Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World)

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. Part I. Service -- 1. Community, Conflict, And Local Authority: The Basque Seroras / Amanda L. Scott -- 2. The Company Of St. Ursula In Counter-reformation Italy / Querciolo Mazzonis -- 3. Nursing As A Vocation Or A Profession? Women's Status And The Meaning Of Healing In Early Modern France And England / Susan Dinan -- Part Ii. Perceptions Of Holiness -- 4. Historicizing The Beatas : The Figures Behind Reformation And Counter-reformation Conflicts / Maria Laura Giodano -- 5. Ecco La Santa! Printed Italian Biographies Of Devout Laywomen, Seventeenth-eighteenth Centuries / Anne Jacobson Schutte -- 6. Flying In Formation: Subjectivity And Collectivity In Luisa Melgarejo De Soto's Mystical Practices / Stacey Schlau -- 7. Illuminated Islands : Luisa De Los Reyes And The Inquisition In Manila / Jessica Fowler -- Part Iii. Confessional Crossings -- 8. Elastic Institutions : Beguine Communities In Early Modern Germany / Jennifer Kolpacof Deane -- 9. Neither Nun Nor Laywoman: Entering Lutheran Convents During The Reformation Of Female Religious Communities In The Duchy Of Braunschweig, 1542-1655 / Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer -- 10. Marina De Saavedra : A Devout Laywoman On A Confessional Frontier (zamora, 1558-1559) / Doris Moreno Martinez -- 11. Devout Recusant Women, Advice Manuals, And The Creation Of Holy Households Under Siege / Ellen A. Macek -- Part Iv. Alliances -- 12. Convent Alternatives For Rich And Poor Girls In Seventeenth-century Florence : The Lay Conservatories Of Eleonora Ramirez Di Montalvo (1602-1659) / Jenniferharaguchi -- 13. The Lives Of Anne Line : Vowed Laywoman, Recusant Martyr, And Elizabethan Saint / Robert E. Scully, S.j. -- 14. Letters, Books, And Relics : Material And Spiritual Networks In The Life Of Luisa De Carvajal Y Mendoza (1564-1614) / Maria J. Pando-canbteli -- 15. Women Apostles In Early Modern Japan, 1549-1650 / Haruko Nawata Ward -- 16. Jesuit Apologias For Laywomen's Spirituality / Alison Weber. Edited By Alison Weber. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Focusing specifically on semi-religious women, this volume addresses a number of provocative questions about gender and religion in the early modern world. It offers a nuanced approach to the paradigm of woman as the prototypical "disciplined" subject of church-state power, and reflects new directions in gender history.