden Age Spain: The Permeable Cloister (Burlington,

VT, Ashgate, 2005). 15

Works that set convents within a broad political and ideological framework include

Ulrike Strasser, “Bones of Contention: Cloistered Nuns, Decorated Relics, and the

Contest over Women’s Place in the Public Sphere of Counter-Reformation Munich,”

Archive for Reformation History 90 (1999), 255–88; Jutta Gisela Sperling, Convents and

the Body Politic in Renaissance Venice (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000);

Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt, “Gender, Order, and the Meaning Of Monasticism during the

Reign of Isabel and Ferdinand,” Archive for Reformation History 93 (2002), 145–71; and

Ulrike Strasser, State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an Early Modern

Catholic State (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2004). Merry Wiesner-Hanks and Joan Skocir (ed. and trans.), Convents Confront the Reformation: Catholic and

Protestant Nuns in Germany (Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 1996) and Amy

Leonard, Nails in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in Reformation Germany (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2005), focus on the effects of the Reformation on nuns.

More detailed analyses of specific issues surrounding convent life include Kate Lowe,

“Elections of Abbesses and Notions of Identity in Fifteenth- And Sixteenth-Century Italy, with Special Reference to Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 2 (Summer 2001),

389–429; Sharon T. Strocchia, “Sisters in Spirit: The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio and Their

Consorority in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence,” Sixteenth Century Journal 33, no. 3

(Fall 2002), 735–68; and Silvia Evangelisti, “‘We do not have it, and we do not want it’:

Women, Power, and Convent Reform in Florence,” Sixteenth Century Journal 34, no. 3

(Fall 2003), 677–700.

The relationship between family politics and women’s entry into convents has been explored in Elizabeth Rapley, “Women and the Religious Vocation in Seventeenth- 16

Century France,” French Historical Studies 18 (1994), 613–31; P. Renée Baernstein, “In

Widow’s Habit: Women between Convent and Family in Sixteenth-Century Milan,”

Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994), 787–807; Barbara Diefendorf, “Give Us Back our

Children: Patriarchal Authority and Parental Consent to Religious Vocation in early

Counter-Reformation France,” Journal of Modern History 68 (1996), 265–307; Joanne

Baker, “Female Monasticism and Family Strategy: The Guises and Saint Pierre de

Reims,” Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997), 1091–108; Thomas Worcester, “‘Neither married nor cloistered’: Blessed Isabelle in Catholic Reformation France,” Sixteenth

Century Journal 30 (1999), 457–76; Merry Wiesner-Hanks, “‘Liebe Schwester . . .’:

Siblings, convents, and the Reformation,” in Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh (eds,),

Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World (Basingstoke, Ashgate, 2006), pp. 53–63.

Two works that focus on the ways in which nuns’ chronicles created convent culture and identity are Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (University Park, Pennsylvania State University

Press, 2004), and K. J. P. Lowe, Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture in Renaissance and Counter-Reformation Italy (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2003).

The ways in which nuns expressed their religious ideas through cultural production and patronage have been examined in Craig Monson (ed.), The Crannied Wall: Women,

Religion and the Arts in Early Modern Europe (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan

Press, 1992); E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (eds.), Creative Women in Medieval and

Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994); Jeryldene M.

Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality: The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 17

Cambridge University Press, 1996); Carolyn Valone, “The Art of Hearing: Sermons and

Images in the Chapel of Lucrezia della Rovere,” Sixteenth Century Journal 31, no. 3 (Fall

2000), 753–77; Andrea G. Pearson, “Nuns, Images, and the Ideals of Women’s

Monasticism: Two Paintings from the Cistercian Convent of Flines,” Renaissance

Quarterly 54, no. 4, Part 2 (Winter 2001), 1356–402; Gary M. Radke, “Nuns and Their

Art: The Case of San Zaccaria in Renaissance Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 2

(Summer 2001), 430–59; Elissa B. Weaver, Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy:

Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002);

Helen Hills, Invisible City: The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century

Neapolitan Convents (New York, Oxford University Press, 2004); and Helen Hills,

“‘Enamelled with the Blood of a Noble Lineage’: Tracing Noble Blood and Female

Holiness in early modern Neapolitan Convents and Their Architecture,” Church History:

Studies in Christianity and Culture 73, no. 1 (March 2004), 1–22.

There are several excellent studies of various aspects of the life of St. Teresa, including

Jodi Bilinkoff, The Avila of St. Theresa (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1989);

Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity (Princeton, NJ, Princeton

University Press, 1990); Janice Mary Luti, Teresa of Avila’s Way (Collegeville, MN,

Liturgical Press, 1991); Carole Slade, Saint Teresa of Avila: Author of a Heroic Life

(Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995); Gillian T. W. Ahlgren, Teresa of Avila and the Politics of Sanctity (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1996); Alison Weber,

“Saint Teresa’s Problematic Patrons,” Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 29, no. 2 (Spring 1999), 357–79; and Carole Slade, “The Relationship between Teresa of

Avila and Philip II: A Reading of the Extant Textual Evidence,” Archive for Reformation 18

History 94 (2003), 223–42. John Sullivan, OCD (ed.), Carmelite Studies: Centenary of

St. Teresa, Carmelite Studies, 3 (Washington, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1984), contains a number of useful articles.

Recent studies of beatas and “living saints” in southern Europe, both those who were accepted as orthodox and those accused of heresy, include Richard Kagan, Lucrecia’s

Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth Century Spain (Berkeley, University of

California Press, 1990); Jodi Bilinkoff, “A Spanish Prophetess and Her Patrons: The Case of María de Santo Domingo,” Sixteenth Century Journal 23 (1992), 21–34; Fulvio

Tomizza, Heavenly Supper: The Story of Maria Janis, trans. Anne Jacobsen Schutte

(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993); Luisa Ciammitti, “One Saint Less: The

Story of Angela Mellini, a Bolognese Seamstress (1667–17[?]),” in Edward Muir and

Guido Ruggiero (eds.), Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective; Selections from

Quaderni Storici (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 141–76; Gabriella

Zarri, “Living Saints: A Typology of Female Sanctity in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in

Bornstein and Rusconi, Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (cited earlier) pp. 219–303; and Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness,

Inquisition, and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618–1750 (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins

University Press, 2001). Anne Jacobson Francisca de los Apóstoles, The Inquisition of

Francisca: A Sixteenth-Century Visionary on Trial, The Other Voice in Early Modern

Europe, ed. and trans. Gillian T. W. Ahlgren (Chicago, University of Chicago Press,

2005), presents records from the trial of a woman who attempted to found a beaterio, a lay community of pious women. 19

Studies of the relationships between female penitents and their confessors include

Rudolph M. Bell, “Telling Her Sins: Male Confessors and Female Penitents in Catholic

Reformation Italy,” in Coon, Gentle Strength, 118–33; Jodi Bilinkoff, “Confessors,

Penitents, and the Construction of Identities in Early Modern Avila,” in Barbara B.

Diefendorf and Carla Hesse (eds.), Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500–

1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan

Press, 1993); Patricia Ranft, “A Key to Counter-Reformation Women’s Activism: The

Confessor-Spiritual Director,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10 (1994), 7–26;

Stephen Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned (New York,

Oxford University Press, 1996); Cordula Van Whye, “Court and Convent: The Infanta

Isabella and Her Franciscan Confessor Andrés de Soto,” Sixteenth Century Journal 35,

no. 2 (Summer 2004), 411–46; Colleen M. Seguin, “Ambiguous Liaisons: Catholic

Women’s Relationships with Their Confessors in Early Modern England,” Archive for

Reformation History 95 (2004), 156–85; Jodi Bilinkoff, Related Lives: Confessors and

Their Female Penitents (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2005); Mita Choudhury,

“‘Carnal Quietism’: Embodying Anti-Jesuit Polemics in the Catherine Cadiere Affair,

1731,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39, no. 2 (Winter 2006), 173–86.

On Catholic women’s efforts to create an active vocation outside the convent, see Ruth

Liebowitz, “Virgins in the Service of Christ: The Dispute over an Active Apostolate for

Women during the Counter-Reformation,” in Ruether and McLaughlin, Women of Spirit

(cited earlier), pp. 132–52; Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes: Women and Church in

Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queen’s University Press,

1990); Jeanne Cover, IBVM, Love, The Driving Force: Mary Ward’s Spirituality: Its 20

Significance for Moral Theology (Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 1997);

Laurence Lux-Sterritt, Redefining Female Religious Life: French Ursulines and English

Ladies in Seventeenth Century Catholicism (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2005); Danielle

Culpepper, “‘Our particular cloister’: Ursulines and Female Education in Seventeenth-

Century Parma and Piacenza,” Sixteenth Century Journal 36, no. 4 (Winter 2005), 1017–

38; Susan Dinan, Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France: The Early

History of the Daughters of Charity (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2006); David Wallace,

“Periodizing Women: Mary Ward (1585–1645) and the Premodern Canon,” Journal of

Medieval & Early Modern Studies 36, no. 2 (Spring 2006), 397–453; and Querciolo

Mazznois, Spirituality, Gender, and the Self in Renaissance Italy: Angela Merici and the

Company of St. Ursula (1474–1540) (Washington, DC, The Catholic University Press,

2007). Linda Lierheimer (ed. and trans.), The Life of Antoinette Micolon (Milwaukee, WI,

Marquette University Press, 2004), presents a translation of the life of a woman who founded six Ursuline convents in the Auvergne region of France.

The special situation of English and Irish Catholic women has been examined in Marie B.

Rowlands, “Recusant Women 1560–1640,” in Mary Prior (ed.), Women in English

Society 1500–1800 (London, Methuen, 1985), pp. 149–80; Phil Kilroy, “Women and the

Reformation in Seventeenth-Century Ireland,” in Margaret MacCurtain and Mary

O’Dowd, Women in Early Modern Ireland (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press,

1991); Claire Walker, “Combining Mary and Martha: Gender and Work in Seventeenth-

Century English Cloisters,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999), 397–417; Caroline

Bowden, “The Abbess and Mrs. Brown: Lady Mary Knatchbull and Royalist Politics in

Flanders in the Late 1650s,” Recusant History 24 (1999); Frances E. Dolan, “Gender and 21

the ‘Lost’ Spaces of Catholicism,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 32, no. 4, (Spring

2002), 641-–65; and Claire Walker, Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe:

English Convents in France and the Low Countries (London, Palgrave-Macmillan,

2003).

Two recent works examine influential laywomen interested in reform ideas but who

stayed within Catholicism: Barry Collett, A Long and Troubled Pilgrimage: The

Correspondence of Marguerite D’Angoulême and Vittoria Colonna 1540–1545, Studies

in Reformed Theology and History (Princeton, NJ, Princeton Theological Seminary,

2000), and Camilla Russell, Giulia Gonzaga and the Religious Contraversies of

Sixteenth-century Italy (Turnhout, Belgium, Brepols, 2006).

Women’s experiences with the various Inquisitions are discussed in Mary G. Giles,

Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1998). John Martin, “Out of the Shadow: Heretical and Catholic

Women in Renaissance Venice,” Journal of Family History 10 (1985), 21–33; E. William

Monter, “Women and the Italian Inquisition,” in Mary Beth Rose (ed.), Women in the

Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1985), pp. 73–

87; Mary Elizabeth Perry, “Magdalens and Jezebels in Counter-Reformation Spain,” in

Anne J. Cruz and Mary Elizabeth Perry (eds.), Culture and Control in Counter-

Reformation Spain (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1992).

The actions of lay Catholic women have been studied in S. Annette Finley-Croswhite,

“Engendering the Wars of Religion: Female Agency during the Catholic League in

Dijon,” French Historical Studies 20, no. 2 (Spring 1997), 127–54; Monica Chojnacka,

“Women, Charity and Community in Early Modern Venice: The Casa dell Zitelle,” 22

Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998), 68–89; Jodi Bilinkoff, “Elite Widows and Religious

Expression in Early Modern Spain: The View from Avila,” in Sandra Cavallo and

Lyndan Warner (eds.), Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (London,

Longman, 1999); Barbara B. Diefendorf, “Contradictions of the Century of Saints:

Aristocratic Patronage and the Convents of Counter-Reformation Paris,” French

Historical Studies 24, no. 3 (Summer 2001), 469–99; Barbara B. Diefendorf, From

Penitence to Charity: Pious Women and the Catholic Reformation in Paris (New York,

Oxford University Press, 2004); Jeanne Harrie, “The Guises, the Body of Christ, and the

Body Politic,” Sixteenth Century Journal 37, no. 1 (Spring 2006), 43–58.

Catholic women’s religious writings from the Reformation period are seeing increasing numbers of analysis, translations, and reprints. Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Untold

Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in their Own Works (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico

Press, 1989), provides long selections in both Spanish and English from the works of many Spanish and New World nuns, as well as interpretations of their writings. Ronald

E. Surtz, Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain: The Mothers of

Saint Teresa of Avila (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Sherry M.

