Religious Sisters and Revival in the English Catholic Church, 1840s–1880s

This chapter focuses on Roman Catholic sisters in England during the period 1840s to the 1880s, the decades when Church diocesan structures were legally re-established and Catholic revivalism was at its peak, is intended to make a contribution to this growing literature on religious sisters. It also concerns on Natalie Zemon Davis's insight that religious reform and revival can act to fracture the status quo and thereby provide opportunities or spaces for some women to alter their own status and to have an impact on their religious culture. The chapter also draws on the history of modern Protestant revivalism, with its understanding of the existence and importance of a transatlantic evangelical religious economy and culture. It indicates how Catholic religious sisters in England, as agents in an English-speaking Catholic revival, operated within an Atlantic World that embraced France, Ireland, and North America.