Gender, Catholicism and Spirituality

LAURENCE LUX-STERRITT is Lecturer in British History at the University of Aix-Marseille, France. CARMEN M. MANGION is Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK.

'The introduction and essays provide nuanced and stimulating treatments of their topics...this volume promises to stimulate thought and debate.' - Claire Sahlin, Texas Woman's University, USA 'Helpful for students of women's religious history, as an introductory text for the ten themes it covers...an excellent resource for libraries and classrooms.' - Bernadette Flanagan, Historians of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland 'This easily read, sensitive but provocative contribution to the growing interest in the history of women Religious, offers an antidote to both the blind 'one-size-fits-all' approach of gender studies and the near infantilising whimsy of Catholic romanticism.' - James Kelly, The Tablet 'Carmen Mangion and Laurence Lux-Sterritt are to be commended for soliciting and editing ten essays that, despite their considerable geographic and chronological range, collectively illuminate a number of themes and patterns that have affected the relationship between women and the Catholic Church across time and place. ...A rich collection.' - Kathleen Sprows Cummings, American Catholic Studies

• List of TablesAcknowledgementsList of ContributorsPrefaceIntroduction: Gender, Catholicism, Women's Spirituality over the Longue Duree;L.Lux-Sterritt & C.M.MangionPresence and Absence in Thirteenth Century Italy: Reading Clare of Assisi in Franciscan Liturgy and Community; A.WelchMarguerite Porete and the Predicament of her Preaching in Fourteenth Century France; R.LahavThe Impact of Renaissance Gender-Related Notions on the Female Experience of the Sacred: The Case of Angela Merici's Ursulines; Q.MazzonisTeresa de Jesus's Book and the Reform of the Religious Man in Sixteenth Century Spain; E.RhodesMary Ward's English Institute and Prescribed Female Roles in the Early Modern Church; L.Lux-SterrittAn English Nun's Authority: Early Modern Spiritual Controversy and the Manuscripts of Barbara Constable; J.LayPower in Piety: Inspiration, Ambitions and Strategies of Spiritual Virgins in the Northern Netherlands during the Seventeenth Century; M.Monteiro'Martyrs of England! Standing on High!': Roman Catholic Women's Hymn-writing for the Re-invigoration of the Faith in England, 1850-1900; N.J.ChoExpressions of Self-surrender in Nineteenth-Century France: The Case of Therese Couderc (1805-1885); K.StogdonThe 'Mixed Life': Challenging Understandings of Religious Life in Victorian England; C.M.MangionAfterword; F.E.DolanGlossaryFurther ReadingIndex.