ABSTRACT
Women and Catholicism Even before the start of the Protestant Reformation in 1517, the opportunities that religious women had seized in the Middle Ages narrowed. The midfifteenth-century theologian Jean Gerson foreshadowed the reaction against female visionaries when he denounced women's enthusiasm as "extravagant, changeable, uninhibited, and therefore not to be considered trustworthy."1 Women's purported weakness and vulnerability had previously qualified them to be the mouthpieces of God, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they were more likely to be seen as instruments of the devil. Although some women still insisted on speaking out as prophets, many more came under attack as witches or heretics for what was essentially the same activity. According to one study, the proportion of female saints fell from a peak of almost 28 percent in the fifteenth century to 18 percent in the sixteenth century and 14.4 percent in the seventeenth.
