This timely collection of essays, from an international team of authors, spans a wide geographical and chronological spectrumand focuseson female relationships with piety and religious vocations. Ideal for students, each chapter introduces new research and offers a guide to historiographical debates and methodologies."
This timely collection of essays, from an international team of authors, spans a wide geographical and chronological spectrumand focuseson female rela...
Contradictions are legion when it comes to women and spirituality. In Christian cultures, the worth of the female sex is highly ambivalent, since virginity and motherhood are construed respectively as badges of purity and fruitfulness, whilst the biological processes which underlie them are considered taboo or impure. Throughout history, women are in turn represented as inferior, defective creatures or as privileged 'empty vessels' in their relationship with the divine. This polarized conception of woman has influenced the way in which religious institutions, learned writers, or indeed women...
Contradictions are legion when it comes to women and spirituality. In Christian cultures, the worth of the female sex is highly ambivalent, since virg...
This book focuses on the Catholic women who became Benedictines in the seventeenth century, choosing exile in order to pursue their vocation for an enclosed life, within England or across the Continent. It uncovers previously unknown details about English conventual life and highlights the tensions between the contemplative ideal and the nuns' personal experiences. The study makes use of a wide variety of original manuscripts, including chronicles, death notices, clerical instructions and texts of spiritual guidance, but also the nuns' own collections of notes.
The first four...
This book focuses on the Catholic women who became Benedictines in the seventeenth century, choosing exile in order to pursue their vocation for an...