Velasco, Demons, Nausea and Resistance in the Autobiography of Isabel de Jesús 1611–

1682 (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1996); and Dayle Seidenspinner-

Núñez, The Writings of Teresa de Cartagena (Rochester, Boydell & Brewer, 1998), all analyze women’s writings. Elizabeth Rhodes (ed. and trans.), “This Tight Embrace”:

Luise de Carvajal y Mendoza (Milwaukee, Marquette Univeristy Press, 2000), presents

translations of the writings of the Spanish noblewoman who lived as a missionary in

England, and Elizabeth Rhodes, “Luisa de Carvajal’s Counter-Reformation Journey to 23

Selfhood (1566–1614),” Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 3 (Autumn 1998), 887–911,

analyzes these.

Many translations of religious works by Catholic women have appeared in the University of Chicago series, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: Cecelia Ferrazzi,

Autobiography of an Aspiring Saint, ed. and trans. Anne Jacobson Schutte (1996);

Antonia Pulci, Florentine Drama for Convent and Festival, ed. and trans. James Wyatt

Cook and Barbara Collier Cook (1996); Bartolomea Riccoboni, Spiritual Letters, ed. and

trans. Daniel Bornstein (2000); Lucrezia Tornabuoni, Sacre Rappresentazioni, ed. and trans. Jane Tylus (2001); Maria de San Jose Salazar, Book for the Hour of Recreation, ed.

Alison Weber, trans. Amanda Powell (2002); Gabrielle de Coignard, Spiritual Sonnets: A

Bilingual Edition, ed. and trans. Melanie E. Gregg (2003); Jeanne de Jussie, The Short

Chronicle: A Poor Clare’s Account of the Reformation of Geneva, ed. and trans. Carrie F.

Klaus (2006).

Merry Wiesner-Hanks, “Christianity and Gender,” in The Cambridge History of

Christianity, Vol. 7: Enlightenment, Revolution and Reawakening, ed. Stewart J. Brown

and Timothy Tackett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 166–84, provides an

overview of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Women’s role in radical sects in seventeenth-century England has received much attention. This began with Ethyn Morgan Williams, “Women Preachers in the Civil

War,” Journal of Modern History 1 (1929), 561–69, and Keith Thomas, “Women and the

Civil War Sects,” Past and Present 13 (1958), 42–62. It has continued with Dorothy

Ludlow, “Shaking Patriarchy’s Foundations: Sectarian Women in England, 1641–1700,”

in Greaves, Triumph Over Silence (cited earlier), pp. 93–123; Barbara Ritter Dailey, “The 24

Visitation of Sarah Wight: Holy Carnival and the Revolution of the Saints in Civil War

London,” Church History 55 (1986), 438–55; Margaret George, Women in the First

Capitalist Society: Experiences in Seventeenth-Century England (Urbana, University of

Illinois Press, 1988); Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-

Century England (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992); Diane Watt, Sectaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Rochester, NY,

Boydell & Brewer, 1997); Katharine Gillespie, Domesticity and Dissent in the

Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004); Orianne Smith,

“‘Unlearned and ill-qualified pokers into prophecy’: Hester Lynch Piozzi and the Female

Prophetic Tradition,” Eighteenth-Century Life 28, no. 2 (Spring 2004), 87–112; Diane

Purkiss, Literature, Gender and Politics during the English Civil War (Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, 2004), and The English Civil War: Papists, Gentlewomen,

Soldiers, and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain (New York, Basic Books,

2006); and Ann Hughes, The English Revolution and Gender (London, Routledge, 2006);

Hilda L. Smith, Mihoko Suzuki, and Susan Wiseman (eds.), Women’s Political Writings

1610–1725 (London, Pickering and Chatto, 2007).

Quaker women have been especially well studied, and their writings reprinted and

analyzed. See Emily Manners, Elizabeth Hooton: First Quaker Woman Preacher (1600–

1672) (London, Headley Bros., 1914); Catherine La Courreye Blecki, “Alice Hayes and

Mary Penington: Personal Identity within the Tradition of Quaker Spiritual

Autobiography,” Quaker History 65 (1976), 19–31; Phyllis Mack, “Feminine Behavior and Radical Action: Franciscans, Quakers, and the Followers of Gandhi,” Signs 11

(1986), 457–77, and “Teaching about Gender and Spirituality in early English 25

Quakerism,” Women’s Studies 19 (1991), 223–38; Mary Ann Schofield, “‘Women’s

Speaking Justified’: The Feminine Quaker voice, 1662–1797,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s

Literature 6 (1987), 61–77; Barbara Ritter Dailey, “The Husbands of Margaret Fell: An

Essay on Religious Metaphor and Social Change,” Seventeenth Century 2 (1987), 55–71;

Bonnelyn Young Kunze, Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism (Stanford, CA,

Stanford University Press, 1994); Judith Kegan Gardiner, “Re-gendering Individualism:

Margaret Fell Fox and Quaker Rhetoric,” in Jean Brink (ed.), Privileging Gender in Early

Modern England (Kirksville, MO, Sixteenth Century Journal, 1993), 205–24 and

“Margaret Fell Fox and Feminist Literary History: A ‘Mother in Israel’ Calls to the

Jews,” in Thomas Corns and David Loewenstein (eds.), The Emergence of Quaker

Writing: Dissenting Literature in Seventeenth-Century England (London, Frank Cass,

1995), 42–56; Catherine M. Wilcox, Theology and Women’s Ministry in Seventeenth-

Century English Quakerism: Handmaids of the Lord (London, E. Mellen, 1995); David

Booy, Autobiographical Writings by Early Quaker Women (Burlington, VT, Ashgate,

2004); Catie Gill, Women in the Seventeenth-Century Quaker Community: A Literary

Study of Political Identities, 1650–1700 (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2005); and Judith

Jennings, Gender, Religion and Radicalism in the Long Eighteenth Century: The

“Ingenious Quaker” and Her Connections (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2006).

For the religious writings of Englishwomen who were not Quakers, see Vera Camden

(ed.), The Narratives of the Persecutions of Agnes Beaumont (East Lansing, MI,

Colleagues Press, 1991); Margaret Olofson Thickstun, “‘This was a woman that taught’:

Feminist Scriptural Exegesis in the Seventeenth Century,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century

Culture 21 (1991), 149–58; Charles Hambrick-Stowe, “The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Sarah 26

Osborne (1714–1796),” Church History 61 (1992), 408–21; Esther S. Cope, Handmaid of the Holy Spirit: Dame Eleanor Davies, Never So Mad a Ladie (Ann Arbor, University of

Michigan Press, 1993); Eleanor Davies, Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies,

Women Writers in English 1350–1850 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1995); Effie

Botonaki, “Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen’s Spiritual Diaries: Self-Examination,

Covenanting, and Account Keeping,” Sixteenth Century Journal 30 (1999), 3–22; Marie

H. Loughlin, “‘Fast ti’d unto them in a golden chaine’: Typology, Apocalypse, and

Woman’s Genealogy in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum,” Renaissance

Quarterly 53, no. 1 (Spring 2000), 133–79; Erica Longfellow, “Eliza’s Babes: Poetry

‘Proceeding from Divinity’ in Seventeenth-Century England,” Gender and History 14, no. 2 (August 2002), 242–65; Paula McDowell, “Enlightenment Enthusiasms and the

Spectacular Failure of the Philadelphian Society,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 35, no. 4

(Summer 2002), 515–33; and Michael P. Winship, “Briget Cooke and the Art of Godly

Female Self-Advancement,” Sixteenth Century Journal 33, no. 4 (Winter 2002), 1045–

59.

Developments in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France have been studied in

George Balsama, “Madame Guyon, Heterodox,” Church History 42 (1973), 350–65; B.

Robert Kreiser, “Religious Enthusiasm in Early 18th-century Paris: The Convulsionaries of Saint-Médard,” Catholic Historical Review 61 (1975), 353–85; Marie-Florine

Bruneau, “The Writing of History as Fiction and Ideology: The Case of Madame

Guyon,” Feminist Issues 5 (1985), 27–38; Elissa Weaver, “Erudition, Spirituality, and

Women: The Jansenist Contribution,” in Marshall, Women in Reformation (cited earlier), pp. 189–206; Jacqueline Pascal, A Rule for Children and Other Writings, The Other 27

Voice in Early Modern Europe, ed. and trans. John J. Conley, S.J. (Chicago, University

of Chicago Press, 2003); and Daniella Kostroun, ‘A Formula for Disobedience:

Jansenism, Gender, and the Feminist Paradox,’ Journal of Modern History 75 (2003),

483–522.

For Germany, see Joyce Irwin, ‘Anna Maria von Schurman and Antoinette Bourignon:

Contrasting Examples of Seventeenth-Century Pietism’, Church History 60 (1991), 301–

35; Kathleen Foley-Beining, The Body and Eucharistic Devotion in Catharina Regina

von Greiffenberg’s “Meditations” (Columbia, SC, Camden House, 1997); Johanna

Eleonora Petersen, The Life of Lady Johanna Eleonora Petersen, Written by Herself, The

Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, ed. and trans. Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Chicago,

University of Chicago Press, 2005). Studies of Anna Hoyer are all to date in German.

There are beginning to be a few studies in English of women in eastern European religious life. See Marie A. Thomas, “Managerial Roles in the Suzdal’skii Pokrovski

Convent during the Seventeenth Century,” Russian History 7 (1980), 92–112, and

“Muscovite Convents in the Seventeenth Century,” Russian History 10 (1983), 230–42;

Georg Michels, “Muscovite Elite Women and Old Belief,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19

(1995), 428–50; Valerie A. Karras, “Female Deacons in the Byzantine Church,” Church

History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 73, no, 2 (June 2004), 272–316.

Along with the collection edited by Baskin, there are several other good articles on the

experiences of early modern Jewish women, especially Chava Weissler, “The Traditional

Piety of Ashkenazic Women,” in Arthur Greene (ed.), Jewish Spirituality II (New York,

Crossroad, 1987), pp. 245–75, and “‘For women and for men who are like women’: The

Construction of Gender in Yiddish Devotional Literature,” Journal of Feminist Studies in 28

Religion 5 (1989), 7–25; Howard Adelman, “Rabbis and Reality: Public Activities of

Jewish Women in Italy during the Renaissance and Catholic Restoration,” Jewish History

5 (1992); Deborah Hertz, “Women at the Edge of Judaism: Female Converts in Germany,

1600–1750,” in Menachem Mor (ed.), Jewish Assimilation, Acculturation and

Accommodation: Past Traditions, Current Issues and Future Prospects (Lanham, MD,

University Press of America, 1992), pp. 87–109. Gracia Nasi has received full biographical treatment in Cecil Roth, The House of Nasi: Dona Gracia (Philadelphia,

Jewish Publication Society of America, 1948). Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs:

Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women (Boston, MA, Beacon Press,

1998), is a wonderful study of the Yiddish prayers women created during centuries of exclusion from men’s observance. Claudia Ulbrich, Shulamith and Margarete: Power,

Gender, and Religion in a Rural Society in Eighteenth-Century Europe, trans. Thomas

Dunlap (Boston, MA, Brill Academic, 2004), examines boundaries created by language, states, religions, cultures, sex, and gender through the lives of two women, one Christian and one Jewish, in the same small village.

Muslim women in Europe are just beginning to receive the attention of scholars. The best place to start for Muslim women in Spain is Mary Elizabeth Perry, The Handless

Maiden: Moriscos and the Politics of Religion in Early Modern Spain (Princeton, NJ,

Princeton University Press, 2005). Articles include Mary Elizabeth Perry, “Behind the

Veil: Moriscas and the Politics of Resistance and Survival,” in Magdalena S. Sánchez and Alain Saint-Saëns (eds.), Spanish Women in the Golden Age: Images and Realities

(Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1996); several of the essays in Gavin R. G. Hambly

(ed.), Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety (New York, 29

St. Martin’s, 1998); Ronald E. Surtz, “Morisco Women, Written Texts, and The Valencia

Inquisition,” Sixteenth Century Journal 32, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 421–33.

For the Ottomans, see Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the

Ottoman Empire (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993), and Morality Tales Law

and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley, University of California Press,

2003); Judith Tucker, In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman

Syria and Palestine (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998). For studies of

Muslim women more generally, see Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron (eds.), Women in

Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (New Haven, CT, Yale

University Press, 1991); Judith Tucker, Gender and Islamic History (Washington DC,

American Historical Association, 1995); Amire El Azhary Sonbol (ed.), Women, the

Family and Divorce Laws in Islamic History (Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press,

1996).

Web Sites

30

Other Women’s Voices. Introduction to more than 100 pre-eighteenth-century women authors who have been translated into modern English, including excerpts of works and references to print and online editions. Includes about fifty women from Europe (1450–

1700), who originally wrote in several languages. Many of these are religious writings.

The image here is from a pamphlet written in support of Lutheran theology by the

German noblewoman Argula von Grumbach. http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/

31

Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Searchable versions of many works from the Church

Fathers and links to many others. Including works by Jacob Boehme, John Calvin,

François Fenelon, Madame Guyon (with audio files), Ignatius Loyola, Martin Luther,

John Milton, Miguel de Molinos, Blaise Pascal, Teresa of Avila, John Wesley, George

Whitefield, and many others. http://www.ccel.org/

32

English Reformation Sources. Includes primary sources, especially royal acts, covering

religious changes under all the Tudors.

http://members.shaw.ca/reformation/

Hanover Historical Texts Project. Hanover University’s site with many historical texts.

