ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |28 pages
Introduction Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World
part I|60 pages
Service
chapter 3|20 pages
Nursing as a Vocation or a Profession?
part II|83 pages
Perceptions of Holiness
chapter 4|21 pages
Historicizing the Beatas
chapter 5|21 pages
Ecco la santa!
chapter 6|19 pages
Flying in Formation
part III|80 pages
Confessional Crossings
chapter 9|23 pages
Neither Nun nor Laywoman
chapter 10|16 pages
Marina de Saavedra
part IV|99 pages
Alliances