1st Edition
Redefining Female Religious Life French Ursulines and English Ladies in Seventeenth-Century Catholicism
By Laurence Lux-Sterritt
Copyright 2005
244 Pages
by
Routledge
244 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This short study offers a contribution to the flourishing debate on post-Reformation female piety. In an effort to avoid excessive polarization condemning conventual life as restrictive or hailing it as a privileged path towards spiritual perfection, it analyses the reasons which led early-modern women to found new congregations with active vocations. Were these novel communities born out of their... Read more
Contents: Introduction; The birth of the new phenomenon of the teaching nun; The improper institutions of troublesome women; Religious change and the politics of gender; Serving the Church in the classroom; Pushing the boundaries of female ministry; Serving Martha and Mary: Modus Vivendi; Modernity and tradition: imitating the cloister; To leave God for God's sake: the apostolate as self-abnegation; Conclusion; Appendices; Bibliography; Index.
Biography
Laurence Lux-Sterritt is lecturer at the Département des Etudes du Monde Anglophone, Université de Provence I, France.
'The whole work is a fine contribution to a field which is attracting increasing interest.' HWR (Historians of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland) ’... a valuable contribution to the history of the Catholic Reformation because it chronicles the forces that gave rise to the English Ladies and the Ursulines, and also argues persuasively for their enduring impact.’ Sixteenth Century Journal ’... makes a useful contribution to the body of works on female Catholic thought and action. It offers an interesting micro-study of the two movements examined, is based on substantial archival research in France and England, and is an attractively presented and well-illustrated book that students and scholars in the field will find of value.’ French History