Includes (in English) documents from the Protestant and Catholic Reformations and the witch hunts. http://history.hanover.edu/project.html

Digital Quaker Collection. More than 500 works from seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, maintained by Earlham College.

http://esr.earlham.edu/dqc/

33

Medici Archives Jewish Collection. The Medici Granducal Archive houses thousands of

letters relevant to Jewish affairs throughout Europe and the Mediterranean World in the

sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries. As the entire archive is being

cataloged, every Jewish document in them is now being registered in a customized

database; eventually there will be full transcriptions in the original languages

accompanied by summaries in English. Some especially interesting documents are posted

on the Web site now.

http://www.medici.org/jewish/docs.html

Early Modern Workshop: Jewish History Resources. Collection of documents pertaining to Jewish life in early modern Europe in the original language and English translation, with introductions and discussion by noted scholars. Sponsored by Wesleyan University and the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies at the University of

Maryland. The 2006 workshop focused on gender, family, and social structures http://www.earlymodern.org/workshops/2006/

Original Sources

1. Woman’s Religious Bequest, Denmark, 1415

People’s religious interests and concerns were often mirrored in wills. This is a will from

Denmark in 1415, in which an urban woman leaves bequests to religious institutions and persons in three cities, reserving the largest bequest, valuable urban property, for the

cathedral of St. Lawrence, the archiepiscopal cathedral of medieval Denmark. In it we

can see what was important to a late medieval Christian woman. Source: Testamenter fra 34

Danmarks Middelalder indtil 1450. Udgivne for Det kongelige danske Selskab for

Fædrelandets Historie og Sprog af Kr. Erslev. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1901).

Translated by Grethe Jacobsen and Pernille Arenfeldt.

Will of Katrina Laurensdatter, wife of Laurens Jensen. 1415.

In nomine Domini, amen. I, Katerina Laurendsdatter, wife of Laurens Jensen,

have a body that is not well but a soul that by the help of God is well; with the will of my

dear husband and several of our true friends I now bequeath the goods that God has lent

me accordingly:

First I donate to the Church of St. Lawrence in Lund, half of a stone house,

situated in Malmø, which yields 3 solid marks in yearly income, which house I lawfully

and honestly inherited from my parents, whose names were Lasse Skytte and Katerine

Laurenses, on the condition that a memorial mass be said in aforesaid church for me and

my aforesaid parents after the fest of St. Canute the King [July 10]. One mark of the

annual rent of aforesaid stone house to be distributed thus: the cannon is to have 3 shillings, the bell-ringer 2 “grot”, and the rest goes to the building of the church.

Item I donate 3 marks in Scanian money to my parish church of St. Olaf. Item for my confessor, Master Benedict Jensen, priest, 1 silver spoon. Item every monastery in

Lund 4 “grot”. Item Mistress Benedicte in the convent 1 shilling. Item for the monastery, parish church and Holy Spirit Hospital in Landskrona each 4 shillings. Item the Black

Friars in Helsingborg 4 “grot”. Item my sister a red tunic with a black sleeve with metal ornaments. Item my sister’s daughter Estrid a red cape and a hood with metal ornaments. 35

This is my will and final desire which I ask my dear husband, Laurens Jensen aforesaid, and Peder Saxtorp, esquire, to fulfil for the benefit of my soul which I trust them to do and to answer to God.

For further witness the seals of honest men who are Master Benedict, my confessor, Sire Peter in Resløf and Peder Saxtorp, esquire aforesaid, have been attached to this.

Datum Agård, Billeberg parish, anno domini 1415, crastino visitacionis beate

Marie virginis gloriose.

2. Letters between two sisters, who were nuns, and their brother, Germany 1523

Protestants rejected the value of celibacy and the monastic life. During the Protestant

Reformation, one of the first moves of an area rejecting Catholicism was often to close the monasteries and convents. Authorities either confiscated the buildings and land immediately or forbade new novices and allowing the current residents to live out their lives on a portion of the convent’s old income. Monks and nuns were expected to move to other houses run by their religious order in areas that remained Catholic, or—much better in Protestant eyes—to leave the religious life for one that involved marriage and a family. In many areas, there is little record of what monks or nuns themselves thought about this process, nor sources that provide information about what happened to displaced monks or nuns. Sometimes individuals or whole institutions fought this process, and women’s convents were more likely to do so than men’s. Sometimes this alienated the women from their families, particularly if the rest of the family had decided to accept Protestantism. The following is part of an exchange of letters between 36

Katherine Rem, of the Katherine convent in the south German city of Augsburg, and her brother Bernard, who addressed his letter to both Katherine and his daughter Veronica, who was also in the convent. Several of Bernhard’s earlier letters to them had been printed, and this exchange was first printed as a small pamphlet in 1523. Pamphlets like this, from educated but not especially prominent people, sold well in the early years of the Reformation when people were trying to sort out their own religious convictions.

Source: From Merry Wiesner-Hanks and Joan Skocir (eds.), Convents Confront the

Reformation: Catholic and Protestant Nuns in Germany (Milwaukee: Marquette

University Press, 1998), pp. 27–37.

The answer of two nuns in the Katherine Convent of Augsburg to Bernhart Rem and afterwards his answer to this.

Isaiah 33

God is our lawgiver.

Job 8

The hope of a hypocrite melts away.

My brother Bernhart,

You have wished us the correct understanding of Jesus Christ. We thank you for that. We hope we have the correct understanding of God. God will fortify us because we praise and favor him. You have sent us two letters, which I am returning to you. We regard you as one of the false prophets that Jesus warned us against in the Holy Gospels when he said “Guard yourselves against prophets who come in the form of a sheep and 37

are ravening wolves.” Therefore you have also come with many good words and wanted

to lead us astray and make us despondent. You should not think that we are so foolish that we place our hope in the convent and in our own works. Rather we place our hope in

God. He is the true lord and rewarder of all things. Him do we serve more willingly in the

convent than in the world, with the grace and help of God. You do not have to worry at

all about our bodies and souls. You do not have to go to heaven or hell for us. God the

Almighty will judge all of us at the Last Judgment, according to his justice. We all know

that for certain. Therefore think about yourself, that you will become and be a good

Christian and that you keep to your station in life rightly and that you do not swear by

God’s name and by his bitter martyrs. I know that you certainly can do this, and not eat

meat on Friday or Saturday. These things are not the teachings of Jesus Christ. You will

pull a splinter out of our eye, while you yourself have a large log in yours. I certainly

know that you have said that your daughter and I are to you more as if we were in a

brothel than in a convent. You should shame yourself in your heart to think [such a thing]

to say nothing of saying this. Whoever hears this from you cannot think very well of you.

There we certainly see the brotherly love that you have for us. And that you allowed [the

letter] from us to be printed! The printer certainly does not think very well of you, even if

he asked you with good words, “Don’t you have anything else to be printed about the

religious [orders], what they are doing and how they are?” You should have given [up]

the money through God’s will. Why didn’t you have [things written] by you and others

like you printed? But I certainly know that you and those like you always do the right

thing, and that the religious [orders] delivered enough to you. No one is sorry for this.

There will still come a time when you will suffer. We will gladly suffer for God’s sake 38

with the help of God. He has also suffered greatly for our sake. God forgive you for

everything. That is our angry message, [that] the bitter suffering of Jesus Christ press in your heart. It would be better for you if you mulled this over. You are a good fellow and happy. I wanted to answer your letter more fully, but I will commend it to God the Lord.

You have shocked us because you actually wanted to come to us. If you don’t come in kinship, stay out. If you want to straighten us out, then we don’t want your [message] at all. You may not send us such things any more. We will not accept them. We also

[already] have many good books.

Here follows the answer to this letter.

Bernhart Rem wishes his sister Katherine and daughter Veronica Rem peace and grace in

Christ.

I have received your answer but have viewed with little pleasure [the fact] that you have scorned my letter, written in all Christian faith, and that you have sent my admonition back to my house, and this in anger that I certainly did not anticipate. [You] insulted me and called me a false prophet. To these words I will say nothing harder than that you do not yet know or do not want to know, what a false prophet is. For a false prophet uses fine words to deceive simple hearts, which he cunningly separates from the healing words of Jesus Christ with his own illusions and human teaching. This I have—God is my witness—never done, but simply out of Christian faith, held before you not human teaching which confuses, but God’s teaching, for your spiritual peace and the pleasure of your conscience. Human teaching destroys and confuses the heart, and pulls one away 39

from the true and simply teachings of Christ our Savior (2 Cor. 11), just like the snake

deceived Eve through its cunning. My letter to you is clear in all things. I also notice that

no true Christian could have rejected it with cause. But you are still badly ensnared in

your rule and human sins, so that you cannot grasp the self-evident evangelical truth. I

therefore pray to Christ [that] he will enlighten your hearts to the true understanding of

his costly freedom that he earned for us through a hard and scornful death. I have done

this as your brother in Christ. I cannot give you grace, but so much is on me [that] I have

given you a true warning. I do not repent this even though you are now enraged against

me in the bitterness of your hearts. You write that your hope stands alone in God. I am

glad to hear that and ask God that he increase such hope in you. However, that you [say

you] want to serve God willingly in the convent, makes me fear that things will not go as

smoothly with you as you say, for I have given you enough reports from Isaiah 29 and

Matthew 15 that God does not want to be honored with human teachings and laws. I am

concerned that you are still on the old path and [that you] make God very angry with

works that you have thought up yourselves, that precious time is consumed in a

destructive way, and that you are very troubled without joy and happiness in your

conscience, and without fruit of your body [i.e., children], and that you do not want to

understand what “the world” means. Truly, because we live in the weak shelter of our

mortal bodies, we always carry the world with us, in the fields, in the convents, and

wherever we are. What did Saint Paul complain about as much as his mortal, sinful body,

in which original sin raised itself so strongly and fought against the spirit of God day and night, in the convent and outside of the convent, as you have in Romans 7 [and] Galatians

5. Be on guard not to be sleepy and too secure behind high walls. You are truly in the 40 world, and if you don’t yet see as much wickedness as I do, so you still have sin and the fruits of sin near and in yourselves. For you are not holier than Paul who complained about this in himself many times. This part of your letter does not sound good; it suits the hypocrite well who was not like the others (Luke 18). You also desire that I do not bother myself about your body or soul, or [go to] heaven or hell for you. Here I notice that unfortunately you don’t yet know what a Christian life is and what a Christian person’s duties are. For you suppose that no one should take on anyone else, and everyone take on only themselves. Where then is Christian faith and love, that fulfills all commandments (Rom. 13)? I am nevertheless responsible, according to God’s commandments, to warn you and give you good advice as my fellow human beings, even if you were not related to me (Matt. 18). . . .

Lastly, expose yourselves willingly to slander, just as if it might be called slander when one admonishes you in a friendly way in writing. Oh, if you want to become like the suffering Christ, you must suffer in a different way. If you are not in the world, why does the Word of God sting you so badly, making you question your life a bit? I wish you had used all the arts to answer my letter. You answer only the angry words; the letter itself is not so easy to answer. Take all your books and give basic answers if you are so learned. You don’t want to accept any writings or admonitions from me. In this I see that you are angry. Whoever has anger and envy is still in the world. You have anger in you; therefore you have not yet escaped the world. I admit, however, that you have many books, but I request that you read only the Bible with diligence and fear of God, and let the other books go. Then you will certainly see, for what reasons I have written to you and [you] won’t call me a false prophet anymore. You will learn composure and your 41

vanity go, and also not despise the worries and prayers for you [which come from] the

worst sinner, as you have done to me, even though I wanted to do this for your benefit. In

conclusion, be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger (Ps. 4,

Eph. 4). And let a sinner and mortal say one thing to you out of Christian faith: This is that you arrange your life according to the word of God, which is our only light and rule.

Live in a godly manner and let human teachings lie. I would rather be counted as carnal with the open sinners in the temple (Luke 18) than be religious with you and those like you. Nevertheless I wish you for once the correct knowledge of Jesus Christ, that the spirit that brings life would write in your hearts the overflowing good works of Christ, so that you know why he in human nature was fastened to the cross. When you know that, your little human discoveries and trust in your own works, habits, convent, fasting, and such things will soon fall away. It will be looked upon as very serious, for one does not presume to buy God’s grace with spiritual simony. Who has ears to hear, let them hear. It is a secret vice rooted deep in our sinful nature. Such presumption, that always presumes one is more facile than God and can achieve God’s grace through one’s own work. It might be that a person could, with effort, ward off such godless error, but I will say nothing about the convents, where many different types of work—all of it self-chosen— are practiced with the fine glitter of holiness. And it is worthless straw, whatever one makes of it. But read with serious attention the 5th and 13th Psalms as Paul inserts [them] in Romans 3, so that you can recognize human works more easily. The grace of God be with you all. Amen. Date: Friday, September 11, 1523 in Augsburg.

