ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some closing thoughts of key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book speaks about 'Women's defence of their public role', a bit over ten years ago; issues of the boundaries between public and private were a hot topic in women's history. The book explores women's actions in support of or in opposition to the Reformation and women's spiritual practices, or they explore the effects of religious change on women's lives. The ideas of the reformers and those which explore actual legal and social transformations have provoked sharp disagreements. The highly gendered nature of the Renaissance's 'anthropological vision' has been a steady theme in the work of Margaret King on women humanists, Constance Jordan on Renaissance feminism, and the huge number of studies of mostly English-women writers. Judith Bennett has noted, many historians are questioning the 'master narrative of a great transformation' from pre-modern to modern.
