Women And The Counter Reformation In Early Modern M Nster

The first study of how women from different backgrounds encountered the Counter-Reformation in early sixteenth-century Münster.

Nine essays explore the role of women in religious controversy and its effect on them, drawing primarily on writing by women. Spans Europe and the years 1500-1700. Topics include the religious politics of the nobility and royalty, charity organizations, family life, and such religious asylums as convents. Paper edition is available ($10.95; 20527-1). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The author is one of America's senior figures in women's history. This volume presents eleven of her writings, considering three of the main issues in the study of women and gender in early modern Germany - religion, law, and work.

Devout laywomen raise a number of provocative questions about gender and religion in the early modern world. How did some groups or individuals evade the Tridentine legislation that required third order women to take solemn vows and observe active and passive enclosure? How did their attempts to exercise a female apostolate (albeit with varying degrees of success and assertiveness) destabilize hierarchies of class and gender? To the extent that their beliefs and practices diverged from approved doctrine and rituals, what insights can they provide into the tensions between official religion and lay religiosity? Addressing these and many other questions, Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World reflects new directions in gender history, offering a more nuanced approach to the paradigm of woman as the prototypical "disciplined" subject of church-state power.

Hillman presents a fascinating account of the role that women played during the Catholic Reformation in France. She reconstructs the devotional practices of a network of powerful women showing how they reconciled Catholic piety with their roles as part of an aristocratic elite, challenging the view that the Catholic Reformation was a male concern.

Women Reformers of Early Modern Europe provides an expansive view of women negotiating their faith, voice, and agency in the religious and cultural scene of the sixteenth-century reformations. Women from different geographic contexts (Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Holland, and Scandinavia) and from a broad spectrum of vocations and social standings are highlighted along with examples of their original writings in English translation (in some cases brand new). An international, interdisciplinary cohort of over thirty scholars provide cutting-edge scholarship on women, religion, and gender in the sixteenth-century reformation context. Chapters interpret historical sources relevant to the women in question and provide original material for a deeper understanding of each woman's specific negotiations about her faith and religious preferences, as well as about her specific options--as a woman. Most of the women in the book left a written record, providing a valuable window into women's spirituality and theology. Gender questions are engaged throughout the chapters that provide irrefutable evidence of women's essential roles in the reception and implementation of the Protestant confessions. An important voice comes from women who defended their right to profess Catholic faith. Thematic articles enhance the analysis of the roles, experiences, and contributions of individual women in different contexts and positions vis-à-vis reformation teachings. Women stand out as writers, theologians, historians, biblical interpreters, publishers, hymnwriters, rulers, pastoral care givers, defenders of justice, "heretics," rebels, midwives, mothers, and friends. The tone of the volume is scholarly but invites a broad spectrum of readers who have varying levels of background knowledge. It is especially suitable as a textbook or as a reference guide in different disciplines (reformation studies, church history, theological history, gender scholarship, early modern and sixteenth-century studies; and language studies).

In premodern Germany, both the emerging centralized government and the powerful Catholic Church redefined gender roles for their own ends. Ulrike Strasser's interdisciplinary study of Catholic state-building examines this history from the vantage point of the virginal female body. Focusing on Bavaria, Germany's first absolutist state, Strasser recounts how state authorities forced chastity upon lower-class women to demarcate legitimate forms of sexuality and maintain class hierarchies. At the same time, they cloistered groups of upper-class women to harness the spiritual authority associated with holy virgins to the political authority of the state. The state finally recruited upper-class virgins as teachers who could school girls in the gender-specific morals and type of citizenship favored by authorities. Challenging Weberian concepts that link modernization to Protestantism, Strasser's study illustrates the modernizing power of Catholicism through an examination of virginity's central role in politics, culture, and society. Weaving together the stories of marriage and convent, of lay as well as religious women, State of Virginity makes important contributions to the historical study of sexuality and the growing feminist literature on the state. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political and religious history, women's studies, and social history.

Women, Religion and Education in Early Modern England is a study of the nature and extent of the education of women in the context of both Protestant and Catholic ideological debates. Examining the role of women both as recipients and agents of religious instruction, the author assesses the nature of power endowed in women through religious education, and the restraints and freedoms this brought.