3. Villagers cope with religious change, Denmark, 1543–4 42

The religious changes brought by the Protestant Reformation often happened very

quickly, and people found it difficult to give up practices they had carried out for many

years. The church in Kippinge, Denmark, mentioned in the following text, had contained a chalice dedicated to St. Severin, reputed to be bleeding, which made it a popular

destination for pilgrimages. The first Lutheran bishop of the Danish island of Zealand traveled widely in his diocese and wrote his experiences down in 1543–4, including stories that reveal how his audience needed to be reminded of the religious change that

had been introduced in 1536 with the establishment of a Lutheran Church and state in

Denmark. Here he tells of a woman who had carried her dead child to the church in the

hope that the saint might being it back to life again. Source: Peder Palladius’

Visitatsbog, ed. Lis Jacobsen (Copenhagen, Gyldendal, 1925), pp. 130–1. Translated by

Grethe Jacobsen and Pernille Arenfeldt.

. . . Another great abuse has been the visits to dead saints while forgetting the living saints

. . . A good and honest man has become the parish minister in Holmstrup and Kippinge.

Whoever arrives there in his ungodly business [i.e., to worship at the saint’s shrine] he directs back to whence he came. Flames have consumed St. Severin and his statue has been taken away. You will not find what you are looking for. Last year, in Flakkebjerg

County, a woman dropped her child by accident and it broke its neck. Her husband was not home. Fearing her husband’s reaction, she took the dead child in her arms and ran to

Kippinge, five miles away. As the parish minister realised that she had come as a pilgrim, he lectured to her about the proper belief and she laid her child in the cemetery and went home again. Still, I had to read her out of her belief in that and more when I visited here. 43

Stay with your parish church and learn there what will benefit your soul and leave such

ungodly ideas behind.

4. Letters from two Anabaptist martyrs, the Netherlands, 1552

During the period of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, individuals of many

religious denominations were arrested, tried, imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes

executed for their religious beliefs. The harshest treatment was accorded to Anabaptists,

who denied the efficacy of infant baptism and often rejected other teachings accepted by

most Protestants and Catholics. Many of the documents regarding the persecution of

Anabaptists were collected into large volumes, and their stories were also told orally or

formed the basis for hymns designed to be sung by the faithful. The following is an

exchange of letters between a husband and wife, Jeronimus Segersz and Lijsken Dircks,

who were executed as Anabaptists in Antwerp; a hymn written later praising their heroic

deaths is included in the book. The letters include references to specific verses of the

Bible, which many Anabaptists had memorized; the verse notations were added by a later

editor. Source: Hermina Joldersma and Louis Grijp, ed. and trans., ‘Elisabeth’s manly

courage’: Testimonials and Songs of Martyred Anabaptist Women of the Low Countries

(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2001).

Here Follows another Letter from Jeronimus Segersz to his Wife [excerpts]: 44

Grace, peace, a joyful heart, through the confession of Jesus Christ, be with you, my dear

wife Lijsken in the Lord. I wish you, my dear Wife Lijsken, a passionate love for God,

and a joyful spirit in Christ Jesus. Know that I remember you [Rom 1:9] day and night in

my prayers, beseeching and sighing to God on your behalf; I am in great sorrow on your

count because you will have to be imprisoned there for such a long time. I would have wished, had it been the Lord’s will, that you would have been out of your bonds, but now the Lord’s will was different, because he wants to test you, and to reveal his power and might through you, against all those who stand against truth. Therefore I cannot go against the Lord’s will, so that I might not tempt him, but rather I will praise and thank him all the more because he has made us both [Acts 5:41] worthy to suffer for his name; for those whom he has chosen for that are all especially selected Lambs, for he has [Rev

4:4] redeemed them from among mortals as the first-fruits of God.

Further, my dearest one, therefore I have been very joyful up to this time, thanking and praising God, that he has made us fitting for this. But when I heard from you that you were more sorrowful than your tongue could express, that caused me to shed many a tear, and to have a downcast heart, for that is a great sorrow. I also understood that this might be so because you had told me so often to stop heeding Assverus [a silversmith who was a leaders among the Anabaptists], and I didn’t do that; this has caused me many a tear, and I am very sorry about it. [Rom 9:19] Still, I can do nothing against the will of God, and if it had been his will, he would have given us a way out. But he has given us [Job 14:5] our measure, and we will not exceed it. Hence we cannot escape [Tob 13:2] from the Lord. Therefore let us not be sad because of the workings of the Lord, but much rather (as [Mt 5:12] Christ says) rejoice and be glad . . . 45

So I beseech you, my love, that you should not be sad any longer, for the Lord will keep you as the [Zech 2:8] apple of his eye; yes, “[Is 49:15] as little as a mother might forget her suckling child, so I will not forget you,” says the Lord; yes, “[Job 10:27] my sheep hear my voice,” (says the Lord), “and they follow me, and no one shall take them from my hand.” Therefore, my very dearest, be content, and trust in the Lord, and [Heb

13:5] he will not forsake you. I also understood, partly from my sister, that you were also sad because you had not been more tolerant towards me. Listen, my dear lamb, you were not antagonistic towards me, and we lived with one another no differently than we were obliged to live, why would you then be sad? Be satisfied, for Christ will not count it against you, [Ezek 18:22] for he will not remember our sins. And I thank the Lord that you did live so submissively with me; I would be gladly imprisoned instead of you for a year on water and bread, indeed, and then would gladly die tenfold, if you were released.

O, if only I could help you with my tears, and with my blood, how willingly would I suffer for you! but my suffering cannot help you. Therefore be at peace, I will beseech the Lord even more for you. I wrote this letter in tears, because I had heard that you were so sad. And I ask you to write me about how things are going with you. With this I commend you to the Lord.

This is a Letter from Lijsken, Jeronimus’s wife, which she wrote to him in the prison in Antwerp.

. . . My dear Husband in the Lord, whom I married before God and his congregation, about which they say that I have committed adultery because I was not married in Baal’s temple. But the Lord says: [Mt 5:12] “Rejoice when everyone speaks evil of you for my name’s sake, then rejoice and be glad, for you will be rewarded in heaven.” 46

Know that I cried a great deal because you were sad on account of me, because you had heard that I had so often said to you that you should forsake Assverus and you didn’t do that; rest your mind about that, my dearest in the Lord, if the Lord had not

wanted it so, it would not have happened thus. [Mt 6:10] For the Lord’s will must be done for the salvation of both our souls, for he does not let [ 1 Cor 10:13] us be tempted beyond our ability to endure. Therefore be comforted, my dearest in the Lord, and rejoice in the Lord as you have done from the beginning, praising and thanking him that he has so specially chosen us that we may be imprisoned for so long for his name’s sake, and were found worthy for that [Acts 5:41], he knows what he foresaw with that. Although the children of [Num 14:8] Israel languished long in the wilderness, if they had obeyed the voice of the Lord, they too would have entered the Promised Land with Joshua and

Caleb. Just so also we are now in the wilderness among these devouring animals who

daily spread their [Ps 7:15, 57:6] nets to catch us with them. But the Lord who is so

mighty, and who does not forsake his own who trust in him, those he will keep from all

evil, yes, as the [Zech 2:8] apple of his eye. Therefore let us then be at peace in him, and

take on our cross with joy and patience, and await with firm faith those promises which

he has made us [Rev 2:13’, not doubting them, for he is faithful who has promised it.

This is so we might be crowned on [2 Esd 2:41, Rev 7:9] Zion’s mountain, and be

adorned with palms, and might follow the [Rev 14:4] Lamb. I pray you, my love in the

Lord, be comforted in the Lord, with all the beloved friends, and [1 Th 5:25] pray to the

Lord for me. Amen.

Here follows yet another Letter from Jeronimus Segersz to his Wife:

. . . I wish my beloved wife, whom I married before God and his holy Congregation [1 47

Cor 7:2] as my own wife, just as [Gen 11:29] Abraham took Sara, and [Gen 24:15] Isaac

Rebecca, and Tob 7:14] Tobias his uncle’s daughter as his wife, exactly so I took you, too, as my wife, [1 Cor 7:2, Mt 19:5] according to God’s word and command, and not like this horribly blind world. On account of this I praise and thank the Lord night and day, that he spared us so long that we could get to know one another a little, and that we have had knowledge of the truth. Because of this they say that we have lived in adultery, because we were not joined in that idolatrous, mortal, vain, proud, gluttonous institution, and with that adulterous generation, which is nothing but an abomination before the eyes of God. That’s why they lie about us, just as they lied about [Mt 11:19] Christ. And even if they said that you should tend to your sewing, that will not deter us, · Mt 11:28] for

Christ has called all of us, [Jn 5:39] and led us to search Scripture, for it testifies of him.

Further, Christ said that Mary [Lk 10:42] had chosen the best part, because she searched

Scripture.. . .

And further I am letting you know, my beloved Wife in the Lord, that I am sorry that you cried, for when I heard that you were being questioned, I prayed to the Lord day and night all the more passionately for you. Know for certain that he will keep you as the

[Zech 2:8] apple of his eye. I praise the Lord always, that he has made us both [Acts

5:41] worthy to suffer for his name’s sake, for which reason I rejoice greatly. And when I read your Letter, and heard how things were with you, and that as a greeting you wished me the crucified Christ, so my heart and my soul sprang in my body for joy. Yes, so much so, that I could not finish the letter completely, I had to fall to my [Eph 3:14] knees before the Lord, and praise and thank him for his might, comfort, and joy, even though I was still sorrowful because of our Brethren, and for your sake, that you will have to be 48

imprisoned there for so long. I have commended you to the hands of the Lord together

with the fruit of your womb; trust him, and do not doubt that he will give you the same

joy that he gives me, and will keep you [1 Pet 1:5] to the very end.

Another letter from Lijsken, Jeronimus’ Wife (to friends and to her husband: excerpts):

. . . I cannot thank nor praise the Lord enough for the wonderful grace, [Sir 43:27] and for the endless mercy, and for the great Love which he has shown to us, so that we might be his [2 Cor 6:18] sons and daughters if we overcome [Rev 3:21] just as he overcame.

Oh, truly, we might well say [Heb 11:1] that upright faith reconciles itself to that which is not seen, [Gal 5:6] that which is working through love, that which shall bring us to glory,

[Rom 8:17] provided that we suffer with him. Let us note, beloved Friends in the Lord, how great a love worldly people have one for another. There are those in the Steen

[Antwerp’s main prison] (it’s been said), who rejoice when they are brought to the rack, because of those whom they love, so that they can be closer to them even though they cannot come together in person. Do hear, my beloved Brothers and Sisters in the Lord, if the world has such love, oh, what love ought we then to have, who are expectant of such wonderful promises! I see another beautiful image before my eyes, of a Bride, how she

adorns herself to please her Bridegroom of this world. Oh, how then ought we to adorn

ourselves, that we might please our Bridegroom! [ .... ] I pray to the Lord night and day,

that he will grant us such burning love, so that we do not care what torments they might

inflict on us [ . . . ]

Know, my dear Husband in the Lord, when I read that you were so very joyful in

the Lord, I could not finish the Letter, I had to pray to the Lord that he would grant me,

too, the same joy, and keep me to the very end, so that with joy we may present our 49 sacrifice to the glory of our Father who is in heaven, and to the edification of all dear brothers and sisters. [Acts 20:32[] With this I want to commend you to the Lord, and the word of his mercy. Know that I thank you very much for your Letter which you wrote me. The grace of the Lord be with us always.

Another Letter from Lijsken written to her Husband (excerpts):

[. . . ] I wish us both the crucified Christ as a Protector and Shepherd of our Souls. He himself will keep us in all righteousness, holiness and truth to the very end, and he will also keep us as his sons and daughters, if we keep our [Heb 3:14] Devotion to his being until the very end, indeed, as the [Zech 2:8] apple of his eye. Therefore let us trust in him, and he will not [Heb 13:5] desert us in eternity, but will preserve us as he has done for his own from the beginning of the world. Let us not [1 Cor 10:13] be seized by any temptation except those which are human. The Lord is faithful (says Paul), he will not let us be tested beyond our ability. [2

Cor 1:3] Thanks be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has made us [Acts

5:41] worthy to suffer for his name a short mortal suffering for such beautiful promises that he has made to us, together with all those who remain steadfast in his teaching. [Wis

3:5] In little we may suffer here, but in much will we be rewarded.

My dearly beloved husband in the Lord, you have prevailed through some trials; in those trials you have remained steadfast, the Lord be given eternal praise and glory for his great mercy. And I also pray the Lord, with weeping, that he will make me, too, fitting for that, to suffer for his name’s sake [. . . ]

5. A queen combats Protestantism, Portugal, 1562 50

In most parts of Europe during the early modern period, people’s religious practices had

to accord with those of the rulers, or they risked arrest, imprisonment, or even death.

Rulers worried when divergent religious beliefs and practices were allowed in areas

close to their own territory, as in this letter from the queen regent of Portugal, D.

Catarina (reigned 1557–62). One of her many concerns was the spread of Protestantism in northern Europe. This document is one of her letters to Count Castanheira in France

to advise him on how to proceed with a possible diplomatic mission to discuss over this

problem with France’s Charles IX. In their handling of religious matters, as in other

issues, ruling queens had the same power than male monarchs did. Source: Joaquim

Veríssimo Serrão (ed.), Documentos inéditos para a história do reinado de D. Sebastião,

(Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1958), pp. 46–7. Translated by Darlene Abreu-

Ferreira.

Count, my friend, I the Queen send you many greetings as the one I love. From letters dated September 16 that I have now received from João Pereira de Antas my ambassador in the court of the King of France, I have learned of the great role in that realm that the

ministers of the Lutheran sect and their followers have, and the regard and authority

enjoyed by very important persons in said realm, and how close it is there for the loss of

our holy Catholic faith if our Lord [Charles IX of France] does not deal with it, as you

will see from the summary I am sending you along with this, taken from said letters to

better inform you, and from other letters by Andre Tellez my uncle and my ambassador

in the Court of Castille, I have learned of the good work that he ordered done on this

matter with the King of France by the Seigneur de Samze, nobleman of the Upper House 51

of said King of France, who for his part was sent to said King of Castille, as you will also

see from the summary of it that I am sending you, from which and from the state of these

religious questions you will understand how it behooves us to take great care in a remedy

for it and because it seems that I am obliged to take up the matter with the King of

France, they [religious questions] being of the type that they are and that they very much

affect the honor of Our Lord , peace and tranquility of all Christianity. I would greatly appreciate you writing to me with all haste if I should do it, and what on this matter should I say to him, and if it should be by a particular person that I send and whom should I choose, and of what station should he be, for I want to resolve this thing immediately, since to delay could create great harm. Written in Lisbon, on the 22 of

October of 1562. The Queen.

6. A women’s confraternity, Italy, 1547

The Catholic Reformation brought a revitalization of devotional life for many people, in which confraternities for laypeople were important agents. Thousands of confraternities were formed throughout Catholic Europe. Many of these were for men only, and women sometimes objected to their exclusion. In 1547, a group of women in Bologna, Italy, staged a public protest against their exclusion from the confraternity of S. Maria della

Pietà, which supervised a popular public shrine that held an image of the Virgin Mary.

The women practiced their devotions at the shrine but wanted to be allowed to join the confraternity as well. Their protest achieved this to a degree, because they gained their own subordinate company within the confraternity. But it was a hollow victory. From the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, women had been fully integrated as 52

members into Bolognese confraternities (although without authority to hold office). In

the fifteenth century, they were shut out as “temptresses.” After the Pietà protest, women

were brought back into many confraternities, but always in these “separate but equal”

subgroups. The general statutes of the confraternity (document a) give one version of the

events, and the separate statutes for the women’s company (document b) give a slightly

different version. Source: A. Prologue to the 1600 Statutes of the Confraternity of S.

Maria della Pietà (Bologna). Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Fondo Demaniale, 10/7696,

#4, fol. 3r.Prologue to the 1600 Statutes of the Women’s Company of the Confraternity of

S. Maria della Pietà (Bologna). B. Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Fondo Demaniale,

10/7696, #3, fol. 2r. Translations by Nicholas Terpstra.

A. The men’s version:

Our company was formed under the emblem of . . . the Madonna della Pietà in 1502,

under the pontificate of Julius II [sic], in our city of Bologna. (. . . ) The image was

found in an old ruined house by the city wall by some young girls, and from them it was

bought by some pious and devout men. They fixed it here with highest devotion,

whereupon a great devotion began, with infinite favors, miracles, and good deeds that

Christ performed here for them in order to ensure that this holy place would be visited by

many. For which reason the devotion grew with great alms . . . such that in the shortest

time there was built the oratory and the portico to the amazement and wonder of all. A

little afterwards Francia, a most famous painter in those times, made the picture of the middle altar with beautiful ornament. And because the Blessed Virgin in this place 53

demonstrated gracious favor as much to one as to the other sex, many honored and

celebrated it. Many women by their particular devotion gathered together and demanded

that they too be numbered among those of the confraternity in service of the Madonna.

This was graciously granted by a public vote of the whole confraternity, as it appears in

their books.. . .

B. The women’s version:

. . . the above mentioned women with proper permission entered the oratory, and in order

to make their petition elected Mona Lucia, wife and consorte of M.Guaspare Bolza.

They gathered together before Daily Office, and Mona Lucia on behalf of all her sisters

demanded first of God on high, and then of the officials and men gathered, that they also be counted under the mantle of the virgin Mary, and that they be able to gather in this

holy place to her service, honor, and glory, and to do all that the statutes commanded of

them. And hearing all this, the men put it to a vote and all the votes were in favor, and so

they accepted them as good mothers and sisters. The women then asked the men to give

them a head and guide to keep them from error, and after prayer and by the will of God,

they elected and confirmed the above mentioned Lucia for the whole of the following

year of 1548. . . .

7. Teresa of Ávila, The Way of Perfection, 1565

Teresa of Ávila had been a contemplative nun and mystic since she was a

teenager. When she was in her forties, Teresa felt a call to turn her visions into action, 54 founding a reformed Carmelite house in her native city. Under the direction of her confessor, she wrote her autobiography, describing stages of devotion as the soul ascends toward God. At the same time, she wrote The Way of Perfection, explaining why she founded the house and providing guidance for the nuns in their devotional life; in this, she clearly sees prayer as an effective way to combat Protestant actions. Teresa’s ideas and reforming activities set her in opposition to many leaders of the Spanish church, who at one point began an Inquisitorial process against her. They were also opposed by the city leaders of Avila, who particularly objected to her suggestion that all nuns, regardless of socioeconomic status, observe the strict rule of a common life.

Pressure from supporters led the process against her to be dropped, and she spent the last years of her life traveling around Spain, establishing and reforming religious houses.

She was canonized in 1622. The italicized final section is not included in all manuscript copies and has been a source of much debate because it includes Teresa’s strongest statements in favor of women. Source: Teresa of Avila, Way of Perfection, trans. and ed.

E. Allison Peers (New York: Image Books, 1964), pp. 20–22, 25, 27. The entire text can be found at: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/way/.

My intent is to suggest a few remedies for a number of small temptations which come from the devil, and which, because they are so slight, are apt to pass unnoticed. I shall also write of other things, according as the Lord reveals them to me and as they come to my mind; since I do not know what I am going to say I cannot set it down in suitable order; and I think it is better for me not to do so, for it is quite unsuitable that I should be writing in this way at all. May the Lord lay His hand on all that I do so that it 55

may be in accordance with His holy will; this is always my desire, although my actions

may be as imperfect as I myself am.

I know that I am lacking neither in love nor in desire to do all I can to help the souls

of my sisters to make great progress in the service of the Lord. It may be that this love,

together with my years and the experience which I have of a number of convents, will

make me more successful in writing about small matters than learned men can be. For

these, being themselves strong and handing other and more important occupations, do not

always pay such heed to things which in themselves seem of no importance but which

may do great harm to persons as weak as we women are. For the snares laid by the devil

for strictly cloistered nuns are numerous and he finds that he needs new weapons if he is

to do them harm. I, being a wicked woman, have defended myself but ill, and so I should

like my sisters to take warning by me. I shall speak of nothing of which I have no

experience, either in my own life or in the observation of others, or which the Lord has not taught me in prayer.

A few days ago I was commanded to write an account of my life in which I also dealt with certain matters concerning prayer. It may be that my confessor will not wish you to see this, for which reason I shall set down here some of the things which I said in that book and others which may also seem to me necessary. May the Lord direct this, as I have begged Him to do, and order it for His greater glory. Amen.

CHAPTER 1

Of the reason which moved me to found this convent in such strict observance.

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When this convent was originally founded, for the reasons set down in the book

which, as I say, I have already written, and also because of certain wonderful revelations

by which the Lord showed me how well He would be served in this house, it was not my

intention that there should be so much austerity in external matters, nor that it should

have no regular income: on the contrary, I should have liked there to be no possibility of

want. I acted, in short, like the weak and wretched woman that I am, although I did so

with good intentions and not out of consideration for my own comfort.

At about this time there came to my notice the harm and havoc that were being wrought in France by these Lutherans and the way in which their unhappy sect was increasing. This troubled me very much, and, as though I could do anything, or be of any help in the matter, I wept before the Lord and entreated Him to remedy this great evil. I felt that I would have laid down a thousand lives to save a single one of all the souls that were being lost there. And, seeing that I was a woman, and a sinner, and incapable of

doing all I should like in the Lord’s service, and as my whole yearning was, and still is,

that, as He has so many enemies and so few friends, these last should be trusty ones, I

determined to do the little that was in me—namely, to follow the evangelical counsels as

perfectly as I could, and to see that these few nuns who are here should do the same,

confiding in the great goodness of God, Who never fails to help those who resolve to

forsake everything for His sake. As they are all that I have ever painted them as being in

my desires, I hoped that their virtues would more than counteract my defects, and I

should thus be able to give the Lord some pleasure, and all of us, by busying ourselves in

prayer for those who are defenders of the Church, and for the preachers and learned men

who defend her, should do everything we could to aid this Lord of mine Who is so much 57

oppressed by those to whom He has shown so much good that it seems as though these

traitors would send Him to the Cross again and that He would have nowhere to lay His

head.,,

Oh, my sisters in Christ! Help me to entreat this of the Lord, Who has brought you

together here for that very purpose. This is your vocation; this must be your business;

these must be your desires; these your tears; these your petitions. Let us not pray for

worldly things, my sisters. It makes me laugh, and yet it makes me sad, when I hear of

the things which people come here to beg us to pray to God for; we are to ask His

Majesty to give them money and to provide them with incomes—I wish that some of

these people would entreat God to enable them to trample all such things beneath their

feet. Their intentions are quite good, and I do as they ask because I see that they are really

devout people, though I do not myself believe that God ever hears me when I pray for

such things. The world is on fire. Men try to condemn Christ once again, as it were, for they bring a thousand false witnesses against Him. They would raze His Church to the ground—and are we to waste our time upon things which, if God were to grant them, would perhaps bring one soul less to Heaven? No, my sisters, this is no time to treat with

God for things of little importance. . ..

CHAPTER 3 Continues the subject begun in the first chapter and persuades the sisters to busy themselves constantly in beseeching God to help those who work for the Church. Ends with an exclamatory prayer.

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Let us now return to the principal reason for which the Lord has brought us together in

this house, for which reason I am most desirous that we may be able to please His

Majesty. Seeing how great are the evils of the present day and how no human strength

will suffice to quench the fire kindled by these heretics (though attempts have been made

to organize opposition to them, as though such a great and rapidly spreading evil could be

remedied by force of arms), it seems to me that it is like a war in which the enemy has

overrun the whole country, and the Lord of the country, hard pressed, retires into a city,

which he causes to be well fortified, and whence from time to time he is able to attack.

Those who are in the city are picked men who can do more by themselves than they

could do with the aid of many soldiers if they were cowards. Often this method gains the

victory; or, if the garrison does not conquer, it is at least not conquered; for, as it contains

no traitors, but picked men, it can be reduced only by hunger. In our own conflict, however, we cannot be forced to surrender by hunger; we can die but we cannot be conquered.

Now why have I said this? So that you may understand, my sisters, that what we have to ask of God is that, in this little castle of ours, inhabited as it is by good Christians, none of us may go over to the enemy. We must ask God, too, to make the captains in this castle or city—that is, the preachers and theologians—highly proficient in the way of the

Lord. And as most of these are religious, we must pray that they may advance in perfection, and in the fulfillment of their vocation, for this is very needful. For, as I have already said, it is the ecclesiastical and not the secular arm which must defend us. And as we can do nothing by either of these means to help our King, let us strive to live in such a way that our prayers may be of avail to help these servants of God, who, at the cost of so 59

much toil, have fortified themselves with learning and virtuous living and have laboured

to help the Lord. . ..

It seems over-bold of me to think that I can do anything towards obtaining this. But

I have confidence, my Lord, in these servants of Thine who are here, knowing that they neither desire nor strive after anything but to please Thee. For Thy sake they have left the little they possessed, wishing they had more so that they might serve Thee with it. Since

Thou, my Creator, art not ungrateful, I do not think Thou wilt fail to do what they

beseech of Thee, for when Thou wert in the world, Lord, Thou didst not despise women,

but didst always help them and show them great compassion.

Thou didst find more faith and no less love in them than in men, and one of them

was Thy most sacred Mother, from whose merits we derive merit, and whose habit we

wear, though our sins make us unworthy to do so.

We can do nothing in public that is of any use to Thee, nor dare we speak of some

of the truths over which we weep in secret lest Thou shouldst not hear this our just petition. Yet, Lord I cannot believe this of Thy goodness and righteousness, for Thou art a righteous Judge, not like judges in the world, who, being, after all, men and sons of

Adam, refuse to consider any woman’s virtue as above suspicion. Yes, my King, but the day will come when all will be known. I am not speaking on my own account, for the whole world is already aware of my wickedness, and I am glad that it should become known; but, when I see what the times are like, I feel it is not right to repel spirits which are virtuous and brave, even though they be the spirits of women.

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8. A Catholic woman writes of her faith, England, 1610

Teresa is the most prominent female Catholic reformer, but not the only one. During the

period of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, individuals who were not members

of the clergy debated religion orally and occasionally published pamphlets and treatises

detailing their ideas on religious matters. It is difficult to find information about oral

discussions, but occasionally one of the participants shared his or her experiences in letters to others. The following is a portion of a letter from Luisa de Carvajal (1566–

1614) to Joseph Creswell, the director of the English Jesuits in Spain and Portugal.

Carvajal was a wealthy Spanish noblewoman orphaned at a young age who developed a strong sense of religious calling. In 1605, she went to England, which had become

Protestant many decades before, to minister to Catholics there and attempt to convince people to convert to Catholicism. She was arrested and jailed for a few days in 1608 and again in 1613, and she died shortly after her second release from prison. Source:

Elizabeth Rhodes, This Tight Embrace: Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (1566–1614)

(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2000), pp. 265-279. Reprinted by permission.

1. I receive great mercy and consolation from Your Grace’s letters, and I hope that

Your Grace has received consolation with my last correspondence, seeing the great constancy of the holy martyrs Garves and Fludder [two Catholic martyrs]. And of me, I can tell Your Grace that I have walked between the cross and holy water, as they say there, because I have been in prison, and since it was in the public jail, it would be useless for me to keep silent about it.

2. The reason was because, arriving one day at a store in Cheapside[ a part of 61

London], leaning on the door sill from outside, as is my custom, the occasion offered to

ask one of the young attendants if he was Catholic presented itself, and he responded,

“No, God forbid!” And I replied, “May God not permit that you not be, which is what

matters for you.” At this the mistress and master of the shop came over, and another

youth and neighboring merchants, and a great chat about religion ensued. They asked a

lot about the mass, about priests, about confession, but what we spent the most time on

(over two hours) was whether the Roman religion was the only true one, and whether the

Pope is the head of the Church, and whether St. Peter’s keys have been left to them [the

Popes] forever in succession.

3. Some listened with pleasure, others with fury, and so much that I sensed some

danger, at least of being arrested. But I thought nothing of it, in exchange for setting that

light before their eyes in the best way I could. And in these simple matters of faith there

are known methods [of convincing] which are very handy for anyone, and with which

one can wage war on error. And although they might not take it very well at first, in the

end those truths remain in their memories, to be meditated upon and open to holy inspirations, and God’s cause for their salvation or condemnation is greatly justified. And

there are very many who never manage to find out even where the priests are, and among

the lay Catholics, not many want to run that risk [of contact with priests] without a guaranteed benefit. And the merchants of Cheapside exceed the rest of the city in malice, error, and hatred for the Pope, as well as in the quantity of its residents and money. And

some of this can be observed in the fact that, when I have spoken on several occasions

with others about exactly the same things, they have always taken it affably.

4. The mistress of the shop tried to stir everyone to anger, as did another infernal 62

young man who was there, younger in age but with greater malice. The woman said it

was a shame that they were tolerating me and that, without a doubt, I was some Roman

[Catholic] priest dressed like a woman so as to better persuade people of my religion. Our

Lord saw fit that I speak the best English I’ve spoken since I’ve been in England, and

they thought I was Scottish because of the way I spoke and because I showed affection

for the King, because one of the eldest men came over to me and asked whether he

[James] wasn’t quite wise for not making his entire kingdom continue in error. I responded that it wasn’t a question of the King, who had been left as a child, without his saintly Catholic mother, in the power of the Puritans, and that they had a truer and more legitimate King now than they had had in Queen Elizabeth.

5. Thus I tried not to evade the truth and make them forget the malicious question about the King, about which they are extremely touchy? And so then they asked why it was that the King was truer. And I said that because he was the great-grandson of the eldest daughter of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, his daughter, was born during the life of

Queen Catherine, Mary’s mother. And from that they inferred that I was calling her a bastard but, since it had already happened and she left no sons, it wasn’t a matter of importance. And we got through that with few words and returned to questions about the true religion once more.

6. And hearing behind me that someone calling Mr. Garves a traitor, and my Ann

[one of her English companions], [insisting he was] a martyr, were disputing, I prohibited her from continuing, fearing that she might say something impolitic? And I asked him to

tell me why Garves had died. He said only because he was a Roman Catholic. “And for no other reason?” I replied. He said yes. “Well then,” I said to him, “don’t be shocked 63

that he is called a martyr.” And he seemed to take it well.

7. With this I returned to my house and I left them like lions against me. And two weeks later they managed to spot me, for it was necessary for me to go out, which I do but few times without a very specific need to buy necessary things or to go see the felicitous confessors of Christ in the prisons, or something similar, and never to visit anyone (for my natural condition so inclines me and my poor health and strength require it. And in the end they surrounded me, looking at me like basilisks [small, snakelike creatures believed to kill with their sight and breath] and with a sheriff they brought, they said I had to go to Sir Thomas Bennet’s house, the justice of the peace, not far from there.

And although they had no warrant, I didn’t resist, so they wouldn’t grab me by the arm or raise a ruckus right in the middle of the street. And it wasn’t a bad moment for my soul either. And all three of us went along agreeably, I mean Ann and Faith, my companions, and myself (for the other two [companions] had stayed at home). And our servant, who is an old and virtuous man of honor and long-standing Catholic faith, went with us.

8. We found the judge seated beneath a little roof on his patio, where he probably conducts his business, and he had us there, examining witnesses and questioning people from six in the evening or a bit later until around nine, when it started to get dark. The witnesses swore on their Bible what truths they said, with a few lies, but more or less within the limits of what I’ve already touched upon, without inventing anything else. And they talked so much nonsense sometimes that they made me recall that line [from the

Bible], Et testimonia convenientia non erant? [But their witness agreed not together.]

And there were two or three of them stirring up the people of the nearby streets against me, saying I was a priest in a woman’s clothes who was walking around persuading 64

people of my faith, and since it was something so unheard of, I believe in half an hour

there were more than two hundred people, so they were saying, at the judge’s door, with

the street full of a great, confusing noise. And among them they were already saying that

there were three priests, with their long black gowns, which is our garb? The judge got up

to calm them down a few times, because they were trying hard to get in. And he told me

that if he were to send me to the jail then, the people would go at me. I told him I thought

he had more charity than that.

9. He asked my homeland, name, address, and the reason I was in England, and by telling the truth I cut it short, saying my name was Luisa de Carvajal, and I was Spanish, and I lived close to don Pedro’s house, where I went to hear mass, and that I had come to

follow the example of many saints of the holy church who voluntarily exiled themselves

into foreign lands, being unprotected and poor. And although it was all gibberish to the pitiful old man, that was the best answer, without a doubt.

10. He laughed as if he were crazy and asked me if it was the case that I affirmed the

Pope to be the head of the Church and his religion the only true one. I said yes. He asked me if I wanted to remain in said opinions. And I responded that yes I did, and that I was prepared to die for them. . .

13. The judge’s daughters kept coming in and out, as well as his wife; it must have been so they could see us. In the end they took us to the jail, after we had been in a lower room adjoining the same patio since nightfall, sometimes walking about, and sometimes with my kneeling in one of its corners to pray that God help us. And we could not leave until after eleven thirty, so as to depart without there being a lot of people, and even so about twenty from the neighborhood followed us. The judge’s secretary was among them, 65 one of good Thomas’s cousins, who is now imprisoned, much needed by all our friends.

He told the jailer to treat us well, but that must not have been able to happen that night, and so they put us in the highest part of a narrow little attic, with a lit candle and the door locked with a key the jailer took with him, without our being able to get so much as a drop of water or beer or even a bite of bread. And what with this and not being very well, and without being able to get into a bed, I slept little indeed, but with notable consolation, and this diminished when I considered what little the whole business amounted to.

14. I had asked them if, for money, they would put me close to the jailer’s wife and female servants, even though it were less comfortable than that lodging. And in the morning they put us in one of her rooms, around ten o’clock, and although dingy and without air, it was reasonable, and the women were all courteous and affable.. . .

15. We were in there for four days, from Saturday until Wednesday at ten at night, when the Council sent orders for them to set me free, with the judge having sent them my papers.. . .

16. While in jail I spoke about religion much more than I had out of it, with all the jailers and officials and their families and friends whom, with my permission, they brought to speak with me. And they listened nicely. And I didn’t want to let the chance slip by, remembering the Holy Apostle who says that the word of God is not tied down? 66

A Benedictine nun in a typical seventeenth-century habit.

9. Letter from Louise de Marillac (Mademoiselle de Gras) to Vincent de Paul, April

1650

Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul founded the Daughters of Charity, a women’s

community dedicated to service to the poor. In this letter, de Marillac discusses some of 67 the issues facing the Daughters and describes a meeting she has just had with the

Procurator General, an appointee of the king, explaining why she wants the Daughters of

Charity to be a company of laywomen and not a religious order. Source: Spiritual

Writings of Louise de Marillac: Correspondence and Thoughts, ed. and trans. Sr. Louise

Sullivan, S.C., (New York: New City Press, 1991), pp. 317–18.

My Most Honored Father,

Yesterday I had the honor of seeing Madame de Lamoignon [a member of the

Daughters]; her daughter asked me what the Ladies had done at Bicetre [a foundling home and orphanage run by the Daughters] She is aware of their resolution to move the boys to an annex in an effort to effect the necessary separation, but she tells me that this is not the solution that your Charity had ordered. She clearly sees the problems for the boys, as well as for the nurses, of leaving the girls there. Although we try to employ good women, the majority of them are forced to leave because of bad conduct rather than on account of the necessities of the times. Moreover, these women, who have been gathered from all over and who are of all types, use coarse language and exhibit licentious conduct. This good young lady told me that you must stand firm so that the proposal that your Charity so strongly supported will be carried out. She also asked that it be put into effect for this Jubilee year and not be put off until a later date. I added that these delays give rise to second thoughts, and Mademoiselle de Lamoignon said that there will be no way to come back to the matter if you miss your opportunity now.

However, I also believe, my Most Honored Father, that you should be firm about taking one or two of your houses, at most, in order to save rent; otherwise, if they make 68

the choice that I think they will, the direction of them will be entirely and permanently

given to others, and in this event their plans will come entirely to light. It occurred to me

that they believe that we cannot abandon the service of the children, and that we are

committed to it because of the 1000 pounds we were given. You know how we have been

wronged. Originally, it was the intention of the benefactors that half the donation come to

us purely and simply for the support of the Company and that it not oblige us to the

service of the children anymore than we are now committed to the service of the poor and

of the galley slaves. If they have any intention of disputing it with us one day, it would be

better now than later.

Yesterday I had an opportunity to see the Procurator General. He did me the honor of receiving me most courteously. He immediately asked me if I was there

concerning some business he had at hand. I told him that I had come to refresh his

memory on the matter. He asked me if we considered ourselves regular or secular. I told

him that we aspired only to the latter. He told me that such a thing was without precedent.

I cited for him Madame de Villeneuve’s Daughters [the daughters of the Cross, another

secular congregation founded earlier] and pointed out to him that they go everywhere. He

said many good things about the Company and added that he did not disapprove of our

plan. However, he said that something of such importance merited much thought. I

expressed my joy that he felt as he did about the matter, and I begged him, if he thought

that the Company was unworthy to be, or for some reason should not be continued, to

destroy it entirely. But if he considered it good, I said that we begged him to establish it

on a solid foundation. I explained that it was this thought that had motivated us to give it

a trial for at least 12 or 15 years, and that during this period, by the grace of God, no 69

insurmountable obstacles have appeared. He replied, “Let me reflect on this, I do not say for months, but at least for a few weeks.” He took the trouble to escort us to our carriage and showed us great cordiality in the courtyard. He asked us to extend his very humble greetings to you. He added that he would consider himself a usurer if he accepted the very humble gratitude that we offered him for the honor he shows to all our sisters when they dare to approach him with their needs for the poor galley slaves or for the little children . . .

10. Nun’s description of relations within the convent, Germany, 1678

Life in religious communities often involved intense interpersonal relations. Loyalty to the abbess and to other members of the community is one reason that women’s religious houses fought the Reformation in many places. Intense relations also had their negative side, however. The following is a discussion of some interpersonal relations in the

Ursuline convent in Erfurt, Germany, written by a nun who had left the order, Martha

Elisabeth Zitter. This is a section of her much longer book describing the reasons she had left the convent, published by a Protestant pastor; it thus highlights the negative in

convent life, yet also captures the intensity of close relations. Although it is not an

objective report, it can still give us a glimpse of the ways in which women actually

related when they lived in the close quarters that were common in convents and

monasteries. Source: Merry Wiesner-Hanks and Joan Skocir, Convents Confront the

Reformation: Catholic and Protestant Nuns in Germany (Milwaukee: Marquette

University Press, 1998), pp. 91–7. Reprinted by permission.

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The commands of the leaders of the order often run contrary to God and his holy

commandments, which I can demonstrate with many examples. Among the many I will

only cite a single one, and ask: Whether it is in accordance with the will of God, when the

mother superior commands one of the nuns that is under her authority to bring forth

invented truths as if they were truths about another [nun], towards whom she is not well

disposed, in order to accuse an innocent [person]? And imposes on another, that she support the one who first brought up the slander, and help damn the innocent to punishment through false witness? Commands like this happened often in the convent, which God’s goodness has led me out of in strange ways. Those Christian hearts and sincere souls who were often painfully punished through such slanders can testify to this upon request. From the bottom of my heart, I wish them the same enlightenment of the merciful God as I experienced, and the same means to save themselves—with both their

souls, which have been bought through the dear blood of Christ, and their bodies—from the barbarous tyranny of Dr. Hunolt [the nuns’ confessor] and the French nuns in Erfurt.

And [I wish] that they would come to such a place where they could edify and console themselves with me through true teaching from God’s Word and the good example of righteous evangelical Christians. For I know only too well, how much it hurts when one must see and experience in the aforementioned convent, how pride and ambition, envy, slander, anger, untruth, unfairness and other deadly sins reign there.

I deliberately began above with pride and ambition, for all the others spring from these. Pride and arrogance make the four oldest [nuns] who are still there hateful and bitter toward each other (though otherwise they are very harmonious when it serves to the detriment of the younger [nuns]). They will not grudge anyone advantage in office, and 71

even make an alienation from conversation and living together out of the alienation of

their hearts. Yes, it has certainly been a half year that they have not come together, and spoken nothing but prickly and quarrelsome words to each other or told very annoying things about each other that are uninteresting to everyone. [They did this] even though

such works themselves prove truthfully how far the desire to rule had driven the one and

the other. It was not enough for them that one party made the other despised through the disclosure of their godless life in the convent, but they troubled themselves scrupulously to write letters to other convents and also to Mainz to his Electoral Grace [the bishop of

Mainz, who had charge over the convents in this area], so that he was obliged to send three [nuns] from Erfurt back to another convent that is almost one hundred miles away.

Despite sending the one party away, the remaining four who are still ruling could not lay down or turn away from their pride and ambition. This is proved by the cunning invented means and slanders with which they belittle and despise those whom they presume are gaining preference over the others, making them suspect to the highest authorities and others whom they presume can do something about this. Nothing would stun [me] about their violence and unbelievable pride.

Through such a life the nuns still want to glorify themselves, [saying that] they follow Christ’s example closest in the convent. How well their life may be compared with their supposed glory may be seen also in the shameful envy that they have for one another. Not only in preference for offices, but in all things and especially in natural gifts.

If one [of them] is somewhat more intelligent, more gifted in delicate work, more experienced, more loved, has better friendships, is given a preference or something special in clothing, or something else, then she has almost as many envious haters around 72 her as there are sciences. They apply all sorts of tricks, [telling her] how she should hide such gifts and turn away from further recommendations and promotions.

From this springs the third [thing] I have mentioned above, that those who are envied in such a way are made suspect and despised through outrageous untruths. The most unchristian, however, is that some of them smash each other to pieces, and bear false witness about the others, that this one or that one is supposed to have said or done such things. For they know, that [the others] will not leave unless there are evil slanders and punishment. Therefore they bring the innocent to correction and punishment. It is not surprising that the nuns who have been through this are engulfed in the pain and desolation caused by such unfairness. I have experienced, and therefore can certainly write about and judge, how the poor distressed souls in the clerical order find themselves.

They have not spared their distinguished authorities—both outside and inside of the convent—from this evil defamation if they didn’t do all that they wanted. I long [to see] what sort of poison arrows of evil defamation they will shoot after me, as is their habit. I don’t fear these in the least, because along with my good conscience, my honest soul will be found [in my actions] both inside and outside the convent. I will prove that I have behaved through all of the persecutions and unfairness, and that they can not accuse me of a frivolous life. No one has heard me complain while in the convent about the severity of the order, but certainly about the immeasurable anger, unfair judgments, unearned punishments, the rages and furies of Dr. Hunolt and the French nuns, directed against those who did not speak well of their evil life. And also about the less than praiseworthy conversations, which one or another of the spiritual directors of the convent had with some of the nuns, who adjusted all their actions so as to please them [i.e., the 73 spiritual directors] the best. Sometimes these talks—which I heard with my own ears— sounded like lovers’ conversations that went on for a few hours or more. They went on during preparations for the mass so that they [they priests] often forgot to consecrate the host and those who wanted to take communion had to turn away from the church.

I said a few words about such things from time to time—though I confess I was sometimes silent in order to prevent scandal—which cost me dearly afterwards, from which it may be concluded that I could not value such an estate [i.e., the clerical estate], in which such a terrible life was lived, as highly as one is supposed to.

A recent Chinese-language translation of Madame Guyon’s guide to prayer

11. Madame Guyon, A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, 1685

Madam Guyon was a French mystic and the center of a group of intensely religious

individuals. She felt called to spread the idea that prayer could bring inner peace and

allow the individual soul to be lost in God. This idea, called “quietism,” was 74

opposed by Bishop Bossuet, the most powerful church official in France, who thought

it might cause people to rely more on themselves than on the institutional church.

Madame Guyon spent eight years in prison for her ideas, although her brief guide to

prayer is still widely read. The entire text can be found at

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/guyon/prayer.html

CHAPTER I

The Universal Call to Prayer

What a dreadful delusion hath prevailed over the greater part of mankind, in supposing that they are not called to a state of prayer! whereas all are capable of prayer, and are

called thereto, as all are called to and are capable of salvation.

Prayer is the application of the heart to God, and the internal exercise of love. S.

Paul hath enjoined us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. v 17), and our Lord saith, “I

say unto you all, watch and pray” (Mark xiii. 33, 37): all therefore may, and all ought to

practice prayer. I grant that meditation is attainable but by few, for few are capable of it;

and therefore, my beloved brethren who are athirst for salvation, meditative prayer is not

the prayer which God requires of you, nor which we would recommend.

Let all pray: we should live by prayer, as we should live by love. “I counsel you to

buy of me gold tried in the fire, that ye may be rich” (Rev. iii. 8), this is much more easily

obtained than we can conceive. “Come, all ye that are athirst, to these living waters”; nor

lose your precious moments in “hewing out cisterns, broken cisterns that will hold no

water” (John vii. 37; Jer ii. 13). Come, ye famished souls, who find naught whereon to 75

feed; come, and ye shall be fully satisfied!

Come, ye poor afflicted ones, who groan beneath your load of wretchedness and

pain, and ye shall find ease and comfort! Come, ye sick, to your Physician, and be not

fearful of approaching Him because ye are filled with diseases; expose them to His view

and they shall be healed!

Children, draw near to your Father, and He will embrace you in the arms of love!

Come, ye poor, stray, wandering sheep, return to your Shepherd! Come, sinners, to your

Saviour! Come, ye dull, ignorant, and illiterate, ye who think yourselves the most

incapable of prayer! ye are more peculiarly called and adapted thereto. Let all without exception come, for Jesus Christ hath called all.

Yet let not those come who are without a heart; they are not asked; for there must be a heart, that there may be love. But who is without a heart? O come, then, give this heart to God; and here learn how to make the donation.

All who are desirous of prayer may easily pray, enabled by those ordinary graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit which are common to all men.

Prayer is the guide to perfection and the sovereign good; it delivers us from every vice, and obtains us every virtue; for the one great means to become perfect, is to walk in the presence of God: He Himself hath said, “walk in my presence and be ye perfect”

(Gen. xvii. 1). It is by prayer alone, that we are brought into this presence, and maintained in it without interruption.

You must then learn a species of prayer, which may be exercised at all times; which doth not obstruct outward employments; and which may be equally practiced by princes, kings, prelates, priests and magistrates, soldiers and children, tradesmen, labourers, 76

women and sick persons: it cannot, therefore, be the prayer of the head, but of the heart;

not a prayer of the understanding alone, which is so limited in its operations that it can

have but one object at one time; but the prayer of the heart is not interrupted by the exercises of reason: indeed nothing can interrupt this prayer, but irregular and disordered

affections: and when once we have tasted of God, and the sweetness of His love, we shall

find it impossible to relish aught but Himself?

Nothing is so easily obtained as the possession and enjoyment of God, for “in him

we live, move, and have our being;” and He is more desirous to give Himself into us,

than we can be to receive Him.

All consists in the manner of seeking Him; and to seek aright, is easier and more

natural to us than breathing. Though you think yourselves ever so stupid, dull, and

incapable of sublime attainments, yet, by prayer, you may live in God Himself with less

difficulty or interruption than you live in the vital air. Will it not then be highly sinful to

neglect prayer? But this I trust you will not, when you have learnt the method, which is

exceedingly easy.

CHAPTER II

The Method of Prayer

There are two ways of introducing a soul into prayer, which should for some time be

pursued; the one is Meditation, the other is Reading accompanied with Meditation.

Meditative Reading is the choosing some important practical or speculative truth,

always preferring the practical, and proceeding thus: whatever truth you have chosen,

read only a small portion of it, endeavouring to taste and digest it, to extract the essence 77 and substance thereof, and proceed no farther while any savour or relish remains in the passage: when this subsides, take up your book again and proceed as before, seldom reading more than half a page at a time, for it is not the quantity that is read, but the manner of reading, that yields us profit.

Those who read fast reap no more advantage than a bee would by only skimming over the surface of the flower, instead of waiting to penetrate into it, and extract its sweets. Much reading is rather for scholastic subjects than divine truths: indeed, to receive real profit from spiritual books, we must read as I have described; and I am certain, if that method were pursued, we should become gradually habituated to, and more fully disposed for prayer.

Meditation, which is the other method, is to be practiced at an appropriated season, and not in the time of reading. I believe the best manner of meditating is as follows:—

When, by an act of lively faith, you are placed in the Presence of God, recollect some truth wherein there is substance and food; pause gently and sweetly thereon, not to employ the reason, but merely to calm and fix the mind: for you must observe, that your principal exercise should ever be the Presence of God; your subject, therefore, should rather serve to stay the mind, than exercise the understanding.

From this procedure, it will necessarily follow, that the lively faith in a God immediately present in our inmost soul, will produce an eager and vehement pressing inwardly into ourselves, and a restraining all our senses from wandering abroad: this serves to extricate us speedily from numberless distractions, to remove us far from external objects, and to bring us nigh unto our God, Who is only to be found in our inmost centre, which is the Holy of Holies wherein He dwelleth. . . 78

Prayer is the effusion of the heart in the Presence of God: “I have poured out my soul before God” saith the mother of Samuel. (1 Sam. i. 15) The prayer of the wise men at the feet of Christ in the stable of Bethlehem, was signified by the incense they offered: for prayer being the energy and fire of love, melting, dissolving, and sublimating the soul, and causing it to ascend unto God; therefore, in proportion as the soul is melted and dissolved, in like proportion do odours issue from it; and these odours proceed from the intense fire of love within. . .

Thus doth the soul ascend unto God, by giving up self to the destroying and annihilating power of Divine Love: this, indeed, is a most essential and necessary sacrifice in the Christian religion, and that alone by which we pay true homage to the sovereignty of God; as it is written, “The power of the Lord is great, and he is honoured only by the humble” (Eccles. iii. 20). By the destruction of the existence of self within us, we truly acknowledge the supreme existence of our God; for unless we cease to exist in self, the Spirit of the Eternal Word cannot exist in us: now it is by the giving up of our own life, that we give place for His coming; and “in dying to ourselves, He liveth and abideth in us.”

79

12. Margaret Fell Fox, Women’s Speaking Justified, 1666

The Society of Friends, generally called the Quakers, rejected all social hierarchies and did not show deference to their superiors; they were persecuted for their beliefs in both

Europe and the European colonies abroad. Quakers also taught that the spirit of God did not differentiate between men and women, and women preached, taught, and suffered punishment along with men. Margaret Fell was active on behalf of her Quaker beliefs for many years and eventually married George Fox, the founder of the Quakers. In this 80 pamphlet, she explains why women should not be silent on matters of faith. The entire text can be found at: http://www.qhpress.org/texts/fell.html.

. . . those that speak against this Woman’s speaking, speak against the Church of Christ, and the Seed of the Woman, which Seed is Christ; that is to say, Those that speak against the Power of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord speaking in a Woman, simply by reason of her Sex, or because she is a Woman, not regarding the Seed, and Spirit, and Power that speaks in her; such speak against Christ and his Church, and are of the Seed of the

Serpent, wherein lodgeth Enmity. And as God the Father made no such difference in the first Creation, nor ever since between the Male and the Female, but always out of his

Mercy and Loving-kindness, had regard unto the Weak. So also his Son, Christ Jesus, confirms the same thing; when the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, if it were lawful for a Man to put away his Wife? He answered and said unto them, Have you not read, That he that made them in the beginning, made them Male and Female; and said,

For this Cause shall a Man leave Father and Mother, and shall cleave unto his Wife, and they twain shall be one Flesh; wherefore they are no more twain, but one Flesh? What therefore God hath joyned together, let no Man put asunder, Mat. 19.

Again, Christ Jesus, when he came to the City of Samaria, where Jacob’s Well was, where the Woman of Samaria was, you may read in John 4. how he was pleased to preach the Everlasting Gospel to her; and when the Woman said unto him, I know that when the Messiah cometh, (which is called Christ) when he cometh, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. Also he said unto Martha, when she said, she knew that her Brother should rise again in the last day. Jesus said unto her, 81

I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet

should he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth, shall never die. Believest thou this?

She answered, Yea, Lord, I believe thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Here she

manifested her true and saving Faith, which few at that day believed so on him, John 11.

25, 26.

Also that Woman, that came unto Jesus with an Alabaster Box of very precious

Ointment, and poured it on his Head as he sat at meat; it is manifest that this Woman

knew more of the secret Power and Wisdom of God, than his Disciples did, who were

filled with Indignation against her; and therefore Jesus saith, Why do ye trouble the

Woman, for she hath wrought a good Work upon me? Verily, I say unto you,

Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole World, there shall also this that this Woman hath done, be told for a Memorial of her, Mat. 26. Mark 14. 3. Luke saith farther, She was a Sinner, and that she stood at his Feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his Feet with her Tears, and did wipe them with the Hair of her Head, and kissed his Feet, and annointed them with Ointment. And when Jesus saw the Heart of the

Pharisee that had bidden him to his House, he took occasion to speak unto Simon, as you may read in Luke 7. and he turned to the Woman, and said, Simon, seest thou this

Woman? Thou gavest me no Water to my Feet; but she hath washed my Feet with Tears, and wiped them with the Hair of her Head: Thou gavest me no Kiss; but this Woman, since I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my Feet: My Head with Oil thou didst not

annoint; but this Woman hath annointed my Feet with Ointment: Wherefore I say unto

thee, her Sins, which are many, are forgiven her; for she hath loved much, Luke 7. 37. to

the End. 82

Also, there was many Women which followed Jesus from Galilee, ministring unto him, and stood afar off when he was Crucified, Mat. 28. 55. Mark 15. Yea even the

Women of Jerusalem wept for him, insomuch that he said unto them, Weep not for me. ye

Daughters of Jerusalem; but weep for your selves, and for your Children, Luke 23. 28.

And certain Women which had been healed of Evil Spirits and Infirmities, Mary

Magdalen, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s Steward’s Wife; and many others which ministred unto him of their Substance, Luke 8. 2, 3.

Thus we see that Jesus owned the Love and Grace that appeared in Women, and did not despise it: and by what is recorded in the Scriptures, he received as much Love,

Kindness, Compassion, and tender Dealing towards him from Women, as he did from any others, both in his Life time, and also after they had exercised their Cruelty upon him; for Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother of James, beheld where he was laid;

And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother of James, and

Salom, had brought sweet Spices, that they might annoint him: And very early in the

Morning, the first Day of the Week, they came unto the Sepulchre at the rising of the Sun; and they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the Stone from the Door of the

Sepulchre? And when they looked the Stone was rolled away, for it was very great, Mark

16. 1, 2, 3, 4. Luke 24. 1, 2. and they went down into the Sepulchre, and as Matthew saith,

The Angel rolled away the Stone, and he said unto the Women, Fear not, I know whom ye seek, Jesus which was Crucified: He is not here, he is risen, Mat. 28. Now Luke saith thus, That there stood two Men by them in shining Apparel, and as they were perplexed and afraid, the Men said unto them, He is not here, remember how he said unto you when 83 he was in Galilee, That the Son of Man must be delivered into the Hands of sinful Men, and be Crucified, and the third Day rise again; and they remembred his Words, and return’d from the Sepulchre, and told all these things to the Eleven, and to all the rest.

It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the Mother of James, and the other Women that were with them, which told these things to the Apostles, and their

Words seemed unto them as Idle Tales, and they believed them not. Mark this, ye despisers of the Weakness of Women, and look upon your selves to be so wise: But

Christ Jesus doth not so; for he makes use of the weak: For when he met the Women after he was risen, he said unto them, All Hail! And they came and held him by the Feet, and worshipped him; then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid, go tell my Brethren that they go into Galilee, and there they shall see me, Mat. 28. 10. Mark 16. 9. And John saith, when Mary was weeping at the Sepulchre, that Jesus said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? what seekest thou? And when she supposed him to be the Gardner, Jesus said unto her, Mary; she turned her self, and said unto him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master;

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my

Brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God, John 20. 16, 17.

Mark this, you that despise and oppose the Message of the Lord God that he sends by Women; What had become of the Redemption of the whole Body of Mankind, if they had not cause to believe the Message that the Lord Jesus sent by these Women, of and concerning his Resurrection? And if these Women had not thus, out of their Tenderness, and Bowels of Love, who had received Mercy, and Grace, and Forgiveness of Sins, and 84

Vertue, and Healing from him; which many Men also had received the like, if their

Hearts had not been so united and knit unto him in Love, that they could not depart as the

Men did; but sat watching, and waiting, and weeping about the Sepulchre until the time of his Resurrection, and so were ready to carry his Message, as is manifested, else how should his Disciples have known, who were not there?

13. A daughter’s memory of her mother’s piety, Germany, 1750

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in many parts of Europe, people sought to deepen their spiritual experiences in a variety of ways. Organized movements developed that promoted more intense piety, such as pietism in Germany and Methodism in England, and followers were encouraged to engage in frequent individual prayer. In this selection from a letter, Katharina Stolberg describes the intensity with which her mother, Christiane Charlotte Friederike Stolberg, prayed. Source: J. H. Hennes, Aus

Friedrich Leopold von Stolberg’s Jugendjahren. Nach Briefen der Familie und andern

handschiftlichen Nachrichten (Frankfurt 1876), pp. 7–8. Translated by Merry Wiesner-

Hanks.

My mother was a true prayer. She did not start a trip or any undertaking without praying;

she did not start reading a book or writing a letter without praying. Wherever she went,

she took the first moment that she was alone to drop on her knees or sit down, and with

closed eyes—she opened them only to cast devout glances at the heavens—and folded

hand she prayed. The presence of her children or her servants did not bother her; I am

also certain that few of her friends have not seen her in prayer; yet it occurred to no one 85

to become annoyed at this or to wonder about it. Her whole demeanor was so open and so

natural, with no doubts in her belief and with such joy in her prayer. Her whole being was

so lively, so cheerful, that it was impossible to have any doubts about her. I do not know if she ever wished to have a miraculous sign of belief, but a child-like belief was her

element. From childhood on she had a very special view of providence whenever she

listened to prayers, and she wished only that her dear Father would fulfill her requests,

not give signs or miracles.

14. A daughter’s letter to her father on her confirmation day, Germany, 1778

Young people who were Catholic or members of many Protestant denominations,

including Lutherans and Anglicans, went through a ritual of the confirmation of their

faith when they reached adolescence. Until they had been confirmed, they were not

allowed to take Holy Communion, a central ritual in Christianity, in which bread and

wine represent—or in Catholicism, are transformed into—the body and blood of Christ.

Until they were confirmed, Catholic young people did not make their confessions, a

necessary prerequisite to Communion. In this letter, Susanna Maria Jakobina

Loeffelholz asks her father’s forgiveness and blessing before her confirmation; such a

request was probably encouraged by her priest, or expected as a normal prelude to

Communion. Source: Franz Erich Mencken (ed.), Dein Dich zartlich liebender Sohn.

Kinderbriefe aus sechs Jahrhunderten (Munich, 1965), pp. 43–4. Translated by Merry

Wiesner-Hanks.

86

Today is one of the most important days in my whole life, because with God’s support I

will go into a confessional booth for the first time in my life, and afterward will be

invited to the atonement and holy meal of our lord Jesus. So that I might appear in a more

worthy way, it is my duty and obligation as a child, to first appear before you, my

gracious father, with my thanks and debts... because my conscience is also convinced that

I have often offended you my dear Papa both consciously and unconsciously, and have brought you to anger, so I will not only attest to this, but will ask you obediently with my whole soul to forgive me my youthful errors and sins from your heart. If you do not bear these in mind any more, I will attempt, with the help of God, to transforms these errors into virtues. I ask in closing only this, that you include me in your Christian and fatherly prayers, and ask for God’s grace and help for me, to which God will undoubtedly listen.

For this I will be, for the duration of my life,

My gracious Herr Papa’s humble and obedient daughter.

15. Legal opinion concerning the religious training of a woman accused of infanticide, Germany, 1787

Although all Christian denominations in early modern Europe mandated religious instruction, and some was available in most cities and villages, many people, especially the very poor, had no opportunity to attend. In this legal brief, which was part of the documentation of a case of infanticide, the jurist noted how superficial and scanty the religious training of the accused was; his explanation was not enough to bring about a reduction in the sentence of the accused, however. Source: Wilhelm Wächterhäuser, Das

Verbrechen des Kindesmordes im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, Quellen und Forschungen 87 zur Strafrechtsgeschichte, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1973), p. 108. Translated by Merry Wiesner-

Hanks.

The unfortunate accused had enjoyed as good as no religious instruction, in that when she was six she went to a school run by the village sexton for fourteen days, and after that she learned a few catechism questions and readings by heart from one of her companions without understanding their meaning. At her confirmation she did not receive any further religious instruction, but some questions were put to her by her pastor, which he answered himself and simply admonished her. It was clear from the examination before the court, that in terms of religious and moral matters she has a completely miserable understanding and incorrect notions; in particular, in terms of the unlawfulness and liability to punishment of the deed she has done, and its seriousness, she has only a little and incomplete understanding and conviction, and no idea about the meaning of the words that she learned by heart in her youth: thou shall not kill.

16. Jewish prayers, Eastern Europe, seventeenth century

Prayer was a common religious activity for people of all religious persuasions in early modern Europe. Many prayers were spontaneous, and there is no way to reconstruct them, but others were published, and people were encouraged to memorize and then recite them. This selection comes from two tkhines, supplicatory prayers for women written in Yiddish, the everyday language of central and eastern European Jews. Most tkhines were probably written by men, although some are known to be written by women, and they often concern issues that were important in women’s lives, such as childbirth, 88

family, and widowhood. Some were written specifically to be recited as a woman carried

the three special women’s religious duties in Judaism, separating out a portion of dough

in memory of priestly offerings, lighting the Sabbath candles, and remaining apart from

her husband during menstruation until she had taken a ritual bath. Source: Tkhines

(Amsterdam, 1658) co. [5c] and Shloyshe she’orim, translated in Chava Weissler,

“Prayers in Yiddish and the Religious World of Ashkenazic Women,” in Judith R. Baskin

(ed.), Jewish Women in Historical Perspective (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,

1991), pp. 159, 174–5.

[The woman] says this when she puts the loaf of berkhes [braided Sabbath bread] into the

oven: Lord of all the world, in your hand is all blessing. I come now to revere your

holiness, and I pray you to bestow your blessing on the baked goods. Send an angel to

guard the baking, so that all will be well-baked, will rise nicely, and will not burn, to

honor the holy Sabbath (which you have chosen so that Israel your children may rest

thereon) and over which one recites the holy blessing—as you blessed the dough of Sarah

and Rebecca our mothers. My Lord God, listen to my voice; you are the God who hears

the voices of those who call to you with the whole heart. May you be praised to eternity.

I, Sarah bas Tovim, [the woman traditionally regarded as the author of this prayer] I do

this for the sake of the dear God, blessed be he and blessed be his name, and arrange, this

second time, yet another beautiful new tkhine concerning three gates. The first gate is

founded upon the three commandments which we women were commanded: [The

acronym] Hanna”h is their name . . . that is to say, separating dough for hallah, 89

observing menstrual avoidances [niddah], and kindling Sabbath lights [hadlaqat ha-

nerot]. The second gate is a tkhine to pray when one blesses the New Moon. The third

gate concerns the Days of Awe.

I take for my help the living God, blessed be he, who lives forever and to eternity, and I set out this second beautiful new tkhine in Yiddish with great love, with great awe,

with trembling and terror. . . May God have mercy upon me and upon all Israel. May I

not long be forced to be a wanderer, by the merit of our Mothers, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel,

and Leah. And my own dear mother Leah pray to God, blessed be he, for me, that my

being a wanderer may be an atonement for me for me for my sins.

17. Trial of two women accused of apostasy, Poland, 1716

Accepting a variety of Christianity different from that of one’s ruler was against the law

in many parts of Europe and could result in punishment and execution. Converting from

Christianity to Judaism, termed apostasy, was even worse. This trial record from early

modern Poland concerns two women accused of apostasy, one who converted to marry a

Jewish man and the other in the course of her travels. The records, and an introduction

by Magda Teter, can be found at

http://www.earlymodern.org/workshops/2006/teter/text01/intro.php?tid=70